John McCarthy, doctor at Department of Applied Psychology, University college Cork. Visiting professor (2007) at Department of Communication, Technology & Design, Södetörn university college, Sweden. Lecture May 31st 2007.

1. Experience, Aesthetics and Design John McCarthy, Department of Applied Psychology, University College Cork, Ireland In collaboration with: Peter Wright, Sheffield Hallam University, UK Jayne Wallace, Sheffield Hallam University and University of Newcastle UK Liam Bannon and Luigina Ciolfi, Interaction Design Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland Mark Blythe, University of York, UK.

2. experience “… experience is a term rife with sedimented meanings that can be actualized for a variety of different purposes” (Jay, 2005, p.12). the Disney experience experience economy authentic experience aesthetic experience out-of-the-box experience hard-won experience user experience experience design life-changing experience experience vs. thought crisis of experience “ Designing for the full range of human experience may well be the theme for the next generation of discourse about software design” (Winograd, 1996, p. xix).

3. experience “ .... includes what men do and suffer, what they strive for, love, believe and endure, and also how men act and are acted upon, the ways in which they do and suffer, desire and enjoy, see, believe, imagine - in short, processes of experiencing…It is “double-barrelled” in that it recognises in its primary integrity no division between act and material, subject and object, but contains them both in an unanalysed totality” (Dewey, 1929, p.10/11). holistic relational historical cultural critical transformative participative Aesthetic

5. technology as experience Continuous engagement and sense making the self is the centre of experience and brings to a situation a history of meanings and anticipated futures Connecting Interpreting Reflecting Appropriating Recounting Anticipating

13. bespoke design / craft tradition make something useful worldmaking putting experience into circulation create engaging event / experience asking questions about the human condition ongoing dialogue between self and other understanding people in ‘experience design’

14. Philosopher's may theorise about subjectivity, but working filmmakers try to learn exactly what it means to say that time is flexible, a function of our inner clock. They study how long a second really is, and how short, and what makes it feel one way or the other. They know that what we see isn’t really what's out there because they've learned how spatial perception varies with angle and focal length and lighting how "true" colors are a figment of lighting, and context, and even the glass of a lens. They know there is no "real" sound but only a better or worse approximation of what our ear expects (Boorstin, 1990, p.198). moviemaking: knowing how we see

19. Engages directly with others to gain insight and inspiration from their life experiences. Finding common threads in her own experiences she builds her own feelings toward them. Immersion in the conversations and materials (both digital and physical). Through building up an aesthetic vocabulary and an emotional and empathetic response to the participant and the materials the emerging artefact can become a medium of expression. Digital jewellery making: feeling how they feel Jayne Wallace ‘Blossom’ 2004

21. Riot!1851: feeling how they feel

24. " Creative understanding does not renounce itself, its own place in time, its own culture; and it forgets nothing. In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding- in time in space, in culture. For one cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help, our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space and because they are others " (Bakhtin, 1986, p.7). aesthetic understanding Consummation of self by other in an encounter of aesthetic understanding

26. Finding a way of responding to the perceived needs and feelings of others takes place within a context of communication ... Rests on the – sometimes counterfactual – assumption that the other is in need, the presupposition of how the other feels not necessarily how s/he actually feels. (Vreeke et al, 2003) a dialogical approach to empathy self-other differentiation moved by the perceived feelings of others felt as an appeal a feature of relationships but how can I feel what other feels? intersubjective stance on empathy a pragmatic communicative approach

27. “… the task consists in forcing the thinglike environment, which mechanically influences the personality, to begin to speak, that is, to reveal in it the potential word and tone, to transform it into a semantic context for the thinking, speaking and acting (as well as creating) personality” (Bakhtin, 1986, p.164). empathy, materials, artefacts

28. But hair had always been a thing for me. Just its beauty as a kind of line form nearly you know… I liked kind of fine line I just loved the life in hair. And then I did the same firing with a piece but for some reason that day and it probably never happened again the kiln went contrary and it just flowed you know empathy, materials, artefacts

29. empathy, materials, artefacts

30. “ Responding, in Bakhtin’s early essays, entails richly seeing. Bakhtin contrasted the kind of seeing that might be characteristic of scientific inquiry with artistic or aesthetic contemplation . In the special case of aesthetic seeing the artist forms a felt and valuational relationship to the object of her activity. … Aesthetic contemplation entails seeing this separate center of value as unique and then forming a response to it from the special value position that is one’s own. This kind of seeing can entail strong feelings; minimally, it requires more than an instrumental or objective response” (Hicks, 2000, pp.231/232). proximity of aesthetic and ethical aspects of experience both aspects of the consummation of self in an other aesthetic experience is created from moments of answerability, the weight of which is located in the relationship between self and other in that moment. design research, aesthetics, & ethics

31. theory and practice in design rationality / instrumentality of language predictability measurement universal generalisable application under-specification of interpretation situated relationships and experiences practice as artful and improvisational judgment guided by understanding of good practice not the application of articulable knowledge local theory orienting frameworks Schön (1983). The Reflective Practitioner