Everyday Adaptive

Design
Tom Moran
IBM Almaden Research Center

Designing Interactive Systems 2002

The British Museum, London, 25-28 June 2002

DIS 2002 1
History of DIS
Computing Systems: Design Perspectives:
• Batch • Cognitive
• Interactive • Usability
• Personal • GUI
• Networked • Socio-technical
• Enterprise • Participatory
• Web • Graphic
• Mobile • Information
• Ubiquitous • Interaction
• Embedded • Experience
DIS 2002 2
“Serious reflections on DIS”
• What is “user-oriented” design?
• What is it trying to accomplish?
• What is its role in system development?
• Why is there no “usefulness design”?
• Who are the designers, anyway?

DIS 2002 3
Past, Present, Future
The point of this talk:
• Design lives everywhere, in all of us.
• Specifically, in the “users”.
• People commit everyday little acts of
design by adapting systems to their needs.
This talk is more about:
… seeing adaptation as good than as bad.
… continuity than change.

DIS 2002 4
<meta> Managing Expectations</meta>

Style Paradigm

DE

RY
Theory
SI
School

O
GN

E
TH
Method Framework
Philosophy Perspective
Attitude
Muddle
Concern

DIS 2002 5
DESIGN

DIS 2002 6
Design v. tr.
• Conceive or fashion in the mind; invent.
design a good excuse for not attending the conference
• Formulate a plan for; devise.
design a marketing strategy for the new product
• Plan out in systematic, usually graphic form.
design a building; design a computer program
• Create or contrive for a specific purpose or effect.
design a game designed to appeal to all ages
• Create a basic scheme or pattern that affects and
controls function or development.
the overall design of an epic poem
• Create in an artistic or highly skilled manner.
DIS 2002 7
Perspectives on What Design Is
Everyday What does the dictionary say?
Political Who is called a “Designer”?
Social What is “Designer talk”?
What is the Designer’s role?
Cognitive What is the behavior, activity,
and practice of designing?
“Design” What do we want it to be?
We can design design!
DIS 2002 8
Goal of Design (personal)
• Design artifacts that become suitably and
intimately enmeshed in people’s lives.
• Not an object of admiration.
• Deeper notion of “interaction design”.
• Criteria: 1. Usefulness. 2. Reliability
3. Usability. 4. Delight.
• More evolutionary than revolutionary.
• More service than product.

DIS 2002 9
Design and Time
Life cycle of development:

Design Build Adapt

Use
10 100 1000

Design is a set of distributed activities

of different kinds
by different people
at different times. Time is the best designer!

DIS 2002 10
Three Notions of Design
Professional Design
By Designers at design time
Generic Design
By many other professionals throughout
development
Adaptive Design
By adapters (users) throughout the life cycle

DIS 2002 11
PROFESSIONAL DESIGN

DIS 2002 12
Professional Design: Assets
• Representation of the end user
• Generic process skills:
• Breadth (look at multiple alternatives)
• Iteration (feedback and refinement)
• Integration (of multiple views)
• Specific skills (eg, aesthetic expression)
• Specialized domain knowledge

DIS 2002 13
Professional Design: Difficulties
“… to ascribe to architects … exceptional insight into problems
of living when, in truth, most of them are concerned with
problems of business or prestige.” – Rudolfsky

• Predicting usefulness Can’t

• Representing the user Adbusters manifesto
• Talk to other designers Awards; AIGA cases
• Pull of over-design Design problems everywhere

DIS 2002 14
GENERIC DESIGN

DIS 2002 15
Generic Design
“ Everyone designs who devises courses of
action aimed at changing existing situations
into preferred ones ” – Simon

Designing is a type of cognitive activity

(vs, say, diagnosis or decision making)
with characteristic properties …

DIS 2002 16
Design Activity
• Design problems are ill-defined.
• The problem is defined as you go.
• What’s taken to be a solution depends on the
individual / discipline.
• Design problems are ill-structured.
(a complex of interdependent components)
• Managed systematically and opportunistically.
• Decomposed into better-structured subproblems.
• Coordinated and integrated.

DIS 2002 17
Design Activity
• Designing is specifying.
• Work with multiple representations.
• Representations give structure and focus.
• Representations provide for reflection on the state
of the design (Schon).
• Designing is stealing.
• Domain knowledge is reused.
• Creativity is based on analogical reasoning.
Integration is the hardest part of design.

DIS 2002 18
Design of a Service (Palen & Salzman)
User experience of a cellphone:
• Hardware dial shuttle
• Software call routing feature
• Netware service quality & type, roaming, long distance
• Bizware
• Calling plans cost & use patterns
• Marketing promotions call routing + free weekend
• Handset manual nonspecific
• Phone bill format
• Customer service
DIS 2002 19
Design is a Social Process
• Collaboration
• Negotiation (NB: Rittel’s IBIS)
• User Participation

Design is not a profession, but a community

(such as, say, DIS)

DIS 2002 20
EVERYDAY DESIGN

DIS 2002 21
Everyday Design
“ Everybody is a designer in everyday life.
Yet we share no common vocabulary for describing
everyday design practice ….
design is not limited to the province of specialists
who have formal training... .
Rather, design behavior is a fundamental
element of our species’ adaptation.” – Strickland

DIS 2002 22
Portable Effects Exhibit (Strickland)
“… glimpses into human
mobile nature … prompts
each of us to consider the
design motives and
methods that underlie our
daily transactions with
ordinary objects.”

Esther
DIS 2002 23
Esther’s Purse
“ I feel very well equipped to go out. The purse looks like a mess …
but it's got everything. It's got all the recent goings on. So it's got all
my credit cards, money a little bit here and there, a notepad. ...
I tend to take a long time to file things … So this works as a
clearance center. It's little pieces of paper that can't be thrown
away, but I don't have time to attend to yet. … If I've just finished a
transaction I like to just dump it into my purse and go. Then once in
a month … or so I'll sit there and organize and weed it out. ...
Once in a while it takes me a longer time to find something, but
that's actually rare. I have an organization, and I can't even
articulate it. But if I need money I dive in there and I can find some.
I guess my system arises from an aversion to organizing all the
time. I like most of my life to be free flowing. In little patches there's
some heavy duty organizing to do.”
DIS 2002 24
Back Bag

DIS 2002 25
Everyday Adaptive Design
Everyday design is authentic:
• continuous process of adaptation
• attention is specific and detailed
• develops a tight fit to the situation
• unique character results:
“ informal, pragmatic,
alive with offhand ingenuity ”

DIS 2002 26
 ADAPTIVE DESIGN IN
VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

DIS 2002 27
Design without Designers
Architecture without Architects – Rudolfsky
“non-pedigreed architecture”
Notes on the Synthesis of Form – Alexander
“unselfconscious design”
The Death and Life of Great American Cities – Jacobs
vitality of the street from its diversity and density
How Buildings Learn – Brand
“the low road”
Learning from Las Vegas – Venturi et al
“theory of the ordinary and ugly”

DIS 2002 28
Vernacular Architecture (Rudolfsky)
“ There is much to learn from architecture before it became an
expert’s art. The untutored builders in space and time …
demonstrate an admirable talent for fitting their buildings into the
natural surroundings. Instead of trying to ‘conquer’ nature, as we
do, they welcome the vagaries of climate and the challenge of
topography.”
“ The beauty of this architecture has long been dismissed as
accidental, but today we should be able to recognize it as the
result of rare good sense in the handling of practical problems.”

DIS 2002 29
Native Vernacular:
Pakistani Wind Scoops (Rudolfsky)

DIS 2002 30
Romantic Vernacular:
Victorian Houses (Moudon)

1887 1991

DIS 2002 31
Victorian House Plans

DIS 2002 32
Vulgar Vernacular:
The Low Road (Brand)

DIS 2002 33
 ADAPTIVE DESIGN
IN INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS

DIS 2002 34
Customization Techniques
• Scripting languages
• Macros (programming by example)
• Formulas
• Rules
• Features
• Parameters
• Skins
• Rearrangement

DIS 2002 35
User vs Adapter
Use: put system into action for a purpose
• Assumes the system is ready for the purpose
• Thus, usability is the designer’s problem
Adapt: make system suitable for a purpose
• Thus, usefulness is the adapter’s problem
Adopt: make the system one’s own
• As a result of adaptive activity

DIS 2002 36
Systems for Adaptive Design
• Web Wikis, Blogs
• Spreadsheets Local developers
• Email “Habitat”
• Messaging Teens
• Cellphone Rendezvousing
• Desktop Freeform space
• Paper Post-its

DIS 2002 37
Adaptive Design – Mobile Work
(Perry, O’Hara, Sellen, Brown, Harper)

• Plan what to carry for later access and use

(“planful opportunism”)
• Redundancy for coping with uncertainty
• Laptop, disk, pre-email, paper, cellphone
• Short dead times in various contexts
• Multi-tasking (eg: in a car)
• Cellphone for delegation
• Lightweightness and flexibility
• “Micromobility” and instant-on
• Connectivity to local resources
DIS 2002 38
Adaptive Design – Email (Bellotti et al)
Email is a “serial killer app” –
• people “progressively appropriate [email] as a habitat in
which they spend most of their workday”
• Basic function used in variety of ways
• eg negotiation
• Manipulate folders to keep visible
• Used for other functions:
• To-do’s; contact management; repository
• Attachments for document exchange
• But filters only slightly used
DIS 2002 39
Professional vs Adaptive Design
Formal Informal
Anticipated Situated
Ill-defined Concrete
Reflect Act
Specify Build
Program Arrange
Adventurous Conservative
Make it right Make do

DIS 2002 40
 DESIGNING FOR
ADAPTIVE DESIGN

DIS 2002 41
Architecture of Layers (Brand)

daily
3-30 yrs
7-15 yrs
20 yrs
30-300+
eternal

DIS 2002 42
Behavior of Layers
• Need “slippage” between layers.
• Fast layers explores changes (originality).
• Slow layers constrain the fast layers.
• Slow layers provide continuity.
• Slow layers eventually integrate changes.
(“Infrastructuralization”)

DIS 2002 43
Platforms, Not Solutions
Overbuild infrastructure, underbuild features:
• Provide reliable basic services.
• Under-design:
• Don’t over-respond to immediate issues.
• Defer decisions, provide opportunities.
(Rationale for simplicity: adaptability, not ease.)
Platforms support cheap experiments
over extended time periods.

DIS 2002 44
Space to Evolve
Make room for adaptive design:
• Leave some spaces rough.
• “low definition spaces”
• basement, garage, porch, storage
• Make spaces non-minimal.
• Generous room sizes

DIS 2002 45
Managing the At-Hand
Allow people to arrange what’s “at hand”:
• Arranging stuff in spaces.
• Fitting in storage/display structures.
• What is an adaptable quality (look and feel)?
• Conveying opportunity and potential.
• Aesthetic of ongoing process.

DIS 2002 46
Modularity
Allow recombining and repurposing:
• Cellular spaces (hierarchic)
• Joinable and splitable
• Closed modular systems (kits)
• Expensive
• Limited style, choices, and availability
• Open standards
• Accomodate heterogeneity

DIS 2002 47
Process
Assuming people have local control:
• Provide documentation, service, and support.
• Do-it-yourself industry
• Make adaptations sharable.
• Document experiences and solutions.
• Use for generalization and “infrastructuralization”

DIS 2002 48
What about Systems?
Some trends supporting adaptive design:
• Open standards
• Web architecture
• Portalization
• Freeform technologies
But interaction design is needed:
• Lightweight
• Flexible
• Looser, less crammed
• Interchangeable, interconnectable
DIS 2002 49
Adaptive Design Behavior Issues
• Time course of adaptation
• Maintaining vs changing habits
• Amenity and function vs style
• Reflection vs on-the-fly action
• Experimentation (trial and error)
• Inhibitions to local control

DIS 2002 50
Research for Adaptive Design
• Systems Theory Alexander, Furnas, …
• Empirical Investigations Nardi, Mackay, …
• Design Methods Fischer, …
• Adaptation Techniques ???
• Pliant Technology Henderson
• Task-Specific Languages spreadsheets
• Design Languages Alexander, Reinfrank, …

DIS 2002 51
Conclusion
Adaptive design runs rampant.
• It is vital, creative, and messy.
The design community can:
• Dismiss it as vulgar.
• Try to clean it up.
• Embrace it.
• Design to support it and improve it.

DIS 2002 52
Thanks to …
• Michel Beaudouin-Lafon • Austin Henderson
• Victoria Bellotti • Wendy Mackay
• Gerhard Fischer • Bill Moggridge
• George Furnas • Bonnie Nardi
• Bill Gaver • John Reinfrank
• Beverly Harrison • Dan Russell
• Steve Harrison • Rachel Strickland
• Bill Verplank

Send comments to
moran@acm.org

DIS 2002 53
DIS 2002 54