Copyright by Natacha Lorena Poggio 2006
    
    Making Sense with Design: A Taxonomy of Designed Experiences
    
    by Natacha Lorena Poggio, B.F.A.
    
    Report
    Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
    
    Master of Fine Arts
    
    The University of Texas at Austin May 2006
    
    Making Sense with Design: A Taxonomy of Designed Experiences
    
    Approved by Supervising Committee:
    
    Gloria Lee, supervisor Kate Catterall, reader John Slatin, reader
    
    Para mi padres, Aida y Ernesto, que me enseñaron que lo esencial es invisible a los ojos.
    
    Taking the needs of people with disabilities as the starting point for design leads to aesthetically richer, more productive, and more satisfying experiences for everyone, not just for people with disabilities. It is important to remember, too, that what people with disabilities want—just like everyone else—is not just information: it is a quality experience.
    
    John Slatin and Sharron Rush, Maximum Accessibility, 2002.
    
    Acknowledgements
    As Maya Angelou once said, “Nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone.” To all the people who were part of my journey during my graduate research thank you.
    
    Marshall Well Scholarship and Fellowship Endowment in the College of Fine Arts, James M. (Jimmy) Malone Endowed Scholarship, and Michael Aubrey Jones Endowed Scholarship in Art. TO: The faculty of the Design Division: Kate Catterall, Gloria Lee, Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Dan Olsen, David Shields, Chris Taylor. Specially, Kate and Gloria for guiding me in the writing of this report, trusting that I would find the right path for myself. TO: Professors from other schools for providing a stimulating learning environment in their classes. My grateful appreciation to John Slatin, for teaching me the importance of accessibility and most importantly, of a quality experience (as well as for being one of my readers); and Randolph Bias, for his commitment to making usability an interesting learning experience. TO: The staff of the Department of Art and Art History: particularly, Judy Clack, John Cobb, Deborah Sayre, Jed Lawnsby, Carmen Shockley, Marc Silva, and Ron Jameson. TO: My design classmates for their friendship, tolerance and support: Eric Benson, Jimmy Luu, Michelle Bayer, and Serene Al Srouji have been my companions throughout the two years, and we had memorable times together. Daniel Lievens, Jaladhi Pujara, Ledia Carroll and Beatrice Thomas for being the “roles models” during the first year; and the not-so-new kids on the block— Alex Lopez, George Morrow and Tanisa Sharif—for bringing fresh ideas to our studio. AND: I would be remiss if I did not thank my cherished friends, the ones near and far away, who have been always there for me, bringing joy to my life. In particular, Florencia Gutierrez, who was part of my journey countless times since the very beginning until the very end. MOSTLY: I would like to thank the person who has endured living with me during this process, for his patience, support, and unwavering faith in me: my husband Victor. To use a metaphor, you are the star by which I set my course.
    
    May 2006
    
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    Making Sense with Design: A Taxonomy of Designed Experiences
    
    Natacha Lorena Poggio, M.F.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2006 Supervisor: Gloria Lee So automatically do we perceive things through sight, sound, smell, and touch that we easily can take our senses for granted. My design research strives to deepen the understanding of our senses by creating innovative experiences that make us react in new ways, even to the most common experiences. My aspiration is that the resulting experiences will re-shape our memory and perception of the world. This report is a documentation of my inquiry into the design of human experience; where I look beyond applied products and broaden my view to include all sorts of objects and environments with which people interact. Serving as a guidebook, it outlines the different disciplines of design that address the design of experiences. Additionally, selected case studies from the body of work I have pursued during my graduate studies are presented as a collection of stories of my experience designing user experiences. My design philosophy embodies the importance of engaging multiple senses in each designed activity to better enhance the overall quality of the experience for everyone, including people with disabilities.
    
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    Table of Contents
    List of Figures......................................................................................................x List of Illustrations..............................................................................................xi Preface: Connecting the dots ................................................................................1 I. THE DESIGN OF EXPERIENCES 3
    
    Introduction .........................................................................................................3 Experience ...........................................................................................................4 Metaphors ............................................................................................................6 II. DEFINING DOMAINS OF DESIGN 8
    
    Design as Experience Design ...............................................................................8 Experience Design.......................................................................................8 Graphic Design (a.k.a Visual Design)........................................................12 Information Design ...................................................................................17 Interaction Design .....................................................................................23 Sensorial Design........................................................................................28 Accessible Design versus Universal Design...............................................38 Usability....................................................................................................45
    
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    III. CONCLUSION: A NEW BEGINNING IV. DESIGN CASE STUDIES
    
    53 55
    
    Accessible exhibition design guidelines .............................................................56 Learning Braille with Braizzle............................................................................63 Art beyond sight: an accessible art experience....................................................69 Building Blocks of Art .......................................................................................76 Transforming the unseen....................................................................................81 Before the fall ....................................................................................................86 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Vita 97 91
    
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    List of Figures
    Figure 1: Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles, CA........................................................ 11 Figure 2: Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C.............................................. 12 Figure 3: Émigré issues. ................................................................................................ 14 Figure 4: Kalman’s ads for Florent’s restaurant ............................................................. 15 Figure 5: Provoking ads from the “United Colors of Benetton” campaign ..................... 16 Figure 6: Tibor Kalman’s Colors magazine ................................................................... 16 Figure 7: Harry Beck, view of The London Underground Map...................................... 22 Figure 8: IRS Form 1040EZ.......................................................................................... 23 Figure 9: ATMs allow people with disabilities to perform bank transactions ................. 26 Figure 10: Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus................................................................... 28 Figure 11: The range of the senses.. .............................................................................. 31 Figure 12: Sensory homunculus .................................................................................... 34 Figure 13: The Sensory Garden..................................................................................... 35 Figure 14: Main Street, U.S.A.. ..................................................................................... 36 Figure 15: Anne Cunningham’s tactile art ..................................................................... 38 Figure 16: The Principles of Universal Design .............................................................. 41 Figure 17: OXO Good Grips peeler............................................................................... 43 Figure 18: Dorcas Project.............................................................................................. 44 Figure 19: Package design............................................................................................. 44 Figure 20: Dreyfuss’ Western Electric 302 tabletop telephone....................................... 50 Figure 21: New York Times OP-ED analysis of the Palm Beach County Ballot.............. 51
    
    x
    
    List of Illustrations
    Case study 1: Image 1:. ............................................................................................... 61 Case study 1: Image 2: ................................................................................................ 61 Case study 1: Image 3:. ............................................................................................... 62 Case study 1: Image 4:. ............................................................................................... 62 Case study 2: Image 5: ................................................................................................ 67 Case study 2: Image 6:. ............................................................................................... 68 Case study 2: Image 7: ................................................................................................ 68 Case study 3: Image 8:. ............................................................................................... 74 Case study 3: Image 9:. ............................................................................................... 75 Case study 3: Image 10: ............................................................................................. 75 Case study 4: Image 11:. ............................................................................................. 79 Case study 4: Image 12:. ............................................................................................. 80 Case study 4: Image 13: .............................................................................................. 80 Case study 5: Image 14: .............................................................................................. 84 Case study 5: Image 15:. ............................................................................................. 84 Case study 5: Image 16:. ............................................................................................. 85 Case study 5: Image 17:. ............................................................................................. 85 Case study 6: Image 18:. ............................................................................................. 90 Case study 6: Image 19:. ............................................................................................. 90
    
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    Preface: Connecting the dots
    For as long as I can remember, I have been a visual interpreter. Most of my life, my connection to the world around me has been mainly through sight. I was good at drawing, carbon copying what I had in front of me; I never had the personal vision that seems to drive fine artists. However, I do know that my earliest impressions had little to do with the nature of art, and everything to do with pure visual sensation. In high school, I was interested in applied art—things like books covers, film titles, record jackets (yes, vinyl records!). Moreover, from a very early age I was fascinated with letterforms, and the messages and emotions conveyed; that graphic design organized information in a logical and emotional way through the use of space, size, and color. This application of artistic skills to communicate ideas to a larger audience drove me to pursue a career in graphic design. For me, to be a graphic designer is to be, fundamentally, in the service of others—to be an agent of social change. To play a role in society for which we are trained to think, that is, to analyze communications or problems posed by others (and also identified by the designer independently), and to provide solutions to these questions. After years of professional experience, I came to the point in my design career where I felt my work was becoming too commercial or client-driven. I believed design could be applied to more challenging problems that would result in beneficial solutions, not only for clients but also to addressed the needs of the end users. Moving from a comfortable print-based environment, and with the hype of the dot-com boom, I began designing online interfaces. The Internet, perhaps the most revolutionary invention since Gutenberg’s original printing press in the mid 1400s, with its capacity to serve out information 24/7 about practically any topic conceivable, has become a way of life for an impatient, information-hungry generation. Now, at the click of a mouse, the world can be “at your fingertips”—that is, if you can use a mouse . . . and if you can see the screen . . . and if you can hear the audio—in other words, if you do not have a disability of any
    
    1
    
    kind.1 The Internet, apparently so accessible, was pivotal in finding the answer to my quest for a design career that addresses the needs of the users. I began to realize that the obstacles that people with disabilities encountered when trying to access web content had more profound manifestations in the physical world, so I came to graduate school to find design solutions to those issues. When I started, I prioritized the role of technology in my projects, since it facilitated the creation of better tools for designing accessible environments. Ultimately, my work focused on designing better experiences for people that augment and enhance their lives, without the technology dictating the form of the experience. My design philosophy now embodies the importance of engaging multiple senses in each designed activity. This approach not only benefits people with different abilities, but also enhances the overall quality of the experience for everyone. This report is the manifestation of my inquiry into the design of human experience. The selected case studies are a collection of stories of my experience designing user experiences. Throughout my two years in the program, I have broadened my view to include all sorts of objects and environments with which people interact. Each exploration has given me new insights into the design of human experience and revealed unforeseen opportunities to create experiences that are more vivid, more enjoyable, and more rewarding.
    
    1
    
    Bohman, P., Introduction to Web Accessibility, October 2003. Retrieved from http://www.webaim.org/intro/
    
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    I. THE DESIGN OF EXPERIENCES Introduction
    Life is about pleasure and enjoyment, and if we are not enjoying what we are doing, then why are we doing it? —Don Norman, BBC interview We know that wine sipped from a paper cup is no different than that sipped from glassware, but the latter experience is typically more enjoyable. Although good design cannot improve the content it presents, it can make the content more accessible, pleasurable, and easier to engage; thus good design contributes to the creation of better experiences. Nathan Shedroff, an information and interface designer who co-founded Vivid Studios (a decade-old pioneering company in interactive media) writes in his book Experience Design 1, “An interface to any experience, whether technological, physical, or conceptual, must have a message and a reason for communicating it and begin with the creation of meaning and the development of appropriate types of interactivity. These decisions drive the use of different sensorial media to present the experience to the users in an appropriate way.”2 Thus, when designing an interface, I identify the message and the most effective way to deliver it. Over the next pages, I will expand on the meaning of experience, the disciplines that address the design of experiences, the processes employed to create different types of interactivity and how important it is to consider the physical senses in order to create meaningful experiences fully accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. In my exploration to understand the design of experiences that engages the senses I have developed a methodology that provides a new set of skills to use in my design practice, and potentially, in a new approach to a design education that addresses all the senses.
    
    2
    
    Shedroff, N., Experience Design 1, New Riders Publishing, 2001.
    
    3
    
    Experience
    Definition of experience, from Nathan Shedroff’s book Experience Design I: The sensation of interaction with an object, event, or environment, through all of our senses, over time, and on both physical and cognitive levels. The boundaries of an experience can be expansive and include the sensorial, the symbolic, the temporal, and the meaningful.3 In the twentieth century John Dewey, father of experiential education, has done much to define the notion of experience and how we use it to learn about the world and our place in it. Experience for Dewey is the “complex of all which it is distinctively human.”4 It is the continually changing contexture of human beings in relation to one another and in relation to their environment. According to Gordon Ziniewicz in his Essays on the Philosophy of John Dewey, experience means more than merely sensation or observation. It includes both active and passive dimensions involving thought, feeling, doing, undergoing, handling, and perceiving–any sort of human involvement with the world.5 Dewey also distinguished between “having an experience” and “knowing an experience.” The having points to the immediacy of contact with the events of life, or sensation; the knowing points to the interpretation of the event, or perception.6 For Dewey experiences involve individuals who are engaged in some type of activity—doing and undergoing. These actions, as John Wilson pointed out, usually have some consequences associated with them that cause the individual to make judgments about the value of each experience. Most of these experiences are everyday occurrences, known as
    3 4
    
    Ibid. Dewey, J. (1929) Experience and Nature, New York Dover. 5 Ziniewicz, G. L., John Dewey: Experience, Community, and Communication. Essays on the Philosophy of John Dewey. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.fred.net/tzaka/dewey.html 6 Smith, M. K., “Is there is a difference between ‘having an experience’ and ‘knowing an experience’?” July 1996 reproduced from the Encyclopedia of Informal Education. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-exper.htm
    
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    primary or ordinary experiences. A second type of experience, referred to as secondary or “an experience,” are out of the ordinary; secondary experiences usually cause the individual to think more deeply about what has happened by comparing it to ordinary experiences. This reflective thinking is what makes a secondary experience become “an experience.” Wilson provided a concise description of the two levels on which we approach experience:7 Primary experiences are ritualistic in nature; they include things that are done routinely by individuals—such as brushing teeth, driving to work—requiring little or no thought. Therefore, they offer minimal stimuli for deeper thought or reflection. However, they do provide the background against which we know when a deeper, more stimulating experience occurs. In other words, if everything were always extraordinary, how could we distinguish such experience if there were no ordinary experiences with which to compare them? Primary experiences may be ordinary but are necessary for extraordinary experiences to occur. Secondary experiences are real life experiences that stand out as significant. According to Dewey’s book Art as an Experience, having an experience involves several things that make it more meaningful. An experience that flows naturally from one part to the next produces a sense of anticipation for the individual having the experience. It is this anticipation that makes the experience compelling for the individual so that it may continue over an extended period of time. Finally a successful experience comes to a logical conclusion and does not simply end. This type of experience can occur when an individual views a piece of art, listens to music, or does science. Succinctly, experience is the “sum total” of transactions of human beings with their environment and with one another. Experience is an individual process, differing from person to person; what we seek the most is fulfillment, unity and satisfaction in any
    
    7
    
    Wilson, J., John Dewey and Experience, 2004. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.chara.gsu.edu/~wilson/EDSC9870/Dewexp.htm
    
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    experience.8 The quality of each situation is the way the whole situation fits together (or fails to fit together). We want to make conditions better and to improve unsatisfying situations.
    
    Metaphors
    [Metaphors provide] the only ways to perceive and experience much of the world. Metaphor is as much a part of our functioning as our sense of touch, and as precious.— George Lakoff and Mark Johnson9 One of the challenges of being a designer is that of working in unfamiliar subject areas. Designers are often thrust into domains where they have little to no background knowledge. One way to overcome this is to use a metaphor to explore the subject matter. Since metaphors are naturally used to help understand a concept that is unfamiliar or unapproachable, designers can thus take a familiar domain and manually utilize its characteristics to find similarities and differences between it and the unfamiliar domain.10 In the book Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggest that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical; it plays a central role in defining our everyday realities, what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. The way we think what we experience, and what we do everyday is very much a matter of metaphor. Lakoff and Johnson also suggest that metaphors not only make our thoughts more vivid and interesting but that they actually structure our perceptions and understanding. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are “metaphors we live by”—metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without
    
    8
    
    Ziniewicz, G. L., John Dewey: Experience and Nature: Individuality and Association. Essays on the Philosophy of John Dewey. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.fred.net/tzaka/deweynew.html 9 Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M., Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980, 2003. 10 Saffer, D, The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design, Master’s Thesis. Carnegie Mellon University, 2005.
    
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    our ever noticing them.11 Therefore, metaphors are especially useful when they relate well to a user’s experience. In his essay The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design, Dan Saffer explains that, if properly used, “metaphors can be a powerful tool for designers, in both the process of designing and within the products themselves.” That is, metaphors can help redefine design problems and help solve them; they can be used as a research tool, to understand new subject areas, or as means to generate new ideas about familiar subjects. As Shaffer explains, if we acknowledge that “invention comes from the juxtaposition of two unlike objects, then metaphor is at the heart of invention; and since invention is at the heart of Design as well, it stands to reason that metaphor itself is at the center of Design as well.”12
    
    11 Lakoff,
    
    12 Saffer, D, The
    
    G. and Johnson, M, Metaphors We Live By. Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design.
    
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    II. DEFINING DOMAINS OF DESIGN
    No man’s knowledge can go beyond his experience. —John Locke
    
    Design as Experience Design
    According to the Design Council in the United Kingdom, design can be viewed as an activity that translates an idea into a blueprint for something useful, whether it is a car, a building, a graphic, a service or a process. The role of the designer is to develop a language that allows for the translation of the idea to happen. Scientists can invent technologies, manufacturers can make products, engineers can make them function and marketers can sell them, but only designers can combine insight into all these things and turn a concept into something that's desirable, pleasurable, viable, and commercially successful–something that adds value to people’s lives.13 EXPERIENCE DESIGN There is an inherently interdisciplinary approach in designing experiences; thus using a single discipline’s name would be too limiting. To emphasize the active nature of my work, I prefer to name my practice “Experience Design,” a term that is broad in scope and suggests a creative process in constant adaptation. To understand the design process used in the case studies, it is crucial for me to present an overview of the important issues of each design discipline so that they can be considered when presenting ideas, communicating messages and designing experiences. But foremost, we need an agreement on what Experience Design means, and Nathan Shedroff provides an accurate explanation: Experience Design is an umbrella term that encompass many disciplines (such as information and interface design; interaction, sound, and game design; architecture, interior, industrial and environmental design and so forth) all working towards the creation of a unified experience for a user throughout the many possible ‘touch-points’ with a ‘product.’ This approach includes
    13 Design
    
    Council, “What is Design”. Retrieved on March 2006 from http://designcouncil.org.uk
    
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    consideration and design in all three spatial dimensions, over time, all five common senses, and interactivity, as well as customer value, personal meaning, and emotional context.14 Experience Design is a new paradigm, and a call for inclusion: It calls for an integrative practice of design that can benefit all designers, including those who work in spatial/environmental installations, print products, services, broadcast images and sounds, live performances, and interactive media. Experience Designers strive to create experiences that produce desired perceptions, cognition, and behavior among their clients’ ‘users,’ ‘customers,’ ‘visitors,’ or ‘audiences.’ Under the experience-design rubric, designers of many specializations successfully work with each other and with non-design professionals on a sequence of events orchestrated to create a mood, an urge to buy, or provide a pleasurable experience. Unfortunately, the pressures faced by designers in all disciplines, together with certain parochialism among designers often prevents interdisciplinary conversations. According to Bob Jacobson, who in 2000 surveyed practicing experience designers from the American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA), “designers who work in the physical world—designers of themed products and environments—have a vastly more developed theoretical base they can call on than do designers who work in the digital world.” Additionally, more money and labor goes into the design of tangible objects and places intended to create experiences. Jacobson argues that: Designers in the physical world have developed rigorous project-management and client-service skills as well as a heightened ability to work with crossdisciplinary teams. Comparable skills and methods are not prolific among digital designers. We need to learn from designers whose practices may be quite different from our own as well as incorporate in the design practice the knowledge provided by ethnographers, phenomenologists (scientists of “experience”), sociologists, psychologists, historians, storytellers, and other design disciplines.15
    
    14 Shedroff, N., 15 Jacobson,
    
    Experience Design 1. B., Experience Design, A List Apart, August 2000. Retrieved April 2006 from http://www.alistapart.com/articles/experience
    
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    Indeed, effective Experience Design encompasses myriad fields, from online to desktop, from print to exhibits, from interaction design to copywriting, from brand management to theme-park design. As Shedroff remarks, the most important concept to grasp is that “…all experiences are important and that we can learn from them whether they are traditional, physical, offline experiences or they are digital, online, or other technological experiences…what these solutions require is for their developers to understand what makes a good experience first, and then to translate these principles into the desired media, without the technology dictating the form of the experience.”16 Experience Design Exemplars Immersive experience: Museum of Tolerance The genesis for the Museum of Tolerance, at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, California, was the troubling discovery that a new generation of young people was beginning to question whether or not the Holocaust ever happened. Through unique interactive exhibits, this museum focuses on the dynamics of racism and prejudice in America. According to their mission statement, “it challenges visitors to confront bigotry and racism by promoting an understanding of the Holocaust in both historic and contemporary contexts.”17 The presentation and organization are innovative, sensitive, and powerful. The experience uses different points of views to present the information and build the story. A timed tour moves visitors between exhibits to relive a decade of events in Germany from pre-World War II, through the rise and fall of the Third Reich, and liberation. Visitors obtain a passport that describes the story of a real person whose life was changed by the events of the Holocaust.18 The passport is updated throughout the tour, and at the end, the ultimate fate of the person is revealed. True to history, not everyone described in the
    16 Shedroff, N., 17 Museum
    
    Experience Design 1. of Tolerance, The Simon Wiesenthal Center. Retrieved on June 2005 from http://www.museumoftolerance.com 18 Shedroff, N., Experience Design 1..
    
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    narration survived the Holocaust. This fact makes a more meaningful connection between visitors and the victims.
    
    Figure 1: Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles, CA. Left: Hall of Testimony, where visitors see and hear unforgettable stories of the courage and sacrifice of Holocaust victims. Right: A re-creation of concentration camp gates. © Museum of Tolerance, The Simon Wiesenthal Center.
    
    Architectural experience: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Design works on many levels, often on levels that the user is not even aware of throughout the experience. Some of these manifest themselves in emotional reactions that even unknowing onlookers do not understand. 19 Architect Maya Lin’s first public commission, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., ensures that everyone is affected by the experience. The memorial functions as a visual scar on the American landscape; a corner submerged into the earth, the work is welcoming in its open-ended, book-like form, and yet disconcerting to those who realize that to read the names is to stand below the horizon—six feet under—conversing in the space of the dead. The PBS documentary Art in the Twenty-First Century shows how the memorial is attentive to the individual life of every man and woman who died in the war, as well as responsive to the individual experience of the visitor. We can see how the two 247–foot walls of the monument expand laterally, hugging close to the earth, depending on the landscape for support as
    19 Shedroff, N.,
    
    Experience Design 1.
    
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    much as they mark it as a site for human suffering and reconciliation. Maya Lin’s memorial activates a full-bodied response on the part of the viewer, connecting us with the material aspects of their construction as well as with the private memories and thoughts that transform past events into awakenings in the present.20
    
    Figure 2: Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C. Left: A long black-granite, V-shaped wall set below ground level, where visitors descend to read the names of the soldiers killed, and then slowly ascend as the list dwindles. © Jim Steinhart21 Right: An emotional connection is created as visitors’ images are mixed with the names of the dead on the polished wall. © Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund22
    
    GRAPHIC DESIGN (A.K.A VISUAL DESIGN) Of the two names that changed design in the ’80s and ’90s—Mac and Tibor—one changed the way we work, the other the way we think. The former is a tool, the latter was our conscience. —The American Institute of Graphic Arts.23 While Graphic Design refers specifically to the use of graphic media (such as color, typography, illustration, and photography) to communicate a style or expression,
    
    20 PBS, Art:21—Art 21 Photo
    
    in the Twenty-First Century. Retrieved from www.pbs.org/art21/ artists/lin/card1.html credit: Jim Steinhart. Retrieved from http://www.planetware.com/picture/washington-d-c/washington-vietnam-veterans-memorial-us-dcvien2.htm 22 Photo credit: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Retrieved from http://www.nea.gov/about/40th/vietnam.html 23 Copyright 1999 by The American Institute of Graphic Arts. Retrieved on Apr 24, 2006 from http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm?contentalias=tiborkalman
    
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    Nathan Shedroff and other Experience Design practitioners prefer the term Visual Design since it encompasses the field of developing visual materials to create an experience in any medium, including online, broadcast, print, outdoor, etc. Nevertheless, as a graphic designer who has worked in different media, both terms are interchangeable, and for the purpose of this report I will use Graphic Design since it is the name I am more comfortable with. Often Graphic Design is been considered a discipline concerned with appearance, and the elements of visual expression and style. However, it can convey more than mere beauty; it can communicate meaning through decisions based on visual appearance. Successful designers choose visual elements according to how they want to communicate goals and message to the intended audience, not based on a stylish foundation. Before the arrival of desktop computers, Graphic Design was known as commercial art; everything was done with Photostat cameras and typesetting. When the first Macintosh computer arrived in 1984, some designers began experimenting with its possibilities, pioneering typefaces that were designed to work specifically upon the computer (see Émigré magazine exemplar). Graphic Design became more visible and more understandable, in part, because designers had that intimate relationship with fonts. As design educator Ellen Lupton stated “Fonts are the gateway into graphics for a lot of people.”24 Graphic Design Exemplars Émigré: 1984-2005 In the 1980s the ‘new wave’ in which electronic technology was used to generate and manipulate type and imagery had it most significant Californian contribution from Émigré, a large-format magazine launched in 1982 by a Dutch immigrant, Rudy Vanderlans, and his wife Zuzana Licko. Typeset with a Macintosh computer in typefaces that Licko designed so that they ‘would look good on a coarse resolution printer,’ the magazine published theoretical discussions about graphic design as well as new typeface
    24Metropolis
    
    Magazine, Speaking Graphically with Ellen Lupton, By Elizabeth Evitts, March 20, 2006. Retrieved April 2006 from http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=1872
    
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    designs. In a Speak Up interview in 2002, Vanderlans acknowledged that the advent of the Macintosh computer was probably the biggest reason for the magazine success: “We made a name for ourselves because we became involved in using the Mac before most other graphic designers did. And in those days, before PostScript was invented, the Macintosh provided its own unique visual bitmapped language. Everything you did on the Mac looked like it was done on a computer, which set it apart from all other graphic design work at that time.”
    
    Figure 3: Émigré issues. They were characterized by their diverse layouts and unconventional use of type. © 1984-2005 Émigré Graphics.
    
    Émigré had a big influence on graphic designers moving into desktop publishing. Its variety of layouts, its use of guest designers (Jeffery Keedy, Scott Makela, Ed Fella, and Gail Swanlund among others), and its opinionated articles positioned Émigré as one of America’s most important design magazines. Another one of its characteristics is that the creators [Vanderlans] reinvented the magazine every time it was published. The magazine evolved from a two-color, oversized sheet-fed format, to the full color web offset trade magazine format, to a cardboard CD packaging format including actual CDs, and finally to the pocket book [perfect bound paperback] format. In its final years, 14
    
    Émigré became less radical and influential than in its heyday, and finally ceased publication in 2005 with its last issue, Émigré 69. Émigré issues became collectable items: They are in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, and the Design Museum in London, among others Design and Social Responsibility: Tibor Kalman, Benetton, and Colors Tibor Kalman may not be as influential on the daily practice of graphic design as the Mac, but his influence over how designers define their roles in culture and society is indisputable. Kalman was best known for the groundbreaking work he created with his New York design firm, M&Co, and his brief yet influential editorship of Benetton’s Colors magazine.
    
    Figure 4: Kalman’s ads for Florent’s restaurant. It became a testing ground for ideas about mixing type and using the vernacular in irreverent ways that would later become M&Co signatures. © Florent
    
    Kalman incorporated visual elements other designers had never associated with successful design, and used his work to promote his radical politics. His influential experiments in typography and images were seen everywhere, from music videos to the design of magazines such as Wired and Ray Gun.25 Kalman saw himself as an ‘artist-as-
    
    25 Haber,
    
    M., Tibor Kalman's obituary, Salon magazine. Retrieved on Apr 21, 2006 from http://www.salon.com/people/obit/1999/05/19/kalman/
    
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    agent-of-change’ for whom graphic design was a means of achieving two ends: good design and social responsibility.
    
    Figure 5: Provoking ads from the “United Colors of Benetton” campaign. Left: a nun and priest kissing. Right: a black woman nursing a white baby. © United Colors of Benetton
    
    In the 1990s, Benetton revolutionized the world of visual design with a multicultural campaign, known as United Colors of Benetton which, among other images, featured thought-provoking ads, like a nun and priest kissing, a black woman nursing a white baby and the photo of an AIDS patient on his deathbed.
    
    Figure 6: Tibor Kalman, Colors magazine Issue 4 “Race,” cover and inside spread), 1993 © COLORS
    
    !
    
    Ultimately Benetton’s ads led to the creation of Colors, a magazine that explored the ways in which people are both similar and at the same time very different, and for which Kalman became the editor-in-chief in 1991. With Colors, Kalman found the 16
    
    perfect platform for his visual and philosophical ideas. With its striking, graphics-heavy layout and its bilingual articles on themes such as race and AIDS, Colors was a unique company periodical. The magazine pushed boundaries in terms of its editorial emphasis on politics, and it pushed design to the point of post-literacy by making words secondary to the controversial images.26 One of Colors’ most famous layouts was the “What If...,” a collection of full-page manipulated photographs showing famous people racially transformed—Queen Elizabeth as African; Pope John Paul II as Asian; Spike Lee as Caucasian; and Michael Jackson given a Nordic look—served to raise readers’ own consciousness of racism. Colors’ design mantra was to present vast amounts of information as clearly and concisely as possible; the magazine was image-driven, a method that is universal and reaches the greatest number of people with a strong, immediate impact. Using this visual language, Colors’ themes alternate between the challengingly serious—such as ecology, wars around the world, the fight against AIDS— and the frankly frivolous—such as shopping and fashion—but each is seen from an unconventional, irreverent perspective. For over ten years the magazine has been talking to an audience of young people all around the world. Indeed, I recall the time when I began studying Graphic Design, and I was waiting for the next issue to appear in the newsstand; the visual language really communicated to the designers of my generation. INFORMATION DESIGN The best designs are intriguing and curiosity-provoking, drawing the viewer into the wonder of the data, sometimes by narrative power, sometimes by immense details, and sometimes by elegant presentation of simple but interesting data. Excellence in [statistical] graphics consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency. —Edward Tufte27 In his essay A Unified Field Theory of Design (1994), Nathan Shedroff explains that Information Design “is an approach to design that stresses clear, understandable communications by giving care to structure, context, and presentation of data and
    26 Hall, P. (Ed. with
    
    M. Bierut), Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist, Princeton Architectural Press, 1998
    
    17
    
    information. As a field, its principles relate to all communications, products and experiences, regardless of medium—print, broadcast, digital, online, etc.”
    28
    
    Primarily
    
    concerned with clarity (instead of simplicity) and understanding, Shedroff sustains that “an information designer starts with the essential view that vast amounts of data, which bombard our senses everyday, are not pieces of information but merely data.” To have informational value, data must be organized, transformed, and presented in a way that gives it meaning. The values that distinguish Information Design from other kinds of design are efficiency and effectiveness at accomplishing the communicative purpose. While few designers have been explicitly taught the issues paramount to clear communication (e.g., organization, presentation, goals and messages, clarity, and complexity), these are usually addressed on a subconscious level by anyone who attempts to organize her thoughts and communicate them. Information Design’s mandate is to optimize the layout of information to facilitate navigation, readability and immediate understanding of what the information communicates.29 Information Design does not ignore aesthetic concerns but it does not focus on them either. As Edward Tufte has passionately demonstrated in his books, (i.e., “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”), there is no reason why elegantly structured or well-architected data cannot also be beautiful. Around 1989—back in the days before the interactive media industry—there was a small community of print designers working on a variety of projects, including complex signage, directories, catalogs and information systems. Many of these designers bore the titles “instructional designer” or “interface designer.” The larger design community had trouble understanding and accepting this field called “Information Design,” as it was decidedly more obscure and conceptual than traditional Graphic Design. Richard Saul Wurman was the first to identify the issues of clarity, meaning and understandability in
    27 Tufte,
    
    E. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics Press, Cheshire, Connecticut (1983), p. 121. 28 Shedroff, N., Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design, Information Design (edited by Bob Jacobson), MIT Press.
    
    18
    
    the print world, as well as some of the techniques designers could use to organize data and create information. He communicated these principles both inside and outside the design community, and he firmly established Information Design as a measurable benefit to both communication and business. Wurman aside, there were others practicing what can be considered Information Design. A New York City firm, Siegel & Gale, was redesigning and rewriting documents and tax forms to make them easier to use (see Figure 7). Edward Tufte’s successful book, “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information,” provided pioneering studies in how communication can be both beautiful and useful. By 1972 Wurman started using the term Information Architect, a rearrangement of the phrase Architecture of Information. In terms of skills, practice, process and expectations, the term Information Architect described the existing fields of information design and visual design. It was simply a new label invented for the purpose of elevating the profession as a whole in the eyes of a population that was not particularly design savvy. Eventually the flood of dot-com startups required so many information designers that anyone who could draw a flowchart was soon hired and given such title.30 Information Design is not as yet a fully integrated profession. Its practitioners have quite different views of the profession—even different names for it. In newspaper and magazines it is called information graphics; in business it is presentation graphics or business graphics; and in science, it is known as scientific visualization. Humancomputer engineers refer to Interface Design, while architects talk about signage or wayfinding. Graphic designers just call it design. While these practitioners no doubt have distinct interests that might warrant different names, many of their core concerns and
    
    29 Canali
    
    De Rossi, L., Learn what Information Design really is, MasterView International #6, November 2001. http://www.masterviews.com/2001/11/15/what_is_information_design.htm 30 Shedroff, N., The Making of a Discipline: The Making of a Title, Boxes & Arrows, March 2002, http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/002328.php
    
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    practices are similar. The different terms indicate that Information Design is still a discipline were many of its practitioners have little contact with each other.31 In ancient times, scribes had to invent the papyrus on which they wrote. Over many centuries they modified written symbols from ideographs to phonetic script to meet the changing needs of their times. Their modern counterparts, today’s information designers, also have to improve the tools and techniques of their trade to meet even more rapid and complex changes of the twenty-first century. Information is now frequently delivered utilizing electronic media such as Web sites and CD-ROMs (with new possibilities for user interaction). A new discipline has emerged which deals with these aspects of Information Design from a user-centered point of view: Interaction Design. Information Design Exemplars The London Underground Map In his authoritative book Graphic Design: A Concise History, designer, teacher and author Richard Hollis explained that in the wake of the First World War, modernists fascinated with machines embraced the idea that technology could heal the world. Modernism became widely followed as a design style, as observed in the stylish posters commissioned to famous poster artists by the London Underground. However, it was not a poster designer but an engineering draftsman, Henry Beck, who assured London Transport a place in the history of Information Design with his re-design of the London Underground map.32 According to Britain's Design Museum, by the early 1930s, the London Underground network had expanded so considerably that it had become increasingly difficult to squeeze all the new lines and stations into a geographical map. Passengers complained that the existing map was crowded, confusing and hard to read.33 Basing his map on an electrical circuit, Beck displayed the system on an octagonal grid
    31 Horn,
    
    R. Information Design: Emergence of a New Profession. Chapter 2, in Information Design, ed. by Robert Jacobson, MIT Press, 1999. 32 Hollis, R. Graphic Design: A Concise History. Thames & Hudson Ltd. London. 1994. 33 British Council Design Museum, Designing Modern Britain, Design Museum Exhibition. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.designmuseum.org/design/index.php?id=106
    
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    so that color-coded lines met at right angles or at 45 degrees, with the stations placed to show their relationship within the system rather than their actual distance from each other. The crowded central area was enlarged for legibility, and the distances between stations were arranged at almost uniform intervals—a strategy more typically employed in the representation of time, rather than space. It therefore assumes that distance between stops and geographical orientation are of secondary interest to finding the correct train. As Beck had observed, “If you're going underground, why do you need to bother about geography? Connections are the thing.”34 The inclusion of the River Thames winding across the lower half of the diagram gave a sense of place and scale; and interchange stations and connections were indicated with clear conventions. The diagrammatic map was produced on a trial basis in 1933 as a leaflet and Beck continued to refine it until 1959.35 Beck’s design complemented Edward Johnston's elegant, crisp, and extremely legible Railway typeface (used for London Underground signage introduced in 1916). The basic underlying concepts of Beck’s design (clarity, lower case font, equally-spaced stations, lines running at 45 or 90 degrees to each other) have inspired the urban transport maps in many cities around the world from New York to Buenos Aires to Sydney. Although, Beck's rigorous map brought conceptual clarity to a senseless tangle of streets and neighborhoods that had no underlying order, the main criticism is that it is geographically inaccurate. This can lead to a very distorted view of London, particularly for those new to the city. Many times, as Martin Kay noted, London Transport has attempted to redesign the diagram using different concepts, none of which have lasted. Even today's version of the map, showing the latest additions, is developed from his schematic interpretation of the network in the pre-war years. It has proved to be a design classic, and even with the geographic distortion, a highly effective way of communicating its information to its readers. As the Underground network has changed
    
    34 Smit,
    
    M. Tube map to Utopia. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/display.var.724624.0.tube_map_to_utopia.php 35 British Council Design Museum, Designing Modern Britain.
    
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    over the years, it has also proved to be adaptable enough to allow new lines and stations to be depicted without compromising its visual logic and clarity.36
    
    Figure 7: Harry Beck, view of The London Underground Map. In Ken Garland’s Mr. Beck's Underground Map, Harrow Weald, Capital Transport, 1994, p. 20 © 2006 Transport for London
    
    1040EZ tax form Created by Siegel & Gale, the United States’ 1040EZ income tax return form is a model of clarity. The firm, famous for redesigning forms and legal documents to facilitate their comprehension, reduced the very complex and otherwise confusing process of filing taxes into an extremely clear, one-page form that nearly anyone could use. As Shedroff admitted in Experience Design I, its use is limited to less complicated tax returns. Unfortunately, the US Internal Revenue Service implemented a simplified version of the original design.37
    
    36 Kay,
    
    37 Shedroff, Nathan,
    
    M. Process Mapping by Tube. 2000. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.kay-uk.com Experience Design 1.
    
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    Figure 8: IRS Form 1040EZ, originally designed by Siegel & Gale. © Internal Revenue Service.
    
    INTERACTION DESIGN Interaction Design is an approach to designing interactive experiences in any medium (digital as well as physical objects, services, performances, etc.) that is concerned with the user-experience as it flows through time. As Shedroff has noted, the problem with the term ‘interactive’ is that it has been generally accepted as meaning either animation (a passive medium in which objects may move on a screen), or anything that appears on a computer or on the Web since both are considered ‘interactive media’— in comparison to other media such as television, film and radio. However, interactivity encompasses everything that we do, not just what we do on or with computers. In fact, most interactive experiences in our lives have very little to do with technology, like playing sports or games, hobbies, or just conversing with another person. On a philosophical level, interaction is a process of continual action and reaction between two parties (whether living or machine). Therefore, Interaction Design can also signify interactions between humans and reactive or responsive products. Saffer defined interactions as communication: one-on-one (a telephone call), one-to-many (blogs), or many-to-many (the stock market). The products an interaction designer creates can be digital or analog, physical or incorporeal, or some combination thereof. What is important is that Interaction Design focuses on the interactivity between an experience 23
    
    and its participants, the behavior of products (that create the experience), and how these work. Interaction designers spend most of their time defining these behaviors, with the goal of facilitating interactions. To this end, these designers consider many interactivity attributes, such as feedback, control, creativity, adaptivity, productivity, communications, etc. Interactive experiences that contain these attributes are highly valued when designed well. Therefore, understanding interactivity allows us to draw experiences, processes and techniques for creating other types of interactions, like computer-based interaction. Everyday, we experience some of the capabilities of digitally stored information—information that can respond to and interact with the user. For example, cash registers, automated teller machines, gasoline pumps, elevators, and soda machines rely on microprocessors, and virtually no printed information reaches a reader without passing through some stage in electronic form. Indeed, in the course of a day, we may come in contact with over two hundred tiny computers embedded in cars, exercise equipment, copying machines and other everyday devices. Donald Norman, a prominent cognitive psychologist who is principal of the Nielsen Norman Group and prominent cognitive psychologist author of The Design of Everyday Things, has observed that: Technology is not neutral. Each technology has properties—affordances—that make it easier to do some activities, harder to do others. The easier ones get done, the harder ones neglected. Each has constraints, preconditions, and side effects that impose requirements and changes on the things with which it interacts, be they other technology, people, or human society at large. Finally, each technology poses a mind-set, a way of thinking about it and the activities to which it is relevant, a mind-set that soon pervades those touched by it, often unwittingly, often unwillingly. The more successful and widespread the technology, the greater its impact upon the thought patterns of those who use it, and consequently, the greater its impact upon all of society.38
    
    38 Norman,
    
    D. Things That Make Us Smart. Addison-Wesley, 1993, p. 243.
    
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    Interaction Design Exemplars Automated Teller Machines (ATM) An Automated Teller Machine (ATM) is an electronic device that allows us to get money and perform simple banking tasks any time of the day or night—without the need to interact with a human bank teller. Interestingly, Luther George Simjian created the world’s first ATM in 1939, though it only existed for six months due to the lack of customer acceptance.39 It took almost thirty years for the idea to catch on, then in the mid-1980s, ATMs became widely use. For a product that has become such a routine of our daily life, it is surprising that ATMs have evolved so little. The user-interaction has remained pretty much the same because the main functions a user performs—withdraw cash, deposit cheques/cash, or transfer money between bank accounts—have not changed. However, the lack of design standardization makes interfaces still difficult for many people to use, though they now offer more options (like multiple languages) and incorporate accessibility features—such as increased visibility of display characters for elderly persons, voice instruction and numeric keypad for the visually impaired, and additional mirrors to increase visibility for low-eye levels/wheelchair users. ATMs have become so ubiquitous that when they are not accessible (either through malfunction or availability) we find ourselves unprepared for alternatives. Like with any type of machinery, errors that can occur may be mechanical (such as card transport mechanisms; keypads; hard disk failures), software (such as operating system), communications, or operator error. As Shedroff has noted, travelers to other countries use ATMs as an easy way to get money without having to interact with bank tellers in a foreign language. Compared to the experience they replace, these devices give us an enormous amount of freedom—especially when they are located in places that are too small to have a bank branch, or where when they can extend the
    
    39 ATM definition,
    
    Wikipedia, the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_teller_machine
    
    25
    
    bank’s hours of operation. Where suspicion and unease were once associated with ATMs—when they were first introduced—we now associate convenience with them.40
    
    Figure 9: ATMs allow people with disabilities to perform bank transactions. Left: a person in a wheelchair practices an ATM slip retrieve with his service dog. © Summit Assistance Dogs41 Right: Talking ATMs allow visually impaired customers to easily access funds. © SMG 42
    
    Visual thesaurus One of my favorite examples of interactivity from the Web is Plumb Design's Visual Thesaurus (www.visualthesaurus.com). While the Internet offers a lot of dictionaries, thesauri and other tools that can be helpful, what distinguishes Visual Thesaurus from the others is its unique—and remarkably beautiful—approach to presenting the results of a word search. By displaying the interrelationships between words and meanings as spatial maps, it translates the English language into a visible architecture.
    
    40 Shedroff, N., 41 Photo
    
    Experience Design 1. credit: Summit Assistance Dogs. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.summitdogs.org/gallery/pages/atm.htm 42 Photo credit: Solutions marketing Group. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://disabilitymarketing.com/profiles/boa.php4
    
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    It works by showing the relationship between words. The intuitive interface uses semantic maps that make it easy to explore the meaning of words and their semantic relationships. First launched in 1998, the Visual Thesaurus has redefined what a thesaurus can be; the Thinkmap visualization software provides a wonderful example of the use of Java applets to add value to interface design. It puts words and meanings in motion to create an engaging experience in language and interface that is as useful as it is beautiful. Each click brings in more words and senses from the connected database, creating a web of relationships that demonstrate linguistic associations and dependencies. Word forms that are more related become brighter and closer, and those that are less related retreat from the display.43 The Visual Thesaurus moves beyond strictly synonyms to display and animate connections among word definitions, multiple word meanings, and even antonyms. The user can broaden and narrow search interactively by selecting parts of speech or type of relationship among the words displayed. Color, shape, and rollover displays enhance both the usefulness and beauty of its visual representation of the English language.44 It has over 145,000 English words and there are also beta versions available in other languages. Targeted to the general population, it has been successful among educators and students as a tool for discovery, study, artistic exploration, and a general analysis of the structure of language.
    
    43 Communication
    
    Arts, Sept/Oct 2003. Retrieved February 2006 from http://www.commarts.com/ca/interactive/cai03/36_ia03.html 44 Visual Thesaurus, Thinkmap. Retrieved from http://www.thinkmap.com/visualthesaurus.jsp
    
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    Figure 10: Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus displaying the semantic relationships associated with the word ‘experience’. © ThinkMap
    
    SENSORIAL DESIGN Every facet of the design process has to maintain a relationship with the senses. When you confront an object, you've got to touch it, smell it, listen to it...—Bruno Munari Sensorial Design is a term used to include the presentation of an experience in multiple senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste). It is the employment of all techniques with which we communicate to others through our senses. For example, Visual Design only covers visual expression and presentation to the visual sense. Audio Design includes the creation of music, sound effects and vocals to communicate and entertain in the aural sense (hearing). Likewise, all of the other human senses (touch, smell, taste, etc.) are elements of an experience that can be designed.45
    
    45 Shedroff, N.,
    
    Experience Design 1.
    
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    Through our senses we are presented with an incredibly rich and varied experience of the world—for example the evocative allure of the aroma of roasting coffee, the texture of fine silk, the taste of good food, the sound of our favorite musician, and the sight of a glorious sunset. Not all sensory experiences are pleasant—we have all smelled rotten milk, felt a pin pierce, tasted foods we detest, heard finger nails on the blackboard, and seen images in movies that have made us close our eyes. All these sensations are part of the immense range of experiences the senses bring to us. In his article, The Mystery of the Senses, James Calvert states that not only do the senses interact with our consciousness, but also with subconscious and involuntary responses to the environment. For example, most of our behaviors depend upon our senses, such as moving about the world, discriminating between safe and unsafe food, detecting potentially harmful situations, etc. The senses cannot be understood except by careful separation of the physical and objective stimulus from the mental and subjective perception. Furthermore, as Calvert indicates, the subjective experiences of the consciousness are created by dynamic mental activity based on sensory information combined with memory.46 This includes things like colors, smells, tones, flavors, recognition of faces, and pain. All the senses are simultaneously in action, and our consciousness is dominated by perceptions. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish a sensation from a perception because their processes are very integrated. In Experiencing Sensation and Perception, John Krantz considers sensation to involve all those processes that are necessary for the basic detection that something exists in the world. For example, a sensory process might be detecting the loudness of a sound or the type of taste in food. Perception identifies, interprets and organizes this sensory information. So the sound becomes a cat’s purr and the food becomes a perfectly prepared steak. Sensation is very basic, and perception involves certain aspects of our cognition. What we see, hear, taste, etc. is not simply the
    
    46 Calvert,
    
    J. B. The Mystery of the Senses, 2001. Retrieved on Feb 2006 from http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/optics/senses.htm
    
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    result of what happens in the world; it also depends upon basic psychological processes that take into account what we expect to see, hear, taste, etc.47 Overview of the sensory system According to Paul Rodaway in his book Sensuous Geographies, the commonly recognized senses—touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing—on reflection may seem to be rather arbitrary, yet have endured as useful categories of sensory experience. A number of researchers have offered definitions of each sense and suggested additional senses, most notably ones associated with the sensory properties of the body itself, the sense of balance and kinesthesia (or the perception of muscular effort or locomotion). However, as Rodaway has noted, paying too much attention to the identification of distinct senses can lead us to overlook the important inter-relationships between the senses and the multisensory nature of experience.48 Borrowing terms from Marshall McLuhan, one might also argue that each sense is both a medium and a message. First, a sense is a medium through which ‘information’ about the environment is gathered. Each sense organ is receptive to particular types of environmental information—material surfaces, chemical compounds, ambient light, and air vibrations. Secondly, a sense is a kind of message, or a distinct perspective on the world. Each sense organ by its very nature is selective of the environmental information it gathers, thus filtering and structuring the information into particular messages. Rodaway remarked the duality of the term ‘sense’—sensation and meaning: medium equates with sensation, message with meaning. Paraphrasing McLuhan, the medium is the message and the message is the medium. The senses gather information but also contribute to the definition of that information, that is, participate in sense-making. Seeing and hearing are remote senses that tell us about distant parts of our environment by receiving electromagnetic and vibrational waves. The information presented to the eyes is spatial and two-dimensional, that from the ear temporal and one47 Krantz,
    
    J. H., Experiencing Sensation and Perception. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://psych.hanover.edu/classes/sensation/
    
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    dimensional. As with sight, hearing is subject to illusions and mental processing is very important in these senses.
    
    Figure 11: The range of the senses. © Larry S. Skurnik and Frank George, 1967.49
    
    The contact senses, which involve physical contact with the things that are sensed, are both chemical and mechanical. The chemical senses are the olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste) sensations; the mechanical is the somatic sense (touch).50 With our olfactory system, which we use for recognizing things, we continuously test the quality of the air we breathe (which alerts us to potential dangers, e.g. smoke) as well as use this sense to inform us of other relevant information, such as the presence of food or another individual. In fact, we appear to have an innate ability to detect bad, aversive smells. Furthermore, other research suggests that smell can influence a person’s mood, memory, emotions, mate choice, the immune system and the endocrine system (hormones).51
    
    48 Rodaway,
    
    P., Sensuous geographies: body, sense, and place. London. 1994. Frank George), Psychology for Everyman, Pelican, 1967. 50 Calvert, J. The Mystery of the Senses. 51 Jacob, T., Smell and taste - A brief tutorial. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.cf.ac.uk/biosi/staff/jacob/
    49Skurnik, L. S. (With
    
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    Olfactory wiring differs in important ways from the other senses. For all other senses, the neuronal pathways for all the senses pass through the thalamus on their way to the cortex. To smell, the stimulus is picked up by the olfactory receptors at the top of the nasal cavity and terminated in the olfactory bulbs, which lie at the base of the brain. This direct connection from nose to cortex is a more primitive arrangement and may account for the ability of aromas to evoke vivid memories of places and people.52 With the olfactory sense ten thousand times more sensitive than taste,53 it thus is primarily responsible for the flavors of food. The types of olfactory sensations are given as fruity, flowery, resinous, spicy, foul, and burned. In contrast, taste sensations are simply known as sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and savory. Interestingly, these sensations are related to physical or bodily requirements: We like the taste of sugar because we have an absolute requirement for carbohydrates (sugars, etc.). We get cravings for salt because we must have sodium chloride (common salt) in our diet. Bitter and sour cause aversive, avoidance reactions because most poisons are bitter and off food goes sour (acidic). The meaty, savory taste termed “umami” drives our appetite for amino acids (the building blocks for proteins).54 With the mechanoreceptive senses that involve touch, posture (kinesthetic sense), the vestibular (equilibrium) and ear (the complex mechanism that allows us to perceive sounds) all involve cells that react to mechanical stimulus. However, while touch may seem to involve less mental processing than the other senses, large volumes of the brain are associated with parts of the body, and thus touch may play a large role, especially in learning and memory. Rodaway maintains that touch is a highly significant dimension of the human experience, both in person-person and in person-environment relationships. To lose an ability to feel, that is, touch, “is to lose all sense of being in a world, and fundamentally of being at all.” And, if we lose the skin, the primary haptic layer, we cannot survive. Hence, to be skinned alive is perhaps the greatest horror of prolonged and
    52 Lockhart,
    
    K. C., Born with a fingerprint-like scent, Vanderbilt University. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.vanderbilt.edu/News/research/ravs96/ravs96_13.html 53 Moncrieff, R.W. The Chemical Senses, 3rd ed., Leonard Hill, London, 1967.
    
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    agonizing death, since the body loses its haptic layer with a massive tactile information overload.55 Therefore, the sensation of pain is closely related to touch, but is obviously a subjective perception like those of sound and vision, involving higher mental processes and consciousness.56 Mapping the Homunculus Scientists have often wondered how the human brain functions in interpreting our richly varied environmental stimuli. Modern scientific studies have mapped the region of the cortex, which receives tactile input from the body, resulting in a representation of the topography of the somatosensory cortex. One such mapping uses the term ‘homunculus’ to describe the distorted human figure drawn to reflect the relative sensory space our body parts occupy on the cerebral cortex. “A particular body region is represented on the cortex with an area that is proportional to the number of touch receptors in the body part, not by its size. Therefore, the neurons form a geometrically distorted projection of the body surface.”57 In human beings, the sensory homunculus has grossly large lips, hands and genitals, because these parts are considerably more sensitive than other regions of the body. Well known in the field of neurology, the Homunculus is commonly called ‘the little man inside the brain.’
    
    54 Jacob,
    
    T., Smell and taste - A brief tutorial. P., Sensuous geographies: body, sense, and place. 56 Calvert, J. The Mystery of the Senses. 57 Walker, P., Mapping the Homunculus, July 2004. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/AEF/1994/walker_mapping.html
    55 Rodaway,
    
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    Figure 12: Sensory homunculus model showing what a man’s body would look like if each part grew in proportion to the area of the cortex of the brain concerned with its sensory perception. © The Natural History Museum, London 58
    
    Sensorial Design Exemplars Sensory Garden The Sensory Garden, re-designed in the 1990s by Yoshisuke Miyake for Osaka Japan’s Oizumi Ryokuchi Park (which originally opened to the public in 1974), invites exploration through the senses of sight, sound, smell, and touch. Using a revised philosophical approach that promotes inclusion, Miyake added Universal Design features, as well as changed both the location and name of this former “Garden of the Blind” in order to provide recreational opportunities and a diversity of sensory experiences for all visitors. The garden features an integrated wayfinding system that takes visitors into seating areas surrounded by raised plant beds and a water pond. The pathway gradually slopes down at the edge of a pond, so people with wheelchairs and scooters can enter the
    58 Sensory
    
    homunculus: The Natural History Museum, London. Retrieved April 2006 from http://piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/www/image.php?img=87494
    
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    seating boxes. Furthermore, people can both experience running their hands through the water as well as touch and smell the aquatic plants without stooping or kneeling. The park uses a combination of flat, hard-surface walks and retaining walls, surrounded by areas of foliage, plants purposely chosen for their textural qualities and aromas, as much as their vividly contrasting colors, to create a rich tapestry of shapes, and movements. Braille labels identifying the plants are placed on the backside of handrails.59 The variety of tactile displays and audio information, as well as opportunities to touch and smell flowers, and to feel the water and sculptures, enrich everyone's experience in the garden.
    
    Figure 13: The Sensory Garden. Left: Seating alcoves surrounded by water offers all visitors to enjoy contact with water. Right: Braille labels identify the plants. © 2005 Sensory Trust
    
    Multi-sensorial experience: Amusement parks Often one of the happiest memories of childhood can include the fun and the excitement of amusement parks. Whether it is the rides or the atmosphere, the excitement is always a result of exploring an unusual environment with fantastical features. In this context, the product designed is human experience, and moving past their roots in another producer of human experience—the movies—they utilize more than the visual and auditory senses. As totally controlled environments, these parks offer us the ability to experience things we could not otherwise, or to play on our senses in ways that would be difficult outside this spaces. Even the simple walk around the park is often a visual, sonic,
    
    59 Robinson, L.
    
    & Stoneham, J., The Japanese Connection. Retrieved on March 2006 from http://www.sensorytrust.org.uk/news/newsletters/newsletter_9/japan_visit.html
    
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    and olfactory treat; as we smell, we see, and hear novel things created especially to grab our attention and enhance the experience.60 “Every aspect of a theme park is carefully planned to shape a visitor’s behavior and experience,”61 argues Miodrag Mitrasinovic in his book, Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space. He gives the example of Main Street, U.S.A., based on Walt Disney’s hometown of Marceline, Missouri, as a perfect example. Designed to resemble the center of an early 1900s American town. “the environment is literally shaped, almost sculpted, so that it allows Disney's designers to actually design what visitors experience,”62 Mitrasinovic observes.
    
    Figure 14: Main Street, U.S.A. at the Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World Resort, Florida, USA.
    
    For example, the buildings along Main Street, U.S.A. use forced perspective to appear taller than they really are: The ground level floors were built at approximately seven-eighths size, with the upper floors becoming progressively smaller. This makes the visitor feel larger and as if he has more dominance over the landscape. Excitement is built through carefully placed visual stimuli. The unique shops, the horse-drawn
    60 Shedroff, N., 61 Vivé
    
    Experience Design 1. G., interviews Dr. Miodrag Mitrasinovic about his book, Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space. Retrieved on February 2006 from http://www.utexas.edu/features/2005/parks/index.html
    
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    transportation, the wonderful architectural details produce a cacophony of background sounds that enhance the visual illusions. Even desirable fragrances, like chocolate and cinnamon wafting through the air, keep visitors moving from one thing to the next. All theme parks seek to heighten experience so that they place visitors in a state where they do not think, do not question and do not engage in critical dialogue. “In order to successfully move you through the environment, your cognitive ability has to be brought down to a minimum but your emotional involvement has to be up for extended periods of time,” Mitrasinovic explains. “That’s how you move beyond being critical or fighting to suspend your disbelief. Most of the information processing unfolds on the visceral level, and it is processed much later on the intellectual level.” Tactile experiences: Tactile Art Tactile art, unlike other works, is meant to be touched. Touching is part of the process of interpretation—both literally and spiritually. Artist Anne Cunningham’s tactile art, low relief sculptures, can be interpreted by touch as well as sight. Her art is meant to be read by running the hands over the surface of each piece, interpreting what is felt and seeing the story with our mind, through our hands. Therefore, Cunningham creates art that function on a higher level, to connect diverse communities in a shared experience, constantly seeking ways to further engage all people with at least one of the five senses. Among her most recently bas-relief explorations, she was commissioned by the National Federation of the Blind to depict Erik Weihenmayer’s assent of Mount Everest—the first blind climber to reach the summit (see figure 15). She created five tactile and visual works of art illustrating the ascent. The satiny smooth sky, clouds and sun were made of black slate. The glassy smooth and grainy textured mountains and ground were made of sparkling white marble. The people, animals, structures and small items were made of cast bronze. The route up Everest, the ropes, camp and summit markers were made of gold, brass, silver, and steel.63
    
    62 Ibid. 63 Cunningham,
    
    A. Tactile Art. Retrieved September 2005 from http://www.acunningham.com
    
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    Figure 15: Anne Cunningham’s tactile art. Left: Detail of tactile panel from the Everest Exhibition. Right: A girl tactually reading the panel. © Anne Cunningham
    
    ACCESSIBLE DESIGN VERSUS UNIVERSAL DESIGN The major issue with accessibility is dignity. It is NOT enough to get into a building just any old way. I like to enter a building at the front with everybody else, where the rest of society does. —Violinist Itzhak Perlman64 Variations in human ability Demographic shifts in the US and internationally were a primary catalyst to a new approach towards inclusion. Across the world people are living longer than at any other time in human history. In the US, that averages thirty years more life than one hundred years ago.65 Additionally, more than 600 million persons—almost ten percent of the world’s population—have some form of disability. As life expectancy rises and modern medicine increases the survival rate of those with significant injuries, illnesses and birth defects, the proportion of people with disabilities in society will keep on expanding.
    
    64 Violinist 65 Adaptive
    
    Itzhak Perlman, in NEAH, 2003, p. 22. Environments. Retrieved on February 2005 from http://www.adaptiveenvironments.org
    
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    In 1990, the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—a pivotal moment in the history of the disability rights movement—ensured equal access to employment opportunities and public accommodations for people with disabilities. The ADA guarantees that no person with a disability can be excluded, segregated or otherwise treated differently than individuals without disabilities.66 A person with a disability is defined by the ADA (and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973) as “someone who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.”67 People with disabilities range from the person who has difficulty walking great distances to the person who uses a wheelchair; from one who is blind and uses a guide dog to the person who cannot adjust quickly to changes in lighting conditions; from one who has age-related and mild hearing loss to the person who is congenitally deaf. As a result of legislation focusing on education, employment, and access to public and private services and facilities, people with disabilities are increasingly becoming an economic force, as well as are gaining access to the cultural mainstream. Design is catching up Accessible Design or “barrier-free design” provides a level of accessibility for people whose physical, mental, or environmental conditions limit their performance (i.e.: people with disabilities). However, designs often result in separate and stigmatizing solutions, such as a wheelchair ramp that leads to a different entry to a building than a main stairway. When Ronald L. Mace, a devoted advocate for the rights of people with disabilities, inspired a group of architects and researchers at North Carolina State University (NCSU) to consider design for everyone, he set in motion what has become a worldwide movement, with the NCSU Center for Universal Design as a leading proponent. The term known as Universal Design—in the US, Inclusive Design in Europe—aims to extend standard design principles to products and environments usable
    66 The Disability
    
    Rights Movement: A Brief History, Access and Opportunities: A Guide to Disability Awareness, U.S. Society & Values-USIA Electronic Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1999. Retrieved February 2005 from http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itsv/0199/ijse/history.htm
    
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    by people of all ages and abilities, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design for any particular disability. Universal Design addresses the larger issues of usability making things accessible and providing better experiences for everyone. Moreover, Universal Design is not a euphemism for accessibility and does not carry the negative connotation of barrier-free design. According to B.J. Novitski, Universal Design differs from the prescriptive ADA standards, which gives many individuals access to spaces, but may not support their active and full participation.68 ADA standards also do not address the subtleties of sensory and cognitive differences or address the changes experienced by the human body over time. The NC State Center for Universal Design proclaims that designers may use the minimums of codes and standards as a benchmark, but then must go beyond them to achieve Universal Design.69 In architecture, Universal Design goes beyond meeting minimum access requirements to the design of programs and physical facilities that are usable by the broadest public audience. The National Endowments for the Arts states that an “accommodation” that assists one person with a disability to experience beauty (in a different way) may also be an added convenience for the vast majority of non-disabled people.70 Rather than trying to design for “the average user,” it is often better to understand how people vary to design acceptably for a broad audience. Universal Design is a part of everyday living and is all around us. The “undo” command in most software products is a good example, together with; so is color-contrast dishware with steep sides that assist those with visual problems as well as those with dexterity problems. Additional examples include cabinets with pullout shelves, kitchen counters at several heights to accommodate different tasks and postures and low -floor
    67 U.S. Department of
    
    Justice, A Guide to Disability Rights Laws, September 2005. Retrieved from http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/cguide.htm 68 Novitski, B., Doing Universal Design. Retrieved on February 2005 from http://www.architectureweek.com/2001/0808/culture_2-1.html 69 Center for Universal Design, North Carolina State University, 2000. Retrieved February 2005, from http://www.design.ncsu.edu/cud/ 70 National Endowments for the Arts, Humanities, 2003.
    
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    buses that “kneel” and are equipped with ramps rather than lifts. A conscious awareness of our sensorial limitations and an increment in the multiplicity of pathways to the world around us will provide a better experience, regardless of users’ abilities. Designers should start putting accessibility at the beginning of the design process rather than adding it on in the end to meet ADA requirements, as if accessibility were just an afterthought. Principles of Universal Design
    Principle Equitable use Flexibility in use The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities. accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities. is easy to understand, regardless of user’s experience, skills or concentration level. communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user's sensory abilities. minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions. can be used efficiently and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue. provides appropriate size and space for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of user's body size, posture, or mobility. Examples - Power doors that automatically open. - Integrated, dispersed and adaptable seating in theaters. - ATM with visual, tactile, and audio feedback. - Scissors designed both for right- and lefthanded users. - A moving sidewalk/escalator in a public space. - An instruction manual with drawings only. - Redundant cueing (e.g. voice communications and signage) in airports, train stations and subway cars. - An “undo” feature in computer software. - A double-cut key easily inserted into a recessed keyhole in either of two ways. - Lever or loop handles on doors and faucets. - Touch lamps operated without a switch. - Controls on front & clear floor space around appliances, mailboxes and other objects. - Wide gates at subway stations. - Storage spaces within reach of both short and tall people.
    
    Simple and intuitive use Perceptible Information Tolerance for error Low physical effort Appropriate size and space
    
    Figure 16: The Principles of Universal Design © 2006 Center for Universal Design, College of Design, North Carolina State University
    
    The authors, a working group of architects, product designers, engineers and environmental design researchers, collaborated to establish the following Principles of Universal Design to guide a wide range of design disciplines including environments, products, and communications. These seven principles may be applied to evaluate 41
    
    existing designs, or guide the design process about the characteristics of more usable products and environments. The Principles of Universal Design were compiled by the following advocates: Bettye Rose Connell, Mike Jones, Ron Mace, Jim Mueller, Abir Mullick, Elaine Ostroff, Jon Sanford, Ed Steinfeld, Molly Story, & Gregg Vanderheiden.71 The table below provides a summary of each principle’s primary directive for design. A detailed description and guidelines are available at The Center for Universal Design website at http://www.design.ncsu.edu/cud/ Universal Design Exemplars Oxo Good Grips: Peeling made easy In the same year that Congress passed the ADA, the needs of one special customer who suffered from arthritis—wife of OXO International's entrepreneur Sam Farber—was the catalyst for developing a new range of easy-to-use kitchen tools called Good Grips. By designing for a special need, which was regarded as being on the margins of the market, OXO dramatically expanded the total customer base for ergonomically superior kitchen utensils. Instead of aiming to satisfy cooks of average physical ability, the decision to include a wider range of user ability in terms of dexterity proved a masterstroke in creating more usable, enjoyable and stylish kitchen products. Since then, the swivel peeler has become an icon of the movement to design more inclusively, proving that rules once thought to be regulatory burdens do not just create niche markets but can be good for the rest of us. Smart Design, the firm responsible for the design, was eager to learn from the experience of users and this unlocked the creative and commercial potential of the project. A key decision during development was the choice of Santoprene material for the basic handle, which needed to be soft and flexible, but also easy to mold and able to go in dishwashers. Additionally, the patented flexible
    
    71 Center
    
    for Universal Design, The Principles of Universal Design, College of Design, North Carolina State University, 2006.
    
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    rubber fins, a device borrowed from bicycle handles, became a defining motif of the Good Grips range, communicating the functional benefits to customers in a tactile way.72
    
    Figure 17: OXO Good Grips peeler. Its design incorporated plump, resilient handles that oval in cross section, to better distribute forces on the hand and enhance grip, even for wet hands.
    
    Multisensory Museum Exhibit: Dorcas Project In the United Kingdom, around 1995, the Dorcas Project was designed by The Dog Rose Trust team to enhance the experience of museum visitors. The project supplements the visual experience with auditory commentary, tactile maps, and touchable models to provide information about a room or an exhibit. These features are useful for all visitors, but especially for people with low or no vision. Integral with the map is the audio component that allows a visitor to locate, select, and depress buttons that activate voice descriptions of specific areas of the building or exhibit. The system can also be used as a directory for any building: the combination print and tactile map can provide critical information about room locations, routes of travel, and emergency exits.
    
    72 World
    
    Kitchen, Inc., OXO International Becomes a Universal Design Icon, Dec 2000. Retrieved on Feb. 2005 from http://www.design.ncsu.edu/cud/newweb/projects_services/projects/case_studies/oxo.htm
    
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    Figure 18: Dorcas Project. Left: stand and case for wooden three-dimensional model and tactile plan of the Houses of Parliament. Right: Two visitors wearing headsets explore the model while listening to the commentary. © The Dog Rose Trust
    
    Universally designed packaging
    
    Figure 19: Package design. Paint can with carrying handle and easy twist-open and pour spout. The spout allows the user to control the amount poured; and a drain-back feature allows paint to drip back into the container.
    
    Packaging of pharmaceutical, personal care, consumer goods, food, etc. must have great utility. Packages that save time, thinking, and work are in demand. Although universal improvements that increase utility may add mere “convenience” to the life of an “average” consumer, they are essential for older adults and people with disabilities to 44
    
    complete their daily activities safely and independently. The designer's job is to create a wrapping or container that protects products during shipping, prevents them from being opened and stolen in the store, and is inexpensive to manufacture. The big challenge is to balance the needs for theft-and-child-proof against the rising need among adults with limited mobility for easy-to-open containers.73 USABILITY Yes. I push doors that are meant to be pulled, pull doors that are meant to be pushed and walk into doors that should be slid. Moreover, I see others having the same troubles— unnecessary troubles. There are psychological principles that can be followed to make these things understandable and usable. —Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things74 “Usability starts with a philosophy,” says Whitney Quesenbery (a usability expert and interface designer who has published several articles about the social benefits of human-centered design), “a belief in designing to meet user needs and to focus on creating an excellent user experience—though it is the specific process and methodology that produce the real goal of usability.”75 In the 1980s, the term usability began to replace the term “user friendly,” which had acquired objectionable connotations. The term ‘user’ generically describes people who use interactive products but in reality, users are people who engage in activities who span the array of human life—including reading, learning, transacting, and collaborating.76Although there are many different approaches to making a product usable, there is no single definition for the term usability. The International Standards Organization (ISO 9241) defines usability as “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency
    
    73 Universal Design
    
    Learnsite. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.kstate.edu/udlearnsite/Lesson7.htm 74 Norman, D. The Design of Everyday Things, Doubleday/Currency, 1990.
    75 Quesenbery,
    
    W. Using the 5Es to Understand Users. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.wqusability.com/articles/getting-started.html 76 Macdonald, N. The People Element. Source: UN, 9 February 2004. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1529.asp
    
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    and satisfaction in a specified context of use.”77 However, there are other approaches to a definition based on the product, the user, ease-of-use, actual usage and the context of use. In the Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on HCI, Bevana et al. introduced three views related to how usability should be measured: 1. Product-oriented view, measured in terms of the ergonomic attributes of the product; 2. User-oriented view, measured in terms of the mental effort and attitude of the user; 3. User performance view, measured by examining how the user interacts with the product, with particular emphasis on either ease-of-use—how easy the product is to use, —or acceptability—whether the product will be used in the real world. These views are complemented by the contextually oriented view, in which usability of a product is a function of the particular user being studied, the task they perform, and environment in which they work.78 Considering these different approaches, a more inclusive definition of usability would be: “the ease of use and acceptability of a system or product for a particular class of users carrying out specific tasks in a specific environment; where ‘ease of use’ affects user performance and satisfaction, and ‘acceptability’ affects whether or not the product is used.” To put it simply, usability is the degree to which something—software, hardware or anything else—is easy to use and a good fit for the people who use it. The study of usability—cutting down mistakes through better design—has spread in the past two decades, from airplane cockpits to nuclear power plants to Web sites.79 The work of usability experts consists of two phases: first, ensuring that designs take advantage of
    77 UsabilityNet 2006 78 Bevana, N.,
    
    Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/r_international.htm Kirakowskib, J. and Maissela, J. What is Usability? Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on HCI, Stuttgart, September 1991. 79 Chang, K. From Ballots to Cockpits, Questions of Design. Interview to Donald A. Norman, January 23, 2001. Retrieved February 2005 from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/23/science/23USEA.html
    
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    known psychological cues—with doors, for example, handles are to be pulled, flat surfaces are to be pushed—and second, testing whether people use the product as designed. Criteria for measurements of attitude and user performance determine whether the design of the product is successful in achieving usability. High usability generally means a system or product that is: easy to learn and remember; efficient, visually pleasing and fun to use; and quick to recover from errors. Cognition and ergonomics In The People Element, Nico Macdonald provides an overview of the origins of usability going back to ancient times: All tools, from a Stone Age axe to a twenty-first-century car, provide an interface and a fit between the properties of the natural world and humans’ perceptual, physical and cognitive abilities. For both ancient and modern tools, this interface communicates the tool’s capabilities and how it is intended to be manipulated. As mass production took over from craft manufacture, tools were no longer made for a specific user, and understanding general human physiology became more important in creating tools that could be widely used. This ‘fit to the body’ became formalized as ergonomics (also known as Human Factors) around the time of the Second World War.80 Engineers realized that the adaptation of machines to the human operator increased human-machine reaction, speed and performance. As electronics replaced physical mechanisms in products, their function and how they were intended to be used become more complex to understand for the human operator. Furthermore, not only could electronic devices now take any form, they are tools that could and can perform myriad functions. Thus, human interaction with products became more an issue of ‘fit to the mind’ and was investigated through cognitive ergonomics. To address these issues, the disciplines of Human-Computer Interaction and Interaction Design were developed, the former rooted in psychology and computer science and the latter in design.81 Design sits at the center of the triangle of what is commercially viable and rewarding for business, what solutions can be facilitated technologically, and what is
    80 Macdonald,
    
    N. The People Element.
    
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    useful, usable and desirable for people. In Human-Computer Interaction: Psychology as a Science of Design, John M. Carroll describes the design process as “frequently piecemeal, concrete, and iterative.” He argues that designers may work on a single requirement at a time, personify it in a scenario of user interaction to understand it, reason about and develop a partial solution to address it, and then test the partial solution before moving on to consider other requirements.82 During this process, designers sometimes radically reformulate the fundamental goals and constraints of the problem. Carroll concludes with the idea that designers often need to do design to adequately understand design problems. A variety of approaches and techniques for user participation were developed in the 1970s to broaden the empirical scope of design, many of which emphasized “lowtech,” cooperative activities to facilitate collaboration between users (who bring expertise on the work situation), and developers (who bring expertise on technology).83 In “participatory design,” as one of these approaches is now known, users are involved in setting design goals and planning prototypes, instead of becoming involved only after initial prototypes exist. This reformulation of design created an opening for new ideas. Noteworthy inspiration came from the work of the great industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, who had pioneered an empirical approach in the 1940s.84 Dreyfuss’ approach institutionalizes an accommodation to designers’ propensity for concrete, incremental reasoning and testing by incorporating four central ideas: (a) early prototyping with (b) the involvement of real users, (c) introduction of new functions through familiar “survival forms,” and (d) many cycles of design iteration. Dreyfuss pushed beyond the designer’s need for prototyping and iteration as a means of clarifying the design problem to the user’s knowledge, experience, and involvement to constrain design solutions.85
    
    81 Ibid. 82 Carroll 83 Kuhn
    
    J. M., Human-Computer Interaction: Psychology as a Science of Design, 1969. S. and Muller M.J. Special section on participatory design. ACM, 1993. 84 Dreyfuss, H. Designing for People. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955. 85 Carroll J. M., Human-Computer Interaction: Psychology as a Science of Design, 1969.
    
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    Usability Exemplars: making history Designing for the people: the telephone of the future In 1929, Bell Laboratories ran a “telephone of the future” competition where Henry Dreyfuss was invited to participate but declined because he believed that a responsible design had to be based on user research. Bell awarded first place to an artist named Jensen who submitted a prototype of an Art Deco-style telephone that was awkward to hold and failed to consider how users really used a telephone.86Afterwards, Bell realized how impractical Jensen’s design was and hired Dreyfuss, who in turn interviewed the company’s manufacturing engineers to understand what production constraints his design had to consider, and performed extensive consumer research to learn the needs of end users. The result of this association was the “302” tabletop telephone, with a receiver and transmitter in a ‘combined handset’ resting in a horizontal cradle. Molded in black phenolic plastic, it was introduced in 1937 and remained in use in offices, institutions, and homes for almost thirty years. Dreyfuss, by remaining true to the needs of the customer, ultimately educated Bell to understand that the phones they designed and installed were an important service they provided to their customers, and that as such phones needed to respond to the needs of those users in deeper ways than mere visual styling.87
    
    86 Williamson,
    
    J. The Different Designer Types. Retrieved on March 2006 from http://www.designmichigan.org/design_futures/ 87 Gantz, C. M., Design Chronicles: Significant Mass-produced Products of the 20th Century, Schiffer Publications, Ltd., 2005. Excerpt retrieved from http://www.idsa.org/webmodules/articles/anmviewer.asp?a=247
    
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    Figure 20: Dreyfuss’ Western Electric 302 tabletop telephone (produced 1937-1950) © Bell Laboratories
    
    The Ballot that (would have) Changed history This example is the antithesis of good usability; it clearly demonstrates what happens when basic Information Design considerations and simple Usability practices are disregarded. During the 2000 US Presidential elections, an apparently well-intentioned effort on the part of local Palm Beach County, Florida officials to make their ballot more readable for elderly citizens led to voting-booth confusion, which probably changed the course of history.88 In the resulting “butterfly ballot” took a simple task— vote for president—into a more complicated task of understanding the ballot itself. On a 2000 New York Times OP-ED page, Paula Scher of Pentagram dissected the Palm Beach Ballot (see figure 22): The votes were cast by punching a hole in a card with a stylus. There were paper ballots that indicate which hole corresponds to which candidate. At the time, a Florida state law allowed for minor-party candidates to get listed on the ballot, which led to 10 parties plus space for a write-in candidate for President. The names were listed alternating left and right on the Presidential ballot, with a single column of punch-card holes down the middle between the rows. George W. Bush was first on the left column, followed by Al Gore in second place; Pat Buchanan was first on the right column (Gore's voting hole was number three, Buchanan's number two). There were arrows that covered a
    88 Rosenberg,
    
    S., Interface bug tips electoral college! November 2000. Retrieved on February 2005 from http://archive.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/11/09/interface_design/
    
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    certain fraction of the distance to the column of holes. Interestingly, on other parts of the ballot (for Senator and other offices) there was only one column (the first name corresponded to the first hole, the second name to the second hole, etc.).89 Whether some of the votes that went to Pat Buchanan were really meant to be for Al Gore will remain a mystery. What is evident is that the Florida ballot clearly had usability problems. As “Web Usability Guru” Jakob Nielsen stated, these were “caused by the attempt to map a two-column set of labels onto a one-column action area. A direct mapping between two single-column areas would have been much less error-prone.”90 In a 2001 New York Times article, Donald Norman reminded everyone about the centrality of usability in the design environment. His partner, Dr. Nielsen, added that “Humans are an incredibly error-prone species. It is very hard to change human nature. It is really easy to change design, if you bother doing so.”91
    
    Figure 21: New York Times OP-ED analysis of the Palm Beach County Ballot © New York Times
    
    89 Dan
    
    Bricklin, Ballot Usability in Florida. Retrieved on February 2005 from http://danbricklin.com/log/ballotusability.htm 90 Rosenberg, Scott, Interface bug tips electoral college! November 2000. Retrieved on February 2005 from http://archive.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/11/09/interface_design/ 91 Chang, Kenneth. From Ballots to Cockpits, Questions of Design.
    
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    For better or worse, the controversy over the design of the presidential election ballot placed the value of design importantly in the mind of the general public. The general consensus was that something as simple as a ballot with a list of names needed essentially no design.92 Democrat Theresa LePore, the county’s supervisor of elections responsible for the infamous ballot design, made that mistake when she opted for the two-column butterfly format to allow the candidates' names to be printed in larger type. That, she thought, would make the ballot easier for older residents to read.93 This was certainly a laudable consideration, but clearly shows the importance of testing a design, because bad design can come from good intentions.
    
    92 Williams, JP. Design
    
    Issues: The State of the Ballot, Communication Arts March/April 2001 retrieved from http://www.commarts.com/CA/coldesign/jphW_48.html 93 Chang, K. From Ballots to Cockpits, Questions of Design.
    
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    III. CONCLUSION: A NEW BEGINNING
    You must be the change you wish to see in the world.—Gandhi I entered graduate school with years of experience in the design of visual materials and interfaces. Through my explorations, I have discovered new disciplines that expanded my definition of design and repurposed my interest in the field. My graduate experience contributed to refine the refinement of my design process into a deliberate working methodology. In my investigation process, I define an inquiry and outline the goals I expect to achieve. Then, I search for existing documentation that addresses the conceptual framework I am interested in exploring. Once I have gathered the relevant information, I compare it and distill the main issues to find the best way to solve the problem. In most projects, the research involves a long commitment, and often allows me to diversify my options opening doors that lead to new and unforeseen paths. In such cases, the iterative process brings unexpected possibilities and the result of the design experimentation often provides multiple solutions to the given problem. I find this both rewarding but also challenging knowing that subtle refinements may make all the difference designed experience. For example, this report is a manifestation of my working process: I defined an inquiry—to understand experience— and the goals—to identify the design practices that address experience. I then dissected the different disciplines associated with the design of an experience; thus I moved from a general to a particular perspective. Once I have covered all bases, I am now able to introduce the outcome of my iteration process—the case studies section. The design experimentation illustrates a variety of solutions to my initial inquiry: the design of experiences. Experience Design should be valued and recognized for the power it holds. In our current era of over-specialization, many people are unable to solve overlapping social, cultural and technological problems because they are trained to see only one dimension of a larger problem. It is often the designer who can fulfill a multitude of role types and is 53
    
    better equipped to meet the variety of needs she will inevitably encounter during her career. As part of my experiences in graduate school, I have concluded that in returning to the professional world, I will no longer be a graphic designer; my new role will be that of an ‘experience designer.’ I have developed a capability to approach problem solving not only aesthetically but analyzing critically what could be the best solution to meet clients’ requirements as well as users’ needs and expectations. In this sense, I find Herbert Simon’s definition appropriate: “Everyone designs who devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”94 Everybody solves problems—it is a basic human capacity. All Design is problem solving, but not all problem solving is Design. Doing a math problem is problem solving but not Design; creating something in the world to respond to human needs is Design as well as problem solving. An experience designer is an expert in defining a unique set of circumstances that need to be addressed and bringing together into the design practice the knowledge provided by an interdisciplinary team (e.g., sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, usability experts, among other professionals). It is this great diversity of creative problem-solving approaches that makes Experience Design so essential as a resource in our society today. In keeping with my conviction about the power of Design, I believe that good design must not only work for as many potential users as possible but must also enhance everyone’s experience. The way something is made lays a foundation for the future, and goes beyond mere satisfaction to wisdom, connecting us to the world. I believe that if we do our art well, its value becomes apparent and we will be asked to do more. And in doing so, we can change the world. As Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, remarked in his Stanford University’s commencement address in June 2005, we should have faith that the dots of one’s life will connect down the road, even if the journey so far has not followed a clear pattern. This is really not a conclusion as much as it is a beginning of my new journey, and it looks quite promising.
    
    94 Simon, H. The
    
    Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, 1969.
    
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    IV. DESIGN CASE STUDIES
    I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. —Helen Keller The following case studies are a collection of stories about the experience of designing for an enhanced user experience. They are intended to illustrate a design problem and solution in a way that informs the reader about the work I have pursued during my graduate studies in Design at the University of Texas at Austin. These case studies provided me with the opportunity to experience and respond to complex design issues in a variety of settings, from print and digital interfaces, to products and physical installations. In the process, I was able to reflect on relevant theories and techniques as I attempted to understand the problem, develop an approach, and implement the solution. By perusing these case studies, the reader may gain insight into the importance of engaging multiple senses in each designed activity to better enhance the overall quality of the experience for everyone, including people with disabilities. Each case study is organized according to a perceptual category, which embodies the use of one or more senses to enhance the user experience. Because human experience is arbitrarily rich and descriptions are finite; experiences cannot be fully described. Therefore, all cases will inevitably address only a part of the experience. In each case study the information is organized in the following order:
    • • • • • • • • • • • • • Case study title Perceptual category Synopsis Course information Challenge Inspirations Process Outcome Further investigations Acknowledgments Endnotes References Images
    
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    Accessible exhibition design guidelines
    PERCEPTUAL MODALITY Multi-sensory: use multiple senses (vision, hearing, touch, olfactory) to convey information. SYNOPSIS A website project providing accessible design recommendations for cultural administrators (e.g.: museum curators and exhibition designers) to make museum experiences more enriching for all participants, including children, elder citizens and people with disabilities. COURSE INFORMATION Course: DES380 Core Course in Design, Fall 2004 Instructor: Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Design, Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Course: INF385T Accessibility: The Web, Multimedia, and the Virtual Body, Fall 2004 Instructor: John Slatin, English, Division of Rhetoric and Composition, Professor, Ph.D. CHALLENGE Museum exhibitions are complex presentations that convey concepts, showcase objects, and often appeal to our visual and auditory senses. However, as museums recognize the diversity within their audiences, they realize that exhibitions must do more: exhibitions must teach to different learning styles, respond to issues of cultural and gender equity, and offer multiple levels of information in order to address the needs of children, elder citizens and people with disabilities. For this project, I wanted to answer the following question: “How does the exhibit design create an enriching experience for all participants, accommodating people with disabilities so they too can access the information equally?” INSPIRATIONS Smithsonian Institution: Smithsonian Guidelines for Accessible Exhibition Design [1]. 56
    
    National Endowment for the Arts: Design for Accessibility: A Cultural Administrator's Handbook [2]. PROCESS In the context of museums and cultural environments, the term “accessibility” refers to the development of experiences that are accessible to all audience members who may want to engage in them—including individuals with disabilities. In order to design with Universal Design in mind, it was important to understand the many types of disabilities that museum patrons may have. Therefore, the website offered a brief overview of different disabilities organized in the following categories: • • • • Visual Auditory Motor/physical Cognitive/learning
    
    The rationale behind the website documentation came from my DES380’s CATTt project. CATTt is an acronym that stands for: Contrast, Analogy, Theory, Target, and tale. Within the context of this project, CATTt means: Contrast: undesirable exhibition examples that set the stage for improvements. Analogy: desirable exhibition examples that provide the qualities necessary to create a meaningful experience. Theory: the relationship between Sensorial Design and Experience Design, as the guideline for enhancing accessibility of exhibitions. Target: the application of my theory, which is to provide recommendations for cultural administrators to make museum experiences more enriching for all. tale: the representation, an accessible website compiling the proposed recommendations. To understand the needs of this research, I reviewed three local exhibitions spaces and compared their implementation (if any) of accessible features. The cases studied were: Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, Jack. S. Blanton Museum of Art and Creative 57
    
    Research Laboratory (CRL), the last two examples from the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. After interacting and examining all the exhibits in these facilities, I found the Texas State History Museum to be the most accessible and engaging example. It appeals to diverse audiences through interactive exhibits that incorporate clear descriptions, redundant modalities (more than one way to display information, such as providing both an audio file and a transcript/captions of a video), tactile experiences (objects and models of the elements exhibited) and an audiodescription tour of permanent exhibits. It was evident that a core value of this museum was to have programs and exhibits accessible to all potential visitors and to seamlessly integrate accommodations into the design of the entire building. In contrast, the CRL gallery exhibit failed to create an accessible environment due to the absence of non-visual modalities, tactile models or a clear organization. Its high dependence on visual cues to convey information made the space unusable for people with visual impairments. The only accessible feature I found was that the building and restrooms were wheelchair accessible. These findings, the accessible guidelines and detailed descriptions of how to design for different disabilities, formed the core of the website. Additionally, as part of the final assignment for the INF385T course, I compiled all the information into an accessible website, which allows everyone, including people using assistive technology, to access the information. The website is at www.vkdg.com/MFA/ OUTCOME The website serves as a framework to assist cultural agencies in making their facilities and programs fully accessible to everyone by providing alternative ways of experiencing a given exhibition (paintings, sculptures, video installations). Therefore everyone— including the 54 million Americans with disabilities [3]—can learn through, participate in, and enjoy the arts. The premise for these recommendations is the relationship between Sensorial Design and Experience Design; in other words, the presentation of an experience in multiple senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) all working towards the creation of a unified experience for the participants. This approach includes consideration 58
    
    and design in all three spatial dimensions, over time, involving interactivity, as well as personal meaning, and emotional context. The proposed recommendations for museum exhibitions help make these presentations more understandable, enjoyable, and connected to visitors’ lives. Some of the recommendations included: • • • provide tactile demonstrations of work exhibited, such as sculpture models, textures in paintings, woven displays. use interactive devices to allow for a participatory experience, such as keypads, audio devices (Acoustic guide). set up the exhibitions space, works of art and interactive elements (architectural, curatorial design, wayfinding) to accommodate diverse disabilities. The benefits of approaching exhibition design from an accessible point of view seem clear. By broadening its target audience to include people with disabilities and enhancing the general usability of museum experiences, cultural agencies benefits from accessible design through increased participation. Moreover, participants enjoy the benefits of accessibly designed environments through the increased availability of well-designed, fun-to-interact experiences. FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS This project has formed the basis of my subsequent investigations in the MFA program. I have applied these guidelines to the design of an accessible art exhibition (see Art beyond sight case study) and to my thesis project, a sound installation in a sculpture museum (see Before the fall case study). Throughout my work I have been pushing the use of different senses in the design of experiences. I believe that by becoming more aware of our senses (i.e., understanding the richness of each sense and the information each is capable of transmitting), we can better relate to others and, in doing so, become better designers of experiences.
    
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    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the following individuals for their invaluable contribution to this project: John Slatin (Director, Ph.D., Accessibility Institute), Miodrag Mitrasinovic (Asst. Professor, Ph.D., Department of Art and Art History), Glenda Simms (Systems Analyst, UT Information Technology Services), Anne Manning (Curator of Education and Academic Affairs, Jack. S. Blanton Museum of Art), David Denney (Director of Public Programming, Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum), Sarita Rodriguez (Head of Education, Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum), Deborah Sayre (Systems Analyst, M.F.A., Department of Art and Art History), Aimee Ronn (Computer Science student), Beatrice Thomas (graduate Design student), Jaladhi Pujara (graduate Design student), Florencia Gutierrez (M.Ed. in Special Education), and Santiago Bustelo (who kindly helped me with the CSS for the website). ENDNOTES None. REFERENCES Smithsonian Institution (2000). Smithsonian Guidelines for Accessible Exhibition Design. Retrieved November 2004, from http://www.si.edu/opa/accessibility/exdesign/start.htm National Endowment for the Arts (2003). Design for Accessibility: A Cultural Administrator's Handbook. Retrieved October 2004, from http://www.nasaaarts.org/publications/design_access.shtml The Center for An Accessible Society. Retrieved on April 2006, from http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/demographics-identity/
    
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    IMAGES
    
    Case study 1: Image 1: Screenshot of website showing guidelines to design for Hearing Impairments.
    
    Case study 1: Image 2: Tactile model of a fortification at Texas State History Museum.
    
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    Case study 1: Image 3: Video snapshot showing open captioning at the Texas State History Museum.
    
    Case study 1: Image 4: Artwork label at the Creative Research Laboratory, which does not follow the standards for accessible label design.
    
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    Learning Braille with Braizzle
    PERCEPTUAL CATEGORY Hearing, Touch SYNOPSIS A project to develop an interactive game that teaches visually impaired children to read the Braille alphabet using electronically enabled keys and audio functions. The goal is always to match the key sets together to reconstruct the alphabet. COURSE INFORMATION DES381 Critique Studio I, Fall 2004 Instructor: Kate Catterall, Design, Associate Professor, M.A. CHALLENGE Within the broad subject of accessibility, my design project focused on creating an interactive game that facilitates the process of learning literary Braille [1] (which is used for writing regular text in books, magazines, etc) to promote literacy in children with visual impairments. The design question was how could this formal learning experience be made more engaging. Teaching the Braille code to young children is difficult because of the multiple dot combinations and the complexity of literary Braille, and young children’s lack of tactile development. These factors lead to a decrease in the literacy skills of visually impaired children. While computers with synthetic speech can be valuable tools for accessing educational content, nothing quite benefits education like the ability to read; listening to a document is not the same as reading it. The stronger the literacy foundation, the better the success. For kids, discovering reading can be a fantastic, multi-sensory experience: the smell of books, the weight of the books, and the textures of the bindings and the paper that they are printed on cannot be replicated in front of a sterile computer.
    
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    INSPIRATIONS Toy companies: Leapfrog [2], specially their definitions of knowledge areas for exploration. Children games: LEGO® blocks, Tack-tiles® [3], Spell time and other CADACO games. [4] Education: resources about different learning styles, and education for children with visual impairments. PROCESS Visually impaired children usually learn Braille with an instructor who repetitively exposes them to the alphabet until they learn it. With this interactive game, the children will be able to learn and play at the same time at their own pace, without the need of an instructor. The game provides the children the ability to be risk-takers without fear of making a mistake. This interactive game, similar to a jigsaw puzzle, is structured so it could be played in different stages. The goal is always to match the tiles sets together to reconstruct the alphabet. There are two sets of alphabet plastic tiles; each set has a characteristic thickness, shape, and color to distinguish it from the other set. The tiles have the corresponding Roman character below each Braille dot cell, in order to help sighted instructors or parents facilitate the learning process. The idea behind this game is that when the child presses the key of a certain letter on the board, a speaker will say that letter and the child will look for a match. Once the child has found what is believed to be the match (by tactile recognition), the key will be placed on top of the one that was pressed and a sound will be played to signal whether the choice was correct or not. When the entire set is matched together, the board plays a song (it will have hundreds of songs). The game structure allows multiple combinations (26 letters of the alphabet, therefore factorial of 26). The randomness of the game is what makes it more appealing for continuous play. Game objectives • Teach Braille code to children four-years old & up. • Develop tactile capacity. 64
    
    •
    
    Enhance gaming experience through the introduction of multi-sensory features (aural feedback, materiality and shape). These will allow children to develop the following knowledge skills areas: o Reading & Language o Music & Creativity o Logic o Motor Skills
    
    Tiles design specifications: • Set of tiles need to snap together. • • • OUTCOME When learning is fun, surprising and exciting, there is more than the simple nourishment of a growing mind, you inspire a lifelong love of learning. By creating toys that challenge, motivate and reward, designers are helping children build self-esteem and confidence. A multi-sensory approach captures kids’ attention, making them full participants in the learning process. Emphasis is put on enabling students to learn by seeing, touching and hearing—appealing to all the ways children learn, that is, all of their senses. Interacting with objects allows children to practice emerging skills, to gain mastery, to exercise their imaginations, to devise and carry out a plan, and to practice solving problems that arise in the process. FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS In the 2005 spring semester, Lyndsi McKinney and Jeremy Parker, students from UT Electrical Engineering Department in their senior year, worked on a prototype of the 65 Cannot have protruding elements that could confuse the child’s Braille recognition. Need to be light, smooth to touch; different materials could be used (plastic allows molding and better manipulation). Need to be safe to use.
    
    game and created a functioning model using optical sensors. In the 2006 spring semester, Erik Larson and Alistair McIntyre, students from the Electrical Engineering Department in their senior year, used magnetic sensors, instead of the optical sensors, to create a new prototype of the game, which improves the user experience. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Interdisciplinary research and collaboration have been essential to the outcome of this project. In multiple occasions I consulted with Prof. Jonathan W. Valvano, faculty in the Electrical Engineering Department, who supported the technical feasibility of this game. Following my conceptual model, he gave this project to his senior class for further research. To create this game, I consulted with Florencia Gutierrez (M.Ed. in Special Education) who was an invaluable source of advice regarding early education development; Leonardo Ramirez Rojas (M.S. in Electrical Engineering), who spent endless hours brainstorming on how the electronic circuitry should work, and who built a working prototype that corroborated the process; and Claudia Torres-Garibay (Ph.D. student in Material Sciences) for helping me produce a wonderful batch of plastic tiles. Finally, Prof. John Slatin’s suggestions and anecdotes helped me expand my knowledge of accessibility barriers and how to overcome them. ENDNOTES
    [1]
    
    Braille is a code comprised of a rectangular six-dot cell with up to 63 possible combinations; it is embossed onto thick paper, and read with the fingers moving across on top of the dots. Braille is the only reliable method of literacy for blind persons because it enables them to read and write and can actually be substituted for print in most circumstances. International Braille Research Center. Leapfrog http://www.leapfrog.com Tack-Tiles® Braille Systems are a Braille teaching tool for all ages based on LEGO®type blocks. CADACO is one of America’s oldest toy and game companies.
    
    [2]
    
    [3]
    
    [4]
    
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    REFERENCES International Braille Research Center. Promoting literacy for the blind in the 21st century. Retrieved Oct. 2004, from http://www.braille.org/ Tack-Tiles® Braille Systems. Retrieved Oct. 2004, from http://www.tack-tiles.com/ CADACO. Retrieved Oct. 2004, from http://www.cadaco.com/learning-timefun/learningactivites.html IMAGES
    
    Case study 2: Image 5: Detail of snapped tile set.
    
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    Case study 2: Image 6: Positioning tile on board.
    
    Case study 2: Image 7: Board prototype with demonstration of tile matching on board.
    
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    Art beyond sight: an accessible art experience
    Shade—Creative Research Laboratory, summer 2005 PERCEPTUAL CATEGORY Touch, Hearing, Vision. SYNOPSIS In a student-run art exhibition, I designed a space where visitors were allowed to use their hands and their ears as much as their eyes. Art Beyond Sight elevated the sense of touch above vision, and was specifically designed from an “eyes closed” perspective. COURSE INFORMATION Course: DES 383 Independent Study, Summer 2005 Instructor: David Shields, Design, Assistant Professor, M.F.A. Course: E W391L Independent Study, Summer 2005 Instructor: John Slatin, English, Division of Rhetoric and Composition, Professor, Ph.D. CHALLENGE What happens when the museum experience moves from being object-oriented to useroriented? How does one understand and experience a work of art without its most essential sensory tool – sight? In this project, I attempted to find answers to these questions in order to address the needs of an audience with visual impairments, while aiming to improve the quality of experience for all visitors. INSPIRATIONS Audio guides for the Museum of Modern Art (unofficial) [1] Tate Museum i-Map works by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. [2] Anne Cunningham’s tactile art. [3] Art Beyond Sight: A Resource Guide to Art, Creativity, and Visual Impairment. Yvonne Eriksson’s articles about the design of tactile maps. [4]
    
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    PROCESS Art exhibits, like museums environments, are places where everyone, regardless of age, race, gender, abilities, economic level, or educational background is invited to learn. This diversity also offers a challenge: how does the exhibit design create an enjoyable, meaningful, and truly accessible experience for everyone? In recent years, science and history museums have employed multidisciplinary approaches that foster inclusiveness and universal access. However, when blind people visit art galleries they are usually guided to find sculptures, making sure they do not damage anything. Most art museums still keep their generalized prejudice against touching exhibits (without applying the ban only to safeguard those exhibits whose physical survival would be compromised by handling.) In addressing people with disabilities’ needs, my objective was to improve the overall quality of the participant’s experience by reaching beyond compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Access to the arts would truly be achieved when all people have an equal opportunity to attend, participate in, and learn through arts experiences. In the summer of 2005, I was invited to participate in a student-run exhibition showcasing the work of graduate students in the Art and Art History Department at the College of Fine Arts. There were a large amount of participants so the organizers, divided the work to be exhibited into two distinctive shows, Fever and Shade. Each show ran for three weeks during the months of July and August at the Creative Research Laboratory (CRL) gallery space. Due to the nature of my work I was placed in Shade show (where artists approached their work from a formal vantage point that is visually cool, but forces the viewer to be actively and intellectually engaged when looking). For this show, I applied the accessible exhibition design guidelines (compiled in an earlier project), to create enriching ways for making Shade accessible, by offering visitors multiple modes of interacting with the art while conveying the artists’ work. To move the emphasis away from the visual, I employed primarily tactile and aural methods for people to experience the works of art. To this end, I did extensive research in how people perceive the environment through the sense of touch. Touch actively engages us, it is immediate and 70
    
    involving; it creates a physical connection between ourselves, the world around us, and each other. By touching we back up impressions we receive through sight and hearing. We rely on using our senses together, so that we understand the information about the appearance, smell and sounds things make when touched. Fingertips and hands are our primary tools to check out the world, to test whether objects are rough or smooth, sharp or blunt, wet or dry, hot or cold. We learn to do this visually too, so that we can imagine all sorts of material experience way beyond our reach. Through my design, I tried to invert the work of art’s experiential effects. The art object, which is fundamentally visual, has the capacity to affect us emotionally and intellectually. This lasting impression is what makes each work unique. This final impression was my starting point. Removing the works of art from sight, I was forced to use other means to convey those same impressions. For Shade, one of methods I chose was the presentation of various tactile materials—provided by artists in the show—to allow gallery visitors to touch them. I asked the artists to provide samples such as ceramic pieces, photographic paper, and construction materials and then I created a display for them (see Fig 4, 5). In this fashion, my design was both derivative and completely original. In my work in Shade, tactile drawings, touchable objects, and audio descriptions were used to bring works of art alive for people who could not see them. Utilizing multiple modalities also benefited people with cognitive or learning disabilities, who could take advantage of both auditory and visual skills to comprehend the work better. In Shade, the result was a tactile and audio itinerary that allowed for an autonomous visit within the general visit to the Creative Research Laboratory, concentrating on a few of the artists exhibited. The tactile itinerary began as soon as the visitor entered the gallery space, with samples of materials each artist used. Some of the artwork was also translated into tactile graphics for further understanding through touch. Audio commentaries with artists describing their work and its concepts were available for both sighted and nonsighted visitors (visitors could also retrieved MP3 files from a website prior to the gallery visit), together with large print and Braille labels that accompanied each artwork. A 71
    
    tactile map of the gallery—embossed with a special printer—helped visitors negotiate the space and access the audio commentaries about the artists’ works (see Fig 1). OUTCOME When I began working on this project, my goal was to provide design solutions for a population with different abilities [such as the visually impaired]. As my work evolved, I have realized that individuals without disabilities can also augment their experiences by utilizing other senses, beyond sight. My project for Shade showed exciting and attractive ways to make exhibitions accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities (see Fig 5, 6). By applying accessible design guidelines, Shade was transformed into an accessible exhibition, highlighting the importance of rediscovering all the perceptive possibilities offered by the five senses and, in particular, by touch. This project reestablished the integrity of touch as a socially viable catalyst for interactive discourse. It set up touch, in favor of sight, by enabling if not ennobling the state of blindness. Visual art was given a new meaning through the aesthetic potential inherent in touch. This observation, which is true for everyone, is of key importance for people who are blind, who are forced to use the sense of touch as their primary means of contact with the outside world. Therefore, the act of touching allowed everyone to discover new and richer ways of perceiving. Indeed, this was what Glenda Simms, a sighted visitor, experienced after interacting with the tactile displays in Shade; on her blog she mentioned [6] “Outfitted with my audio guide and headphones, I enjoyed exploring the materials used to create the works of art. The feeling of paint on canvas, the texture of bent wood, the fragile liquid slip fired onto cheesecloth gave my fingers a way to explore the samples of the materials used to create the works without getting in trouble! Although, I will admit, after the introductory tactile adventure…my brain was set to “touch mode” and I had to remind myself not to touch the real works of art.” In this multi-sensory environment, Shade proved to be a successful approach to go beyond traditional gallery exhibitions, engaging the widest audience possible, both non-sighted and sighted visitors in experiencing art. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The 72
    
    Little Prince says, “It is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye”. FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS In museums, there have been significant advancements to provide access to people with disabilities: wider hallways for wheelchairs, audio tours, and rampways. However, the actual connection made between the audience and the object in this context remains largely understudied and underserviced. In a setting where touching is absolutely forbidden, how can a person who is blind perceive thick Expressionist brushstrokes or perfectly polished marble contours? Many art institutions make little effort to create a learning and interactive environment in this respect; this is where my efforts play a larger role in re-thinking what an artwork is and how it may be perceived. To make works of art accessible to museum visitors who cannot see them, I try to re-create the artwork in ways that can be understood in non-visual terms. In this capacity, the work may be understood with different senses. This is what I did for my MFA thesis project, Before the Fall, a sound installation at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum (see case study). For future projects, some ideas include reproducing paintings with Braille dots or using music to evoke a certain mood that seeing a painting or sculpture could perhaps similarly evoke. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the following individuals for their invaluable contribution to this project: John Slatin (Director, Accessibility Institute), David Shields (Asst. Professor, Department of Art and Art History), Stacey Bell (Coordinator, Services for Students with Disabilities), Pat Pound (Executive Director, Texas Governor's Committee on People with Disabilities), Alex Codlin (Art History graduate student and one of the curators for Shade exhibition), and Marc Silva (for all his help setting up the work and the unconventional labels at the CRL). Finally, all the graduate student artists and designers in Shade who kindly agreed to participate in making art accessible: Michelle Bayer, Jarrod Beck, Katalin Hausel, Marianne McGrath, Mike Osborne, Nathan Spondike, and Thuy-Van Vu. 73
    
    ENDNOTES
    [1]
    
    Audio guides for Museum of Modern Art (unofficial) http://mod.blogs.com/art_mobs/ i-Map is an online art resource designed for visually impaired people with a general interest in art, art teachers and their visually impaired pupils. It incorporates text, audio, image enhancement and deconstruction, animation and raised images. Rather than examining the entire artwork at once, i-Map introduces detail in a carefully planned sequence, gradually building towards an understanding of the work as a whole. Tate Museum i-Map. Anne Cunningham’s tactile art: http://www.acunningham.com Yvonne Eriksson articles on The design of tactile maps. http://www.surrey.ac.uk/~pss1su/intact/TMC/eriksson1.html
    
    [2]
    
    [3]
    
    [4]
    
    REFERENCES Tate Museum i-Map. http://www.tate.org.uk/imap/ Salzhauer, Elisabeth Axel and Sobol Levent, Nina. Art Beyond Sight: A Resource Guide to Art, Creativity, and Visual Impairment. Glenda Simms. Touching Art, Glenda Simms’ blog: http://www.glendathegood.com/blog/?p=89 IMAGES
    
    Case study 3: Image 8: Shade installation. Left: In the foreground, Marianne McGrath’s ceramics, in the background, Katalin Hausel’s Expel piece, and to its left, the accessible materials. Right: A miniature module of Hausel’s Expel was available to touch and explore.
    
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    Case study 3: Image 9: Left: Tactile display with Jarrod Beck’s materials. Right: Tactile display with Mike Osborne and Marianne McGrath’s ceramics samples.
    
    Case study 3: Image 10: People with visual (left) and motor (right) disabilities participated in the art experience as everyone else.
    
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    Building Blocks of Art
    An art vocabulary for the eLounge. PERCEPTUAL CATEGORY Vision, Touch. SYNOPSIS The creation of didactic materials designed to promote and enhance visitors’ personal exploration of the Blanton Museum’ collections by giving them a vocabulary that is pertinent to the works of art exhibited in the galleries. The learning materials would be located at the museum’s eLounge space. COURSE INFORMATION GRS 390F Professional Internship, Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Summer-Fall 2005 Instructor: Thomas Darwin, Graduate Studies, Professor, Ph. D. Course: DES 383 Independent Study, Summer 2005 Instructor: David Shields, Design, Assistant Professor, M.F.A. Course: DES391 Core Laboratory II, Fall 2005 Instructor: Kate Catterall, Design, Associate Professor, M.A. CHALLENGE In my internship with the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, my role was to identify key themes and ideas to develop hands-on materials that would be available at the eLounge, a new learning space aimed to engage visitors in an active exploration of works of art. The objective was to generate a didactic component that will promote and enhance visitors’ personal exploration of the museum collection by giving them a vocabulary that is pertinent to the works of art in the exhibition. This manipulative object should be intuitive, easy to use, appealing, and should support a good learning experience through discovery, self-reflection, and interaction. This applied project was mostly geared towards adult audiences (including UT students and faculty, and general adult visitors) 76
    
    but should be accessible to families and K-12 students as well. To me, the eLounge space was more than establishing relationships with the collection but what the visitors keep with them when they leave the museum, the actual interaction with the work. Therefore, I tried to further enhance the visitors’ learning experience by designing elements that may create lasting associations with the museum. INSPIRATIONS Children’s games in general, especially popular alphabet blocks. Goéry Delacôte (scientist and educator and director of the Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA.) [1] Lauralee Alben (Quality of experience article). [2] PROCESS From reading articles on interactive learning and museum environments, I began to identify possible avenues to explore in the development of hands-on materials for the eLounge. These readings allowed to understand the nature and character of the collection, and possible themes to explore, e.g.: Media (the substance the artist uses to create the artwork: oil, tempera, acrylics, pastels, charcoal, ink, marble, porcelain, etc); art styles, schools, and movements; time period; geographic regions (Genoa, Milan, Florence) and techniques (printmaking engraving, woodcut, etching, lithography). Based on the concept of wooden blocks that were used to teach children the alphabet, I appropriated the shape of the cubes to create an A to Z language of art, where each side of a block emphasized on a theme containing terms related to media, styles, techniques, and artists that are part of the Blanton collection. The blocks are cubes with sides of length 2 3/8 inches, made of solid Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF). The material is similar to wood but with a nicer grip and available at any Home depot store. After sanding them, I used two layers of grey primer, then, they were painted with two layers of “Flat Black” (1976) latex paint and on top, two layers of "gloss black" (1979) latex paint (Painter's touch brand). The images on each side of the blocks were printed on adhesive vinyl (same one that is used in vehicle 77
    
    advertising) with a large format printer at Austin Photo Imaging [3]. The inks are specially conceived to last approximately two years under outdoor conditions, though the blocks will always be located inside the eLounge, this characteristic makes them durable enough to sustain the long exposure to people. When the blocks need to be put away, I proposed to use color string bags to hold them together. These bags resemble the European grocery bags that are so fashionable nowadays, and they are made of 100% cotton, which is recyclable. There was a suggestion to use these blocks as a marketing product for the Blanton museum shop. I believe it is important to offer a container that will be appealing, non expensive and will clearly show the blocks without damaging the environment. OUTCOME As a University museum, the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art has an intrinsic study mission, opening its vast collections to scholars, artists and casual visitors who can go to learn, understand and experience fine art. My work aimed to further the learning experience of the visitors, by providing elements that may create lasting associations with the museum. In my design sketches, I have introduced aesthetic considerations to make the interactive materials look as part of a cohesive system. As a designer, I am not only introducing aesthetic considerations in each idea proposed for the project, but am also including purposely designed elements that will communicate concepts in a way that art cannot do. The knowledge I bring from my graduate work allows me to improve the overall visitor experience by applying principles of Universal Design and the design of experiences. FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS On April 30th, 2006 the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art opened at its new location; and prototypes of the Building blocks of Art were placed in the eLounge (see Fig 5). Research will be conducted in the following months to evaluate how visitors’ interact with the blocks and if they find them to be appealing and engaging, and a good educational resource as the block were designed for. 78
    
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Anne Manning and Kristina Elizondo for the opportunity to work with them and the enthusiasm they put into this project. ENDNOTES
    [1]
    
    Goéry Delacôte, Enseñar y aprender con nuevos métodos (Gedisa Editorial, Barcelona, 1997). Lauralee Alben, Quality of experience, article published in interactions, May+June 1996, volume 1113. I printed the adhesive vinyl at Austin Photo Imaging  512.236.0600, 605 W. 4th St (across from Austin’s La Zona Rosa).
    
    [2]
    
    [3]
    
    REFERENCES None. IMAGES
    
    Case study 4: Image 11: Blanton Museum “blocks of art” prototypes.
    
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    Case study 4: Image 12: Blanton Museum “blocks of art,” European-theme designs.
    
    Case study 4: Image 13: Left: View of alphabet “blocks of art” showing one of the puzzle images. Right: Blanton’s eLounge visitors playing games during opening night. The “blocks of art” appear on the bottom right corner.
    
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    Transforming the unseen
    Light installation
    
    PERCEPTUAL CATEGORY Visual SYNOPSIS A light installation project aimed to change how users perceived a staircase in the Art building, through a process involving colored light to transform the atmosphere of the space throughout the day. COURSE INFORMATION DES392 Critique Studio II, Fall 2005 Instructors: Chris Taylor, Design, Assistant Professor, M.Arch. Dan Olsen, Design, Associate Professor, M.F.A. CHALLENGE My project was about transforming the atmosphere of a specific site using light as a stimulus. The natural light coming from the window exists independently of our usage of the space; it is a commonplace phenomenon where we are mere observers. People use this staircase everyday without noticing how light affects the surface of the walls, the stairs, or the banister. In the “Transforming the Unseen” installation, the challenge was to change the experience of being in and around the staircase. INSPIRATIONS James Turrell (Skyspaces), Olafur Eliasson, James Carpenter, Bruce Nauman, United Visual Artists’ projects (www.uva.co.uk). Workshop with the Swedish design firm Claesson Koivisto Rune. [1]
    
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    PROCESS For my installation I studied the interaction of the light and these surfaces over time. By covering all the window panels with color, the light affects not only when it touches a surface, but also when the light waves meet an obstruction (like on the banister). In this optical phenomenon–the wave does not propagate in a single direction so–the rays are deflected producing fringes of light and colored bands (called diffraction). This phenomenon is always noticeable in presence of sharp edges, however color accentuates the effect. After trying different translucent materials, I used colored gels (from the theater and lightning design industries) to manipulate the light to reveal itself, creating new shapes and transforming the unseen. As part of my project, I wanted to track down the movement of the light during the day. Because the light moves imperceptibly slowly, and nobody would stay all day to see it in different spots, I used metallic tape to trace where the light gap was at specific times during a day (every half hour from 9 am to 4:30 pm, when the light disappears), thus creating an impression of motion, and resembling a sundial. To make this work I used colored gels, tape, and whiteboard. The dimensions for this mixed-media installation are: 16 inches x 153 inches (or 1.3 ft x 13 ft) and it is located in the Art Building (between 1st and 2nd floor). OUTCOME I believe the Transforming the Unseen installation was a great success since I received multiple compliments from a variety of people (undergraduates and graduate students, staff, professors and janitors alike). When I sought to change how users perceived this staircase space in the Art building, I was not expecting to create a piece that will last in place for over six months. I was thinking my work would only last for the period of evaluation. On the contrary, many people asked me to leave it there as a permanent installation! So far, my graduate projects have not had such a long-lasting effect, maybe because I have been using sound as sense modality, so the projects have a more ephemeral presence. 82
    
    FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS For the MFA Thesis exhibition in spring 2006, I used light, this time artificial, to set the atmosphere of a space within the Creative research Laboratory show. In the future, I believe I will continue exploring the use of light to enhance experiences that also utilize other sense modalities (hearing, touch). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the following individuals for their invaluable contribution to this project: Chris Taylor (Asst. Professor, Department of Art and Art History), Dan Olsen (Assoc. Professor, Department of Art and Art History), Amarante L. Lucero (Head of Design/Technology and Automated Lighting Program, Department of Theatre and Dance), George Morrow (graduate Design student), Victor Calo, Beatrice Thomas (MFA Design 2005), Roen Salinas (graduate student, Department of Theatre and Dance), Megan Reilly Lightning. ENDNOTES
    [1]
    
    (graduate student, Department of Theatre and Dance), Peter Tucker
    
    (Metals shop, Department of Art and Art History), and the knowledgeable staff at Olden
    
    Swedish design firm Claesson Koivisto Rune: http://www.claesson-koivisto-rune.se/
    
    REFERENCES None.
    
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    IMAGES
    
    Case study 5: Image 14: Comparison of staircase before and after the color gels addition.
    
    Case study 5: Image 15: Left: Light around 11 am. Right: Light at 1:30 pm.
    
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    Case study 5: Image 16: Left: Light around 10 am. Right: Light around 3 pm.
    
    Case study 5: Image 17: Left: Light at 1:30 pm. Right: Light at 4:30 pm.
    
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    Before the fall
    A sound journey at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum. PERCEPTUAL MODALITY Hearing (secondary: vision, touch) SYNOPSIS A sound installation specifically designed for the Icarus sculpture at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum where a variety of field recordings, including natural ambiences and intentional sound making, were combined to extend the senses in order to appreciate the sculpture in a new way. COURSE INFORMATION DES398S MFA Exhibition, Spring 2006 DES392 Critique Studio II, Spring 2006 Instructor: Chris Taylor, Design, Assistant Professor, M.Arch. CHALLENGE To enhance visitors' experience of a public or cultural place (e.g., museum) by designing an innovative experience where interpretation through multiple senses is involved. INSPIRATIONS Audio: Janet Cardiff (Walks), Constance De Jong (Speaking of the river) and Laurie Anderson’s work. Aesthetics for Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition at Creative Research Laboratory: Bruce Nauman (Green light Corridor), Dan Flavin (Green Crossing Green), United Visual Artists’ projects (www.uva.co.uk), Christian Moeller (Heaven). PROCESS This project came from my awareness of the challenges people with visual impairments encounter when experiencing art. I reviewed local museums and exhibitions spaces trying to find a suitable location to engage participants in a multi-sensory experience. Among 86
    
    the places visited were: Texas Memorial Museum, Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, Austin’s Children Museum, George Washington Carver Museum, and the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum [1]. In the latter one I had an epiphany, I imagined the sculptures coming to life and telling visitors the stories that brought them into that frozen moment. Since the garden already provides a compelling visual experience and visitors can touch the sculptures, I decided that I would use audio to narrate one of their stories. However, I wanted to go beyond the fact that audio content is usually designed for museum visitors with special needs, and that this resource may offer more than a mere description of the sculptures in the garden, but a new perception of space. Therefore I created a sound installation that engaged visitors in a multi-sensory experience of the garden. This project reinforced my interests in the physical architecture of an experience: the sound script, the set, the materials and how these elements were integral to defining “the participant experience.” Motion detectors were set discretely on the landscape; when visitors approached the area adjacent to the sculpture, the detectors activated the soundtrack, offering the unsuspecting listeners a new perception of the space. A wireless speaker was located near the Icarus sculpture, while another speaker was hidden in a wooden lectern adjacent to the bench located opposite the sculpture. Apart from storing the audio equipment, I used the lectern to display information about the installation in the form of a notebook where visitors could leave their comments. This installation project served as a vehicle for expanding visitors’ awareness of their physical senses by prompting unexpected, evocative interactions with the sculptures. In Placeways: A Theory of the Human Environment, E.V. Walter points out that “a place is a location of experience. It evokes and organizes memories, images, feelings, sentiments, meanings, and the work of imagination. The feelings of a place are indeed the mental projections of individuals, but they come from collective experience and they do not happen anywhere else. They belong to the place.”[1] To make visitors feel this unique connection with the Umlauf garden, and specially, with the Icarus sculpture, the way the soundtrack was designed was crucial. The soundtrack incorporated a variety of field 87
    
    recordings, such as sounds from specific elements in the Umlauf garden (the brook, the birds, the sound of the trees’ leaves moving in the wind, the cars from the road) and recordings from ocean waves and seagulls. It also included intentional sound making, like footsteps on a gravel path and running on the grass, as well as sounds of wings flapping. All these sounds helped to position the listener in an imaginary place, an island similar to the one where Icarus and his father were trapped inside the labyrinth. After the mood is set, a female voice reads a moving poem about Icarus—written by American poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974)—and his journey into the darkness, while a modified version of the score A Night on Bald Mountain—composed by Modest Moussorgsky (1839-81)—plays in the background. Transcript of poem: To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph by Anne Sexton: Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on, testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade, and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made! There below are the trees, as awkward as camels; and here are the shocked starlings pumping past and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well. Larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings! Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling into that hot eye. Who cares that he fell back to the sea? See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.
    
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    OUTCOME A requirement for the completion of the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree is to disseminate the outcome of my investigation in any manner that is appropriate for the nature of the research work. Traditionally, participating in the MFA Thesis exhibition fulfills this requirement. Because my target dissemination was designed to be presented in a site-specific space—the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum—my Design MFA Exhibition became an abstract reinterpretation of the garden’s work. Therefore, this project was presented in two different environments each of which created different experiences for the participants. I think that the performance at the Umlauf garden provided people with a richer experience, the one I aimed for. Nevertheless, the performance within the gallery space was successful too because it offered a more controlled environment where participants concentrated only in the performance—as opposed of being distracted by things that normally occur in outdoor settings. These two performance exhibitions gave me the opportunity to complete the cycle of my education: to share with an audience outside of the academic environment the culmination of what I had learnt during the past two years, applying Sensorial and Experience Design principles to the design of experiences. FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS After the success the sound performance had, I have been invited to participate in a future event to celebrate “education for the blind” month in October. This will be a great opportunity to continue my exploration on the design of sensory experiences. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to the following people: Chris Taylor (for encouraging me to push this project from a proposal into a reality), John S. Cobb (for his invaluable help building the lectern), Nelie Plourde (Umaluf Museum Director, for the opportunity to perform at the garden), George Morrow (for all the inspiration he provided), Soo-Jin Lee (for lending her voice for the narration), Marc Silva (for his patience while I was setting up my installation at the CRL), and finally, Victor Calo, for always being there. 89
    
    ENDNOTES [1] Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum: 605 Robert E. Lee Road, Austin, Texas 78704, www.umlaufsculpture.org REFERENCES E.V. Walter, Placeways: A Theory of the Human Environment (Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press, 1988), 142. IMAGES
    
    Case study 6: Image 18: Left: Visitor contemplating Icarus sculpture, with wireless speaker behind it. Right: A couple of visitors reading the comments left on the notebook placed on the lectern.
    
    Case study 6: Image 19: Left: Visually impaired visitor listening to soundtrack. Right: Lectern and bench.
    
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    Jacobson, Bob, Experience Design, A List Apart, August 2000, http://www.alistapart.com/articles/experience Kay, Martin. Mapping by Tube. 2000 Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.kayuk.com Krantz, John H., Experiencing Sensation and Perception, Retrieved April 2006 from http://psych.hanover.edu/classes/sensation/ Kuhn S. and Muller M.J. Special section on participatory design. Association Computing Machinery, 1993. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark, Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980, 2003. Lockhart, Kelly C., Born with a fingerprint-like scent, Vanderbilt University, Retrieved from http://www.vanderbilt.edu/News/research/ravs96/ravs96_13.html Macdonald, Nico. The People Element. Source: UN, 9 February 2004. Retrieved on April 2006 from http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1529.asp Metropolis Magazine, Speaking Graphically with Ellen Lupton, By Elizabeth Evitts, March 20, 2006, Retrieved April 2006 from http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=1872 Moncrieff, R.W. The Chemical Senses, 3rd ed., Leonard Hill, London, 1967. Museum of Tolerance, The Simon Wiesenthal Center. Retrieved on June 2005 from http://www.museumoftolerance.com National Endowment for the Arts (2003). Design for Accessibility: A Cultural Administrator's Handbook. Retrieved October 2004, from http://www.nasaaarts.org/publications/design_access.shtml Natural History Museum, London. Sensory homunculus. Retrieved from http://piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/www/image.php?img=87494 Norman, Donald A., Things That Make Us Smart. Addison-Wesley, 1993, p. 243. Novitski, B., Doing Universal Design, Retrieved on February 2005 from http://www.architectureweek.com/2001/0808/culture_2-1.html PBS, Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century. Retrieved from www.pbs.org/art21/ artists/lin/card1.html 93
    
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    Vita
    
    Natacha Poggio was born in the city of Córdoba, Córdoba province, Argentina, on April 24, 1975, the daughter of Aida Olga Larezca and Ernesto Emilio Poggio. In 1979 her family moved to Buenos Aires where she was raised. In 1993, after receiving her diploma at Medalla Milagrosa High School in Ramos Mejía, she entered the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), in Buenos Aires, Argentina. From 1994 to 1999, Natacha worked for several design and advertising agencies while studying. In December 1998, she completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. At her university, she taught a sophomore course in Typography for two years until she married Victor Calo and moved from Buenos Aires to Palo Alto, California, to work as a design consultant for Stanford University. In September of 2002, she moved to Austin, Texas and continued her independent design work. In August 2004, Natacha entered the Graduate School at the University of Texas at Austin to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Design.
    
    Permanent address:
    
    3543 Greystone Drive, Apt. 1125, Austin, Texas 78731
    
    This report was typed by the author.
    
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