The mystery mantra of Interaction Design
Inspired by the fundamentals of computer science and computational thinking
Imagine yourself sitting in a car. You are in the drivers seat; you put the key in the dial and turn on it inward. The engine makes some noise. You put down the handbrakes, place your hand on the steering wheel while gently pressing down on the accelerator with your foot. You find yourself moving forwards.
Seem like a familiar story? Ok, now let’s look at this as an interaction designer.
When the person is sitting in the car, they majorly need to remember what the controls do:
- turning the key — starts the engine
- rotating the steering wheels — controls the direction of movement
- pressing the accelerator — helps you move faster
- pressing the brakes — stop the vehicle
However, there are a lot of behind-the-scene actions going on inside the car. For the simplicity of this post, I will not get into all of them. But all of these actions that help run the machine, are very different than what actually we do: we are not physically moving the wheels in the direction that we want to move in but rather rotate a wheel towards that direction (the right if we want to go right or rotate it leftwards if we want to go left). There are several motors and mechanisms that take that input (turning of the wheel) and perform an action action that is assigned.
So, even though the tasks that we actually perform are different from what is happening, we are still getting the result we want because we assigned them that way. We are able to convey relevant information without involving any background detail. In computer science and computational thinking, this is known as abstraction.
What is abstraction?
Abstraction, in computer science, is one of the most important and essential features of object-oriented programming. In “Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python,” John Guttag writes that the “essence of abstraction is preserving information that is relevant in a given context, and forgetting information that is irrelevant in that context.” Check this out to learn more about abstraction in computer science.
In a more general context, abstraction can be understood as —
Abstraction is the process of simplifying or generalizing a more complex system it to make it more versatile and easy to use.
This concept is not exclusive to computer science or art. It can be applied to any other field of study including interaction design.
‘Abstraction’ in the 18th century
In the 18th century, a phony chess robot called ‘Kempelen’ (the Turk, automaton) was created. It was an mechanical imitation of a chess master named the Turk. The Turk, the first of the pseudo-automatons, was a cleverly constructed cabinet that concealed a human master.
The cabinet’s interior was crammed with a series of gears, cranks and levers that resembled the innards of a clock. As for the dummy, it wore a turban, carried a pipe in one hand and was swathed in colorful robes. It was from this costume that the automaton got its name: the Turk.
All of the mechanics, including the human control, was concealed; abstraction for misdirection. Here, people were fooled into thinking that the robot was smart enough to beat any human due to the abstraction of their interaction with the robot.
How is the 18th century similar to the 21st century?
In today’s world, it is easy to feel like we are communicating with machines rather than humans. The Turk gives us an opportunity to examine our relation to machines and the level of faith people have in a well-executed abstraction. Since most of our communication happens through a device, there is little or no human interaction. This makes it important for designers to allow for human-computer interactions to feel more human than mechanical.
Moreover, abstraction is important to reduce cognitive load as well as make systems easier to understand. Abstraction can be used as a technique for interaction design where one can look at the audience in question and design systems and processes that are appropriate for their level of interaction.
