Ecologies of Interactive Artifacts
| Submitted by | Heekyoung Jung |
| Affiliation | Indiana University |
| All authors | Stolterman, E., Jung, H., Ryan, W., Siegel, M. |
| Keywords | artifact, personal ecology, network, interactivity, design |
| Paper link |
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| Submitted | 2008-01-08 13:30 |
| Submission history |
Abstract
With the increasing ubiquitous presence of technology, we as designers must start to look at the way these technologies support, interfere with, and compete with each other in our homes and workplaces. This paper looks at the network created by these artifacts as an ecology that an individual must strive to maintain. We propose an early theoretical perspective and a preliminary research framework to analyze this phenomenon that models both the artifact itself and its value to the user. Our goal with this research is to understand the strategies that users employ to maintain their personal ecology to support the design of artifacts integration with these ecologies.
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| This study has not published to any conferences yet. Only a part of this paper (value-centered model) has been submitted to CHI note this year but rejected receiving constructive feedbacks with ratings of 3, 6, 6, 3. Positive comments were about the increasing needs for this new perspective and the originality of the concept while negative ones mentioned about insufficient user studies. After that, we have furthered theoretical studies for the concept of ‘ecology of artifacts’ and suggested more relative perspectives and models to understand dynamic relations among interactive artifacts. I hope this alt.CHI would be a valuable venue for us to get meaningful feedbacks from those who realize the increasing importance of “interactive artifacts” in our life. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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We like the concept of “ecologies”. One question we would like to raise, however, is whether and why people are excluded in the authors’ ecologies concept. It appears as if the ecologies are about artifacts – without people. We think that including people – and especially: more than one person – could enrich the ecologies concept, e.g. because it would enable to think about multiple people sharing artifacts – on a physical, functional, informational or interactive level. We think that many texts about “ambient systems” include people for that reason.
Regarding theoretical foundation, we would have liked to see one theory chosen and elaborated upon – rather then treating four theories (or theorists) relatively superficially. There’s Verbeek, Borgmann, Latour and Krippendorff – the first three authors one of us is familiar. And, in line with our earlier remark about including people, we would like to see a theory chosen which includes (or focuses upon) the relation or interaction between people and technology. A large part of the paper is about a research framework and a research plan. We found it difficult to evaluate or appreciate that part, because we missed examples or findings or insights on a content level. We are not sure whether the concept of "ecologies of interactive artiacts" as it is described in the current paper is new or well positioned relative to concepts like "personal network", "ambient systems", etc. Nicole de Koning and Marc Steen |
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| It is possible that we (Nicole de Koning and Marc Steen) missed the main point of the paper: that interactive artifacts form an ecology *without* people interacting with them and with each other. If *that* is their point, then we would like to read some explanation about that decision to exclude people. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Thanks for your comment. Actually, we do not exclude people from the concept of artifact ecology. By focusing more on relationships 'among' artifacts 'surrounding' people than an individual relationship between one artifact and a user, we aimed to implicitly include people (for example, their use of artifacts, and cultural or social contexts) in our analysis of interactive artifacts. There is always a person at the core of a network or ecology. Our perspective is based on the notion of personal ecologies, which means that there (in our study) exist no ecologies of artifacts without humans. It is right that this paper is more like a proposal for further studies based on theoretical foundations and discussion about potential models for analyzing ecology of artifacts. Although we only discuss individual ecologies of artifacts at this initial step, we expect to extend the model for multiple users in various contexts as a long-term plan.
(maybe we can add more explanations about the selection of theoretical foundations later.) |
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This review was submitted by Milena Droumeva co-author of the A Antle, What the boyd Know paper.
Summary: the paper describes the theoretical background and past work of an investigation into the concept of ecologies of interactive artifacts (mostly, telecommunication and other portable devices are used as examples) and the implications of such a study to designers of future interactive artifacts. Strengths: The paper offers a good overview of theoretical concepts relating to ecology, and specifically how it has been applied in the area of technology and human-computer interaction. I was glad to see the Nardi and Kuuti reference to Information Ecologies, and if I can offer one suggestion on the philosophy of technology side it would be Andrew Feenberg’s work on that topic, in the area of communication and media. Weaknesses: The paper essentially proposes a future study, bringing together ideas from past published papers as opposed to offer much new. The several new concepts, to be investigated in the upcoming study, seem to recycle out of past studies from published papers so the main weakness is to what degree this work contributes anything new. Suggestions: Perhaps a more explicit reiteration of the benefits of this study, and how its implications would and should be used in designers’ work would help. Also, on the question of ecology, while theoretically well-addressed, I still wonder – does your framework of ecology of interactive artifacts imply a ‘balance’ or ‘sustainability’ in any way? Analogous to the biological term ecology, are there balanced and unbalanced networks of interactive artifacts? And does your study aim to help designers create a balance, or help users achieve a balance? Basically, I believe when discussing ecology, issues of value-judgment need to be addressed. |
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Thank you for your suggestion of Andrew Feenberg’s work!
To answer some of your questions, the first motivation of this paper was that people use various interactive artifacts in everyday life and their individual environments tend to be defined by interactive artifacts they use. For example, we feel a same place very differently with or without interactive artifacts such as laptops or mobile phones. What is important, sometimes people feel complicated with various interactive artifacts and relevant information, as the importance of interactive artifacts increases in our life. For now, we expect the results of this study would provide design implications in relation with convergence issues, for example which information or functions to be integrated, related or separated and also how to harmonize them with appropriate physical interfaces (not directly related to sustainable issues but can be from long-term perspectives). About ‘balanced’ or ‘unbalanced’ networks, we are still not sure if we can define some of them as ‘balanced or not’. However different patterns of networks have been found so far from our initial user studies. That is to say, even for the same kinds of interactive devices, individuals construct different networks among them in terms of information management or carrying physical devices. We will categorize some patterns of ecology regardless of its ‘balancedness’ in relation with its effects or influence on people’s use of interactive artifacts with sufficient user studies. Lastly we expect this study would help both designers and users. Directly, the results may be implications about how much designers should consider individuals’ very personal and flexible management of artifact ecology or how they should support users’ ecology optimization based on understanding various patterns of artifact ecology. We also agree with the importance of value aspects of ecology as suggested value-centered model in our paper, and will specify them in relation with properties of interactive artifacts that we defined. At an initial phase of the study, many answers are still open with various possible directions. Although we have tried out some user studies (like describing participants’ ecology of artifacts and rating values of each artifact) for developing theoretical foundations, we did not include details of them in this paper because the results may bias the perspectives of our study with insufficient data and we have not make specific conclusions from them yet. Before actual empirical studies, we expect that this alt.chi would be an appropriate place to discuss our fundamental backgrounds and perspectives (like how on earth other people would think of the concept of ecology of artifact!). Many of your questions and ideas would be helpful for furthering our study. Thanks! |
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I found the main idea of this paper, i.e., explore relationships between HCI and ecology, very interesting although while I was reading the paper I was wondering if the focus of the paper can be some how be extended to exploring the relationships between ART and science.
The strong points of this paper are excellent theoretical grounding, consistent presentation of the study and logical arguments behind the choices that have been made. There are some weak points, still. I was missing the actual research questions that the researchers are planning the solve with the methodology presented this paper. In addition. the concept of Ecology Maps resembles a little bit maps of actor’s networks based on the theory of actor network theory (see e.g. John Law and John Hassard (eds) (1999). Actor Network Theory and After (Oxford and Keele: Blackwell and the Sociological Review). I also was interested to see the initial studies that the authors have made and in which they were referring to but the problem is that the references 13, 14, and 26 are under review and thereby they are not published yet. Thus, the main idea of this study is interesting and I look forward to hear from the study in the near future. |
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I find the authors' proposed topic to be an interesting and relevant issue to consider as the diversity and ubiquity of networked devices increases in everyday life. In in principle agree with the CHI note reviewers that this work has much potentially but is not yet fully developed. So, I think that the authors' would benefit from discussion of their work at CHI (although I am unsure if they would be a better fit at alt.chi or something else, such as works in progress).
Some of the issues discussed in the paper, such as the 3 basic values in the value-centered ecology model, remind me of Norman's three levels of cognitive processing (visceral, behavioral, and reflective -- Norman, Emotional Design, 2004), and the work should likely be cited in future versions of this paper. I would also encourage the authors to consider the relationship between networked ecologies and the physical environment, as the relationship between the physical form of objects and the environments in which they are used has a significant impact on their success (and on what is considered appropriate usage of such objects). I would point the authors towards a couple papers I have written on this topic, which also have references to some useful related work. E.g., Portable but not Mobile..., Woodruff et al. Ubicomp 2007 (http://bid.berkeley.edu/papers/pervasive_2007/portable_not_mobile/). In summary, I think that this paper presents an interesting research agenda that is positioned to reveal some new understanding of network ecologies. However, there is still a large body for related work that is worth exploring in more detail. |
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In this paper the authors provide a preliminary overview of future work. Although I find the goals pursued to be quite interesting, valuable, and worthy of research I am unable to recommend this paper for publication for a few reasons, most importantly: it's too early. Many of the references provided by the authors are still under review (as is pointed out by Teija), the research question is quite broad, and as Nicole and Marc point out the research framework is hard to appreciate from the content of the paper.
Here are some questions that I'd be very interested to see the authors address in future work: Artifacts vs. interactive artifacts (as described by the authors, meaning interactive via digital technologies). I would recommend reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book "The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self" if you are not familiar with it. In it M. C. explores the ecology (his usage) of symbols within the home through an in-depth study of people and their artifacts. I think this book would help inform assumption (ii) in the introduction. The broader ecology of people, culture, and artifacts. As the authors point out many of our interactive artifacts are used for communication. Does it make sense to confine study of these types of ecologies to only individuals and their artifacts? From Heekyoung's comment above I believe you are looking at expanding your work in this direction. How will you refine the goal (which appears to be the research question described in the paper) of creating "knowledge about how people experience and strategize the use and development of their ecologies of interactive artifacts over time." The frustration of feeling out of control. This may end up being beyond the scope of your work, but it is related and very interesting to me. You make reference to this in the intro by citing Norman and Wurman. I would also suggest Langer and Rodin's work.* * Langer, E. J., & Rodin, J. (1976). The effects of choice and enhanced personal responsibility for the aged: A field experiment in an institutional setting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 191-198. |
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Thank you all for your comments and recommendations of related studies!
As Teija mentioned, we also come to think the concept of ecology maps would be similar with actor network theory after preliminary user studies and plan to compare with it more specifically. Ryan mentioned that the three values would be similar with Norman's emotional model, which I have never thought of before. But now, I can relate those two conceptual models, and will try to specify how similar or different they are. Also the relations with physical environments would be a good idea as the artifacts themselves are obviously becoming an important part of our world, either in physical or virtual perspectives. Emotional feelings about artifacts, particularly frustration would be an interactive part of the study as Jamie mentioned. Although we briefly mentioned about information overload in the beginning of the paper, they can be also more studied about how they influence the relations among artifacts and the overall ecology. All your feedbacks and comments would be helpful for us to further this research. I hope to have more chances for discussion with more detailed results of study in near future! |
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