Impact of Interface Design

""Electronic Visualisation in Arts and Culture explores a variety of new theory and technologies, including devices and techniques for motion capture for music and performance, advanced photographic techniques, computer generated images derived from different sources, game engine software, airflow to capture the motions of bird flight and low-altitude imagery from airborne devices.

The international authors of this book are practising experts from universities, art practices and organisations, research centres and independent research. They describe electronic visualisation used for such diverse aspects of culture as airborne imagery, computer generated art based on the autoimmune system, motion capture for music and for sign language, the visualisation of time and the long term preservation of these materials. Selected from the EVA London conferences from 2009-2012, held in association with the Computer Arts Society of the British Computer Society, the authors have reviewed, extended and fully updated their work for this state-of-the-art volume.
""

Advanced Extensible Interface (AXI) is the most commonly used bus protocols in the day-today because of its high performance and high-frequency operation without using complex bridges. AXI is also backward-compatible with existing AHB and APB interfaces. So verification of driver logic using AMBA-AXI UVM is presented in this paper. The AXI is used for multiple outstanding operations which is only possible in the other protocol but it is possible in AXI because it contains different write address and data channels and AXI also supports out of order transfer based on the transaction ID which is generated at the start of the transfer. The driver logic for the AXI has been designed and implemented using the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM).The signaling of the five channels such as write address, write data, write response, read address, read data channel of AXI protocol are considered for verification. According to the AXI protocol,the signals of these channels are driven to the interconnect and results are observed for single master and single slave. The driver logic has been implemented and verified successfully according to AXI protocol using the Rivera Pro. The results observed for single master and single slave have shown the correctness of AMBA-AXI design in Verilog. KEYWORDS AMBA(Advance Microcontroller Bus Architecture),AXI(Advanced Extensible Interface),UVM(Universal Verification Methodology),channel.

In 21. century information technology is developing day by day. Especially information communication technology are used for sharing feelings and informations by people.
Therefore information communication technologies (ICT) are so important for humanity. The major qualification of information communication technologies, especially of mobile ones, is making life easier that all information can be rapidly obtained through different sources. Thanks to the 3G technology, online newspapers have reached readers by mobile devices. In addition, divergent screen sizes, operating capacities, Internet connection speeds, information display styles and interface designs of mobile devices influence the way news is perceived by readers.
This dissertation has examined the compatibility of the web pages of newspapers with mobile devices in terms of interaction design. To this end, new communication environments, transformation of communication and interaction design in mobile publishing have been analyzed. In the research section of the study, the experiments made about this issue have been reviewed. Also, mobile communication experts from Hürriyet, Milliyet and Sabah have been interviewed. A survey designed about this issue was published on the Internet. Last of all, in order to observe users’ individual experiences with mobile devices, the method of experimental design was implemented with a group of participants. Consequently, the standardization that should be applied to mobile interface design has been specified.

The Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang proposed the theory of "kicking away the ladder", in reference to how the world's great powers managed to establish themselves as such after a prolonged period of robust measures to protect their development. Once they achieved that, they entered the free global market, demanding that small countries eschew any protectionist measures and immediately enter the 'free trade' in a highly unprotected manner. According to this approach, Cybernetics in Latin America can be interpreted in different ways: it can be a confirmation of the disappearance of technological, social, and industrial development defended by the already non-existent Latin American developmental states that had a utopian view of technology as a tool for self-determination, but, on the other, it can also be a provocation for those in the region who still believe in the possibilities of Cybernetics to develop and support its proposals. There is a fundamental difference between using technology and producing it, while the ways of using it are also techniques or technologies in themselves. This paper outlines the meaning of first-order cybernetics and then interprets what second-order cybernetics has represented in Latin America, its Viable System Model, and how its components have evolved.

Narrative is viewed by a growing body of interdisciplinary work as an immanent medium through which humans interpret the world and their life. The author claims that in accordance, a level of narrative interpretation should be situated within the temporality of lived experience, of being-in-interaction with the world. To achieve this, the predominant understanding of narrative as an abstract structure actualized in conscious, reflective thought should be supplemented with a more immediate phenomenological level, where narrative framing is in direct interplay with embodied experience. In this scope, this thesis develops an initial theoretical framework that posits narrativity, the narrative quality of experience, as an embodied and enactive modality.
Paul Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity, which develops a model of dynamic circularity between action, narrative interpretation, and the formation of life stories, is positioned at the base of this framework. Ricoeur’s view is adapted and expanded via Alva Noë’s theory of enactive perception, according to which all perceptual experience is actively enacted through implicit sensorimotor knowledge, and involves skillful interpretation via ‘practical understanding’ of movement in environment. The author stipulates that narrativity might be entangled with enactive perception, and therefore construed in relationality to the dynamics of movement and action. This claim is further expanded via Mieke Bal’s narratological concept of focalization –according to which narrative perspective is calibrated through “the movement of the look” – to suggest the concept of enactive narrative focalization. 
This framework is applied to discuss interactive digital narrative media, where the spectator is positioned inside the ‘storyworld’ to become an interactor, and stories unfold through navigating an environment. By analyzing past work in this field such as the game Journey (2012), the author claims that his thought on embodied narrativity provides a potentially valuable theorization of how interactive narratives take shape in experience. In particular, the notion of enactive focalization underscores the narrativity of movement, and hence the resonances between the authoring of tangible movement dynamics in digital environments and narrative understanding.

Keywords: narrative phenomenology; interactive digital narrative; embodied cognition; enactive perception; environmental storytelling; movement dynamics; focalization; narrative identity.

This article presents a review on how software usability could be increased for users with less computer
literacy. The literature was reviewed to extract user interface design principles by identifying the similar
problems of this group of users. There are different groups of users with less computer literacy. However,
based on the literature three groups of them need special attention from software designers. The first group
is elderly users, as users with lack of computer background. The second group is children, as novice users
and the third group is users with mental or physical disorders. Therefore, this study intends to focus on the
mentioned groups, followed by a comparison between previous researches in the field, which reveals that
some commonalities exist between the needs of these users. These commonalities were used to extract user
interface design principles such as (a) reducing the number of features available at any given time, (b)
avoiding using computer terms, (c) putting customization ability for font, color, size and (d) using
appropriate graphical objects such as avatar or icon. Taking these principles into account can solve software
usability problems and increase satisfaction of users with less computer literacy.

YouTube is able to generate new forms of user interactions and an entire evolutionary cycle in audiovisual languages and digital culture through the interface. This platform offers the possibility for the user to assume the functions of prosumer of audiovisual contents, through generating their own digital identities. In this way they are able to influence and be part of the society of production, diffusion and audiovisual user interactions. The main aim of this research was to obtain a general idea and a first approximation of the tendencies of audiovisual popular user interactions and the digital culture on YouTube, which was undertaken by means of the quantitative analysis of YouTube video interfaces selected by YouTube categories. In order to extract this information, a quantitative analysis of the most viewed channels and videos was undertaken. These interface categories were those with more views, with more subscribers, with more likes and dislikes, with more comments, as well as the average time of some of the most viewed videos. This was done through a sample of 160 most viewed videos of the platform. The aim was to understand the common denominators and interface preferences that users manifest through their interactions with videos, channels and thematic categories in the YouTube digital culture interface. The conclusion from the study was that the YouTube categories that enjoy the most popularity are education and music, at the same time the interaction features of each category can also be defined on the YouTube platform.

Web sites are increasingly adapted towards their users by a variety of dynamic techniques, providing improved personalization for the individual. In this paper we discuss various possible approaches from a museological as well as a technical point of view. A number of Web sites, some produced by museums and some in other fields such as e-commerce or Internet based information services, will be considered as case studies. All use personalization techniques in ways that could be beneficial also for the cultural sector. Other possible applications such as audio guides or interactive devices will also be considered, especially with respect to how this technique could help in the personalization of museum Web sites. Currently most museums lag well behind the state of the art with respect to on-line personalization. Perhaps this paper will inspire some museums to add personalization facilities to their Web sites the next time they undertake major updates.

Keywords: Personalization, customization, adaptivity, adaptability, museums, Web sites.

I want freedom for the full expression on my personality.
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

From the educational reform in 1928 1 , with an abrupt interruption in 1929, up to Gui Bonsiepe's design development for the Production Development Corporation (Corfo) 2 , interrupted in September 1973, we can distinguish a period in both Chilean and Latin American history where different design definitions emerged as the main axis for a possible and effective self-determination. This meant that various public policies, with greater or lesser continuity, were gradually consolidating development through added value. Symbolically at least, public policies focused on reversing the process of dependence on small economies, countering the endogenous system of exclusive production of raw materials with little added value. Within this period we witness two conjunctures that come together as exceptional situations that go beyond the adoption of an external productive system.

Interfaces alquímicas são aquelas que alteram um dispositivo, ou uma matéria, ou o próprio alquimista, ou o usuário. Na medida em que estão alterando uma percepção de um indivíduo, então há interfaces alquímicas. Incluindo-se no gênero indivíduo, também os próprios dispositivos tecnológicos, porque, pensando alquímicamente, tudo que age tem um anima. Onde há a ars alquímica em andamento, há transmutação! /Alchemical interfaces are those that alter a device, or a matter, or the alchemist himself, or the user. To the extent that they are altering an individual's perception, then there are alchemical interfaces. Including in the individual genre, also the technological devices themselves, because, thinking alchemically, everything that acts has an anima. Where there is the alchemical ars in progress, there is transmutation!

Natural Capital is one of the new scenarios in which the discipline of Design - in particular of visual communication - is called to be able to have its say. A radical paradigm shift and approach to the Natural System’s communication project has been underway for about 10 years. The park authority system and the network of actors involved in the management of
the Natural Capital of our planet has begun to implement Design-Driven solutions. From the emblematic cases of the Norwegian National Parks in Norway, passing through the Greek Calabria Cultural Park, up to the educational practices, the role of the design project as a system clearly emerges, as a strategic discipline capable of integrated responses between immaterial and real-virtual material, proposing, from the point of view of language, truly structured, territorial and relational solutions; narrative systems of history, of diversity, and therefore of the “culture” of a place through real crossmedia storytelling, able to immerse people - right from
reading a flyer or post on social media - in the specific features offered from the single park. The careful study of the peculiarities that each reality brings with it - also through tools borrowed from historiographical research, or in the most interesting archaeological cases - together with a range of immersive experiences, are the key that Design-Driven approaches can give to the paradigm change required: from park visitor to inhabitant.

Lester Beall facilitated the visual communication of the New Deal; electrification, radio, water and other large-scale infrastructural shifts were embodied in modern, direct and clear campaigns sponsored by the Rural Electrification Administration. The progressive policies of the New Deal were visualized through graphic design as a mediating discipline; though one that primarily sought passive announcement and uncritical reception, rather than a more active discourse aimed at critical participation. The capacity for the discipline of graphic design to serve as a mediator of coming infrastructural change and invite a more critical reflection on the inevitable shift towards renewable energy has been eroded by decades of hyper-capitalist expansion since the New Deal.
Renewable energy infrastructure connects a complex network of information, technology, and spatial practice. Such infrastructure is at the heart of current discourse around a potential Green New Deal. The objective of this project is to visualize the presence of such infrastructure in the landscape, and its mediation through interfaces seen and unseen. Do we see the complex relationships created by mediating domestic technologies that function not out in the physical landscape, but rather in a digital landscape of information networks?
This project is an attempt to critically construct a speculative view of an uncertain future of renewable energy. How images and visualizations construct, and relay states of change, current uncertainty and future possibility will be brought into focus through the weaving of theoretical frameworks that constitute our understanding of nature, infrastructure, and security.

Automobile manufacturers are constantly trying to keep up with current technology trends and respond to today's societal challenges. Cars have become more than just a means for transportation, they are now a fully embedded technological 'multifunctional living space'. The increased complexity of automotive user interfaces, driven by the need for using consumer electronic devices in cars as well as improving comfort, and the overall user/driver experience, has sparked a range of new research within this field of study. The number of infotainment functions (controlled as tertiary tasks) with which a user can interact while driving has greatly increased, making the primary task of driving even more challenging. In creating a better automotive user experience, automobile manufacturers have unintentionally increased the cognitive load of the driver when they are performing these tertiary tasks. This research study aims to reduce the cognitive load of the driver/user by suggesting novel, simple menu design interfaces, which add design improvements in two function aspects (entertainment and comfort) by implementing visual, hands-free and gestural based interfaces. This research study will add to the body of literature aimed at improving driver safety and driving experience while performing a tertiary task.

E-learning has the potential to be a very personalized experience and can be tailored to the individual involved. So far science museums have yet to tap into this potential to any great extent, partly due to the relative newness of the technology involved and  partly due to the expense. This chapter covers some of the speculative efforts that may improve the situation for the future, including the SAGRES project and the  Ingenious website among other examples. It is hoped that this will be helpful to science museums and centers that are considering the addition of personalization features to their own website. Currently website personalization should be used with caution, but larger organizations should be considering the potential if they have not already started to do so.

Keywords: Accessibility; Digital Collections; E-Learning; Electronic Database;Electronic Resources; Information Access; Internet Access; Internet-Based Technologies; Metadata Creation; Online Community; Online Resources; Personal Use of IT; User Expectations; User Experience; User Interface; User Needs; Virtual Community Building; Web Development; Web Resources; Web-Based Services

Authoring tools are a crucial component in the practice and research of interactive digital narrative design, yet no recent meta-analysis or mapping of such tools exists that would make it possible to comparatively study their defining qualities and characteristics and their effects on the artefacts produced with them. As a first step towards this goal, we created an online resource [1] in which we surveyed and classified over 300 tools. This paper lays out our proposed categorisation and description framework for IDN authoring tools. After exploring our definition of authoring tools and research methodology, we describe 9 categories and 38 descriptors for tool analysis and comparison. We conclude with a sample analysis of Twine [2].

Much of the research and development effort in the Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS) community is guided by a design approach, according to which user desires, expectations and agency are central. This approach may place unnecessary limitations on the design space. I argue for the validity and significance of an alternative, expressive approach, which may be more appealing to artists, and offer some formal parameters of IDS-as-Art. These open up for authors the ability to explore the creation of vastly complex and dynamic storyworlds that highlight contingency and probability; and the possibility of manipulating agency as subject matter to implicate users, through userly performance, in the storyworld’s meaning. IDS can thus offer users an opportunity to reflect upon various aspects of their performance, including un- and subintentional aspects.

O turismo é um dos segmentos que apresentam grande destaque e crescimento. A crescente demanda turística gera a necessidade de ampliação das fontes de informações. Sendo assim, as novas tecnologias favorecem a troca de conhecimento e possibilitam o intercâmbio de informações em tempo real. Através de aplicativos móveis pode-se ter conhecimento do local de destino com um maior grau de interação, onde enorme concorrência exige aplicativos bem projetados. Assim, este trabalho tem por objetivo solucionar problemas de interface de um aplicativo móvel turístico, chamado Find Natal que surgiu da parceria de uma equipe multidisciplinar das áreas de turismo, informática e design. Os problemas de interface foram avaliados por meio de duas técnicas distintas: empírica e analítica. Com isso, foram apontadas as fraquezas do aplicativo, assim como onde devem ser realizadas as respectivas melhorias sob a ótica do design, a fim de incrementar a interação dos usuários com o aplicativo.

Este texto tiene la intención de exponer algunos desafíos del posthumanismo de Braidotti, señalar sus características, trazar algunos puentes con el diseño digital y, acogiéndose a su política afirmativa, hacer una humilde propuesta de espacio de diseño ético-político compatible con su visión del mundo en la era del Antropoceno.

En la primera parte se busca situar el pensamiento de Braidotti en relación al sujeto como proceso relacional. En la segunda parte se habla de como el movimiento de software libre puede albergar gran parte de los artefactos y dispositivos ético políticos alrededor de los que construir una sociedad con capacidad de creación de una subjetividad relacional ecodependiente e interdependiente, consciente y localizada. Se analiza el impacto del género en los procesos de diseño ligados a los mecanismos sociales digitales y los devenires ligados a la automatización del trabajo como amenaza de orden social liderada, entre otros factores, por la inteligencia artificial. En este tramo se expone  la crisis de diversidad que compone el sector y como el hecho de sustituir cuerpos por identidades no corpóreas, puede ayudar a perpetuar el género masculino como única voz apoyándose en la ilusión de neutralidad.

En todas estas construcciones tecnológicas el diseñador tiene un rol crucial. Para poder acudir desde el diseño a la llamada a las políticas afirmativas que demanda Braidotti, los diseñadores debemos aceptar nuestra responsabilidad en el desafío posthumanista y proponer diseños y procesos que garanticen la subjetividad ética y política de seres ecodependientes e interdependientes, localizados y autoorganizados, lejos de las lógicas delirantes del capitalismo pero abrazando las capacidades tecnológicas y científicas entendidas bajo procesos sostenibles e iterativos en consonancia con un planeta finito.

Interface Critique is an attempt to interrogate apparatuses and applications. How can we examine the dissolving intersections between human and machine? How can we comprehend the contexts and conditions of their production? Where and how do these interfaces govern and guide us? How do they shape our perception of our surroundings and of our world? And what significance could the interface have in the context of current technological, social and economical developments?

Applications providing “yellow pages information” for use over the web should ideally be based on
structured information. Use of web pages providing unstructured information poses variety of problems to
the user, such as use of arbitrary formats, unsuitability for machine processing and likely incompleteness of
information. Structured data alleviates these problems but we require more. Capturing the semantics of a
domain in the form of an ontology is necessary to ensure that unforeseen application can easily be created
at a later date. Very often yellow page systems are implemented using a centralized database. In some
cases, human intermediaries accessible over the phone network examine a centralized database and use
their reasoning ability to deal with the user’s need for information. Centralized operation and considerable
central administration make these systems expensive to operate. Scaling up such systems is difficult. They
behave like isolated systems and it is common for such systems to be highly domain specific, for instance
systems dealing with accommodation and travel. This paper explores an alternative – a highly distributed
system design meeting a variety of needs – considerably reducing efforts required at a central organization,
enabling large numbers of vendors to enter information about their own products and services, enabling
end-users to contribute information such as their own ratings, using an ontology to describe each domain
of application in a flexible manner for uses foreseen and unforeseen, enabling distributed search and mashups,
use of vendor independent standards, using reasoning to find the best matches to a given query, geospatial
reasoning and a simple, interactive, mobile application/interface. We view this design as one in
which vendors and end-users do the bulk of the work in building large distributed collections of
information in a Web 2.0 style. We give importance to geo-spatial information and mobile applications
because of the very wide-spread use of mobile phones and their inherent ability to provide some
information about the current location of the user. We have created a prototype using the Jena Toolkit and
geo-spatial extensions to SPARQL. We use simple and shallow reasoning to give inferred information in
addition to explicitly stored information. We have tested this prototype by asking a group of typical users to
use it and to provide structured feedback. We have summarized this feedback in the paper. We believe that
the technology can be applied in many contexts in addition to yellow page systems. The essential features
are the involvement of a set of creators of information and a set of end-users, the two sets not being
mutually exclusive and the use of an ontology that can span a number of domains in the context of product
and service vendors.

Physical disabled access is something that most museums
consider very seriously. Indeed, there are normally legal requirements to do so. However, online disabled access is still a
relatively novel field. Most museums have not yet considered the
issues in depth. The Human-Computer Interface for their websites
is normally tested with major browsers, but not with specialist
browsers or against the relevant accessibility and validation
standards. We consider the current state of the art in this area and
mention an accessibility survey of some museum websites.

In this paper, we apply Instructional-design theories and case study methodology to investigate the effects of social interface features in the forum of a Connectivist Massive Online Open Course (cMOOC), besides that we examined the integration of the Twitter microblog in this course. The course applied an open portal, a forum, a blog with daily suggestions, and a communicative channel through the hashtag #ccourses, i.e. the Twitter was applied as a shared interest channel. The investigation indicated that the social resources available on the forum interface, blog and Twitter (e.g.: response system, sharing, like button, mention feature @username, avatar etc.) promotes the building of emotional capital between students, the sense of belonging and new participation ways. When we consider the expansion of social interfaces over the past decade (represented by platforms such as Facebook, Twitter etc.), it seems correct to connect these interfaces to the growth of active social participation, collaborative construction, content appropriation and user-led content production. According to Crumlish and Malone (2009), social interface affordances can transform user behavior because the architecture of social interfaces must support and stimulate connections, but we think they do more than that: social interfaces have the potential to transform a digital space in a space of affinity, as well as transforming the fabric of interactions. In the context of e-learning, this transformation can be a good strategy for tackling dropout rates and stimulating the feeling of belonging and students participation. Our research has identified that the Connected Courses applied a portal, which features was similar to those applied to social interfaces, as well as maintained close dialogue with social networks such as Twitter (the portal was fed back by student tweets). In the analysis, we found that the materiality of design demonstrates how important interface features are in building a friendlier environment, connections, and social dynamics that fosters student-to-student interactions, as well as more horizontal relationships between students and tutors. In the analysis of the cMOOC forum, we identified tools for affective economy, which are similar to social networking affordances like Facebook and Twitter. In the cluster of tools for interaction on topics, there were buttons to appreciate and a flag for inappropriate content, such resources make it possible to express agreement, disagreement or affection among users. With these features, the software provides a material ecology that supports the existence of an affective economy, which is very relevant because it stimulates interests and is able to increase motivation in the learning process. In addition, the forum interface also provided configurations whose features highlighted individual identities. Identity resources have an essential role in the development of virtual collectives, since these resources make it possible to perform identities, earn merits, in short, articulate the elements that build personality in digital media and express the participation of a member in a community. Therefore, the research findings indicated that the use of social networks, and the integration of social resources into the course environment, has the power to transform positively the fabric of interactions, transforming the learning process.

La presente tesis–obra desarrolla teórica y artísticamente una tecnopoética de la llama para señalar tensiones estéticas y conceptuales en determinados paradigmas tecnológicos frecuentados por el arte electrónico en el campo particular del performance digital. Se desarrollan y amplían los conceptos interfaz y máquina a partir de introducir nuevos enfoques relacionales que provienen de la termodinámica y el pensamiento complejo de Edgar Morin. Se presentan dos derivas de obra performática: Código*Pléyade y Código*Voz-ignis en las que el devenir maquinal del fuego aporta un comentario en torno a la génesis de la tecnología y se reconoce como origen común de todas las máquinas naturales, entre ellas el cuerpo, y de las máquinas artificiales por extensión. La propuesta arquemaquinal entonces funciona como una suerte de zoom out antropotécnico que habilita la reformulación desjerarquizada de las interfaces interactivas hacia un dispositivo performático multidimensional. Propone una reflexión estética, tecnocultural y epistemológica del devenir electrónico del fuego - la transformación instrumental del fuego en electricidad y reducto numérico- en donde se reconocen pérdidas y dispersiones que van aparentadas con la noción de ser en la era digital.

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Tesis de Maestría en Tecnología y Estética de las Artes Electrónicas, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina.
Proyecto apoyado por el Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes y el Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología de México a través de su Programa de Becas para Estudios en el Extranjero 2012-2013

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El siguiente trabajo intentará brindar un punto de vista introductorio, desde una disciplina proyectual como el diseño industrial, respecto al individuo y su relación inmediata con su entorno; a la vez que intentará esbozar una definición elaborada del acontecimiento propio que surge en dicha relación.

"Interactive multi-touch screens in museums are often used for a dual purpose: to both educate and entertain visitors. With this in mind, how can the sense of ‘delight’ in the use of a multi-touch screen in a museum be explained? What kinds of ‘delight’ may visitors experience, and why? A case study was enacted in April 2012 on One Road, an interactive multi-touch installation in the ‘Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route’ exhibition at the Australian Museum, Sydney. The study aimed to investigate user experiences of the interactive, and a range of different behaviours were observed. A discussion of the findings with reference to the concept of ‘delight’ in interface design examined how different aged visitors appeared to find ‘delight’ in different entertaining and educational features of One Road, and questioned whether entertainment-focused ‘delight’ was positive or negative. These considerations are important for interface designers. With further research, we may come to better understand and continue to investigate how an interface design on a multi-touch surface in a museum can be ‘delightful’, and influence users’ experiences.

Keywords:
Multi-touch interface, user experiences, interactive applications, human-computer interaction, case study"

The Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang proposed the theory of "kicking away the ladder", in reference to how the world’s great powers managed to establish themselves as such after a prolonged period of robust measures to protect their development. Once they achieved that, they entered the free global market, demanding that small countries eschew any protectionist measures and immediately enter the ‘free trade’ in a highly unprotected manner. According to this approach, Cybernetics in Latin America can be interpreted in different ways: it can be a confirmation of the disappearance of technological, social, and industrial development defended by the already non-existent Latin American developmental states that had a utopian view of technology as a tool for self-determination, but, on the other, it can also be a provocation for those in the region who still believe in the possibilities of Cybernetics to develop and support its proposals. There is a fundamental difference between using technology and producing it, while the ways of using it are also techniques or technologies in themselves. This paper outlines the meaning of first-order cybernetics and then interprets what second-order cybernetics has represented in Latin America, its Viable System Model , and how its components have evolved.

Aesthetic techniques are increasingly used by marketeers to create enticing digital products. In this paper, I work with the aesthetic experiences of one audience group to consider the psychological impact of living in a culture where digital devices are deliberately designed to influence behaviour. I argue that aesthetic encounters can help with understanding the impact of the interplay between visual stimulus, affect and digital culture, in ways that may support situated understandings of mental distress in a digital age. I show how audiences respond to the artist-led research project Are We All Addicts Now? arguing that they generate ideas connected to submersion and being overwhelmed as a means of reporting on their own personal experiences of living in a digital culture that seeks to influence behaviour. The findings may have value for designers, curators and artists invested in understanding the experiential impact of digital devices.

The concept of interaction is foundational in technology interface design with its presuppositions being taken for granted. But the interaction metaphor has become ambiguous to the extent that its application to interface design contributes to misalignments between people’s expected and actual experience with computers. This article re-examines the presuppositions governing human-computer interaction with the motivation of strengthening weaknesses in their foundational concepts. It argues for abandoning the interaction metaphor to refocus design discourse toward the mediation roles of technology interfaces. ‘Remediation’, i.e. representation of one medium in another, is proposed as a conceptual model that more precisely describes the human-to-computer actions.

Ksenia Fedorova’s focus on the embodiment of technology and its tendency to expand our experience is clear since the table of contents: across the four chapters of the book, the author ‘zooms out’ from the face to the body, from individual consciousness to the environment around us. We are thus not talking about a strictly bound body, but a relationally expanded one. Just like the human selves Fedorova writes about, each chapter of the book is then an assemblage of theoretical concepts, personal accounts, commercial gadgets, and media artworks. Tactics of Interfacing is a precious resource for both media art aficionados and those interested in a critical take on the cultural implications of new media, also in their more commercial applications.

Software Interfaces are meant to describe contracts governing interactions between logic modules. Interfaces, if well designed, significantly reduce software complexity and ease maintainability. However, as software evolves, the organization and the quality of software interfaces gradually deteriorate. As a consequence, this often leads to increased development cost, lower code quality and reduced reusability. Code clones are one of the most known bad smells in source code. This design defect may occur in interfaces by duplicating method/API declarations in several interfaces. Such interfaces are similar from the point of view of public services/APIs they specify, thus they indicate a bad organization of application services. In this paper, we characterize the interface clone design defect and illustrate it via examples taken from real-world open source software applications. We conduct an empirical study covering nine real-world open source software applications to quantify the presence of interface clones and evaluate their impact on interface design quality. The results of the empirical study show that interface clones are widely present in software interfaces. They also show that the presence of interface clones may cause a degradation of interface cohesion and indicate a considerable presence of code clones at implementations level.

This paper addresses some of the issues raised by the use of skeuomorphic design elements in music technology interface design. Some believe these features afford a sense of familiarity, helping users transition from one medium to another, and that these elements are useful visual metaphors for the original objects; conversely, others regard these components as both a hindrance to the development of more useful interfaces and as a gatekeeping mechanism, as only specialists have enough knowledge and experience to use the complicated analog hardware and the equally complex digital versions. Further, I will examine the impact skeuomorphic design elements have on the reception of some new musical interfaces and how these elements democratize and/or hinder user interaction with emerging music and audio technology.