Lev
Manovich*
Information
as an Aesthetic Event
abstract
How do designers of information technology understand the
interaction between the users and devices? How do they design user interfaces?
In this article I will analyze the recent shift in information technology
design. Contrary to ten years ago, today the designers no longer try to make
the interfaces invisible. Instead, the interaction
is treated as an event - as opposed to "non-event", as in the
previous "invisible interface" paradigm. Put differently, using
personal information devices is now conceived as a carefully orchestrated experience, rather than only a means to
an end. I will discuss different aspects of this new interface paradigm using
the examples of OSX, LG Chocolate, and iPhone.
Introduction
If you recall the very first mobile phone you owned – lets
say at the end of the 1990s or maybe even the first years of this decade – and
compare to the phone you have (or wish to have) today, the difference in design
is striking.
The change in the design of mobile phones is just one
example of larger trend which I calll "aesthetisation of information
tools". The trends begins around 1996-97 (1996:Wallpaper was launched and
Collete was opened in Paris; 1997: opening of Guggenheim Bilaboo). It can
certanily be connected with the democratisation of design, the rize of
branding, the competition in global economy and other larger socio-economic
shifts. However, there are also particar reasons for it -- non-reducible to
these other forces.
Untl mid 1990s only people working in particular jobs spend
all their time interacting with information. In addition, these interactions
were limited to work spaces and times;
they were not spilling into leasuire and other non-work activities. The rize of
information society has greatly increased the proportion of people whose work
involves information processing. At the same time, during the 1990s,
interacting with informaton via computers and computer-based devices has
gradualy entered people’s lives outside of fwork. Because of its inherent
multifunctionality and expandability, a computer and other devices build on top
of it such as a mobile phone came to be used for all kinds of non-work
activities: entertainment, culture, social life, communication with others.
Consequently, work and non-work, professional and personal met within the same
information processing machines - the same physical objects, same hardware and
software interfaces, and in some cases even the same software.
As these machines came to be redefined as consumer objects
to be used in all areas of people’s lives, their aesthetics were altered
accordingly. The associations with work and office culture and the emphasis on
efficiency and functionality came to be replaced by new references and criteria.
They include being friendly, playful, pleasurable, expressive, fashionable,
signifying cultural identity, aesthetically pleasing, and designed for
emotional satisfaction. Accordingly, the
modernist design formula “form follows function” came to be replaced by new
formulas such as “form follows emotion.”[1]
Aesthetisation
of Interfaces
Something else has happened in this process. Until this
decade the design of user interfaces was often ruled by the idea that the
interface shoud be invisible. In fact, the really successful interface was
supposed to be the one which the user does not notice. This paradigm made sense
until the middle of the 1990s – that is, during the period when, outside of
work, people used information devices on a limited basis. But what happens when
the quantity of these interactions greatly increases and information devices
become intimate companions of people's lives? The more you use a mobile phone,
a computer, a media player or another personal information device, the more you
"interact with an interface" itself.
Regardless of whether the designers realize this consciously
or not, today the design of user interaction reflects this new reality. The
designers no longer try to hide the interfaces. Instead, the interaction is treated as an event - as
opposed to "non-event", as in the previous "invisible
interface" paradigm. Put differently, using personal information devices
is now conceived as a carefully orchestrated experience, rather than only a means to an end. The interaction
explicitly calls attention to itself. The interface engages the user in a kind
of game. The user is asked to devote significant emotional, perceptual and
cognitive resources to the very act of operating the device.
OS X
Today a typical information device such as a mobile phone
has two kinds of interfaces. One is a physical interface such as buttons and
the phone cover. The second is a media interface: graphical icons, menus, and
sounds. The new paradigm that treats interaction as an aesthetic and meaningful
experience equally applies to both types of interfaces.
The most dramatic example of the historical shift in how
interfaces are understood is the differences in user interface design between
the successive generations of the operating system (OS) used in Apple computers
– OS 9 and OS X. Released in October of 1999, OS 9 was the last version of Mac
OS still based on the original system which came with the first Macintosh in
1984. Its look and feel – the strict geometry of horizontal and vertical lines,
the similarly restrictive pallete of greys and white, simple and business-like
icons – speaks of modernist design and "form follows function"
ideology. It fits with grey suites, office buildings in International Style,
and the whole twentieth century office culture.
The next version of the operating system introduced in 2001
- OS X - was a radical departure. Its
new user interface was called Aqua. Aqua's icons, buttons, windows, cursor and
other interface elements were colorful and three-dimensional. They used shadows
and transparency. The programs animated when started. The icons in Dock
playfully increased in size as the user moved a cursor over them. And if in OS
9 default desktop backgrounds were flat single-color monochrome, the
backgrounds which came with Aqua were much more visually complex, more
colorful, and assertive – drawing attention to themselves rather than trying to
be invisible.
In OS X, the interaction with the universal information
processing machine of our time – a personal computer – was redefined as as
explictly aesthetic experience. This aesthetic experience became as important
as the functionality (in technical terms, "usability"). The word
aesthetics is commonly associated with beauty, but this is not the only meaning
which is relevant here. Under OS X, user interface was aesthetized in a sense
that it was now to explicitly appeal to and stimulate senses - rather than
only users' cognitive processes.
The transformation of Apple from a company which was making
hardware and software to a world leader in consumer product design – think of
all design awards won by iMACs, Powerbooks, iPods and other Apple products – is
itself the most clear example of what I called aesthetisation of information
tools. It is relevant here to recall another
classical meaning of aesthetics: the coordination of all parts and details of
an artwork or design – lines, forms, colors, textures, materials,
movements, sounds. (I talk about classical aesthetics because twentieth century
art has often aimed at opposite effects – shock, collision, and establishment
of meaning and aesthetic experience through montage rather than unification of
parts.) The critical and commercial success of Apple products and the truly
fanatical feelings they envoke in many people to a large extent has to do with
the degree of this intergration which until now has not been seen in commercial
products in this price range. In each new product or version, the details are
refined until they all work together to create a rich, smooth, and consistent
sensorial whole. This also applies to the way hardware and software work
together. As an example, think of the the coordination between the circular
movement of user's finger on the track wheel of the original iPod and the
corresponding horizontal movement of menus on the screen (which borrows from OS
X column-view.)
In the beginning of 2000s other personal technology
companies had gradualy begun to follow Apple in putting more and more emphasis
on design of their products across all price categories. Sony started using the
"Sony Style" phrase. In 2004 Nokia introduced its first line of
"fashion phones" declaring that personal technology can be "an
object of desire" (two years later this became true for the whole mobile
phone market). By investing in industrial designs of their consumer products,
Samsung was able to move from an unknown supplier to a top world brand. Even
the companies whose information products were almost exclusively used by
professionals and business users started to compete in design of their
products. For instance, the new 2006 version of BlackBerry smart phone popular
with business people and professionals was introduced with this slogan:
"BlackBerry Pearl – Small, Smart, and Stylish".
Interaction as
Theatre; Interaction as Experience
In retrospect we can see that aesthetisation (or perhaps,
theatrisation) - of user interfaces of laptops, mobile phones, cameras and
other mobile technology which took place between approximately 2001 and 2005
was conceptually prepared in previous decades. Based on the work done in the
1980s, computer designer and theorist Brenda Laurel published a ground breaking
book Computers as Theatre in 1991.
She callled interface an expressive form and compared it with a theatrical
performance. Using Aristotle's Poetics as her model, she suggested that
interaction should lead to "pleasurable enjoyment".
The notion of interaction as theatre brings an additional
meaning to the idea that a mobile phone engages its user in a kind of game or a
play which I put forward in the beginning. In suggesting this I was thinking of
how the buttons on LG Chocolate suddenly appear glowing in red when you switch
the phone on; or how when you select some option on the same phone it confirms
your selection by replacing the current screen with a whole new graphic screen;
or, how pressing the cover of Motorola PEBBLE opens the phone in an expected
and unique way. In over words, I was referring to a variety of ways in which the current generation of mobiles responds
to user actions in a surprising and often seemingly exaggerated manner.
(This applies to both physical interfaces and media interfaces). The notion of
interaction as theatre makes us notice another dimension of this play-like
behavior. As I will describe in more detail below using the example of
switching on LG Chocolate mobile, various sensorial responses which a mobile
generates in response to our actions often are not single events but rather
sequences of effects. As in a traditional theatre play, these sequences unfold
in time. various sensorial effects play on each other, and it is their contrast
as well as the differences between the senses being addressed – touch, vision,
hearing – which together add up to a complex dramatic experience.
In 1991 when Laurel published her book the use of technology
products was still limited to particular professions but as designers of iMAC
have clearly recognised, at the end of the decade these products were becoming
the mainstream items of consumer economy. And this economy as a whole was
undergoing a fundamental change. In their 1989 book Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage
Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore argued that consumer economy was entering a
new stage where the key to succesful business was delivering experiences.
According to the authors, this was the new stage following the previous stages
centered on goods themselves and later services. The authors stated that to be
successful today, the compnay "must learn to stage a rich, compelling
experience". If Laurel envoked theatre as a way to think about the
particular case of human-computer interaction, authors of Experience Economy suggested that it can be a metaphor for
understanding the interaction between consumers and products in the new economy
in general.
The aesthetisation (which is my preferred term) of hardware
design and user interfaces of information products which took place throughout
the industry in the following decade fits very well with the idea of
"experience economy". Like any other interaction, interaction with information devices became
a designed experience. In fact, we can say that the three stages in the
development of user interfaces of computers – command-line interfaces,
classical GUI of 1970s-1990s, and the new sensual and entertaining interfaces
of post OS X era can be correlated to the three stages of consumer economy as a
whole: goods, services, and experiences. Command-line interfaces "deliver
the goods", that is, they focus on pure functionality and utility. GUI adds
"service" to interfaces. And at next stage, interfaces become
"experiences".
Experience
design in LG Chocolate
The idea of the experience economy works particularly well
to explain how the physical interaction with technology objects - as opposed to
their physical forms and screen interfaces only - was turned into the stage for
delivering rich sensorial and often seductive experiences. For instance, early
mobile phones did not have any covers at all. The screen and the key were
always there and they were always visible. By the middle of 2000s, the simple
acts of opening a mobile phone or pressing its buttons were turned into real
micro-plays: very short narratives complete with visual, tactile, and
three-dimensional effects. In the short history of mobile phones the examples
of particuar models whose commercial and critical popularity can to a
significant degree be attributed to the innovative sensorial narratives of
interaction with them are the Motorola RAZR V3 (2004) and LG Chocolate (2006;
the actual model number is LG VX-8600).
LG Chocolate sold over one million units in only eight weeks
following its introduction. This phone offers a
unique (from a 2006 point of view) interactive narrative which can be
called a real Gesamtkustwerk – directly engaging the three senses of sight,
sound and touch, and envoking the fourth sense of taste through the phone's
name and color. When the phone is closed and off, it appears as a solid
monocrome shape with its display and touchpad completely invisible. It is a
mysterious Thing. When you switch the phone on, the whole multimedia drama
unfolds. The Thing gradually awakens. Suddenly previously invisible buttons
appear in a glowing red color. The screen lights up and it begins to play an
animation. As the short animation unfolds towards its finale, the phone
suddenly vibrates at exactly the same time when the LG logo comes into the
screen.
Given that the process of aesthetization of information
tools only started less than a decade ago, I am sure that what we have seen so
far are just initial shy steps. More wild effects and experiences which we cant
even imagine today wait for us in the future.
Supermodernism:
The Aesthetics of Dissapperance
As iMAC (1998) and OS X (2001) demonstrate, aesthetisation
of information technology paradigm was applied equally to designs of
information products and and their user interfaces – i.e. both “hardware” and
“software.” In fact, although released
at diffirent time, the first iMACs (1998-1999) and OS X (2001-) share similar
aesthetic features: bright clear colors, use of transparency / translucency,
and rounded forms. And while both aim to remove the standard twentieth century
associations of information technology - cold, indiffirent to human presence,
suited only for business - they at the
same time cleverly exploit their technological identity. Both the translucency
of iMAC plastic case, and the Dock magnification and Genie effects in Aqua
interface similarly stage technology as magical and supernatural.
In this respect it is relevant that a number of Ive’s
subsequent designs of Apple products – Titanium and Aluminum PowerBooks (2001,
2003), iPod and iPOd shuffle (2001, 2005), Mac Mini (2005), the accompanying
power cables, earphones, and so on – adopted very diffirent minimal aesthetics.
In this aesthetics the technological object seems to want to dissappear, fade
into the background, and become ambient - rather than actively attracting
attention to itself and its technological magic, like the original iMACs.
Whether consciously or not, these Apple designs communicate, or rather
foretell, the new identity of personal
IT which today is still in development - the actual practical
dissappearance of technological objects as such as they become fully integrated
into other objects, surfaces, spaces and cloves. This is the stage of
ubiqutious computing in which a technological fetish is dissolved into the
overall fabric of material existence. The actual details of this potential
future dematerialisation will most probably be diffirent from how it is
imagined today, but the trend itself is clearly visible. But how to stage this
future dissapperance using technology available today? Apple designs of the
first part of the 2000s can be understood as responses to this challenge. Historically,
their particular aesthetics occupies an intermediate, transitional stage -
between the stage of technology as a designed lifestyle object (exemplified by
Apple iMACs from 1998 onward or Nokia’s Fashion collection of mobiles, 2004-)
and its future stage as an invisible infrastructure implanted inside other
objects, architectural forms and human body.
In 1998 Dutch architecture theorist Hans Ibelings has
published a slim but soon to become influential book Supermodernism in which he identified the similar aesthetics of
dissappearnce in the architecture of the 1990s as exemplified by Foundation
Cartier in Paris (Jean Nouvel, 1994), Railload Switch Tower in Basel (Herzog
& De Meuron, 1994-1997), or French National Library in Paris (Dominique Perrault,
1989). According to Ibelings, supermodern aesthetics “is characterized mainly
by the absense of distinguiishing marks, by neutrality.”[2] This
aesthetics stands in opposition to previos architectural aesthetics of the
1980s and early 1990s: “Whereas postmodernist and deconstructivist architecture
almost always contain a message, today architecture is increasingly conceived
as an empty medium.”[3]
But while architecture as “an empty medium” on purpose on purpose avoids
communicating messages and over-signifying, it does instead something diffirent
and new. It creates unique sensorial experiences. The large, open and empty
interior volumes, the use of translucency and transparency, the employment of a
variety of new materials and finishes which create finely focused sensorial
effects – all these tactics have been by supermodern architects to craft unique
spatial experiences – where the experience one can have by being inside a
particular building cannot be duplicated anywhere else.
In retrospect, we can correlate supermodern aesthetics with
the rise of “experience design” / “experience economy” in the second part of
the 1990s. We can also see it as already partially employing the new logic of
architecture which becomes fully operational in the next decade – that is,
“signature” buildings by brand-name architects crucial for branding cities and
companies alike. Canonical supermodern buildings used simple geometric volumes
which offered subtle sensorial effects inside and tried to dissappear when seen
from a distance. Canonical brand architecture of 2000s appears to work
diffirently – its easily identifiable and unique forms function as icons
designed for media communication. But at the same time, just as supermodern
buildings, signature iconic buildings also function as spatial destinations,
i.e. they offer unique sensorial experiences inside. The complex and dynamic
forms of Frank Gerrhy’s buildings such as Guggenheim Bilaboo, Los Angeles
Disney Hall, or Strata Center at MIT is a perfect example of this double function
– they look dramatic and unique when photographed, and they simultaneosly
promise a unqiue spatial experience which requires a physical visit.
Ibelings was looking only at architecture, but ten years
later, we can say that the same supermodern aesthetics was put forward by Ives
and his team in designing Apple products in the first half of the 2000s. The
new developed materials and finishes, the flat largely empty surfaces
uninterrupted by multiple buttons or screws (as it is the case in typical technological
objects), the monochrome appearance which visually emphasises the shape as a
whole, the rounded corners, the glow of Apple logo which creates a
three-dimensional effect, and the simplicity of the overall 3D form – all these
techniques work together to create a powerful impression that an object is
about to fade and completely dissolve. And at the same time, the same object –
a laptop, monitor, or iPOD - creates another spatial experience which, inspite
of the dramatic diffirences in size between these buildings and architecture,
is a perfect analog of “a new spatial sensibility” that Ibelings found in
supermodern buildings - “boundless and
undefined space” which however “is not an emptiness but a safe contained, a
flexible shell.”[4]
Ibelings has speculated about the diffirent reasons for
supermodern aesthetics in architecture, but in the case of personal information
technologies, the spatial form which is simultaneosly “boundless” and
“undefined” and also “a safe contained, a flexible shell,” seem to me a perfect
spatial metaphors for the meanings of these technologies as intended by Apple,
Nokia and other progressive (i.e. attuned to lifestyle and cultural trends)
technology/design companies in 2000s – mobility, flexibility, lack of predefined
boundaries and limits. The last meaning, however, also happens to define a
modern computer in theoretical terms – a universal simulation machine which via
software can simulate unlimited number of other machines and tools and, again
via software, is infinetely expandable. But how do you find a visual and/or
spatial expression for such a meta-machine? This is one of the challenges of
contemporary aesthetics. The
supermodernist aesthetics of Apple products as designed by Ive and his team
has so far been one of more succesful solutions to this fundamental challenge.
______________________
Lev Manovich,
TATE lecture, September 8, 2007
* Lev Manovich is a respected new media theorist. His most
famous book is “The Language of New Media”.
Find more texts and news on Lev Manovich on his website: http://www.manovich.net/