Making Visible

The cover and opening pages from the PhD thesis 'Making Visible'
The cover and opening pages from the thesis ‘Making Visible’.

My PhD thesis, ‘Making Visible’, was submitted in December 2013 and successfully defended on 12 June 2014. It reflects on the material-exploration research from the Touch and YOUrban projects, and uses those explorations to place design research with technology as a cultural, material and mediational practice:

In Making Visible I outline how interaction design may engage in the material and mediation of new interface technologies. Drawing upon a design project called Touch, that investigated an emerging interface technology called Radio Frequency Identification or RFID, I show how interaction design research can explore technology through material and mediational approaches. I demonstrate and analyse how this research addresses the inter-related issues of invisibility, seamlessness and materiality that have become central issues in the design of contemporary interfaces. These issues are analysed and developed through three intertwined approaches of research by design: 1. a socio- and techno-cultural approach to understanding emerging technologies, 2. through material exploration and 3. through communication and mediation. When taken together these approaches form a communicative mode of interaction design research that engages directly with the exploration, understanding and discussion of emerging interface technologies.

The thesis is built around four peer-reviewed journal articles, together with a ‘meta-reflection’ document that sets them in a wider frame of theory, concepts and models.

Overview

The meta-reflection develops the concept of mediational material, which draws attention to the material and communicative practices in interaction design. These practices are what we use to explore, develop and share knowledge about technologies as design materials.

Thumbnail overview of the thesis: 178 pages laid out in a grid showing the structure and 53 illustrations
The thesis is 178 pages with 53 illustrations.

I’ve made it available in a few digital formats:

It’s also available through AHO’s open-access archive ADORA.

Articles

The four included articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Article 1: Exploring ‘immaterials’: mediating design’s invisible materials

This article takes on the idea of ‘immaterial’ and ‘seamless’ technologies, asking how designers might explore them as design materials. It situates interaction design as a sociocultural practice, one engaged with culture, critical approaches and the technocultural imagination. It closes by looking at mediational strategies (documentary film, online video, weblog writing) and at how new material perspectives have been shared, discussed and developed by others.

Arnall, T. (in press). ‘Exploring ‘immaterials’: mediating design’s invisible materials’. International Journal of Design, 29. Will be available at the International Journal of Design.

Article 2: Visualizations of digital interaction in daily life

This article explores how visual signage can make aspects of ubiquitous computing technologies visible, and how digital tools and platforms shape that visual design. It looks at identification technologies like barcodes and RFID, which only become ‘visible’ or ‘interactional’ through a designer’s work on physical or visual expression. It argues that designers should work carefully at the bindings and distinctions between design process, visual mediation, and the symbols and signs that surround them, when engaging with emerging technologies as material for creative and communicative composition.

Morrison, A., & Arnall, T. (2011). Visualizations of Digital Interaction in Daily Life. Computers and Composition, 28(3), 224-234. Available at Computers and Composition.

Article 3: Satellite Lamps

Satellite Lamps is a project about using design to investigate and reveal one of the fundamental constructs of the networked city: GPS, the Global Positioning System. The article extends the concept of ‘mediational materials’ to how GPS technology inhabits urban spaces. It takes up how a discursive, reflexive interaction design practice can open up new perspectives on networked city life. Satellite Lamps is also a multimediational web text, moving between film, notebooks and a host of images, so that the richness of the work can surface in ways that traditional academic publishing couldn’t support.

Martinussen, E, Knutsen, J & Arnall, T. (forthcoming 2014). Satellite Lamps. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. Will be available at Kairos.

Article 4: Depth of Field: Discursive design research through film

This article is about the role of film in interaction and product design research, and the use of film to explore and explain emerging technologies across multiple contexts. It closes by looking towards the potential of a discursive design practice, where the object of design and analysis is the discourse catalysed by new artefacts, and where design research puts communication at its centre.

Arnall, T., & Martinussen, E. S. (2010). Depth of field: discursive design research through film. FORMakademisk, 3(1). Available at FORMakademisk.