Where the Action Is
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £4.45
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Where the Action is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction (Bradford Books) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £4.45, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Engagingly written...."-- R. Keith Sawyer, "Philosophical Psychology"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Engagingly written..." R. Keith Sawyer Philosophical Psychology "Important reading for anyone engaged in designing computer-based systems to support human activities... full of interesting ideas and insights." Richard Mateosian IEEE Micro "Important reading for anyone engaged in designing computer-based systems to support human activities...full of interesting ideas and insights." Richard Mateosian IEEE Micro
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
It is a truism that computers are becoming faster and more powerful all the time. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
It is a truism that computers are becoming faster and more powerful all the time. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
This is a book about design and philosophical issues in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The author examines how computer systems, when thought of as technical entities, are essentially "underdefined", since in the end they are always designed for people. He also looks at how modern phenomenology (a strand of modern philosophy) and social anthropology offer us methods to move towards an embodied, encultured approach to HCI design.
Particularly interesting is the informed discussion of various computer development models in which human users can use real objects to stand for themselves. For example, the "Illuminating Light" application for testing hologram-making scenarios uses "phicons": physical icons such as mock beam-splitters, laser sources and mirrors which also represent their "computer" meaning in the system. These phicons "stand for themselves" - as the user moves them around a table, the software calculates beam angles and displays those via a projector onto the same table, thus making the user experience of testing holography set ups more tangible and intuitive. (Side note - holography set-up is a tricky old business, at least for this reviewer, so this application would also be useful outside of mere "prototype" contexts).
The book contains lots of example scenarios, the author draws particularly on experiences from his career in "innovative software" development with Xerox plc. In this way, the book manages to stay relevant from an engineering design perspective.
Dourish also introduces - in an easy-paced "philosophy for the mildly interested" style - various philosophers from the 20th Century whose contributions to the ideas of our existence as "embodied" and "interactive" selves have both reoriented modern philosophy and enabled philosophy to contribute theoretical ideas to other fields. He mentions Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Andy Clark, and so on - references are provided for further reading, though I reckon the basic treatment in the book - brief explication with concrete examples in HCI practice - is pitched just right for it's target audience, the HCI community.
Particularly interesting is the informed discussion of various computer development models in which human users can use real objects to stand for themselves. For example, the "Illuminating Light" application for testing hologram-making scenarios uses "phicons": physical icons such as mock beam-splitters, laser sources and mirrors which also represent their "computer" meaning in the system. These phicons "stand for themselves" - as the user moves them around a table, the software calculates beam angles and displays those via a projector onto the same table, thus making the user experience of testing holography set ups more tangible and intuitive. (Side note - holography set-up is a tricky old business, at least for this reviewer, so this application would also be useful outside of mere "prototype" contexts).
The book contains lots of example scenarios, the author draws particularly on experiences from his career in "innovative software" development with Xerox plc. In this way, the book manages to stay relevant from an engineering design perspective.
Dourish also introduces - in an easy-paced "philosophy for the mildly interested" style - various philosophers from the 20th Century whose contributions to the ideas of our existence as "embodied" and "interactive" selves have both reoriented modern philosophy and enabled philosophy to contribute theoretical ideas to other fields. He mentions Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Andy Clark, and so on - references are provided for further reading, though I reckon the basic treatment in the book - brief explication with concrete examples in HCI practice - is pitched just right for it's target audience, the HCI community.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Dourish book is both impressively well written with a fluent comprehensible language and offers insights to the challenging work of designing interfaces. By introducing the perspective of phenomenology to Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Paul Dourish sheds new light on important concepts such as appropriation, intersubjectivity, awareness, and embodied interaction. All of which are key issues when designing user interfaces. This book book should be mandatory as well as plesurably reading for everybody involved or interested in designing computer systems.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Clear, interesting, inspiring, but also a little like a religion
7 July 2007
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
One of the strong sides of this book is that it makes it really easy for the reader - things are generally summarized and repeated exactly in the right places. It can serve as an introduction to the world of phenomenology, sociology and philosophy as pertaining to Human-Computer Interfaces.
It felt more like a mixture between a proposal and an introductory philosophical treatise than an overview of the current state of the field (it carries the word "foundations" in its title for a reason).
After reading it however, I still wasn't convinced that "social computing", "tangible computing" and "embodied interaction" really add up to a construct that can effectively inform the design of new HCI devices even though this claim was repeated throughout the book almost like a prayer wheel.
Interestingly, while the book points out the meaning of embodiment in already existing work practices, it fails to give any strategies on how these theories can actually be applied to the design of effective new HCI devices that go beyond the shiny toys produced at MIT Media Lab.
The loophole seems to be that embodied practices can only arise once the tools are defined, so that it is hard to predict what practices will be used once it's out there - since the way we use tools is largely improvisatory, as Dourish points out.
I also can not stop to wonder if the term "embodiment" is akin to "multimedia" - a belief system that can mean so many things that it effectively disintegrates sooner or later.
So, while it left me not exactly sure that there really is another end to it, it was certainly worthwhile and inspiring to work through this book in a thorough manner - I now feel courageous enough to put my nose into "Being and Time" by Heidegger.
A friendly way to get your brain going!
It felt more like a mixture between a proposal and an introductory philosophical treatise than an overview of the current state of the field (it carries the word "foundations" in its title for a reason).
After reading it however, I still wasn't convinced that "social computing", "tangible computing" and "embodied interaction" really add up to a construct that can effectively inform the design of new HCI devices even though this claim was repeated throughout the book almost like a prayer wheel.
Interestingly, while the book points out the meaning of embodiment in already existing work practices, it fails to give any strategies on how these theories can actually be applied to the design of effective new HCI devices that go beyond the shiny toys produced at MIT Media Lab.
The loophole seems to be that embodied practices can only arise once the tools are defined, so that it is hard to predict what practices will be used once it's out there - since the way we use tools is largely improvisatory, as Dourish points out.
I also can not stop to wonder if the term "embodiment" is akin to "multimedia" - a belief system that can mean so many things that it effectively disintegrates sooner or later.
So, while it left me not exactly sure that there really is another end to it, it was certainly worthwhile and inspiring to work through this book in a thorough manner - I now feel courageous enough to put my nose into "Being and Time" by Heidegger.
A friendly way to get your brain going!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Good if a little heady
3 Jan 2007
Format:Paperback
This is one of the more influential books to grace the HCI academic's shelf in recent years. Dourish's thesis, that tangible and social computing have their genesis in a sense of embeddedness in our real world and not some foreign, constructed environment known as "The OS," is stimulating material but does not dramatically change my outlook on the topic. However, it does a good job of providing useful terms and theory to support our intuition surrounding why TUIs and CSCW are useful things. I also believe that the author's goal of providing a sound philosophical and theoretical groundwork for HCI in general is a great idea, as there are few works that deliver well on this promise. As someone with limited exposure to computer-supported cooperative work before reading this book, I have to say that Dourish also has some excellent (and very readable) reviews of the most important literature in both tangible and social computing, giving a newcomer solid ground from which to consider new research.
15 of 20 people found the following review helpful
This is a major work on the human/computer Interface
2 Jan 2002
Format:Hardcover
This is a major work on the redesign of the human/computer interface. It is well written but very deep. Excellent academic research is clearly demonstrate throughout. I would not say, however, that it is an easy read.
Engineering research does not generally have to be as strongly academically founded as scientific research. The controlling factor is "does it work," not how does it relate to previous work. This tendency leads to problems when it is necessary to do multidisciplinary work involving both engineering and science. The redesign of the human/computer interface is just such a problem.
As an engineer working independently in this field, I have often wished for the time and resources to do proper academic studies. Paul Dourish has now done them for me. All my future publications will have to show consistency with this book, show they are clearly outside the area covered by this book, or show the book is wrong. The last alternative is most unlikely. I think I can show my work, based on Darwinism and ontology, complies with the first option. I am certain that my work will be stronger for this effort.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Computing & Internet > Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence
- Books > Computing & Internet > Digital Lifestyle > Online Shopping > Amazon
- Books > Computing & Internet > Networking & Security > Network Topics
- Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Graphics & Multimedia
- Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Interface Design
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
