Part 1: General thoughts on aesthetics

[First in a series of postings about aesthetics and beauty as they pertain to interaction design, and beyond…]


Recently the question was raised on the IxDA discussion list, “does aesthetics matter to interaction design(ers)?” I wholeheartedly say yes as described here. But it’s important to first understand what is meant by the concept of “aesthetics”, as it relates to the design profession at-large.

Commonplace notions of aesthetics tend to focus on purely the surface visual qualities (color, style, shape, effects, etc.) as a matter of sensory stimulation and ornamental differentiation. It’s meant to excite and enthrall and, quite simply, jazz up some fuddy-duddy engineering contraption. This notion is applicable to a web 2.0 website look-and-feel, or the housing for a portable vacuum, or a business stationary logo.

Of course, as designers we often vehemently protest and cringe when someone says all we do is make something “pretty” with surface delights. We know there’s much more to a highly refined aesthetic than mere style and decoration of an engineered contraption, slapped on to appease marketing, etc. At the same time as designers we know that visual (and sensual) beauty matters and can have a defining role in determining a product’s acceptance/usage and shaping the overall quality of engagement.

Gianfranco Zaccai, president/CEO of Design Continuum in Boston, explains aesthetics this way:

Aesthetics in regard to any object, therefore, it not an absolute and separate value. Rather, it is totally related to our ability to see congruence among our intellectual expectations of an object’s functional characteristics, our emotional need to feel that ethical and social values are met, and our physical need for sensory stimulation

Interesting how he identifies three core elements that constitute a sense of aesthetic wholeness. In the original article he paired them with the three psychological elements of self: id, ego, and super ego. In parallel, Don Norman identified three levels of cognitive processing that are shaped by an emotionally powerful design: the visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Ahh, the power of threes!

Zaccai continues further, about designing for our senses and kinesthetics:

To a great extent, many designers have focused their attention on the sense of sight and, to a much lesser extent, the sense of touch. However, human sensory perception includes other organs besides the eyes and the nerve endings at the tips or our fingers. Olfactory and auditory considerations and manipulations should also be a part of the design process. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water and the Alhambra are two examples where the sounds of water and the scents of natural components within the human-made environment are intrinsic to the experience of the architecture.

It seems reasonable that the design of many mass-produced products could benefit from a similar sensitivity. A slide projector, for example, would be immeasurably improved by the elimination of the fan noise. In contrast, the addition of appropriately restful sounds to an alarm clock would potentially help the user in falling asleep, and be less offensive when the time comes to awaken.

The interrelations among all of the sensory perceptions need to be considered in a dynamic way. Concerns for the kinesthetics associated with the actual use of an object add a new dimension to the design process.

So what can we make of this? A few major points:

** Aesthetics has to do with the entirety of human senses and intellect, in a cumulative, integral fashion. Design aesthetics must respect the value of our basic human desire for pleasure and satisfaction and fulfillment.
>> See Patrick Jordan, Designing Pleasurable Products

** Aesthetics is a multi-sensory concept, encompassing visual, audio, smell, taste, and tactility. True “experience design” should embody all these together, in the staging of a dramatic, experiential performance crafted to address each sense in a cooperative fashion, where each sense feeds off the other, and reinforces the overall impact. Best example of this: Disney Imagineering. Also, “dinner theater” events, Cirque Du Soleil, branded environments (Rainforest Cafe, NikeTown, Virgin Atlantic, Cunard Cruises), W Hotels, Apple Store.
>> See Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses
>> Also Brenda Laurel’s Computers as Theatre

** Aesthetics involves multiple insights on human psychology (cognition), emotional response (affect), sensual stimulation (biology, kinesthetics, physics, chemistry), and rational logical thought (engineering, logic). These three map to (surprise!) the core elements that constitute a well-formed, balanced rhetorical argument: pathos, ethos, logos.

As Zaccai himself says, the great designers are those that believe in the totality of aesthetics and cultivate that sense in their process by whatever means and tools. In the end, aesthetics has to do with respecting core human senses and values. Thus, aesthetics has absolutely everything to do with designing interactions and user experiences.


Gianfranco Zaccai, “Art and Technology”, from Discovering Design: Explorations in Design Studies


Part 1: General thoughts on design aesthetics

Part 2: Interpretations of beauty as a value of user experience

Part 3: Towards an integrative aesthetic experience

Aesthetics for interaction design

I’m in the midst of transitioning jobs but will soon post a multi-part series on the place and value of aesthetics for interaction designers. I’ve long had thoughts about this, dating back to my graduate thesis on beauty as an emergent value of user experience, and subsequent papers for CHI and IDSA exploring the various experiential interpretations of beauty, even proposing a model of aesthetics for new product innovation at the IDSA World Design Congress last fall. When I recently saw aesthetics re-surface as a point of debate on the ixda list, I decided to publish more about my ideas on this, leveraging material from my previous papers and talks. However, that was over a month ago! :-) So I intend to make good on that personal promise very soon…


Aesthetics for Interaction Design

Part 1: General thoughts on design aesthetics

Part 2: Interpretations of beauty as a value of user experience

Part 3: Towards an integrative aesthetic experience

Rhetorical definitions and design

The following quoted passage is by R. Buchanan, PhD., from his essay Design and the New Rhetoric: Productive Arts in the Philosophy of Culture, published in Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 34, No. 3, 2001. Copyright 2001, Penn State University.

My intention in typing this up is to help those struggling to define UCD, IxD, and related concepts, by providing insights from a rhetorical POV. I hope you find this useful!

The rhetorical uses of definition offer a good beginning point for clarifying the nature of design. For rhetoricians, definitions serve strategic and tactical purposes in inquiry. They do not settle matters once and for all, as many people seem to believe they should. Instead, they allow an investigator or a group of investigators to clarify the direction of their work and move ahead with inquiry in a particular thematic direction. Rhetoricians recognize many kinds of definition, ranging from commonplace definitions of ordinary usage to descriptive and formal definitions. Commonplace definitions are adequate for settling the issue of name, but descriptive and formal definitions serve to identify a direction for thematic investigation of the nature of a subject. Descriptive definitions, for example, tend to identify a single primary cause of a subject and point toward how that cause may be explored in greater depth and detail, allowing an individual to create connection among matters that are otherwise not easily connected. When designer Paul Rand says, for example, “Design is the creative principle of all art,” he identifies individual creativity as the most important cause of design. In similar fashion, when cognitive psychologist Herbert Simon says, “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones,” he identifies cognitive processes of decision-making as the key to understanding design. THere are many descriptive definitions of design, and they are as varied as the insights of human beings and as varied as the causes that may account for design.

Formal definitions are somewhat different. They tend to identify several causes and bring them together in a single whole, suggesting relationships that may be explored through further inquiry. Functional integration is the primary principle of such a definition, rather than the separate causes considered in isolation. There are fewer formal definitions of design than descriptive definitions, but formal definitions play an important role. They serve to establish the boundaries of a field and relate many otherwise separate lines of inquiry in a common enterprise. One formal definition that may serve this purpose is the following: “Design is the human power of conceiving, planning, and making products that serve human beings in the accomplishment of any individual or collective purpose.” Whether this is an immediately compelling definition–formal definitions are seldom as dramatic or vivid as a good descriptive definition–it does bring together the variety of themes and causes that are explored in the study and practice of design. If we wish to consider Aristotle’s four causes for a comparison with his definition of rhetoric, the formal definition of design identifies: (1) The creative capacity of individual designers as an efficient cause; (2) the sequence of goals around which the methods of design thinking and practice have taken shape as a final cause; (3) the outcome of the design process in products that serve human beings as a formal cause; and (4) the subject matter of design as found in any of the activities and purposes of human beings as a material cause. The lack of further specification in the material cause is significant, because design, like rhetoric, may be applied with regard to any subject. Design has no fixed subject matter, which explains why it continues to evolve in a surprising array of new applications and extensions. In essence, the definition suggests that design is an art of invention and disposition, whose scope is universal, in the sense that it may be applied to the creation of any human-made product. This makes of design as an art of forethought, as traditional rhetoricians perhaps regard their discipline as an art of forethought in verbal communications.

At this point we may being to ask whether design is a modern form of rhetoric–or whether rhetoric is an ancient form of design. Although we tend to think of the products of design as artifacts–graphics and industrial objects–there is nothing in our formal definition that would forbid us to consider traditional verbal rhetoric as a species of design. This inversion may seem strange and unfamiliar, yet it accords with our understanding of how information is shaped in persuasive argumentation and how, in contemporary life, it often emerges in new products of technology. If rhetoric provides systematic forethought in all of the distinct forms of making in words, why should it not be considered an art of design?

Note: Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric similarly identifies efficient, final, and formal causes, but treats the material cause in the phrase “with regard to any subject.” In Aristotle’s analysis, style is simply the material cause of a speech rather than the subject matter or material cause of the art of rhetoric itself.

Change vs. Experience

Surveying the rhetoric by the candidates vying to be the next president, two major themes emerge: change and experience. Each of the major candidates are trying to position themselves as embodying or representing one of those ideals. Hillary = Experience, while Obama = Change. McCain = Experience, while Romney/Huckabee = Change. But regardless of personal political affiliations and favorites, I can’t help but think as a designer that these themes are exactly what designers struggle with daily with clients and projects. Change and experience are simply inherent to design.

Change is fundamentally what design is all about, in my view. More accurately, positive change, for the better. As Herb Simon declared in what has come to be regarded as a canonical work of modern design theory The Sciences of the Artificial, “everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones”. In this regard, designers are quite simply “change agents” in the conception, planning, and creation of solutions that help people. There are of course levels of change and impact, depending upon the contingencies, constraints and circumstances that define a given situation, or the scope of it. A change may involve the decision to use a different typeface as the corporate brand (see Apple), or commercializing technologies that support fluid, direct manipulation (see iPhone and Wii), or reshaping the entire business model with user participation (see Netflix or YouTube). There is change of the artifact itself, and of course change of user behavior and attitudes, towards a more positive user engagement and thus purchase/referral/repeat usage, favoring the business cycle. Darrel Rhea of Cheskin suggests there is a “continuum of innovation” from incremental improvements, to evolutions, to inventions, to entire industry transformations, that represent different fields of opportunity for designers.

Experience means a couple things for designers. There is of course the extensive background knowledge and past experience from prior clients and projects that help evolve a designer’s competency to shape/drive a vision in later situations. This kind of experience is an ongoing learning process, natural and necessary for future success. And there is the concept of designing to improve a user’s quality of experience or engagement, between himself and the “other”: product, service, system, environment, etc. It’s a complex milieu of psychological, phenomenological, and emotional issues/materials. Designing to improve the user’s experience has become a paramount goal for all designers, regardless of the resulting artifact, whether a poster or a system. Thinking about the quality of that engagement is a critical consideration when designing, in addition to the craft aspects of the artifact.

Finding a designer who has the experience to make change, that is hugely valuable! Such person must simultaneously hold passionate idealism, yet be able to arbitrate the practical realities of a situation, taking pragmatic courses of action to enable the ideals to manifest successfully in a realized form one can be proud of. To me that’s a powerful ideal to strive for, and perhaps the hardest to achieve as designers seeking to improve the lives of ordinary people.