In this weeks reading of Brenda Laurel’s Computers as Theater, I found many concepts that related to Jon Kolko’s Thoughts on Interaction Design. For instance Laurel borrows a notion from Brecht: “catharsis is not complete until the audience members take what they have assimilated from the representation and put it to work in their lives” (Laurel 31). In Kolko’s interpretation of Interaction Design, “the creation lies dormant until the ‘user’ honestly understands the beauty of what has been designed” (Kolko 11). In both instances Laurel and Kolko recognize the need for an audience or user, to assimilate the representation or design, in a much more meaningful way then what is usually considered.
Laurel finds that in “symbolic thinking and representation-making… imagination is a shortcut through the process of trial and error” (Laurel 29). There are also wide ranging “‘mood swings’” from “seriousness” to “fooling around” when one is making a creative decision (Laurel 25). Therefore an interface needs to accommodate these unexpected, yet very natural, occurrences by working at the level of “action”: “it is only through a person’s actions that all dimensions of representation can be manifest” (Laurel 2). It seems like Laurel and Kolko are both concerned with the audience or user’s ability to exercise creativity in their interaction. Here Laurel appears to be attempting to answer one of the questions Kolko poses: “can our Interaction Design solutions encourage users to be creative?” (Kolko 110).
Both also view the interface or design, as a place for dialogue between designer and user, or performer and audience. Kolko says: “this communication is not a monologue. It is a dialogue” (Kolko 100). Laurel has an example of how the communication can become more like a dialogue by citing the work of Brennan, which is aimed at, “designing human-computer interfaces so that they offer means for establishing common ground (“grounding”) that are similar to those that people use is human-to-human conversation—for example, interruptions, questions, utterances, and gestures that indicate whether something is being understood” (Laurel 4).
This “grounding” or meeting point must therefore be considered more carefully if it is to allow for these (again) unexpected, yet very natural, occurrences. Kolko says this by stating: “meaning is not simply projected or found but instead created and shared through engagement with the artificial” (Kolko 120). The “artificial” as interface or representation, is expanded upon by Laurel here: “a person participates in a representation that is not the same as real life but which has real world effects or consequences” (Laurel 31). Again, action is what allows for these representations (that have real world consequences) to be assimilated: “participants learn what language to speak by noticing what is understood; they learn what objects are and what they do by playing with them” (Laurel 18).
Both of them also talk about a state of unaware/awareness, wherein the audience or user becomes so invested in what they are doing, that they forget to not be creative. Kolko refers to the necessity of “a poetic interaction,” that “should encourage a state of mindfulness” wherein “flow” becomes possible, and “people become too involved in their activities to worry about protecting their self-image or their ego” (Kolko 109). Laurel depicts a similar interaction: “in this sense, plays are like movies: When you are engrossed in one, you forget about the projector, and you may even lose awareness of your own body” (Laurel 16).
Whenever I have encountered descriptions of these kinds in the past they have always been presented in a negative light, as problematic “suspensions of disbelief.” But in the way that Kolko and Laurel describe them, it makes me consider these instances as a possible break from the constant reaffirmation of a stereotypical self-image or the ego stroking that most products, advertisements, and entertainment are trying to capitalize on. If there is someway to add a creative element into this moment of suspension then I believe it is possible for the audience or user to walk away with something more then just a reaffirmation about the world they live in, but an awareness of a multiplicity of other options outside the world they live in. In this way the momentary suspension of self is not working to reinforce their self-image, or the image they have about the world around them, but is challenging them to look elsewhere and become more creative. So in this suspension there must be (as I said in my last post) an element of challenge or impetus for creativity: “in order to realize the state of awareness…. an element of challenge must be present” (Kolko 110).
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