Dan Dixon – Web Design and Quantum Physics

Science is trying to explain everything.

Some important discoveries:

• Max Planck – “energy is quantisied” (black body radiation.)
• Feynman – mediating particles, “standard model”

• when Planck discover Quantum Mechanics, Einstein was developing relativity – “the speed of light is constant”
• But these things all break down when you look at large things in small spaces: eg. black holes.

How can we apply this to web design?

• Jesse James Garrett – elements of web design (IA, IXD, Information structuring, Software Interfaces)
• IA is about creating Information strucutres; IXD is about building software interfaces.

Unified Field Theory for Web design:

• IA + IXD = Web design; Web design + HCI = Interface design; Interface design + Information design = “Super Design”
• Nathan Shelldruff has written a chapter on this.
• Relativity and QM were set up in opposition – they contradicted each other.
• What underlies all our web design stuff?

Cognitive science

• brought together: philosophy of mind, linguistics, information studies, some computational stuff. Building a computational model of the brain.
• Brains and computers are both cognitive systems – they both manipulate symbols.
• cognitive science says we can make predicitions about one based on another
• but CS leaves out people
• this is where phenomenology comes into things.

Phenomenology

phenomenolgoists – Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau Ponty

Heidegger:

• Active and engaged = “thrownness” (when you’re hammering, you’re only aware that you’re “using a hammer” when something goes wrong – once you’re in a flow state, you don’t pay attention to the things, just the action – you are hammering.)
• Meaning is social
• Hermeneutic = meaning
• Interpretation and action over ideals!

When you do things, it’s about you imparting meaning on your actions.

[Digression into Eliza.]

• Byron Reeves/Clifford Nass – “People treat computers like people”
• took sociology tests, but crossed out the word “person” and changed it to the word “computer”
• John Searle – philosopher of mind – “pragmatics, not semantics” – book called “the construction of social reality”
• Berger and Luckmann wrote “the social construction of reality” (sociologist perspective) – all knowledge is socially constructed.
• Foucault also ties into social construction of knowledge – “at any particular point in history, we have a different idea of ‘knowledge’ – and, by extension, ‘government’, ‘politics’, ‘banks’, etc.” Foucault interested in the sick/insane/outsiders (sick were treated as insane at one point; distinction emerges later)

Meanwhile, in Physics…

• Leonard Susskind
• IA and IXD are in the cognitive science side of things; phenomenology encourages “social architecture” and “narrative design”.
• Social architecture: not about the individual interacting with a computer, but about people interact with people through these things.
• Interaction between “humans and humanised interfaces”

Dan Dixon’s M-theory – designed as a tetrahedron:

IXD -\ Social Archicture Narrative design -/ IA

Some ideas about directions to go in:

• “personality design” – designing personality into things (little moo) – little/big moo are good/bad cop – if big moo breaks it’s not little moo’s fault.
• “simple tools/human complexity” – small pieces, loosely joined; allow the humans to add the complexity to tools.
• “gonzo ethnography” – building these things is half the story. Companies creating stories about building the product – talking about the product, using it yourself.
• “create magic!” (ACC quote, obv.) Shamanism as a way of manipulating technology – treating interactive devices like spirits.
• “creating platforms that are indistinguishable from magic” – we, as shamans, need to be mediating that
• “this has taken me away from the web” – interest in tangible/real interfaces, ubicomp, pervasive comp.