HappyTime 4AR(ie)d: Bernhard Rieder, is giving away a good deal of all you wanted to know about contemporary digital culture- in association to new media design- and you were just afraid to ask!

Bernhard Rieder is Associate Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

While still in Paris, he was co-responsible for an MA program in interaction and web design, concluding his Phd research on the social and political dimension of information processing. His background as a web developer, researcher, educator, together with his recent, current position in teaching Media theory, in the university’s Media studies department, (:faculty of Humanities), compose a unique line of experience and flair. Digital communication, society, design, the  information age, issues and problems: here are some basic facts and figures, explained thoroughly, yet effectively by Bernhard Rieder.

Picture above from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/silvertje/7535118470/

Α4D-D4A: We were at the multimedia rush, back in the beginning of the noughties (2000), when we heard that access to digital (personal) data will be maximized , through a common server, running through your (digital) TV, laptop AND mobile phone. Today cloud computing is finally here, how this reality affects the design of new media apps?

Bernhard Rieder: Well, I’ve been a bit out of the loop concerning the latest design practices, but one of the realities is certainly that the necessity to work for different screen sizes and interaction paradigms requires quite a lot of very concrete thinking about device-specific interaction patterns and a lot of highly abstract thinking about how to coordinate between devices, synching data, and so forth. My impression is that design is becoming less about specific technical requirements (including graphical work) - a lot of people can use Photoshop or write some code and outsourcing has become commonplace - and more about what you could call "activity design”, which moves from what happens on a specific screen to the question what people are doing, or what they could be doing. Besides its technical dimension, the cloud is about allowing activity patterns to move from one screen to the next. Apple’s continuity project is a recent example, but so many programs now have a website, desktop app, mobile app, etc. and what holds it together is not a particular interface or design paradigm, but an activity or service. This means that designers need to be concerned with questions that were traditionally asked in the humanities and social sciences.

Α4D-D4A: What is the most common clashes you experience in young peoples debates, during your sessions, regarding computer design?( For instance, the eternal conflict between web designers and web developers always occurs, even in an academic environment like yours?)

B.R: When I taught design or development some years ago, I found that this opposition was beginning to slowly fade away, even if it was slower than what I would have liked. But some of the best designers were beginning to get pretty good at coding, which really also fed back into their design practice.

Α4D-D4A:You once mentioned that you should need NO more than 3 clicks to navigate through an application, in order to reach a function-result, otherwise this app’s interface is extremely inadequate (you used another word but that’s classified info ;-). Have you changed your mind? Do you have any favourite apps , today, that you use regularly?

B.R: It’s of course an overstatement and the slavish following of some usability mantras can really be detrimental to creativity. But what I still like very much about these ideas is that users are not there for the purpose of your app or website. They have their own lives and ideas and struggles and neither the time nor the inclination to learn a badly designed or complicated interface. Things have been getting better, but in particular in Europe, we’ve had so many examples of really badly designed stuff where usability was not of any concern that something like the three click rule had its place. But it’s clear that interface design, in particular, has done enormous strides since mobile appeared and when the activity orientation I mentioned above really kicked in.

Concerning favorite apps, I love the distraction-free writing trend that started some years ago. Stuff like Ulysses on the Mac is really such a boon to writers. I’m still waiting for something to make the email avalanche more bearable, though.

Α4D-D4A: Energy, climate, supplies, science, space, economy, design. Notions that are changing dramatically, succumbing to the necessities of the crisis era. As a programmer, professor and digerati, can you define the most important stakes, regarding the making of the future digital media?

B.R: That’s a big one. My main worry is that complexity in all areas is growing, but our willingness to adequately deal with it is not. By that I mean first of all that the attractiveness of the quick fix, the slogan, the hip shot diagnosis, or the fast thinking is growing rather than diminishing. Things have to go fast and there is little time for introspection and deep deliberation. But most relevant problems today are not only complex in the sense that they have many different components, but also because they have complicated histories and engage increasingly diverse people and ideas. That means that we would actually need a lot of time to unpack the problem, to hear each other out, and to think through a number of lines - and there’s rarely time for that. In my research area, which basically concerns the political dimension of information processing, the people concerned with critique or policy have rarely a robust understanding of technology and the technologists are oblivious to the political dimension of their work. They come together in research projects or conferences and I constantly hear one group complaining about the other - if only the computer scientists were more open, if only the social scientists were less vague, etc. Understanding the other’s ideas not only takes willingness, but years of exchange and the time to learn about sometimes fundamentally different ways of looking at the world. But since everybody is so busy, exchange risks becoming superficial, petty, and thus ultimately frustrating. It’s maybe a naive wish, but I hope that we’ll be able to pause a bit more, to take a bit more time, and maybe to become a bit more prudent.

Α4D-D4A: A kid/young person comes to you, asking your advice; he/she wants to be a hypermedia architect, a designer of intelligent digital systems. Which steps he/she should follow, to realise this, and to overachieve?

B.R: Go broad. With things like codecademy, stack overflow, etc. there’s really no excuse any more to not learn how to code, at least a little. Maybe you won’t become a developer, but at least you’ll be able to be part of a productive conversation about technical specs. And if you have a more technical background, go to the museum, look at a design magazine, read a novel, see a play. You’ll maybe never become an artist, but you’ll hopefully develop a wider appreciation of culture and human diversity. There is nothing more depressing than hearing from somebody in the first sentence of a conversation what they are *not*. To both I’d say to stay up to date on digital culture - there are so many great sites out there that do quality reporting on stuff from gadgets to NSA spying and that’s the larger context every designer or developer now works in.

Α4D-D4A: Thanks so much for your time Bernhard!

Enjoy more of Bernhard Rieder’s  views, ventures, articles and research on:

http://thepoliticsofsystems.net | http://rieder.polsys.net | https://www.digitalmethods.net | @RiederB