links for 2009-10-24

Thoughts on Interaction Design

"Seeing oneself as a chicken and being chicken amounts to a minor difference of usage, but the practical difference is substantial. In the first case, you take the person to an asylum, while in the second you stop taking him seriously. It is very possible that privately the first option has crossed the minds of the combatants in the ‘Epistemological Chicken’ debate.1 Are they out of their minds? The written statements resemble the second option. SSK-adherents, Collins and Yearley, and ANT-adherents, Callon and Latour, seem to have stopped taking each other seriously, which is even more devastating for intellectual debate."

Assembling citizenship In Physical Bar Charts, viewers are presented with five tall see-through tubes containing button badges, each with a specific message on. Visitors are prompted to help themselves to badges. As they do so, the levels in the tubes drop, presenting an inverse bar chart showing the popularity of the badges. Alongside the tubes are postcards asking visitors to predict the levels in the tubes on a future date. Depending on the messages on the badges, and the location in which the tubes are placed, the Physical Bar Charts make public the views of anonymous participants. As people walk around wearing the badges, a temporary community is formed. Below: ‘How strategic have you been this week?’ Photo from Imagining Business, June 2008: Physical Bar Charts Participative time-based installation