Synthesis

Attached is a useful survey of how to design computational media things : tools, apps, services, even events, and performances with an aesthetic intent.

Some points / caveats:

• No one article can adequately represent all the different techniques, but this one serves as a good index.  (I'm sure Stacey K could point to a lot more :)

• This addresses the practical matter of how to design a sociotechnical thing: software application like a mobile app, a service like an augmented reality platform for use by curators or academic game developers, or an immersive responsive media environment for exploring Mars or terrestrial ecosystem, or an immersive environment for modeling buildings and streets, according to criteria that can be stated in advance:  for such and such a demographic, for a specific purpose -- like helping ASU seniors create scenarios about climate change for high school students.

• Such digital design methods are a practical and technical matter.  Research in digital design is NOT the same as using digital design to do research (which could be any inquiry to expand human knowledge -- eg why are we here?   Why are we mortal?  What is a gesture?   When should we replace some human work by machine work?   Etc etc etc)

• Digital design method is also NOT art.

 (Despite the authors' citation of Lev Manovich. )

• Experimental studies of experience, and (non-anthropocentric) experiential experiments, and in general any scientific (vs engineering) research  are NOT well served by pre-packaged methods.  I can talk about that.

Having said all that, the design methods surveyed are extremely useful when the sociotechnical context is stable, and it's time to make something work robustly enough to be used and useful.   Please study this carefully if you aim to making something "usable" by "other people."

The most valuable aspect of this article is its concrete observations about accommodating the putative "users" of (engineering lingo) / "audience" for (art lingo)  what you make in the very process of inventing and designing what you make.

Neither engineers nor artists are very good about this.  

That's why the Topological Media Lab was set up with a different ethical stance : NEITHER as an isolated engineering lab, NOR as an isolate artist but as home for fundamental inquiry that uses art and engineering research techniques.   So, can we do engineering or art research reflexively  (the makers are their own subjects and objects of study as well as the people they purport to help) and abductively?

Xin Wei