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Information design and philosophy

— What does philosophy and social theory have to do with information design and user experience?…”

When I ponder the methods I use in my work, I occasionally find in them a few interesting similarities with philosophy and social theory.

Jeremy Bentham (source: Wikimedia Commons)

I’ve mentioned a couple of these findings before, applying them to the management of migrated or contributed content.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a quantitative theory of ethics supported and developed by such luminaries as John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham.

Its purpose is to evaluate the worth of an action in terms of its contribution to overall utility. The object is to deliver ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’.

Since it was coined, the term ‘utilitarian’ has attracted rather negative connotations beyond the original meaning. We’ll find out why in our next analogy.

How it relates

To communicate information to a varied audience from a single source, the designer must employ general principles of usability and good design.

The end case of the project is to deliver a product that satisfies the requirements of all target users. This is an inherently utilitarian object.

Utilitarianism versus Aestheticism

In the nineteenth century, debate raged in the arts between utilitarian thinkers and those who furthered the cause of a diametrically opposed school of thought Aestheticism.

Utilitarian art critics considered that there must be a practical purpose for and wide-ranging benefits from, the creation of art.

For much of recorded history, the likes of sculptors, painters and architects had been viewed as skilled labourers rather than the auteur-creators we think of today. They managed workshops and apprenticeships, joined guilds and competed for commissions.

The Renaissance more than any other period contributed to the notion of the divinely-inspired artist, a strange beast whose raison d’être was purely to satisfy his/her own whims, sustaining him/herself with the proceeds of sales to distant, admiring but uncomprehending patrons.

Oscar Wilde (source: Wikimedia Commons)

So in contrast, Utilitarianism’s pursuit of purpose sought a return to the perception of art as a vocation, craft and profession in which all art was useful, satisfying a pre-determined objective, usually for public benefit.

Utilitarianism therefore equates to a concern for the function of things.

The mirror opposite was Aestheticism, embodied in the rise and fall of the always controversial Oscar Wilde. Those sympathetic to Aestheticism believed that the elevation of art beyond product was both worthwhile and necessary.

The practical result of this approach was a concern for the form of things. The sole object of art, according to aesthetes, was a sincere pursuit of the ideal of beauty.

Neither the Utilitarian nor the Aesthetic school vanquished the other despite occasionally rancorous and often public debate. Indeed, both terms have since passed into the English language, albeit with more prosaic definitions and sometimes negative connotations, while their influence on the concepts of modern thinking is still obvious.

Especially since the massive wars that threatened to destroy and did substantively change the world during the twentieth century, artists have become even less constrained, some might say dispersed. However, though artists are no longer expected to provide a valid, useful purpose for their art, what they seek to represent is not necessarily an ideal of beauty either.

How it relates

One lasting result of this extraordinary clash between Utilitarianism and Aestheticism has been to effect a clear separation of design from art. Design itself requires the identification of a need and the object of a function, whilst art does not.

That is not to say that design is the exclusive domain of utilitarian thinking. We have seen in the very best examples of design that there is still plenty of room for aesthetic excellence.

Usability, for example, requires that users be ‘satisfied’ with their user experience. Aesthetic refinement can be a significant contributor of user satisfaction.

However, it would be wrong to evaluate a visual design based entirely on subjective, aesthetic opinion, in the same sort of way one would appraise a work of art. It is unfortunately still true, for example, that designers of screen-based interfaces may occasionally face misdirected criticism from clients on purely aesthetic grounds.

As always, the practice of moderation is necessary, though every designer will consider the balance between form and function differently depending upon their training and experience.

Auguste Comte (source: Wikimedia Commons)

Positivism

Training and experience are prized by proponents of Positivism, a philsophical concept first defined by the French proto-sociologist Auguste Comte.

Positivism demands that knowledge can only be acquired by experience and this has to be arrived at by strict scientific method. This is the thread that links ancient science with modern science: in both, theory begets experimentation.

How it relates

Christopher Alexander’s pattern theory of urban planning and design is a seminal work, modern architecture’s equivalent of Vitruvius.

The work is a systematic ontology of architectural patterns. Unlike Vitruvius’ focus on the individual structure, whose importance I am not disputing, Alexander considers how patterns can be tesselated to form conurbations: villages, towns and cities.

Tabs: a user interface pattern

It follows that one can apply a similar method to information design. To use of grids, typographic schema and common user interface elements is to use patterns. Successful patterns are the product of experience.

An interface that engenders a good user experience, to borrow from Steve Krug, doesn’t require users to think about using it. This ‘instinctual’ essence is typically the result of patterns and in a wider sense, of Positivism.