Comments on: IUI ’09 confirms : Intelligent = Ugly

By: buza

buza — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:33:58 +0000

I completely agree. There was indeed some indication from presenters (actualy, just Georg Groh) that even if aesthetics were considered in their research, they wouldn’t have the first idea on how to go about evaluating it, which I understand.

Just about the time I started thinking that what needs to be done is focus on usability as opposed to aesthetics, one moderator referenced a few conclusions reached at CHI 2008 (taken directly from his slides):

- usability testing considered harmful
- not helpful for inventions in prototype stage
- early usability evaluation cuts off design experimentation

Intuitively, I guess these make sense, but I have this feeling that it’s a cop out. I would think that of all research fields, HCI should be the one most sensitive to usability and aesthetics.

By: infosthetics

infosthetics — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:50:32 +0000

I would argue that it is still “new” at academic conferences because most don’t (want to?) see that there is research in it. To research the value of “aesthetics” (which I consider to be considerably more than visual style alone), one needs methods that are significantly different from the performance tests that are prevalent in research today. Next to the completely different terminologies, this makes it not all that simple.

By: mud

mud — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:28:33 +0000

I wonder why this is still such a new concept for academics/industry in technology to comprehend. I always thought it was because they like ugly things that look like shit. I mean, these “conferences” have people who print out a bunch of powerpoint slides, tile them up to call it their “poster.” But maybe it’s because they are totally clueless.

You ask these guys at the conference; you’re at a bar and can only talk to one girl, would you talk to the hot one or the ugly one. They will probably reply, “why would I be at a bar, I don’t drink.”