Daniel Fallman
Umea University, Sweden
The New Good: Designing Engaging Information Technology

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Contemporary Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is seeing an increasing interest in experience-related themes such as engagement, involvement, and affection. As a result, HCI is now increasingly examining the nature of interactions between artifacts, humans, and environments through the concept of user experience. In the transition from usability metrics to user experience, what appears lacking however is a more explicit characterization of what it is HCI now strives for as a discipline: i.e. what constitutes a 'good' user experience? Implicitly or explicitly, information technology has typically been thought of and designed to do things for us as users: to make our lives easier or more convenient, to automate or help speed up boring tasks, to free us from geographical constraints to allow us to communicate ubiquitously, and to save us time to spend on more rewarding pursuits. However, what seems to be a common denominator among some very successful information technologies of late is that they strive to do the exact opposite: these technologies tend to engage rather than disengage mind and body; they require effort, patience, and skill; and they help shape new relations between humans, artifacts, and environments that draw us closer to genuine places, people, and things. In this talk, the notion of a 'good user experience' will be analyzed and decomposed in light of these trends. Second, I will briefly introduce the work of two contemporary philosophers of technology---Albert Borgmann's notion of the device paradigm and Don Ihde's notion of the inherent non-neutrality of technology-mediated experience---that I have come to base much of my own thinking in this area around. Finally, the project The Design of Engaging Information Technology (DEIT) will be introduced. DEIT is a five-year-long project collaboration between the Interactive Institute and Umea University, Sweden, funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. We aim to advance a new design philosophy for HCI and Interaction Design where the concepts of engagement, involvement, and embodiment form the keystones. As will be argued in this talk, there is a substantial difference in complexity between designing for usability and designing for engagement, involvement, and embodiment. For the latter, we must develop new guiding visions that provides us the means---the ideas, theories, concepts, models, tools, and techniques---for revealing, analyzing, and discussing the rich human, social, cultural, ethical, moral, ecological, and political implications of these experiences and how they foster new relationships between people, artifacts, and environments.

Daniel Fallman is an Associate Professor of Informatics at Umea University, Sweden, and studio director for Interactive Institute Umea where he leads a team of talented young interaction designers, researchers, doctoral students, and engineers specializing in experimental interaction design, primarily within non-office type environments such as paper mill factories, mountain bike paths, and scuba diving reefs. His own research interests are in the confluence of HCI and design and include new interaction technologies and interaction styles, sketching techniques for interaction designers, design theory, and the philosophy of technology.