Reflective Design

What I read

In this text, the authors develop the idea of Reflective Design: encouraging designers to integrate a critical approach to their work both for themselves, and translated into the artifacts they make for users as well.

First, the authors describe the presence of technology, and the way designers are influencing culture by introducing so many devices and interactions with software, often with blind spots in our approaches. This has been studied in the past, often through a reflective lens on one single topic, where the output of the reflection was the purpose of the study. In this case, the authors argue that the reflection itself should be a core part of design.

The authors indicate that reflective design is grounded in critical theory, and acknowledges that our experiences are shaped by things that we are not aware of. Critical reflection is a way of gaining awareness of these things, and the core argument the authors make is that this critical reflection should be a goal of design. They describe that there are various foundations of this approach in HCI. They cite Pelle Ehn’s work in participatory design; Friedman’s work on value-sensitive design (“techniques to elucidate and answer values questions during the course of a system’s design); Dunne and Raby’s critical design; Gaver’s ludic design (with a focus on playfulness, as opposed to utility, and often critical but not necessarily real); critical technical practice (to highlight “unconsciously-held assumptions that are hindering progress in a technical field”); and Schon’s reflection-in action.

Next, the authors show how these ideas come to life through two case studies.

The first describes some interventions they added to a traditional museum walkthrough, that attempted to encourage visitors to actively reflect on their experience, as it was occurring. Some participants felt they did not have the right to provide authorship or contributions to an existing exhibit; others engaged in participating in a social layer over the exhibit, as compared to the exhibit itself.

The second case study showed how a small desktop widget encouraged couples in a long-distance relationship to indicate that they were thinking of one-another through a simple aesthetic-based interaction. This was accompanied by a diary, to gather more introspective data. The diary itself became a central part of the reflective experience, and rather than just providing data to the researchers, it acted as the reflective design prompt itself.

The authors then propose principles for integrating reflective design into design work. These include:

• Using reflection to uncover the hidden biases or limitations they may have in their practice
• Reflecting to “re-understand” their role, highlighting their unique perspectives, to themselves
• Encouraging users to reflect on their lives, as they use designed artifacts
• Encouraging technology to “support skepticism about and reinterpretation of its own working”
• Ensuring that, when reflection is included in a design, it is not separate from the design
• Engaging users in the process of designing reflective moments

They also then propose strategies for this integration, including “inverting” metaphors (looking at practices that have been “un-designed for.” The authors note that integrating reflective design into work is challenging.

What I learned and what I think

I’m most taken by the way this work, from 2005, has been actualized in present software, primarily in ridiculous ways that I’m sure the authors would hate. Net promoter interstitials, “Do you have time for a quick question?” prompts, out-of-box and new feature instructional prompts are all realizations of forced reflection in the context of software, and they all suck, probably because they are focused on using the reflection from users, rather than encouraging the reflection from users (it’s also being generous to call the data from these reflective, as it’s thin and it’s also probably fake, given how disruptive these are.) The authors actually use a net-promoter-ish example as what not to do: "We want to avoid, however, a literal codification of reflection-in-action, for example pop-up windows that suggest ‘now would be a good time to think about what is happening…’".

I’m also struggling to think about where this shows up in a positive way in most apps that aren’t explicitly designed for reflection. That is, apps like Calm or Headspace are tied to a business model that literally is this. But where does this show up in TikTok? Or Figma? Or, where could it show up? I love both examples, but both are so shielded from the corporate realities of just shipping software. Ironically, that’s the exact same feedback I got when I proposed “poetic” interactions from a book reviewer, who said “I don’t have time to do that, because I’m busy trying to even get software out the door.” I also remember Chap’s comment, that “I don’t want to shed a tear every time I brush my teeth,” which probably plays here too.

Maybe the larger issue is not that this isn’t applicable to industry and therefore isn’t useful, but that this isn’t applicable to industry so maybe we should stop “doing” industry. I don’t know what that means in practice, because things cost money and concepts don’t make any money. Kickstarter and micromarkets may be the only way to introduce something like this into real life in any meaningful way. And maybe it doesn’tactually have to live in real life, because digital real life is so jacked now.

Gaver’s Ludic Design is new to me, and I like it a great deal. Designing for play is wonderful, particularly when the whole point is not to make whatever was designed because it’s so ridiculous. It’s very similar to Allan’s focus, especially when it’s almost sarcastic or mocking in its playfulness.

The little desktop widget is so close to my remote-light-up-bear-hugging-idea that I almost want to go revisit it and make it. That actually could be productized, but that’s because it falls into the realm of a Calm again: the whole point of the design is to drive reflection.

Last thought; I’m always so impressed that papers like this can find their way through the peer-review process. The conference was called Critical computing (or CC), and in a somewhat ironic move, it appears to be the last of that CC—ACM replaced it with a conference on Compiler Construction.