What I've learned in "Interaction Culture"

This is the take-home essay part of the final exam in "Interaction Culture". It ask you to write about the points of view towards the YouTube video "Brand Experience Showreel" from three different perspectives: phenomenological, structuralist and post-structuralist. I guess this is a best summary of what I've learned during this semester in this course, so I post it here as the first post related to HCId.

The video: Brand Experience showreel, by Stephen Van Elst

A phenomenological response

From the notion “Meaning exists in people’s mind”, a phenomenologist might ask “What’s the designer’s intention behind the interactions?”

Since they are brand experience interfaces, the purpose behind can be creating customers’ positive perception of the brand through positive user experiences. The Nab club digital wall has been designed to make an innovative, leisure, enjoyable environment for the club customers. Though doing this, hopefully the brand “Nab Club” can be associated with that kind of environment.

A structuralist response

From the notion of “Meaning exists in the structure itself.” A structuralist might ask “What elements or features do those interfaces have?”

Take the Nab Club Digital Wall for example, there are two different scenes shown in that part of video:

One consists of birds, flowers and insects. All of them are mostly red. They tend to convey a sense of club life through those elements and the color. The other one consists of water, fish, sea weed and the flowing brand logo. It tends to construct a feeling of peace, relax and connect that impression with the brand “Nab Club”.

A post-structuralist response

From the notion of “Author is dead”

The company/brand is constructing itself through designing the brand experience interface. By interacting with the mini-cooper interactive environment, customers hopefully will have the impression that mini-cooper will be a joy to their lives.

From the notion of “Culture logic”

It’s the culture logic which is directing the design of all these interaction. Through human history, flowers, birds and fishes tend to be connected with joy and leisure. Making interactions with artifact as natural as in the physical world is the trend in the area of interaction design nowadays. That’s the rationale behind the circling screen, multi-touch tech, digital wall and digital floor.

My own response as an interaction designer

I think the phenomenology approach is most valuable for me here. It helps me to radically understand why these interfaces exist and why they have been designed that way. From the designer’s point of view, they’re like advertisements in a more interactive way. The ultimate purpose here is to make customers feel good about the brand. How to achieve this? Knowing the customers’ horizon can be helpful. To most people, flowers, birds and fishes tend to be connected with joy and leisure. They’re like common senses. Moreover, People come to night club usually seek for a place which is different, far from the world which he’s tired of, maybe quiet and maybe in the sea. People who are interested in mini-cooper probably are in favor of leisure, fun and sports.

Structuralistic perspective also might help in the process of the design. How to construct the interface in a way that it will make more powerful impact on the customers? How to compose the sound, visual motion and multi-touch together to make the interaction a smooth, aesthetical, innovative and finally enjoyable experience? This question reminds me the cinema techniques we learned in class.

Conclusion

This essay states points of view toward the YouTube video “Brand Experience Showreel” from three different perspectives: phenomenology, structuralism and post-structuralism. After that as an interaction designer I talked about my personal inclinations among the three of them.