Juha Huuskonen (FIN)
Reaching out - interaction design as mediator between software and concepts
Juha Huuskonen's talk combined the views of software designer and media artist. His main point about interaction design seemed to be that it is all about communication: about creating a space for dialogue between the participants in a design project, and about finding ways to make pieces of software and hardware to communicate with each other in unexpected ways. Juha also reminded us that software is a messy business, but almost everything is possible.
Interaction design as mediaiting zone
Everything is possible!
Software is messy
Designing a product vs designing the process
Juha Huuskonen's lecture at UIAH, Helsinki 30.11.2001. Notes by Minna Tarkka.
Turkka Keinonen and Juha Huuskonen
Interaction design as mediating zone
Juha described interaction design as the point in the design process where people representing the different skills - programmers, graphic, media and interface designers - can meet. It is a space where everybody can express ideas: we are all users^Ê When discussing interaction design, we talk about content, scriptwriting, interface, the needs of software/system design - and everything at once. It is important to have this multidisciplinary forum for discussing.
Juha's own study and working history contains a variety of contexts and approaches to interactive design. After growing up as a member of the 'demoscene', with its low hardware level approach to programming (Assembly), he studied at the Helsinki University of Technology, where you "learn how structures are built and defined but not what you can do with them". This lack, together with the fact that his approach to programming is very visual and hands-on, led him to continue studies at UIAH Media Lab. His work contexts have also shifted from systems design projects to academic research at cern, through commercial applications to more artistic ones, which now form his main interest.
Juha himself is not interested in projects, where ready screenshots and tightly specified functionalities are presented at the start - "we just need someone to implement this". It is important for the programmer to participate in the development from concept design, and to proceed, in collaboration, through various demo and test iterations towards the final application.
According to Juha, designers - and engineers alike - too often limit their viewpoint to looking at what has been done previously. This leads to emulating past applications, and losing sight of all the interesting things that could be also possible to implement.
Instead of thinking through the existing solutions, and the constraints of the current design tools - such as flash or dreamweaver - it is possible to 'open' the tools for rethinking.
This is also why software design is such a key element of interaction design. Software designers can find ways to "reorganize the intelligence" embedded in design tools, and to make different devices and software to communicate between each other. Often the tools for achieving small programming wonders are quite simple, such as sockets, http protocols and files.
Never trust technology, said Juha. All these devices and software, beneath their smooth covers and interfaces that look so clean, are a terrible mess insideMade up of patches on patches, they barely keep themselves together.
He made an analogy between designing software and the baking process. At the start, all materials are in the kitchen, and almost everything is possible. But after starting to run the 'bread' procedure, which involves decisions at each step, it will be ever more difficult to change the thing under baking to a 'cake'.
This is one of the main resasons why a good actual collaboration at the start, the dialogue space of interaction design is important. It will be very hard for the programmer to follow designer's wish to insert raisins in the dough, if the bread is already in the oven.
Designing a product vs designing the process
Besides securing a good communication with the participants in the process, Juha stresses the creation of tools to facilitate collaboration and production. Instead of focusing on a static idea of the end product, it is important to find ways to keep the work process dynamic: - tools for design, production, documentation and updating.
The design of appropriate tools makes it possible for the others in the team to follow what the programmer is doing, or for the artist to do low-end programming with direct visual results. As example of this kind of process, Juha gave the collaboration with Perry Hoberman, where most of his time in developing software for a complex interactive installation was spent precisely in devising the right kind of tool for the artist to work with. Another example came from the Sarai Media Lab in New Delhi: CyberMohalla project, which develops an operating system without files, a shared information pool, based on local communication patterns.
A good question from the audience - "Who pays for all of this communication and tool development?" - raised some discussion. Juha explained that just reorganising the workspace - "taking the programmer out from the corner" - may be enough for ensuring communication. While most of his examples represented the borderland of software development and media art, it is also true that many solutions used in commercail projects often stem from this 'indie' scene. "On the other hand, not communicating enough will also become very expensive", Maari, one of the master class participants stated her experience.
Chris Hales (UK)
Juha Huuskonen (FIN)
Turkka Keinonen (FIN)
Casey Reas (USA/IT)
Bill Gaver (UK)