INTERFACE DESIGN EDUCATION STRATEGIES FOR HYBRID SPACES: DIGITAL SENSING AND SHARED REPRESENTATIONS

Abstract

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the dimension of space has been significantly impacted: the risks in the use of physical space and the consequent limitations to its use have introduced unprecedented friction to the execution of many everyday tasks as compared to the execution of such tasks in virtual space. Whereas this pandemic-related configuration of physical space is hopefully temporary, nevertheless some changes in the relation between digital and physical territories have persistently altered the ways in which individuals interact with one another, establishing the dialogue between “remoteness” and “presence” as an integral part of how we conceptualize space and our relationship with it. This paper discusses how interface design education can be framed as the design of hybrid spaces of interaction between virtual and physical systems. While traditionally, the experience of cyberspace has been described as separate from the experience of physical space, current physical and digital spaces are integrated into a single experience where the connections between the two worlds are increasingly pervasive, leaving room for the emergence of experiences that natively involve the integration of physical and digital, spatial and virtual, material and synthetic. In the field of communication and digital design, this conceptualization of space compels us to acknowledge a continuity between the physical and the digital for the purpose of designing for the space of their hybridization, without making a distinction between digital and analog design, but on the contrary with the explicit objective of assuming this integration as the point of departure of the design process, to eliminate elements of friction between spaces, fostering a “seamless” experience for the user.In design education, the concept of interface as a “place of interaction between systems” proposed by cybernetics and systems theory returns to hold a central role, keeping invisible systems in contact with each other. Through sensors, online databases, and locative technologies, digital communication designers emerge not only as designers of the interface between users and technological systems but also between users and a hybrid world that mixes physical senses and new perceptions mediated by a technological system whose presence is increasingly less visible and whose pervasiveness is constantly growing.In this context, design education needs to focus on providing the tools to access this new space. It must offer translations that allow for the perception of digital space and for our ability to act on it, it must provide a representation of territories made up not only of spaces and people but also of data and mediated connections and it must allow for their perception in terms of a new reality on which it becomes possible to reflect and act. This communication interface, placing in the same artifact elements of different worlds, provides a space for relationships, a synthetic space that enables users to act on a heterogeneous reality. It is on this level that digital and physical spaces enjoy the integration that allows them to share a seamless space in which the physical dimension becomes digitally accessible and in which digital data and digital processes become part of the everyday world.