The University of Melbourne | twleong@unimelb.edu.au
The University of Melbourne | showard@unimelb.edu.au
The University of Melbourne | f.vetere@unimelb.edu.au
[ 1] Hofstede,
G. Cultures and
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London: Harper
Collins, 1994.
May + June 2008
[ 2] van Andel, P. “Anatomy of the Unsought Finding. Serendipity: origin, history, domains, traditions, appearances and programmability.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (1994): 631-648.
interactions
Randomness has long beguiled and fascinated human beings. It is widely used as a powerful computational resource, as mathematicians and scientists use it to encrypt, model, and predict. Artists, on the other hand, have recognized randomness’s versatility and ability to provoke, seed, and capture our imagination. They exploit the ephemeral qualities of randomness, utilizing them as creative tools to produce innovative artistic output.
For interaction designers, randomness can be used to enrich designed user experiences. Encounters with randomness exploit our natural urge to interpret and our tendency to try to make sense of things when engaging with content in unpredictable and unexpected ways. As design discourse shifts from “beyond the object” into “ experience design,” the design of digital devices is increasingly motivated by users and their experiences, and an appreciation of the role of randomness can provide designers with a unique perspective as they grapple with the complexi-ties of “users” and “experiences.”
Our experience of randomness is suffused with a host of other phenomena, including the concepts of luck and chance. Our encounters with randomness also result in qualities such as uncertainty, unpredictability, indeterminacy, and unexpectedness. Randomness is often something to be managed, and whose negative effects mitigated. Culturally, “uncertainty avoidance” is considered one of the five defining dimensions of human beings [ 1].
Yet unanticipated encounters can also lead to particularly pleasant experiences with desirable ends, such as that of serendipity. Van Andel’s extensive study of more than a thousand examples shows that serendipity has had very strong relevance in the progress of science. Many scientific breakthroughs have been credited (in part) to the accidental, unforeseen nature of randomness [ 2].
Approaches to Randomness An exploration of how randomness has been harnessed to influence people’s experiences reveals
two broad approaches: 1. the use of certain qualities of randomness as a creative resource by artists and designers, and 2. digital devices expressing certain qualities of randomness during use. More recently, there is an emergent approach whereby users can manipulate and modulate randomness directly during the use of the digital device.
Randomness as a creative resource. Qualities of randomness such as unpredictability, indeterminacy, and unexpectedness have been used as a creative resource to generate innovative output. Performance artists, painters, musicians, writers, and poets (particularly those from the early to mid-20th century) relied on their own indeterminate actions, free association, and accidental movements to generate these qualities of randomness. Some also took to randomizing devices such as dice to determine artistic decisions. Randomness provides the input, and the designed artistic product is the output.
The Dada movement claimed that chance is a vital new stimu-
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