Organic Simulations in interaction Design: Beyond Aesthetic refinement?

1st Supervisor: Prof. Dr. -ing. Andreas Schrader

2nd Supervisor: Dr. rer. nat. Frieder Nake

This thesis proposes a design scheme for multiple user interaction with large context-aware displays based on aesthetic computing concepts. The main objective is to study a procedure that allows design professionals to consider how aesthetic experiences of users go beyond a simple set of visual parameters, but are shaped from the main concept of the interface’s functionality and the methods it offers to understand and manipulate information. For this purpose, the concept of organic information visualization (Fry, 2000) is adapted to build a simple messaging board with context aware functionalities on a university campus. The idea is that simple rules of self-organization that allow basic living organisms to survive and interact within complex environments, can be adapted to algorithmic equivalents that permit a computer system to interact with the complexities of dynamic data sets. The outcome of this set of organic simulations, is an organic data visualization that supports qualitative representations of data values in order to improve understanding and facilitate navigation of a shared interactive space. In the process it is discussed, how aspects of user’s experience and visual communication of an interface, can be considered in function of programming decisions and technical solutions. This allows to examine how computing concepts and usability standards might be complemented with aesthetic studies that aim to enrich the user’s experience of new paradigms of interaction within architectural environments.