Windows and Mirrors : Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency, by Jay David Bolter and my former colleague Diane Gromala (who left the University of Washington, where I still teach, for Georgia Tech, at least in part because of UW’s stupidity and failure to give her the recognition she deserved) is a book about rethinking the philosophy of web design. It’s a theoretically informed book, but one that is aimed at an audience of Web designers rather than theorists, and hence is lucid and highly accessible. The book’s main thesis is that the value of “transparency” in Web and interface design has been greatly exaggerated. The interface should not simply disappear, as if it were just a window through which we see naked data. Rather, the interface should also be valued for itself; this is what makes “interactivity” possible, as well as being where aesthetic pleasure resides. Web design should be pleasurable, rather than just nakedly utilitarian in the way “usability” experts like Jakob Nielsen have recommended. A good interface is one that oscillates between usability and reflectivity, between being a “window” and being a “mirror.”
I don’t think that Bolter and Gromala’s thesis is new, at least among people who are familiar with theory. But rarely has this sort of argument been presented so elegantly and at the same time so accessibly (in doing both, the book practices what it preaches). Taking off from analyses of art works displayed at SIGGRAPH 2000, Windows and Mirrors shows how self-consciousness and self-reflection are intrinsic dimensions of digital media (indeed, of all media), and how trying (never successfully) to eliminate them in favor of a supposedly unmediated and direct experience has disastrous consequences. Along the way, they Bolter and Gromala affirm the importance of embodiment in digital or virtual experience, debunk totalizing notions of media “convergence,” and look further at the consequences of “remediation” (the way new media take up and alter older media — this was the title and subject of a previous book by Bolter, written in collaboration with Richard Grusin).
Web designers should definitely read this book. Anyone else with an interest in digital media should find it interesting and informative, if only for the clarity and focus it brings to its themes.
Windows and Mirrors
Windows and Mirrors : Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency, by Jay David Bolter and my former colleague Diane Gromala (who left the University of Washington, where I still teach, for Georgia Tech, at least in part because of UW’s stupidity and failure to give her the recognition she deserved) is a book about rethinking the philosophy of web design. It’s a theoretically informed book, but one that is aimed at an audience of Web designers rather than theorists, and hence is lucid and highly accessible. The book’s main thesis is that the value of “transparency” in Web and interface design has been greatly exaggerated. The interface should not simply disappear, as if it were just a window through which we see naked data. Rather, the interface should also be valued for itself; this is what makes “interactivity” possible, as well as being where aesthetic pleasure resides. Web design should be pleasurable, rather than just nakedly utilitarian in the way “usability” experts like Jakob Nielsen have recommended. A good interface is one that oscillates between usability and reflectivity, between being a “window” and being a “mirror.”
I don’t think that Bolter and Gromala’s thesis is new, at least among people who are familiar with theory. But rarely has this sort of argument been presented so elegantly and at the same time so accessibly (in doing both, the book practices what it preaches). Taking off from analyses of art works displayed at SIGGRAPH 2000, Windows and Mirrors shows how self-consciousness and self-reflection are intrinsic dimensions of digital media (indeed, of all media), and how trying (never successfully) to eliminate them in favor of a supposedly unmediated and direct experience has disastrous consequences. Along the way, they Bolter and Gromala affirm the importance of embodiment in digital or virtual experience, debunk totalizing notions of media “convergence,” and look further at the consequences of “remediation” (the way new media take up and alter older media — this was the title and subject of a previous book by Bolter, written in collaboration with Richard Grusin).
Web designers should definitely read this book. Anyone else with an interest in digital media should find it interesting and informative, if only for the clarity and focus it brings to its themes.
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