0000000000958289
AUTHOR
Jaana Leikas
The Psychology of Fluent Use
In a perfect world, it would always be possible to operate technology effortlessly and to reach the desired goal. However, in the real world many factors may make technologies difficult to use or even hinder people from using technical artefacts. Most of these factors pertain to usability (i.e., technology’s ability to fit users’ capabilities) and thus concern technological solutions from the point of view of human beings as users of technology. Therefore, designing technical artefacts that are easy to use requires understanding the psychological and mental preconditions for using technology.
Introduction—Feelings Matter
Emotions are a hot topic in design, human–computer interaction and any area of business these days. Their significance in areas in which people make choices, decisions and engage in action has been undeniable for at least the last 40 years of psychology and consumer scholarship. What once was an extremely contested, fuzzy and (almost) easily scientifically avoidable area, is now at the centre of everyone’s interest. In an era of cognitive computing, artificial intelligence (so-called learning and thinking machines), and optimization, all attention is placed on what makes us human, and the ways in which human thought actually operates. This emotional logic, intentionality and consciousness i…
Ethics in designing intelligent systems
The idea of Hume’s guillotine contains the argument that one cannot derive values from facts. As intelligent systems operate with facts, Hume’s famous dilemma seems to contradict the very idea of being able to create ethical intelligent systems. In a closer look, ethics is a system of rules guiding actions. Actions always have factual or cognitive aspects, as well as evaluative or emotional aspects. Therefore, Hume’s juxtaposition of facts and norms is not well-founded. Instead of separating the facts and norms it should rather ask what kinds of facts are associated to what kinds of norms. Consequently, Hume’s guillotine sets no limits in processing ethical information, as one can combine f…
How older and younger people see technology in Northern and Southern Europe : Closing the generation gap
Background Mental representations of technology can be affected by many social and biological factors. The aim of this study was to test the effects of two of these factors, age and culture, on how people mentally represent and experience technologies by comparing the conceptions of old and young people in Spain and Finland. Both Spain and Finland are European countries, but they are historically, geographically, and culturally very different. Method The study is framed within the life-based design (LBD) paradigm, where culture and age interact to define particular forms of life in which technology might be used and perceived differently. We hypothesised that there are differences in the me…
Life-based design as an extension of problem-based learning — A tool for understanding people and technology
Global conditions are changing at such a rate that foreseeing trends in technological development, economic fluctuations and climatic conditions is ever more difficult. When developing technologies, there is one constant factor that practitioners and researchers should be aware of, and that is people. This is not to say that people, culture and social conditions remain stagnant, for these too evolve with the surrounding circumstances. Rather, appropriate tools and capabilities for investigating people, their lives and life situations, are integral to understanding what people need in terms of technology, how these technologies will be used, and more importantly how they will be valued in th…
Designing digital well-being of senior citizens
In this paper, we illustrate a concrete case to apply the Life-Based Design approach to identifying human goals for technology to achieve. We focus on a form-of-life method of design, which seeks to reach a mental state of “digital wellbeing.” Digital well-being aims to facilitate digitalization and changes in the digital environment, and to maximize the availability and accessibility of services. We evaluate the target group of senior citizens, who are facing an accelerating pace of digitalization of the services in their daily lives. This increases their sense of anxiety and undermines their well-being. peerReviewed
Activity typologies as a design model for the ubiquitous detection of daily routines
Emerging technologies open up new visions and business potential for systems design and development in the areas of wellbeing and health. New technologies enable the detection of human performance and early changes in physical and cognitive functioning, making it possible to monitor an older person’s wellbeing. This kind of technology or service sets significant requirements for design, as design concepts must be able to capture the complexity of people’s daily lives in terms of activities and environments. Technology itself is “blind” unless designers can adapt it to human life. There is thus a distinct need for comprehensive design and development models that generate adequate human requi…
Emotions in Technology Design
Understanding emotions is becoming ever more valuable in design, both in terms of what people prefer as well as in relation to how they behave in relation to it. Approaches to conceptualising emotions in technology design, how emotions can be operationalised and how they can be measured are paramount to ascertaining the core principles of design.Emotions in Technology Design: From Experience to Ethics provides a multi-dimensional approach to studying, designing and comprehending emotions in design. It presents emotions as understood through basic human-technology research, applied design practice, culture and aesthetics, ethical approaches to emotional design, and ethics as a cultural frame…
Technology in Life
Technological advancements have changed human life throughout history as technical inventions have emancipated people from many mundane, necessary tasks. The development of technical artefacts has long relied on the natural sciences and engineering. However, recent technical advancements—such as ubiquitous and multifunctional technologies as well as the emergence of social media—have made it necessary to approach design from a multidisciplinary perspective and to ground design thinking more on the understanding of human mind and human life. As the natural sciences and human research are in many respects different practices, it is time to discuss their mutually inclusive roles in design and …
Life-Based Design
Technical artefacts should exist to bring added value and quality to people’s lives. HTI design should, therefore, be considered in a much broader context than merely the usage of technology. It should be based on an understanding of people’s lives and well-grounded design methods and tools, which can investigate life and apply this knowledge to the design work. The conceptual model of life-based design (LBD) is based on segregating unified systems of actions called forms of life. Investigating the structure of actions and related facts relevant to particular forms of life, in addition to the values that people follow, is the core tool of LBD. The knowledge produced constitutes a template f…
Life-based design as an extension of problem-based learning:A tool for understanding people and technology
Global conditions are changing at such a rate that foreseeing trends in technological development, economic fluctuations and climatic conditions is ever more difficult. When developing technologies, there is one constant factor that practitioners and researchers should be aware of, and that is people. This is not to say that people, culture and social conditions remain stagnant, for these too evolve with the surrounding circumstances. Rather, appropriate tools and capabilities for investigating people, their lives and life situations, are integral to understanding what people need in terms of technology, how these technologies will be used, and more importantly how they will be valued in th…
Emotions, Motives, Individuals, and Cultures in Interaction
Cognitive aspects of the human mind form the foundations of solving usability problems. However, being able to use a technology is not the only critical psychological question in the design of successful HTI. In addition to understanding users’ capabilities, it is equally important to comprehend their preferences and what they want to accomplish with the help of technologies. Knowledge of the dynamic mind—in particular human emotions, motives, and personality—helps address such ‘liking and wanting’ concerns in HTI design.
Epilogue: Designing for Life
The main criterion for HTI design is that it should not only concern the development of a technical artefact and the design of the immediate usage situation, but also help illustrate how technologies can advance the quality of human life. People should be motivated to adopt and use technology by the added value it can bring to everyday life to help them accomplish their goals. The question of how much a technology can improve the quality of human life defines the worth of the particular technology.
Human-centricity in AI governance : A systemic approach
Human-centricity is considered a central aspect in the development and governance of artificial intelligence (AI). Various strategies and guidelines highlight the concept as a key goal. However, we argue that current uses of Human-Centered AI (HCAI) in policy documents and AI strategies risk downplaying promises of creating desirable, emancipatory technology that promotes human wellbeing and the common good. Firstly, HCAI, as it appears in policy discourses, is the result of aiming to adapt the concept of human-centered design (HCD) to the public governance context of AI but without proper reflection on how it should be reformed to suit the new task environment. Second, the concept is mainl…
The Logic of User Interface Design
Technical artefacts exist so that people can use them to make something happen. Their capacity to do so depends on the functions and functionalities of the technology, which requires users. Technologies thus have to give users the ability to control them, and the designer’s role is to create the actions and work processes for which the artefacts are intended. This basic HTI pursuit is called user interface design. It applies technical interaction concepts to solve design problems. This chapter presents the overall principles and goals for the user interface design of any technical artefact.
Designing Ethical AI in the Shadow of Hume’s Guillotine
Artificially intelligent systems can collect knowledge regarding epistemic information, but can they be used to derive new values? Epistemic information concerns facts, including how things are in the world, and ethical values concern how actions should be taken. The operation of artificial intelligence (AI) is based on facts, but it require values. A critical question here regards Hume’s Guillotine, which claims that one cannot derive values from facts. Hume’s Guillotine appears to divide AI systems into two ethical categories: weak and strong. Ethically weak AI systems can be applied only within given value rules, but ethically strong AI systems may be able to generate new values from fac…