J O N A S H E I D E S M I T H

Jonas Heide Smith

Dept. of Digital Aesthetics and Communication,
The IT University of Copenhagen

Rued Langgaards Vej 7
Office 2D27
DK-2300 Copenhagen

Work: (+45) 38168935
Home: (+45) 35378006
Mobile: (+45) 22112825

smith@itu.dk

Last update
24-08-2004

The FUNdamentals game text-book project
Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Susana Tosca, and yours truly are working on a game text-book (know more)

The distant sound of trumpets

Infrequently updated musings vaguely inspired by my PhD project.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Thoughtful

nowuseit.com :: it's about excitability
Co-candidate Martin on his fashionable - if constantly morphing - nowuseit.com mentions the "potential dangers of usability culture". This is a topic which I used to be rather obsessed with as an undergraduate, going as far as to write a largely misunderstood student paper entitled "The Disenfranchised User". In this underestimated masterpiece I argued that usability is wonderful in the short term but the requirement that users must not (for the love of God!) think may have dire consequences (insert, in the background, the shrill sound of high-pitch violins) in the long term. But it all depends on your conceptualization of IT - if IT is like electricity we have little reason to be concerned with the relative ignorance of users (or if we do, it takes someone more STS than me to realize it) but if IT is like a communicative infrastructure the design of which has large-scale consequences for both private and public life then we may not want to resign ourselves to ignorance, no matter how blissful in the short term.
posted by Jonas Heide Smith # 16.10.04

Comments:

Hey Jonas. Knowing your academic skills I am convinced that your paper was nothing but a underestimated stroke of genius, we now live in more sophisticated times, and the world is perhaps finally ready to meet your deep insights. Anyway I'd be happy, if not honoured, to read it ;-)

I think your framing is just on the spot; the question goes way deeper than the quarrel if users are better off with ease-of-use or funky web-interfaces. IT is, I think we can agree, is distinctly more a communicative - and thereby a social and cultural vivid - infrastructure that constantly emerges and changes between us (you and I and the people formerly know as Users), much more than it is just a technical infrastructure like that of electricity. But even if IT where to be like electricity, a transparent “service” that we only observe when it is not there, we might also find it TO user-friendly leading to excessive use. In the future (I’m on wobbly ground here), I think, we would need to understand, evaluate and ultimately design Information Technology "beyond usability" in a manner that produces use situations and contexts that makes people think, feel and… laugh.

BTW I have increased the font-size on my humble blog so now use it??

# posted by Anonymous : 20.10.04

whooops, by mistake my commenting went of as anonymous (but it is I). Meanwhile I have received word on the whereabouts of the much heralded student paper, that Jonas was too modest to link up. So should you want to tap into the formative years of Smithian thinking: it's all out there to grab (in danish though!) for everyone: http://www2.adm.ku.dk/portal/opgavebank/src/ViewArticle.php?id=178

# posted by Martin : 20.10.04