Performing perception—staging aesthetics of interaction

TLDR

In interaction design for experience‑oriented technology, aesthetics of interaction is rooted in the user’s experience of “performing her perception.” The study shows how the user simultaneously acts as operator, performer, and spectator during interaction, drawing on performance theory, phenomenology, sociology, and recent HCI work. The authors analyze interaction by having users continuously enact the three roles, using examples from everyday technologies and contemporary artworks to illustrate the performative spectator and spectating performer concepts. They find that the simultaneous operator–performer–spectator roles shape users’ perception of interaction, and that treating perception as performative is essential for designing experience‑oriented products, systems, and services.

Abstract

In interaction design for experience-oriented uses of technology, a central facet of aesthetics of interaction is rooted in the user's experience of herself “performing her perception.” By drawing on performance (theater) theory, phenomenology and sociology and with references to recent HCI-work on the relation between the system and the performer/user and the spectator's relation to this dynamic, we show how the user is simultaneously operator, performer and spectator when interacting. By engaging with the system, she continuously acts out these three roles and her awareness of them is crucial in her experience. We argue that this 3-in-1 is always already shaping the user's understanding and perception of her interaction as it is staged through her experience of the object's form and expression. Through examples ranging from everyday technologies utilizing performances of interaction to spatial contemporary artworks, digital as well as analogue, we address the notion of the performative spectator and the spectating performer. We demonstrate how perception is also performative and how focus on this aspect seems to be crucial when designing experience-oriented products, systems and services.