Reading Response #5 to Artful Design • Chapter 5: “Interface Design” and Interlude
Sami Wurm
Oct. 30th, 2022
Music 256A / CS476a, Stanford University
Reading Response: Design Through a Feminist Lens
From this week’s reading, I’d like to respond to Artful Design Principle 5.4, which states:
Principle 5.4: BODIES MATTER
Our body is the ultimate instrument of all our external knowledge… Our own body is the only thing in the world which we normally never experience as an object, but experience always in terms of the world in which we are attending from our body. It is by making this intelligent use of our body that we feel it to be our body, and not a thing outside. — Michael Polanyl, THE TACIT DIMENSION
The ethos of chapter 5 and the Interlude are all about how design interfaces should feel like extensions of our bodies, and how their purpose need not be anything more than for us to explore and express ourselves as we live our lives. While I agree that these sentiments can definitely ring true, I feel that some questions go unexplored when we talk about what it means to design in a way that allows us to feel or to escape/transcend our bodies.
The quote under principle 5.4, for example, widely does not ring true for women. In my experience, it is far from accurate to say that we “normally never experience [our bodies] as an object, but experience always in terms of the world in which we are attending from our body” (page 210). It is an almost constant, daily reminder that my body is, in fact, viewed as an object by many of my fellow society members and that it would be treated as such if I did not take measures to protect it. Furthermore, living in a society where we are viewed this way, many women internalize the male gaze (objectification) in the way that they feel and experience their own bodies.
Furthermore, apart from women, many people who deal with trauma or mental health issues such as PTSD, depression, anxiety, and mood disorders experience dissociation from their bodies and do not feel at one with it. All this to say, many people do feel like objects at times, and many people do want interfaces that allow them to feel specifically like they are more than their body — not that they are completely at one with their body and all of its technological extensions.
Keeping this in mind, how can we approach all of the other principles that state “Embody!”, “Re-Mutualize!”, “Have your Machine Learning, and the Human in the Loop!”, “Interfaces Should Extend Us!” ? We must approach these concepts from a different lens when our audience is different. How do they want to feel? How do I want to feel?
Of course, our interfaces and design must still work to inspire some raw human emotion. But as I start to think about ‘design as my own artistic exploration’ (page 298), I wonder what this means for me. Actually, I wonder how I can make designs that make people feel less in their bodies, and more in their spirit. I think that doing this requires slightly different principles that deserve exploration. We may want to consider how we can use or do the opposite of the principles listed in the book, at times, to feel separate from our physical form, and how these designs may require a more serious approach (one that risks failure) rather than a ‘funny’ approach that braces for laughs (page 288).
I do not have any answers on how to accomplish these visions for now, but I do think that I have a really good question.
At the end of the Interlude, Perry R. Cook states that perhaps we are “broken monkeys” (page 303), as we no longer enjoy and bask in life’s simplicity. However, I think we are all perfect little monkeys inside, living in a very broken society. That’s why it sucks to be in our bodies sometimes — because our little monkeys (or inner children, if you will) — live on only in our spirit after society breaks us down as we grow up. I would love to continue exploring how we can design to bring these little monkeys out, in physicality or in spirit.