(A brief aside on “writing in the disciplines” or “interdisciplinary writing” programs: Most college composition courses take one of two approaches: the either ask the students to write about literature or they take a topical approach, choosing topics in which they believe the students will be interested. The former approach assumes the students are interested in what the instructor is interested in, as many of these courses are taught by graduate students or professors whose real interest is something literary. The latter creates an environment in which the ostensible topic of the writing is an artificial academic context usually dealt with very superficially, since the real purpose of the course is the writing, not the topic. IWP and programs like it try to solve that by situating the students and the instructor in a real academic context: an existing undergraduate course in another discipline. The students’ writing tasks are situated in an authentic environment, where they are actually trying to understand and enter an ongoing academic discourse.)

I was reminded of the importance of context (and my love for the insights of the social sciences broadly) this weekend as I watched two videos from an event Microsoft Research held at MIT, to celebrate the launch of their new lab in Cambridge:

• danah boyd on socio-technical practices (streaming video)
• Bill Buxton on “Designing Experience” (streaming video)

(Sorry for the mms links – you can rip them via mplayer if you need to watch in offline mode, but I think reposting them here would be considered a copyright violation).

Both really celebrate / argue for what we might call the situatedness of technology design: the ways in which an understanding of the cultural context of technology use needs to be brought back into the design of those technologies and how non-engineering approaches (from the social sciences in danah’s talk and from Design in Buxton’s talk) can help to provide that context.

danah boyd (capitalization hers) has built a (well-deserved) reputation for being a smart ethnographic observer of teen culture as it intersects with what we now call social networking, having spent many years embedding herself in both the online networks and (importantly) the social contexts in which real teens engage with those networks.

In this video, she talks about the situatedness of what the industry calls “Web 2.0″ within a broader social and cultural history which includes moral panic about teens and adult strangers and changing political geographies which eliminated / privatized traditional public spaces.

She outlines several factors which are inflecting teen behavior (ways in which the new technology both has an impact on and is impacted by the behavior):

1. persistence
2. replicability
3. scalability
4. searchability

And some dynamics which result from these factors:

• invisible audiences
• collapsed contexts
• public == private

For me the key in the video is less the specific issues she discusses (which if you’ve followed her work aren’t necessarily new) but the broader context in which she places the work: how technology creation and design needs to take into account the social contexts in which technology use is always necessarily embedded.

In other words, technology designers and makers can’t really hope to be fully successful without engaging the uses to which their technologies are put. Not that they’ll know in advance what all social uses will be (in fact the most interesting ones are generally those least anticipated) but that they need to remain engaged and active in the kinds of understanding on which social sciences have traditionally focused.

Eminent researcher, designer, and teach Bill Buxton‘s talk, which followed danah’s, actually ends up complimenting it well. He basically makes an argument for bringing “design thinking” earlier and more consistently in the design process for technology products. He also makes a compelling case for doing a different kind of “usability testing,” with two key additions:

1. Showing users multiple prototypes/sketches. Users recruited for testing will rarely be critical of a prototype when shown only one solution, but will provide stronger critiques when shown multiple solutions. This is due in part to a reluctance to criticize the team running the tests, who are presumably invested in the solution. When users were shown three alternative approaches they were much more forthcoming in their criticisms, as they recognize the design team haven’t “solved” the problem.
2. Ask users to sketch a solution. It’s long been a truth universally accepted that users don’t provide solutions: they know the problem, but don’t know how to solve it. Buxton shows that by giving users a vocabulary and toolset which enables them to communicate design solutions, they can and will produce more innovations.

As with boyd’s talk, though, the importance for me of what Buxton’s talking about isn’t a specific set of changes to usability testing, but a broader focus on the kinds of skill sets teams need to encourage, facilitate, and perhaps even require. It’s about what he calls “design thinking” and collaboration among researchers and designers with heterogeneous specialties. He talks specifically about bringing together cognitive psychologists, sociologists, graphic designers, interaction/industrial designers, and software engineers on teams to really cultivate the kind of productive discussion necessary to fundamentally change how technology solutions are imagined.

Although voting by prospective attendees is only “about 30%” of the decision making process, I figured I should promote my submissions here, and hope that readers of this blog might be interested in commenting on them or voting for them in the panel picker. (Although they call it the panel picker – no one can resist alliteration – it includes sessions which are solo speakers or dual speakers as well as more tradition 4-5 person panels).

So here are the sessions I proposed (links go directly to the Panel Picker):

Managing User Generated Content

The age of content being managed only by authorized professionals is over. Users expect to contribute to, rate, review, recommend, filter, tag, and moderate their experiences on the web. What does this mean for designers and content management professionals? How do you encourage appropriate behavior and discourage spam and vandalism, without completely reverting to non-participation?

Open Source and Design: Ideologies Clashing

Thesis: Open Source and Design are fundamentally philosophically incompatible. Antithesis: Open Source and Design are profoundly similar in core beliefs and approaches. This talk works to articulate a meaningful synthesis between these two positions.

Managing Your Online Identity Outside the Walled Garden

(Dual talk with Joshua Porter). This talk will cover 3 basic ideas: 1) What Managing Identity means these days and why it is important 2) Off-the-shelf technologies that help you manage your Identity 3) A DIY (Do-it-yourself) approach to managing your Identity…how you can roll your own identity services using existing pieces

The first is really an updated version of this talk from Web Content 2008, which seemed to go over well.

The second is inspired by r0ml’s series of OSCON talks over the last 3 years: rambling, philosophical, and entertaining in addition to being educational and thought-provoking. I’m sure I’ll fail to live up to his example but have fun in the process. I tried to update the description in the panel picker but failed – here’s what I was trying to add:

The context for me is in trying to articulate why free and open source projects have historically found it difficult to recruit / retain / attract designers as contributors. (Or, depending on your point of view, why open source projects have been so inhospitable to the design-oriented contributors who show up).

Thesis: Open Source and Design are philosophically incompatible.

Open Source is about enabling anyone and everyone to share the same code base. Open source pushes markets toward commodity status, leveling the playing field by making the same technology available to all. Design, by contrast, is about differentiation; standing apart from the crowd and being unique on the basis of creative innovation.

Besides, Open Source projects are ugly, and only engineers can use them. Well designed, beautiful, and easy to use projects have always come from proprietary approaches.

Antithesis: Open Source and design are profoundly similar in core beliefs. Open source and design are both based in solving problems based on known patterns. Good artists copy, great artists steal. Maybe some very small portion of “design” is about differentiation, but design is much broader than that subset. Also, many open source projects differentiate and innovate – sometimes on ease of use.

Besides, many open source projects are now actively pursuing design contributions, running usability studies, encouraging themes/skins, and working to compete with proprietary software on both “eye candy” and ease of use.

Synthesis: How can open source projects benefit more from the talents of the design community (across visual design, interaction design, information architecture, usability, and branding)? How can designers and design communities benefit from the lessons of free and open source software?

The third is a joint talk with Joshua Porter, whose book Designing for the Social Web is a must read. He’ll be talking about some of the “off the shelf” services available to help you manage your online identity (like Chi.mp), and I will be talking about the DIY approach, assembling together from free and open source software an online identity management toolbox.

The Boston chapter of the Interaction Design Association is hosting a night of short talks – I imagine something like Pecha Kucha or Ignite! – this Thursday (June 26th, 2008) 6pm-9pm at Bentley College. RSVP required

Planned speakers:

• Juhan Sonin: Design and Open Source Software
• Jeremy Merle: Designing in an Agile Environment
• Ian Muir: Designer-Developer collaboration
• Jesse Beach: HTML5 Heads Up
• Jared Spool: What’s the Best Way to Compare Multiple Design Alternatives?
• Christa Houlahan: Search, Beyond the Box
• Matt McKeon: Many Eyes, Visualisation in the hands of the people.
• Michael Hawley: Next Generation Interaction Paradigms
• Kris Engdahl: Using Reality Maps for Task Analysis

Looking forward to it – hopefully I’ll be able to blog a bit about some of the presentations.