Casting a Wider Net: Using Historical Analysis as a Resource for Design
Susan P. Wyche
Georgia Institute of Technology
College of Computing
Human Centered Computing Program
“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
-George Santayana
Introduction
I used to design glassware for a large manufacture in the Midwest. It was my first
job out of college and the multiple layers involved in creating such a mundane and
ubiquitous item amazed me. Union disputes, labor’s gendered character, and the rise and
fall of Toledo, Ohio, were embedded in this everyday artifact. The company’s
management expected direction for new products to come from them, instead I found
inspiration combing through products archives, visiting museums, and reading about
glassware’s long and rich history. Doing this not only motivated various design ideas it
helped me understand the broader meanings that were embedded in products and their
production. As computer technology continues to reach more and more into our
everyday lives, understanding technology’s past is necessary if we are to understand
where it is going.
Analyzing technologies’ historical context is not yet standard practice in the
human-computer interaction (HCI) community. Novel computational devices and
systems are often conceived of in a vacuum separate from their socio-historical context
and their developers sometimes fail to acknowledge technologies’ position on a larger
historical trajectory. Incorporating historical analysis into current HCI practice would
help practitioners reach their larger goal of making technology more useable and create
opportunities for more innovative design solutions. In this paper I will argue that
technology developers must cast a wider net in terms of the disciplines they draw from to
inform design. I will specifically focus on history’s role in developing new technology.
Just as ethnography has helped us understand and design for unconscious cultural
meanings and uses of technology, historical analysis can help us become more aware of
the trends technology may otherwise unthinkingly propagate.
HCI is increasingly a focus of interdisciplinary interest drawing from traditional
disciplines such as computer science, cognitive science and design, but also from
alternative fields ranging from cultural studies to gerontology. However there is a
tendency among HCI practitioners to look for theories that are conveniently associated
with their research and apply them without examining additional resources. Classic
anthropological, sociological and historical texts are increasingly being cited in popular
HCI research areas such as domestic technology and online communities.
Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton’s (1981) The Meaning of Things: Domestic
Symbols and the Self has lead to broader acknowledgement that values are intertwined
with domestic technology and influenced how we study the home (Bell, Blythe, Gaver,
Sengers, & Wright, 2003; Hirsch, Forlizzi, Hyder, Goetz, Stroback, and Kurtz, 2000;
Forlizzi & Ford, 2000) Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
standard among researchers studying identify and impression management online (Palem,
Salzman, & Youngs, 2000; Golder & Donath, 2004). Ruth Cohen Schwartz’s More
Work for Mother More Work for Mother questions the assumption that technology has
reduced the amount of time devoted to domestic work. Her argument has become
increasingly relevant to an audience outside the science and technology studies
community (Edwards and Grinter; 2001, Bell and Kaye, 2002; Bell, G., Blythe M.et al..,
2003). HCI researchers are also drawing from diverse fields to help develop new usercentered research methods. Gaver’s (2001) “cultural probes” were influenced by
Situationists’s texts; writings from a collective of artist-provocateurs based out of Paris
from the late 1950’s to the early 1960’s.1 I want to extend this practice by proposing that
historical analysis-or focusing on the historical development of artifacts and their use- a
standard and more rigorous part of the HCI design process.
Figure 1.0
This approach parallels Phoebe Senger’s suggestions to incorporate “critical
technical practice” into HCI. Drawing from Agre’s (1997) Computation and the Human
Experience, Sengers and her colleagues suggest we explore the assumptions that
underpin ideas about technology and humanity when developing it (Dourish, Finaly,
Sengers, and Wright, 2004). Similarly my goal is to create more space in HCI for critical
reflection on its methods and concepts.
Sadie Plant’s The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age and Guy
Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle are excellent resource for learning more about the Situationists.
1
My background in Industrial Design and I am currently a Ph.D. student in
Human-Centered Computer program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. My formal
training in history is limited to an undergraduate minor, a handful of graduate level
courses, and an enthusiastic curiosity. History scholars may suggest my “armchair
approach” to understanding history diminishes from the rigor and complexity in their
discipline. This may be true, however I do not pretend to be an authority on this vast
field of research. Instead, I want to emphasize why HCI practitioners must cast a wider
net in terms of the resources used to inform design and work towards increasing
dialogues between people thinking about technology’s past and the ones shaping its
future.
Motivation
Computers presence in our daily lives is rapidly growing. They are in the cars we
drive, the alarms that wake us up, and the ATM’s where we get cash. I can interact with
people in countries I have never visited and chat about topics ranging from how to
program in Python to what it means to be a part of “furry” subculture and all of this is
mediated by my laptop. Accompanying these drastic changes in how we communicate,
access knowledge, and live at home is a level of unparalleled complexity – complexity
which can not be answered by any one discipline. Yet, too often the future is narrated by
the new technology crowd, many who are so steeped in enlightenment notions of
progress and romantic dreams of community and transcendence on the Net that history
seems only a deadweight bogging utopia down (Spigel, 2001). Currently, there is a
disconnect between the visionaries creating the future and the historians examining the
past. HCI has opened its doors cognitive scientist, anthropologist, and industrial
designers. I suggest the field open its doors wider to welcome historians and begin to
recognize how technologies’ past influences its future. History provides an additional
perspective needed to tame the complexities that will accompany technologies increased
presence on our daily lives.
Not only can historical analyses bring added perspective to technology’s impact
on our lives it can inspire innovative design solutions. Geoffrey Nunberg (1996) writes,
“Nothing betrays the spirit of an age so precisely as the way it represents the future.”
Images of the future are often embedded in notions of the past, or how Lynn Spigel
(2001) describes it, “yesterday’s tomorrow.” She suggests there is a reverse logic to
designing for the future. Scenarios represent a future supposedly enhanced with new
technology but they often fail to acknowledge the socio-historical change that typically
occurs with the passage of time.
Representations of tomorrow’s domestic environment demonstrate these
phenomena. A popular example comes from a Popular Mechanics 1950’s article about
“The Home of the Future.” It depicts the quintessential American mother in her plastic
furniture filled living room spraying it with a garden hose. The caption reads, “Because
all her furniture is waterproof, the housewife of the year 2000 can do her cleaning with a
hose.” (Figure 2.0). Two things make this problematic and provide lessons for how to
think about technology development today.
During the 1950’s, plastic was growing into a major industry and touted as the
something that would change everyday life for the better. At the time it was fashionable
to imagine a future rich with everything made out of plastic. Some of these visions
materialized, while most did not. Today instead of being sleek and streamlined our future
is smart and wired. Housewares manufacturers like Sunbeam, LG, and GE (Figure 3.0)
are inventing web-enabled kitchen appliances which are receiving a lukewarm reception
from users. Similar to a future made out of plastic, smart appliances are the manifestation
of our current interest in a popular and new technology. Designing technology that is
grounded in users needs rather than what may be a technological fad can help create more
useable computational devices. Plastic furniture is uncomfortable to sit in and I do not
need to exchange e-mail with my microwave! Analyzing materials’ histories may help
designers reflect on why they are developing the technologies they are and conceive of
ideas outside what may be technological fads.
Figure 2.0
Figure 3.0 Smart Appliances
Secondly, the image perpetuates the notion that housework will and should
remain women’s work. Fifty years ago the stay at home mom in charge of home upkeep
and looking after the kids was more commonplace than it is today. Since then women
have increasingly entered the workforce and making housework with synonymous with
“women’s work” has arguably marginalized women’s power outside of the home
(Weisman, 1992; Wajcman, 1991; Hayden, 1981). Popular media and advertisement
possibly help naturalize gendered notions about domestic labor (Lupton, 1993).2
Half a century later similar problems exists in how the future is conceived.
Images of tomorrow’s technology are embedded with dated notions about the meaning of
family. ASIMO, Honda’s humanoid wonder robot, promises to be what Rosie the robot
was to the Jetson’s. However today family is not the Jetson’s and few mimic the one
depicted in Honda’s advertisement (Figure 4.0). Paradoxically, this advanced piece of
technology is contrasted by a deeply conservative image. Despite an evolving meaning of
what constitutes a family driven by the rise of single mothers, the emergence of blended
families, and more visible interracial and same-sex families we are presented with an
Stephanie Coontz’s research provides an excellent and more detailed analysis of nostalgic images of
family.
2
image that is increasingly become a myth.. Dad’s patriarchal appearance, mom with the
“What will they think of next?” smirk on her face, even the well-behaved Golden
retriever are all mythical stereotypes which according to the most recent census represent
a mere 25% of the American population.3
A similar argument can be made regarding Intel and Microsoft’s “Homes of the
Future” (Figure 5.0). Like the previous examples these are laden with conservative and
nostalgic values about domestic life. These Tudor and Colonial style “McMansions” are
laden with white, upper-middle class, suburban values and fail to acknowledge the
diversity of users and living arrangement that exist. Incorporating histories of
architecture, family, and domestic life into the front-end design processes will make
technology developers more conscious of what values they are perpetuating in their work
and question which one should be repeated and which ones should be left behind.
3
2000 Census Data available at http://www.census.gov/main/www/cen2000.html
Figure 4.0 Honda’s ASIMO Advertisement
Figure 5.0 Intel’s vision of the “Home of the Future”
Historical Analysis and Design Research
In this section I will outline specific contributions historical analysis can make to
the HCI design process. Drawing from historical texts, conducting patent searches, and
listening to elders’ historical narratives, are provided as support for merging historical
analysis in to current HCI design processes.
“I-methodology” or “egocentric intuition fallacy” is when technology developers
use themselves as the model for users (Oudershorn, 2003). Currently the HCI community
is rather homogenous is many senses. It is predominately white, Western, well-educated
technically trained, and young to middle-aged. Ethnographic observation has allowed
technology developers to become more conscious of how they map their ways of doing
things onto the technology they develop thus alienating certain segments of the
population. Immersing oneself in the historical texts may allow HCI researchers to reflect
on the cultural meaning embedded in technology and distance themselves from technical
fields’ disciplinary dogma.
Similar to how a historian would investigate old patents to trace changes in
technology, HCI practitioners should do so to inform and inspire their work. Searching
the United State’s Government’s Online Patent (http://www.uspto.gov/) database reveals
hundreds of futuristic ideas for the home. Perhaps these ideas were too far ahead of their
time when conceived or they could not be properly developed without today’s
technological know-how. An interesting example is U.S. Patent 4,428,085, Frances Gabe
Bateson’s design for a “Self-Cleaning Home (Figure 6.0). The sink, shower, toilet and
bathtub clean themselves. The bookshelves automatically remove dust and the fireplace
carries away ashes. The closet doubles as a washer/drier and dishwashers are embedded
in kitchen cabinets. Just pile in dirty dishes, and the next time they are needed they will
be cleaned.
Despite the academy and industry’s recent attention to future domestic
environments little thought has been given how the home of the future will be
maintained. Researchers have examined the internet’s role in changing how we will
work, entertain, and stay safe at home, but few have asked the how we will keep it clean.
Similar to how ethnography has become an accepted part of the HCI design process,
patent searches should also become standard. Patents can give insight into what has been
done before and broaden the scope of issues being addressed in current research.
Figure 6.0
Historical analysis is typically associated with examining artifacts but it can also
be used to gather insights into how user behavior has changed over time. Much attention
has been devoted to improving the fit between elders, technology, and the built
environment (Lundell, Morris, & Intille, 2004; Mynatt, Essa, and Rogers, 2000). This
research has demonstrated the importance of understanding elders’ cognitive and
anthropometric needs when developing computational devices. I propose extending
elder’s roles in the design process by using their narrative accounts to inform design.
We ask older adults to recount historically significant stories. (i.e. Where were you
when JFK was shot? Do you remember when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon? )
Why not ask similar questions to inform design? For example, tell me about the first
time you logged onto the internet? Has the microwave changed how you prepare meals?
How do cellular phones differ from landline phones? Elders’ narrative responses could
help us become more conscious of the cycles of technology use and better understand
how such patterns shape out assumptions about future designs and the unanticipated
consequences that accompany new technologies thus helping providing additional insight
into technology as an experience.
There is an increased interest in understanding technology as experience within
the HCI community (McCarthy & Wright, 2004). Paralleling this is the need to develop
research methods that capture the intangible qualities associated with experience.
“Cultural probes” (Gaver et al, 1999) is perhaps the most recognized of these techniques.
Historical awareness can help in developing additional methods. The “Memory
Scrapbook” (Wyche, 2004) demonstrates how novel research tools can emerge from
historical awareness.
As a part of a larger study examining aging and housework I wanted to elicit
stories about how cleaning has changed over time. To do this I found advertisements
from Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and Sears and Roebuck catalogues
from various years between 1910-1984 and placed them into a scrapbook. In addition to
creating novel research tool the process of collecting these images increased my
awareness of how housework’s gendered nature was portrayed in popular media.
The “Memory Scrapbook” (Figure 7.0) was effective in eliciting stories from the past and
helping to create a comfortable report between researcher and subject. Elders’ would sing
jingles associated with an ad or reminiscence about a product that was no longer available
on the market. Several participants had fond memories of the “Fuller Brush Man,” a
door-to-door salesman that sold high quality brushes during the early 1920’s to 1950’s.
Many liked buying products from a real person. This insight poses questions as to
whether buying products on-line is most desirable to older people or should we return to
the days of selling items in person. Designing for experience means stepping out of
technical, cognitive, and objective research styles the subjectivity embedded in historical
analysis may in developing context appropriate technological experiences.
Figure 7.0 “Memory Scrapbook”
Finally, not only would HCI benefit from the introductions of humanities into its
practice, but social scientist would also reap rewards. Academics in the humanities are
sometimes accused of writing in dense, inaccessible prose not readily understood by the
general public. Merging their work with HCI practice make their theories see less
esoteric and more relevant to peoples’ everyday lives if it was incorporated into
technology development.
Conclusion
Computer devices are becoming more and more intertwined with the artifacts that
make up our daily lives. What were once mundane artifacts are slowly becoming highly
complicated pieces of technology. If the HCI community is to stay true to its goal of
making technology more useable is must continue to accept insights from various
disciplines including one that seems far removed from the high tech world.
HCI has already opened its door to the arts and social science, I suggest HCI rip
the door from its hinges and welcome insights from all disciplines ranging from Ethnic
Studies, Public Policy, and Theology. HCI should become a disciplinary melting pot, a
place where seemingly disparate disciplines come together to examine the complexity
that will arise from technology’s increased presence in our lives.
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