July 9, 2012
Is A New Design Discipline Branching Out From IxD?

In the early 1980s, Bill Moggridge designed the first notebook–style computer for GRiD Systems. When he brought the first prototype home in 1981, he basked in its ingenious industrial design. But as soon as he started playing with it, he felt himself 

“being sucked down into the virtual realm, concerned only with how I interacted with the software, and forgetting the existence of the physical object. That’s when I realized the significance of human-computer interaction.”

Bill realized that designing human–software interactions was significantly different than industrial design. It demanded different research, different skills sets, and different ways of thinking. He felt an affinity between the disciplines, but believed they were not the same thing. He named this new field he stumbled upon “interaction design.” 

I often feel that we are reaching similar bifurcation in the practice of design. For the last couple of decades, Design (yes, design proper) has steadily expanded its concerns beyond non dynamic objects and fully controlled experiences. The design theorist and intellectual John Thackara has written a new ethos for designing for a complex world. Hillary Cottam won the Design Museum’s Designer of the Year award for her work in what she called Transformation Design. Philippe Starck, who made his career in creating some of the most lust-worthy objects, said: 

“I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact. Everything I designed was unnecessary. I will definitely give up in two years’ time. I want to do something else, but I don’t know what yet. I want to find a new way of expressing myself …design is a dreadful form of expression…. In future there will be no more designers. The designers of the future will be the personal coach, the gym trainer, the diet consultant.” (PSFK)

Tim Leberecht at Frog Design wrote a nice post about this shift in which he quotes a phrase JP Rangaswami coined at this year’s Enterprise 2.0 conference: “Design for the loss of control.” Tim adds,
“His point was more IT-specific, arguing that the combination of pervasive digital infrastructure, software-as-a-service, cloud computing, social software, and smart phones have enabled employee- and customer-driven solutions to a degree that renders top-down IT systems obsolete. As Dion Hinchcliffe of the Dachis Group writes: ‘Enterprises currently expend considerable resources trying to impose control on a situation that increasingly appears like it not only can’t be controlled, but almost certainly doesn’t need to be.’”
It’s also theme many marketing strategists and innovators rightly impress upon their clients and agencies.
So if we accept Rangaswami’s (and this blog’s) premise that the future is about mass collaboration (a.ka. distributed control), the question becomes: 
How do you create an infrastructure that allows self-lead individuals to come together in productive, collaborative creation?
This is fundamentally a design challenge. Many people see it as an IxD challenge, specifically. But I’m not sure about that. IxD, in the main, concerns itself with Human–computer interaction (HCI). I feel like that while “Designing for loss of control” is informed by HCI, it is not defined by it. (In a parallel example, Ixd is informed by graphic design but not defined by it.) Instead, I think this design challenge has more to do with computer-supported cooperative work. The design based in such a domain is what I’m calling “P2P design.” (For a example see my post on Droog’s “Downloadable Design” and consider if it is IxD or something else.) Here’s a working definition:
P2P Design (n): A discipline that cultivates mass collaboration using networked technologies, storytelling, and peer–to–peer production models: crowdsourcing, wiki–production, collaborative filtering, commons, crowdwisdom, P2P renting, crowdfunding, mass customization, etc.
To draw a stronger distinction between IxD and P2PD, consider these comparisons: 
GENERAL OVERVIEW
Interaction Design: IxD shapes digital things for people’s use.
P2P Design: P2PD creates “infrastructures of cooperation” to spur mass collaboration.

PRINCIPLE DOMAIN OF INTEREST

RESEARCH AND STRATEGIC EMPHASIS
Interaction Design: IxD concerns itself with the user–object relationship. It emphasizes individual user psychology and behavior.
P2P Design: P2PD concerns itself with networked relationships. It emphasizes group psychology and behavior.

GOAL
Interaction Design: IxD aims to achieve ease of use, clarity, and fit to activity.
P2P Design: P2PD aims to achieve network effects, positive externalities produced by participants, and evolution of the designed infrastructure by its participations (see “produsage”).
I should say that I do believe there are many self-identified interaction designers who practice P2P design. They just do not think of it as a separate discipline. In my opinion, the disciplines are siblings and not twins. IxD is necessary for P2P design but P2P design is not necessary for IxD. These are all working thoughts, but I’ll return to this topic again and again because I find it fascinating. 

3:35pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZgAnuuP0JQYR
Filed under: p2p design future innovation ixd interaction design 
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