Read more
Are digital interfaces controlling more than we realise? Can designers take responsibility, and should they?
From domestic appliances like Siri and Amazon Echo, to large scale Facebook manipulation and Google search prediction, digital interfaces are ubiquitous in everyday life and their influences affect how people live, feel and behave. As they grow in complexity and increase integration into our lives we need to address the social, ethical, political and aesthetic responsibilities of those designing and creating the computer systems all around us.
Through discussion with cutting-edge designers and thinkers and with international examples, the authors explain how we need an expanded aesthetic, critical and ethical awareness on the part of designers willing to act with sensitivity and understanding towards the people they design for and with.
This critical take on the process and implications of interface design looks beyond the mechanics of making, and into the techno-political realm of deliberate and unintended consequences.
List of contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Preface
Introduction: What are digital interfaces? Technological Interfaces
Cultural Interfaces
Historical Interfaces
What does an interface designer do?
Theoretical Perspectives and Frameworks
1. Complexity and FragmentationFragmented distribution
Fragmented devices
Fragmented attention
Technological approaches
Design approaches
Research Methods
2. Social InterfacesDesign for Social Impact
Soft Interfaces: Healthcare and Loneliness
Accessibility: Democratization of Tools
Collaborative Interfaces: Beyond Western-Centrism
Interfaces for Sociality
Constructing Social Identities
3. Legal and Political InterfacesPolitical Interfaces
Entangled Interfaces
The Political Action of Interfaces
A History of Critical Practice
Openness and Access
Inscrutability and Opacity
Critical Interfaces
4. Ethical InterfacesDesign as exploitation
Unforeseen consequences
Legislation
Ethical legibility
Ethical design cultures
Futuring ethical principles
Ethical designers
5. Aesthetic InterfacesAesthetics and the Senses
Cultural aesthetics and meaning
Aesthetics for use
Aesthetics for Empathy
6. Uncertainty, Deviance and FuturesEmbracing Uncertainty
Science-Fiction and Design
Design Fiction
Design Imaginaries
Deviant Interfaces
7. InterviewsAnab Jain
Dan Lockton
Mushon Zer-Aviv
Sarah Gold
Glossary
References
Index
Acknowledgements
About the author
Ben Stopher is Programme Director: Interactive & Visual Communication at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He has extensive experience as a practitioner and creative consultant in communication and digital design.
John Fass has been a designer and art director for fifteen years working in photography, information architecture, user experience design, interaction design and design research. He is course leader for Information and Interface Design at the London College of Communication, and PhD Researcher at the Royal College of Art, London.
Tobias Revell holds an MA in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art from which he graduated in July 2012. He is one of the course leaders for BA Information & Interface Design at the London College of Communication.
Dr Eva Verhoeven was awarded her PhD in Digital Creative Practice from Wimbledon School of Art/University. She is Course Leader of MA Interaction Design Communication at the London College of Communication
Summary
Are digital interfaces controlling more than we realise? Can designers take responsibility, and should they?
From domestic appliances like Siri and Amazon Echo, to large scale Facebook manipulation and Google search prediction, digital interfaces are ubiquitous in everyday life and their influences affect how people live, feel and behave. As they grow in complexity and increase integration into our lives we need to address the social, ethical, political and aesthetic responsibilities of those designing and creating the computer systems all around us.
Through discussion with cutting-edge designers and thinkers and with international examples, the authors explain how we need an expanded aesthetic, critical and ethical awareness on the part of designers willing to act with sensitivity and understanding towards the people they design for and with.
This critical take on the process and implications of interface design looks beyond the mechanics of making, and into the techno-political realm of deliberate and unintended consequences.
Foreword
A timely text looking at digital interfaces from the perspective of the social, ethical, political and aesthetic responsibilities of contemporary designers - taking the conversation around interfaces to the next level.
Additional text
Design and Digital Interfaces is reader-friendly by module, chapter, or jumping to the color-coded content most relevant to the reader’s interests ... [an] elegantly designed, innovative, and powerful book.
