John Vines,
Transtechnology Research,
Room B312 Portland Square,
University of Plymouth,
Drake Circus,Plymouth,
PL4 8AA.
john.vines@plymouth.ac.uk
john.c.vines@googlemail.com
John Vines is a design academic and practitioner whose research investigates how the changes to human beings in later life may impact upon how people interact with certain types of technology. He began his AHRC funded doctoral candidacy in October 2007 at Transtechnology Research focusing on developing alternatives to the contemporary strategies used by designers when developing novel technological products for older people to participate with. Previous to this John studied at the University of Wales in Newport, completing a Bachelor’s in Three-Dimensional Design in 2005 and a Master’s in Design (New Media and Technology) in 2007. The underpinnings of his Master’s thesis was presented at the Include 2007 conference, organised by the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art, London, in April 2007.
John is an associate editor of Leonardo Reviews. His work is also affiliated with the ‘Metaphysics Embodiment Aesthetics Technology‘ research group at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, and the Institute of Digital Art and Technology at the University of Plymouth.
Please click here for a brief CV.
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Major research project:
Ageing Futures: Towards cognitively inclusive digital media products.
Project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Doctoral supervision team: Prof. Michael Punt, Prof. Mike Philips, Dr. Martha Blassnigg, Dr. Stephen Thomspon.
This research is situated within the context of a gradually ageing population within western Europe. Within this ageing population there is an apparent desire from older adults to engage with novel forms of technology, yet there appears to be a profound inability to do this. It is suggested by various scientific communities, such as cognitive psychology, that this inability is due to the changes that occur to the cognition of most human beings as they age. This investigation builds upon recent attempts in design to develop novel technological interactions that are better suited to the cognition of older people. The research critically investigates the assumptions that underlie the scientific knowledge of ageing cognition as they are applied by designers of novel technologies.
The investigation is currently at the stage of been written up into a doctoral thesis. The thesis proceeds through four key stages. Firstly, the claims emanating from cognitive psychology of ageing are investigated, highlighting why this discipline is applied by designers as a way to understand how older people interact with a novel technology. Secondly, contrasting scholarship and practice from the discipline of human-computer interaction is examined that highlights how this broader design community considers the application of cognitive psychology as an outmoded approach to understanding human beings interacting with technologies. Proceeding from these arguments, thirdly the thesis examines emerging claims from the scientific study of the human mind that suggest human cognition is fundamentally tied to the capabilities of the human body and how such bodies relate to the world. The fourth stage of the thesis integrates the preceding and somewhat contradictory debates into an alternative perspective of ageing cognition. The intervention of the thesis is in the translation of this alternative perspective of ageing cognition back into design theory and practice.
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Recent research output:
Conference presentation at Consciousness Reframed X: Experiencing Design, Behaving Media with Brigitta Zics: The Mind Cupola and Enactive Ecology: Designing technologically mediated experiences for the Aging Mind.
Abstract: ‘This paper attends to research within the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community that aims to make the learning of new technological interfaces more inclusive of older individuals. In particular, the paper unpacks the problematic nature of improving the manner in which the designers of such systems aim to provide an implicit learning process through remediation and metaphor. This paper speculates an alternative approach to conceptualising the learning process by making a distinction between designing for invisible usability and transparent creation of novel meaning. An example of a technological system that incorporates the concept of transparency is introduced in the form of The Mind Cupola (Zics 2008). It is argued that The Mind Cupola, which is described to be an affective technology-mediated environment, may provide human-technological relationships that highlight aspects of conscious reflection in the participant, supplementing the level of unconscious immersion that is normally the intent of the designer. It is suggested that in highlighting the dynamic and transformative aspect of such interactions, the Mind Cupola provides a perspective on Inclusive HCI that aligns itself with the idea of meaning being enacted by human beings in an emergent system of affordances between the participant, the technological system and the designer.’
Conference presentation at the IASDR 2009 doctoral colloquium: The Ageing Present: Neurophysiological change and the relational affordances of technological objects.
Abstract: ‘This paper outlines a doctoral thesis investigating claims that difficulties older people encounter in comprehending new technologies may be accountable to a reduced cognitive and neurophysiological capacity that occurs in later life. The thesis questions whether understanding an individual’s experience of technology within a reduced and predetermined cognitive model is suitable in design methodologies attempting to alleviate these difficulties. A body of knowledge opposing this view is introduced arguing that neurophysiological change should not be considered through an internal schema but in the way it relates to the wider physiological and ecological context a person is situated within.’
Conference presentation at Nordes 2009: Engaging Artifacts: Body, World and Affordance: Towards Engaging Technological Artefacts for Older Individuals.
Vines, J. 2009. Body, World and Affordance: Towards Engaging Technological Artefacts for Older Individuals. Nordes 2009: Engaging Artifacts, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway. 30 August -1 September 2009.
Abstract: ‘This paper addresses the problems older individuals have been observed to encounter when engaging with technological artefacts and how such difficulties may relate to the designers understanding of the normal cognitive ageing process of human beings. This paper suggests that these problems may not be the result of limited cognitive abilities of certain older individuals but rather the manner in which designers understand the complex relationship between the mind and actions in the world. The paper speculates that an alternative perspective on interactions as affordances that occur between the embodied individual and their ecology may benefit design methodologies deployed in creating engaging technological artefacts for older individuals.’
Joint paper to be presented at the Third International Workshop on Physicality at HCI 2009: Enacted Experience and Interaction Design: New Perspectives
Abstract: ‘Interaction design is now of sufficient maturity to warrant a critical discourse of its own. To date much of the published material which refers to interaction design has tended to reflect upon examples of its practice or to draw upon research done elsewhere (computer science or cognitive psychology for example) in order to give validity to its own accounts. Interaction design’s is a synergistic consequence of other fields which it uses in order to create its own creative and strategic practice; this is both its strength and weakness. Interaction design can become shaped by the fields it draws upon. The authors of this paper take a cautious view of the cognitive and user models that are typically applied in the development of interaction prototypes. Our ideas, presented here in the spirit of a critical conversation, are founded in an intellectual insistence that interaction design presents a strategic extension of an embodied model of the human as an enacted being. In this paper we outline a way by which interaction designers can understand their role to be an orchestration of that enaction, not merely a mechanistic organiser of, ‘perceptions’ of, ‘behaviours’ of and the ‘understandings’ of, systems.’
Paper presentation: The failure of designers thinking about how we think: The problem of Human-Computer Interaction.
Vines, J. 2009. The failure of designers thinking about how we think: The problem of Human-Computer Interaction. Failed Design: What were they thinking, Bard Graduate Centre, New York, USA. 24 April 2009.
Abstract: ‘This paper stems from the author questioning some of the ways that designers think how we think, particularly in the context of developing interactions between people and new technologies. Through looking at the role of designers thinking about how we think in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), the paper notes that there is a division between two distinct models of human thought and consciousness; the model of the cognitive mind and the enacted world. The dominant model in HCI research, the cognitive model, claims that an individual’s thought process could be understood in a similar mechanical and computational manner as the technology. The alternative model of enaction claims that mechanizing the subject in such a way reduces the potential to understand and influence the unified, dynamic nature of lived human experience; however, this model appears to be seldom implemented within contemporary HCI design research. The paper intervenes to explain how the specific example of usability studies of older participants interacting with computing technologies might exemplify how the mechanization of the way people think produce a shortcoming in the HCI design process. The paper presents these shortcomings in the form of a dual failure; firstly, the perception of failure within an older persons cognitive abilities and, secondly, the failure of designers to recognize that the way in which they think people think may be an inherent flaw in their methodologies. The paper concludes by speculating that designers working on understanding and forming relationships between older people and new technologies might provide a suitable entrance point to introduce enactive principles into contemporary HCI discourse’
For more information on any of these papers, please email the author at john.vines@plymouth.ac.uk
For a full list of papers and presentations, please click here.