Malcolm McCullough

On typologies of situated interaction

Consideration of context raises issues of design. The complexity of these issues calls for a typological approach, in which conventional configuration of space plays a greater role. Theories of phenomenology, embodiment, and periphery underlie the argument that we must design for recurrent situations of everyday life, and that we must do so in a manner quite different from the anytime/anyplace universality so often held out as an objective for ubiquitous computing. Architecture, the more established discipline of physical context, demonstrates the importance of type to usable design. Not merely a functional classification, typology here is a generative abstraction, by which good design creates new instances from inexhaustible themes. This essay explains typology as a design philosophy, toward which its suggests possible steps forward from current developments in context-aware applications of computing.

New media urbanism: grounding ambient information technology

The design challenge of pervasive computing demands new emphasis on ambient, embodied, and habitual experiences. This emphasis connects the younger field of interaction design with the more venerable disciplines of the built environment. In terms of knowledge representation its central problem becomes location modeling. This turn from the universal aspects of computing to its situated practices becomes both a defense of architecture and an agenda in urbanism. To complement more particular research compiled in this journal issue, this paper offers a connective overview of that position.

On the nature of attention, with ambient interfaces at street level

As a paradigm for interaction design, the ambient is different from the visual and intentional. Here you cannot always tell who is a user. Appropriate resolution becomes a significant cultural consideration. Data undergo formation and not just visualization. Human capacities for embodied non-visual cognition face new opportunities and challenges. Towards a synthesis of a cultural agenda for the ambient, this paper reviews fundamental principles of epistemology, cognition, ethnography and urbanism. As a starting point towards this agenda, neither embedded technology nor media-cultural critique seem so important as a better understanding of attention itself. Attention becomes scarce as information becomes superabundant. This paper explores common misconceptions about attention, at least with regard to ubiquitous media. It suggests some alternative first principle for understanding of the design challenge of more truly ambient information.

Unofficially) Enacting the Commons

Is there a tangible information commons, and does the entr’acte bring that to light? For as stated in this book’s introductory essay: “the entr’actes greatest potential exists in the social and material amalgams that rapidly organize and refigure the commons.” But what kind of commons?