Thinking through making is about revealing the unknown unknowns.

There are five (5) paradigms that are particularly salient for designing and evaluating interactive systems. I’m going to skip the third and last ones called Visibility and Thickness of Practice. The remaining three are broken down here with three questions you need to ask yourselves regarding your Museum 2.0

Thinking Through Doing

This theme describes how the thought (mind) and action (body) are deeply integrated and how they co-produce learning an reasoning. Remember the days of when you were learning how to tie your shoe? You didn’t learn by watching a video or reading a manual. No. You kept trying until you got it right.

Direct physical interaction with the world is a key constituting factor of cognitive development during childhood. But even if your core audience or market(s) are adults, the importance of physical action as an active component of our cognition extends beyond early developmental stages.

Lets look at what you have…a mouse, and a keyboard. Since I know you won’t be doing any programming with video or audio input, these are the two tools that lend you the most physical interactions with your current project.

How are you enhancing learning it with the integration of jQuery interfacing and feedback?

Performance

Describes the rich actions our bodies are capable of, and how physical actions our bodies are capable of, and how physical action can be both faster and more nuanced than symbolic cognition. But as realized by the last them, we’re restricted by how “physical” we can get when it comes to online interfacing. Here’s a great quote by Bill Buxton:

When compared to other human operated machinery (such as the automobile), today’s computer systems make extremely poor use of the potential of the human’s sensory and motor systems? The controls on the average user’s shower are probably better human-engineered than those of the computer on which far more time is spent.

What performance of your users are you specifically measuring in your Museum 2.0?

Risk

Explores how the uncertainty and risk of physical co-presence shapes interpersonal and human-computer interactions. Another wonderful quote about this particular paradigm:

But where there is no risk and every commitment can be revoked without consequences, choice becomes arbitrary and meaningless. – Hubert Dreyfus

Risk is having to choose an action which cannot be undone while the consequences of the action are not fully knowable ahead of time. Technologies of telepresence and digital design tools often strive to minimize or eliminate risk. Digital artifacts often do not exhibit commitment to actions. In fact, being able to index at random into the past of our creation through undo/redo and versioning may be the single most important characteristic that separates digital from physical interactions. Despite the obvious benefits of simulation and virtualization, retaining elements of risk in practice can be beneficial. With the challenges of risk come opportunities for more trusting, committed, responsible, and focused interactions in both social and individual activities.

How much flexibility are you allowing your user? Where in your Museum 2.0 can the user self-edit themselves or their environment?

What I’m listening to at work right now:

Bon Iver – For Emma by donknox

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