What follows is my college thesis, written in the Summer of 2007, wherein I propose what I believe the responsibilities of the contemporary interactive designer are by drawing comparisons between the dawn of photography and the dawn of the Internet.
Though much dissention, disagreements and swinging fists are born out of the task of defining art and its separation from (or symbiosis with) its sibling design, it is exasperatingly difficult to ignore the fact that design affects our everyday lives. It might be said that while art weaves itself mysteriously through everything we create, a fickle tapestry documenting the past and contemporary zeitgeist and impossibly difficult to encapsulate in any one medium (or even a single definition), design is busy getting things done. Art progresses with our consciousness, our emotions and our self-awareness, as design progresses with our needs and technology, and the latter never more so than today. The introduction of the Internet and other interactive technologies insists that, for the first time, a truly communicative design can be formulated without building a specific machine to facilitate it. The role of the contemporary interactive designer is to establish a means of communication between an entity and audience in order to solve a problem, and to do so as beautifully as possible while striving for innovation in this emerging medium.
Technology has always furnished the progression of visual communication, oftentimes in initially disruptive ways. Prior to the invention of photography, the primary purpose of a professional artist or illustrator was to document events and places in history as accurately as possible, though accuracy was often defined by the work’s patrons. While many painters still managed to imbue some sort of interpretation into their works, they are all overwhelmingly representational despite the distinct personalities of their creators. However, the importance of their masterful works is not to be underestimated; though they may have been fueled by causes separate from basic human expression, they are the most compelling representational documents in existence and define the feats capable by artisans with an intense discipline and devotion to their craft. That being said, this system had severe flaws which illustrated the necessity for a succeeding technique.
As mentioned previously, the time and skill required to create such a document was intense, but more importantly such an investment of time required a significant financial investment. The results of this arrangement are documents commissioned by the elite, those with the resources to finance it; thusly, there exists a very perceptible bias in the majority of these works depending on financier, location and time period. Furthermore, the process is too representational to lend itself to complex, personal interpretation, yet too filtered through the artist’s eye to be taken at face value by the audience. A truly representational form is one that has no filter, that possesses true objectivity, and for that reason painting’s obsolescence as a tool of documentation was natural (perhaps even necessary).
“From now on, painting is dead,” early photographers declared. What they really meant by that overtly confrontational statement was that painting as a primary medium of documentation was dying. Prolific author Paul Theroux elaborates on the strengths of photography in the forward to Margarett Loke’s The World as It Was
The eye is selective, the camera lens is not; which is why photography, when it is masterly, is both an art and a science, the triumph of technology creating a luminous and symmetrical artifact. And it seems to me (though not to everyone) that what photography does best, when successful, is suggest imagination by dealing with the actual. Its subtlety is its exactitude, for in photography light is everything, and in light is its capacity for utter clarity (9).
This “capacity for utter clarity” shook practicing artists to their core because it uprooted their primary objective, that of representation. Many artists responded with an understandable amount of venom, as photography had taken the craft they had practiced for decades to perfect and replicated it more accurately in a fraction of the time. What those artists didn’t realize is that, despite the fact that the consistency of their paychecks would waver due to the absence of necessity, the invention freed them from the confines of the actual to explore new methods of visual communication. Essentially, technology had seen the limits of the status quo and intervened in order to allow visual communication to evolve.
The seeds of modernism were sewn following the introduction of photography and perceptible in the earliest waves of impressionism. One of the most fascinating examples of this transitional period can be found in the work of Edouard Manet, particularly in his 1865 painting Olympia. Though at first glance the image seems to be a relatively straightforward nude study, it outraged many viewers when it was showcased. The painting exuded a sort of commentary not seen regularly in the time period:
While Titian’s nudes were anonymous, allegorical figures suggestive of the classical Venus, Manet’s model Victorine Meurent was clearly identifiable, especially to other painters for whom she had modeled. Although surrounded by standard references to erotic experience, […] Olympia’s look is less seductive than confrontational. (Marquardt 197)
Though art as expression is a concept taken for granted now (perhaps even required to resonate with the fine art populace), in 1865 we were only 25 years into a world where representational illustration was no longer necessary. Progressive painters like Manet were aware of this and played to their medium’s strengths, such as the ability to express ideas and feelings apart from the exactitude of the source material. Whether these pioneering artists realized it or not, the progression of technology had forced their hand to emphasize the unique strengths of painting and illustration as tools for communication. Rather than capturing sights as they saw them, they were now designing their pieces to evoke specific elements of a subject, thought, moment, emotion or idea.
The modern art movements born out of this mindset possess clearly perceptible, specific functions apart from (and usually above) the subject matter being portrayed. Impressionism existed to capture a specific moment in time in all its fluidity and intangibility, conveyed in loose and organic brushstrokes. Expressionism ignored the boundaries of physical realism in favor of conveying the viewer’s emotion of the subject, communicating the feeling before the image. Cubism did attempt to capture a model, but in a way photography couldn’t—conveying all important facets of an object from one omniscient angle. Futurism borrowed from the same concept as Cubism, but applied the three-dimensional exploration to the fourth dimension by studying the subject’s movement through time. Progressive artists, uninterested in conveying what we could see with our own eyes, brought art’s purpose to the forefront and designed images that would tell us something new.
Modern art movements beginning with impressionism established art as a conversational medium between artist and viewer. While pure representation is extremely effective at describing a scene or event to the viewer, it asks nothing of them and thusly invests little of the viewer’s resources save their time and interest. Modern art, voiding certain descriptive details in favor of elements not found in the physical world but arguably just as communicative, requires the audience to interpret these new ideas and subsequently assemble them into a cohesive idea which resonates with their own experiences, opinions, emotions and personality. The best artists are arguably those who provide enough details for the viewer not to feel lost or stranded in the subject matter, but enough enigmatic qualities for the viewer to imbue their own meaning into the work—one might also apply a similar definition to that of a good conversationalist, and thusly a good communicator. Also worth noting is the fact this is not an unnatural method of visual expression, as noted by Pablo Picasso and other artists drawing inspiration from “primitive” artworks:
European artists like Picasso often identified with what they perceived to be the irrational, pre-civilized (and therefore more authentic than that of urban European society) power of non-Western objects. […] For the Cubists, these were not the sort of artworks that needed “professional” study of their original historical context. Rather, they resounded powerfully as “primitive,” magical images from a faraway time and place. (Marquardt 251)
This respect for basic, visual communication led artists down a path of simplification and an emphasis on the idea or function of the object. As art and design progressed through the 21st century, the philosophies of modernism were drafted by an enterprising architect named Walter Gropius, who founded the Bauhaus School of Design in 1919. Gropius believed that function was infinitely more relevant than the form of an object, and applied this school of thought to the Bauhaus curriculum resulting in the first popularized fusion of art and technology:
Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts! For there is no such thing as “professional art”. There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in rare moments of inspiration which transcend the will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in handicrafts is essential to every artist. It is there that the original source of creativity lies. (“Bauhaus Manifesto”)
By emphasizing function over form, the Bauhaus was arguably the first interactive design studio. A fantastic example of their user-centric design was in their distinctive chess set, designed and produced in 1924 (Droste 94). Rather than committing themselves to tried-and-true visual symbols of the name and history of a given chess piece, they opted to abandon them entirely in favor of directional shapes, each mimicking its possibility of movement on the game board. Though its design was considerably more minimalist as a result, it stands as a fantastic example of artistically-rendered visuals acting in service of their audience.
To understand the impact of user-centered design in our modern society and draw parallels between photography’s awakening of the art world to non-representational functionality and the contemporary dawn of the Internet, one must establish an environment where the current means of communication are dissatisfactory. In today’s society, the modern representational art is akin to visual mass media. Video and audio (in their forms of television, DVD sales, radio and compact disc sales) are by far some of the widest-reaching means of communication society has ever created and popularized. Like all technology, these types of technologies started as revolutionary, innovative, society-altering events. Capitalism lends itself to this sort of innovation, as individuals are rewarded for creating new ideas which allow them to gain prestige, fame, resources and power. Unfortunately, this environment also conditions said individuals to reduce their innovation to a quantifiable formula.
As television, radio or any industry becomes widely accepted, it is in their proprietors’ best interests to simply maintain this success rather than attempt to trump it with a series of risky innovations. A sort of complacency is reached, which is inherently counter-productive to creativity. Without creativity and without progress, a medium refuses to grow with the changes of the society adopting it; eventually, the honeymoon will be over and consumers must consider carefully what they’ve married themselves to.
Television and radio are outdated models, offering content to the viewer on the content-creator’s schedule rather than the viewer’s. Information transmitted over either means is limited to a strict protocol, and lacks versatility. Because the content of either medium is unwaveringly controlled by those few companies who possess the resources to support it, progress has dwindled as the medium’s investors become largely out-of-touch with the needs of the common consumer. While television is by no means a dead medium, its loss in ratings and advertising revenue following the rapid acceptance of content-centric sister technologies such as DVDs and Digital Video Recorders suggests an increasing dissatisfaction. One might thoughtfully propose the notion that television is currently being sustained less by the quality of the information it presents than the warmth provided by its ceaselessness. As Bill McKibben succinctly put it, “TV is cumulative,” (14) and that facet of its success reveals its two-dimensionality, signaling the coming of an insurgent communication. Like representational illustration before it, mass media is being shaken by the dawn of a new technology.
In 1969, the government connected two computers together over a network they called ARPANET in an attempt to quickly transfer information digitally from geographically-separate locations. The seductive promise of long-distance data transfer prompted further research through the seventies and eighties, earning a major breakthrough in 1987 when England’s Tim Berners-Lee proposed a system of linking content together in a non-linear fashion. This concept became the basis of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the foundation for all modern web sites. This was followed shortly after by the writing of the first web browser (called “Mosaic”) and its commercial successor Netscape—the rest, as they say, is history (McCloud 156). The Internet is incredibly powerful not simply for the fact that it networks computers together, but because it transfers data indiscriminately for decoding on either system. By allowing the user’s side of things to handle the information (with custom-built and freely-available programs like web browsers and media players), the Internet becomes dynamic in what types of communication it can accommodate.
The Internet as it stands today is working. Like all innovative technologies, the reason it’s been accepted by a newly mainstream audience is because it solves problems running rampant in previous means of transmitting and receiving information. Whereas television programs are strictly created and overseen by the corporations who control the medium, the Internet is by nature an open network allowing anyone with an idea and an audience to “broadcast.” Also in support of this concept is the fact that, since data doesn’t take up any physical space, these “broadcasters” can reach more niche audiences that would have been forgotten due to competition for space or time; this potentially counter-acts what McKibben calls “the great simplification” of information as it is watered-down to suit the infinitely varied needs of a massive audience (36). The Internet also solves a problem of speed—why wait to hear the news at five o’clock when you can “Google” it in a heartbeat?
If the Internet is indeed the replacement of traditional mass media due to its numerous benefits on the part of the end user, what then is the role of the contemporary designer, the Walter Gropius of the interactive age? How does the designer’s role shift when applied to a brand new technology that can be literally manipulated by the viewer? An answer can be derived by studying the nature of online communications in tandem with the Internet’s place in society as a progressive catalyst.
The most successful interactive designers are not artists. Design is concerned with function over form (the Bauhaus philosophy), and a successful interactive project is one that can be used and manipulated by the viewer. Artistic, arbitrary or expressive elements are unsuccessful unless compelling enough to initiate action on the part of the user, and are thusly subservient to the greater design. Because interactive design requires audience participation, opting for expression over intuitivism will ostracize the user and result in a greatly diminished market; contemporary Microsoft interface designers refer to this rule as “straight-forward before clever” (Harris). There is a difference between artistic expression and the progression of a medium, and the latter should be given greater weight.
The interactive designer is the custodian of the new media; our decisions, pitfalls and observations will shape the foundations of communication in the way that the first typesetters influenced the conventions of print. The responsible interactive designer realizes this influence and seeks to innovate in order to better meet the needs of the audience, continually raising the bar so that we maintain our breakneck level of progress. Doing so will not only differentiate the project itself, but benefit users unsatisfied with current solutions. The longer we maintain a commitment to continued innovation, the longer we avoid the sort of complacency which new mediums naturally seek to usurp.
In order to properly project the functionality and innovation of a product, we must attempt to make it as aesthetically-pleasing as possible; beauty is never obsolete. A common criticism of web design is that the necessity for code and markup limits designers in their range of artistic freedom, but there are several tools to insure that the delivered experience is simultaneously useful and pleasant. The designer must rely on color to differentiate elements on the page in a way that does not overwhelm the user. With web sites primarily composed of text, an understanding and commitment to quality typography with thought given to typefaces, line-heights (leading) and word-spacing (kerning/tracking) is essential to readability. Animation can be created to react to feedback, providing responses that encourage and inform the user. Most importantly, all of these elements must work together in establishing a natural visual hierarchy of elements and functions which lends itself to the task of the audience.
The Internet is to contemporary communication mediums as photography was to representational illustration, providing a more natural and functional successor to the status quo which, under the weight of its own established formula, fails to keep pace with the society evolving around it. It is the first medium to establish a literal conversation between artist and viewer, and the position of the interactive designer is to facilitate this conversation successfully by making it usable, distinctive and appealing in its execution. The longer we interactive designers display a commitment to these values, the longer we can experience the consistent progression we currently enjoy.