Welcome
Interactions:
Authenticity, Complexity,
and Design
Frequently, designers find themselves reflecting
on the nuances of what makes us human—
matters of cognitive psychology, social interaction,
and the desire for emotional resonance. This
issue of interactions unpacks all of these ideas,
exploring the gestalt of interaction design’s
influence. Sarah Kettley, a researcher and an
artist, is most interested in understanding the
relationship between wearable computing and
body adornment. She writes about the relationship between craftsmanship and authenticity,
illustrating a potential divide between design
and craft. We can see a similar exploration of
the ethereal in William Odom, Richard Banks,
and Dave Kirk’s piece “Reciprocity, Deep Storage,
and Letting Go: Opportunities for Designing
Interactions with Inherited Digital Materials”;
these authors are looking to understand “how
the digital residue of a person’s life could become
the property of someone else and be representative of a person after they have passed on.”
And Liz Danzico’s column focuses on the nature
of serendipity and design. If design is careful
planning, and serendipity is a desired state of
unplannedness, what can interaction designers
learn from serendipity—and what can we reappropriate in our work?
Several pieces in this issue look less at how
to integrate human qualities into design, and
instead at how to evaluate the qualities of design
on human problems. Steve Baty examines why
design is suitable for—and perhaps best pre-
pared for—handling complex problems, and
Graham Pullin and Andrew Cook show how this
form of problem solving can lend new capabili-
ties to those with a form of disability. In Dana
Chisnell’s review of Pullin’s book, Design Meets
Disability, she explains that the text is “a call to
action against an old way of thinking, in which
design for disability is solving a medical engi-
neering problem rather than meeting a cultural,
societal challenge.” Our old friends Don Norman
and Jakob Nielsen take gestural interfaces to
task, exploring the usability—or lack thereof—in
a number of the most popular touch devices
we’ve come to take for granted.
• Jon Kolko
September + October 2010
DOi: 10.1145/1836216.1836217
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0900 $10.00
