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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 国会图书馆编目出版数据
Murray, Janet H. 珍妮特·H·穆雷
Inventing the medium : principles of interaction design as a cultural practice / Janet H. Murray. 媒介的创造:交互设计原则作为文化实践 / 珍妮特·H·穆雷
p. cm. 厘米页
Includes bibliographical references and index. 包含参考文献和索引。
ISBN 978-0-262-01614-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Human-computer interaction. 2. Digital media-Design. 3. Social media-Design. 4. Intercultural communication. I. Title. QA76.9.H85M87 2012 ISBN 978-0-262-01614-8(精装:碱性纸)1. 人机交互。2. 数字媒体设计。3. 社交媒体设计。4. 跨文化交流。I. 书名。QA76.9.H85M87 2012
004.1 '9-dc22
For my mother, Lillian Horowitz 献给我的母亲,莉莲·霍洛维茨
Whenever I design a chip, the first thing I want to do is look at it under a microscope-not because I think I can learn something new by looking at it but because I am always fascinated by how a pattern can create reality. 每当我设计芯片时,首先想做的就是用显微镜观察它——这并不是因为我认为能从中学到什么新东西,而是因为我总是对图案如何创造现实感到着迷。
-Danny Hillis, The Pattern on the Stone (1998) 丹尼·希利斯著,《石头上的图案》(1998)
Contents 目录
Acknowledgments … xi 感谢 … xi
Introduction: A Cultural Approach to Interaction Design … 1 介绍:一种文化导向的交互设计 … 1
I CHANGING TECHNOLOGIES, LASTING INNOVATIONS … 23 我在改变技术,带来持久的创新……23
1 Design in an Evolving Medium … 25 1 在不断演变的媒介中进行设计 … 25
2 Affordances of the Digital Medium … 51 数字媒介的两种可用功能 … 51
3 Maximizing the Four Affordances … 87 3 最大化四种可用性 … 87
II DESIGNING EXPRESSIVE PROCEDURES … 105 设计富有表现力的程序 … 105
4 Computational Strategies of Representation … 107 四种计算表示策略 … 107
5 Building Procedural Complexity … 137 5 建筑程序的复杂性 … 137
III SPATIAL DESIGN STRATEGIES … 159 第三部分:空间设计策略 … 159
6 Defining and Navigating Spaces and Places … 161 6 定义与导航空间和地点 … 161
7 The Library Model for Collocating Information … 191 7 图书馆模型用于信息整合 … 191
IV DESIGNING ENCYCLOPEDIC RESOURCES … 221 IV 设计百科全书资源 … 221
8 The Database Model: Strategies for Segmentation and Juxtaposition of 8 数据库模型:分割与并置的策略
Information … 223 信息 … 223
9 The Structured Document Model: Using Standardized Metadata to Share 9 结构化文档模型:利用标准化元数据进行共享
Knowledge … 253 知识……第 253 页
V SCRIPTING INTERACTION … 289 V 脚本交互 … 289
10 The Tool Model: Augmenting the Expressive Power of the Hand … 291 10 工具模型:提升手部表现力 … 291
11 The Machine Model: Visibility and Control as Design Goals … 321 11 机器模型:将可见性和控制作为设计目标 … 321
12 The Companion Model: Helpful Accompaniment as a Design Goal … 345 12 伴侣模型:有益陪伴作为设计目标 … 345
13 The Game Model: Scripting Interaction as Structured Play … 379 13 游戏模型:将互动作为结构化游戏进行脚本编写 … 379
Glossary … 409 术语表 … 第 409 页
Bibliography … 445 参考文献 … 445
Image Credits … 455 图片来源于 … 455
Index … 467 索引 … 第 467 页
Acknowledgments 致谢
It is a pleasure to acknowledge all the people who were helpful to me in writing this book. 我很高兴能感谢所有在我写这本书时给予帮助的人。
First and foremost I want to thank those very busy people who made time to read draft chapters and to offer me their expert feedback and suggestions, saving me from many errors and making this a much better book: I am enormously grateful to Chaim Gingold, Carl DiSalvo, Ali Mazalek, Gonzalo Frasca, William Murray, Celia Pearce, and Ozge Samanci for reading and commenting on parts of the manuscript and to Shelley Evanson for teaching with it at Carnegie Mellon and giving me her encouragement and feedback. I am also grateful to the anonymous readers for MIT Press whose insights were very helpful to me in the final stages of revision. 首先,我要感谢那些非常忙碌的人,他们抽出时间阅读草稿章节,并提供专业的反馈和建议,帮助我避免了许多错误,使这本书变得更好:我非常感谢 Chaim Gingold、Carl DiSalvo、Ali Mazalek、Gonzalo Frasca、William Murray、Celia Pearce 和 Ozge Samanci,他们阅读并评论了手稿的部分内容;同时也感谢 Shelley Evanson,她在卡内基梅隆大学教授这本书,并给予我鼓励和反馈。此外,我还要感谢 MIT 出版社的匿名读者,他们的见解在最后的修订阶段对我帮助很大。
I owe a great deal as well to my colleagues, collaborators, research assistants, and students at the two world-class toy shops where I have spent my career: MIT and Georgia Tech. I first learned about computational affordances, project development, and design from working on projects at MIT with Steve Lerman, Glorianna Davenport, Bob Berwick, Doug Morgenstern, Hal Abelson, Henry Jenkins, John Belcher, Claire Kramsch, Gilberte Furstenberg, Kurt Fendt, Pete Donaldson, Shigeru Miyagawa, Phil Bailey, Lestra Litchfield, Andrew McKinney, Michael Privat, Freedom Baird, Stuart Malone, Sue Felshin, Ayshe Farman-Farmaian, Michael Roper, Olga Brown, and Dorothy Shamonsky, and with our Stanford collaborators Larry Friedlander and Charles Kerns. I also learned a great deal from my then-students, especially Nick Montfort, Kevin Brooks, Philip Tan, Marleigh Norton, and the many others who took my interactive narrative course. The projects that we worked on together remain part of my creative imagination; the lessons we learned in those early days of digital media have stayed with me as touchstones of good practice. 我也非常感谢我的同事、合作者、研究助理以及在我职业生涯中所工作的两家世界级玩具店的学生:麻省理工学院和乔治亚理工学院。我第一次是在麻省理工学院与史蒂夫·勒曼、格洛里安娜·达文波特、鲍勃·伯威克、道格·摩根斯坦、哈尔·阿贝尔森、亨利·詹金斯、约翰·贝尔彻、克莱尔·克拉姆施、吉尔伯特·弗斯滕伯格、库尔特·芬特、皮特·唐纳森、宫川茂、菲尔·贝利、莱斯特·利奇菲尔德、安德鲁·麦金尼、迈克尔·普里瓦、弗里德姆·贝尔德、斯图尔特·马龙、苏·费尔申、艾莎·法尔曼-法尔马扬、迈克尔·罗珀、奥尔加·布朗和多萝西·沙蒙斯基一起工作时,学习到了计算能力、项目开发和设计的知识。此外,我还与我们的斯坦福合作者拉里·弗里德兰德和查尔斯·科恩进行了合作。 我也从我的学生们那里学到了很多,尤其是尼克·蒙特福特、凯文·布鲁克斯、菲利普·谭、马雷利·诺顿以及其他许多参加我互动叙事课程的同学。我们共同完成的项目依然是我创造性想象的一部分;在数字媒体早期阶段学到的经验,始终是我良好实践的基石。
I am tremendously fortunate to have been a professor at Georgia Tech since 1999, and although my ten-year stint as director of graduate studies in digital media (DM) certainly delayed the writing of this book, it was more than balanced by the unique opportunity of thinking about design in the context of the innovative theory and practice of my DM colleagues past and present: Jay Bolter, Ian Bogost, Carl DiSalvo, 我非常幸运,自 1999 年以来一直在乔治亚理工学院担任教授。虽然我作为数字媒体(DM)研究生项目主任的十年任期确实耽误了这本书的写作,但与我过去和现在的 DM 同事们——杰伊·博尔特、伊恩·博戈斯特、卡尔·迪萨尔沃——在创新理论和实践的背景下思考设计的独特机会相比,这一切都是值得的
Brian Magerko, Ali Mazalek, Celia Pearce, Michael Nitsche, Diane Gromola, Fox Harrell, Robert Kolker, Michael Mateas, and Sha Xin Wei. I am also grateful to our media-focused colleagues in literature, communication, and culture and in the interdisciplinary GVU center, and especially to Ken Knoespel and Jay Telotte, to Nancy Nersessian who introduced me to the work of Michael Tomasello and Merlin Donald, and to my fellow faculty investigators in the NSF InTEL project, Sue V. Rosser, Larry Jacobs, Wendy Newstetter, Christine Valle, John Leonard, and Sneha Veeragoudar Harrell. Most of all I am grateful to Sue Rosser for her leadership as dean of the Ivan Allen College of the Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech, during the period 1999 to 2009, which was crucial to the growth of the graduate program in digital media and the establishment of a strong humanities-focused research culture. 我感谢布莱恩·马格科、阿里·马扎莱克、塞莉亚·皮尔斯、迈克尔·尼切、黛安·格罗莫拉、福克斯·哈雷尔、罗伯特·科尔克、迈克尔·马特亚斯和沙·辛·韦。我还要特别感谢我们在文学、传播和文化领域以及跨学科 GVU 中心的媒体专注同事,尤其是肯·克诺斯佩尔和杰伊·特洛特,南希·内尔塞西安,她让我接触到迈克尔·托马塞洛和梅林·唐纳德的研究,以及我在 NSF InTEL 项目中的同事研究人员,苏·V·罗瑟、拉里·雅各布斯、温迪·纽斯特特、克里斯汀·瓦莱、约翰·伦纳德和斯内哈·维拉戈达尔·哈雷尔。 我最感激的是苏·罗瑟在 1999 年至 2009 年期间担任乔治亚理工学院伊万·艾伦文理学院院长的领导,这对数字媒体研究生项目的发展以及建立以人文学科为核心的研究文化起到了至关重要的作用。
I am grateful for the design insights that have come from working with so many talented, experienced, and deeply engaged Georgia Tech students, in courses and in project work. I want to thank all our pioneering PhD students and especially Calvin Ashmore, Hank Blumenthal, Ayoka Chenzira, Clara Fernandez-Vara, Sergio Goldenberg, David Jimison, Hartmut Koenitz, Susan Robinson, and Brian Schrank for their intellectual companionship and creative inspiration. I am enormously grateful to Sergio Goldenberg, Chaim Gingold, Drew Cogswell, and Gunthar Hartwig, who set up and ran several instantiations of my Georgia Tech project lab over the past ten years and generously contributed their deep technical knowledge and design insights to build up a sustained community of practice; to Brinda Cockburn, Sarah Cooper, and Sinhwa Kang, who were my first and wonderfully talented research assistants when I arrived at Georgia Tech; and to Zuley Clark, Karyn Lu, Daniel Upton, and Beth Schechter, who were such extraordinary managers of individual projects. 我非常感激与许多才华横溢、经验丰富且积极参与的乔治亚理工学院学生在课程和项目工作中所获得的设计见解。我想特别感谢我们的开创性博士生,尤其是卡尔文·阿什莫尔、汉克·布卢门塔尔、阿约卡·陈齐拉、克拉拉·费尔南德斯-瓦拉、塞尔吉奥·戈尔登堡、大卫·吉米森、哈特穆特·科尼茨、苏珊·罗宾逊和布赖恩·施兰克,感谢他们的智力陪伴和创造性启发。 我非常感谢塞尔吉奥·戈尔登堡、哈伊姆·金戈尔德、德鲁·科格斯威尔和冈萨尔·哈特维格,他们在过去十年中设立并运营了我的乔治亚理工学院项目实验室的多个实例,慷慨地分享了他们深厚的技术知识和设计见解,帮助建立了一个持续的实践社区;同时也要感谢布琳达·科克本、莎拉·库珀和辛华·康,他们是我到达乔治亚理工学院时的第一批才华横溢的研究助理;还要感谢祖莉·克拉克、卡琳·卢、丹尼尔·厄普顿和贝丝·谢赫特,他们在各个项目中表现出色,管理得非常出色。
The Georgia Tech DM and HCI (human-computer interaction) master’s degree students have played a crucial role in the evolution of this book, taking LCC 6313 Principles of Interactive Design, which I taught every spring since 2001 and offering me feedback after graduation from their experience in the fast-track worlds of Apple, CNN, Disney, EA, IDEO, IBM, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Showtime, and other design, entertainment, and information firms. I could not have taught the course at all without the help of expert teaching assistants including Patrick Quattlebaum, Mayhew Seavey, Jason Alderman, Will Hankinson, Micah Horvath, Adam Rice, Joshua Cuneo, and Daniel Fuller. I particularly want to thank the students in the Spring 2010 course who found errors in the near-final manuscript for this book and offered such excellent design examples, including Mariam Asad, Matthew Drake, Daniel Fuller, Shiva Muthiah, Vedrana Novosel, Dilip Patharachalam, Andrew Quitmeyer, Nicole Blackwell, Jayraj Jog, Chip Schooler, and Cory Simon. 乔治亚理工学院的 DM 和 HCI(人机交互)硕士生在这本书的发展中发挥了重要作用。他们参加了我自 2001 年以来每年春季教授的 LCC 6313 互动设计原理课程,并在毕业后根据他们在苹果、CNN、迪士尼、EA、IDEO、IBM、亚马逊、谷歌、雅虎、Showtime 等设计、娱乐和信息公司快速发展的经验向我提供反馈。如果没有包括帕特里克·夸特尔鲍姆、梅休·西维、杰森·奥尔德曼、威尔·汉金森、米卡·霍瓦斯、亚当·赖斯、约书亚·库尼奥和丹尼尔·富勒在内的优秀助教的帮助,我根本无法教授这门课程。 我特别感谢 2010 年春季课程的学生们,他们在这本书的近终稿中发现了错误,并提供了许多优秀的设计示例,包括 Mariam Asad、Matthew Drake、Daniel Fuller、Shiva Muthiah、Vedrana Novosel、Dilip Patharachalam、Andrew Quitmeyer、Nicole Blackwell、Jayraj Jog、Chip Schooler 和 Cory Simon。
I also benefited during this time from many insightful conversations with Will Wright, Dale Herigstad, Nick DiMartino, Joe Garlington, Mary Flanagan, Kate Hayles, Marie-Laure Ryan, Katie Salen, Tracy Fullerton, Espen Aarseth, Chaim Gingold, Gonzalo 在这段时间里,我也从与威尔·赖特、戴尔·赫里格斯塔德、尼克·迪马蒂诺、乔·加林顿、玛丽·弗拉纳根、凯特·海尔斯、玛丽-劳尔·瑞安、凯蒂·萨伦、特雷西·富尔顿、埃斯彭·阿尔塞斯、哈伊姆·金戈尔德和冈萨洛的许多深刻对话中获益良多
Frasca, Jesper Juul, and Eric Zimmerman at Georgia Tech and elsewhere. I am grateful to them all for the inspiration of their work and for the encouragement and constructive challenges with which they have engaged my own projects and theoretical formulations. 我非常感谢 Frasca、Jesper Juul 和 Eric Zimmerman 在乔治亚理工学院及其他地方的工作所带来的灵感,以及他们对我的项目和理论构想给予的鼓励和建设性挑战。
I have been very fortunate to have the partnership of MIT Press throughout the long process of writing this book. Doug Sery’s patience and encouragement, and his astute insights about the evolving field, have been essential to its creation; I owe him a large debt of gratitude for this and for all he has done to nurture the work of scholars in this young and growing field. I also want to thank his assistant editor, Katie Helke Dokshina, and manuscript editor Mel Goldsipe for their care and expertise in shepherding this large and complex volume through the production process, and Julia Collins for her vigilant and skillful copyediting. I was very fortunate to have the help of PhD candidate Rebecca Rouse in preparing the final page proofs. Many very busy and productive people were kind enough to respond to my requests for permission to use their images and in many cases to supply higher-resolution files, and I am very grateful for these contributions, which are acknowledged in the image credits. 我很幸运在写这本书的漫长过程中得到了麻省理工学院出版社的支持。道格·塞里的耐心和鼓励,以及他对这一不断发展的领域的深刻见解,对这本书的创作至关重要;我对他在这方面的帮助以及他为培养这一年轻而不断发展的学者所做的一切深表感激。我还要感谢他的助理编辑凯蒂·赫尔克·多克希娜和手稿编辑梅尔·戈尔德西普,他们在制作过程中对这本庞大而复杂的书籍给予的关心和专业指导,以及朱莉亚·柯林斯在校对方面的细致和高超技巧。我很幸运能得到博士候选人丽贝卡·劳斯在准备最终校样时的帮助。 许多非常忙碌且高效的人友好地回应了我关于使用他们图像的请求,并在许多情况下提供了更高分辨率的文件,我对此深表感谢,这些贡献在图像版权中得到了认可。
The work of writing this book has benefitted from all of these richly collaborative activities, but any errors in it are mine alone. I thank in advance any readers who can point them out to me for correction on the web and in future editions. 写这本书的过程得益于所有这些丰富的合作活动,但其中的错误完全是我自己的责任。我提前感谢任何能够在网上和未来版本中指出这些错误的读者。
On a personal note, I want to thank my family: my daughter Elizabeth Murray, my son William Murray, and Will’s fiancée, April Holm, who have so generously encouraged my obsessions and shared their knowledge and keen insights on media, culture, and technology with me; and my mother, Lillian Horowitz, to whom this book is dedicated, whose own life now spans more than a century, whose mind remains vigorous and open, and who has avidly followed her unexpected baby’s circle of attention from century to century, from Victorian women to Holodeck gamers, inspiring meas she inspires everyone around her-with her energetic optimism, inexhaustible compassion, and relentless advocacy for a more humane and just society. 在个人层面上,我想感谢我的家人:我的女儿伊丽莎白·穆雷,我的儿子威廉·穆雷,以及威尔的未婚妻艾普丽尔·霍尔姆,他们慷慨地支持我的热情,并与我分享在媒体、文化和技术方面的知识和深刻见解;还有我的母亲莉莉安·霍洛维茨,这本书献给她,她的生活已经跨越了一个多世纪,思维依然活跃而开放,热切关注着她意外的孩子的成长,从维多利亚时代的女性到全息甲板游戏者,激励着我,就像她激励着周围的每一个人——以她充满活力的乐观、无尽的同情心和对更人道、公正社会的不懈倡导。
Introduction: A Cultural Approach to Interaction Design 介绍:一种文化导向的交互设计
We are, in sum, incomplete or unfinished animals who complete or finish ourselves through culture. 我们可以说是未完成的动物,通过文化来实现自我完善。
—Clifford Geertz (1973) —克利福德·吉尔茨(1973 年)
The Collective Process of Design 设计的集体过程
This book is meant for anyone whose work involves shaping new digital artifacts and the systems of behavior in which they are embedded, not just for those with designer in their job title. It aims to complement expertise in related fields such as graphic design, industrial psychology, or programming by providing lead designers and other team members with a set of common principles and a common design vocabulary to aid in the collective design process. Unlike other useful books in HCl (human-computer interaction) or interaction design, this book is written from a humanistic rather than a social science or industrial design perspective. One of the most important characteristics of humanistic inquiry is that it accommodates multiple frameworks of interpretation, a habit of mind that is a good fit for the design process, which never has a single right answer and is strengthened by an expanded palette of possibilities. 这本书适合任何从事新数字产品及其行为系统设计的人,不仅限于职位中带有“设计师”的人。它旨在通过为首席设计师和其他团队成员提供一套共同的原则和设计词汇,来补充图形设计、工业心理学或编程等相关领域的专业知识,以支持集体设计过程。与其他关于人机交互或交互设计的有用书籍不同,这本书从人文主义的角度出发,而非社会科学或工业设计的视角。 人文探究最重要的特点之一是它能够容纳多种解释框架,这种思维方式非常适合设计过程,因为设计过程从来没有唯一的正确答案,并且通过更广泛的可能性选择得到了增强。
From a humanities perspective, the design of digital objects is a cultural practice like writing a book or making a film. Culture is the name we give to the infinite web of meaning that human beings have been weaving for millennia. We participate in culture when we imitate one another’s behaviors, adopt common values and practices, share symbolic codes like language, music, or the latest dress style. To see any artifact (i.e., any human-made object) as part of culture is to understand how it becomes meaningful through the social activities, thoughts, and actions of the people who engage with it. Humanists understand that cultural objects and practices can be meaningful in many ways. For example, a digital telephone can be understood as a neutral piece of business equipment, a stylish status symbol, an intrusive disruptor of family rituals, or a lifeline between an isolated individual and a distant community. The humanist designer aims to see as much of this larger web of meaning as possible in order to 从人文学科的角度来看,数字对象的设计是一种文化实践,类似于写书或拍电影。文化是我们用来描述人类数千年来编织的无限意义网络的词汇。当我们模仿彼此的行为、采纳共同的价值观和实践、分享象征性符号(如语言、音乐或最新的穿衣风格)时,我们便参与了文化。将任何人工制品(即任何人造物)视为文化的一部分,就是理解它如何通过与之互动的人的社会活动、思想和行为而获得意义。人文学者明白,文化对象和实践可以以多种方式展现其意义。 例如,数字电话可以被视为一种中立的商业设备、时尚的地位象征、干扰家庭仪式的入侵者,或者是孤立个体与远方社区之间的生命线。人文设计师希望尽可能多地理解这个更广泛的意义网络
understand the context and connotations of particular design choices. This book provides a method for invoking this wider view of design possibilities, a vocabulary for identifying and characterizing design elements, and a set of principles for making choices within this expanded decision space. In referring to this practice as “inventing the medium” I am asserting three foundational design principles: 理解特定设计选择的背景和内涵。这本书提供了一种方法,帮助我们从更广泛的视角看待设计可能性,提供了一套识别和描述设计元素的词汇,以及在这个扩展的决策空间中做出选择的原则。当我将这种实践称为“发明媒介”时,我主张三个基本的设计原则:
All things made with electronic bits and computer code belong to a single new medium, the digital medium, with its own unique affordances. 所有由电子元件和计算机代码构成的事物都属于一种新的媒介——数字媒介,它具有独特的特性。
Designing any single artifact within this new medium is part of the broader collective effort of making meaning through the invention and refinement of digital media conventions. 在这个新媒介中设计任何单一的艺术品,都是通过发明和完善数字媒体规范来共同创造意义的重要努力。
When we expand the meaning-making conventions that make up human culture, we expand our ability to understand the world and to connect with one another. 当我们拓展构成文化的意义建构规范时,我们就能更好地理解世界并与他人建立联系。
This book is an effort to support the creation of an expanded range of meaningful cultural artifacts by clarifying the task and providing a unifying framework for many disparate but related efforts. 这本书旨在通过明确任务,为许多不同但相关的努力提供一个统一的框架,从而支持创造更丰富的有意义的文化艺术品。
The design of digital artifacts is very young (a matter of a few decades), compared to the design of alphabets and pencils (measured in millennia), printed books (over five hundred years), or sound and image recording (over a century). Until the invention of the PC around 1980, computers were mostly used as mainframe number crunchers, while only a handful of researchers, educators, and game designers were tentatively exploring the larger symbol-manipulating potential of the machines. Yet now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the once-restricted bitstream of numbers has become a global floodtide of images and sounds, flowing across rapidly expanding broadband and wireless networks, and the new generation of digital natives are fluently integrating computer-based devices into their daily lives. In fewer than thirty years we have moved from the cumbersome, colorless, command-driven desktop machine that had to be coaxed into processing simple spreadsheets and text files, to the multitasking and pervasive miniaturized processors that power our indispensable laptops and mobile devices, and are embedded in everything from the walls of banks to the dashboards of cars to the human body. 数字工件的设计相对年轻(仅有几十年的历史),与字母和铅笔的设计(以千年计)、印刷书籍(超过五百年)或声音和图像录制(超过一个世纪)相比,显得微不足道。直到 1980 年左右个人电脑的发明,计算机主要被用作大型机的数字运算器,只有少数研究人员、教育工作者和游戏设计师在探索这些机器更广泛的符号操作潜力。 现在,在 21 世纪的第二个十年,曾经受限的数字流已变成全球范围内的图像和声音洪流,迅速通过扩展的宽带和无线网络传播。新一代数字原住民正在自如地将计算机设备融入他们的日常生活。在不到三十年的时间里,我们从笨重、无色、依赖命令的桌面计算机,发展到如今无处不在的多任务微型处理器,这些处理器为我们不可或缺的笔记本电脑和移动设备提供动力,并嵌入到从银行的墙壁到汽车的仪表盘,再到人体的各个部分。
Digital artifacts pervade our lives, and the design decisions that shape them affect the way we think, act, understand the world, and communicate with one another. But the pace of change has been so rapid that technical innovation is outstripping design. We are making too many new things too quickly, with the result that as users of the devices we often feel overwhelmed and unable to take appropriate advantage of the opportunities they offer us. The icon bar of a photo-editing program, word processor, or roleplaying game can be as complicated as the cockpit of an airplane. This wealth of possibilities raises our expectations, but the functions are so mysteriously offered or 数字化产品无处不在,塑造它们的设计决策影响着我们的思维、行为、对世界的理解以及彼此的沟通。然而,变化的速度如此之快,以至于技术创新已经超越了设计。我们以过快的速度创造了太多新事物,结果是作为用户,我们常常感到不知所措,无法充分利用这些设备所提供的机会。照片编辑软件、文字处理器或角色扮演游戏的图标栏可能复杂得像飞机的驾驶舱。这种丰富的可能性提高了我们的期望,但功能的呈现方式却显得神秘莫测。
so compromised by unintended secondary consequences that we can find ourselves spending hours in frustrating trial and error in order to accomplish simple tasks, such as formatting a text document or adjusting the privacy setting in a social networking application. Vital information like a beloved family photo in a personal archive, a credit card number in an online account, or the name of a terrorist in a government database is stranded in an outdated format or falls into the wrong hands, or cannot be retrieved in the right context, with disastrous results. In order to get the benefit of the new digital environment in which we live, we will have to do a much better job of designing it. 由于意外的次要后果,我们可能会花费数小时进行令人沮丧的反复试验,以完成一些简单的任务,比如格式化文本文件或调整社交网络应用中的隐私设置。重要信息,如个人档案中的珍贵家庭照片、在线账户中的信用卡号码,或政府数据库中的恐怖分子姓名,可能会被困在过时的格式中,落入错误的手中,或无法在正确的上下文中检索,导致严重后果。为了更好地利用我们所处的新数字环境,我们必须在设计上做得更出色。
This book offers a new framework that I believe can help to speed the process of useful and lasting design innovation by focusing on the collective cultural task of inventing the underlying medium. 这本书提供了一个新的框架,我相信它可以通过关注集体文化任务来加速有用且持久的设计创新过程,即发明其基础媒介。
Designing the Unfamiliar 设计陌生事物
Designers in established fields are often engaged in a process of refinement, creating slightly improved or distinctive versions of a familiar artifact; for example, modifying the familiar metal toaster with cooler ceramic sides or larger bagel-sized slots (figure 0.1)0.1). The digital designer is more often inventing something for which there is no standard model, like word processing in the age of the typewriter, or video games in the age of pinball. 在成熟领域的设计师通常参与一个精细化的过程,创造出稍微改进或独特版本的熟悉物品;例如,改造传统的金属烤面包机,使用更时尚的陶瓷侧面或更大的贝果插槽(图 0.1)0.1) )。而数字设计师则更常常是在创造一些没有标准模型的东西,比如在打字机时代的文字处理,或在弹球机时代的视频游戏。
There are three problems associated with this situation that differentiate digital design from other design practices. 这个情况有三个问题,使数字设计与其他设计实践区别开来。
First, we are dealing with an immature medium, which is much more diffuse and has much cruder building blocks at its disposal than a mature medium like print. Designers can draw on many standardized conventions to make a new history book, newspaper article, magazine layout, or romance novel without much thinking about how it will be produced, distributed, or navigated by the end-user. Any established medium has diverse, elaborated formats and genres that reflect a long collective process of trial and error, offering the designer many generic and specialized components to draw upon in creating a new work. 首先,我们正在处理一种尚不成熟的媒介,它比成熟的媒介(如印刷品)更加分散,且可用的构建块也更为粗糙。设计师可以依赖许多标准化的惯例,轻松制作一本新的历史书、报纸文章、杂志布局或浪漫小说,而无需过多考虑这些作品的生产、分发或最终用户的使用方式。任何成熟的媒介都有多样化且复杂的格式和类型,反映了漫长的集体试验与错误的过程,为设计师在创作新作品时提供了丰富的通用和专业组件。
In some ways it is easier to be innovative in an established domain of practice because of this larger and more differentiated repertoire of components. Stable media provide a reliable framework on which to experiment with useful and pleasing variations. Architecture, furniture, and clothing are always active areas of design innovation because human beings have been sheltering and clothing themselves for millennia, providing a well-stocked cultural inventory to match the range of material possibilities that arise from developing technology and crafts. Similarly, some media formats are old enough and stable enough to be open to innovation without confusion. Print magazines, for example, are a productive area of design because their basic 在某些方面,在一个成熟的实践领域中进行创新更容易,因为它拥有更丰富和多样化的组件库。稳定的媒介提供了一个可靠的框架,可以在其上进行有益且令人愉悦的实验。建筑、家具和服装始终是设计创新的活跃领域,因为人类已经为自己提供庇护和穿着了数千年,形成了丰富的文化库存,以匹配随着技术和工艺发展而出现的各种材料可能性。同样,一些媒体格式足够古老且稳定,可以在不产生混淆的情况下进行创新。例如,印刷杂志是一个富有成效的设计领域,因为它们的基本特征。
Figure 0.1 图示 0.1
Toasters are composed of known, stable elements that are open to refinement by designers. Ivo Vos’s concept toaster on the bottom right is calibrated to propel the toast onto the plate. 烤面包机由已知且稳定的元素构成,这些元素可以被设计师进一步改进。Ivo Vos 在右下角的概念烤面包机经过调校,能够将烤好的面包送到盘子上。
components are unchanging but open to stylistic variation. For example when Wired magazine appeared in the early 1990s it did not have to invent the table of contents or the page numbering system or the grid-based page layout; it was startlingly innovative by merely restyling familiar elements in a manner that reflected the energy and plasticity of the new digital world. And the stable conventions of magazines are also available for simple remediation into digital form (figure 0.2). 组件虽然是固定的,但可以进行风格上的变化。例如,当《连线》杂志在 1990 年代初期问世时,它并不需要发明目录、页码系统或基于网格的页面布局;它仅仅通过以一种反映新数字世界活力和灵活性的方式重新设计熟悉的元素,就显得极具创新性。而杂志的稳定惯例也可以轻松地转化为数字形式(图 0.2)。
But in the digital sphere we have often had to invent the building blocks of design while we are designing the specific artifact. In fact, much of the achievement of the first decades of digital design has been the establishment of such building blocks: the joystick game controller, the point-and-click mouse and cursor, the hypertext link, the search engine, 但在数字领域,我们常常需要在设计特定产品的同时发明设计的基本要素。实际上,数字设计的最初几十年中,最大的成就之一就是建立了这些基本要素:游戏操纵杆、点击式鼠标和光标、超文本链接以及搜索引擎。
Figure 0.2 图示 0.2
The FlipBoard application for the iPad platform rearranges web content, mimicking the layout of a magazine. FlipBoard 应用程序在 iPad 平台上重新排列网页内容,仿照杂志的排版。
the navigation bar, the online shopping basket, the TV remote control with scrolling channel display. But despite their wide adoption and usefulness, all of these design conventions are now stretched beyond their capacity, outpaced by the exponentially increasing quantities of online information and the escalating demands of users for more functionality and less frustration. Once the pop-up electric toaster was invented in 1919, it could be routinely improved for several decades without drastic change of form or function. Web pages and cell phones, in contrast, have incorporated wholly new functionalities and required new formal conventions almost every year since the mid-1990s. Designers need to become more aware of the process of design as the invention and refinement of media conventions in order to move more quickly toward more mature, coherent, and expressive digital genres. 导航栏、在线购物车和带有滚动频道显示的电视遥控器。尽管这些设计惯例被广泛采用且非常实用,但它们现在已经超出了自身的承载能力,无法跟上在线信息数量的快速增长,以及用户对更多功能和更少挫折的日益增长的需求。自 1919 年发明弹出式电烤面包机以来,它在几十年内可以不断改进,而形式和功能几乎没有发生剧烈变化。相比之下,自 1990 年代中期以来,网页和手机几乎每年都在引入全新的功能,并需要新的设计惯例。 设计师需要更加关注设计过程,理解媒体惯例的创造与完善,以便更快地向更成熟、一致和富有表现力的数字类型迈进。
Second, digital designers inherit too many building blocks that are quite familiar and practical, but suited to legacy media formats, and in conflict with one another. When newspaper editors and television producers work together on a news site should they be thinking in terms of soundbytes or headlines? or both? or neither? Design processes are often stalled by such unproductive attempts to apply legacy conventions to new digital frameworks. 其次,数字设计师继承了许多熟悉且实用的构建模块,这些模块适用于传统媒体格式,但彼此之间存在冲突。当报纸编辑和电视制作人在新闻网站上合作时,他们应该考虑音频片段、标题,还是两者都考虑?或者都不考虑?设计过程常常因为试图将传统惯例应用于新的数字框架而陷入停滞。
Figure 0.3 图示 0.3
Before playing Catan: The First Island, the iPhone version of the popular and appealing board game Settlers of Catan, the player must page through several consecutive screens of dense text like this one to learn the rules. 在玩《卡坦岛:第一岛》之前,玩家需要翻阅几屏密集的文本,以了解这款流行且引人入胜的桌面游戏《卡坦岛》的规则,这个版本是 iPhone 上的。
A robust digital media design process should pay attention to the values of all the relevant design disciplines and media traditions. But designers cannot merely transpose the design criteria of these contributory disciplines onto digital practice. Pages of text that read well in a board game manual can be irritatingly long-winded on a computer or mobile device screen, where the interactor expects to be in command of information (figure 0.3). The scrolling text of a news ticker, whose pace and size perfectly suited a billboard in Times Square in 1960, is much harder to follow when compressed at the bottom of a television newscast (figure 0.4). In order to avoid making such mistakes, developers need to become more aware of principles of design specific to digital media, such as the need to establish conventions of semantic segmentation for text in interactive environments. 一个有效的数字媒体设计过程应关注所有相关设计学科和媒体传统的价值观。然而,设计师不能仅仅将这些学科的设计标准直接应用于数字实践。在棋盘游戏手册中读起来流畅的文字,在计算机或移动设备屏幕上可能显得冗长乏味,因为互动者希望能够掌控信息(图 0.3)。1960 年在时代广场的广告牌上,滚动的新闻字幕的速度和大小非常合适,但在电视新闻播报的底部压缩后就变得难以跟随(图 0.4)。 为了避免犯这样的错误,开发者需要更加关注数字媒体特有的设计原则,比如在互动环境中建立文本语义分割惯例的重要性。
Third, though we have a well-developed design protocol for user need analysis and user testing of industrial products, users cannot tell us how to resolve problems that require new design strategies. Consumers of digital artifacts often cannot think past the familiar conventions of existing devices and applications, and may even claim to prefer more limited functionality because it is more familiar. Industrial design and the social 第三,尽管我们有完善的设计协议来进行用户需求分析和工业产品的用户测试,但用户无法告诉我们如何解决需要新设计策略的问题。数字产品的消费者往往难以超越现有设备和应用的熟悉惯例,甚至可能声称更喜欢功能有限的产品,因为它们更为熟悉。工业设计与社会
Figure 0.4 图示 0.4
Right-to-left scrolling text on a television screen creates disturbing gaps in information. If we tune in at this moment we see mention of a bombing, and viewers may not have any way of rewinding to find out where it happened. The convention that remedies this problem displays complete, shorter headlines refreshed with vertical wipes instead of horizontal scrolls. 电视屏幕上从右向左滚动的文字会造成信息的干扰性空白。如果我们在这个时刻调到这个频道,会看到提到了一次爆炸,而观众可能无法倒回去查找事件发生的地点。解决这个问题的做法是用垂直擦除的方式显示完整且较短的标题,而不是使用水平滚动。
sciences have methodologies for framing design questions by analyzing the needs and expectations of user communities. But if a needs assessment team had asked people what they wanted a computer to do in 1970 they would not have elicited a desire for the personal computer, let along the iPod or GPS-enabled cell phone. Innovation in digital media design is often driven by a small group of technologists consulting their own desires and targeting user communities that do not yet exist and cannot yet be studied. Sometimes a design team has to get ahead of the expressed desires of users, relying on a prototype to introduce potential users to new possibilities. In such circumstances it is useful to think of the individual project in the larger context of trends that run across the entire digital medium, in order to indentify kindred efforts that may not be immediately visible. For example, the makers of search engines might have paid more attention to online photo albums and digital video archives in the late 1990s if they had recognized the common thread of encyclopedic aggregation of information that was going to make searching as relevant for still and moving images as it already was for text. 科学有方法论,通过分析用户社区的需求和期望来界定设计问题。然而,如果在 1970 年,一个需求评估团队询问人们希望计算机能做什么,他们可能不会引发对个人计算机的渴望,更不用说 iPod 或 GPS 手机了。数字媒体设计的创新通常由一小群技术专家推动,他们关注自己的需求,并针对尚未出现且无法研究的用户群体。有时,设计团队需要超越用户的明确需求,依靠原型向潜在用户展示新的可能性。 在这种情况下,将个别项目放在整个数字媒介的趋势大背景下进行思考是非常有益的,这样可以识别出那些可能并不立即显现的相似努力。例如,如果搜索引擎的开发者在 1990 年代末期能够意识到信息的百科全书式聚合这一共同主题,他们可能会更加关注在线相册和数字视频档案,从而使得对静态和动态图像的搜索与对文本的搜索同样重要。
If users are unreliable, legacy conventions are inappropriate or conflicting, and existing digital conventions are often inadequate to the task at hand, how can designers make good choices? How do we know what is worth making that has not been made before? 如果用户不可靠,传统规范不合适或相互冲突,而现有的数字规范往往无法满足当前的需求,设计师该如何做出明智的选择?我们又如何判断值得制作的东西是否是之前没有制作过的呢?
How (Not) to Talk about Design 如何(不)讨论设计
Design problems involving computer-based interactive artifacts must be solved by bringing multiple forms of expertise to bear, including the very divergent fields of programming and graphic design. But digital design has been hampered by the lack of useful common vocabulary to express common design goals, a problem that this book (and its Glossary) addresses by drawing on multiple fields within a unified approach. But before we begin the conversation we have to clear the air by looking at some common misconceptions about the goals and values of good design. 设计计算机交互工件时面临的问题必须通过结合多种专业知识来解决,包括编程和图形设计这两个截然不同的领域。然而,数字设计受到缺乏有效的共同词汇来表达设计目标的困扰,这本书(及其词汇表)通过整合多个领域的知识来解决这个问题。在我们开始讨论之前,我们需要澄清一些关于良好设计目标和价值的常见误解。
New Media/Digital Medium 新媒体/数字媒体
Before we identify how we should design something we need to know what it is that we are designing. Academic departments and even some textbooks have used the blanket term “new media” to refer to the Internet, videogames, computer-based installations, mobile phones, and other artifacts that have been made possible by the rapidly increasing power and decreasing size of computers. The virtue of the term is that it puts computer-based artifacts into the category of media, which are aimed at complex cultural communication, in contrast to the instrumental view of computational artifacts as tools for accomplishing a task. “New media” also has the advantage of not specifying a particular application like games or hypertext, and of automatically including whatever is invented in the future. But the vagueness of the term encourages sloppy thinking about design by suggesting that novelty is the salient property of these phenomena. Video games and word processors have been around since the 1970s, but they pose design problems that are also found in the most cuttingedge robotics or virtual reality installation. Calling objects made with computing technology “new” media obscures the fact that it is the computer that is the defining difference not the novelty. After all, a newspaper printed on a cereal box would be a new medium if it were to appear tomorrow, but no one would refer to it as “new media” because it is not computer based. It can also be confusing to think about media convergence or transmedia properties, though older media are certainly migrating to digital formats, and entertainment and information products are indeed being linked across platforms. But these are secondary effects of the foundational change that is the arrival of a wholly new form of representation: the networked, programmable computer. 在我们确定如何设计某个事物之前,我们需要了解我们所设计的内容是什么。学术部门甚至一些教科书使用“新媒体”这一笼统术语来指代互联网、视频游戏、计算机装置、手机以及其他因计算机快速增强和体积缩小而得以实现的物品。这个术语的优点在于,它将计算机相关的物品归类为媒体,这些媒体旨在进行复杂的文化交流,这与将计算物品视为完成任务的工具的观点形成对比。“新媒体”还具有不特指像游戏或超文本等特定应用的优势,并且自动涵盖未来的任何发明。 但是,这个术语的模糊性导致人们在设计上产生粗心的思考,因为它暗示新颖性是这些现象的主要特征。视频游戏和文字处理器自 1970 年代以来就存在,但它们所面临的设计问题同样出现在最前沿的机器人技术或虚拟现实装置中。将用计算技术制作的物体称为“新”媒体掩盖了一个事实:决定性差异在于计算机,而非新颖性。毕竟,如果明天出现一份印在谷物盒上的报纸,它将被视为一种新媒体,但没有人会称其为“新媒体”,因为它并不是基于计算机的。 思考媒体融合或跨媒体特性时可能会感到困惑,尽管传统媒体确实在向数字格式转型,娱乐和信息产品也在不同平台之间相互连接。但这些只是根本变化的次要影响,而这种根本变化是全新表现形式的出现:网络化、可编程的计算机。
Therefore, throughout this book I argue for the advantage of thinking of digital artifacts as parts of a single new medium, which is best understood specifically as the digital medium, the medium that is created by exploiting the representational power of the computer. 因此,在本书中,我主张将数字文物视为一个新媒介的组成部分,这种媒介可以具体理解为数字媒介,即通过利用计算机的表现力而创造的媒介。
Focusing on computation allows us to see all of these disparate artifacts—games, web pages, cell phones, music players, interactive TV shows-as belonging to a single 专注于计算让我们能够将这些不同的事物——游戏、网页、手机、音乐播放器和互动电视节目——视为一个整体
evolving medium, in which formats that we once thought of as fixed and separate, like spoken and written messages, books and games, movies and file cabinets, television and telephones are being deconstructed into their component parts and reconfigured for interactivity. It also allows us to identify the distinct effects of the inscription of information on electronic bits rather than clay tablets or printed books, and its transmission across space and time through binary codes rather than analog waves. Most of all, as we will be exploring in detail, it allows us to focus on the four representational properties of digital environments (the procedural, participatory, spatial, and encyclopedic affordances) that provide the core palette for designers across applications within the common digital medium. 发展中的媒介使我们曾经认为固定和独立的格式,如口头和书面信息、书籍和游戏、电影和文件柜、电视和电话,得以解构为其组成部分,并重新配置以实现互动。这也让我们能够识别信息在电子比特上铭刻的独特效果,而不是在粘土板或印刷书籍上,以及通过二进制代码而非模拟波在空间和时间中传输的方式。 最重要的是,正如我们将详细探讨的,这使我们能够专注于数字环境的四个表现特性(程序性、参与性、空间性和百科全书性),这些特性为设计师在共同的数字媒介中提供了核心的设计基础。
Intuitive/Transparent 直观且透明
“Intuitive” is by far the most abused word in digital design and it is one that should perhaps be banned for a decade or so until it can once more be employed meaningfully. Properly used, intuitive means drawing on our unconscious expectations about how things behave, expectations that come from experience and from ideas about the world that we have internalized so deeply that we don’t think about them consciously. Intuitions about the world are often based on repeated experience (like our intuitions about balancing things, based on our repeated experiences with gravity) or established conventions (like our intuition that a big red button on a device will turn it on and off). As Donald Norman pointed out in his classic work The Design of Everyday Things (Norman 1988), we expect doors to open when we push or pull them, and if something new looks like a door we will look for the design cues that we should push it or pull it, without consciously reasoning. Intuition is also acquired by expert practice, becoming tacit knowledge that is hard to transmit because a skilled practitioner does not employ it consciously; for example, we are able to intuitively apply the rules of grammar in our native language without being able to explicitly state them. It is an appropriate design strategy to exploit the interactor’s unconscious expectations and knowledge to cue their interaction with a new artifact or process, making the experience feel “intuitive” rather than difficult to understand or hard to learn. But the designer or critic of the design should be able to name the conventions that make the interface seem familiar and to identify the reason why it works. For example, a trash can icon provokes an “intuitive” response that it is for deleting files because it looks like something that serves a similar function in the real world and because it has become a standard symbol in computer interfaces. Swiping to the right also feels “intuitively” right as a way to delete an email on an iPhone because it mimics the gesture of flicking something off a physical surface and the left-to-right orientation mimics the progression of western text. “直观”无疑是数字设计中最常被滥用的词汇之一,或许应该在未来十年内禁止使用,直到它能够再次被有意义地使用。正确理解“直观”意味着依赖我们对事物行为的无意识期望,这些期望源于经验和我们对世界深刻内化的观念,以至于我们在意识上并不去思考它们。我们对世界的直觉往往基于重复的经验(例如,我们对平衡事物的直觉,源于与重力的反复接触)或既定的惯例(例如,我们直觉上认为设备上的大红按钮会打开和关闭它)。 正如唐纳德·诺曼在他的经典著作《日常事物的设计》中所指出的,我们通常期望门在我们推或拉时会打开。如果某个新物体看起来像门,我们会下意识地寻找设计线索来判断是推还是拉,而不需要进行有意识的推理。直觉也是通过专家的实践获得的,成为一种难以传递的隐性知识,因为熟练的从业者并不会有意识地使用它;例如,我们能够在母语中直观地运用语法规则,但却无法明确地表达这些规则。 这是一种合适的设计策略,利用用户的无意识期望和知识来引导他们与新工具或流程的互动,使体验显得“直观”,而不是难以理解或学习。然而,设计师或设计评论者应该能够指出使界面看起来熟悉的设计惯例,并识别其有效的原因。例如,垃圾桶图标会引发一种“直观”的反应,让人联想到它是用来删除文件的,因为它的外观与现实世界中具有类似功能的物品相似,并且它已成为计算机界面中的标准符号。 在 iPhone 上向右滑动删除电子邮件的方式也让人觉得“直观”正确,因为这模仿了将物体从物理表面上抖掉的手势,而从左到右的方向又与西方文本的书写顺序相符。
It is important not to confuse a desire to give the interactor a satisfying experience that feels intuitive because it is so well thought out, with a magical faith in the designer’s creative 重要的是不要将希望给互动者带来一种经过深思熟虑、直观的满意体验的愿望,与对设计师创造力的盲目信仰混淆
intuitions. While it is essential to encourage creativity and exploration in the design process, intuitive design is rarely the result of lucky guesses. In order to make truly intuitive interfaces, designers must be hyperaware of the conventions by which we make sense of the world-conventions that govern our navigation of space, our use of tools, and our engagement with media. Furthermore, designers must be able to distinguish among the many possible conventions that can be employed in any application and decide which one is best suited to the artifact they are making. Intuition is a poor way to make that judgment, since we have so much unconscious knowledge to bring to any situation. Should a device that is combining the functions previously performed with a telephone, a typewriter, and an appointment book draw on our intuitions from one or all of these? 直觉。虽然在设计过程中鼓励创造力和探索至关重要,但直觉设计很少是偶然的结果。为了创造真正直观的界面,设计师必须对我们理解世界的各种惯例保持高度敏感——这些惯例影响着我们如何导航空间、使用工具以及与媒体互动。此外,设计师还需能够区分在任何应用中可用的多种惯例,并决定哪一种最适合他们所设计的作品。依靠直觉来做出这种判断并不理想,因为我们在任何情况下都积累了大量无意识的知识。 一种将电话、打字机和日程本功能结合在一起的设备,是否应该参考我们对这些设备的直觉?
A better design value than intuitive is transparent: a good interface should not call attention to itself, but should let us direct our attention to the task. Interfaces can be immediately transparent, like a conventional light switch in a room we have never been to before, or easy to learn like the mouse pointer was when first introduced. Both of these examples are intuitive because they provide immediate feedback when we manipulate them, and because they exploit the ease with which we absorb binary relationships like up/down, on/off, left/right, and the close mapping between hand and brain. Once we have learned how to use a light switch, we have a strong, takenfor-granted expectation that flipping the switch turns the light on. If we encounter a new object with an up/down switch, such as a digital sound mixer, we will intuitively assume that the up position is the on position because we will be drawing on our tacit experiential knowledge of the world. Instead of trying to create a magically intuitive interface by an unspecified process, designers should consciously exploit the user’s preexisting knowledge by looking for familiar interaction patterns that will be easy to learn and will quickly become transparent. 比直观更好的设计价值在于透明:一个好的界面不应引起注意,而应让我们将注意力集中在任务上。界面可以是立即透明的,比如在我们从未去过的房间里的传统灯开关,或者像首次引入的鼠标指针那样易于学习。这两个例子都是直观的,因为它们在我们操作时提供了即时反馈,并且利用了我们轻松理解二元关系(如上/下、开/关、左/右)以及手与大脑之间紧密联系的特点。一旦我们学会了如何使用灯开关,我们就会自然而然地期待翻动开关能打开灯。 如果我们遇到一个带有上下开关的新设备,比如数字音频混音器,我们会直观地认为上方是开启的位置,因为我们会依赖于对世界的潜在经验知识。设计师不应试图通过不明确的方式创造一个神奇的直观界面,而应有意识地利用用户已有的知识,寻找那些易于学习且能迅速变得自然的熟悉交互模式。
Interface Design/Interaction Design 界面设计与交互设计
Interface is a convenient but imprecise term for the outward appearance, the visible control and feedback apparatus, for interactive devices. The interface is what the user sees and operates; it sits between the machine and the person, like the knobs and dials on a toaster, or the icons on a computer screen. In industrial design, psychologists and graphic designers have long worked on creating interfaces like control panels for machinery or home appliances with the object of making them easier to operate and more “usable.” Similarly, in the early days of digital design, graphic designers were often brought in at the end of the development process and asked to create visually appealing “user-friendly” interfaces to wrap around the functional but unsightly code created by a separate team of programmers. This model has been replaced by a more inclusive design process and a focus on the interaction between the human being and the automated system. 界面是一个方便但不够精确的术语,用于描述交互设备的外观、可见的控制和反馈装置。界面是用户所看到和操作的部分,位于机器与人之间,就像烤面包机上的旋钮和刻度盘,或计算机屏幕上的图标。在工业设计领域,心理学家和图形设计师长期以来一直致力于设计像机器或家用电器控制面板这样的界面,旨在使其更易于操作和更具“可用性”。“同样,在数字设计的早期,平面设计师往往在开发过程的最后阶段被邀请,要求他们设计出视觉上吸引人的‘用户友好’界面,以掩盖由一个独立程序员团队编写的功能性但不美观的代码。这种模式已经被更具包容性的设计流程所取代,重点转向人类与自动化系统之间的互动。”
The design of any computer-based object or environment goes beyond the outward appearance to include the architecture of the code and the expectations of the user. Although it is still useful in some contexts to refer to an interface, and to think about the interface design as a distinct part of the design process, interaction design is the more appropriate term for capturing the many aspects of the system that have to be the subject of coordinated design decisions, including social and cultural elements as well as technical and visual components. 任何基于计算机的对象或环境的设计不仅仅是外观,还包括代码的架构和用户的期望。虽然在某些情况下提到界面仍然有其价值,并将界面设计视为设计过程中的一个独立部分,但交互设计更为恰当,因为它涵盖了系统的多个方面,这些方面需要协调设计决策,包括社会文化元素以及技术和视觉组件。
Interaction design can be applied to any system of behaviors, and need not involve digital artifacts. Although this book emphasizes the specific affordances of the digital medium, it is consistent with design programs that employ a transmedia approach to interaction design, resting on the same premises: the primacy of interaction and the interpretation of artifacts as part of larger social and cultural systems. 交互设计可以应用于任何行为系统,并不一定需要数字产品。虽然本书强调数字媒介的特定特性,但它与采用跨媒体方法的设计项目是一致的,基于相同的原则:交互的重要性以及将产品视为更大社会和文化系统一部分的理解。
User/Interactor 用户与交互者
In HCI research we often refer to the human being as the user. This is another convenient but narrow and somewhat outdated term like “interface,” reflecting a model of the computer as a tool that we put to use. We might think of someone as a user when they are setting a digital alarm clock or entering data in a spreadsheet program, but it seems much less appropriate for someone flying over a virtual landscape in a social networking world or shooting zombies in a cell phone video game. In this book we will refer to the “user” from time to time because it is a convenient and wellunderstood term, but we will always think of the human being more inclusively as the interactor, someone who is not so much using a device as acting within a system. Interactors focus their attention on a computer-controlled artifact, act upon it, and look for and interpret the responsive actions of the machine. A user may be seeking to complete an immediate task; an interactor is engaged in a prolonged give and take with the machine which may be useful, exploratory, enlightening, emotionally moving, entertaining, personal, or impersonal. Interactors are also engaged with one another through the mediation of the machine, and with the larger social and cultural systems of which the automated tasks may only be a part. By designing for interactors rather than users we remind ourselves of the larger context of design beyond mere usefulness. 在人机交互研究中,我们常常将人称为“用户”。这个术语虽然方便,但显得狭隘且有些过时,就像“界面”一样,它反映了将计算机视为我们使用的工具的观念。当某人在设置数字闹钟或在电子表格中输入数据时,我们可能会称他们为用户,但当某人在社交网络的虚拟世界中飞翔,或在手机游戏中与僵尸作斗争时,这种称呼就显得不太合适了。在本书中,我们会偶尔提到“用户”,因为这是一个方便且易于理解的术语,但我们始终会更全面地看待人,将其视为“交互者”,即在系统中行动而不仅仅是使用设备的人。 交互者将注意力集中在计算机控制的人工制品上,进行操作,并寻找和解读机器的反馈行为。用户可能在完成一个即时任务,而交互者则与机器进行长期的互动,这种互动可能是有益的、探索性的、启发性的、情感丰富的、娱乐性的、个人化的或非个人化的。交互者还通过机器与彼此进行交流,并与更广泛的社会和文化系统互动,而自动化任务可能只是其中的一部分。通过为交互者而非用户进行设计,我们提醒自己设计的更大背景,超越单纯的实用性。
Content/Information 内容与信息
Starting in the 1990s as CD-ROMS and the Internet become widespread, those seeking to develop products for the new digital platforms started to talk about “content providers” and “content” as separate from the “technology.” The problem with this way of thinking is that there is no such thing as content without form. Everything we put into the digital medium has to be explicitly shaped for it. Otherwise we are just using the computer as a fat telephone wire for shipping old-fashioned media artifacts around 从 1990 年代开始,随着 CD-ROM 和互联网的普及,寻求为新数字平台开发产品的人们开始谈论“内容提供者”和“内容”,并将其与“技术”区分开来。这种思维方式的问题在于,没有形式就没有内容。我们放入数字媒介的所有内容都必须经过明确的设计。否则,我们只是在把计算机当作一根粗大的电话线,用来传输过时的媒体作品。
the world. When we think of digital artifacts as content that is transported by technology we lose sight of an important focus of design, which is the medium: the point of intersection between the logical patterns of the technical layer and the cultural web of meaning in which human beings live. When the technical layer changes, the possibilities for meaning making change as well. The agenda for filmmakers in the beginning of the twentieth century was not to get better and better at photographing plays, but to figure out how to use the camera and the plasticity of film to invent movies. Attempts in our era to use computers to imitate books or television sets are equally shortsighted. Content is not a useful concept for designers because digital design is not about filling a neutral technical container with a preexisting package; digital design is about shaping interaction within new combinations of the format and genre conventions that make up a new medium. 当我们把数字文物视为由技术传递的内容时,我们就忽视了设计中一个重要的焦点:媒介。这是技术层的逻辑模式与人类生活的文化意义网络之间的交汇点。当技术层发生变化时,意义创造的可能性也会随之改变。二十世纪初,电影制作者的目标并不是不断提高拍摄戏剧的技巧,而是探索如何利用相机和胶卷的特性来创造电影。在当今时代,试图用计算机模仿书籍或电视机的做法同样是短视的。 对设计师而言,内容并不是一个有用的概念,因为数字设计并不是将一个中性的技术容器填充已有的内容;而是通过新的格式和体裁组合来塑造互动,从而形成一种新的媒介。
Information is a more useful term than content for what media convey, because it points us toward issues of information design, such as how best to label and organize media segments so that we can retrieve and navigate them Thinking of legacy genres as information rather than content also allows us to focus on the organizational features of the legacy media that we otherwise take for granted, such as the division of television shows into thirty- and sixty-minute segments with commercial breaks, or books into pages and chapters, or newspaper articles into headlines and leads, and how these genre conventions reflect the affordances of analog broadcast or ink on paper and the social and economic arrangements that support them. As designers we should be looking for ways to restructure legacy formats to create satisfying interactions and more expressive genres by exploiting the affordances of the digital medium. 信息这个术语比内容更有用,因为它更好地指向媒体传达的设计问题,比如如何有效地标记和组织媒体片段,以便我们能够方便地检索和浏览。将传统类型视为信息而非内容,让我们能够关注传统媒体的组织特征,这些特征往往被我们忽视,比如将电视节目分为三十分钟和六十分钟的片段并插入广告,或者将书籍分为页和章,报纸文章分为标题和导语。这些类型的惯例反映了模拟广播或纸质印刷的特性,以及支撑这些特性的社会和经济结构。 作为设计师,我们应寻找重构传统格式的方法,利用数字媒介的特性,创造更令人满意的互动和更具表现力的作品。
Interactivity/Agency 互动与代理
As we will be discussing in chapter 2, “interactivity” is an overused term that can be confusing when invoked as the goal of design. Properly understood, interactivity refers to the combination of the procedural and participatory properties of the digital medium: the structures by which we script computers with behaviors that accommodate and respond to the actions of human beings. Interaction cannot be a design goal in itself since there can be good and bad interactions between computers and humans. Although designers and others often praise a piece of software or a new device as "highly interactive, " the appropriate design goal for interactive environments is not the degree of interactivity, but whether or not the system creates the satisfying experience of agency for the interactor. Agency results when the interactor’s expectations are aroused by the design of the environment, causing them to act in a way that results in an appropriate response by the well-designed computational system. This matching of the interactor’s participatory expectations and actions to the procedural scriptings of the machine creates the pleasurable experience of agency. Bad design frustrates 正如我们将在第二章中讨论的,“互动性”这个术语被过度使用,当它被作为设计目标时,可能会引起混淆。正确理解互动性,实际上是指数字媒介中程序性和参与性特征的结合:我们通过这些结构为计算机编写行为,以适应并响应人类的行动。互动本身不能成为设计目标,因为计算机与人类之间可能存在良好的互动和不良的互动。尽管设计师和其他人常常称赞某个软件或新设备为“高度互动”,但互动环境的适当设计目标并不是互动的程度,而是系统是否能够为互动者创造令人满意的代理体验。 当交互者的期望因环境设计而被激发时,代理性就会产生,促使他们以某种方式行动,从而使设计良好的计算系统做出适当的反应。这种交互者的参与期望与机器的程序脚本相匹配,带来了愉悦的代理体验。糟糕的设计让人感到沮丧
the interactor by creating confusing or unsatisfiable expectations, or by failing to anticipate actions by scripting the machine with appropriate responses. 通过制造混淆或无法满足的期望,或未能预见到行动而为机器编写适当的响应来进行交互。
Creating the experience of agency does not mean always giving interactors what they want. An archive may not have the item they are seeking; a game may make it hard to level up. But interactors will still experience agency if the limits of the archive are made clear, and the difficulty of the game is conveyed as an intentional challenge rather than as faulty misdirection. Agency is much more helpful than the vaguer value of interactivity as a focus for design decisions, such as choosing an implementation platform, weighing conflicting professional values, assessing the importance of legacy media conventions, or prioritizing proposed features. The most appropriate elements for a design are always those that increase rather than obstruct the agency of the interactor. 创建代理体验并不意味着总是满足互动者的需求。档案中可能没有他们所寻找的项目,游戏可能会让升级变得困难。然而,只要明确档案的限制,并将游戏的难度视为一种有意的挑战而非错误的引导,互动者仍然会感受到代理的存在。在设计决策中,代理的价值比模糊的互动性更为重要,例如选择实施平台、权衡冲突的专业价值、评估传统媒体惯例的重要性或优先考虑提议的功能。设计中最合适的元素总是那些能够增强而非阻碍互动者代理的元素。
As you will have noticed by now, throughout this book I refer to the objects we design in a general way, as artifacts, environments, applications, devices, systems, and so on. This is because the design method of this book is meant to apply to anything made of bits. If you find this confusing I suggest you substitute something familiar. For example, when I say that agency is “the characteristic pleasure of interactive environments” you can substitute “word processors” or “video games” or “cell phones” or “websites” for the more general term. The examples and exercises in each chapter are meant to be helpful in pointing out the connections between the general principles and specific design environments. But since the digital medium is still evolving and the artifacts and systems that designers are working on today are not the ones they worked on ten years ago or the ones they are likely to be working on ten years from now, it is good to get in the habit of thinking of the methods and principles of design abstractly—as separate from specific formats and genres, and therefore more likely to be useful to you over the course of a long career. 正如你现在可能已经注意到的,在本书中我以一般的方式提到我们设计的对象,称之为工件、环境、应用程序、设备、系统等等。这是因为本书的设计方法适用于任何由比特构成的事物。如果你觉得这令人困惑,我建议你用一些熟悉的事物来替代。例如,当我说“代理是交互环境的特征乐趣”时,你可以用“文字处理器”、“视频游戏”、“手机”或“网站”来替代这个更一般的术语。每一章中的示例和练习旨在帮助你理解一般原则与特定设计环境之间的联系。 但是,由于数字媒介仍在不断发展,设计师今天所使用的工具和系统与十年前的截然不同,也与十年后可能使用的工具不同,因此养成抽象思考设计方法和原则的习惯是非常重要的——将其与特定的格式和类型区分开来,这样在漫长的职业生涯中更有可能对你有所帮助。
Media Expand the Scope of Our Shared Attention 媒体拓宽了我们共同关注的领域
Inventing a medium is a collective process as old as human culture. Media are important building blocks of culture: they form the basis of communication and knowledge transmission across time and space. Culture-the web of shared meaning in which we understand our lives and our world-is conveyed in large part through symbolic representations of various kinds-alphabetical writing, paintings, movies-and through the performance of symbolic rituals closely associated with media documentation, such as legal and religious ceremonies. Human beings, unlike other animals, are able to endow inscriptions, utterances, and performed actions with meaning because our minds can handle symbolic thought. Our media allow us to organize those shared symbolic meanings into more complex and expressive forms. New media technologies 发明媒介是一个与人类文化同样古老的集体过程。媒介是文化的重要组成部分,它们构成了跨越时间和空间的交流与知识传递的基础。文化——我们理解生活和世界的共享意义的网络——在很大程度上通过各种象征性表现形式传达,比如字母书写、绘画、电影,以及与媒体记录密切相关的象征性仪式的表演,如法律和宗教仪式。人类与其他动物不同,能够赋予铭文、言语和表演行为以意义,因为我们的思维能够处理象征性思维。我们的媒介使我们能够将这些共享的象征意义组织成更复杂、更具表现力的形式。新媒体技术的发展
are attractive to us because they offer new opportunities for the defining human activity of symbolic expression. 吸引我们的原因在于,它们为人类象征性表达这一重要活动提供了新的机会。
Before the invention of language, human beings communicated through gestures, and built up cultural patterns through imitation and synchronized behaviors like clapping and dancing (Donald 2001). This delight in imitating one another is apparent in babies and grows out of the recognition that other people have consciousness and intentionality just as we do. Cognitive scientists have identified a fundamental milestone in the cognitive development of children at around nine months of age when they start to point at things. It marks an awareness of the caretaker’s attention as something that can be directed by the child. Other primates do not spontaneously point in this way, although they can learn to point for the benefit of humans. The human baby’s pointing takes place in the context of the joint attentional scene. A baby, a caregiver, and a toy make up a joint attentional scene if the baby and the caregiver each know that the other is looking at the toy. The caregiver may hide the toy and make it appear again. The baby may repeatedly throw the toy out of the crib and make clear that he expects the caregiver to pick it up again. This common experience of shared attention lays the groundwork for language, since once we share attention with another person we can establish shared patterns of cultural behavior, and agree to associate particular gestures or sounds with specific meanings (Tomasello 2001). 在语言发明之前,人类通过手势进行交流,并通过模仿和同步行为(如拍手和跳舞)建立文化模式(Donald 2001)。这种模仿彼此的乐趣在婴儿身上非常明显,源于他们意识到其他人也像我们一样拥有意识和意图。认知科学家发现,儿童在大约九个月大时的认知发展中有一个重要的里程碑,那时他们开始指向事物。这表明他们意识到看护者的注意力可以被他们所引导。其他灵长类动物不会自发地以这种方式指向,尽管它们可以学习为人类的利益而指向。 人类婴儿的指点行为发生在共同注意的场景中。当婴儿和看护者都意识到对方在看玩具时,婴儿、看护者和玩具就形成了一个共同注意的场景。看护者可以把玩具藏起来,然后再拿出来。婴儿可能会反复把玩具扔出婴儿床,并清楚地表示他希望看护者把玩具捡回来。这种共享注意的体验为语言的发展奠定了基础,因为一旦我们与他人共享注意,就能建立共同的文化行为模式,并同意将特定的手势或声音与特定的意义相联系(托马塞洛 2001)。
This ability to use shared attention to externalize what we think in symbolic formthe ability to communicate by inventing and elaborating media of representation, starting with gesture and spoken language-has been the deciding factor in human achievement, differentiating us from other primates and allowing us to share our experiences with one another and to pass on knowledge from generation to generation. 这种利用共享注意力将思维外化为符号形式的能力,即通过发明和丰富表现媒介(如手势和口语)进行交流的能力,已成为人类成就的关键因素,使我们与其他灵长类动物区分开来,并使我们能够相互分享经验,将知识代代相传。
All of human media can be seen as an elaboration of the baby’s gesture of pointing at something in order to draw the caregiver’s attention to it. Media conventions extend our ability to point across time and space. For example, associating objects with uttered sounds-naming things with words-allows us to share the idea of something even if it is not physically present. Spoken language allows us to focus shared attention on events that have happened in the past or that we imagine might happen in the future. But oral culture puts great demands on memory, leading to the development of new media genres, such as poetry and song, which make words more memorable by arranging them in repetitive patterns of rhythm and rhyme and engage groups of people in the shared task of preserving knowledge. With centuries of collaborative effort, memory specialists in oral cultures can create and transmit encyclopedic works like the Homeric epics or the Indian oral epic the Mahabharata, which is composed of 100,000 two-line stanzas that in written form covers 3,000 pages. 所有的人类媒体都可以看作是婴儿用手指指向某物以引起看护者注意的行为的延伸。媒体的惯例扩展了我们在时间和空间中指向的能力。例如,将物体与发出的声音关联——用词语命名事物——使我们能够分享某种事物的概念,即使它并不在身边。口语使我们能够将共同的注意力集中在过去发生的事件或我们想象可能在未来发生的事件上。然而,口头文化对记忆的要求很高,这促使了新媒体类型的发展,如诗歌和歌曲,通过将词语以重复的节奏和韵律排列,使其更易于记忆,并让一群人共同参与知识的保存任务。 经过几个世纪的合作努力,口头文化中的记忆专家能够创作和传承像《荷马史诗》或印度口头史诗《摩诃婆罗多》这样的百科全书式作品,后者由 100,000 个两行诗节组成,书面形式长达 3,000 页。
Figure 0.5 图示 0.5
Engraved slate plaques from around 3000 BC Iberia are thought to have represented family lineage (Lillios 2003). 大约公元前 3000 年的伊比利亚地区的雕刻石板被认为象征着家族血统(Lillios 2003)。
Oral cultures often rely on inscription technologies such as representational drawings or symbolic markings on tally sticks or engraved stones (figure 0.5) to externalize and fix knowledge. Writing expands the amount of information that can be accessed without the need for memorization because we only need to remember where to look it up. It allows us to organize information as lists and tables, and to fix contracts with one another that can be consulted in the future. With the invention of alphabets capable of transcribing complex utterances, we can record discourse containing complex arguments and study it at a distance from the person who is the source of the information. Writing also increases the power of structures of social control. Laws can be carved in stone; orders can be transmitted to distant colonies; births and deaths can be tracked, taxes can be levied and payment recorded. The invention of a new form of external media augments our capacity for shared attention, potentially increasing knowledge, but also increasing the possibilities for imposing fixed ideas and behavior and for proselytizing for disruptive causes. Media can augment human powers for good or for evil; and they often serve cultural goals that are at cross purposes, as literacy served both the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity. 口头文化通常依赖于一些书写技术,如代表性绘画或在计数棒和雕刻石头上的符号标记(图 0.5),来外化和固定知识。书写扩大了我们可以获取的信息量,无需记忆,因为我们只需记住查找的地方。它使我们能够将信息组织成列表和表格,并与他人签订合同,以便将来查阅。随着能够转录复杂话语的字母的发明,我们可以记录包含复杂论点的讨论,并在与信息来源的人保持距离的情况下进行研究。书写还增强了社会控制结构的力量。 法律可以铭刻在石头上,命令可以传达给遥远的殖民地,出生和死亡可以被追踪,税收可以被征收,付款可以被记录。新型外部媒体的发明增强了我们共享注意力的能力,可能增加知识,但也可能加大强加固定观念和行为的风险,以及为颠覆性事业进行宣传的可能性。媒体可以增强人类的善恶能力,往往服务于相互矛盾的文化目标,正如识字既促进了罗马帝国的发展,也推动了基督教的兴起。
As with the development of language and manuscript writing, the invention of the printing press in 1455 augmented human cognition, by supporting new formats for our focused attention: scientific treatises and comic novels, personal letters and public newspapers. And as with other great advances in media technology, the rise of print 与语言和手稿书写的发展相似,1455 年印刷机的发明提升了人类的认知能力,支持了我们集中注意力的新形式:科学论文、漫画小说、个人信件和公共报纸。正如其他媒体技术的重大进步一样,印刷的崛起
culture has expanded the range and power of constructive and destructive ideas by exponentially increasing our ability to share ideas and coordinate behavior across time and space. 文化通过大幅提升我们分享思想和协调行为的能力,极大地扩展了建设性和破坏性思想的范围与影响。
The advent of the computer may mark the beginning of a cultural change of similar magnitude to the advent of language, writing, or print. We now have the power to make every book, every museum piece, and every university lecture available to anyone on earth who can receive a telephone call or a radio broadcast. We can engage a hundred thousand people in playing the same shooting game at the same time, or induce tens of millions of people to make donations to distant earthquake victims with an instant text message. The challenge for designers is how to make such an abundance of information coherent and how to coordinate such massive participation in interactive environments so that it best serves human needs. 计算机的出现可能标志着一种文化变革的开始,其影响力与语言、书写或印刷的出现相当。我们现在能够让地球上任何能够接听电话或收听广播的人都能获取每一本书、每一件博物馆藏品和每一场大学讲座。我们可以让十万人同时参与同一款射击游戏,或者通过即时短信促使数千万的人向远方的地震受害者捐款。设计师面临的挑战是如何将如此丰富的信息整合成一个连贯的整体,以及如何协调如此大规模的参与,以更好地满足人类的需求。
The Medium Is the Method 媒介就是方法
Our media make us human by externalizing symbolic thought so it can be shared. Media of representation extend the range of shared attention, providing us with an enormous repertoire of behaviors and ideas, and with a wide range of strategies for preserving them and sharing them with one another. In an oral culture we are dependent upon memory; in a written and print culture we can sustain longer thoughts, share them more widely, and record a greater variety of human experience. Now the cultural practices supported by print culture have led to the advent of another new and powerful medium of representation. By inventing and refining the format and genre conventions of the emerging digital medium, we are widening the circle of shared attention, and participating in the ancient project of expanding human cognition and enlarging human culture. 媒体通过外化象征性思维使我们更具人性,便于分享。表现性媒体扩展了我们共享注意力的范围,提供了丰富的行为和思想选择,以及多种保存和分享这些思想的策略。在口头文化中,我们依赖记忆;而在书面和印刷文化中,我们能够维持更长的思考,更广泛地分享,并记录更丰富的人类经验。如今,印刷文化所支持的文化实践催生了另一种新的强大表现媒介。 通过创造和完善新兴数字媒介的格式与体裁规范,我们正在扩大共享关注的范围,并参与扩展人类认知和丰富人类文化的古老事业。
Media conventions are important because they are part of the shared cultural patterns that allow us to make sense of complex information. The cognitive system of human beings can be thought of as a giant pattern-recognition and pattern-generating machine. We recognize objects in the world by the perceptual patterns associated with them (how they look and sound) and by the behavioral patterns they exhibit (the bird flies away as we draw near). Human beings can find coherence in a wider range of experience than bees (or any other living creature) because of our more extensive pattern-making abilities. Most important, we make symbolic patterns, patterns that do not directly correspond to what is immediately before our senses, and we assign them meaning by using them in the same way. Human beings routinely create patterns to refer to things not present (a dead ancestor) and things that do not exist (a magical tool). We can abstract general patterns from multiple specific experiences (kinds of animals, categories of food, the platonic idea of a chair), or apply patterns from one kind of experience to another (metaphorically thinking of the future as “in front of” us, or of earth as a spaceship). We can make up seemingly arbitrary 媒体惯例非常重要,因为它们是共享文化模式的一部分,帮助我们理解复杂的信息。人类的认知系统可以看作是一个巨大的模式识别和生成机器。我们通过与物体相关的感知模式(如它们的外观和声音)以及它们表现出的行为模式(例如,鸟在我们靠近时飞走)来识别世界中的物体。与蜜蜂(或其他生物)相比,人类能够在更广泛的经验中找到一致性,这得益于我们更强的模式创造能力。最重要的是,我们创造符号模式,这些模式并不直接对应于我们感官面前的事物,而是通过以相同的方式使用它们来赋予它们意义。 人类常常创造模式来指代不在场的事物(如已故的祖先)和不存在的事物(如魔法工具)。我们可以从多种具体经验中提炼出一般模式(例如动物种类、食物分类、椅子的理想概念),或者将一种经验的模式应用到另一种经验上(比如比喻性地将未来视为“在我们面前”,或将地球视作宇宙飞船)。我们可以随意编造一些内容
transmission patterns like the written alphabet or Morse code or the 00 s and 11 s of computer bits and assign interpretations to them. We are born with the ability to make meaningful patterns out of experience and we spend our lives acquiring, refining, elaborating, and reinventing these patterns. 像书写字母表、摩尔斯电码,或计算机位的 00 和 11 这样的传输模式,我们为这些模式赋予意义。我们天生具备从经验中创造有意义模式的能力,并在一生中不断获取、完善、阐述和重塑这些模式。
Although we are constantly processing information at both the symbolic and literal level, most of our pattern-recognition activity is automatic, below consciousness, as free of thought as a bee’s dance. The bees do not have to reinvent their dancing every time they find a new pollen source. They just have to adapt it to the current stimuli. Similarly, we do not have to relearn what a kitchen is every time we enter a house we haven’t visited before. We have a general pattern of expectations for the concept of a kitchen, and then we are free to pay attention to where the sink and refrigerator are, or to whether there is a gas or electric stove. Patterns of meaning in cognitive science are called schemas. A schema is an abstract model of experience or beliefs into which we can fit new experiences. Just as we have generalized cognitive schema for a house, a kitchen, a college course, or a blind date, we have media schema for a newspaper, a television show, and a website. Media formats and genres are externalized cognitive schemas, strategies for making us smarter by standardizing complex repeated experiences into recognizable patterns. They are part of the distributed cognition by which culture is propagated and shared: We do not have to figure out how to drive a car every time we get into one, because the placement of the steering wheel, ignition, gas pedal, and brake remain the same each time, reminding us of what to do. We do not have to figure out how to read a newspaper every time we consult one because the function of the front page, headlines, photo captions, and lead sentences remain the same, reminding us of how to find the most important story of the day. Design conventions are important parts of this elaborate, expanding, system of distributed cognition, the familiar organizing features of the world that provide consistent cues for individual intelligence (Minsky 1986; Lakoff 1987). 尽管我们在符号和字面层面上不断处理信息,但大多数模式识别活动都是自动进行的,低于意识,就像蜜蜂的舞蹈一样没有思考。蜜蜂不需要每次找到新的花粉源时重新发明舞蹈,只需根据当前的刺激进行调整。同样,我们每次进入一个未曾访问过的房子时,也不需要重新学习厨房的概念。我们对厨房有一个普遍的期望模式,因此可以自由关注水槽和冰箱的位置,或者是燃气炉还是电炉。在认知科学中,这些意义的模式被称为图式。 模式是经验或信念的抽象模型,我们可以将新的经验融入其中。就像我们对房子、厨房、大学课程或盲约有一般化的认知模式一样,我们对报纸、电视节目和网站也有媒体模式。媒体格式和类型是外化的认知模式,是通过将复杂的重复经验标准化为可识别的模式来提升我们的智慧。它们是文化传播和共享的分布式认知的一部分:每次我们上车时,不必重新学习如何驾驶,因为方向盘、点火器、油门和刹车的位置始终如一,提醒我们该如何操作。 我们在查阅报纸时不需要每次都去弄清楚如何阅读,因为头版、标题、照片说明和导语的功能始终如一,提醒我们如何找到当天最重要的新闻。设计惯例是这个复杂而不断扩展的分布式认知系统的重要组成部分,它是我们熟悉的世界组织特征,为个体智力提供了一致的线索(明斯基 1986;拉科夫 1987)。
To be a designer is to deal with the external patterns that correspond to existing cognitive schema or form the basis for new schema. Our job is to create the media templates that make new media artifacts understandable in the same way that new kitchens are understandable. A paper newspaper is a well-established template that we know how to map to cognitive schema so that we can take in the multiple stories it is telling us through media conventions like headlines, columns, and lead paragraphs. The templates of online news can potentially contain much more informationmoving images, original documents, previous stories, interactive visualizations, reader comments, recommendation systems-but we have yet to establish a stable media form comparable to the paper newspaper (figure 0.6). Creating the templates and conventions that will organize this expanded universe of news reporting is an ongoing collective task for digital designers. 成为设计师意味着处理与现有认知模式相对应的外部模式,或为新的认知模式奠定基础。我们的任务是创建媒体模板,使新的媒体作品能够像新厨房一样易于理解。纸质报纸是一个成熟的模板,我们知道如何将其映射到认知模式,以便通过标题、栏目和导语等媒体惯例理解它所传达的多个故事。在线新闻的模板可能包含更多信息——动态影像、原始文件、过往故事、互动可视化、读者评论、推荐系统——但我们尚未建立一个与纸质报纸相当的稳定媒体形式(图 0.6)。 创建组织这个扩展新闻报道宇宙的模板和规范是数字设计师们的一项持续集体任务。
HONE PAGE 主页
TOOAYS PAPER 纸张太多
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Figure 0.6 图示 0.6
Home page of the New York Times online, from 1996 and from 2010. The first screen of the newspaper is equivalent to the area “above the fold” of the print paper: the area where the most important news is communicated. In 1996 the designers aimed to reproduce online the authority and familiar look of the printed newspaper. By 2010 they had many more digital conventions at their disposal-grid columns, menus, tabs, popularity indexes-to support complex navigation and a more dense display of information. 纽约时报在线首页,分别来自 1996 年和 2010 年。报纸的首屏相当于印刷版的“折叠线”区域,主要传达最重要的新闻。在 1996 年,设计师们希望在线上重现印刷报纸的权威性和熟悉感。到 2010 年,他们拥有了更多数字化的设计规范,如网格布局、菜单、标签和热度指数,以支持更复杂的导航和更丰富的信息展示。
The argument of this book begins with the insight that everything made of bits is part of the same digital medium, because it shares the substructure of computation, which offers a unique combination of properties that can be used for symbolic communication. By understanding the affordances of the digital medium-its procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, and spatial properties-we can exploit them appropriately to develop more coherent media conventions, the digital formats and genres that will expand the scope of human expression. This book is an exploration of those properties and of the methods that designers can use to maximize them in the service of individual projects as well as the larger collective goal of advancing the expressive resources of the digital medium. 本书的论点源于一个洞察:所有由比特构成的事物都是同一数字媒介的一部分,因为它们共享计算的基础结构,这种结构提供了一种独特的属性组合,能够用于符号交流。通过理解数字媒介的特性——包括其程序性、参与性、百科全书式和空间属性——我们可以有效地利用这些特性,发展出更为连贯的媒体惯例,即那些能够扩展人类表达范围的数字格式和类型。本书探讨了这些特性以及设计师可以用来最大化这些特性的方法,以服务于个人项目和推动数字媒介表达资源的更大集体目标。
Part I of this book describes the basic components of the design process: the framing and reframing of design questions in terms of the core human needs served by any new artifact, the assembling of a palette of existing media conventions, and the search for ways to more fully serve the core needs that may lie beyond these existing conventions. It surveys the four affordances of digital media and key concepts drawn from diverse fields of study that can contribute to exploiting each of these affordances. Part I concludes with a framework for innovative thinking based on examining individual projects within a grid of possibilities. 本书第一部分描述了设计过程的基本组成部分:将设计问题进行框架和重构,以便更好地满足任何新产品所服务的核心人类需求,整合现有媒体惯例的调色板,并探索更全面地满足可能超出这些现有惯例的核心需求的方法。它探讨了数字媒体的四种可供性,以及来自不同研究领域的关键概念,这些概念有助于充分利用每一种可供性。第一部分最后提供了一个创新思维的框架,基于对个别项目在可能性网格中的审视。
Parts II-V deal in detail with each of the four affordances, exploring foundational models that provide useful conventions and strategies for the design of digital artifacts. 第二至第五部分详细探讨了四种可供性,研究了为数字工件设计提供有用约定和策略的基础模型。
Part II focuses on the procedural affordance of the medium, and on the powerful strategies of abstraction by which we can describe objects and behaviors with computer code. It presents key concepts for the design of digital artifacts such as modularity, encapsulation, instantiation, and state; and it presents methods for representing conditional processes and complex systems that facilitate communication between programmers and other team members. 第二部分着重于媒介的程序性特征,以及我们通过计算机代码描述对象和行为的强大抽象策略。它介绍了数字工件设计的关键概念,如模块化、封装、实例化和状态;并提供了表示条件过程和复杂系统的方法,以促进程序员与其他团队成员之间的沟通。
Part III surveys basic strategies for exploiting the spatial affordance of the medium in order to create meaning, in geographical virtual landscapes including Second Life that are inhabited by avatars and also in abstract information spaces such as the World Wide Web. It covers foundational building blocks of spatial design such as tables, containers, landscapes, maps, and places, and methods for establishing coherent navigation and fostering the collocation of like information, taking the library as a physical model for digital information spaces. 第三部分探讨了如何利用媒介的空间特性来创造意义,涉及由化身居住的地理虚拟景观(如第二人生)以及万维网等抽象信息空间。内容包括空间设计的基本要素,如表格、容器、景观、地图和地点,以及如何建立连贯的导航和促进相似信息的聚集,以图书馆作为数字信息空间的物理模型。
Part IV covers the encyclopedic affordance of the digital medium, focusing on the database and the structured document, two foundational models of information design in digital formats. The database is perhaps the oldest established digital genre of information organization, based on the fundamental principle of semantic segmentation, and offering designers many challenges and opportunities for expressive aggregation, juxtaposition, and visualization of information. The structured document is 第四部分探讨了数字媒介的百科全书式功能,重点是数据库和结构化文档,这两者是数字格式中信息设计的基础模型。数据库可能是信息组织中最古老的数字类型,基于语义分割的基本原则,为设计师提供了许多挑战和机会,以便对信息进行富有表现力的聚合、对比和可视化。结构化文档是
the basis of the World Wide Web, the model for the creation of meaning with metadata, and the foundation of next-generation information design including the Semantic Web envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee. The design of structured documents and structured archives will be crucial to the development of entertainment and information applications in the coming decades. 万维网的基础、元数据的意义创建模型,以及蒂姆·伯纳斯-李设想的语义网等下一代信息设计的基础。结构化文档和结构化档案的设计将在未来几十年内对娱乐和信息应用的发展起到关键作用。
Part V covers four foundational models for structuring the participatory affordance of the digital medium, all of which can be present within any single design problem. When we think of the computer as a tool we emphasize transparency of operation, and the support of virtuosity through direct manipulation that is an extension of the hand. When we think of the computer as a machine we value visibility of its internal workings and strategies for giving the interactor feedback and control over the automated processes it performs. The sense of the computer as a companion is a powerful model for interaction, but designers have to avoid triggering the pervasive fantasy of the magical mind-reading servant, while appropriately and politely anticipating the interactor’s needs. Finally, the game is a vital genre of digital media and also a powerful model for interaction in general, and especially for synchronizing the behavior of large groups of interactors and for structuring engagement with digital artifacts as sustained exploratory play. 第五部分涵盖了四个基础模型,用于构建数字媒介的参与能力,这些模型可以在任何设计问题中同时存在。当我们把计算机视为工具时,我们强调操作的透明性,以及通过直接操作来支持的技巧,这是一种手的延伸。当我们把计算机视为机器时,我们重视其内部工作原理的可见性,以及为用户提供反馈和控制自动化过程的策略。将计算机视为伴侣的概念是一个强大的互动模型,但设计师必须避免激发对神奇心灵感应仆人的普遍幻想,同时要适当地、礼貌地预见用户的需求。 最后,这款游戏不仅是数字媒体的重要类型,也是互动的强大模型,尤其在同步大量参与者的行为和与数字作品的持续探索性互动方面。
Each chapter of this book includes a set of Design Explorations that provide practice in the habits of analysis that lead to good design. Design can only be learned by focusing on particular artifacts, and these explorations offer the opportunity to apply the ideas in each chapter to specific design problems, starting with the close observation and critique of existing designs, and moving toward the design of original projects. Student responses to these assignments may be diagrams, essays, slide presentations, or interactive artifacts, depending on the students’ skill level and instructor’s course goals. The design explorations are meant to provide practice in important strategies for communicating design ideas such as flowcharts, storyboards, pseudocode, and rapid prototyping, and to serve as starting points for larger projects. 本书的每一章都包含一系列设计探索,旨在培养分析习惯,从而促进良好的设计。设计的学习必须聚焦于特定的作品,而这些探索为将每章的理念应用于具体设计问题提供了机会,首先是对现有设计的细致观察和批评,接着是原创项目的设计。学生对这些作业的回应可以是图表、论文、幻灯片演示或互动作品,具体取决于学生的技能水平和教师的课程目标。 设计探索旨在提供实践,帮助掌握重要的设计沟通策略,例如流程图、故事板、伪代码和快速原型制作,并为更大项目提供起点。
Instructors should feel free to pick and choose among the suggested exercises to suit the particular course, to modify them to suit time and resources, and are encouraged to use them as starting points for inventing your own design activities. However they are used, the most important result is that the students engage in focused discussion of the design of specific artifacts, and that the discussion be based on explicitly defined design values. It is important to encourage students to be constructive and critical in their assessment of one another’s design responses, to use specific language, and to refer to specific details of a design. 教师可以自由选择建议的练习,以适应特定课程的需求,或根据时间和资源进行调整,并鼓励将这些练习作为自己设计活动的起点。无论如何使用,最重要的是学生能够参与对特定作品设计的深入讨论,并且讨论应基于明确的设计价值观。鼓励学生在评估彼此的设计回应时保持建设性和批判性,使用具体的语言,并参考设计的细节,这一点非常重要。
The practicing designer reading this book mid-career may also want to read through these Design Explorations, using them as thought experiments to increase awareness of the possibility space for design. I encourage designers to spend time with the explorations that involve areas in which you have not yet had a chance to work, 这本书的中期职业设计师可能还希望阅读这些设计探索,将其作为思维实验,以提高对设计可能性空间的认识。我鼓励设计师花时间参与那些您尚未涉足的领域的探索。
in order to keep your thinking ahead of the curve of converging formats and evolving genres. 为了让你的思维始终走在不断变化的格式和演变的类型的前面。
Throughout this book, the emphasis is on connecting the design of individual artifacts with the larger cultural project of inventing the medium. Media of representation shape our understanding of the world. They do not just contain information; they also determine what can be communicated. They provide the loom on which we can weave the fabric of human culture. A stone tablet is a good medium for inscribing fixed laws of behavior. A multipage volume is a good medium for fixing the contents of a single consciousness over a long period of time. A television broadcast is a good medium for witnessing events at a distance as if they were happening near at hand. The computer combines elements of all of these, as well as its own unique affordances. It offers us a larger and more complicated cultural loom, one that can contain the complex, interconnected patterns of a global society, and one that can help us to see multiple alternate interpretations and perspectives on the same information. 本书强调将单个文物的设计与发明媒介这一更大文化项目相连接。表现媒介塑造了我们对世界的理解。它们不仅仅是信息的载体,还决定了可以传达的内容。它们为我们编织人类文化提供了基础。石碑是铭刻固定行为法则的理想媒介;多页书籍则适合于长时间固定单一意识的内容;而电视广播则能让我们远距离见证事件,仿佛它们就在眼前发生。计算机则结合了所有这些媒介的元素,并具备其独特的功能。 它为我们提供了一个更大更复杂的文化框架,能够容纳全球社会中复杂而相互关联的模式,并帮助我们看到对同一信息的多种不同解读和视角。
As a designer of interactive media who is also a student of literary history, I believe in the power of new genres of representation to expand our powers of understanding and our capacity for empathy with one another by expanding the circle of our shared attention. A printing press is just a mechanical device, but a scientific journal is a means of bringing our shared attention to the task of explaining the mysterious universe, a newspaper is a way of focusing our collective political thinking, and a novel is a means of changing the soul. A computer is just an electrical device, but when we exploit its affordances for symbolic expression we make possible new genres that hold a similar possibility for changing what we can know and what we can share with one another. That is why I have written this book. It is my hope that those who use it will find it helpful in our collective effort to invent the medium, to put the vast power of the computer to the task of expanding the boundaries of human understanding and deepening the ties of human connection. 作为一名互动媒体设计师和文学历史的学生,我相信新表现形式的力量能够拓展我们的理解能力和彼此的同理心,从而扩大我们共同关注的范围。印刷机只是一个机械设备,而科学期刊则是将我们共同关注引向探索神秘宇宙的工具;报纸则帮助我们集中集体的政治思考,小说则是改变灵魂的手段。计算机只是一个电气设备,但当我们利用它进行象征性表达时,就能创造出新的类型,这些类型同样有可能改变我们所能了解的和彼此分享的内容。 这就是我写这本书的原因。我希望使用它的人能够在我们共同努力发明媒介的过程中找到帮助,将计算机的强大力量用于拓展人类理解的边界,深化人类之间的联系。
I CHANGING TECHNOLOGIES, LASTING INNOVATIONS 我在不断变化的技术中追求持久的创新
Media expand the scope of our shared attention, making the design of media a crucial building block of human culture. 媒体拓宽了我们共同关注的领域,使媒体设计成为人类文化的重要组成部分。
All things made with electronic bits and computer code belong to a single new medium, the digital medium, with its own unique affordances. 所有由电子元件和计算机代码构成的事物都属于一种新的媒介——数字媒介,它具有独特的特性。
Designing any single artifact within this new medium is part of the broader collective effort of inventing and refining the shared conventions that allow us to understand new kinds of media objects. 在这个新媒介中设计任何单一的艺术品,实际上是我们共同努力发明和完善共享规范的一部分,这些规范帮助我们理解新型媒体对象。
Good design is aimed simultaneously at perfecting the object and at improving the overall practice of the field. 优秀的设计既追求物品的完美,又致力于提升整个领域的实践水平。
It is the designer’s task to foster the development of meaningful common conventions at all three levels of media making-inscription, transmission, and especially representation-to accelerate the collective project of expanding the expressive power of the new digital medium. 设计师的任务是在媒体创作的三个层面上促进有意义的共同规范的发展——记录、传输,尤其是表现——以加速扩展新数字媒介的表现力。
To design something new that transcends the expressive limitations of legacy media and existing formats and genres, the designer should think about the core human needs served by the new artifact, survey the ways those needs have been met across multiple media platforms, and then attempt to reimagine them as they might be served by the affordances of the emerging digital medium. 设计一些新事物,以超越传统媒体和现有格式与类型的表达限制,设计师应考虑新产品所满足的核心人类需求,调查这些需求在多个媒体平台上是如何被满足的,然后尝试重新构想它们如何通过新兴数字媒介的特性来满足。
All digital artifacts belong to a shared landscape of potential affordances, and designers should consider every individual project within the context of procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, and spatial design strategies. 所有数字化作品都处于一个共享的潜在可能性环境中,设计师应在程序性、参与性、百科全书式和空间设计策略的背景下考虑每个项目。
The characteristic goal of interactive environments is agency. We create agency by scripting the interactor and the computer so that the human being’s expectations and behaviors elicit appropriate responses from the machine. When an interdisciplinary team is confronted with a conflict in design values, the design goal of creating agency can serve as a touchstone to resolve the issue. 互动环境的主要目标是赋予用户自主权。我们通过编写交互者和计算机的脚本来实现这一点,使得人类的期望和行为能够引发机器的适当反应。当跨学科团队面临设计价值观的冲突时,创造自主权的设计目标可以作为解决问题的参考。
A recognizable pleasure of interactive environments is the interactor’s sense of immersion. We create immersion by increasing scope, detail, and consistency while establishing clear boundaries and means of navigation. 互动环境中一个显著的乐趣是互动者的沉浸感。我们通过扩大范围、增加细节和保持一致性,同时设定明确的边界和导航方式来营造这种沉浸感。
In a well-designed environment, agency and immersion reinforce one another through the active creation of belief. 在一个精心设计的环境中,代理性和沉浸感通过积极地建立信念相互促进。
1 Design in an Evolving Medium 在不断演变的媒介中进行设计
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. 预测未来的最佳方式就是创造未来。
—Alan Kay, http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html —艾伦·凯,网址:http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html
Design as Framing and Reframing 设计作为框架与重构
To design is to shape a specific artifact or process by choosing among alternate strategies in order to achieve explicit goals. Design is always concerned with discretionary choices that take into account the benefits and liabilities of alternate strategies. A designer must be able to envision multiple approaches to the same design problem, including novel approaches that exploit the affordances of new materials. 设计是通过在不同策略中进行选择,来塑造特定的物品或过程,以实现明确的目标。设计始终关注那些考虑到不同策略利弊的自主选择。设计师需要能够设想多种解决同一设计问题的方法,包括利用新材料特性的新颖方法。
Design can be directed at objects meant to last for a season or a century, for pleasure or utility, for comfort or style. But design is always the conscious creation of a particular artifact within a longer cultural tradition of practice. It always involves a choice of conventions in a context in which there is not just one correct way of doing something. Most of all, good design is aimed simultaneously at perfecting the object and at improving the overall practice of the field. This double focus is particularly important for the designer of digital media because the field is so new and because there are so many competing methodologies that are relevant to the design of a digital artifact. 设计可以针对那些旨在持续一个季节或一个世纪的物品,无论是出于愉悦还是实用,舒适还是风格。然而,设计始终是在更长的文化传统中有意识地创造特定的工件。它总是涉及在一个没有唯一正确做法的背景下选择不同的惯例。最重要的是,好的设计同时致力于完善物品和提升整个领域的实践。这种双重关注对于数字媒体设计师尤为重要,因为这个领域非常新颖,并且有许多相关的竞争性方法。
Professional designers in any field know how to frame a new design problem within existing traditions, practices, and goals. We know how to design a toaster because we know how people use it, and the underlying technology of heating element and regulators has not changed. Innovation in toaster design can focus on refining familiar elements: making them a little bit more reliable (less burnt toast), usable (easier to get the toast out of the slot), functional (more slots, bigger slots, a defrost setting), visually appealing (e.g., ceramic toasters with whimsical shapes), or marketable (designerbrand toasters). Some tasks in digital media design involve similar refinement of established artifacts. For example, the laptop computer can be designed for greater reliability (longer battery life, tougher shell, fewer viruses), usability (ergonomic keyboard design, less heat generation, lighter weight), functionality (faster operation, 专业设计师在各个领域都懂得如何在现有的传统、实践和目标中界定新的设计问题。我们之所以能设计出烤面包机,是因为我们了解人们的使用习惯,而加热元件和调节器的基本技术并没有改变。烤面包机设计的创新可以集中在对熟悉元素的改进上:提高可靠性(减少烤焦的面包)、提升可用性(更容易将面包取出)、增强功能性(增加槽位、加大槽位、增加解冻功能)、提升视觉吸引力(例如,设计成奇特形状的陶瓷烤面包机)或增强市场竞争力(设计师品牌的烤面包机)。数字媒体设计中的一些任务也涉及对既有工件的类似改进。例如,笔记本电脑可以设计得更加可靠(更长的电池寿命、更坚固的外壳、更少的病毒),更易于使用(符合人体工程学的键盘设计、产生更少的热量、重量更轻),以及更强的功能性(更快的操作,
Figure 1.1 图示 1.1
Standard web conventions for a retail site on http://www.landsend.com include logo banner, keyword search, store locator, order tracker, account sign-in, shopping bag, and menu bar with conventional clothing categories. 在 http://www.landsend.com 上,标准的零售网站网络规范包括 logo 横幅、关键词搜索、商店定位、订单跟踪、账户登录、购物袋以及包含常规服装类别的菜单栏。
优惠商店的优惠与促销:您喜欢的所有优惠,尽在这里!查看库存
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SHOP ONUNE DEALS & PROMOTIONS
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SHOP ONUNE DEALS & PROMOTIONS
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for the home 为家庭而设
beds bath 床和浴室
women 女性
men 男性
juniors 初级选手
kids 小朋友们
beauty a fragrance 美丽的香氛
shoes 鞋子款式
handbags & accessories 手袋与配饰
jewelry a watches 珠宝与手表
sale 销售活动
search Key 搜索关键词
d, Web IO d,网络输入输出
co , 一起
CUSTOMERSTOPRAT
****
StOREs 商铺
GIFTSA GiP
aros 阿罗斯
widoinc 威多科技有限公司
GISTRY
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Figure 1.2 图示 1.2
Standard web conventions similar to the Lands’ End website are found on <http://www.macys. com >> with the additional features of a rotating ad space (here promoting “Online Deals”) and a rating system for customers to recommend purchases. 类似于 Lands' End 网站的标准网络惯例可以在< http://www.macys.com >> 上找到,此外还有一个旋转广告位(推广“在线优惠”)和一个供客户推荐购买的评分系统。
larger hard-drive capacity, increased connectivity), visual appeal (custom colors, minimalist design), or marketability (Apple or PC brand appeal). 更大的硬盘容量和更强的连接性,视觉上的吸引力(如自定义颜色和极简设计),以及市场营销(苹果或 PC 品牌的吸引力)。
Designing a website for a retail operation can be a matter of refining existing conventions, similar to designing a new toaster, because retail websites currently rest on standardized technical elements (shopping basket with secure credit-card entry, inventory stored in a database, web pages generated on the fly) and include genre features that consumers are familiar with (home page, menu navigation, product images, sorting by size, recommendation systems). Like toasters, retail websites are stable enough in design to compete on style and relatively small functional refinements (see figures 1.1-1.41.1-1.4 ) 为零售业务设计网站可以看作是对现有规范的优化,类似于设计一款新的烤面包机。因为目前的零售网站依赖于标准化的技术元素(如安全的信用卡输入的购物车、存储在数据库中的库存、即时生成的网页),并且包含消费者熟悉的特征(如主页、菜单导航、产品图片、按大小排序和推荐系统)。就像烤面包机一样,零售网站在设计上足够稳定,可以在风格和相对较小的功能改进上进行竞争(见图 1.1-1.41.1-1.4 )。
But many tasks in digital media design are not a matter of refining clearly established traditions and practices, but of inventing new conventions within a more open-ended context of possibilities. Creating a virtual world, a social networking site, a media-playing device, a handheld communication device, a website for a newspaper or a television station are much more open-ended tasks that cannot be approached within a single-standard framework. They require us to reframe familiar practices to take advantage of the new affordances of digital technology. 但数字媒体设计中的许多任务并不是简单地完善已有的传统和实践,而是在更开放的可能性背景下创造新的规范。创建虚拟世界、社交网络网站、媒体播放设备、手持通信设备,或报纸和电视台的网站,这些都是更为开放的任务,无法在单一标准框架内处理。它们要求我们重新审视熟悉的做法,以充分利用数字技术带来的新机遇。
Innovative design is often the result of reframing familiar activities, such as rethinking the context in which they can be performed. The small portable radios introduced with the invention of transistors are based on reframing the activity of listening to music, which was previously thought of as something done in the home, or perhaps 创新设计往往源于对熟悉活动的重新思考,比如重新审视这些活动可以进行的环境。随着晶体管的发明,小型便携式收音机的推出重新定义了听音乐这一活动,过去人们通常认为听音乐是在家中进行的,或者也许
Figure 1.3 图示 1.3
Macy’s display of merchandise provides rollover text that duplicates the information below the picture. 梅西百货的商品展示提供了与图片下方信息相同的滚动文本。
Figure 1.4 图示 1.4
On the Lands’ End site, rolling over the front-view image of a swimsuit displays the back of the garment, a refinement of the standard retail web convention. 在 Lands’ End 网站上,将鼠标悬停在泳衣的正面图像上,可以看到服装的背面,这是一种对传统零售网站惯例的改进。
while sitting on the grass or the beach with a “portable” radio the size of a toaster. The addition of earphones to the transistor radio made music listening into something that you could do privately, even when walking around outdoors and in public, paving the way for later inventions such as the tape-driven (and later CD-based) Sony Walkman and the digital mpeg3 player like the widely popular iPod. Telephoning has seen a similar shift in the past twenty years, changing the circumstances under which people contact one another and conduct conversations. For designers of digital artifacts, there is always the possibility of introducing a similarly durable reframing of a common activity. 当你坐在草地或海滩上,手里拿着一个像烤面包机大小的“便携式”收音机时,耳机的加入使得收听音乐变成了一种可以私下进行的活动,即使在户外和公共场合走动时也能享受音乐,这为后来的发明铺平了道路,比如磁带驱动(后来是 CD 驱动)的索尼随身听和广受欢迎的数字 mpeg3 播放器 iPod。在过去的二十年里,电话通讯也经历了类似的变化,改变了人们联系和进行对话的方式。对于数字产品的设计师来说,总是有可能引入一种持久的方式来重新定义常见活动。
Reframing can also be done at the level of social context. We see this quite often in advertising. For example, the bathing suits in figures 1.3 and 1.4, though both meant to present images of attractive women, are based on very different assumptions about shopper’s motivations. The Macy’s models are photographed in sexually seductive poses, an exaggeration of the cultural convention of objectifying women’s bodies as objects of male desire; they also suggest urban sophistication about fashion trends since high fashion is often framed in risqué poses. The Lands’ End images reframe the conventional bathing suit pose to suggest wholesome athleticism and a less overtly sexual attractiveness. Similarly, the Apple “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” advertising campaign framed the Microsoft operating system as the unreliable choice of unimaginative nerds and the Mac platform as the hassle-free choice of the creative and cool. Advertising works by exaggerating such cultural connotations, so it is a good guide to the stereotypes considered mainstream by corporate culture. The designer should strive to identify such stereotypes and conventional value assumptions, and to be aware of whose interest they serve. It is often useful to reframe the scenario by reversing roles. For example, suppose the Microsoft people rewrote the Apple ads: would the hip Apple guy seem pretentious and incompetent and the PC guy seem coolly efficient and in control? 重新框架也可以在社会背景层面进行。这在广告中非常常见。例如,图 1.3 和 1.4 中的泳衣虽然都旨在展示吸引女性的形象,但对购物者动机的假设却截然不同。梅西的模特以性挑逗的姿势拍摄,夸大了将女性身体物化为男性欲望对象的文化惯例;同时,这些形象也传达了关于时尚潮流的城市精致感,因为高端时尚常常以挑逗的姿势呈现。而 Lands' End 的图像则重新定义了传统泳衣的姿势,传达出健康的运动气息和不那么明显的性吸引力。 同样,苹果的“我是 Mac/我是 PC”广告活动将微软操作系统描绘成不可靠的选择,认为它是缺乏想象力的书呆子的选择,而 Mac 平台则被视为创意和酷炫的无忧选择。广告通过夸大这种文化内涵来发挥作用,因此它是企业文化中被视为主流的刻板印象的良好指南。设计师应努力识别这些刻板印象和传统价值观,并意识到它们服务于谁的利益。通过反转角色来重新构建场景通常是有益的。例如,假设微软的人重写了苹果的广告:那时,时髦的苹果家伙会显得自命不凡和无能,而 PC 家伙则会显得冷静高效、掌控全局吗?
Cultural values and economic imperatives drive the direction of design innovation in ways that we usually take for granted, making some objects the focus of intense design attention while others are ignored altogether. For example, over the past century, music distribution and listening devices have experienced intense redesign, including dramatic changes in technology, from wax cylinder recordings and crystal radios to vinyl, tape, CDs, and Internet distribution. As a result we have gone in one hundred years from poor reproduction of a limited range of music, available to relatively few people worldwide, to a massive, globally distributed shared library of every conceivable form of musical performance. If a similar level of engineering resources and design inventiveness had been devoted to solar energy devices in the past fifty years, we might have made similar progress in an area more directly related to human survival. 文化价值观和经济因素以我们常常视为理所当然的方式推动设计创新的方向,使某些物品成为设计关注的焦点,而其他物品则被完全忽视。例如,在过去的一个世纪里,音乐传播和播放设备经历了剧烈的重新设计,技术发生了巨大的变化,从蜡筒录音和水晶收音机到黑胶唱片、磁带、CD 以及互联网分发。因此,在一百年间,我们从对有限范围音乐的低质量再现,转变为一个庞大的、全球共享的音乐库,涵盖了每一种可以想象的音乐表演形式。 如果在过去五十年中,投入到太阳能设备的工程资源和设计创新与其他领域相当,我们或许在一个与人类生存更直接相关的领域取得了类似的进展。
Military technologies have been pursued with diligence over centuries, leading to many design innovations in the history of swords, missiles, vehicles, and gun mechanisms. But the massive funding of military equipment does not necessarily favor improvements. Organizations become attached to equipment because it is familiar, or because it has political support through the influence of the manufacturer. Contractors are most eager to innovate in areas of large profit, and may not give equal resources to developing body armor, for example, over much more lucrative missile systems. Design sometimes gets fossilized around “good enough” solutions. The Russian-made Kalashnikov rifle or AK-47 is widely believed to be easier for soldiers to maintain than the corresponding American weapon, the M16, which is more accurate. Despite the half century of hostility and proxy warfare between the United States and communist bloc countries, with billions spent on weapons, neither side has produced an assault rifle that combines accuracy and ease of maintenance. If research budgets were in the hands of infantry soldiers, body armor and assault rifles might have gotten more design attention than fighter jets and missile defense systems. 军事技术在几个世纪以来一直被认真追求,促成了剑、导弹、车辆和枪械机制历史上的许多设计创新。然而,对军事装备的大量资金投入并不一定能促进改进。组织往往对设备产生依赖,因为它们熟悉这些设备,或者因为制造商的影响力带来了政治支持。承包商通常更愿意在利润丰厚的领域进行创新,而在开发防弹衣等方面可能不会投入同等的资源,反而更倾向于更有利可图的导弹系统。设计有时会围绕“足够好”的解决方案而变得僵化。 俄罗斯制造的卡拉什尼科夫步枪(AK-47)被普遍认为比美国的 M16 步枪更容易维护,尽管后者的精准度更高。尽管美国与共产主义国家之间经历了半个世纪的敌对和代理战争,投入了数十亿用于武器,但双方都未能研发出一种兼具精准度和易于维护的突击步枪。如果研究预算由步兵士兵掌控,防弹衣和突击步枪可能会比战斗机和导弹防御系统获得更多的设计关注。
Everyone has cultural biases, expectations, and value judgments that are the result of living in a particular society or subgroup. It is the job of the designer to identify and consciously examine these biases so they can become the subject of active choices rather than passive acceptance. In order to uncover unspoken cultural biases for an assigned task, designers can bring multiple stakeholder groups into the design process and elicit their different perspectives and needs. They can also ask themselves how the project would be different if it were being designed for people of a different social class, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, profession, neighborhood, educational background, or physical ability. The more we imagine such alternatives, the richer the set of possible strategies from which to make our design choices. 每个人都有文化偏见、期望和价值判断,这些都是在特定社会或子群体中生活的结果。设计师的任务是识别并有意识地审视这些偏见,使其成为主动选择的对象,而非被动接受。为了揭示在特定任务中未被言明的文化偏见,设计师可以邀请多个利益相关者参与设计过程,倾听他们的不同观点和需求。他们还可以思考,如果这个项目是为不同社会阶层、种族、国籍、性别、年龄、职业、社区、教育背景或身体能力的人设计,会有什么不同。 我们想象的替代方案越多,设计选择的可能策略就越丰富。
For example, the joystick game controller is an explicitly phallic device, evocative of male sexual excitement and potency. It reinforces the macho cultural values of shooting and driving games, which are structured around pressured individual performance and competition. But in Mary Flanagan’s art installation piece [giantJoystick] (2006), the classic Atari game controller is reproduced in a ten-foot-tall version, turning it into a device that must be controlled collectively and cooperatively (see figure 1.5). Although we may not want to market a 10 -foot joystick commercially, it is important to keep such creative reframing in mind in order to understand the cultural assumptions and design conventions behind the familiar version. 例如,操纵杆游戏控制器是一种明显的阳物象征,唤起男性的性兴奋和能力。它强化了射击和驾驶游戏中男性文化的价值观,这些游戏围绕个体表现和竞争的压力而构建。然而,在玛丽·弗拉纳根的艺术装置作品《巨型操纵杆》(2006)中,经典的雅达利游戏控制器被制作成十英尺高的版本,变成一个需要集体和合作控制的装置(见图 1.5)。虽然我们可能不想将十英尺的操纵杆进行商业化,但牢记这种创造性的重新构思对于理解熟悉版本背后的文化假设和设计惯例是非常重要的。
Three Layers of Media Design: Inscription, Transmission, Representation 媒体设计的三个层面:刻印、传播、表现
In common parlance the word “medium” (and its plural form “media”) can refer to anything from a set of charcoal pencils to a multinational entertainment corporation, encompassing technologies as tangible as marble sculpture or as imperceptible as radio 在日常用语中,“媒介”一词(及其复数形式“媒介”)可以指从一套炭笔到一家跨国娱乐公司,涵盖了从大理石雕塑等有形技术到无线电等无形技术
Figure 1.5 图示 1.5
Mary Flanagan’s [giantJoystick]-ten-foot-tall giant working model based on the handheld controller from the classic Atari 2600 video game system-is an art installation that redefines the social context of the familiar device by increasing its scale to provoke group play. See <http:// www.maryflanagan.com/giant-joystick>. 玛丽·弗拉纳根的[巨型操纵杆]是一个十英尺高的巨型工作模型,基于经典的雅达利 2600 视频游戏系统的手持控制器。这个艺术装置通过放大设备的规模,重新定义了其社会背景,旨在激发团体游戏的乐趣。更多信息请访问。
waves. The term refers equally to a television news broadcast aimed at hundreds of millions of people or a private diary hidden under a teenager’s pillow. In order to understand how best to develop the digital environment as an expressive medium, we need to distinguish the common elements of all of these varied phenomena and to identify the several levels at which design takes place. 波浪。这个术语既可以指面向数亿人的电视新闻广播,也可以指藏在青少年枕头下的私人日记。为了更好地理解如何将数字环境发展为一种表达媒介,我们需要区分这些不同现象的共同元素,并识别设计发生的多个层次。
For our purposes, a medium is any combination of materials and cultural practices that is used by human beings to support the intentional communication of meaning. It is important to remember that a medium is both material and cultural: a stone and chisel only become a medium for writing when a society develops practices of marking the stone and interpreting the chisel marks. Furthermore, the materials and cultural practices that make up any medium serve three nested processes: inscription, transmission, and representation. Design choices shape all three levels, and a change in any one of these levels can have consequences up and down the structure. For designers, it is helpful to think of anything made out of electronic bits and meant to be directly used by human beings as an artifact created in the emerging digital medium. A digital artifact might be a website, a research archive, a video game, a mobile device, a virtual environment, a wired piece of clothing, an art installation, an interactive television 对于我们的目的,媒介是人类用来支持有意传达意义的各种材料和文化实践的组合。需要记住的是,媒介既包括物质层面,也包括文化层面:石头和凿子只有在社会发展出标记石头和解读凿子痕迹的实践时,才会成为书写的媒介。此外,构成任何媒介的材料和文化实践涉及三个相互关联的过程:铭刻、传输和表现。设计选择会影响这三个层面,任何一个层面的变化都可能对整体结构产生影响。 对于设计师而言,将任何由电子元件制成并直接供人类使用的物品视为在新兴数字媒介中创造的工艺品是非常有帮助的。数字文物可以是网站、研究档案、视频游戏、移动设备、虚拟环境、有线衣物、艺术装置或互动电视等
Figure 1.6 图示 1.6
Two inscription technologies: a modern reproduction of biblical-era stylus and clay tablets and a digital multitouch screen created by Jefferson Y. Han of New York University. 两种铭刻技术:一种是现代复刻的圣经时代的刻写工具和泥板,另一种是由纽约大学的杰斐逊·汉开发的数字多点触控屏。
program, and so on. Anything that is inscribed in bits and transmitted in computer code is part of the emerging, evolving, constantly changing, and significantly immature digital medium. 程序等。任何以比特形式记录并通过计算机代码传输的内容,都是新兴、不断演变、持续变化且尚不成熟的数字媒介的一部分。
In a mature medium, the processes of inscription-of making perceptible marks on a receptive material—are so reliable and well-learned that they become transparent: we can perform them with little conscious effort. Writing on paper with a pencil has been a transparent process only since the mid-nineteenth century. Before that, paper was scarce and the pencil was an unreliable tool, differing from one maker to another, producing uneven markings, breaking easily, and lacking an eraser (Petroski 2000). The digital medium includes some inscription technologies, like the desktop computer keyboard, that work as reliably as pencil and paper do today, and some, like the toosmall keyboards on mobile devices, that are more like pre-nineteenth-century pencils-unreliable and distractingly clumsy to use. Inscription remains an active area of digital innovation for input and output devices (figure 1.6). 在成熟的媒介中,刻写过程——在可接受的材料上留下可感知的痕迹——是如此可靠且经过良好学习,以至于变得透明:我们几乎可以在没有意识努力的情况下进行这些操作。自十九世纪中叶以来,用铅笔在纸上写字才成为一种透明的过程。在那之前,纸张稀缺,铅笔也不可靠,不同制造商的产品差异很大,标记不均匀,容易断裂,并且没有橡皮擦(Petroski 2000)。数字媒介中有一些刻写技术,比如桌面计算机键盘,它们的可靠性与今天的铅笔和纸张相当;还有一些,比如移动设备上过小的键盘,更像是十九世纪之前的铅笔——不可靠且使用时令人分心。 铭文依然是输入和输出设备数字创新的重要领域(见图 1.6)。
Similarly, in a mature medium, transmission-the transfer of a message across space or time or both-is stable, standardized, and transparent. Transmission involves turning a meaningful message into a coded signal of some kind, and conveying it from sender to receiver with a minimum of noise (meaningless transmissions like static in a radio broadcast or misprints in a newspaper). Inscription involves marking a malleable material with a perceptible imprint; transmission involves arranging the marking into recognizable patterns we can think of as a transmission codes. Transmission codes are logical structures established by social agreement, like Morse code patterns that correspond to letters of the alphabet, or the unique phone number assigned to every landline or cell phone. The digital medium includes some mature (though still evolving) transmission codes such as data transfer protocols, media compression formats, 类似地,在成熟的媒介中,信息的传输——即在空间、时间或两者之间传递信息——是稳定、标准化且透明的。传输过程将有意义的信息转化为某种编码信号,并以尽量减少噪音(例如广播中的静电或报纸中的印刷错误)将其从发送者传递给接收者。铭刻是指在可塑材料上留下可感知的印记;而传输则是将这些标记排列成我们可以视为传输代码的可识别模式。传输代码是由社会共识建立的逻辑结构,类似于与字母对应的摩尔斯电码模式,或分配给每个固定电话或手机的唯一电话号码。数字媒介包含一些成熟的(尽管仍在不断发展的)传输编码,例如数据传输协议和媒体压缩格式,
and computer languages, as well as some relatively inelegant and unreliable codes that make the medium less transparent, such as the triple tap system for writing alphabetically on a telephone keypad and the many password barriers that regularly challenge our memory and patience. In a mature medium, the inscription and transmission layers become standardized into formats by socially established customs, and are so well learned or so buried under more meaningful layers that they do not distract the human being who is depending on them. 以及计算机语言,还有一些相对不优雅和不可靠的代码,使得这种媒介变得不那么透明,比如在电话键盘上按三次以字母顺序输入的系统,以及那些经常考验我们记忆和耐心的密码障碍。在一个成熟的媒介中,铭刻和传输层通过社会习俗标准化为格式,学习得如此深入或被更有意义的内容所掩盖,以至于它们不会分散依赖于它们的人类的注意力。
Inscription technologies and transmission codes change over time (table 1.1). When they coalesce into lasting arrangements, we recognize stable formats or platforms. Representational forms are also changing, but they tend not to disappear even over long periods of time and remain available for meaning making. The digital medium rests on binary code inscribed on electrical charges, and it includes multiple evolving inscription and transmission technologies. Its formats and platforms are therefore also shifting, making it harder to stabilize conventions of representation. For example, electronic book readers and tablet computers have sold many millions of units and led to the downloading of billions of dollars worth of electronic books and magazines, even though the conventions for display and navigation are far from stabilized. 随着时间的推移,铭刻技术和传输代码不断变化(见表 1.1)。当这些技术融合成持久的形式时,我们能够识别出稳定的格式或平台。表现形式也在不断演变,但即使经过很长时间,它们通常不会消失,仍然可以用于意义的构建。数字媒介依赖于刻在电荷上的二进制代码,并包含多种不断发展的铭刻和传输技术。因此,它的格式和平台也在不断变化,使得稳定表现惯例变得更加困难。 例如,电子书阅读器和平板电脑的销量已达数百万台,下载的电子书和杂志价值也超过了数十亿美元,尽管显示和导航的标准仍然不够稳定。
In any medium, the transmission layer is logical and well organized but meaningless until it is interpreted through our shared systems of representation. Morse code or alphabetical writing, for example, mean nothing until translated into a message in a human language. But the meaning of words in a language is much more elusive than the one-to-one relationship of Morse code to written alphabets. The representational layer is characterized by open cultural codes in which meaning is fuzzier, less stable, and more dependent on interpretation by discourse communities than the meaning of logical transmission codes. 在任何媒介中,传输层是逻辑且组织良好的,但在通过我们共同的表现系统进行解释之前,它是没有意义的。例如,摩尔斯电码或字母书写,只有在被翻译成一种人类语言的信息时才有意义。然而,语言中单词的意义比摩尔斯电码与书写字母之间的一对一关系要复杂得多。表现层的特点是开放的文化代码,其中的意义更加模糊、不稳定,并且比逻辑传输代码的意义更依赖于话语社区的解释。
The words of a language, the images we create for one another, the stories that we tell are all part of the representational layer of media. The inscription layer is grounded in the physicality of the inscription materials; the transmission layer is grounded in the logic of the coding system. The representational layer is more diffuse, created by cultural tradition and open to an ongoing process by which we negotiate meaning with one another. We understand what words mean not because the meanings are fixed or absolute, but because we draw on shared contexts and associations to interpret them. The combination of the written letters D-O-G, or the vocalized sounds represented by this alphabetical sequence, denote an animal with four legs, a tail, and a loyal disposition because English speakers have collectively associated these letters and sounds with the perceptions and experiences that make up our familiarity with dogs. But words and other cultural constructs are also connotative. For example, we can standardize pronunciation of a word like “mother” so that all English speakers will recognize it as the same word, but we can never standardize all the meanings that the 语言的词汇、我们为彼此创造的图像以及我们讲述的故事,都是媒体表现层的一部分。铭刻层基于铭刻材料的物质性,传输层则基于编码系统的逻辑。表现层更为广泛,由文化传统所形成,并且在一个持续的过程中,我们通过协商来理解彼此的意义。我们理解词语的含义,并不是因为这些含义是固定或绝对的,而是因为我们依赖于共享的背景和联想来进行解释。 字母 D-O-G 的组合,或这个字母序列所代表的发音,指的是一种有四条腿、一个尾巴且性格忠诚的动物,因为英语使用者共同将这些字母和声音与我们对狗的认知和经验联系在一起。然而,词语和其他文化构造也具有内涵。例如,我们可以标准化“母亲”这个词的发音,使所有英语使用者都能将其识别为同一个词,但我们永远无法统一所有的含义
Table 1.1 表格 1.1
Examples of Stable Formats, Conventions, and Genres 稳定格式、规范和类型的示例
Loose sheets,
bound books,
conventions for
the direction of
writing and
reading (e.g., left
to right)| Loose sheets, |
| :--- |
| bound books, |
| conventions for |
| the direction of |
| writing and |
| reading (e.g., left |
| to right) |
News stories,
feature stories,
editorials, letters
to the editor| News stories, |
| :--- |
| feature stories, |
| editorials, letters |
| to the editor |
视频摄像头(模拟或数字)
Video cameras
(analog or
digital)
Video cameras
(analog or
digital)| Video cameras |
| :--- |
| (analog or |
| digital) |
通过卫星、有线或无线广播接收的模拟或数字电视信号
Analog or
digital TV
signals via
satellite, cable,
wireless
broadcast
Analog or
digital TV
signals via
satellite, cable,
wireless
broadcast| Analog or |
| :--- |
| digital TV |
| signals via |
| satellite, cable, |
| wireless |
| broadcast |
网络电视通过广播或订阅方式提供服务
Network TV
delivery by
broadcast or
subscription
Network TV
delivery by
broadcast or
subscription| Network TV |
| :--- |
| delivery by |
| broadcast or |
| subscription |
节目指南以网格形式呈现,遥控器用作频道选择器,包含标题序列、片尾字幕和幕间广告
Program guide
as a grid,
remote control
as channel
selector,
title sequences,
credit sequences,
commercial
breaks between
acts
Program guide
as a grid,
remote control
as channel
selector,
title sequences,
credit sequences,
commercial
breaks between
acts| Program guide |
| :--- |
| as a grid, |
| remote control |
| as channel |
| selector, |
| title sequences, |
| credit sequences, |
| commercial |
| breaks between |
| acts |
Electrical charges
in transistors
Multiple input
devices like
keyboard,
mouse, touch
screen, game
controller, and
multiple display
technologies like
computer
screens, mobile
device screens,
digital or analog
TV screens| Electrical charges |
| :--- |
| in transistors |
| Multiple input |
| devices like |
| keyboard, |
| mouse, touch |
| screen, game |
| controller, and |
| multiple display |
| technologies like |
| computer |
| screens, mobile |
| device screens, |
| digital or analog |
| TV screens |
Binary code
ASCII code
Audio and
video codices
Internet
protocols
HTML
RSS
Proprietary
encodings
(e.g., iTunes,
Kindle)| Binary code |
| :--- |
| ASCII code |
| Audio and |
| video codices |
| Internet |
| protocols |
| HTML |
| RSS |
| Proprietary |
| encodings |
| (e.g., iTunes, |
| Kindle) |
网络电视(IPTV)上的电子音乐和专有平台书籍
Webpage
Internet Protocol
Television (IPTV)
Electronic music
and books in
proprietary
platforms
Webpage
Internet Protocol
Television (IPTV)
Electronic music
and books in
proprietary
platforms| Webpage |
| :--- |
| Internet Protocol |
| Television (IPTV) |
| Electronic music |
| and books in |
| proprietary |
| platforms |
购物车、导航栏、标题,音频和视频播放器,电子书阅读器中的翻页和书签功能
Shopping carts,
navigation bars,
headings
Audio and video
software players
Page-turning
and
bookmarking in
electronic
"readers"
Shopping carts,
navigation bars,
headings
Audio and video
software players
Page-turning
and
bookmarking in
electronic
"readers"| Shopping carts, |
| :--- |
| navigation bars, |
| headings |
| Audio and video |
| software players |
| Page-turning |
| and |
| bookmarking in |
| electronic |
| "readers" |
零售网站、新闻网站、个人日记、大学网站、在线广播、搜索引擎等。
Retail sites,
news sites,
personal
journals,
university sites,
online radio,
search engines,
etc.
Retail sites,
news sites,
personal
journals,
university sites,
online radio,
search engines,
etc.| Retail sites, |
| :--- |
| news sites, |
| personal |
| journals, |
| university sites, |
| online radio, |
| search engines, |
| etc. |
"Inscription
Materials" "Transmission
Codes" Stable Formats "Conventions of
Representation" "Genres of
Representation"
"Pencils and
paper" "Alphabets,
numbers" "Loose sheets,
bound books,
conventions for
the direction of
writing and
reading (e.g., left
to right)" "Words, lists,
tables" "Letters,
shopping lists,
love notes,
financial records"
Printing presses "Alphabets,
numbers, letter
press machines" "Newsprint sizes
and folding
patterns, fonts,
photography in
newsprint" "Words, lists,
tables, headlines,
bylines,
photographs
with captions" "News stories,
feature stories,
editorials, letters
to the editor"
"Video cameras
(analog or
digital)" "Analog or
digital TV
signals via
satellite, cable,
wireless
broadcast" "Network TV
delivery by
broadcast or
subscription" "Program guide
as a grid,
remote control
as channel
selector,
title sequences,
credit sequences,
commercial
breaks between
acts" "Sit-coms, news
broadcasts,
police dramas,
hospital dramas,
reality shows,
quiz shows, live
sports, etc."
"Electrical charges
in transistors
Multiple input
devices like
keyboard,
mouse, touch
screen, game
controller, and
multiple display
technologies like
computer
screens, mobile
device screens,
digital or analog
TV screens" "Binary code
ASCII code
Audio and
video codices
Internet
protocols
HTML
RSS
Proprietary
encodings
(e.g., iTunes,
Kindle)" "Webpage
Internet Protocol
Television (IPTV)
Electronic music
and books in
proprietary
platforms" "Shopping carts,
navigation bars,
headings
Audio and video
software players
Page-turning
and
bookmarking in
electronic
"readers"" "Retail sites,
news sites,
personal
journals,
university sites,
online radio,
search engines,
etc."| Inscription <br> Materials | Transmission <br> Codes | Stable Formats | Conventions of <br> Representation | Genres of <br> Representation |
| :---: | :---: | :---: | :---: | :---: |
| Pencils and <br> paper | Alphabets, <br> numbers | Loose sheets, <br> bound books, <br> conventions for <br> the direction of <br> writing and <br> reading (e.g., left <br> to right) | Words, lists, <br> tables | Letters, <br> shopping lists, <br> love notes, <br> financial records |
| Printing presses | Alphabets, <br> numbers, letter <br> press machines | Newsprint sizes <br> and folding <br> patterns, fonts, <br> photography in <br> newsprint | Words, lists, <br> tables, headlines, <br> bylines, <br> photographs <br> with captions | News stories, <br> feature stories, <br> editorials, letters <br> to the editor |
| Video cameras <br> (analog or <br> digital) | Analog or <br> digital TV <br> signals via <br> satellite, cable, <br> wireless <br> broadcast | Network TV <br> delivery by <br> broadcast or <br> subscription | Program guide <br> as a grid, <br> remote control <br> as channel <br> selector, <br> title sequences, <br> credit sequences, <br> commercial <br> breaks between <br> acts | Sit-coms, news <br> broadcasts, <br> police dramas, <br> hospital dramas, <br> reality shows, <br> quiz shows, live <br> sports, etc. |
| Electrical charges <br> in transistors <br> Multiple input <br> devices like <br> keyboard, <br> mouse, touch <br> screen, game <br> controller, and <br> multiple display <br> technologies like <br> computer <br> screens, mobile <br> device screens, <br> digital or analog <br> TV screens | Binary code <br> ASCII code <br> Audio and <br> video codices <br> Internet <br> protocols <br> HTML <br> RSS <br> Proprietary <br> encodings <br> (e.g., iTunes, <br> Kindle) | Webpage <br> Internet Protocol <br> Television (IPTV) <br> Electronic music <br> and books in <br> proprietary <br> platforms | Shopping carts, <br> navigation bars, <br> headings <br> Audio and video <br> software players <br> Page-turning <br> and <br> bookmarking in <br> electronic <br> "readers" | Retail sites, <br> news sites, <br> personal <br> journals, <br> university sites, <br> online radio, <br> search engines, <br> etc. |
word might have for different individuals (an eight-year-old child, a woman with twin babies) and subcultures (stereotypical Jewish mothers, Chinese mothers limited to one child), and in different contexts (the “mother of all battles,” a “mean mother” of a convict). We build up these related but divergent meanings experientially and we decode the meaning of our sentences by referring to these specifically situated experiences. 这个词对不同个体(如八岁的小孩、带着双胞胎的母亲)和亚文化(如刻板印象中的犹太母亲、只生一个孩子的中国母亲)可能有不同的含义,并且在不同的语境中(如“所有战斗的母亲”、“一个罪犯的严厉母亲”)。我们通过经验积累这些相关但不同的意义,并通过这些特定情境的经历来理解我们句子的含义。
Abstract nouns like “justice” require even more complex patterns of shared cultural interpretation. To explain what “dog” denotes we just point to Lassie and Fido. To explain what “mother” means in all these connotative contexts we might point to specific people in movies and news reports as well as in our own families. To explain what “justice” means we need an extensive system of shared schema and the ability to evoke multiple alternate outcomes and complex chains of events. Media help us to form these complex concepts by allowing us to organize our fluid culture codes into fixed units of meaning-sentences, manuscripts, diagrams, and rules-so that they can be externalized, shared, and refined. We need stability of inscription and transmission in order to focus our attention on what our words and images represent. New technologies and codes introduce new possibilities and destabilize older formats. 抽象名词如“正义”需要更复杂的文化共享解释模式。要解释“狗”的含义,我们只需指向拉西和菲多。要解释“母亲”在各种含义背景下的意思,我们可能会指向电影和新闻报道中的特定人物,以及我们自己家庭中的人。要解释“正义”的含义,我们需要一个广泛的共享框架系统,并具备唤起多种替代结果和复杂事件链的能力。媒体帮助我们形成这些复杂概念,使我们能够将流动的文化代码组织成固定的意义单元——句子、手稿、图表和规则——以便它们可以被外化、共享和完善。 我们需要铭刻和传递的稳定性,以便专注于我们的言语和图像所代表的内容。新技术和编码带来了新的可能性,同时也使旧有格式变得不稳定。
Design decisions involve all three levels of a medium—physical inscription, logical transmission codes, and cultural conventions of meaning. In the digital medium, inscription and transmission technologies are constantly changing, subverting existing formats and opening up new design possibilities. For example, digital technology has led to new kinds of mobile devices that contain degraded voice processing, making telephoning less reliable and harder to decipher, but opening up new uses for telephones as messaging devices, navigators, and cameras. Similarly, the shift from analog to digital televisionfrom inscribing the image on the screen as analog lines to inscribing it as an array of pixels-has given designers higher resolution to work with, increasing the amount of information that can be included in the frame, rendering the standard remote control obsolete while multiplying the choices available to the viewer. Refinement of digital transmission codes can change the platform available for design. For example, the first versions of HTML (the transmission code by which programmers tell browsers how to display pages on the World Wide Web) did not allow designers to create tables on web pages. The extension of HTML to include tables allowed designers to format a web page as a grid, a big step forward in the visual organization of the web. 设计决策涵盖了媒介的三个层面——物理刻录、逻辑传输代码和文化意义的约定。在数字媒介中,刻录和传输技术不断变化,颠覆了现有格式,开辟了新的设计可能性。例如,数字技术催生了新型移动设备,这些设备的语音处理能力下降,使得电话通话变得不那么可靠且更难以理解,但也为电话作为信息传递工具、导航仪和相机开辟了新的用途。 同样,从模拟电视到数字电视的转变,从将图像以模拟线条显示在屏幕上到以像素阵列显示,给设计师提供了更高的分辨率,增加了可以在画面中包含的信息量,使得标准遥控器变得过时,同时也增加了观众的选择。数字传输代码的改进可以改变设计的平台。例如,HTML 的早期版本(程序员用来告诉浏览器如何在万维网上显示页面的传输代码)并不允许设计师在网页上创建表格。 HTML 的扩展使得设计师可以将网页格式化为表格形式,这在网页的视觉组织上迈出了重要的一步。
When inscription and transmission conventions become linked and standardized, designers can think in terms of a stable format (like a web page, a video compression codec, a music CD). When delivery is linked to specific hardware and software combinations, like a particular game console or mobile device with its own operating system, hardwired (inscribed and coded) chips, and input technologies (keypad, game controller, accelerometer) system, a number of formats, each with their own affordances and constraints, are fused into a fixed platform. The establishment of a stable 当铭刻和传输规范相互关联并标准化时,设计师可以考虑使用稳定的格式(如网页、视频压缩编码、音乐 CD)。当交付与特定的硬件和软件组合相关联时,例如某款游戏机或具有独立操作系统的移动设备、硬件(铭刻和编码)芯片以及输入技术(如键盘、游戏控制器、加速度计)系统,许多格式各自具有不同的优缺点,最终融合成一个固定的平台。建立一个稳定的
Figure 1.7 图示 1.7
The Apple iPod device, iTunes software, and iTunes online store together make a stable platform for the distribution of music without infringement of copyright. 苹果 iPod 设备、iTunes 软件和 iTunes 在线商店共同构建了一个稳定的平台,使音乐分发在不侵犯版权的前提下得以实现。
platform like the Atari 2600, the Macintosh operating system, or the World Wide Web is an important precondition for the sustained development of expressive genres like arcade video games, word-processing applications, or retail websites. Platforms usually require social and economic arrangements, not just technical engineering (figure 1.7). 像雅达利 2600、麦金塔操作系统或万维网这样的平台,是街机视频游戏、文字处理应用程序或零售网站等表达性类型持续发展的重要前提。平台通常需要社会和经济的安排,而不仅仅是技术工程(见图 1.7)。
Limiting design to a strongly branded, widely used format or platform can provide assurance of technical support and a customer base for a new product. It can save development time and provide useful constraints to design, limiting the scope of a project within manageable, familiar boundaries. Every established format and platform configuration has its own set of affordances and constraints, which the designer should consider carefully. Designing a game for the Nintendo Wii offers different possibilities and problems than designing the same game for a smartphone. It is best to postpone format and platform decisions until the functional requirements and expressive goals of a project are clearly understood. Designers should then survey available options and perform a competitive analysis by creating a table that summarizes the relevant features and limitations of each implementation strategy. Wherever possible, components of the project should be developed in platform-independent formats to increase the flexibility of implementation and delivery. 将设计限制在一个强烈品牌化且广泛使用的格式或平台上,可以为新产品提供技术支持和客户基础的保障。这可以节省开发时间,并为设计提供有益的约束,将项目范围限制在可管理且熟悉的边界内。每种已建立的格式和平台配置都有其独特的可用性和限制,设计师应仔细考虑。为任天堂 Wii 设计游戏所面临的可能性和问题,与为智能手机设计同一款游戏的情况是不同的。在明确理解项目的功能需求和表现目标之前,最好推迟格式和平台的决策。 设计师应调查可用选项,并通过创建表格进行竞争分析,概述每种实施策略的相关特征和局限性。在可能的情况下,项目组件应以平台无关的格式开发,以提高实施和交付的灵活性。
Although it is easiest to work with stable platforms-with established combinations of inscription technologies and transmission codes-designers can also work with digital components to invent their own platforms. Inscription can be shaped with the choice of input and output devices: keyboard, mouse, joystick, gestural controller, environmental sensor, computer screen, vibrating tactile device, projected images, directional sound, and so on. Designers can also establish their own standardized transmission formats, such as customized database tables and fields, specialized tagging conventions for digital documents, unique sets of bar patterns to be read by mobile devices, or new gestural codes for the control of multitouch screens or sensors. 尽管与稳定的平台(如已建立的铭刻技术和传输代码组合)合作是最简单的,设计师也可以利用数字组件来创造自己的平台。铭刻可以通过选择输入和输出设备来实现,例如键盘、鼠标、操纵杆、手势控制器、环境传感器、计算机屏幕、振动触觉设备、投影图像、定向声音等。设计师还可以制定自己的标准化传输格式,比如定制的数据库表和字段、数字文档的专用标记约定、供移动设备读取的独特条形码模式,或用于控制多点触控屏幕或传感器的新手势代码。
Just as conventions of inscription and transmission become fixed in standardized configurations called formats, conventions in the representational layer (like newspaper headlines and bylines) coalesce into larger units of meaning that we refer to as genres (like newspaper news stories). Genres are sometimes tightly tied to specific formats (like print newspapers), but formats can support multiple representational genres (like advertising supplements, comics sections, television listing booklets as well as standard news pages) and genres can exist on multiple formats (like newspapers on line, or news reporting in print, radio, television, and web pages). The television sitcom genre and the game show genre both rest on the television format of the halfhour commercial television show, and they share common TV formatting conventions such as commercial breaks, intro music, credit screens, and so on. TV sitcoms and TV game shows can be thought of as media-specific genres. When we put a TV sitcom on the web, advertising and credit conventions are reinvented for the new transmission format. Genres can also transcend media. For example, a television sitcom might belong to the cross-media genre of romantic comedy, which exists on stage and film and has contributed to the plot of novels, poems, operas, and country songs. A game show belongs to the cross-media genre of games, which includes mystery dinner theater, radio game shows, and board games. 就像铭刻和传递的惯例在被称为格式的标准化配置中变得固定一样,表现层的惯例(例如报纸的标题和副标题)汇聚成我们称之为体裁的更大意义单位(如报纸新闻故事)。体裁有时与特定格式紧密相关(如印刷报纸),但格式可以支持多种表现体裁(如广告补充、漫画版块、电视节目手册以及标准新闻页面),而体裁也可以存在于多种格式中(如在线报纸,或在印刷、广播、电视和网页上进行的新闻报道)。 电视情景喜剧和游戏节目都基于半小时的商业电视节目格式,并共享商业广告、开场音乐、字幕等电视格式的惯例。电视情景喜剧和游戏节目可以视为特定媒体的类型。当我们将电视情景喜剧放到网上时,广告和字幕的惯例会为新的传播格式进行重新设计。类型也可以跨越媒体。例如,电视情景喜剧可能属于跨媒体的浪漫喜剧类型,这种类型不仅存在于舞台和电影中,还影响了小说、诗歌、歌剧和乡村歌曲的情节。游戏节目则属于跨媒体的游戏类型,包括神秘晚宴剧、广播游戏节目和桌游。
The communications theorist James Carey proposed the ritual model of communication as an alternative to the transmission model of information theory. In Carey’s view, reading a newspaper cannot be understood as the decoding of logical code, but as the performance of a meaningful social ritual: 传播理论家詹姆斯·凯瑞提出了仪式传播模型,作为信息理论传输模型的替代。在凯瑞看来,阅读报纸不仅仅是解码逻辑代码,而是一种有意义的社会仪式的表现。
A ritual view of communication will . . view reading a newspaper less as sending or gaining information and more as attending a mass, a situation in which nothing new is learned but in which a particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed. News reading, and writing, is a ritual act and moreover a dramatic one. What is arrayed before the reader is not pure information but a portrayal of the contending forces in the world. . . . The model here is not that of information acquisition, though such acquisition occurs, but of dramatic action in which the reader joins a world of contending forces as an observer at a play. We do not encounter questions about the effect or functions of messages as such, but the role of presentation and involvement in the structuring of the reader’s life and time. (Carey 1989, 16-17) 一种仪式化的沟通观将阅读报纸视为参与弥撒的过程。在这个过程中,虽然没有获得新的知识,但却描绘和确认了一种特定的世界观。阅读和写作新闻是一种仪式行为,更是一种戏剧性的体验。读者面前呈现的不是单纯的信息,而是对世界中对立力量的描绘……这里的模型并不是信息获取,尽管这种获取确实存在,而是戏剧性的行动,读者作为观察者融入了一个充满对立力量的世界,就像在观看一场戏剧。 我们并不遇到关于信息本身的效果或功能的问题,而是关注呈现和参与在塑造读者生活和时间中的作用。(凯瑞,1989 年,第 16-17 页)
A media genre is more than the organizing structures that allow us to decode the words; it is a set of practices by the people who create and consume it, and a context of interpretation in which it is understood. When we introduce new media formats or disrupt established inscription and transmission technologies, we are also disrupting the rituals that have formed around these artifacts. Television was blamed, for example, for disrupting family rituals centered around reading together or playing board games or outdoor sports; more recently computers have been blamed for disrupting the shared ritual of family TV viewing. 媒体类型不仅仅是帮助我们解读文字的组织结构;它是创造和消费这些媒体的人们所形成的一系列实践,以及理解这些媒体的背景。当我们引入新的媒体格式或打破既有的记录和传播技术时,我们也在打破围绕这些媒介形成的仪式。例如,电视曾被指责打破了家庭共同阅读、玩桌游或进行户外运动的仪式;而最近,电脑则被认为打破了家庭共同观看电视的传统仪式。
In a mature medium, we rely on familiar formats and genres to guide us in making sense of complex media artifacts. Because so much of our communication is in cultural codes that require experiential knowledge to decode, we need to have our attention focused on the salient parts of the communication. Mature media have developed elaborate conventions like newspaper columns, headlines, sections, bylines, and so on, to focus us on the most important parts of the communication. We recognize the kind of communication we are receiving because it has common elements with similar communications. We know what to expect of a commercial television program in general, and of a sitcom or a game show in particular because we recognize the common format and the familiar genres. Similarly, we know what to expect of a first-person shooter video game or a retail website because we recognize the format and the genre that provide the conventions of interaction. 在成熟的媒介中,我们依赖熟悉的格式和类型来帮助我们理解复杂的媒体作品。由于我们的交流大多是以文化代码的形式进行的,这需要经验知识来解码,因此我们需要将注意力集中在交流的关键部分。成熟的媒体发展了复杂的惯例,如报纸专栏、标题、版块和署名等,以便让我们关注交流中最重要的内容。我们能够识别所接收的交流类型,因为它与类似的交流有共同的元素。我们知道商业电视节目通常是什么样的,尤其是情景喜剧或游戏节目,因为我们识别出共同的格式和熟悉的类型。 同样,我们对第一人称射击游戏或零售网站的期望是明确的,因为我们能够识别出提供互动规范的格式和类型。
In a mature medium, format and genre are well matched and reinforce one another. For example, television writers use commercial breaks to build suspense for the comic climax of the sitcom or the big-money question on the game show; newspaper editors use page position and headline size to indicate the importance of a story. In the digital medium, the mapping of a pointing device, like a game controller or a mouse, to a graphical user interface (GUI) has been foundational to establishing stable formats and genres by giving designers a set of conventions for coordinating the attention of the interactor with the attention of the machine (figure 1.8). The pointing system allows us to create icons that mean one thing to the human (a trash can, a Pac-Man figure) and another to the computer (a command to delete the addresses of particular places in memory, a change in a pattern of pixel display) but whose behavior is coherent to both. 在成熟的媒介中,格式和类型相辅相成,彼此增强。例如,电视编剧利用商业广告的间歇来制造情景喜剧的喜剧高潮或游戏节目的大奖问题的悬念;报纸编辑则通过页面位置和标题大小来表明故事的重要性。在数字媒介中,指向设备(如游戏控制器或鼠标)与图形用户界面(GUI)之间的映射为建立稳定的格式和类型奠定了基础,因为它为设计师提供了一套约定,以协调互动者的注意力与机器的注意力(图 1.8)。 指示系统让我们能够创建一些图标,这些图标对人类(如垃圾桶、吃豆人形象)和计算机(如删除特定内存地址的命令、像素显示模式的变化)有不同的含义,但它们的行为对两者都是一致的。
Where existing conventions, formats, and genres are a good fit for the immediate project, it is the designer’s responsibility to employ them and to refine them as necessary. Refining individual media conventions-how we open a file, how we choose the attributes of an avatar, how we steer a virtual vehicle, or what label we give to a database field, menu item, or website section-all contribute to the development of the medium as a whole. For example, the Lands’ End convention of showing the back of a garment on rollover of a catalog image (figure 1.4) is a refinement of the rollover convention of merely displaying a text message. If other designers use it, it could become a standard feature of retail sites. 当现有的惯例、格式和类型适合当前项目时,设计师有责任使用并根据需要加以改进。对单一媒体惯例的改进——例如我们如何打开文件、选择头像属性、操控虚拟车辆,或为数据库字段、菜单项和网站部分命名——都对整个媒介的发展起着重要作用。例如,Lands’ End 在目录图像上滚动时显示服装背面的做法(图 1.4)是对仅仅显示文本信息的滚动惯例的改进。如果其他设计师也采用这一做法,它可能会成为零售网站的标准功能。
Figure 1.8 图示 1.8
Image from the original mouse patent, filed in 1967 by Douglas Engelbart, showing it controlling a “tracking point” (cursor) on the screen, and a still image from Engelbart’s public demonstration of his system in 1968 in which he is using the mouse with his right hand and a chording system similar to command keys with his left hand. 这是 1967 年道格拉斯·恩格尔巴特提交的原始鼠标专利的图像,展示了鼠标如何在屏幕上控制“跟踪点”(光标),以及 1968 年恩格尔巴特公开演示其系统时的静态图像,他用右手操作鼠标,左手则使用类似于命令键的和弦系统。
In an evolving medium, formats are unstable and genre conventions of older media are disrupted, making it harder to create expressive works. There is disruption of inscription methods, such as the confusion over nonstandard keyboards and the pressure to use telephone keypads to do the work of typewriter keyboards. There is incompatibility of transmission formats, between older and newer versions of devices or software packages, and between competing operating systems and compression technologies. These shifts in the underlying technologies make for disruptions at the 在一个不断发展的媒介中,格式变得不稳定,旧媒体的类型规范受到冲击,使得创作富有表现力的作品变得更加困难。书写方式的混乱,例如对非标准键盘的困惑,以及使用电话键盘代替打字机键盘的压力,都是一种干扰。传输格式的不兼容性体现在旧版和新版设备或软件包之间,以及不同操作系统和压缩技术之间。这些基础技术的变化导致了各种干扰。
level of representation, leaving interactors confused about which conventions to employ to perform common tasks. 表现水平让交互者对执行常见任务时应该采用哪些惯例感到困惑。
In addition, formats and genres may prematurely fossilize around particular devices or authoring applications that are widely adopted but soon become outdated. This can make for stable platforms that have the wrong functionality. For example, designers of CD-ROMs in the 1990s relied on an authoring system that was optimized for animation, thereby limiting the possibilities for interactivity in their projects. Genres that have large numbers of enthusiastic early adopters-like specialized business applications, social networking sites, or certain kinds of games-may standardize around these highly specialized user communities, creating conventions of interaction that are unnecessarily hard for novice users to learn, but that developers cannot change for fear of alienating their most loyal customers. It is therefore not always good design to conform to an established genre, no matter how many people are using it. Instead, an innovative design team could take the longer-term view, and work to develop new conventions, formats, and genres that will better serve a broader range of applications. For example, DOS, the command-line operating system for PCs, had millions of loyal users in the mid-1990s when Microsoft belatedly followed Apple and Xerox PARC by introducing the now-standard Windows interface. The fact that PC users have become habituated to DOS, a severely limited form of representation based on a more limited inscription and transmission format (e.g., no graphics, slower processors), seems in hindsight like a foolish reason for retaining it. Yet the current digital environment includes many similarly feeble and cumbersome interfaces-such as the television remote, the joystick-and-button game controller, and the form-based query systems for many relational databases (such as course registration systems in universities). Designers should be alert to opportunities to radically rethink familiar interaction patterns when they no longer support the transparent interaction necessary for the experience of user agency. 此外,格式和类型可能会过早地围绕一些广泛使用但很快就过时的设备或创作应用程序而固化。这可能导致功能不匹配的稳定平台。例如,1990 年代的 CD-ROM 设计师依赖于一个专为动画优化的创作系统,从而限制了他们项目中的互动性。 拥有大量热情早期采用者的领域——如专业商业应用、社交网络网站或某些类型的游戏——可能会围绕这些高度专业化的用户社区进行标准化,形成一些对新手用户来说不必要的复杂互动规则,而开发者因担心疏远最忠实的客户而无法改变这些规则。因此,遵循一个已建立的类型并不总是好的设计,尽管有很多人在使用它。相反,一个创新的设计团队可以采取更长远的视角,努力开发新的规则、格式和类型,以更好地满足更广泛的应用需求。 例如,DOS 是一个用于个人电脑的命令行操作系统,在 1990 年代中期拥有数百万忠实用户。当时,微软迟迟跟随苹果和施乐 PARC 推出了如今标准的 Windows 界面。PC 用户习惯于 DOS,这种基于更有限的记录和传输格式(例如,没有图形、处理器较慢)的表现形式,事后看来似乎是一个愚蠢的保留理由。然而,当前的数字环境中仍然存在许多同样脆弱和笨重的界面,比如电视遥控器、操纵杆和按钮游戏控制器,以及许多关系数据库(如大学的课程注册系统)的表单查询系统。 设计师应当关注那些在无法支持用户自主体验所需的透明互动时,彻底重新思考熟悉互动模式的机会。
The digital medium is still in an immature state but it is evolving rapidly and unevenly, with some very stable genres and others still quite disorganized. It will continue to evolve and to experience disruptions and unexpected opportunities arising from changes in inscription and transmission technologies. It is the designer’s task to work at all three levels of media making-inscription, transmission, and especially representation-to accelerate the collective project of inventing a new medium by creating and refining the conventions that will bring coherence to new artifacts and enhance their expressive power. 数字媒介仍然处于不成熟的阶段,但正在快速且不均匀地发展,某些类型非常稳定,而另一些则仍显得相当混乱。它将继续演变,并经历由于铭刻和传输技术变化而带来的干扰和意外机会。设计师的任务是在媒介制作的三个层面上进行工作——铭刻、传输,尤其是表现——以加速集体创造新媒介的进程,通过创造和完善能够为新作品带来连贯性并增强其表现力的规范。
Designing for the Core Human Needs 设计满足人类核心需求
The design process begins by asking: Who needs this object and for what? This question must be asked at three levels: 设计过程的开始是要问:谁需要这个物品,目的是什么?这个问题需要从三个层面进行探讨:
Function How will specific end-users employ the product in particular tasks and activities? 特定的最终用户将如何在具体的任务和活动中使用该产品?
Context What social and cultural customs, relationships, institutions, and value structures does this product reflect or subvert? 这个产品反映或挑战了哪些社会文化习俗、关系、机构和价值观?
Core What deeper, enduring general human activities and values does this object serve? 这个物体满足了哪些更深层次和持久的人类活动与价值观?
It is simplest to frame a design problem in terms of known genres and formats and immediately observable functions. But innovative design requires that we look beyond received opinion and familiar solutions to identify the deeper, cultural connections. This method can uncover potential users and functionalities that might otherwise be overlooked and will help us to expand the design palette and to sharpen our design goals. 将设计问题以已知的类型、格式和可观察的功能进行框架化是最简单的。然而,创新设计要求我们超越传统观点和熟悉的解决方案,去识别更深层次的文化联系。这种方法能够发现潜在用户和功能,避免被忽视,并帮助我们扩展设计的可能性,明确设计目标。
The designer’s task must be in the service of specific human needs. A design is not good or bad because it uses a particular technology, makes money or fails to make money, or preserves or erodes a particular power structure. It is good or bad according to how well it serves a core human need whose value is larger than the immediate task. Examples of core needs would be: increasing understanding of complex phenomena, fostering the acquisition of skills, supporting works of the creative imagination, expanding communication across distances. We can recognize the core need (or needs) behind a design problem when it can be identified independent of the technology that currently supports it. We should not be focused on making an electronic version of a book, record collection, television show, etc.; we should be focused on serving the information, entertainment, or community needs that these particular books, records, television shows are addressed to, by rethinking those needs in terms of the affordances of digital media. 设计师的任务应当服务于特定的人类需求。一个设计的好坏并不在于它使用了什么技术、是否盈利,或是维护或削弱了某种权力结构。它的优劣取决于它在多大程度上满足了一个核心人类需求,而这个需求的价值超越了眼前的任务。核心需求的例子包括:加深对复杂现象的理解、促进技能的学习、支持创造性想象的作品、扩大跨距离的交流。当一个设计问题能够独立于当前的技术被识别时,我们就能发现其背后的核心需求。 我们不应只关注制作书籍、唱片、电视节目的电子版本,而应专注于满足这些特定书籍、唱片和电视节目所针对的信息、娱乐或社区需求,重新思考这些需求与数字媒体的优势之间的关系。
For example, if we are making an online newspaper with only a print newspaper as a guide, and a narrow sense of the end-user as a newspaper reader, then we might focus design on reproducing the masthead and the columns of the front page as accurately as possible. By shifting to a more open-ended assessment of needs, we widen our range of design choices. 例如,如果我们正在制作一个在线报纸,仅以印刷报纸为参考,并将最终用户狭义地理解为报纸读者,那么我们可能会专注于尽可能准确地再现头版的报头和栏目。通过对需求进行更开放的评估,我们扩大了设计选择的范围。
At the level of function, in addition to duplicating current coverage, we can look for unserved news needs of potential interactors, including those who do not currently read the newspaper (Do they want more local sports coverage? Are there local demographic or interest groups that would welcome more coverage?), and examine the likely conditions in which people would consume news in digital rather than paper form (on a mobile device in frequent, short bursts while out and about, or on a larger screen for longer periods?). 在功能层面,除了复制现有的报道范围外,我们还可以寻找潜在互动者未被满足的新闻需求,包括那些目前不阅读报纸的人(他们是否希望有更多地方体育的报道?是否有地方的人口或兴趣群体希望获得更多的报道?),并探讨人们在何种情况下会选择以数字而非纸质形式来消费新闻(是在外出时通过移动设备频繁、短时间地查看,还是在更大的屏幕上长时间观看?)。
At the context level, we would want to understand the role of the paper in the community it serves, and also how the switch to online publication would affect the social and economic structure of the newspaper organization. We would look for 在上下文层面,我们希望了解这篇论文在其服务的社区中的作用,以及转向在线出版将如何影响报纸组织的社会和经济结构。我们将会寻找
the strengths of the paper in particular genres of reporting (political news? sports? lifestyle?), each of which has its own associated social rituals and media conventions. 论文在特定报道类型(如政治新闻、体育或生活方式)中的优势,每种类型都有其独特的社会习俗和媒体惯例。
Most importantly we can identify the core human activities-the media-independent needs-that make newspapers important to us: our curiosity about what is happening around us; our need for speed, frequency, accuracy, and reliability in reporting; and our reliance on shared information to connect us to the communities we belong to. 最重要的是,我们能够识别出一些核心的人类活动——与媒体无关的需求——使报纸对我们变得重要:我们对周围发生的事情的好奇心;我们对报道的速度、频率、准确性和可靠性的需求;以及我们依赖共享信息来连接我们与所属于的社区。
By identifying the design task as furthering the media-independent core activity of news consumption, we can capture a wider range of potentially useful format and genre conventions. We can think historically and cross-culturally about oral news sources like town criers and barbershop gossips; print sources like letters, newspapers, and magazines; and broadcast sources like local and national TV and radio news, discussion, and documentaries. We can think about digital news genres, such as texting, webcasts, podcasts, aggregators, and blogs. This exercise reframes the immediate task, giving us a larger palette of design conventions to choose from, and helping us to see the advantages and liabilities of previous approaches. Framing our goals in terms of the core human needs also helps us to prioritize design choices so that we are not overwhelmed by all these alternatives. For example, in order to maximize the pleasure of satisfying curiosity we might increase the number of headlines and teasers we display, allowing interactors to choose which stories to follow, rather than limiting their choices with longer initial story segments or pop-up ads that block content. Knowing that news serves the important core human need of connecting us to others, we might prioritize popularity ratings or user-created content (like the neighborhood bulletin board). Or we might prioritize location-sensitive news bulletins to serve the core need for anticipating opportunities and dangers in our immediate surroundings (like the town crier). 通过将设计任务视为推进与媒体无关的新闻消费核心活动,我们能够捕捉到更广泛的潜在有用格式和体裁惯例。我们可以从历史和跨文化的角度思考口头新闻来源,比如城镇报信人和理发店的闲聊;印刷来源,如信件、报纸和杂志;以及广播来源,包括地方和国家的电视、广播新闻、讨论和纪录片。我们还可以考虑数字新闻体裁,如短信、网络直播、播客、聚合器和博客。这个练习重新定义了当前任务,为我们提供了更丰富的设计惯例选择,并帮助我们理解以往方法的优缺点。 将我们的目标框定为核心人类需求,有助于我们优先考虑设计选择,避免被众多替代方案所困扰。例如,为了最大化满足好奇心的乐趣,我们可以增加展示的标题和预告数量,让用户选择关注哪些故事,而不是通过更长的初始故事片段或遮挡内容的弹出广告来限制他们的选择。考虑到新闻满足了连接我们与他人的重要核心人类需求,我们可能会优先考虑受欢迎程度评分或用户创作的内容(如社区公告栏)。 或者我们可能会优先发布与位置相关的新闻简报,以满足我们对预测周围环境中机会和危险的基本需求(就像镇上的传令员一样)。
Although it may seem obvious that we as designers should orient ourselves to the core human needs served by the artifacts that we make, in practice other forces often dominate. Because digital artifacts are based on changing technologies, the demand for new applications is sometimes driven by a delight in novel features or an appeal to the status value of the latest gadgetry. But novelty cannot drive the design process because whatever is new and fashionable today will be displaced tomorrow by a yet newer fashion. New platforms come and go quite quickly, while the development of interactive applications is necessarily slow. Solutions that only work on one device or that emphasize a single innovative feature risk seeming out of date by the time they are released, or losing users when the novelty wears off. 尽管作为设计师,我们应该关注我们所制作的工件所满足的核心人类需求,这似乎是显而易见的,但在实际操作中,其他因素往往占据主导地位。由于数字工件依赖于不断变化的技术,对新应用的需求有时是出于对新颖特性的喜爱,或者是对最新小玩意的地位价值的追求。然而,新颖性不能主导设计过程,因为今天的新潮和时尚明天就会被更新的潮流所取代。新平台的兴起和消失非常迅速,而交互应用的开发则必然是一个缓慢的过程。 只在单一设备上有效或过于强调某一创新特性的解决方案,发布时可能显得过时,或者在新鲜感消退后失去用户。
Designers should therefore resist the easy excitement that comes from merely employing emerging technologies. Technical experimentation is crucial to keeping 设计师因此应当抵制仅仅依赖新兴技术所带来的短暂兴奋。技术实验对于保持
current in a changing field, but it should not drive the design process. A project that has no clear human need behind it may engage the skills of talented people, and may generate contracts for design firms, but it cannot be a focus for truly professional design because it will lack coherence. If you do not know why you are making something you will not be able to tell whether or not you are getting it right. The designer’s task must be grounded in the service of specific human needs: this is what gives the work clarity and direction. 在一个不断变化的领域中,当前的情况不应主导设计过程。一个没有明确人类需求的项目可能会吸引有才华的人,并为设计公司带来合同,但它无法成为真正专业设计的重点,因为缺乏连贯性。如果你不知道自己为什么要创造某样东西,就无法判断自己是否做对了。设计师的任务必须基于满足特定人类需求,这正是赋予工作清晰性和方向的关键。
Advancing the medium does not mean choosing the newest platform to implement a project or adding in the coolest new bells and whistles. Such superficial advances may appeal to a forward-thinking designer and may get immediate attention, but they do not serve the task. Because newly introduced technologies are unstable, they are best explored for demonstration projects, in a research context like a university or industry laboratory; they are risky for projects that have to be done within limited time spans and which must work on a regular basis for a wide population of users. 推进媒介并不意味着选择最新的平台来实施项目或添加最炫的新功能。这种表面的进步可能会吸引前瞻性的设计师,并获得即时关注,但并不真正满足任务需求。由于新技术往往不稳定,因此最好在演示项目中进行探索,比如在大学或行业实验室等研究环境中;对于那些必须在有限时间内完成并且需要为广泛用户群体正常运作的项目来说,这些新技术是有风险的。
Even if the new technology is stable, it is not helpful to use it if it distracts from the task served or meaning expressed by the artifact. For example, in the early days of the World Wide Web blinking buttons were an easily implemented, reliable, and therefore irresistible addition to websites. They expressed an exuberant embrace of the vitality of the new medium, but they very quickly went from being a sign of advanced skillfulness to the defining symbol of naive design. A clear focus on the expressive goals of your design can save you from similar missteps, while helping you to look for appropriate applications of new technologies. For example, a similar technique to the one that produced the annoying blinking buttons is now used routinely to rotate informational or promotional images on a home page, with each image linked to more information deeper in the site. The wise designer avoids employing novel technical formats-like blinking buttons-for their own sake and looks for the longer-lasting expressive uses-like the more slowly changing hyperlinked images-that might be built on top of them. 即使新技术很稳定,如果它分散了对任务或所表达意义的注意力,使用它也没有意义。例如,在万维网的早期,闪烁的按钮是一个容易实现、可靠且不可抗拒的网站附加功能。它们展现了对新媒介活力的热情,但很快就从先进技能的象征变成了幼稚设计的代名词。清晰地关注设计的表达目标可以帮助你避免类似的错误,同时也能帮助你寻找新技术的合适应用。 例如,产生恼人闪烁按钮的类似技术现在常用于主页上轮换信息或促销图像,每个图像都链接到网站更深处的更多信息。明智的设计师不会为了新奇而使用闪烁按钮等技术格式,而是会寻找更持久的表现方式,比如变化较慢的超链接图像,这些图像可以在其基础上进行构建。
To avoid seduction by mere novelty, it is best to keep a separate playpen or scratch pad area for trying out new technologies. It is often a good idea to test something out as an alternate version of an existing project. Project leaders often make the mistake of testing out an innovation with phony data or filler content, but the expressive potential of a new format only becomes clear when it is implemented with real content, when it is measured against a specific human purpose that exists outside of the excitement of technological wizardry. Because the digital medium depends on interaction, the true usefulness of a new approach cannot be assessed until it is mocked up with real information that will provoke interactors to come up with specific expectations and actions. 为了避免仅仅被新奇事物所吸引,最好为尝试新技术保留一个单独的游戏区或划痕垫区域。将某些东西作为现有项目的替代版本进行测试通常是个好主意。项目负责人常常犯的一个错误是用虚假的数据或填充内容来测试创新,但新格式的表现潜力只有在用真实内容实施时才会变得清晰,并且需要与超越技术魔法兴奋的特定人类目的进行比较。由于数字媒介依赖于互动,因此在用真实信息进行模拟之前,无法评估新方法的真正实用性,这些信息将促使互动者产生具体的期望和行动。
Identifying the core activity is useful as a counterweight to technophilia and infatuation with mere novelty. It is also useful in coping with the opposite problem: 确定核心活动有助于平衡对技术的热爱和对新奇事物的迷恋,同时也有助于应对相反的问题:
technophobia and resistance to change. Domain experts and design clients often define a task in terms of work patterns that have been shaped by legacy media. Users of consumer products can also be closely wedded to their familiar ways of doing things. Finding the alignment between the abstracted, generalized, core human needsomething so basic that you can state it without any specialized jargon-and the particular digital design task often takes patience and hard work. Designers have to think about the needs of their users that lie beneath the particular artifacts and practices by which they currently go about satisfying those needs. For example, a group of scholars once asked me for advice on how to make a better scholarly edition of Shakespeare’s works but became agitated at the thought that their end product might shift from a book to a digital artifact, such as a CD-ROM. They knew that the footnote on a paper-based page was a clumsy way of expressing the depth of research that went into a scholarly edition. Their own editions often separated the note from the text by several pages, or squeezed the text into a few lines per page in order to accommodate the dozens of lines of footnotes chasing after them. But an “edition” to them meant paper pages bound between covers. They were not thinking as designers, or even as scholars, but as members of a print culture with a deep attachment to the physical form of the book. 技术恐惧症和对变革的抵制。领域专家和设计客户通常根据传统媒体所形成的工作模式来定义任务。消费产品的用户也可能非常依赖他们熟悉的做事方式。在抽象和概括的核心人类需求之间找到一致性——这种需求简单到可以不使用任何专业术语来表达——与特定数字设计任务之间的关系,往往需要耐心和努力。设计师必须关注用户的需求,这些需求隐藏在他们当前满足这些需求的具体工具和实践之下。 例如,一群学者曾向我请教如何制作更好的莎士比亚作品学术版,但他们对最终产品可能从书籍转变为数字文物(如 CD-ROM)感到不安。他们意识到,纸质页面上的脚注无法充分表达制作学术版所需的深度研究。他们自己的版本通常将注释与文本隔开数页,或者将文本压缩成每页几行,以容纳后面数十行的脚注。但对他们来说,“版本”意味着封面之间装订的纸页。他们并没有以设计师或学者的身份思考,而是作为对书籍的物理形式有着深厚依恋的印刷文化的成员。
Designers should be prepared to encounter this mindset and they should be prepared to show appropriate respect for the core task-such as creating a variorum edition of a Shakespeare play or using a card catalog or “leaning back” to watch a conventional, noninteractive television program-while tactfully discounting panicky attachment to the physical formats of print and analog culture-such as an insistence on squeezing a complex, multisequential knowledge structure into the unisequential format of a bound book. Thinking as a designer means focusing on the core task of a variorum edition: the coherent presentation of centuries of commentary on Shakespeare’s plays. This is a task that has a clear human imperative behind it, linked to the more general goal of expanding human knowledge and understanding. Focusing on the physical format of the delivery medium-the creation of a bound book or a simulated bound book (as in a PDF photo facsimile of each page)—distorts the design task. 设计师应当准备好面对这种心态,并对核心任务表现出适当的尊重——例如创建莎士比亚戏剧的变体版,使用卡片目录,或“向后靠”观看传统的非互动电视节目——同时巧妙地忽视对印刷和模拟文化物理格式的恐慌性依赖——例如坚持将复杂的多序列知识结构压缩到一本装订书的单序列格式中。作为设计师思考意味着专注于变体版的核心任务:对莎士比亚戏剧数百年评论的连贯呈现。 这是一个明确体现人类需求的任务,旨在扩展人类的知识和理解。过于关注交付媒介的物理形式——无论是实际的装订书籍还是模拟的装订书籍(例如每页的 PDF 照片复制品)——都会使设计任务变得扭曲。
There is always a temptation to use the digital medium as a means of duplicating the appearance and behaviors of legacy media. We can make an excellent facsimile of a book in digital form, and in some circumstances it can be helpful to do so. But it is a poor use of the affordances of the digital medium to create an artifact that must be paged through, and in which footnotes remain cryptic abbreviations, displayed separately from the items they are commenting on. 总是有一种诱惑,想要将数字媒介用来复制传统媒体的外观和行为。我们可以制作一本优秀的数字书籍,在某些情况下这样做是有益的。但如果创建一个必须翻页的文档,并且脚注仍然是难以理解的缩写,且与其所评论的内容分开显示,这样使用数字媒介的特性就显得不够恰当。
Addressing the core need may be harder for others on the team than for the designer. Clients often resist rethinking media structures that legitimize wellestablished professional distinctions. For example, expanding the available space for 解决核心需求对团队中的其他成员来说,可能比对设计师更具挑战性。客户往往不愿意重新思考那些使专业区分合法化的媒体结构。例如,扩大可用空间以便于
commentary in a variorum edition reopens the awkward question of how the editors decide which commentaries to include and which to exclude. Such decisions may not be as easy to justify when space is no longer the constraint. Reconfiguring the database system of a complex organization, such as the index-card based catalog of a library, may eliminate some jobs, change the skill sets for other jobs, foster more open access to formerly closed information, or otherwise disrupt political and social arrangements. Changing the delivery structure of television disrupts the advertising model and therefore the revenue stream that supports the production of entertainment. The anxiety produced from such disruptions can make it harder to get a clear fix on the patterns of information and interaction that the designer most needs to serve. 在变异版中的评论重新引发了一个棘手的问题:编辑如何决定哪些评论应被纳入,哪些应被排除。当空间不再是限制时,这样的决定可能变得难以辩解。重新配置复杂组织的数据库系统,例如基于索引卡的图书馆目录,可能会导致一些职位消失,改变其他职位的技能要求,促进对以前封闭信息的更开放访问,或以其他方式扰乱政治和社会结构。改变电视的传输结构会影响广告模式,从而影响支持娱乐制作的收入来源。 这种干扰带来的焦虑可能使设计师更难清晰地理解他们所需的信息和互动模式。
Orienting oneself to the core human task provides the designer with a necessary corrective to the distractions of organizational politics and the fetishism of legacy formats, focusing design choices toward empowerment of the most enduring and valuable functions. Of course some clients may prefer outdated solutions. In that case it is the designer’s job to make sure that the client understands the trade-offs. As a practical matter, one might try in such situations to help people move to the next comfortable stage of digital organization, such as moving the production of the variorum editions from shoeboxes of index cards into a uniform electronic database, or delivering the variorum as a book with a CD-ROM tucked into it. In that way, the integrity of the information is preserved in the eyes of the clients, by the production of the book, and also for the designer, by the digital organization that might one day support a better-organized digital version. 定位核心人类任务为设计师提供了必要的纠正,帮助他们应对组织政治的干扰和对传统格式的迷恋,从而将设计选择集中在赋权于最持久和有价值的功能上。当然,一些客户可能更倾向于使用过时的解决方案。在这种情况下,设计师的职责是确保客户理解其中的权衡。实际上,在这种情况下,人们可以尝试帮助他们转向下一个舒适的数字组织阶段,比如将变体版的制作从装满索引卡的鞋盒转移到统一的电子数据库,或者将变体版作为一本书交付,并附带一个光盘。 通过书籍的制作,客户对信息的完整性得以保持;而设计师则可以通过数字化组织,未来支持更为有序的数字版本。
As we have seen, focusing on the core task can protect us against both the seduction of new technologies and the fetishism of older media. The scholars holding onto their shoeboxes of index cards are at the opposite end of the spectrum from the marketing manager who wants the latest bells and whistles on the company website. But sophisticated practitioners can also derail design by insisting on fitting each new project into their own favorite software or hardware framework. As the proverb goes, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Designers should be skeptical of any project that begins with an implementation strategy. Instead, we must discipline ourselves to begin by identifying the core human need, without reference to whether it is going to be served with bits or boom boxes or bowling balls. 正如我们所见,专注于核心任务可以帮助我们抵御新技术的诱惑和对旧媒体的迷恋。那些依然使用索引卡片的学者与希望在公司网站上添加最新功能的市场经理截然相反。然而,经验丰富的从业者也可能因为坚持将每个新项目纳入他们自己喜欢的软件或硬件框架而偏离设计方向。正如谚语所说,拿着锤子的人看什么都像钉子。设计师应对任何以实施策略为起点的项目保持怀疑态度。 相反,我们必须自律,首先识别核心的人类需求,而不考虑它是通过小零件、音响还是保龄球来满足的。
Identifying the core task may make it clear that this is not a problem that calls for a computer at all. Maybe the fundamental design problem is in the social, political, or information structure itself, and the computer will not solve the problem, only distract from it. Maybe the computer will even make the problem worse. For example, suppose that in a large liberal arts university, students are extremely bright and motivated, but 20 percent of the freshman class is getting poor grades in a required course. This course is taught by lecture; students can be seen at all the lectures, their eyes glazed over, and some of them asleep in their seats. Suppose that money becomes available to the university to offer computer-based education, and the instructor of 确定核心任务可能会让我们明白,这根本不是一个需要计算机来解决的问题。也许根本的设计问题在于社会、政治或信息结构本身,而计算机并不能解决这个问题,反而可能会让人分心。甚至有可能计算机会使问题变得更糟。例如,假设在一所大型文理学院,学生们非常聪明且积极,但 20%的新生在一门必修课上成绩不佳。这门课是通过讲座授课的;可以看到学生们在所有讲座上,眼神呆滞,有些甚至在座位上睡着。假设学校获得资金提供基于计算机的教育,而这门课的讲师
this required course secures some of the funds. His plan is to put his lectures on digital video and make them available from a web page in all student dormitory rooms. This plan presents itself as a simple design problem: make a web page that students can find with clear links to digital video. But if the underlying problem is how to improve student performance in the course, this is not a satisfactory solution. If the lectures in this course are not effective in person they are unlikely to be more effective when seen remotely. The digital design is doomed to failure because it is not an appropriate response to the presenting problem of the high failure rate. The same logic holds if the presenting problem is a failing newspaper or an unpopular television program. Adding “interactive” bells and whistles for their own sake will not make for a successful application, and such projects undermine confidence in the medium and in the work of interactive designers. 这门必修课程确保了一部分资金。他的计划是将讲座录制成数字视频,并在所有学生宿舍的网页上提供。这看似是一个简单的设计问题:制作一个学生能轻松找到的网页,并提供清晰的数字视频链接。然而,如果根本问题是如何提高学生在课程中的表现,这并不是一个令人满意的解决方案。如果这门课程的讲座面对面时效果不佳,那么远程观看时效果也不太可能更好。数字设计注定要失败,因为它并没有针对高失败率这一根本问题提供合适的解决方案。如果根本问题是一本失败的报纸或一档不受欢迎的电视节目,同样的逻辑也适用。 仅仅为了“互动”而添加花哨功能并不会使应用成功,这样的项目会削弱人们对这一媒介及互动设计师工作的信心。
As the designers of interactive artifacts we are engaged in a collective task of inventing a new medium of representation. We cannot be satisfied with just reproducing older information formats in digital form, settling for mere remediation of the textbook, the lecture, the broadcast TV show, the paper newspaper. We have to think more radically. But we cannot redesign the world with every object we make. We have to accept the creative boundaries of the project at hand, such as resistant power structures, technophile or technophobe collaborators, preexisting platform commitments, and limited resources. Yet even on the most constrained project, the fully professional designer can make decisions based on the larger collective task. We can always do a better job with the immediate task by seeing it as a single step toward the development a future, more radical version. We can think of this future artifact as the endpoint of a collective journey, providing an orientation point, a general direction in which we are moving in the company of the larger body of designers, each of us at our pace and from our own starting point. 作为互动艺术品的设计师,我们参与了一个集体任务,旨在创造一种新的表现媒介。我们不能仅仅满足于将旧的信息格式以数字形式再现,停留在教科书、讲座、广播电视节目和纸质报纸的简单再现上。我们需要更为激进地思考。然而,我们无法通过每一个设计物品来重新设计整个世界。我们必须接受当前项目的创造性边界,例如抵抗的权力结构、技术爱好者或技术恐惧者的合作者、已有的平台承诺以及有限的资源。即便在最受限制的项目中,专业的设计师也能基于更大的集体任务做出决策。 我们总是可以通过将当前任务视为通往未来更激进版本的一个步骤来做得更好。我们可以把这个未来的产物视为集体旅程的终点,它为我们提供了一个方向点,指引着我们与更大设计师群体共同前进的方向,每个人都以自己的节奏和起点前行。
Orientation toward the core need and toward development of the affordances of the digital medium (as we will be discussing in chapter 2) can guide us even in creatively constrained projects. In the case of the boring college lectures, for example, we can design the underlying data structure so that it supports a more active learning style. Following good information design principles, we can semantically segment the lectures, labeling all segments that contain live demonstrations in a similar way so that they can be accessed by those students who will find them more effective than the whiteboard parts of the lecture. We can look for ways to link our project with those of other designers exploring more participatory learning tools. We can also steer the general design process in the direction of collective change by raising questions that orient the team toward the core human tasks and the expressive opportunities of the medium, preparing the way for more original projects in the future. Even if we use only a limited range of the representational power of the computer, we can remain fully professional by cultivating an awareness of wider possibilities, and doing our best 面向核心需求和数字媒介的可用性发展的方向(如我们将在第二章中讨论的)可以在创造性受限的项目中为我们提供指导。例如,在无聊的大学讲座中,我们可以设计基础数据结构,以支持更积极的学习方式。遵循良好的信息设计原则,我们可以对讲座进行语义分段,标记所有包含现场演示的部分,以便那些认为这些部分比黑板讲解更有效的学生能够访问。我们还可以寻找将我们的项目与其他设计师探索更具参与性的学习工具的项目相结合的方法。 我们还可以通过提出问题,引导整体设计过程朝着集体变革的方向发展,这些问题将团队的注意力集中在核心人类任务和媒介的表现机会,从而为未来更具原创性的项目铺平道路。即使我们只利用计算机有限的表现能力,只要培养对更广泛可能性的意识并尽力而为,我们依然可以保持专业
to orient the current project toward the collective goal of an increasingly mature medium. 将当前项目朝着一个日益成熟的媒介的共同目标进行引导。
DESIGN EXPLORATIONS: EXPLORING DESIGN IN A NEW MEDIUM 设计探索:在新媒介中进行设计探索
Increasing Awareness of Design Choices that Shape Everyday Experience 增强对影响日常体验的设计选择的意识
In a familiar environment, such as a room in your own home, look at three or more manufactured objects and identify the design decisions that went into producing each one, including size, materials, color, shape; placement of buttons, functions of buttons; relationship to human senses such as softness/roughness, retention of heat or cold; relationship to other objects, such as size of shelves or counters the object sits on, size and shape of any of its own container compartments (e.g., pockets on an apron, oven size in an appliance), need for electrical or other energy source, and portability (e.g., can it fit inside a pocketbook? A car trunk? Can it be carried from floor to floor?). What trade-offs were made in designing it (e.g., capacity versus portability, pleasing appearance versus cost)? 在一个熟悉的环境中,比如你自己家里的一个房间,观察三个或更多的制造物体,并识别出每个物体在生产过程中所做的设计决策,包括大小、材料、颜色、形状;按钮的放置和功能;与人类感官的关系,如柔软度/粗糙度、保温或散热能力;与其他物体的关系,比如物体所放置的架子或台面的大小、任何自身容器隔间的大小和形状(例如,围裙上的口袋、家电中的烤箱大小)、对电源或其他能源的需求,以及便携性(例如,它能放进手提包吗?汽车后备箱?能否从一层楼搬到另一层楼?)。在设计过程中做出了哪些权衡(例如。容量与便携性、外观与成本之间的权衡?
Choose a household object, such as a microwave oven or media-recording device or clock radio, that has been confusing to you or to someone you know. What design choices led to this confusion? Do you know of similar devices that employed alternate strategies for the same feature? How would you redesign the device to make it less confusing? 选择一个家庭用品,比如微波炉、录音设备或时钟收音机,这让你或你认识的人感到困惑。是什么设计选择造成了这种困惑?你知道有类似的设备采用了不同的策略来实现同样的功能吗?你会如何重新设计这个设备,使其更易于理解?
Compare two cell phones that have different approaches to providing a keyboard for dialing a telephone number. What requirements and constraints were common to both design teams? What different choices did they make? What similar or different trade-offs did they make in order to fulfill the requirements within the constraints? How would you justify both design paths? 比较两款在提供拨打电话号码的键盘方面采取不同方法的手机。两个设计团队的共同要求和限制是什么?他们做出了哪些不同的选择?为了在这些限制条件下满足要求,他们做出了哪些相似或不同的权衡?你如何为这两条设计路径进行辩护?
Increasing Awareness of the Cultural Traditions behind Familiar Media Conventions 增强对熟悉媒体惯例背后文化传统的理解
Take an aspect of a commonly used medium and trace its form back to a design innovation or design choice of at least a hundred years earlier. Report your findings in a brief essay, slide presentation, or interactive artifact. You may come up with your own example or choose one of the following: 选择一个常用媒介的某个方面,并追溯其形式至至少一百年前的设计创新或设计选择。请以简短的论文、幻灯片演示或互动作品的形式报告你的发现。你可以自己想一个例子,或者选择以下的其中一个:
The forms of printed letters (i.e., A a, B b . . .) 印刷字母的形式(例如 A a, B b 等)
The arrangement of keys on a keyboard (e.g., QWERTY, telephone pad) 键盘上按键的布局(例如,QWERTY,电话拨号盘)
The image of a file folder in a computer operating-system interface. 计算机操作系统界面中的文件夹的图像。
Choose a website you are very familiar with. What features and functions does it have that resemble older media? Does it have conventions in common with a pamphlet, newspaper, television show, social experience, or other nondigital cultural form (e.g., captioned images, headlines, list of contents, opening credits, rituals for greeting other people)? How are these conventions changed in digital form? What aspects of 选择一个你非常熟悉的网站。它有哪些特征和功能与传统媒体相似?它是否与小册子、报纸、电视节目、社交体验或其他非数字文化形式(例如,带字幕的图片、标题、目录、开场字幕、问候他人的仪式)有共同的特点?这些特点在数字形式中是如何变化的?哪些方面
the site are unique to digital media? What computational inscription and transmission technologies (e.g., mouse, links, HTML code) make them possible? 这些网站在数字媒体中是否独特?哪些计算技术(如鼠标、链接、HTML 代码)使它们成为可能?
Differentiating Layers of Media Innovation 媒体创新的不同层次
Make a chart similar to table 1.1 for movies. What inscription and transmission code changes of the twentieth century changed the format of movies? What stable formats were important to the film industry as a business? What innovations in the technologies of inscription and transmission were important to the development of film art? 制作一个类似于表 1.1 的电影图表。二十世纪有哪些铭刻和传输代码的变化改变了电影格式?对电影行业作为商业来说,哪些稳定格式是重要的?在铭刻和传输技术方面,哪些创新对电影艺术的发展起到了关键作用?
Make a chart similar to table 1.1 for video games. Indicate important innovations in input and output (inscription) devices. What are some important innovations for mapping actions with the game controller to complex actions, like fancy fighting moves, on the screen (we can think of coordinated keystrokes as similar to Morse code, a symbolic transmission code for sending a message from the player to screen display)? Indicate important platforms and representational genres. What relationships do you see between changes to the inscription and transmission layers and changes in representation? 制作一个类似于表 1.1 的视频游戏图表。请指出输入和输出(铭文)设备的重要创新。将游戏控制器的操作映射到复杂动作(如华丽的战斗动作)上的一些重要创新是什么(我们可以将协调的按键输入视为类似于摩尔斯电码,这是一种将信息从玩家传输到屏幕显示的符号传输代码)?请指出重要的平台和表现类型。你认为铭文和传输层的变化与表现变化之间有什么关系?
Make a chart similar to table 1.1 for Internet-based formats and genres. What other inscription and transmission technologies can you identify? What formats and platforms have disappeared in the past five years? Which have lasted longer than five years? What are the most recent examples of a stable platform for building applications at the level of representation? What codes do they share? What genres have been built on top of these platforms (e.g., podcasts, blogs)? What conventions do they have in common? How have the underlying technologies shaped the level of representation? 制作一个类似于表 1.1 的图表,专注于基于互联网的格式和类型。你能识别出哪些其他的铭刻和传输技术?在过去五年中,哪些格式和平台已经消失?哪些平台持续了超过五年?最近有哪些稳定的平台可以用于构建应用程序的表示层级?它们共享哪些代码?在这些平台上构建了哪些类型(例如,播客、博客)?它们有什么共同的惯例?基础技术如何影响表示层级的构建?
Increasing Awareness of the Cultural Values Reflected in Design Decisions 增强对设计决策中体现的文化价值的认知
Choose a digital or mechanical artifact you use regularly and identify the cultural values that have shaped it. Does the design incorporate assumptions about privacy, space, leisure time, or other aspects of life that might vary across societies or groups? Does the artifact include features that reflect historical values, such as stricter gender roles? What activities does the artifact assume to be the most valuable? What related activities does it ignore or support less completely? How would the design be different if it came from a different cultural context? 选择一个你经常使用的数字或机械物品,并识别塑造它的文化价值观。它的设计是否包含关于隐私、空间、休闲时间或其他可能因社会或群体而异的生活方面的假设?这个物品是否反映了历史价值观,比如更严格的性别角色?它假设哪些活动是最有价值的?又忽视或支持哪些相关活动较少?如果这个设计来自不同的文化背景,会有什么不同?
Microsoft and Apple make operating systems that have very similar functions, but users identify themselves with either the Windows or Mac similarly to the way sports fans identify with teams. Look at the advertising campaigns for Apple and Microsoft products. What values do each of these companies emphasize in their approach to potential customers? Do the designs of the Mac and PC systems reflect these different corporate values? 微软和苹果的操作系统功能非常相似,但用户就像体育迷认同球队一样,选择认同 Windows 或 Mac。看看苹果和微软产品的广告活动。这些公司在吸引潜在客户时强调了哪些价值观?Mac 和 PC 系统的设计是否体现了这些不同的企业价值观?
Choose an artifact that you would like to see redesigned for a different demographic group. Identify the differences in experiences, expectations, and values between the two groups. How does the artifact reflect its current user group? How would it change to appeal to the new group? What features would remain the same across user groups? (Examples: How would you redesign a miniaturized music player so that it would be usable by the elderly? How would you redesign a shooting game so that it would appeal to pacifists or a cooperative game so that it would encourage competition?) 选择一个你希望为不同人群重新设计的物品。识别这两个群体在体验、期望和价值观上的差异。这个物品如何反映当前用户群体的特点?为了吸引新群体,它需要做哪些改变?哪些特征在不同用户群体中是相同的?(例如:你会如何重新设计一个迷你音乐播放器,使其适合老年人使用?你会如何重新设计一个射击游戏,使其吸引和平主义者,或者一个合作游戏,使其鼓励竞争?)
Increasing Awareness of Media-Specific Conventions 增强对媒体特定规范的认识
Compare any two platforms for listening to recorded music (e.g., vinyl records and cassette tapes or CDs and MP3 players) or for watching television programs (e.g., digital recorder; broadcast, cable, satellite, computer, or mobile device; DVD player). What features and conventions do the two systems have in common? What features and conventions differ? How does the experience of the user change with the change in delivery medium? Consider capacity, playing time, ways of acquiring the music, portability, ability to share, privacy, noise, and so on. What conventions remain the same across platforms? What new conventions (e.g., for labeling, playing, storing, advertising, purchasing) were invented to take advantage of the affordances of new delivery formats? 比较两个平台在收听录制音乐(如黑胶唱片与磁带,或 CD 与 MP3 播放器)和观看电视节目(如数字录音机、广播、有线、卫星、计算机或移动设备、DVD 播放器)方面的异同。这两个系统有哪些共同特征和惯例?又有哪些特征和惯例是不同的?随着交付媒介的变化,用户的体验会如何改变?请考虑容量、播放时间、获取音乐的方式、便携性、分享能力、隐私、噪音等因素。哪些惯例在不同平台间保持一致?为了充分利用新交付格式的优势,出现了哪些新的惯例(如标签、播放、存储、广告、购买等)?
Compare a paper newspaper to a web-based news site of the same newspaper on the same day. What purpose do headlines serve in the paper version? Do headlines change in any way when they move from paper to the web? What is on the masthead of the paper newspaper? Where is the same information presented or the same functions served on the website? What new conventions exist on the website that do not exist in the paper version? What purpose does the menu bar serve? How was this purpose served in the paper version? 比较纸质报纸与同一天的网络新闻网站。纸质版的标题有什么作用?当标题从纸质版转到网络版时,有什么变化?纸质报纸的报头上包含哪些信息?在网站上如何呈现相同的信息或实现相同的功能?网站上有哪些新的约定是纸质版所没有的?菜单栏的作用是什么?这个作用在纸质版中是如何体现的?
Make a two-column table, similar to table 1.2, listing at least five inscription methods you have used in the past week and the task you performed with each of them. How appropriate is each method for its task? How are the specific affordances that made them appropriate? 制作一个两列的表格,类似于表 1.2,列出你在过去一周使用过的至少五种书写方法,以及你用每种方法完成的任务。每种方法对其任务的适用性如何?是什么具体的特性使它们适合?
Table 1.2 表格 1.2
Inscription Methods 注册方式
Task 工作任务
Performed With 正在进行中
Bank withdrawal 银行提款
ATM kiosk keyboard 自动取款机键盘
Shopping list 购物列表
Pen and paper 笔记本和纸张
Appointment calendar 预约日程表
PDA stylus on screen PDA 触控笔在显示屏上
Slide presentation 幻灯片展示
Laser pointer and projection 激光指示器与投影仪
Task Performed With
Bank withdrawal ATM kiosk keyboard
Shopping list Pen and paper
Appointment calendar PDA stylus on screen
Slide presentation Laser pointer and projection| Task | Performed With |
| :--- | :--- |
| Bank withdrawal | ATM kiosk keyboard |
| Shopping list | Pen and paper |
| Appointment calendar | PDA stylus on screen |
| Slide presentation | Laser pointer and projection |
Now invent an algorithm for randomizing the two columns in relation to one another and execute it. (For example, you sort the items in one of the columns alphabetically while leaving the other column as is.) You now have new pairings (such as a PDA stylus for making a bank withdrawal). How would you perform each of these tasks with the mismatched inscription system? How would the experience change? What would be the challenges for accomplishing the task? Would there be any advantage in the new system or any opportunity for an innovative approach to a familiar task? 现在请发明一个算法,用于随机化两列之间的关系并执行它。(例如,您可以将其中一列的项目按字母顺序排序,而另一列保持不变。)这样您就得到了新的配对(比如,用于银行取款的 PDA 触控笔)。您将如何在不匹配的铭文系统中执行这些任务?体验会有什么变化?完成这些任务会面临哪些挑战?在新系统中是否会有任何优势,或者是否有机会对熟悉的任务进行创新?
One of the marks of an immature medium is the need for the interactor to have to pay attention to transmission codes (e.g., telephone numbers) rather than the representational layer (e.g., names of contacts). For a week, write down every time you are confronted with a code that is meaningful to a computer but not to you as a human being. How would you redesign the system so that interactors did not need to focus on the transmission code? 不成熟媒介的一个特征是互动者需要关注传输代码(如电话号码),而不是表现层(如联系人姓名)。在接下来的一周里,记录下每次你遇到对计算机有意义但对你作为人类却没有意义的代码。你会如何重新设计系统,使互动者不必关注传输代码?
Orienting Design toward the Underlying Human Needs, Not the Legacy Media Conventions 将设计聚焦于人类的基本需求,而非传统媒体的惯例
Telephones have been in use for a century and a half, but have changed tremendously in the past twenty years. What core human needs do they serve? How were these needs met before the invention of telephony? What communication conventions and rituals made the land-based original telephone system coherent (e.g., assigning of telephone numbers, invention of the dial, ringing, new greeting rituals, human operators)? How did mobile phones incorporate these older conventions? What new conventions and social rituals have been invented for the new devices (e.g., dialing by hyperlink, custom ringtones for different callers, texting)? What needs have been met by these new features that were not met by predigital telephones? 电话已经使用了一个半世纪,但在过去的二十年里发生了巨大的变化。它们满足了哪些核心人类需求?在电话发明之前,这些需求是如何被满足的?哪些沟通惯例和仪式使得传统的固定电话系统变得有序(例如,分配电话号码、拨号盘的发明、铃声、新的问候仪式和人工接线员)?手机是如何融入这些旧的惯例的?为新设备创造了哪些新的惯例和社交仪式(例如,通过超链接拨号、为不同来电者定制铃声、发送短信)?这些新功能满足了哪些在数字电话时代之前未被满足的需求?
Identify the core human needs or activities served by one of the following: Google, Amazon.com, eBay, iTunes (or choose another widely used digital environment such as an instant messaging or social networking site). How were the same needs met before the invention of writing? How were they met before the invention of the computer? How has the activity remained the same and how has it changed as a result of the switch to the digital framework? 确定以下之一所满足的核心人类需求或活动:谷歌、亚马逊、eBay、iTunes(或选择其他广泛使用的数字环境,如即时消息或社交网络网站)。在书写发明之前,这些需求是如何被满足的?在计算机发明之前又是如何满足的?随着转向数字框架,这些活动有哪些保持不变的地方,哪些又发生了变化?
Choose an example of a device or application that you find poorly designed. Analyze its design objectives in terms of core human needs. What design elements prevent it from serving those needs appropriately? Why do you think the design team made those unfortunate choices? What did they value more than the needs that you expected them to address? What other media artifacts serve these needs? Do they offer other conventions that might have been applied here? How would you redesign the artifact so that it better served the core needs? 选择一个你认为设计不佳的设备或应用作为例子。分析它的设计目标与核心人类需求之间的关系。哪些设计元素妨碍了它有效满足这些需求?你认为设计团队为什么会做出这些不理想的选择?他们更看重什么,而不是你期望他们关注的需求?还有哪些其他媒体作品能够满足这些需求?它们是否提供了可以在这里应用的其他设计惯例?你会如何重新设计这个作品,以更好地满足核心需求?
2 Affordances of the Digital Medium 数字媒介的两种功能
Think of the computer not as a tool but as a medium. 将电脑视为一种媒介,而非仅仅是工具。
—Brenda Laurel (1993) —布伦达·劳雷尔(1993 年)
The Four Affordances 四种可用性
All digital artifacts are made of a common substance: programmable bits that can be used for symbol manipulation. As a result, we can think of digital artifacts as part of a common medium, rather than as a diffuse collection of multiple “New Media.” Looking at the computer as a single new medium of representation, we can see its defining representational affordances: The computer is encyclopedic, spatial, procedural, and participatory (Murray 1997). These four properties constitute our design space, the context for all of our design choices. Individual projects will be located at various points in that design space, exploiting one property more than another. But thinking of the potential for any project to more fully exploit each of the four properties can help us to discover new directions that we may have previously overlooked. In approaching interaction design as a cultural practice our aim is always to make an object that is satisfying in itself and that advances the digital medium by refining or creating the conventions that best exploit these four affordances. This chapter provides a brief overview of these four properties as well as the most important contributory disciplines that designers can draw on to maximize the expressive potential of individual digital artifacts and of the larger digital medium. 所有数字作品都是由一种共同的物质构成:可编程的比特,用于符号操作。因此,我们可以将数字作品视为一种共同媒介的一部分,而不是多个“新媒体”的分散集合。将计算机视为一种新的表现媒介,我们可以看到它的四个主要特性:计算机是百科全书式的、空间性的、程序化的和参与性的(Murray 1997)。这四个特性构成了我们的设计空间,即我们所有设计选择的背景。各个项目将在这个设计空间的不同位置上展开,侧重于某一特性而非其他特性。 但考虑到任何项目更充分利用这四个属性的潜力,可以帮助我们发现之前可能忽视的新方向。在将交互设计视为一种文化实践时,我们的目标始终是创造一个本身令人满意的对象,并通过完善或创造最佳利用这四种可供性(affordances)的惯例来推动数字媒介的发展。本章简要概述了这四个属性,以及设计师可以借鉴的最重要的相关学科,以最大化单个数字工件和更大数字媒介的表现潜力。
The Computer Is a Procedural Medium 计算机是一种程序化的媒介
The biggest difference between the computer and earlier media of representation is its procedural property, its ability to represent and execute conditional behaviors. As I have argued elsewhere, one of the most striking early signs that the computer was a new expressive medium was Joe Weizenbaum’s Eliza, an interactive program that was widely mistaken for an actual person (box 2.1). Eliza was experienced as real even 计算机与早期媒介之间最大的区别在于它的程序特性,即能够表示和执行条件行为。正如我在其他地方所论述的,计算机作为一种新型表现媒介的早期显著标志之一是乔·韦岑鲍姆的 Eliza,这是一个互动程序,常常被误认为是真实的人(框 2.1)。人们体验 Eliza 时感到它是现实的,尽管
Box 2.1 盒子 2.1
Dialog with Eliza 和伊丽莎的对话
Men are all alike.
IN WHAT WAY
They are always bugging us about something or another.
CAN YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC
Well, my boyfriend made me come here.
YOUR BOYFRIEND MADE YOU COME HERE
He says I am depressed much of the time.
I AM SORRY TO HEAR YOU ARE DEPRESSED
It's true. I am unhappy.
DO YOU THINK COMING HERE WILL HELP YOU NOT TO BE UNHAPPY
I need some help, that much seems certain.
WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO YOU IF YOU GOT SOME HELP
Perhaps I could learn to get along with my mother
TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR FAMILY
(From Weizenbaum 1966)
though there were no images or sound track to reinforce the illusion. The program played the role of a nondirective psychotherapist responding to free text input (unrestricted words typed in ordinary natural language) into a Teletype terminal. Eliza had no understanding of what was said to her, but looked for keywords like “depressed” or “mother” and applied cleverly formulated rules of response, including the use of simple grammatical inversions to echo back statements. Despite her many inappropriate replies, and to Weizenbaum’s dismay, many interactors believed she was an actual person. She was animated by the power of her procedural design, by the ingenuity of the rules of behavior that determined her reactions to novel input (Weizenbaum 1966, 1976; Murray 1997; Wardrip-Fruin 2009). 尽管没有图像或音轨来增强这种幻觉,该程序仍扮演了一个非指导性心理治疗师的角色,能够响应自由文本输入(在普通自然语言中输入的无限制单词)到电传打字机终端。Eliza 并不理解对她说的话,但会寻找“抑郁”或“母亲”等关键词,并运用巧妙设计的回应规则,包括使用简单的语法倒装来重复陈述。尽管她的许多回复不恰当,令 Weizenbaum 感到沮丧的是,许多互动者仍然相信她是一个真实的人。她的反应源于她程序设计的力量,以及决定她对新输入反应的行为规则的独创性(Weizenbaum 1966, 1976; Murray 1997; Wardrip-Fruin 2009)。
Draw on Computer Science Concepts and Conventions 计算机科学的概念与规范
The discipline most relevant to procedural design is of course computer science. Even for those who will not be doing the coding, understanding how computer science describes objects and processes is crucial to making sound design decisions. A key element of this process is abstraction. Computer science strives to master complexity by creating abstract representations that describe elements of systems in the most general terms that most accurately describe their most salient features. For example, to describe the items [apples, bananas, grapes] in a single abstraction we might choose fruit, food, or groceries depending on the context. Of these three terms, fruit would be the best term 与过程设计最相关的学科无疑是计算机科学。即使是那些不从事编码的人,理解计算机科学如何描述对象和过程对于做出合理的设计决策也至关重要。这个过程的一个关键要素是抽象。计算机科学通过创建抽象表示来应对复杂性,这些表示用最一般的术语描述系统的元素,最准确地反映它们的显著特征。例如,为了用一个抽象概念来描述[苹果、香蕉、葡萄],我们可能会根据上下文选择“水果”、“食物”或“杂货”。在这三个术语中,“水果”是最合适的选择。
for limiting the category and establishing common qualities such as sweetness or perishability. If those qualities are not relevant to the task we are performing and if we want to add other items such as [bread, meat, cereal] to the system later on, then food would be a good choice. And if we are making a shopping list and distinguishing between hardware store and supermarket items then groceries might be best. The computational frame of mind sees the world as composed of multiple alternate abstraction systems such as this. 用于限制类别并建立共同特征,例如甜度或易腐烂性。如果这些特征与我们当前的任务无关,并且我们希望在未来将其他项目(如面包、肉类、谷物)添加到系统中,那么“食品”将是一个不错的选择。如果我们正在制作购物清单,并区分五金店和超市的商品,那么“杂货”可能是更好的选择。计算思维将世界视为由多个替代抽象系统构成。
Most important, programmers abstract behaviors. Before a programmer writes a line of code they conceptualize the processes the computer will be executing as an abstract set of instructions and rules known as an algorithm. A useful algorithm describes a process at its most generalized level but in such a way that every important variation and condition can also be accounted for and responded to appropriately. Deciding how flexible a program should be, how many possibilities it should anticipate and accommodate is an important part of the design process. The more possibilities it encompasses, the more powerful and widely useful it will be, but also the more challenging to design. 最重要的是,程序员会抽象出行为。在编写代码之前,程序员会将计算机将要执行的过程概念化为一组抽象的指令和规则,这被称为算法。一个有效的算法在最一般化的层面上描述一个过程,但同时也能考虑到每一个重要的变体和条件,并做出适当的响应。决定程序的灵活性、预见和适应多少种可能性,是设计过程中的重要环节。可能性越多,程序就越强大和广泛适用,但设计的挑战性也会随之增加。
Legacy media practices like animation and film editing specify unconditional sequences that are always executed in the same order. They are often represented in a timeline, and some computer-based authoring systems also use timelines as an organizing framework (figure 2.1). The problem with this approach is that it reinforces our tendencies toward linear or unisequential design. Programmable bits can imitate legacy media and present unisequential documents and film clips, but they are particularly well suited to more complex multisequential objects that can be assembled and navigated in more than one order. Computational structures allow us to describe entities as variables that can have different values at different times, and to make conditional statements that have more than one possible outcome. Objects in digital form can have multiple instantiations, existing as identical copies or as variant examples of a common pattern. Computational systems change over time, exhibiting different states. When we make something with computer code we are creating not a single version of an object or event, but many possible versions with interesting variations. Computational artifacts exist not as fixed entities, like books or movies (even though we may think of them that way), but as a set of easily altered bits governed by conditional rules. 传统媒体实践,如动画和电影编辑,规定了始终以相同顺序执行的无条件序列。它们通常以时间线的形式呈现,一些计算机创作系统也将时间线作为组织框架(见图 2.1)。这种方法的问题在于,它加深了我们对线性或单一序列设计的倾向。可编程的位可以模仿传统媒体,展示单一序列的文档和电影片段,但它们更适合于更复杂的多序列对象,这些对象可以以多种顺序进行组装和导航。 计算结构使我们能够将实体视为可以在不同时间拥有不同值的变量,并进行具有多个可能结果的条件语句。数字形式的对象可以有多个实例,既可以是相同的副本,也可以是共同模式的变体示例。计算系统随着时间的推移而变化,展现出不同的状态。当我们用计算机代码创建某个事物时,我们并不是在创造一个对象或事件的单一版本,而是许多可能的版本,具有有趣的变化。计算工件并不是像书籍或电影那样固定的实体(尽管我们可能会这样认为),而是一组由条件规则控制的易于修改的位。
By harnessing the procedural power of the computer to represent objects and processes we can create simulations, working models of complex systems that can be run with controlled variations and that aspire to reproduce the complexity we recognize in natural and social systems like the human body or the global financial markets. Such systems are made up of multiple independently operating objects or agents, whose complex interactions produce results too numerous and multicausal to be predictable in advance. Although many beginning programmers see the core computational structures as a branching tree, in fact the inner workings of computer code 通过利用计算机的程序能力来表示对象和过程,我们可以创建模拟,构建复杂系统的工作模型,这些模型可以在控制变化的情况下运行,并旨在再现我们在自然和社会系统中所认识的复杂性,例如人体或全球金融市场。这些系统由多个独立运作的对象或代理组成,它们之间复杂的交互产生的结果多种多样且多因性,无法提前预测。尽管许多初学者将核心计算结构视为一棵分支树,但实际上计算机代码的内部运作是复杂的。
Figure 2.1 图表 2.1
Timeline from Adobe Flash authoring environment, which is based on the metaphor of a movie. Flash also includes object-oriented scripting for more fully exploiting the procedural and participatory affordances of the medium. 来自 Adobe Flash 创作环境的时间线,这一环境以电影为隐喻。Flash 还包含面向对象的脚本,能够更充分地利用这一媒介的程序性和参与性特点。
have been growing more interactive: more like the ecology of a pond rather than the command structure of an army. Systems are now written that exhibit emergent behavior, behavior that is more than the sum of its parts, and therefore can be seen as similar to life forms. 变得越来越互动:更像是池塘的生态,而不是军队的指挥结构。现在的系统展现出涌现行为,这种行为超越了部分的总和,因此可以被视为类似于生命形式。
Computer programs are judged by how efficiently and reliably they perform. Programmers aim for robustness, for not failing under a variety of error-inducing conditions, including coping with unpredictable user input and portability to multiple systems; and for scalability, for being able to accommodate more users, more data, more related procedures without having to be reengineered. The programmer values predictability and formula, aiming for the most generic, reusable solution that is also the most adaptable. The digital media designer, like the computer scientist and the programmer, should think of the process of representing meaning on the computer as a process of abstracting objects and behaviors as efficiently as possible, and should be aware of the possibility of representing complex systems as composed of multiple abstract actors in multivariable configurations. 计算机程序的评判标准在于它们的效率和可靠性。程序员追求稳健性,力求在各种可能引发错误的情况下不发生故障,包括应对不可预测的用户输入和在多个系统上的可移植性;同时还追求可扩展性,能够在不重新设计的情况下容纳更多用户、更多数据和更多相关流程。程序员重视可预测性和公式,旨在找到最通用、可重用且适应性最强的解决方案。 数字媒体设计师与计算机科学家和程序员一样,应将计算机上表示意义的过程视为尽可能高效地抽象对象和行为的过程,并意识到可以将复杂系统视为由多个抽象角色在多变量配置中组成的可能性。
In part III we will be looking more closely at the procedural affordance and identifying ways in which designers can make use of the power of computational abstraction for the purposes of describing objects and processes in the most coherent and expressive manner. 在第三部分中,我们将更深入地探讨程序性赋能,并寻找设计师如何利用计算抽象的力量,以最连贯和富有表现力的方式来描述对象和过程。
The Computer Is a Participatory Medium 计算机是一种互动媒介
It is surprising that the Eliza program fooled people when it first appeared, since it now seems so primitive in its ability to simulate a conversation that the tendency for people to assume that computer programs are more capable than they actually are is often referred to as “Eliza effect.” But Eliza also owed her success to an element of Weizenbaum’s design that is often overlooked: Weizenbaum did not merely script the machine; by framing his experiment in natural language processing as the highly conventionalized and familiar scenario of a therapy session he was also scripting the interactor. His character was successful because it exploited the participatory affordance of computer environments as much as it did the procedural affordance. 令人惊讶的是,当 Eliza 程序首次出现时,它竟然能够欺骗许多人,因为现在看来它在模拟对话的能力上显得如此原始,以至于人们往往认为计算机程序的能力比实际更强,这种现象通常被称为“Eliza 效应”。然而,Eliza 的成功也得益于 Weizenbaum 设计中的一个常被忽视的因素:Weizenbaum 并不仅仅是为机器编写脚本;他通过将实验框定为自然语言处理的高度常规化和熟悉的治疗场景,也在为互动者编写脚本。他的角色之所以成功,是因为它充分利用了计算机环境的参与性特征,正如它利用程序性特征一样。
The relationship between the interactor and any digital artifact is reciprocal, active, and open to frustrating miscommunication. The designer must therefore script both sides so that the actions of humans and machines are meaningful to one another. Sometimes the script is quite rigid, as in a touchscreen ATM machine or a phone-based automated customer service system. Such rigid systems work best with screen-based multiplechoice answers, where there are a limited number of routine transactions, with each one taking few steps to complete. When used for more complex transactions, like the decision-tree diagnosis of a consumer problem, they can be maddeningly frustrating. 交互者与任何数字产品之间的关系是相互的、积极的,但也容易出现令人沮丧的误解。因此,设计师需要为双方编写脚本,使人类和机器的行为能够相互理解。有时,这些脚本会非常严格,例如在触摸屏 ATM 机或电话自动客服系统中。这类严格的系统在屏幕上的多项选择答案中效果最佳,因为常规交易的数量有限,每个交易只需几个步骤就能完成。然而,当用于更复杂的交易时,比如消费者问题的决策树诊断,它们可能会让人感到非常沮丧。
Sometimes the script is more flexible, offering the interactor an array of props with which to improvise their part of the exchange, like the iconized tool bars of word processors or role-playing adventure games. Some digital conventions are so familiar that they script us in a transparent way. For example, a blinking insertion point in a text box is a transparent cue to type in information; blue or underlined text on a website cues us to the presence of a link; arrows at the left edge or bottom-left corner of application windows cue us to the possibility of scrolling. A large part of digital design is selecting the appropriate convention to communicate what actions are possible in ways that the human interactor can understand. 有时,脚本更具灵活性,为交互者提供了一系列道具,让他们可以即兴发挥在交流中的角色,就像文字处理器或角色扮演游戏中的图标工具栏一样。一些数字惯例如此熟悉,以至于它们以透明的方式影响着我们。例如,文本框中闪烁的插入点是一个明显的提示,提醒我们输入信息;网站上蓝色或带下划线的文本提示我们有链接;应用窗口左边缘或左下角的箭头提示我们可以滚动。数字设计的很大一部分在于选择合适的惯例,以便以人类交互者能够理解的方式传达可能的操作。
Because the computer is a participatory medium, interactors have an expectation that they will be able to manipulate digital artifacts and make things happen in response to their actions. They will therefore become frustrated and impatient when they are not allowed to act. The responsiveness of digital media, whether accessed through a keyboard, mouse, joystick, touchscreen, scroll wheel, or gesture sensor, 由于计算机是一种参与性媒介,用户期望能够操控数字内容,并根据自己的操作使事情发生。因此,当他们无法进行操作时,往往会感到沮丧和不耐烦。数字媒体的响应性,无论是通过键盘、鼠标、操纵杆、触摸屏、滚轮还是手势传感器来访问,
excites our desire to do something, to see what will happen if we drag something around, click on an underlined word, or otherwise poke at the environment. 激发我们去做某事的欲望,看看如果我们拖动某个物体、点击下划线的词语或以其他方式与环境互动会发生什么。
Participation in digital media increasingly means social participation. Previous masscommunication technologies provided either one-to-one (telephone) or one-to-many (books, television) transmission channels. The computer provides one-to-one (e.g., email) and one-to-many (e.g., DVDs) communication. It also provides new forms of many-to-many communication, most notably on the World Wide Web, which provides the same potential distribution to an album of baby pictures as it gives to CNN. com’s coverage of a presidential inauguration, disrupting the media conventions for both. New participatory genres such as chat rooms, bulletin boards, discussion lists, blogs, wikis, instant messaging formats, virtual environments (Second Life), social networks (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter), and media-sharing technologies (Flickr, YouTube) convene communities of participants in discussions that are synchronous and asynchronous, spoken and written, individual and collective. They also quickly assimilate the functions of one another, posing new design challenges in providing coherence to a sustained collective conversation (see figures 2.2, 2.3). 参与数字媒体越来越意味着社会参与。以往的大众传播技术提供了一对一(如电话)或一对多(如书籍、电视)的传播渠道。而计算机则提供了一对一(例如电子邮件)和一对多(例如 DVD)的沟通方式。它还创造了许多对许多的新沟通形式,尤其是在万维网上,这使得一张婴儿照片专辑的传播潜力与 CNN.com 对总统就职典礼的报道相当,打破了两者的媒体惯例。 新的参与性形式,如聊天室、公告板、讨论列表、博客、维基、即时消息、虚拟环境(如第二人生)、社交网络(如 Facebook、Myspace、Twitter)以及媒体共享技术(如 Flickr、YouTube),在讨论中聚集了参与者社区,这些讨论可以是同步或异步的、口头或书面的、个体或集体的。它们迅速吸收彼此的功能,给持续的集体对话的连贯性带来了新的设计挑战(见图 2.2,2.3)。
Mass participation in digital environments has also raised questions of security and privacy. Designers have the power to capture input from users without their intentional action, and even without their knowledge and consent. As citizens of a digitally enabled world we are subject to many kinds of monitoring. Digital cameras record our images, digital networks record our purchases, and global positioning technology in our cars or cell phones pinpoints our personal location (figure 2.4). We are open to photographic and sound recording through portable devices that were once the domain of superspies and are now available at mass consumer prices. This capacity can be reassuring, as in devices that allow the elderly to call for help even if they are far from a telephone; or it can be menacing, as in spyware programs that surrepti- 大规模参与数字环境也引发了安全和隐私方面的问题。设计师可以在用户未主动行动的情况下,甚至在他们不知情和未同意的情况下捕捉用户的输入。作为数字化世界的公民,我们面临着多种监控。数字相机记录我们的影像,数字网络记录我们的消费,而汽车或手机中的全球定位技术则精确定位我们的个人位置(图 2.4)。我们通过曾经是超级间谍专用的便携设备,现在以大众消费价格可得的设备,暴露于摄影和录音之中。这种能力可以让人感到安心,例如一些设备可以让老年人即使远离电话也能呼叫帮助;但它也可能带来威胁,比如间谍软件程序
News Feed
Top News - Most Recent 21 最新的 21 条新闻动态
What's on your mind? 你在想些什么?
Figure 2.2 图表 2.2
Status line on Facebook. The status line, cued here by a generic question, is a convention that has been widely accepted as a way of formatting participation in large common spaces. The box provides a constrained container (even when longer posts are allowed) that focuses contributions so they can be composed easily, distributed widely, and collected in lists that can be scanned quickly by the recipient. This simple convention-a limited size, rapidly posted container for messages that can be targeted at one or many recipients-has created new, globally accessible channels of communication for personal and organizational use. Facebook 上的状态栏。通过一个通用问题提示的状态栏,成为了一种被广泛接受的格式,用于在大型公共空间中参与交流。这个框提供了一个有限的容器(即使允许更长的帖子),使得贡献能够集中,便于撰写、广泛传播,并以列表形式快速供接收者浏览。这个简单的惯例——一个有限大小、快速发布的消息容器,能够针对一个或多个接收者——创造了新的、全球可访问的个人和组织沟通渠道。
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Figure 2.3 图表 2.3
It has now become standard to provide a space for visitors to a website to talk back, like this customer review utility on Amazon.com. Other standard feedback conventions include email links, live chats, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), and polls. The refinement of these features and the invention of new ways to support participation will be a growing area of digital design for decades to come. 现在,为网站访客提供反馈空间已成为一种标准,例如亚马逊的客户评论工具。其他常见的反馈方式还包括电子邮件链接、在线聊天、常见问题解答(FAQ)和投票。这些功能的不断完善以及新参与方式的发明,将在未来几十年内成为数字设计的重要发展方向。
tiously record our keystrokes and page views in order to steal passwords or deliver unwanted advertising. The increasing mediation of our actions by digital technology has led to new kinds of counterfeiting, including the crime of identity theft in which possession of data about someone becomes the power to act as that person. For the purposes of many social transactions, we are identical with the sum of the digital information we have input. Designers must therefore take care to limit access to information and to give interactors control over their own information and knowledge of how it is being collected and used. 我们谨慎地记录我们的键盘输入和页面浏览,以窃取密码或投放不必要的广告。数字技术对我们行为的日益介入导致了新型的伪造现象,包括身份盗窃罪,在这种情况下,拥有某人的数据就意味着可以以该人的身份行事。对于许多社会交易而言,我们的身份与我们输入的数字信息总和是相同的。因此,设计师必须谨慎限制信息的访问,并让用户掌控自己的信息,同时了解这些信息是如何被收集和使用的。
The participatory nature of the medium has also profoundly affected legacy media enterprises. Media now appears to us as something to be cut, pasted, reassembled, and 媒介的参与性本质也深刻影响了传统媒体企业。如今,媒体在我们眼中似乎是可以被剪切、粘贴和重新组合的。
Figure 2.4 图表 2.4
Google Map Street View of San Francisco includes a figure in a potentially embarrassing moment, an example of how once-private experiences are becoming publically—and even globally —visible. 谷歌地图街景中的旧金山展示了一个人在一个可能令人尴尬的瞬间,这例子说明了曾经私密的经历是如何变得公开,甚至在全球范围内可见的。
distributed with ease. The music industry underwent a tremendous change starting in the late 1990s when users began trading digital music files over the Internet. As sales of CDs fell and threats of prosecution escalated, Apple Computer came up with a design solution that included a commercial solution: the introduction of the iTunes website and the iPod device gave users a legal method for collecting digital music files. As increasing bandwidth and memory make it easier to collect moving-image files, movies and television face similar challenges and the need for similar design solutions. One of the key tasks for information designers is to satisfy increasing demand for access to media while preserving the property rights of those who create media artifacts. 随着数字音乐文件在互联网上的交易,音乐产业在 1990 年代末经历了巨大的变革。随着 CD 销量的下降和起诉威胁的加剧,苹果公司提出了一种设计方案,包括商业解决方案:iTunes 网站和 iPod 设备的推出为用户提供了合法收集数字音乐文件的方法。随着带宽和内存的提升,收集动态影像文件变得更加容易,电影和电视也面临着类似的挑战和对相应设计方案的需求。信息设计师的一个重要任务是满足日益增长的媒体访问需求,同时保护创作者的知识产权。
The production of entertainment is also becoming more participatory, with digital recording and editing equipment, and development platforms for interactive gaming, that were formerly the prerogative of studio professionals now available at consumer prices. One result is the exponential explosion of user-generated and self-published content, often indexed by other participants through popularity ratings (figure 2.5). 娱乐制作正变得更加参与化,数字录音和编辑设备,以及曾经是工作室专业人士专属的互动游戏开发平台,如今以消费者价格提供。这导致用户生成和自我发布内容的迅猛增长,通常通过其他参与者的受欢迎程度评分进行索引(图 2.5)。
Participatory structures are increasingly being incorporated into legacy frameworks. In England, television viewers have access to a remote control with a special button for 参与性结构正逐渐被融入传统框架。在英格兰,电视观众可以通过遥控器上的一个特殊按钮来使用
Figure 2.5 图表 2.5
YouTube displays user-created videos based on popularity. YouTube 会根据视频的受欢迎程度展示用户创作的内容。
interactivity, and interactive enhancements are added to hundreds of television shows every year, giving viewers a choice of which tennis match or garden tour to watch, letting them vote for their favorite British person, inviting them to take an IQ test in sync with a live audience, or allowing them to participate in interactive stories (figure 2.6). As television merges with games and the Internet and more powerful computing is incorporated into media players of various kinds, the opportunity for inventing new participatory conventions for entertainment and for information resources will expand. 每年都有数百个电视节目增加互动性和互动增强功能,让观众可以选择观看哪个网球比赛或花园游览,投票选出自己最喜欢的英国人,邀请他们与现场观众同步进行智商测试,或参与互动故事(图 2.6)。随着电视与游戏和互联网的融合,以及更强大的计算能力被应用于各种媒体播放器,创造新的参与性娱乐和信息资源的机会将不断扩大。
Draw on HCl Concepts and Conventions 依据 HCl 的概念和规范
The discipline that is explicitly concerned with the study of the relationship between human beings and computers is human-computer interaction (HCl)(\mathrm{HCl}), which has its roots in industrial design. In fact, one of the most influential books for the interactive designers, Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things (1988), hardly mentions the computer. Norman, who began as a cognitive psychologist, called attention to the importance of the mental model formed by the user based on the appearance and behavior of the object. Mental models can derive from existing conventions and past experience. For example, we expect wall switches to turn on overhead lights. But they also derive more generally from what we perceive as the affordances of the artifact, 明确关注人类与计算机之间关系的学科是人机交互 (HCl)(\mathrm{HCl}) ,它源于工业设计。实际上,对于互动设计师来说,唐纳德·诺曼的《日常事物的设计》(1988)是一本极具影响力的书籍,但书中几乎没有提到计算机。诺曼最初是一名认知心理学家,他强调用户基于物体的外观和行为形成的心理模型的重要性。心理模型可以源于现有的惯例和过去的经验。例如,我们通常期望墙壁开关能打开天花板灯。但它们也更普遍地源于我们对物品可供性(affordances)的感知。
Figure 2.6 图表 2.6
Red Button TV in Great Britain was among the first widespread interactive services to be delivered as part of the standard television package. Interactive features are accessed through a dedicated red button on the remote control, including on-demand content like news and traffic reports, local government public services, and multifeed coverage of sports events and concerts. 英国的红色按钮电视是最早作为标准电视套餐提供的广泛互动服务之一。用户可以通过遥控器上的专用红色按钮访问互动功能,包括点播内容,如新闻和交通报告、地方政府公共服务,以及体育赛事和音乐会的多路直播。
that is, the functions that the physical properties of an object make possible. Wood, for example, affords carving and burning; blackboards afford writing and erasing. Other affordances are more like cultural signals to the users, like the door handle that affords pulling, triggering the mental model that the door will move toward us in response to our action. Much of our confusion in coping with an unfamiliar environment like a hotel shower in a foreign country, or a rental car in an unfamiliar make and model, derive from poor signaling of what functions a hidden knob or mysterious gizmo affords. Mental models are particularly important for machines whose workings are usually hidden from us. We need to know not only the results of a command but 也就是说,物体的物理特性所能实现的功能。例如,木材可以被雕刻和燃烧;黑板可以用来书写和擦除。其他的可供性更像是对用户的文化信号,比如门把手可以拉动,这触发了一个心理模型,让我们认为门会在我们的动作下向我们移动。在应对陌生环境时,比如在外国的酒店淋浴或不熟悉的租车,我们的困惑往往源于对隐藏旋钮或神秘装置所能实现的功能信号不清晰。心理模型对于那些工作原理通常对我们隐藏的机器尤为重要。我们需要了解的不仅仅是命令的结果,而是
also the causal relationship: such as why a digital music player has chosen a particular song, a search engine has prioritized certain sites over others, or a computer operating system has suddenly caused all my working windows to disappear. 这就是因果关系:比如,为什么数字音乐播放器会选择某首特定的歌曲,搜索引擎为何会优先显示某些网站而非其他网站,或者计算机操作系统为何会突然让我的所有工作窗口消失。
In digital design we must ask ourselves what mental models the interactor will bring to the object. For example, if we make a computer “notepad” how far should we follow the model and mimic the affordances of the paper notepad? Should we allow the user to turn its pages? To write on the “reverse side” of a page? To tear out a page and save it separately? With machines whose workings are complicated and hidden Norman advocates the key design principle of visibility. We should be able to see what the machine is doing-not by looking at the gears, but by understanding its behavior as determined by a logical system of cause and effect. In particular, we should have clear feedback from the machine on the effects of our own actions. For example, in an operating system, the mini-animations of a clock face or an hourglass are feedback mechanisms that acknowledge our commands and indicate the machine is working on executing them. In an electronic notepad, an animation may reinforce the model of turning a page as feedback for the interactor’s gesture and reinforcement of the legacy model. 在数字设计中,我们必须思考交互者会带来怎样的心理模型。例如,如果我们设计一个计算机“记事本”,我们应该在多大程度上遵循这一模型,并模仿纸质记事本的功能?我们是否应该允许用户翻页?在一页的“反面”写字?撕下某一页并单独保存?对于那些工作复杂且不易察觉的机器,诺曼提倡一个关键的设计原则:可见性。我们应该能够看到机器的工作状态——不是通过观察齿轮,而是通过理解其行为,这种行为是由因果关系的逻辑系统决定的。特别是,我们应该从机器那里获得清晰的反馈,以了解我们自己行为的后果。 例如,在操作系统中,时钟面或沙漏的微动画是反馈机制,能够确认我们的命令并指示机器正在执行它们。在电子记事本中,动画可能会强化翻页的概念,作为对用户手势的反馈,并加强传统模型的理解。
In digital as in mechanical design, our goal should be to remove distraction, to allow the user to focus on the task at hand rather than the tool, by making the interface elements transparent, and allowing the interactor direct manipulation, as we do, for example, when we drag a file folder to the trash can. Usability is a key concept in HCI. The usability design process starts with the gathering of all the stakeholders of a system, with an understanding that there will be multiple kinds of users of the end product and multiple criteria on which that final product will be evaluated. Such a process identifies tasks and models alternate ways of performing them, relying on repeated testing and revision with small groups of users, including groups that work with paper mock-ups before anything is built. User testing often focuses on the performance of tasks, and takes quantitative data on how long it takes new or experienced users to complete them, and how many mistakes these users make in performing them. Users may also be asked to provide think-aloud protocols describing their assumptions, intentions, and reactions as they use an object, which can provide insight into the mental models they are forming. Such testing can be part of an iterative and formative evaluation in which the designers repeatedly test and redesign versions of the product. Human-centered design is an important usability concept, emphasizing the physical and cognitive capabilities and limitations of human beings. Keyboard design, for example, is the subject of ergonomic standards that take into account the size of the human hand and the positioning that creates the least strain (figure 2.7). (For more on usability guidelines, see Jakob Nielsen’s website <http://useit. com>; government guidelines at http://www.usability.gov; and the guidelines issued by the International Standards Organization at http://www.iso.org). 在数字设计和机械设计中,我们的目标应该是消除干扰,让用户能够专注于当前任务,而不是工具。我们可以通过使界面元素透明,并允许用户直接操作来实现这一点,就像我们拖动文件夹到垃圾桶时那样。可用性是人机交互中的一个关键概念。可用性设计过程始于收集系统所有利益相关者的意见,理解最终产品将有多种用户和多种评估标准。 这个过程识别任务并模拟执行这些任务的不同方式,依赖于对小组用户的反复测试和修订,包括在任何产品建造之前使用纸质模型的小组。用户测试通常关注任务的执行,收集定量数据以了解新用户或经验丰富的用户完成任务所需的时间,以及他们在执行任务时犯的错误数量。用户还可能被要求提供思维大声说出协议,描述他们在使用物体时的假设、意图和反应,这可以帮助我们理解他们正在形成的心理模型。这种测试可以作为一个迭代和形成性评估的一部分,设计师在这个过程中反复测试和重新设计产品的不同版本。 以人为本的设计是一个重要的可用性概念,强调人类的身体和认知能力及其局限性。例如,键盘设计符合人体工程学标准,这些标准考虑了手的大小以及能够减少压力的最佳位置(见图 2.7)。有关可用性指南的更多信息,请访问雅各布·尼尔森的网站;政府指南请访问 http://www.usability.gov;国际标准化组织的指南请访问 http://www.iso.org。
Figure 2.7 图表 2.7
The Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard addresses the problem of repetitive motion injuries by providing wrist support and an angled split design to create a more “natural” rotated positioning for the hands. The buttons in the middle just above and below the spacebar are dedicated to zooming in and out on and moving between web pages, reducing the need for mousing. 微软自然人体工学键盘通过提供手腕支撑和倾斜的分离设计,有效解决了重复性运动伤害的问题,使手部能够保持更“自然”的旋转姿势。空格键上方和下方的按钮专门用于放大、缩小以及在网页之间切换,从而减少了对鼠标的依赖。
Usability studies work particularly well within the model of the computer as a tool or machine, requiring a “user” whose main goal is efficiency in performing a task. But interactors can be understood in larger contexts than as tool users and task performers. They also make complex judgments about what they want to know, what they want to do, and where they want to go in the digital realm. They make these judgments based on social and cultural contexts that can resist quantification. 可用性研究在将计算机视为工具或机器的模型中特别有效,这需要一个“用户”,其主要目标是在执行任务时提高效率。然而,交互者的理解可以超越工具用户和任务执行者的范畴。他们还会对自己想了解的内容、想要做的事情以及在数字领域的去向做出复杂的判断。这些判断是基于社会和文化背景,而这些背景往往难以量化。
Social anthropology, for example, has introduced the useful concept of situated action, as a way of understanding human-computer interaction. Situated action theory sees users not as interchangeable processors of information, who all behave the same way according to pre-scripted, machine-friendly rational plans, but as uniquely positioned, complex actors whose frame of reference is shaped by the surrounding social and material world. Lucy Suchman, studying the interaction of users with copier machines in the late 1980s, demonstrated the many ways in which their model of where they were in the process of copying and binding a document at any given moment differed from the machine’s model, and from that of the Help system. Instead of asking the user to conform more fully to the machine model of a generic process, Suchman argues for an embodied and relational model, in which humans and machines are constantly reconstructing their shared understanding of the task at hand (Suchman 1987) (figures 2.8, 2.9). 社会人类学引入了“情境行动”这一有用概念,以帮助理解人机交互。情境行动理论认为,用户并不是可以互换的信息处理者,他们的行为并不总是按照预先设定的、机器友好的理性计划进行,而是独特的、复杂的参与者,他们的视角受到周围社会和物质环境的影响。露西·萨奇曼在 1980 年代末研究用户与复印机的互动,展示了用户在任何时刻对复印和装订文档过程的理解与机器模型及帮助系统模型之间存在的诸多差异。 与其要求用户完全遵循机器的通用过程模型,萨赫曼主张一种具身和关系的模型,在这种模型中,人类与机器不断重建对当前任务的共同理解(萨赫曼 1987)(图 2.8,2.9)。
Ethnographic research, grounded in cultural anthropology, is a fruitful way of looking at interactors in online social networks and virtual communities as cultural 基于文化人类学的民族志研究,是观察在线社交网络和虚拟社区中互动者作为文化的一种有效方法
Figure 2.8 图表 2.8
A GPS navigational system must understand action as situated, adjusting to the current position of the car and the driver’s real-time changes in position, rather than expecting drivers to conform to a single invariant route. GPS 导航系统必须理解行动是基于情境的,能够根据汽车的当前位置和驾驶员实时的位移进行调整,而不是期望驾驶员始终遵循一条固定的路线。
Figure 2.9 图表 2.9
YELP provides location-sensitive information, including many user reviews of the same venue, and it does so for multiple platforms, illustrating three different ways in which the same interaction can be contextualized or “situated.” YELP 提供位置相关的信息,包括许多用户对同一场所的评论,并且在多个平台上展示了同一互动可以以三种不同方式进行情境化。
Figure 2.10 图表 2.10
Celia Pearce has documented the ways in which players who were exiled from the short-lived Uru, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORG), have reconstructed elements of the game’s culture in other online environments. Shown here is the Uru Fountain, an important gathering place, in (clockwise from upper left): Uru, There.com, Adobe Atmosphere, and Second Life. 塞莉亚·皮尔斯记录了那些被短暂存在的《乌鲁》这款大型多人在线角色扮演游戏(MMORPG)驱逐的玩家,如何在其他在线环境中重建游戏文化的元素。图中展示的是乌鲁喷泉,这是一个重要的聚集地,顺时针方向依次为:乌鲁、There.com、Adobe Atmosphere 和 Second Life。
beings, actively creating and negotiating the meaning of shared actions and objects. For example, Celia Pearce has found striking resemblances between the communitymaking behaviors of a gaming community displaced from one virtual world to another and those of similarly displaced émigré communities in the real world (Pearce 2009) (figure 2.10). 生物体积极地创造和协商共享行动和物体的意义。例如,Celia Pearce 发现,一个从一个虚拟世界转移到另一个虚拟世界的游戏社区的社区建设行为,与现实世界中类似的流亡社区的行为之间存在显著的相似性(Pearce 2009)(图 2.10)。
Another useful approach to capturing the many ways in which objects participate in systems of meaning is participatory design, which engages the potential users of a new system in every step of the design process, not merely as informants or testers but as collaborating members of the design team. Participatory design emphasizes the empowerment of marginalized stakeholders in proposed designs, such as poor people receiving a government service like a homeless shelter, workers rather than managers in a business introducing a new IT system, or people without technological expertise who are expected to be the users of a new device. Participatory 另一种有效的方法来捕捉物体在意义系统中参与的多种方式是参与式设计。这种设计方法在每个步骤中都让新系统的潜在用户参与,不仅仅是作为信息提供者或测试者,而是作为设计团队的合作成员。参与式设计强调赋权于提议设计中的边缘利益相关者,例如接受政府服务(如无家可归者收容所)的贫困人群、在引入新 IT 系统的企业中作为工人而非管理者,或是那些没有技术专长但被期望成为新设备用户的人们。
designers look to such groups as providing valuable knowledge of the relevant realworld contexts and of the core human needs underlying the design brief (Dearden, Rizvi 2008). 设计师们认为这些群体能够提供关于相关现实世界背景和设计简报中核心人类需求的宝贵知识(Dearden, Rizvi 2008)。
Individual experiences with interactive environments can vary widely from one another and from the designers’ expectations. The emotional component of interaction, which is important to understanding players’ engagement with game environments, is particularly hard to capture with experimental user testing. Players may suppress emotional information in nondirective think-aloud protocols, and directed questioning can limit responses to predetermined categories. One promising approach is to ask game players to provide feedback by manipulating evocative but nonspecific tactile figures that serve as symbols for whatever emotions the individual player associates with them (Isbister et al. 2007) (figure 2.11). 个人在互动环境中的体验可能因人而异,也可能与设计者的期望大相径庭。互动中的情感成分对于理解玩家与游戏环境的参与度至关重要,但通过实验用户测试来捕捉这一点尤其困难。玩家在非指导性的思维大声表达中可能会抑制情感信息,而有针对性的提问可能会将回答限制在预设的类别中。一种有前景的方法是让游戏玩家通过操控引发情感但不具体的触觉图形来提供反馈,这些图形象征着个别玩家与之关联的情感(Isbister et al. 2007)(图 2.11)。
Figure 2.11 图表 2.11
The Sensual Evaluation Instrument (SEI) used by Katherine Isbister and her collaborators to engage interactors in playful self-assessment of their emotional responses to computer systems. The system is composed of eight clearly differentiated, warm-to-the-touch, nonrepresentational objects created by a sculptor. The objects are meant to be appropriate to the kinds of feelings reported by interactors, such as confusion, surprise, and flow, without imposing any particular meanings. Subjects tend to associate more negative feelings with the spiky objects and more positive feelings with the smooth objects. 由凯瑟琳·伊斯比斯特及其团队开发的感性评估工具(SEI),旨在让参与者以轻松的方式自我评估他们对计算机系统的情感反应。该系统由八个明显不同、触感温暖的非具象物体组成,这些物体是由一位雕塑家创作的。它们旨在与参与者所报告的情感相匹配,如困惑、惊讶和流畅,而不强加任何特定的意义。受试者通常将尖锐的物体与更消极的情感联系在一起,而将光滑的物体与更积极的情感联系在一起。
Participation in digital environments is always part of larger social and cultural contexts that the designer should bear in mind. In part V we will be examining several social and cultural models of interaction that designers can draw on to script the interactor. 参与数字环境始终与更广泛的社会和文化背景相关,这是设计师需要考虑的。在第五部分中,我们将探讨几种设计师可以参考的社会和文化互动模型,以便为互动者设计脚本。
The Computer Is an Encyclopedic Medium 计算机是一种百科全书般的媒介
The most capacious medium ever invented, the computer can contain and transmit more information in humanly accessible form than all previous media combined. Technically, this larger capacity is a function of engineering successes in electronic circuitry, signal processing, and a symbolic system of logical codes. Since the 1960s, advances in silicon technology have led to the creation of ever-larger repositories of bits in ever-smaller and cheaper machines. In 1965, Gordon Moore noticed that new computer chips seemed to be released every eighteen to twenty-four months and that each chip doubled the processing power of the preceding one. This rapidly accelerating growth became known as Moore’s Law and has held true for almost half a century. The removable tape drives of the 1960s held two million characters each (two megabytes, or approximately two books worth of information), and were the size of a household refrigerator. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century we were measuring personal computer capacity in terabytes and carrying around on our key chains removable storage equivalent to dozens of those refrigerator-sized tape drives. The size of the available storage space and the ease with which it can be retrieved and displayed also has meant an expansion in the kinds of media formats that can be inscribed and transmitted as electronic bits. New technologies of signal processing have made it possible to represent audio, images, and moving images in digital form and to display them in a single environment. The phenomenon of media convergence challenges designers by creating a convergence of conflicting conventions with which to structure information. The encyclopedic capacity of the medium raises the expectations of the designer and the interactor, making it important to communicate the limits of any collection, and to make clear decisions on what lies inside and outside of the project’s scope (figure 2.12). 计算机是有史以来最能容纳信息的媒介,它能够以人类可理解的形式存储和传输的信息量超过所有之前的媒介总和。从技术角度来看,这种更大的容量源于电子电路、信号处理和逻辑代码符号系统的工程成功。自 1960 年代以来,硅技术的进步使得越来越大的比特存储库在越来越小且更便宜的机器中得以实现。1965 年,戈登·摩尔注意到新的计算机芯片似乎每 18 到 24 个月就会发布一次,并且每个芯片的处理能力都比前一个翻了一番。这种快速增长被称为摩尔定律,近半个世纪以来一直保持有效。 1960 年代的可拆卸磁带驱动器每个可存储两百万个字符(约两兆字节,相当于两本书的信息),其体积与家用冰箱相当。到 21 世纪第一个十年末,我们开始以太字节为单位来衡量个人计算机的存储容量,并在钥匙链上携带相当于数十个冰箱大小的可拆卸存储设备。可用存储空间的大小以及检索和显示的便利性,促使了可以刻录和传输的媒体格式种类的扩展。新的信号处理技术使得以数字形式表示音频、图像和动态图像成为可能,并能够在同一环境中展示它们。 媒体融合现象通过将冲突的惯例融合在一起,给设计师带来了挑战,以便更好地构建信息。媒介的百科全书式能力提高了设计师和用户的期望,因此,清晰地沟通任何集合的界限变得至关重要,并且需要明确决定项目的范围内外的内容(图 2.12)。
I use the word “encyclopedic” to refer to both a technical and cultural phenomenon: to the unequalled storage potential of the new medium and to its promise of an infinite tablet, a library as big as the world. As a culturally encyclopedic medium the computer inherits age-old traditions of human culture, expressive of our core need to collect, preserve, and transmit knowledge across generations. Homer’s epics, for example, include encyclopedic set pieces, such as a lengthy catalog of ships, similar to lists in other bardic works of preliterate orature. With the advent of a written alphabet the encyclopedic impulse appeared in scrolls of magical spells, detailed histories, Aristotle’s knowledge compendia, and Pliny’s thirty-seven-“book” survey of 我用“百科全书式”这个词来指代一种技术和文化现象:新媒介无与伦比的存储潜力,以及它所承诺的无限平板,一个如同世界般庞大的图书馆。作为一种文化百科全书式的媒介,计算机继承了人类文化的悠久传统,体现了我们收集、保存和跨代传递知识的核心需求。例如,荷马的史诗中包含了百科全书式的片段,如一份冗长的船只目录,这与其他无文字口述作品中的列表相似。随着书写字母的出现,百科全书式的冲动出现在魔法咒语的卷轴、详细的历史记录、亚里士多德的知识汇编以及普林尼的三十七本“书”的调查中。
Figure 2.12 图表 2.12
The “My Life Bits” Project is an attempt to record the life of Gordon Bell, a Microsoft researcher, as completely as possible, including photographs, video, and audio recordings of events as they happen. The challenge it poses is how to annotate such a wealth of data so that it can be retrieved. Merely recording everything would be similar to recording nothing, since human memory relies on forgetting and selecting. See http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/mylifebits. “我的生活片段”项目旨在尽可能全面地记录微软研究员戈登·贝尔的生活,包括事件发生时的照片、视频和音频录音。这个项目面临的挑战是如何对如此丰富的数据进行标注,以便于检索。单纯地记录一切就像什么都没记录,因为人类的记忆依赖于遗忘和选择。详情请见 http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/mylifebits。
“Natural History” published in the first century A.D. With the invention of the printing press, the accumulation of knowledge took on new, standardized forms, from scientific treatises to picaresque novels. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the editors of Encyclopedia Britannica felt confident enough to attempt an alphabetical survey of all of human knowledge, a project that lasted for two hundred years, with increasing numbers of volumes, and served as a respected and useful reference work for shared authoritative knowledge until overtaken at the turn of the twenty-first century by Internet information resources. The human encyclopedic aspiration is also reflected in data collection, for example census taking; in narrative traditions, such as Shakespeare’s history plays and the novels of Charles Dickens, Honoré de Balzac, and George Eliot; and in the increasing development of film and television series that 《自然历史》于公元一世纪出版。随着印刷机的发明,知识的积累以新的标准化形式出现,从科学论文到流浪汉小说。到十八世纪中叶,《大英百科全书》的编辑们自信地尝试对人类知识进行字母顺序的整理,这一项目持续了两百年,出版的卷数不断增加,成为一个受人尊敬且实用的参考书,为共享的权威知识提供服务,直到在二十一世纪初被互联网信息资源所取代。人类对知识的渴望也体现在数据收集上,比如人口普查;在叙事传统中,如莎士比亚的历史剧,以及查尔斯·狄更斯、奥诺雷·德·巴尔扎克和乔治·艾略特的小说;还有电影和电视剧的不断发展
follow multiple related characters and stories across time and space. All of these legacy genres are encyclopedic in scope, presenting sweeping panoramas and close-up detail of a particular complex society at a particular moment. Their strategies of organization are part of the rich palette of media conventions that the designer can draw upon to create encyclopedic digital artifacts. 追随多个相关角色和故事,穿越时间与空间。这些传统类型在范围上如同百科全书,展现了特定复杂社会在特定时刻的广阔全景与细致细节。它们的组织策略是设计师可以借鉴的丰富媒体惯例调色板的一部分,用以创造百科全书式的数字文物。
The designer can also draw upon the conventions of emerging encyclopedic digital genres: vast databases such as world health surveys, stock market prices, soccer statistics, and recordings of electromagnetic impulses collected by spaceships exploring distant planets; massively multiplayer virtual worlds in which hundreds of thousands of people share a common landscape; a World Wide Web of “pages” describing everything in the world that can be captured in text, image, or sound; participatory information structures like Wikipedia that are created by multiple contributors acting independently within a common information structure; maps and satellite image systems that reproduce the whole earth in navigable form at multiple levels of granularity. The creation of encyclopedic networked resources will be a continuing challenge for digital design, posing the problem of how to shape our expanding capacity into coherent genres so that we can access information without being overwhelmed. 设计师还可以借鉴新兴的百科数字体裁的惯例:庞大的数据库,如世界健康调查、股市价格、足球统计数据,以及由探索遥远行星的宇宙飞船收集的电磁脉冲记录;数以万计的人共享共同景观的大型多人虚拟世界;一个描述世界上所有可以用文本、图像或声音捕捉的事物的“页面”的万维网;像维基百科这样的参与性信息结构,由多个独立贡献者在共同的信息框架中创建;再现整个地球的可导航地图和卫星图像系统,具有多层次的细节。 创建百科全书式的网络资源将是数字设计面临的持续挑战,这带来了如何将我们不断扩大的能力整合成连贯的形式,以便我们能够在不被信息淹没的情况下进行访问的问题。
Draw on Information Science Concepts and Conventions 依托信息科学的概念与规范
The exponential increase in information presents us with the challenge of finding more powerful means to organize it than the ones we have developed for legacy media. In doing so we can build on the methods of information science, which are themselves changing to accommodate the convergence of libraries, document archives, and museums. Information science is faced with the task of inventing the transmission technologies-the common standards for preserving, describing, cataloging, and accessing an exponentially expanding global knowledge base, the vast repository of human culture in all its artifactual manifestations. 信息的快速增长给我们带来了挑战,我们需要寻找比传统媒体所用的更有效的组织方式。在这个过程中,我们可以借鉴信息科学的方法,而这些方法也在不断演变,以适应图书馆、档案馆和博物馆的融合。信息科学的任务是发明传输技术——制定共同标准,以便保存、描述、编目和访问一个不断扩大的全球知识库,这个知识库是人类文化在各种物质形式中的庞大宝库。
The digital medium differs from legacy media in that it can store the artifact itselfthe equivalent of the book, the audio tape, the film canister-as well as a description of the artifact, and it can link one to the other. The Google Book Search Library Project (http://books.google.com) is digitizing millions of volumes and making them directly searchable in the same way that web pages are searchable (figure 2.13). As scholarly journals, newspapers, magazines, and books move to digital delivery formats it will become increasingly possible to archive them in a manner that makes them open to free text searches for words and phrases. But free text search of large information resources (like typing words into a web search engine) produces too much information. The ability to find every mention of the word “freedom,” for example, in every book in the Library of Congress is a daunting prospect. The challenge for designers 数字媒介与传统媒体的区别在于,它不仅可以存储文物本身——相当于书籍、音频带和胶卷罐——还可以存储文物的描述,并将两者相互链接。谷歌图书搜索图书馆项目(http://books.google.com)正在数字化数百万本书籍,并以与网页相同的方式使其可以直接搜索(见图 2.13)。随着学术期刊、报纸、杂志和书籍逐渐转向数字交付格式,越来越有可能以开放的方式存档这些资料,从而支持对单词和短语的自由文本搜索。然而,对大型信息资源进行自由文本搜索(就像在网络搜索引擎中输入单词一样)往往会产生过多的信息。 比如,在国会图书馆的每一本书中找到“自由”这个词的所有提及,这是一项非常艰巨的任务。设计师所面临的挑战
Figure 2.13 图表 2.13
Google Books has scanned over seven million books held in research libraries, and it provides an online search that returns titles, images, and full or partial access to the text, depending on copyrights. It can also search for words and phrases within a single book. 谷歌图书已扫描超过七百万本存放在研究图书馆的书籍,并提供在线搜索功能,能够返回书名、图片以及根据版权情况提供的全文或部分文本访问。它还可以在单本书中搜索单词和短语。
is determining how to organize information so that it is retrievable in a coherent form that minimizes confusion and maximizes understanding. 正在确定如何组织信息,以便以一种清晰的方式进行检索,从而减少混淆并增强理解。
One of the key affordances of moving encyclopedic resources to digital form is the ability to index and retrieve information at multiple levels of granularity. We can search or browse by titles of books or by chapter headings or single words within multiple 100,000-word texts. We can retrieve whole books, or particular pages within a book. Furthermore, when we bring multiple media into a single format we have a chance to rethink the segmentation conventions with which we index, retrieve, and display them. Should films be accessed by title, chapter, shot, or frame? Or perhaps by line of dialog? When we make new resources for digital delivery we have the opportunity to segment information for the screen, and to avoid physical interruptions-like the end of a page-of sections that should be kept together by content. Design of encyclopedic resources involves active decision making on granularity and segmentation conventions, and careful assignment of appropriate labels. 将百科全书资源转为数字形式的一个重要优势是能够在多个层次上索引和检索信息。我们可以通过书名、章节标题或在多个 10 万字的文本中搜索单个词汇来进行搜索或浏览。我们可以获取整本书或书中的特定页面。此外,当我们将多种媒体整合为一种格式时,我们有机会重新思考用于索引、检索和展示它们的分段方式。电影应该通过标题、章节、镜头还是帧来访问?或者通过对话的台词呢? 当我们为数字交付创建新资源时,我们有机会对屏幕上的信息进行分段,避免因页面末尾等物理中断而将应当保持在一起的内容分开。设计百科全书资源需要积极决策粒度和分段的标准,并仔细分配合适的标签。
An important goal of archive design is support for intellectual access to individual artifacts, that is, retrieval of the appropriate item not by its size or shape or media type or donor’s name, but by the relevant conceptual terms. This usually involves an 档案设计的一个重要目标是支持对单个文物的知识性访问,也就是说,检索适当的项目不是通过其大小、形状、媒体类型或捐赠者的名字,而是通过相关的概念术语。这通常涉及到一个
act of classification, of assigning objects to standardized categories, often through the use of metadata. Classification involves establishing controlled vocabularies, words that everyone agrees to use in the same way to refer to a class of artifacts. The subject index of the Library of Congress is a controlled vocabulary, as is the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus, which provides a taxonomy for everything from arches to urns. The virtue of a controlled vocabulary is that it allows us to juxtapose separate items that relate to one another by virtue of the fact that they carry the same label. In a library environment the number of labels by which we can juxtapose individual units of information is limited. We can sort them onto separate shelves, and we can cross-reference the shelves by assigning multiple subject labels. But one book can only be in one place at a time, and so can one index card describing the book. If a book is to be listed by various subjects it must have separate cards for each one, which limits the number of entries per book. But a digital artifact can be called up in multiple contexts without having to be duplicated. It takes up no more room in the computer’s memory, although it may appear on hundreds of virtual shelves. Every query to a search engine constructs a new shelf, customized to the individual searcher. 分类是将对象分配到标准化类别的过程,通常通过元数据来实现。分类需要建立受控词汇,即大家一致同意以相同方式使用的词汇,来指代某一类文物。国会图书馆的主题索引和盖蒂艺术与建筑词汇表都是受控词汇,它们为从拱门到 urn 的各种事物提供了分类法。受控词汇的优点在于,它使我们能够将那些因相同标签而相互关联的独立项目进行对比。在图书馆环境中,我们可以用来对比单个信息单元的标签数量是有限的。 我们可以将它们分类到不同的书架上,并通过分配多个主题标签来进行交叉引用。然而,一本书在任何时候只能放在一个地方,描述这本书的索引卡也是如此。如果一本书要按不同的主题列出,就必须为每个主题准备单独的卡片,这限制了每本书的条目数量。而数字文献可以在多个上下文中调用,而无需重复存储。它在计算机内存中不会占用更多空间,尽管它可能出现在数百个虚拟书架上。每次对搜索引擎的查询都会创建一个新的书架,专门为每位搜索者量身定制。
The values of information science are concerned with minimizing ambiguity and maximizing accessibility. A well-designed information structure is open-ended and can accept new elements without confusion about where they will be placed. It provides a means of finding items without memorizing the controlled vocabulary words, either by providing them as a navigation system, as in the stacks of a library, or by offering an intermediary-human or mechanical—who can find the right label when offered a synonym or related term. With the right labels attached to the right items, we can find any needle in the rapidly expanding global haystack. But our methods for labeling items of information are lagging behind our technologies for retrieving and juxtaposing them. Designers in the twenty-first century are faced with the need to bridge this gap, and must find new ways to maximize the power of the digital environment to retrieve information with precision and to juxtapose information from varying sources in coherent ways. We will explore these approaches further in part IV. 信息科学的核心价值在于减少模糊性和提高可获取性。一个设计良好的信息结构是开放的,能够无缝地接纳新元素,而不会造成放置上的混乱。它提供了一种查找项目的方式,无需记住受控词汇,既可以作为导航系统,比如图书馆的书架,也可以通过一个中介——无论是人还是机械——在提供同义词或相关术语时找到合适的标签。只要将正确的标签附在合适的项目上,我们就能在迅速扩展的全球信息海洋中找到任何针。然而,我们的信息标记方法却未能跟上检索和对比技术的发展。 二十一世纪的设计师需要弥合这一差距,必须找到新的方法来充分利用数字环境的力量,以精确检索信息,并将来自不同来源的信息以连贯的方式进行对比。我们将在第四部分进一步探讨这些方法。
The Computer Is a Spatial Medium 计算机是一种空间载体
Since space and time are the two foundational coordinates of human cognition, we experience everything spatially and we have many genres for representing it, such as paintings, sculpture, architectural plans, and film. But the computer constructs space in a different way from other media: it creates virtual spaces that are also navigable by the interactor. Digital space is created out of bits rather than bricks, and it rests upon the procedural and participatory affordances of computation: it is navigable because it responds to our navigational gestures in a consistent manner. 由于空间和时间是人类认知的两个基本坐标,我们以空间的方式体验一切,并且有许多表现空间的艺术形式,如绘画、雕塑、建筑设计和电影。然而,计算机构建空间的方式与其他媒体不同:它创造了可以被用户导航的虚拟空间。数字空间是由比特而非砖块构成的,依赖于计算的程序性和参与性特征:它之所以可导航,是因为它以一致的方式响应我们的导航手势。
Figure 2.14 图表 2.14
The Xerox Star (1981) was the first commercially produced computer with a GUI (graphical user interface). It included icons for files and windows for applications and it was mouse driven, which became standard features of the familiar desktop interface. There was no fixed desktop menu; the keyboard had several dedicated function keys. The mouse was used to select an icon, but a physical “Move” key was used to reposition it, in contrast to the later click-and-drag convention. The functionality of the interface is well documented in videos available at <http://www.digibarn. com >> or <http://video.google.com>>. 施乐星(1981 年)是第一台商业化生产的图形用户界面(GUI)计算机。它配备了文件图标和应用程序窗口,并通过鼠标进行操作,这些都成为了我们熟悉的桌面界面的标准特征。它没有固定的桌面菜单,键盘上有几个专用功能键。用户通过鼠标选择图标,但需要使用一个物理的“移动”键来重新定位图标,这与后来的点击拖动方式有所不同。该界面的功能在可用的视频中有详细记录,网址为< http://www.digibarn.com >> 或 < http://video.google.com >> 。
The spatial affordance of the computer does not rest on its ability to present us with images of real-world spaces (Murray 1997): for example, we perceive web pages as occupying “sites” that we “visit.” But the addition of spatializing images to computer displays has been an important part of the evolution of information organization. The familiar desktop graphical user interface, the world’s most successful GUI, was invented at Xerox PARC in the 1970s, further developed by Apple Computer as the commercially successful Macintosh in 1984, and fully established as the dominant world standard when it was deployed in a robust PC version in 1995. The objects and the space that make up the computer desktop-the file folders, windows, manipulable icons, and menus-were developed over time, not as literal reproductions of physical objects, but as abstractions that include only those spatial properties that reinforce their functions as chunks of information and programming code (figures 2.14-2.16). Computer file folders have customizable labels like real file folders but they are not depicted as vertical objects stacked in wooden drawers. Because there is no need to mimic the extraneous tasks of the physical world, like opening a drawer, we can focus our attention on the placement of the file within the hierarchy formed by the labels. The desktop GUI is now so well established that it is regularly lamented as too limited, 计算机的空间可供性并不依赖于其展示真实世界空间图像的能力(Murray 1997):例如,我们将网页视为我们“访问”的“地点”。然而,将空间化图像添加到计算机显示器中是信息组织演变的重要组成部分。熟悉的桌面图形用户界面,世界上最成功的 GUI,最初是在 1970 年代的施乐 PARC 发明的,随后在 1984 年由苹果公司发展为商业上成功的 Macintosh,并在 1995 年以强大的 PC 版本推出时完全确立为全球主导标准。 组成计算机桌面的对象和空间——如文件夹、窗口、可操作的图标和菜单——是随着时间发展而来的,它们并不是物理对象的简单复制,而是只包含那些强化其作为信息块和编程代码功能的空间属性的抽象(见图 2.14-2.16)。计算机文件夹有可自定义的标签,类似于真实的文件夹,但它们并不是以垂直物体的形式堆叠在木抽屉中。由于没有必要模仿物理世界中的多余操作,比如打开抽屉,我们可以将注意力集中在文件在标签所形成的层级中的位置上。现在桌面图形用户界面已经非常成熟,以至于人们常常觉得它过于局限
Figure 2.15 图表 2.15
Apple Lisa GUI (1983) includes windows, files, icons (including the trash can), and a (rather verbose) top menu bar. The operating system, called Desktop Manager, was document driven like the Xerox Star, rather than application driven like the later Macintosh. To create a new document the user would “tear off” a new piece of virtual “Stationery.” Applications (or “tools” as they were called) like word processors would start up only when documents were opened and were otherwise hidden from the end-user within the operating system. 苹果丽莎 GUI(1983 年)包含窗口、文件、图标(包括垃圾桶)和一个(相当冗长的)顶部菜单栏。操作系统称为桌面管理器,像施乐星际一样以文档为中心,而不是像后来的麦金塔那样以应用程序为中心。用户创建新文档时,可以“撕下”一张新的虚拟“文具”。像文字处理器这样的应用程序(或称为“工具”)只有在打开文档时才会启动,平时在操作系统中对用户是隐藏的。
Figure 2.16 图表 2.16
The Apple Macintosh GUI (1984) included windows, files, click-and-dragging of icons, and a menu bar at the top. The Macintosh, inspired by the Xerox Star, initiated the full WIMP interface we have come to think of as the standard for personal computers and workstations. 苹果麦金塔图形用户界面(1984 年)包含窗口、文件、图标的点击与拖动,以及顶部的菜单栏。麦金塔受到施乐星的启发,开启了我们如今视为个人计算机和工作站标准的完整 WIMP 界面。
and even denigrated with the acronym WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing devices), but it has yet to be superseded, although web browsers, mobile devices, and entertainment systems offer partial alternatives. 甚至被贬低为 WIMP(窗口、图标、菜单、指点设备)的缩写,但至今仍未被完全取代,尽管网络浏览器、移动设备和娱乐系统提供了一些部分替代方案。
By the 2000s proliferation of applications on the personal computer led to the addition of a “dock” at the bottom of the desktop screen, an abstraction of the function of docking a ship that allows users to park favorite applications in easy reach of top-level pointing. Desktops, windows, sites, tabs, and docks all occupy very different frameworks in the real world. We don’t find file folders floating with yachts, or windows arranged in tabs within our physical world. But as abstractions of spatial functions these conventions have proved to be learnable and are now transparent to users. However, the space of applets on mobile devices remains disorganized and will no doubt be an active focus of design in coming years. 到了 2000 年代,个人电脑上应用程序的激增促使桌面屏幕底部增加了一个“停靠栏”,这是停靠船只功能的抽象,允许用户将最喜欢的应用程序方便地停放在触手可及的地方。桌面、窗口、网站、标签和停靠栏在现实世界中占据了截然不同的框架。我们不会看到文件夹与游艇漂浮在一起,或者窗口在物理世界中以标签的形式排列。然而,作为空间功能的抽象,这些约定已被证明是可以学习的,现在对用户来说是透明的。然而,移动设备上小程序的空间仍然显得杂乱无章,毫无疑问,这将在未来几年成为设计的一个重要焦点。
Some of the earliest applications of computers, even before the wide availability of graphical displays, were spatial applications including Spacewar! (1962), the first action video game, and the Aspen Movie Map (1978), which preceded the Google Street View by two decades (figures 2.17, 2.18). Digital technologies have developed the two-dimensional screen into increasingly realized three-dimensional spaces, both for conventional movies and for interactive environments. For example we can fly through highly detailed models of real places like Disney World (figure 2.19), virtual 计算机的一些最早应用,甚至在图形显示广泛普及之前,就包括了《太空战争!》(1962 年)这款第一款动作视频游戏和《阿斯彭电影地图》(1978 年),后者比谷歌街景早了二十年(见图 2.17,2.18)。数字技术将二维屏幕发展为越来越真实的三维空间,既用于传统电影,也用于互动环境。例如,我们可以在像迪士尼乐园(见图 2.19)这样的真实地点的高度详细模型中飞行,虚拟。
Figure 2.17 图表 2.17
The Spacewar! game created for the PDP-1 computer (1962) was the first representational video game. It was created as a demonstration of the new graphics system by a group of researchers who were avid pinball players and science fiction fans (Graetz 1981). 为 PDP-1 计算机(1962)开发的《太空战争!》游戏是第一个具象视频游戏。它是由一群热爱弹球和科幻小说的研究人员创建的,旨在展示新图形系统(Graetz 1981)。
Figure 2.18 图表 2.18
Aspen Movie Map (1978) one of the first demonstration projects of the group led by Nicholas Negroponte and Andy Lippman that went on to found the MIT Media Lab. It made use of early optical videodisk inscription to create a computer-driven, interactive experience simulating a drive through parts of Aspen, Colorado, including the ability to make right-angle turns. In 2007, Google Street View introduced a similar interaction pattern. 阿斯彭电影地图(1978 年)是由尼古拉斯·尼葛洛庞帝和安迪·利普曼领导的小组开发的第一个演示项目之一,该小组后来成立了麻省理工学院媒体实验室。该项目利用早期的光学视频盘技术,创造了一种计算机驱动的互动体验,模拟在科罗拉多州阿斯彭地区的驾驶体验,包括进行直角转弯的功能。2007 年,谷歌街景推出了类似的互动模式。
Figure 2.19 图表 2.19
Fly-through of Disney World 3D model in Google Earth. 在谷歌地球中飞越迪士尼乐园的 3D 模型。
communities like Second Life, and inaccessible abstracted places like a detailed model of the inside of a cell or a chemical molecule (figure 2.20). As with video games, we can often switch camera positions within these environments and zoom in and out from overview to close-up. Such environments can be both captivating and overwhelming. Designers face challenges in providing a consistent model of the space as a whole and in making individual areas memorable and findable (Nitsche 2008). These challenges are similar to the design problems of filmmakers, landscape architects, and urban planners, combining problems of layout with consideration of point of view. 像第二人生这样的社区,以及细胞内部或化学分子的详细模型等难以接触的抽象场所(见图 2.20)。与视频游戏一样,我们通常可以在这些环境中切换摄像机位置,并在全景与特写之间进行缩放。这些环境既迷人又让人感到不知所措。设计师面临着提供整个空间一致性模型的挑战,同时还要确保各个区域既令人难忘又易于找到(Nitsche 2008)。这些挑战与电影制作人、景观建筑师和城市规划师所面临的设计问题相似,涉及布局问题和视角的考虑。
Draw on Visual Design Concepts and Conventions 依托视觉设计的概念与规范
The visual organization of digital environments should reflect the core principles of good graphic design, including the design values of contrast and regularity, which allow us to focus the interactor’s attention on the key informational elements and their relationship to one another. For example, we establish table-like grids for web pages and assign specific horizontal and vertical areas to specific purposes such as a site logo, a navigation menu, or a news box. Regularity of proximity, size, color, and font allows users to recognize similar items and to distinguish dissimilar items from one another (figures 2.21,2.222.21,2.22 ). 数字环境的视觉组织应体现良好图形设计的核心原则,包括对比和规律性的设计价值,这有助于我们将用户的注意力集中在关键信息元素及其相互关系上。例如,我们为网页创建类似表格的网格,并将特定的水平和垂直区域分配给特定的功能,如网站徽标、导航菜单或新闻框。接近度、大小、颜色和字体的一致性使用户能够识别相似的项目,并区分不同的项目(图 2.21,2.222.21,2.22 )。
Because we are attuned to the spatial characteristics of digital environments, users assume that spatial positioning is meaningful and related to function. If an item calls attention to itself with a different color or size we will try to touch it or click 由于我们对数字环境的空间特性非常敏感,用户往往认为空间位置是有意义的,并与功能相关。如果某个物品以不同的颜色或大小吸引了我们的注意,我们会尝试去触摸或点击它。