The Aspects of Aesthetics of Interaction: Deconstructing The ‘How’ Level Of User - Product Interactions
Güzin Şen, Bahar Şener · OpenMETU (Middle East Technical University) · 2021
The term aesthetics of interaction emerged from the need to explain the appreciation of our sensory experience of the products, which goes beyond the appreciation of the visual appearance. In other words, it is used to define/design products which are not only pleasant to look at, but also pleasant to use. The product design literature discusses the aesthetics of interaction through the sensory aspects of the products. However, with the increased embodiment of computing technologies, the interactivity of the products has become more complex and varied. To describe the interaction aesthetics of the products there now appears a need to widen the vocabulary. Even though we interact with most of the product aspects through our sensory systems, we still need to acknowledge certain characteristics of interaction (e.g. response time, sequence of interaction steps, range of movement and precision in information presentation) separately than the aspects like product texture or sound to deal with the complexity of such diverse products/interactive systems. This paper presents a synthesis of product experience and interaction design literature to deconstruct ‘how’ users interact with products with reference to the sensory specific and non-sensory specific aspects of interaction/interactivity. It also offers a categorization of the existing ‘aesthetics of interaction’ vocabulary with an aim to guide the designers while they define and formulate the aesthetics of user-product interactions.