Extracts
“Rather than being concerned with the attribution of spiritual or religious power to beings and nature elements, Laurel was particularly interested in the way people respond to animistic beliefs, i.e., how seeing the world as alive could shape and ‘co-design’ our behaviors, decisions and creations. In a technological context, Laurel invites us to consider an opportunity design space that builds on a model that emerges “from the summed actions of many actors” [20:255] and in which the technology offers opportunities for pleasure rather than for utilitarian and productive purposes.”
“Animistic design is characterised by four interwoven principles [3,23,24] . A first key animistic design principle accounts for the way design qualities can evoke a sense of agency. Rather than considering only subjects as active, and objects as passive, animistic design explicitly considers objects on an equal stand with subjects, as all agents that ‘do’ things. Agency is not something that objects a priori have; it is not an innate property. Agency is conceptualized as a relational concept instead, as being actualized, embodied in the relationship between the object and the broader ecology in which it is interacting [23:228] . This brings us to the second and third key principle, namely the embodied nature of objects , that act in a broader ecology. The animistic design interest in embodiment as a second key principle draws the attention to how meaning is created, how cognitive processes unfold, and how information is represented, not as purely existing in one agent, but as unfolding in relation to other agents, instead [24:61] . This notion of considering the broader ecology (also coined milieu) in which objects and subjects act upon each other and are entangled, is the third animistic design principle [23,24]. It brings forth a sensitivity to multiple and heterogeneous points of view [3:2254] that emerge when several distinct objects and subjects act upon each other at an equal stand [24] . This ecology is not a controlled and stable, but considered as having a complex, unpredictable, fluid nature instead. The animistic design perspective embraces this power of uncertainty, which can be considered as a fourth principle. Instead of aspiring control and creating pre-defined, predictable human-computer interactions, animistic design embraces the uncertainty that emerges when various agents creatively engage in and cocreate different realities.”
Extracted Annotations (6/10/2021, 9:40:58 PM)
“categorized on a spectrum ranging from a certainty-driven, problem-solving logic to an uncertainty-driven, animistic design perspective.” (Zaman et al 2018:170)
“The rational of this study responds to the observation that research on the Internet of Toys requires an analytical lens that moves beyond a sole focus on the human” (Zaman et al 2018:170)
“Focusing only on user interactions with connected toys, however, might miss out an understanding of how the design qualities of connected toys afford certain actions, make others impossible, and how they may yield unexpected interaction outcomes.” (Zaman et al 2018:170)
“We focus on one specific design perspective that is known to embrace such a setting of fluid relations between objects and subjects, namely animistic design” (Zaman et al 2018:170)
“Animistic design considers a broad chorus of voices, actions, and perspectives that act upon each other often in uncertain and unpredictable ways [[user/child) -computer (object/toy) interaction, but addresses the richness of the” (Zaman et al 2018:170
“‘milieu’ instead, i.e., the broader ecology, the “ambient, atmosphere, or circumstance” [[objects and subjects) are related to each other, through embodied entanglements [2], and with increasingly unstable and uncertain boundaries [23]. We believe an animistic design perspective is promising to guide the analysis and exploration of the design qualities of connected toys.” (Zaman et al 2018:171
“After the prototyping activities, however, we took the design instances of these three connected toys concepts as a starting point, and revisited them from an animistic design perspective.” (Zaman et al 2018:171)
“By doing so, we aimed to move beyond an isolated artefact-centred evaluation that would only present design instances, and reflect on the design potentialities at an abstraction level that potentially could cut across particular use situations, instead.” (Zaman et al 2018:171)
“The scientific value of this paper is that its animistic design perspective puts connected toys in a broader context of various agents, i.e., objects and subjects that all act upon each other, often in unpredictable ways. By embracing the uncertainty in this complex network of humans and non-humans, the animistic design perspective allows to explore a broad set of design opportunities relevant in the realm of the Internet of Toys.” (Zaman et al 2018:171)
“An animistic design perspective challenges interaction designers to design for an expressiveness of animated objects with intent, while positioning them in a wide ecology of human-object entanglements” (Zaman et al 2018:171)
“likely to be perceived as having personality, autonomy, intention, and an inner life” (Zaman et al 2018:171)
“Animistic design, they argue, offers a practice oriented, but theoretically stooled alternative for humancomputer interactions that are traditionally driven by functionality and control” (Zaman et al 2018:171)
“Rather than being concerned with the attribution of spiritual or religious power to beings and nature elements, Laurel was particularly interested in the way people respond to animistic beliefs, i.e., how seeing the world as alive could shape and ‘co-design’ our behaviors, decisions and creations.” (Zaman et al 2018:171)
“In a technological context, Laurel invites us to consider an opportunity design space that builds on a model that emerges “from the summed actions of many actors” [[Zaman et al 2018:171
“Animistic design is characterised by four interwoven principles” (Zaman et al 2018:172)
“A first key animistic design principle accounts for the way design qualities can evoke a sense of agency.” (Zaman et al 2018:172)
“This brings us to the second and third key principle, namely the embodied nature of objects, that act in a broader ecology” (Zaman et al 2018:172)
“The animistic design perspective embraces this power of uncertainty, which can be considered as a fourth principle.” (Zaman et al 2018:172)
“children ascribe human and life-like qualities to inanimate object like robots, including cognitive, behavioral, and especially affective characteristics. Similarly, [[Zaman et al 2018:172
“Especially when it concerns smart things and AI agents, people of all ages are likely to consider them as alive (whereas in reality they are not), give them attitude and personality [[whereas in reality they are configured), see them as intelligent (whereas they are dumb [23]), having broad capabilities (whereas these are actually rather limited [28]) [2].” (Zaman et al 2018:172
“This study is drawn from a 1.5-year R&D interdisciplinary project in which academia and industry collaborated to design a scalable framework for the development of connected toys applications that incorporate physical, tradable, personalized cards and toys in an interactive multi-platform media experience. The goal of this project was to iteratively conceptualize, design, and evaluate connected toys concepts and present at least one demonstrator.” (Zaman et al 2018:173)
""To which extent and how does an animistic design perspective foster a fruitful exploration of the design qualities of connected toys?"" (Zaman et al 2018:173)
""A substantive reflection on a broad spectrum of design potentialities of connected toys in terms of 1) agency, 2) embodiment, 3) ecology, and 4) uncertainty."" (Zaman et al 2018:173)
“challenge, concept generation and selection, prototyping, testing, and iteration. The emphasis was on discussing priorities, and defining focus in the multidisciplinary team, with as the ultimate project goal the creation of a workable demonstrator of a connected toys concept.” (Zaman et al 2018:173)
“The methodological approach for the generation of the concept definition followed the rationale of a design sprint [[Zaman et al 2018:173
“Analysis The analysis can be considered as a particular type of expert evaluation, complementing (not replacing) user and technical research. The instances of the three concepts that emerged out of the development weeks (supra), were reanalysed from an animistic design perspective following a 2-step process.” (Zaman et al 2018:175)
“In the first analysis phase, we explored each design concept from the perspective of animistic design, questioning whether and how the design qualities would foster or inhibit 1) agency, 2) embodiment, 3) a certain ecology of objects and subjects, and 4) uncertainty (cf., supra). Based on the analytical lens of agency, we defined new codes relating to ‘autonomy’, ‘domination, ‘simulation’, and ‘negotiation’. The combination of the perspective of agency with the notion of an ecology, led to the definition of the following new codes: ‘(in)dependence’, and ‘divergent interactions’. The analytical lens of embodiment and ecology led to an investigation and discussion of ‘boundaries’ in the connected toys concepts. The notion of uncertainty did not yield new codes during the analysis, but was helpful to further characterize and flesh out each of the new codes presented above.” (Zaman et al 2018:175)
“The Bracelet concept hinted upon several animistic design principles in affording children to interact with it in an ecology of heterogeneous, tangible, networked objects that act upon each other in uncertain ways. It does not rely on the typical command and response pattern present in traditional user-interface interactions. It is indeed an essential characteristic of animistic design “to fit a messy, serendipitous process of constant reassessment, enriching open-ended situations” [[s) or in its encounters with other things and data.” (Zaman et al 2018:176
“We do note, however, that design qualities can afford an animistic interpretation, but even without these qualities being present, children still have the agency to creatively bring these objects to live.” (Zaman et al 2018:176)
“Future studies on animistic design could then consider triangulating data in a research design that combines adult expert evaluations of the design qualities with an analysis of empirical data based on participation of children and parents. Doing so would allow us to actually treat the human and non-human activities on an equal stand, which is a key characteristic of animistic design, and posthumanist research in general.” (Zaman et al 2018:177)