Reading through the reference papers from Djajadiningrat et al. was a interesting read. The authors argues that the trend of today is sadly neglecting the natural and essential importance of movement. Technology therefor is designed around heavily taxing our cognitive load which in turn limits the possible expressions as well as interactions with it.
The paper gives a historic background to how products have changed from being very mechanical in their expression and feedback requiring often the person to use the motor skill of the whole or part of the body. The relation between form. action and function is quite obvious up to the period of the 1940-50. With technological breakthroughs so does products change, purely mechanical switches and mechanisms are replaced by electrical powered ones. Movement is no longer required to be done by the whole body or arm instead the hand is sufficient to use thanks to the use of analogue rotary controls and sliders. Feedback is mainly displayed on scales and dials. Fast forwarding to the eighties the IC-chip has done a (commercial) breakthrough, now the movement is very precise at the users finger tip. Push buttons becomes an increasingly used control as it can fulfill many functions effectively cutting down the usage of many. The function of one control to have multi function role is prevalent. Here the feedback is commonly on displays in form of a text or other visual graphic.
The author reiterates that this development is moving towards a heavy emphasis on cognition and a loss of appreciation for perceptual-motor skill. Different functions are triggered by the same actions resulting in similar looking output. The burden of remembering everything is an issue, the proposed fix would be to look at design opportunities for bodily interaction. The move towards the “knowledge in the world” rather than “knowledge in the head”.
The paper is filled with interesting information a lot more then I can capture in a single post. Reading through it got me thinking about why the situation is like the authors describe. Why the products look like they do and why they aren’t like they purpose it should be. I’m not quite sure why it is like that but is it really necessary to be so engaged with a product when in fact the only thing you want to do is “simple” action e.g. heat up the food in the microwave. The microwave has it cognitive burden on the person. Settings are pushed in via buttons or dialed in with a knob do we really want this experience to be more beautiful aesthetically? The situational context is certainly not, I’m very hungry and I’m eating micro-ed food there is no need to do this action more interactively pleasant as it’s just at this point, for most people, a built in rudimentary move.
The efficiency of operating a product (once you know how it works) is quite high. Module 1 is going to be challenging for me as it will put demand on thinking in a way I’m not quite used to.
Micro blogg 