Being Human

Yesterday afternoon we met with Richard Harper, a senior researcher at Microsoft, as well as attending the public lecture he gave in the evening titled Changing Humans. 

It was interesting to hear him talk about understanding how people think, and how this can be aided by developing an understanding of how you think yourself. He related this to the conversations between designers and non designers, and said that it can involve creating a common ground together.

I liked the point he made when describing communication as a human act, as in some environments it can be interpreted as an exchange of data, with humans seen as machines. However he also stressed that neither of these are necessarily wrong, but are simply a different viewpoint.

I thought about this a bit more while we were discussing reflection, and reflective writing with Jonathan Baldwin in the first session of the Designing Innovative Research module. When describing the action of making a cup of tea or brushing your teeth most people will go through the process in a systematic way. We were encouraged to question why you do certain things in order to evaluated and reflect on the action i.e. why do you have a cup of tea? I though back to what Richard Harper had said and realised that often when people make a cup of tea or coffee, they are not doing it because they are thirsty and need a drink, but it is like a performance. They do it to take a break, gain comfort, or even to make a social gesture. People don't go for coffee to drink coffee; they go to have a chat.

I think I would like to relate this to my ideas for my 3rd semester project, and particularly the social interaction aspect of design.