Aesthetic Interaction: A Framework

Abstract

The rise in the development of interactive electronic products has been accompanied by growing interest in the aesthetic aspects not only of the artifacts themselves but in the aesthetics of interactive systems. Petersen, Iversen, Krogh, and Ludvigsen5 point out that these two approaches to the aesthetics of design reflect Shusterman’s6 distinction between analytical aesthetics and pragmatic aesthetics, respectively. From an analytic perspective, aesthetics arise as a product property, as “added value” to an artifact. The focus of the design process here is on the aesthetics of appearance, on the creation of artifacts that are attractive and pleasurable. The pragmatic approach, on the other hand, is concerned with the aesthetics of use. According to this view, the aesthetics of an artifact emerge out of a dynamic interaction between a user and this artifact and is an integral part of what has been labeled an aesthetic interaction by some researchers7 in design and as a resonant interaction by others.8 At the same time the scope of design is changing from human/artifact interaction, mainly focused on opening up the functionality of a product, toward a broader approach that seeks to enhance interpersonal and societal values, including personal, aesthetic, and socio-cultural ones, through the application of intelligence (i.e., smart electronics) in artifacts. Much has been written concerning the factors that contribute to the aesthetics of human-artifact interaction. However, to our knowledge, no framework or conceptual model of the structure of the interactive aesthetic experience that incorporates these factors has appeared in the literature. In this paper we integrate an information-processing model of the nature of an aesthetic experience with visual art proposed by Locher and his colleagues9, 10 with a framework proposed by Wensveen11 that describes the coupling of a user’s actions (i.e., handling an artifact) and a product’s function; the result is the formation of a general theoretical framework for understanding the nature of a user’s aesthetic interaction with design products. Our hope is that the proposed conceptual framework will serve as a valuable basis for the development of experimental studies into the nature of aesthetic interaction to complement the experimental tradition of usability studies among designers. Before presenting the framework, it is important to note, as have Petersen and her colleagues,12 that the notion of aesthetic is used in ambiguous ways by theoreticians when it comes to answering the key question: What is the nature of the resulting