Report from Italia - Conceptualising Human Activities in Context

Notes on Liam Bannon lecture:

When we define interaction or even design, it may be more useful to say that the definition is not one for all space and time, but rather in a particular place, with particular people, trying to accomplish something in particular ...

We do not want to actually "interact" with a computer - we want to DO something and have the computer mediate (assist/improve/simplify etc.) this "doing"

We need to explore the design space where we DO NOT MODEL THE USER ...

[Hear hear! Just say no to personas!]

We have moved from the physical to the digital (Negroponte) and now back to the physical (AR, UbiComp etc.)

[Is this merely reactionary? Are we returning to universalist or (yikes!) positivist, systems thinking?]

Taking inspiration from Engelbart - augmentation NOT substitution

Computers cannot make meaning - what we need to do is put that in the hands of users ... Sensors can give indications of certain parameters without telling you what that state IS ...

[This is still modelling: the parameters themselves have been interpreted as meaningful enough to measure and/or track ... This thinking does not go far enough ...]

See also: Liam's publications on interaction design