Design and Digital Interfaces: Designing with Aesthetic and Ethical Awareness

by Ben Stopher, John Fass, Eva Verhoeven, Tobias Revell

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350068278
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/12/2021
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.21(w) x 9.23(h) x 0.42(d)

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

Table of Contents

List of figures 6

Preface 10

Introduction: What are digital interfaces? 16

Technological interfaces 17

Cultural interfaces 18

Historical interfaces 19

What does an interface designer do? 21

Theoretical perspectives and frameworks 23

Chapter 1 Complexity and fragmentation 26

Fragmented distribution 29

Fragmented devices 31

Fragmented attention 33

Technological approaches 33

Design approaches 35

Research methods 37

Chapter 2 Social interfaces 40

Design for social impact 42

Soft interfaces: healthcare and loneliness 44

Accessibility: democratization of tools 46

Collaborative interfaces: beyond western-centrism 48

Interfaces for sociality 51

Constructing social identities 54

Chapter 3 Legal and political interfaces 58

Political interfaces 59

Entangled interfaces 61

The political action of interfaces 63

A history of critical practice 65

Openness and access 67

Inscrutability and opacity 70

Critical interfaces 72

Chapter 4 Ethical interfaces 76

Design as exploitation 78

Unforeseen consequences 80

Legislation 81

Ethical legibility 82

Ethical design cultures 85

Futuring ethical principles 86

Ethical designers 88

Chapter 5 Aesthetic interfaces 92

Aesthetics and the senses 94

Cultural aesthetics and meaning 98

Design patterns and behaviours 101

Aesthetics for use 105

Aesthetics for empathy 106

Chapter 6 Uncertinty, deviance and futures 108

Embracing uncertainty 111

Science fiction and design 112

Design fiction 115

Design imaginaries 118

Deviant interfaces 121

Interviews 124

Anab Jain 125

Dan Lockton 129

Mushon Zer-Aviv 136

Sarah Gold 141

Glossary 148

References 154

Acknowledgements 165

Index 166