User:Pleun/rwrs/interview

Q: Pleun Gremmen

A: Colm O'Neill

It's recording! O, and you see the sound wave as well which is really nice!

Much more fancy than mine.

Yeah, it's an iPhone, omg, it's one of those devices you kind of must hate. But let's go into that later.

Nice intro.

We were talking before about your research and let me start by asking you again just broadly what your research is about and how that connects to your previous practice?

At the moment I'm working around an observation – at least an observation from my perspective – around digital practices, software practices and the way we use the machine that we have in our pockets and bags all the time. It is bizarre to me that we seem to have more computers, more laptops, more tablets and phones and more interactions with digital devices, yet not so much of a growing of understanding on how they work. For this year at least this has been a constant motivation, a constant question.

This observation, is that something you slowly developed or can you recall a specific moment where you really felt that this was the case?

There are a few events that really triggered this and one that I like to remind myself of a lot. I have a practice of web design, making websites for people. Before joining this course I was in a project where I was making and designing a back-end interface to manage content on a website for a client. I was trying to make it easy and usable for the client, so I decided to implement a new nice feature in HTML, which was a drag and drop for uploading images. The concept was to facilitate multiple uploads in one go. I make it, it works and I show them and they are happy. It does accelerate when I snuck a tiny implementation in and it worked. The next day I got a call and they said: “Yesterday was great, but you forgot to activate the reorganizing feature.” And I was like: “Excuse me? What do you mean by reorganizing feature?” They spoke of it as like an inherent concept, like something that lives, the 'reorganizing feature'. And it took me a few more questions to later understand that because of me giving access to this drag and drop visual interface – which I thought was helping them out or making things faster – they had understood that I had also build in an ability to reorganize the pictures that they were uploading. Which is actually a totally different module, or not even a module, it's a total different function to than later be able to view your files and decide the order of them. I was just talking about a method for upload.

It probably reminded them more of a computer interface or like a Microsoft environment.

Yes, so in this process where I was super close to them and they were understanding a lot of the intricacies of me as a developer there and the interface maker, that I said: “Okay, so how many images are you going to be uploading at the same time? How are they organized on your computer, like when you are going to be building this register for this page you wanna make? You have 20 pictures in a bunch. Okay, I'll make these things accessible through drag and drop because you organize there.” I sort of bit my own tail, because then later they got new ideas because of other things that they had seen other programs do or other websites do which I wasn't even able to make work in my own system, because it called upon references of interface languages from powerful software.

Going back to your research now, how did this initial question develop within your research during this first year at the Piet Zwart Institute?

First I was really running with this thing I stated as an observation earlier and I was more assertive. Like this is definitely happening. We are losing our understanding and our knowledge of how computers work. These new interfaces are actively unteaching (is the word I came up with) us, diseducating us. What we once knew about computers as they are providing different solutions then we forget the old ones. My view was very dystopian. Really looking at companies and the way they try to lock us in with their abilities to make things look shiny and work fast and then we only have the choice to stick with them or lose all the comfort that we thought we had gained. So that was my first chapter in trying to pick apart this observation. It's been really negative. This is definitely a corporate strategy and the only use of this is to make more money. It was really... negative is really the keyword. I realized it's more complicated than that. If only because of it's history can't let that be so simple. To bring it to the point I'm observing as now, so isolated, it can't really be possible that somebody thirty years ago developed a plan to lock users in to buy the same devices over and over and over as I was imagining it to be in this dystopian scenario. So I took a chill pill or two. I started reviewing again what I was saying and peoples input was if this was really true you are gonna have to make sure you can truthfully prove these things to everybody.

I'm going to go a little bit of track and ask a side question here: You said you have to truthfully explain this to everybody, but why? You could also just take this dystopian view and run with it. When you say dystopian view you quite quickly think of fiction, where a dystopia is often a magnifying glass of contemporary issues.

I guess I was still trying to keep it grounded, because I think it's so real and contemporary. And I think it's happening right now, this thing I'm observing. If I was to try and validate just for myself it was only valid if I could explain it to all types of people with all types of interests, not only people that are interested in software. If this observation is proven to be right – which isn't my focus at the moment, whereas it was at the beginning of the year where I was being quite negative as in that we need to fight against this – then I had to start to make compelling arguments and for these arguments to really spread they needed to register with all types of people. Which in itself is a waste of energy, because it's not interesting to be that active for me. It's a very activist position to try to take down something of that magnitude.

Let me dive in here. You were saying that you are not really focussed on proving this observation anymore. What is your new focus now and I would also like to know that in a practical way. What does your practice consist of? Are you writing or making?

I'm still dealing with this observation, but the way I'm working now is a bit more pragmatically. I'm trying to be more approachable in the way I argument and not be only negative. What that means is indeed some writing and making some tiny prototypes. At the moment there web extensions. Things that you add on to browsers and because that's a nice and easy sketchable area of making little applets that can easily slide in and out and be switched on and off. So practicality speaking I'm still researching this question in writings, readings and makings. Observations also in a sense of collecting examples of things that I think are helping and are giving positive answers or things that I think are working along a module that I think that I could work with as well.

Could you give an example of one of those small makings?

Maybe before I go in into one of the examples: what I mean really here is, rather than blaming just one company as I was at the beginning of the year I sort of zoomed out. It wasn't even just one company, but trying to look at bad ideas, I zoomed out and looked at more loosely brought together concepts of making software. So blackboxing, interfacing and modes of address. Which is where a lot of my focus is at the moment. The language within interface. If I can go from the interests for modes of address as being the midway or the method I'm seeing as the smartest, that for me is the most reasonable and the most appropriate when it comes to software. The model I'm imagining is one where my question is sort of answered or my observation is confirmed, where you can use software tools or a computer and they give you the power that a computer should give you. Like speed and abilities that you wouldn't have with your two hands, but also it gives you access, side access not necessarily direct access, but it gives you a window into the way of how it is making all of this work for you.

So, I've collected a few examples of software that when the first time you run it, it speaks to you. They are called a splash screen. Lot's of softwares have splash screens, but some of them you launch and they actually start by saying: “We have a help-menu here and we have a bunch of resources for you there. These are things that you may or may not need, because for all we know this is your thousandth time launching it and you have just reinstalled it. But also it might be your first time and maybe your not exactly sure what this type of software does or can do. Maybe you have forgotten. We don't really know, but we'll just start speaking to you like we were sitting right beside you just showing you along.” They establish not only a dialogue, but a basis in which we are saying that this information is there. You don't have to consult it, but if you want it it's there. Just by opening that sort of dialogue, there is an acknowledgement that you are not only user, you are a person.

For me, when software starts like the way you describe, it feels like they are handholding and they are explaining the interface rather than the back end of the software. Do you have an other view on that?

In many ways that is true and I have bad examples of this being done as well. Of splash screens that were this initial dialogue really being quite clumsy in fact. They were trying to do jobs of things that should have been done elsewhere in the software. Interface has its own sort of realm excepted usability lets say. Even the times when it doesn't work, or it might annoy you, I think its a small cost.

Cost for opening the dialogue?

Yes, I think making you frown for two seconds when you click the red button to close it. Than that's probably the case they imagine as well. Or I hope it is. But its a small cost of making something pop up and say “Okay, just to remind you that we have made all of these resources available and that we are not going to be talking you through every single one of the steps, but we felt that at the very beginning was a very good point to [...].” I think there is a lot to be said there, about how just then [...]: “Okay, you don't need help, brilliant, that's kind of great as well for us, but if you do, all of this is here.” And it is a bit holding your hand, but in a lot of cases I like the idea that there is a hand that can hold me along into understanding a new piece of kit. Especially if its a domain i'm not able to work very well. Like audio for example. I don't understand it very well and the interface can confuse me towards the things I know from graphic design software. Things that might be badly referenced or look like things that actually aren't these things. I think the opening of the dialogue is much more valuable than the two seconds of frustration it might cause a user.

From my understanding your research is in part also about stripping away layers between user and developer. Do you think these boxes with dialogue add on an extra layer? And do you then think this is contradictory to your goal?

It's true, it is kind of contradictory, but there have been a lot of convention happening. Sort of silent agreements in things that haven't necessarily been planned. Software as a culture has developed as any culture, kind of organically. People do things this way or that way and then we are mixing a bunch of references all the way along and we get to different points of reflection or cohesion or non cohesion and it progresses and it moves and changes. Some conventions continue and others disappear, but I do see software as an encapsulation of a broader culture. In fact, maybe even software is an access to a certain culture. Like behind each of our tools is a very least a bunch of math, quite probably a bunch of physics and these are all things that I'm speculative about, but I'm quite sure that at least in the hardware components there is a lot of this broader culture, that is sort of build in. When you are talking about graphic design software, but also about audio software and even text editing software or browsers, all these things reference cultures that did or didn't exist before the digital, but are all being compressed and reflowed through these interfaces. So they have all these layers, it's just that software as we tend to talk about it we only view them of a bracket of certain layers of interface and output. A sort of user interface and output in that order. Part of my project is also about broadening where software starts and where it ends. Or at where least I think . And maybe the word isn't software anymore, but it's sort of where we think it can start considering the beginning of the digital practice and where it ends. So in that sense, yes it will be encapsulating more layers and maybe layers that aren't the common understanding of what software is, but I think that is something that still is totally reviewable. It's something I can question.

So than I have a final question that can kind of wrap it up. It may be a question that is difficult to answer. We talked about is probably going to be the cause of multiple small attempts and projects and makings, but can you still in a broader sense see where it's heading? Or maybe if you can't answer that yet, can you tell me what your next focus is going to be?

It's still quite blurry and what I'm trying to do is sort of ground it, at the moment it's a collection of different modes of address in these areas. Or attempts of modes of address of ways in which the person that made the software at the very start speaks to the software at the very end. And all of the devices in between that are used to make all of that communication happen. So that's where interface falls in, but also plain old language falls in and then the cultures that made it happen and the cultures that expect the outputs. So it's sort of that broad. Where I hope for this to go? That is for me to have a better understanding of how these things will be leveraged, hopefully. Behind it is still a hope that I can answer my initial observation with a no. No this isn't exactly right, this is too narrow, the way I have stated it at first. Like it is not just because you are a user of a device that you are included in all the rest. And where then does my investment have to be if I want to bridge that gap. When does it happen that as a user you become more, or what do you have to do to make that happen and engage with your digital tool. And then I hope it will give me a perspective to observe both ends. Is it dependent on the person using or the person making. This isn't about responsibility or blaming anybody necessarily, but just as a taking of an account of where digital tools are going and just taking notes of where things are moving towards. Towards more federated models where our software is being distributed through to almost single sources. App stores and Play stores and whatever all these things where everything is sort of rolled over by one big rolling pin and what that could have as consequences then. Very broad plan.

Very broad indeed.