The Essence of Interaction Design Research: A Call for Consistency

This post is reproduced from the original Interactions magazine article

It started with an innocent query to the IxDA listserv. Someone was sure they had read an article in Interactions magazine once but could not find it again: Wasn’t there something written sometime by someone about something like sample size in usability research? asked an expectant interaction designer. Woe is the hapless interaction designer who is unprepared for the firestorm that follows the dreaded “sample size” question. 106 replies later, and not only was the answer clearly left unanswered but worse, it left many scratching their heads in genuine confusion: what is the essence of interaction design research? Is it data-driven and “scientific”? Is it exploratory and qualitative? No consensus was reached. Again.

What's your sample size again?

This schizophrenia is both a blessing and a curse. One the one hand, an interaction designer has the freedom to assemble her research program like an artist assembling an installation: whatever inspires her can indeed find a place in the final result. Yet, such a lack of standards leads to a distinct lack of consistency and expertise. If interaction design research is whatever you want it to be, what is to stop other occupations “colonizing” what ought to be the purview of the interaction research? See, for example, Dan Formosa’s article in this year’s January-February issue of Interactions, lamenting the intrusion of market research into the design field. When there are no standards, there is freedom.

As Sartre said, we are “condemned to be free,” meaning when there are no pre-defined codes of conduct, then we must tragically, wonderfully, horribly, create ourselves. The confusion over the essence of interaction design research is us, thrashing about as we desperately create ourselves.

You are condemned to be free: courtesy of http://artoftheprank.com/author/mibanez/

In this article, I explain how this lack of standardization affects the practice of interaction design research. In particular, I note that the dreaded “sample size” debate is actually indicative of a larger issue of theoretical training. I call on interaction designers to embrace standardization – not blindly, but with eyes wide open – for the benefit of the interaction design research and for the profession itself.

The Long and Winding Road

Most people stumble into interaction design. Unlike a profession such as medicine, for example, interaction design has a distinctively ill-defined apprenticeship. The proliferation of interaction design job titles demonstrates this lack of definition. A lack of standardization is liberating to many but has the unintended consequence of undermining the interaction designer’s autonomy. To become an, accountant, professor or engineer, individuals must meet compulsory standards, pass examinations, and prove their mastery of the profession’s “canon” of knowledge in order to practice it. Jobs that require a “canon” are typically called a “profession” instead of a mere “occupation.”

Indeed, a “profession” is not simply a job requiring skill. A profession differs from an occupation in that its members exercise exclusive control over a specific body of knowledge (Friedman, 2000, Greenwood, 1957, Larson, 1977). A profession must therefore have a clearly defined certification process, which in turn allows its members to exercise a sort of monopoly over the work itself. If a doctor is fired from a hospital, she continues to be a doctor. No hospital administrator can remove her ability to write prescriptions, for example. Only her peers can remove or grant this ability. Her peers have decided she has met the minimum acceptable standards to write prescriptions and practice medicine; the hospital administrator’s opinion is irrelevant. The power of the professional, then, is inextricably bound up with her knowledge and training.

The “community of practice” is no substitute for a profession. It is merely the poor man’s version of a profession; it refers to the informal knowledge sharing sessions of Xerox technicians, who bully each other instead of fighting for higher wages or more autonomy (Seely Brown and Duguid, 1991).  As with copier repair, there is no body of knowledge that is collectively recognized as comprising “interaction design,” much less “interaction design research.” In their 2006 survey, the IA Institute found 48% of self-identified information architects had no formal training, and almost 3% of those surveyed “weren’t sure” (!) if they had formal education (Information Architecture Institute, 2006).  It is for this reason that there is much confusion about what interaction design research should really look like. No accountant questions how to gather data for creating a cash-flow statement. Certainly, there may be debate about the “right” method, and perhaps there are several schools of thought to which individual accountants tend to subscribe. But in the end, there is no debate that a cash flow statement has X, Y, and Z and if it has A, B, and C, then it is not a cash flow statement, but a balance sheet.

Interaction designers have no such luxury. What exactly constitutes an “interaction”? Where does interaction design end and aesthetic design begin? These questions may seem overly theoretical to some, and indeed, they are theoretical. But it is this very line of questioning that defines the professionalization process. What constitutes a dentist over a dental hygienist? Dentists and dental professors themselves defined that difference – for their own benefit (Adams, 2003). Practitioners of a discipline must delineate the theoretical confines of a discipline (and the requisite knowledge that must be mastered to claim expertise in that discipline) in order to claim occupational autonomy. Simply forming a “community of practice” and gathering for “shop talk” is not sufficient. Xerox technicians have not successfully created a monopoly of knowledge over photocopiers, neither have they created a strong lobby for occupational control.

The HCI Connection

This is not to say that interaction design is completely bereft of an intellectual tradition. The IA Institute’s industry survey did find that, of the information architects that were formally trained, 40% of them had training in Library Science and another 12% in Human Computer Interaction. This suggests there is, at least, a significant number of practitioners (at least those identifying as “information architects”) with similar training. The HCI and Library Science disciplines inculcate their students with a distinctively quantitative approach to research. The November 2009 annual meeting for the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) included a full-day pre-conference workshop “infometrics” and “scientometrics,” which trained participants on a multitude of quantitative methods. The ASIS&T also maintains several “special interest groups” or SIGs that are specifically targeted around metrics, measurement and quantitative methods. Not one SIG specializes in “design” or “qualitative” methods. The Computer Human Interaction (CHI) SIG in ASIS&T professes interest in “online users and their behavior,” and not the symbolic, interpretive or otherwise cultural aspects of the online experience.

One Small Question: What is reality?

Underneath this focus on metrics and “behavior” is a set of implicit: assumptions within the HCI/Information Science tradition. This assumption cuts to the heart of the “sample size” debate: what is the nature of the world and what is the best way to research it? Most researchers subscribe, at least in part, to two established schools of methodological thought: quantitative and qualitative. While they may never be “purely” quantitative or qualitative in their research approaches, researchers tend to subscribe to the overall tenets of their school. The archetypical or “ideal type” quantitative researcher may not actually exist, but describing her methodological approach elucidates unspoken assumptions many researchers may have.

The archetypical quantitative researcher first starts with the assumption that the world is a “real” place that exists independently of human beings (Bryman, 2006). In other words, quantitative research has an objectivist ontology, one which assumes reality is an objective thing that can be researched. Accordingly, the ideal-type quantitative researcher also assumes that the scientific method is the best way to discover this reality, and that a researcher does not affect or shape the outcomes of the research, if appropriate steps to avoid “bias” are taken. On the whole, this approach means looking for the most “typical” occurrence, one which has a necessarily statistical description (Alasuutari, 1995).

Table 1: Qualitative Versus Quantitative Research Paradigms

By contrast, the archetypical qualitative researcher assumes the world is not an objective reality but something that is constructed by us humans, every moment of everyday (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). Such a researcher considers how humans “make sense” of the world as having primary importance, so his methods are typically aimed at uncovering or “unriddling” this sensemaking process (Alasuutari, 1995). Numerical representations of the “typical” occurrence are irrelevant in this view because there is no typical occurrence.

One can see how “scientific” approaches to interaction design research evolved, therefore, from the objectivist, positivist research paradigm. In this paradigm, it makes sense to count and to find the “average.” And of course in order to do so, one must count sufficient numbers to make it statistically valid. But if one adopts the assumption that there is no such thing as “typical,” that how we make sense of language, for example, tells us how to build Web sites, then it is a logical choice to reject “sample size” as important. The process of sensemaking is more important to the constructivist, interpretivist researcher.

The Design Connection

It is unclear how many self-identified “interaction designers” would reject, wholesale, the title or description of “information architect.” Herein lies the problem. To reject “information architecture” in favor of “interaction design,” is actually to reject the positivist tradition of information “science” in favor of “design.” This is a significant turn.

Design spans both art and science, making its ontological and epistemological position unclear. Design requires both the “logical character of the scientific approach and the intuitive and artistic dimensions of the creative effort.” It spans both deductive and adductive logic; it is the “the process of creation and decision-making” (Borja De Mozota, 2003). Interaction designers draw on both the “science” of decision-making but also the art of creativity.

Is it any wonder then, where our collective schizophrenia comes from? We are fraught with existential angst by the very label of the occupation. We are not entirely sure if we are information scientists or if we are artists. We create our own professional identities as a bricolage, choosing pieces that suit us and rejecting those that don’t. If there are no standards, there is freedom.

Freedom Ain’t Free: A Call To Action

Interaction designers may feel blessed to draw on the scientific tradition for one research project, and on the interpretivist tradition for another. This may feel liberating. But it has its cost.

Professionals command higher pay, status, and autonomy precisely because they have agreed to subscribe to a canon of collected knowledge. They accept that they must prove their familiarity with, say, contracts law even though they do not plan to use it and could easily do without it, thank you very much. Professionals do endure such “irrelevant” learning because they recognize the benefits of having their occupation controlled, even somewhat, by their peers. They enjoy greater freedom at work (Greenwood, 1957). They have higher salaries (Larson, 1977). They can even withstand the slings and arrows of globalization and maintain their professional autonomy (Faulconbridge and Muzio, 2008). Professionals know that by sacrificing a little, they get a lot.

So a call to action. Interaction designers: now is the time to define the theoretical boundaries of your knowledge. What exactly constitutes an “interaction” and how exactly might one “design” it? What is the difference between an interaction designer and an information architect? What, by extension constitutes interaction design research? And finally, for once and for all, does an interaction designer need to care about sample size?

These questions must be answered. We must answer them. I’m not suggesting that interaction designers drop everything and begin furiously debating in the pages of academic journals. Rather, I am suggesting that design educators begin instilling clear and defined canons of knowledge in their students, that practitioners begin adopting (gasp!) standards when hiring, and that collectively, we pursue a consensus.

I present two illustrative examples of professionalization: engineering and medicine. Engineers structured their occupation and thereby collect some benefit, but physicians gained exclusive rights over key aspects of their practice, making their professionalization process much more successful. David Noble traces the professionalization of the engineer in his fascinating history America By Design (Noble, 1979).

It was businessmen, not university-based researchers, which lead the drive to professionalized engineering, resulting in engineers becoming “company men” instead of independent practitioners. Engineers successfully controlled entry into the profession but oftentimes rely on engineering employers for a professional identity. By contrast, physicians professionalized their occupation as a group of independent practitioners. Indeed, it is physicians that all other professions look to emulate (Ritzer and Walczak, 1988). While there have been many recent changes that limit physician autonomy (O’Connor and Lanning, 1992), physicians continue to maintain a near monopoly over the legal ability to prescribe drugs (in the United States, nurse practitioners can prescribe some drugs).

The lesson from these two professions is first to ensure practitioners, not companies, drive professionalization. The Interaction Design Association and the Information Architecture Institute are great starts in this direction. But secondly, interaction designers must gain exclusive control over a certain body of knowledge. For example, interaction designers may seek to “own” accessibility-compliant Web site design. Interaction designers may end up with several schools of thought, which is perfectly acceptable (there are, after all, Jungian psychiatrists as well as Freudians). But at the very least, we will never waste another single pixel on the dreaded “sample size” question!

About the Author

Sam Ladner is a sociologist with an interest in the design of technology and its effect on organizations. She mixes private-sector consulting work with academic research and teaching. Using a range of methods including interviewing, observation and ethnography, she consults on digital product design, organizational change, and the social aspects of technological innovation. She holds a PhD in sociology from York University. She currently works for her own firm as consultant and principal with Copernicus Consulting Group and frequently partners with design firms.

References

ADAMS, T. (2003) Feminization of Professions: The Case of Women In Dentistry. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 40.

ALASUUTARI, P. (1995) Researching Culture: Qualitative Methods and Cultural Studies, Thousand Oaks, Sage.

BORJA DE MOZOTA, B. (2003) Design Management: Using Design to Build Value and Corporate Innovation, New York, All Worth Press.

BRYMAN, A. (2006) Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Research: How Is It Done? Qualitative Research, 6, 97-113.

DENZIN, N. & LINCOLN, Y. (2000) Introduction: The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research. IN DENZIN, N. & LINCOLN, Y. (Eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, Sage.

FAULCONBRIDGE, J. & MUZIO, D. (2008) Organizational professionalism in globalizing law firms. Work, Employment and Society, 22, 7-25.

FRIEDMAN, M. (2000) Autonomy, Social Disruption and Women. IN MACKENZIE, C. & STOLJAR, N. (Eds.) Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

GREENWOOD, E. (1957) Attributes of a profession. Social Work, 2, 44-55.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE INSTITUTE (2006) Information Architecture For The World Wide Web Industry Survey. Seattle, Information Architecture Institute.

LARSON, M. (1977) The Rise of Professionalism, Berkeley, University of California Press.

NOBLE, D. F. (1979) America by design : science, technology, and the rise of corporate capitalism, New York, Oxford University Press.

O’CONNOR, S. & LANNING, J. (1992) The End of Autonomy? Reflections of the Postprofessional Physician. Health Care Management Review, 17, 63-73.

RITZER, G. & WALCZAK, D. (1988) Rationalization and the Deprofessionalization of Physicians. Social Forces, 67, 1-22.

SEELY BROWN, J. & DUGUID, P. (1991) Organizational Learning and Communities of Practice: toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation. Organization Science, 2, 40-57.

“© ACM, (2009). This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in PUBLICATION, XVII.2 – March / April, 2010,

Consumers are “time starved,” as many designers and marketers may know, but there is more to the story than simply not having enough time. The very concept of “down time” carries an important lesson about technology design.

In this post, I analyze the idea of “down time” and the activity of “cottaging” as a Canadian (and more specifically, Ontarian) cultural touchstone. Our pursuit of “down time” isn’t simply about not having enough time; it’s about a simpler way to understand the world. “Up time” is both precisely measured and immediately connected to events the world over. “Down time” is not measured and implies a smaller amount of sensory information. “Down time” is sought after because time passes less stressfully and engagement is based on what is physically in one’s presence.

Technology fails the user’s own “stress test,” in a sense, when it is designed with the implicit assumption of “up time.” Technology that passes the “stress test” allows time to pass in the background, without constantly reminding the user how much time is left precisely. Well designed technology also allows the user to tune out the loud, messy world that foists itself upon us through our cell phones, televisions, and computers.

Designers, marketers, and technology architects should embrace “down time” as the over-arching experience their products evoke.

Cottaging
Cottaging is a time-honoured tradition in Ontario. People living in the so-called “Golden Horseshoe” of the cities ringing Lake Ontario make annual treks north to a variety of locations collectively called “cottage country.”

To “cottage” is a uniquely Ontario phenomenon.

Image courtesy of paulhami on Flickr

(Being a Westerner, I haughtily refused to utter the word “cottage” for the first two years I lived here. In British Columbia, it is referred to as “a cabin” or as “camp.” I continued to use “cabin” stubbornly until eventually I gave in, as exhausted as a Briton too beaten down to ask for his “bonnet” to be opened at the “petrol station.” I too became a “cottager.”)

Cottaging frequently means “roughing it,” though “roughing it” is a matter of degrees. Some urbanites sneer at their city neighbours for having insulation in their cottages; others deride the use of televisions or Web-connected computers (the truly ascetic disdain electricity or running water).

Cottaging is time to “recharge” and relax, to cook, to read, to sit and stare at nothing. It is “down time.”

Therein lies a key insight in today’s urban world. What is “down time” and why would a city dweller require it?

“Down time”
“Down time” is time spent “off the grid,” or “away from it all.” In short, it is time spent disconnected. Hence the implicit assumption that cottaging often requires no modern technology (though exceptions are often made for iPods fully loaded with the complete works of Leonard Cohen, or covers of Gordon Lightfoot songs).

Something happens when you go to the country. As you leave the city limits, the sounds and people recede into the distance. Coming into view are trees and lakes and rivers and sky. There is a comfort in knowing less about what is going on in the world. The less you know about what is happening elsewhere in the world, the slower time passes.

“Down time” is still time, and time that can pass quickly. But it is most fundamentally local time. What happens in Delhi or Denver is irrelevant. All that matters is what happens right here and right now.

We went to the cottage about 3 hours north of Toronto several weekends ago. When we arrived, there was a hint of autumn in the air. The overcast sky gave you a biting hint of the cold weather to come.

When you see the countryside, you pay close attention to the changing patterns of time. You cannot help but notice time passing because you see it imprinted on the trees and fields in front of you. The sun reminds you constantly of its relative position in space. It is hot and close; it is far and cold; it is turning away from you.

Time in the city: artificial, precise and decoupled from location
But in the city, the natural time-keeping clues of the land are masked. The sun may well become warmer throughout the spring, but you cannot see the growing grass or the lush fields because they are covered in concrete.

In the city you pay more attention to your personal, artificial time-keeping device: your watch. Or more likely still, your cell phone. On digital clocks, time is precisely measured and calculated.

When you check the time using your cell phone, you are shown precisely how much time has passed down to the minute (or even the second). In a sense, you know far more about time than you would if you checked the sky. But in another sense, you know far less about time because you are divorced from your physical location.

You measure time, but you do not know time.

You fill up your mind with news of events from far away, from places you may never see. You know more about the world, but less about what is in front of you.

Back to the cottage
There is an immediate relief when you become ignorant to the precise measurement of time. There is no need to count the minutes; they will pass without your noticing. You need not notice minutes passing because there anything you need to know about will occur right in front of you.

This is the relief you get when time is known through local cues like the sun, the length of the grass, or the kids asking you for food. You no longer need to know exactly what some arbitrary number tells you what time it is. Instead, you know it’s “bed time” or “dinner time” because the cues around you tell you it is.

The cottage offers “down time” which is disconnected from everything other irrelevant thing going on in the world. It is time that is measured in cups of tea, in sinksful of dishes, in conversations. What time is it two time zones away? What time is it two houses away? Who cares? It is not in front of you and therefore, it is irrelevant.

When we’re up
Why is “down time” valued so much by urban Ontarians? “Up time” is time that is overwhelming. It is connected. It is a ringing cell phone. It is an Outlook alert. It is precisely one hour. It is a Web page updated before your eyes. It is your in-box. It is the calculation that you make to know it is six hours ahead in London.

Photo courtesy of Toasty Ken on Flickr

This kind of “up time” may not reach all urban dwellers equally. People who are in knowledge jobs are likely more “up” than those in front-line service or goods production. The more going on outside of your immediate physical presence, the more “up” you have to be.

The implications for design
Designers are well familiar with the successes of simpler design. Part of Apple’s success is its relentless commitment to eliminating visual and techno-social noise (consumers often say that Apple products “just work”).

But the desire for “down time” suggests that successful design is more this kind of appeal. It is also building in the ability to “cut off” or disconnect from all those distant events. It allows people to engage wholeheartedly with what is in front of them in that moment.

Some may be familiar with Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of “flow,”which occurs when a person’s ability is evenly matched to the challenge in front of them. This is actually “down time.” Cottagers may be challenged by playing a game or cooking a challenging meal, but they are not exhausted by it.

Designing good technology is understanding cultural touchstones like “down time” and embedding them into the final product.

Lies are an important source of design insight. Design research ought to embrace lies as potential sources of creative inspiration. Lies are indicators of a gap between what we are and what we think we ought to be. Well-designed products soften and assuage the effects of this gap.

Photo courtesy of: www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/213108466

The other day, one interviewee asked me, near the end of the interview, what “is this all about.” At first I was confused, having explained the study we were conducting and what specifically we were interested in finding out. Yet she pressed me further, wanting to know the “mystery” behind the study.

I reflected and realized that she was expecting a great “reveal” of the “real” purpose behind the study. She was expecting me to pull back the curtain and tell her what I was actually interested in.

If you have ever participated in a university psychology study, this story will sound familiar to you. You had likely been recruited as an undergraduate, incented to participate with the promise of a few percentage points tacked onto your final grade.

Or perhaps you attended a focus group, which had a one-way mirror at one end of the room that you were directed to “try to ignore.” Or maybe you have answered a telephone survey that had a mysterious combination of questions the meaning of which you could not decipher.

Perhaps you, like my participant, have been conditioned to believe that “unbiased” or “scientific” social research involves trickery or outright deception. Proponents of this approach may argue that in order to get “the truth,” researchers must mask their true intentions, lest participants lie. This kind of research seeks to sanitize the results, to make them somehow untainted by “bias.”

What underlies this idea of deception and lying in social research? There is an assumption that The Truth is something that lives within the minds of your participants and your job as a social researcher is to pry that nugget out of their minds. Your job is to eliminate any “bias” that would filter this truth.

This is the same assumption ethnographers make when they believe a year’s fieldwork is essential. The classic anthropological model is a one-year field assignment. But ethnographers who hold this view are actually similar to market researchers who assume participants may “lie.” They are hoping to establish “rapport,” so that participants will eventually “drop their guard” and show the ethnographer their “true” or “authentic self.”

But if you assume that the truth is something we create, in tandem with our participants, authenticity or truthfulness become irrelevant concepts. Instead, a researcher can assume participants do indeed lie, but that lying is an interesting data point. The savvy, design ethnographer can ask, “Now why did she lie about cleaning her oven weekly, when she clearly hasn’t cleaned it in months?”

This is not a clean stove

These kinds of questions can lead to interpretive gold.

Perhaps oven cleaning is considered “proper,” and women are encouraged to act “properly” by cleaning their ovens regularly. Perhaps a better-designed stove looks “clean” on its exterior, whether it is actually clean inside or not. Perhaps a better-designed stove provides women with mechanical “excuses” of why it should NOT be cleaned regularly, thereby absolving its owner of any shame.

Both design solutions assuage the guilt and the shame of having not lived up to a perceived norm.

Indeed, the Swiffer provides exactly this kind of “cover.” Hardwood floors are supposedly “different” than regular floors and require a “different” kind of broom and mop. It just so happens that the Swiffer is faster, more ergonomic, and less messy than a regular broom. It requires less effort, yet Swiffer uses are told they are doing the “proper” thing by using this “special” kind of broom.

When you are hunting for design solutions, become a lie detector. Do not question the veracity of a participant’s statement, but go deeper. Why did he say that he “tries to not be the dad on the cell phone”? What ideal is not living up to?

Design interventions based on lies could promise to be the most user-accepted designs.

I was recently invited to speak at Ottawa’s Social Media Breakfast. The organizers, Simon Chen, Rob Lane and Ryan Anderson, asked me specifically to bring a sociologist’s understanding to social media. Below is my presentation. For the full version, with the notes, visit the full slideshare version.

My essential argument for the presentation was that we don’t have enough deep understanding of “the social” in social media. Social media gurus abound these days, but too few of them actually understand social theory. Sociologists have been thinking about and researching social interactions for over a century. Just because we are now using the Web doesn’t mean those essential insights are no longer valid. Quite, the contrary, I argue. Social theory is even more relevant today because it coheres and synthesizes design and marketing research. We need social theory to provide some weight, some shape to what we learn about social media use.

As an aside, I notice “social business” is an emerging buzz word. All business is social. Those who argue “social business” is new are missing the point; we have only just begun to realize social interaction is fundamental to business, in part because we have begun to engage in empathetic research projects such as ethnography. When you do quantitative surveys, for example, it’s incredibly easy to dismiss the real impact of your business policies on your customers or employees. But when you hang out with your employees and hear candid feedback about how you’ve organized your business processes, it’s impossible to ignore the social impact (Undercover Boss is a great example of this phenomenon). “Social business,” then, is the effect of “taking on the role of the other” in your employee or customer research. It is not new.

But back to social media. I offer two social theories: social capital (Bourdieu) and dramaturgical theory (Goffman) to explain how we interact both on and off-line. Social networks are a source of wealth, says Bourdieu. Social interaction is a well-crafted play, says Goffman. I apply these theories to well executed, and not-so-well executed social media experiences.

Bourdieu understood our social networks to be a source of wealth. It’s what helps the rich get richer, he argued. Rich people know other people who can help them make more money or to keep the money they have. Sociologist Mark Granovetter found that in fact, it is the “weak ties” we have with our acquaintances that gets us jobs, for example. “Strong ties” with friends and family may enrich us spiritually but provide us fewer job opportunities.

Goffman had another framework for understanding social interaction: the theatre. Goffman believed social actors play roles when they interact. We have scripts, a wardrobe, a set, make-up, and a cast (or “team” as he called it). Embarrassment happens when the script slips. Imagine you must be both a manager, a father, a school buddy, and a cousin all at the same time. Embarrassing! This is what online social networks do to us everyday: they force us to play multiple roles at the same time. Good social media allows “audience segregation,” which lets us select which role to play when.

In the Q&A afterward, I mentioned a few pieces of social research that would help people understand social theory. The first is

McMillan, S. and M. Morrison (2006). “Coming of Age With The Internet: A Qualitative Exploration of How The Internet Has Become An Integral Part of Young People’s Lives.” New Media and Society 8(1): 73-95.

The second that is a wealth of information about social networking and online life:

Wellman, B. and C. Haythornwait, Eds. (2002). The Internet in Everyday Life. New York, Blackwell.

And finally, the original sources:

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. Handbook of Theory And Research for The Sociology of Education. J. G. Richardson. New York, Greenwood: 248.

Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour. New York, Pantheon Books.

For those of you who caught my Ignite TO presentation, here are the slides. For those of you who missed it, below is a text summary that goes with the slides.

I’d like to give thanks to my teacher and friend, Dr. Karen Anderson, whose scholarly work underpins many of the ideas in this presentation.

Slide 1:

This presentation about is the self, that it is a social phenomenon not a biological one.�Most theories of the self don�t give us a social angle but only a biological one.�This has an impact for technology design.

Slide 2:The self is an uniquely human phenomenon.�It is the internal private reality of the consciousness.�It is not anatomical or physiological.�It is not a body.It is only meaningful in social situations.

Slide 3:�So we have this internal, private reality, this consciousness.�Biological paradigms to explain it are inadequate.�Bodies are the containers of selves, not the actual self.�Containers matter.�But they are not the only thing that matters.

Slide 4:�Victor, was a �feral child� found in France.�He would not wear clothes.�Or Use a bed.�He farted.�He did not have a social self, but a biological one.His body functioned; his self did not.

Slide 5:�HAL 9000 has a self.�He is socially competent.�Aware of his inner reality.�He imagined that Dave and Frank were plotting against him.�Victor had no inner reality but HAL did. �HAL understood the social.

Slide 6:�All too often we think of the self as a piece of hardware, or an emotion chip.�Unfortunately, most of our ideas about the self are really about our hardware.

Slide 7:�For example, Sigmund Freud.�Freud thought biological experiences created the self.�In the form of ego and the superego.�We learn about our anus and develop a self, but this doesn�t explain Victor or HAL�s development.

Slide 8:�Even psychologist Piaget put biology first.�Piaget�s theory of child development relies on sensory experiences.�Not social experiences.�For Piaget, learning starts with a bodily interaction, not social interaction.

Slide 9:�Yet socially successful human beings must master the meaning of symbols.�Symbols have fine nuances, depending on the context.�Hand gestures are anatomically similar but mean different things at different times, in different places.

Slide 10:�Social interaction is built upon symbols, not biological impulses.�We are aware of our internal realities by interpreting social symbols.�The degree of force in a gesture matters. Who gives it matters.

Slide 11:�We interpret symbols, not react to them.�We are not Pavlovian dogs who salivate at the sound of a bell.�We are not somatically driven beings, but socially driven beings.�Our bodies have influence over us but they are not the self.

Slide 12:�George Herbert Mead offers us a theory of a social self.�The �I� is what Victor has: a purely instinctual consciousness.�The �me� is created through social interaction.��I should sit on a chair; it�s more socially appropriate.�

Slide 13:�The �generalized other� is when we realize there is a whole world out there.�That we then internalize into our own private reality.�We begin to imagine what �others� might say about our actions.�Our self imagines what other selves think of it.

Slide 14:�Often we design technology to be USABLE, not to be SOCIAL. We don�t enable social selves to use technology without an awkwardness, or embarrassment.

Slide 15: �Google Street View.�This technology has created a few embarrassing moments.�Google�s face blurring does not solve our embarrassment of interpreting this image.�Street View is functional, not social.

Slide 16:�Facebook continually fails to sense what selves need.�This self posted a picture of himself smoking.�Unfortunately, his mom recognized the room.�This is embarrassing.

Slide 17:�If we design for selves, not bodies, we think of everyone�s internal private realities.�Bodies need ergonomics, usability, accessibility.�Selves need to be shielded from embarrassment, awkward situations, and social breaches.

Slide 18:�Technology designed for bodies is like an awkward dinner party.�The technology we design should provide a consistent, social lubricant.�We must design technology like we design great parties.�Where the right people sit in the right seats.

Slide 19:�Socially meaningful symbols must be present.�This can be discovered through contextual inquiry,�Selves also require the ability to control their presentation to others.�And finally, the social �place� of technology must be clearly demarcated.

Slide 20:�In the end, we design our world for selves.�Technology designed for bodies just gets in the way.�If technology is designed for bodies, selves change to meet the needs of technology.

I would prefer that have technology adapt to selves.

Thank you

“But how many people did you talk to?” If you’ve ever done qualitative research, you’ve heard that question at least once. And the first time? You were flummoxed. In 3 short minutes, you can be assured that will never happen again.

Folks, qualitative research does not worry about numbers of people; it worries about deep understanding. Weber called this “verstehen.” (Come to think of it, most German people call it that too. Coincidence?). Geertz called it “thick description.” It’s about knowing — really knowing — the phenomenon you’re researching. You’ve lived, breathed, and slept this thing, this social occurrence, this…this…part of everyday life. You know it inside and out.

Courtesy of daniel_blue on Flickr

You know when it’s typical, when it’s unusual, what kinds of people� do this thing, and how. You know why someone would never do this thing, and when they would but just lie about it. In short, you’ve transcended merely noticing this phenomenon. Now, you’re ready to give a 1-hour lecture on it, complete with illustrative examples.

Now if that thing is, say, kitchen use, then stand back! You’re not an Iron Chef, you are a Platinum Chef! You have spent hours inside kitchens of all shapes and sizes. You know how people love them, how they hate them, when they’re ashamed of them and when (very rarely) they destroy them. You can tell casual observers it is “simplistic” to think of how many people have gas stoves. No, you tell them, it’s not about how many people, it’s about WHY they have gas stoves! It’s about what happens when you finally buy a gas stove! It’s about….so much more than how many.

Welcome to the world of verstehen. When you have verstehen, you can perhaps count how many people have gas stoves. Sure, you could determine that more men than women have them. Maybe you could find out that more of them were built between 1970 and 80 than 1990 and 2000. But what good is that number? What does it even mean?

When you’re designing, you must know what the gas stove means. You must know what it means to transform your kitchen into one that can and should host a gas stove. You must know why a person would be “ashamed” to have a gas stove (are they ashamed of their new wealth? do they come from a long line of safety-conscious firefighters?). You must know more than “how many.”

So the next time someone asks you, “how many people did you talk to?”, you can answer them with an hour-long treatise about why that doesn’t matter. You can tell them you are going to blow them away with the thick description of what this thing means to people. You are going to tell them you know more about this thing than anyone who ever lived, and then, dammit, you’re gonna design something so fantastic, so amazing that they too will be screaming in German. You have verstehen!

See my discussion about sampling methods in qual and quant research for more insight into the reasons why “how many” is irrelevant in qualitative research.

My article on understanding organizational culture is now up on the interaction design site, Johnny Holland. The post provides an overview of key factors in organizational culture and how these factors affect an organization’s culture. It’s specifically intended to help designers understand their clients’ business culture and to avoid the all-too-common trap of “missing the social” in a design project.

It’s happened to all of us. We walk into what we think is a Web redesign project, only to find we have unwittingly ignited the fires of WW III in our client’s organization. What begins as a simple design project descends – quickly – into an intra-organizational battle, with the unprepared interaction designer caught in the crossfire.

Read the whole post.