In Depth
Who's the author?
Timo Arnall is a designer and filmmaker, currently a co-founder of the small design company Ottica. Previously, he was a creative director at BERG in London. He has a PhD in Interaction Design from The Oslo School of Architecture and Design and has lectured at various universities across Europe.
What's the intention?
This web essay was written amid a lot of attention on “invisible design” in the design community. Arnall’s piece pointedly calls out the problems he sees with the idea that the best user interfaces are those that disappear. His arguments touch on the value of materiality, user and designer agency, and interfaces as key manifestations of culture.
Who's it for?
Arnall’s writing to designers most clearly. He references various people and thinkers that might be familiar to the interaction design community.
So what?
Many of Arnall’s points resonate with me personally. In particular, he gives due weight to the consequences of making design invisible. I feel that writing like this is important because it provides a nice critical counterbalance to temper the hype around trends in an industry that can be prone to fashion over substance.
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More
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On Design Seams and Agency
Seams
People are stripped of their ability to understand, critique and reconfigure the things in their world when the seams of construction are hidden from them.
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On Culture Through Interfaces
Pervasive Computing
The things we make affect the world not just by what they do, but also by what they are. Design shapes culture and to imagine it as invisible is to promote an inert culture.