<\/a><\/p>\nBrenda Laurel:\u00a0 <\/strong>Both Christina and Randy make good points. I imagine \u201cpublic interactives\u201d that might allow us to see together our own public environments and gatherings in different ways. Mindfulness meditation apps already exist (for example, Smiling Mind and Take a Deep Breath). Beyond this, design applications or environment remind us to breathe and be present.<\/p>\nDo you engage with strangers when you\u2019re in a \u201cthird space\u201d\u2014<\/strong>standing in line at the post office, waiting out an airplane delay?\u00a0 Or, in those cases, are you grateful to have an electronic device at hand? \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nChristina Wodtke:<\/strong>\u00a0 Most of the time, my biggest fear is being put into that situation. I\u2019m intensely introverted. On a recent flight back from Prague, the entertainment system was not working. When the food heating system also broke, my neighbors and I started talking.\u00a0 We ended up connecting, but it took a shared misery. As well, it helped that I was playing a game on my iPad. The iPad is a big surface, easy to peek at, and games are inherently social. If I had been watching a movie, especially if I\u2019d had headphones on, my seatmate wouldn’t have used the game as a social object to start a conversation. He was really interested in watching me play Frontier Rush, asked about how to play, and started to suggest moves I should make. (He was a man in his 70s whose wife was trying to talk him into an iPad. I made the sale that night.) I wonder if the post office or the airlines could create similar play spaces where it would feel safe to connect.<\/p>\nOur tools are teaching us a new kind of social helplessness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
Randy Farmer:\u00a0 <\/strong>Recently I was in a fast-food restaurant and an older woman came in, looking lost and asking for driving directions. The twenty-year-old at the register was at a loss for helping her, even though I am certain he was carrying a smartphone. I was waiting for my order, so he asked me to help her. \u00a0I quickly loaded my maps app and told her the step-by-step directions (which she wrote with pencil on her physical map). \u00a0The cashier was grateful and a bit embarrassed that he didn\u2019t know the directions (how would he, growing up without paper maps?) and that he didn\u2019t even know how to handle the social encounter well enough to figure out that he had the solution in his pocket.<\/p>\nOur tools are teaching us a new kind of social helplessness, and also providing us an easy means for escape when we can\u2019t cope with the fact we\u2019re directly interacting less and less. This is a vicious spiral.<\/p>\n
Social rules design has helped in the past and can help us today.\u00a0 Our technologies can, and must, take a role in this, but we must start with the goal in mind.\u00a0 We\u2019ve started using tech for physical exercise, something that was also declining, and we can do the same for social health. One might imagine a Fitbit for socialization.\u00a0 Or you could just get a t-shirt:<\/p>\n
Sometimes excellent interaction design isn\u2019t technological.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
Brenda Laurel:\u00a0 <\/strong>Randy, I want one of those. I do see many folks staring at their phones when waiting in line and the like. I love observing and talking to people in those situations, so I rarely bury my head. On the other hand, if the wait is two hours or something, I\u2019ll certainly end up grabbing my iPhone. I agree with Randy that this is really about socialization. I don\u2019t think we can design social \u201crules\u201d (although we might model more civil and sociable societies in things like multiplayer games).<\/p>\nOne of the best social times I\u2019ve had lately was at the LGBT luncheon at the Grace Hopper Conference. It seemed like the usual conference lunch scene\u2014sitting next to people you didn\u2019t know, some of whom knew one another. But the \u201cemcee\u201d suggested topics for discussion and eventually we got into making comments to one another publicly on a variety of subjects. I felt the community draw closer, and I had special buddies throughout the conference because of that experience. At Grace Hopper I also learned about \u201clean in\u201d circles as a way to enhance our engagement in discourse as well as community.<\/p>\n
Sometimes excellent interaction design isn\u2019t technological.<\/p>\n
Like what our experts had to say? Guess what: you can have them bring their brains to you.\u00a0Randy Farmer, Brenda Laurel, and Christina Wodtke are available for consulting<\/a> and training<\/a> through Rosenfeld Media.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With our eyes on our screens more and more, what\u2019s happening to our public spaces? \u00a0Are they less congenial, less bustling, less safe? \u00a0A number of recent books, such as The Circle by Dave Eggers and Ambient Commons by Malcolm McCullough, cast a critical eye at an always-online society. \u00a0And in a tragic turn, a … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184123"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186448,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184123\/revisions\/186448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}