The aesthetics of interaction : implications for design and education

A major challenge for designers of information and communications technologies (ICTs) is to create an interface with the underlying computer technologies to achieve seamless, intuitive and expressive interactions. Accepting the claim, from theories of embodiment and ecological psychology that our ways of knowing and being rely on our full sensory capacities we argue for a physically embodied interaction with ICTs. Specifically this contribution is framed within two positions, the first is that time is an underlying property in the design of human computer interaction and it should be considered as an aesthetic property. Secondly these interactions should encompass our full bandwidth of communications through physical and multi-sensory means, not just the prevailing visual means of the Graphical User Interface (GUI). To attain an aesthetically pleasing interaction we believe emphasis should be placed on two central themes, time and multi-modal interaction. We articulate our positions on these themes through a review of relevant literature and give an account of the teaching programs we have developed to educate undergraduate design students in the Aesthetics of Interaction.