Article

Randomness as a resource for design

Authors:

Tuck Wah Leong,

Steve HowardAuthors Info & Claims

DIS '06: Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems

Pages 132 - 139

https://doi.org/10.1145/1142405.1142428

Published: 26 June 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Randomness is being harnessed in the design of some interactive systems. This is observed in random blogs, random web searching, and in particular Apple's iPod Shuffle. Yet the role of randomness in design of interactive systems in not well understood. This paper reports on an empirical study examining the influence of randomness on the user experience of music listening. 113 instances of self-reporting were collected and analysed according to four themes: listening mode, content organisation, activities during listening, and affective outcomes. The analysis provides insights into how randomness is used to engender certain affective responses (such as feeling refreshed) by using various constraining techniques (such as playlists) whilst engaging in everyday activities (such as driving a car). The paper argues that randomness can be used as an innovative design resource for supporting rich and novel user experiences.

References

[1]

Alasuutari, P., Why Does the Radio Go Unnoticed? The Nordic Review of Nordic Research on media and Communication, 1, (1997), 161--172.

[2]

Apple, http://www.apple.com/au/ipodshuffle/.

[3]

Aronson, J., A Pragmatic view of Thematic Analysis. The Qualitative Report, 2, 1 (1994).

[4]

Bennett, D.J., Randomness. 1998, London: Harvard University Press.

[5]

Brown, B.A.T., Geelhoed, E. & Sellen, A.J. The Use of Conventional and New Music Media: Implications for Future Technologies. In Proc. Interact '2001 (2001).

[6]

Bruner, J., Acts of Meaning. 1990, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

[7]

Bull, M., Sounding out the City. 2000, Oxford: Berg.

[8]

Dewey, J., Art as Experience. 1934: Perigree.

[9]

Dotinga, R., Radio Industry Hits Shuffle. http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67727,00.html.

[10]

Drew, E. & Haahr, M. Lessness: Randomness, Consciousness and Meaning. In Proc. 4th International CAiiA-STAR Research Conference 'Consciousness Reframed' (2002.)

[11]

Gaver, W.W., Beaver, J. & Benford, S., Ambiguity as a resource for design in Proc of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems ACM Press: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA (2003 ), 233--240.

Digital Library

[12]

Hayes, B., Randomness as a Resource. American Scientist, 89, 4 (2001), 300--304.

[13]

Lee, J.H. & Downie, J.S. Survey of Music Information Needs, Uses, and Seeking Behaviours: preliminary findings. In Proc. 5th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (2004).

[14]

Leong, T.W., Vetere, F. & Howard, S. Serendipity Shuffle. In Proc. OZCHI (2005).

Digital Library

[15]

Levy, S., Does your iPod Play Favourites? http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6854309/site/newsweek/.

[16]

LS, The 10 Golden Rules. http://www.lomography.com/about/.

[17]

McCarthy, J. & Wright, P., Technology as Experience. 2004, Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Digital Library

[18]

Pritchett, J., The Music of John Cage. 1993, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[19]

Scherer, K. & Zentner, M., Emotional Effects of Music: Production rules, in Music and Emotion: theory and research, P.N.S. Juslin, J.A., Editor. Oxford University Press: Oxford; New York. (2001).

[20]

Surowiecki, J., Paying to Play, in The New Yorker. 2004. p. 42.

[21]

Vignoli, F. Digital Music Interaction Concepts: A user study. In Proc. 5th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (2004).

Cited By

Gabbolini GBridge D(2024)Surveying More Than Two Decades of Music Information Retrieval Research on PlaylistsACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology10.1145/368839815:6(1-68)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3688398
Fabre ÉSeaborn KVerhulst AItoh YRekimoto J(2024)Juicy Text: Onomatopoeia and Semantic Text Effects for Juicy Player ExperiencesProceedings of the 26th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction10.1145/3678957.3685755(144-153)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678957.3685755
Kamath PMorreale FBagaskara PWei YNanayakkara S(2024)Sound Designer-Generative AI Interactions: Towards Designing Creative Support Tools for Professional Sound DesignersProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642040(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642040
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Randomness as a resource for design

Recommendations

Designing for experiences: randomness as a resource
DIS '06: Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems

Studies which I carried out recently of users of digital music players revealed that the element of randomness plays a role in influencing the user experience (UX). Apart from being generally positive, some users even report rich experiences such as ...
The Impact of Expectations on User Experience: Surprising the User
BCS-HCI '14: Proceedings of the 28th International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference on HCI 2014 - Sand, Sea and Sky - Holiday HCI

Exciting product design and great user experience (UX) have become one of the most important selling points for digital interactive products. Strong competition fosters innovative user experience design and the development of new design techniques. ...
Applying Storycraft to Facilitate an Experience-Centric Conceptual Design Process
Design, User Experience, and Usability. Interaction Design
Abstract
The design profession is shifting from designing objects towards designing for experiences, and the main premise of this paper is that designers need strategic guidance in bringing the emotional, contextual, and temporal aspects of experiences ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

DIS '06: Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems

June 2006

384 pages

ISBN:1595933670

DOI:10.1145/1142405

General Chair:
John M. Carroll
The Pennsylvania State University, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Susanne Bødker
Aarhus University, Denmark
,
Julie Coughlin
The Pennsylvania State University, USA

Copyright © 2006 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 26 June 2006

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Conference

DIS06

Sponsor:

DIS06: Designing Interactive Systems 2006

June 26 - 28, 2006

PA, University Park, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,158 of 4,684 submissions, 25%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

111
Total Citations
View Citations
739
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)15
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3

Reflects downloads up to 07 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Gabbolini GBridge D(2024)Surveying More Than Two Decades of Music Information Retrieval Research on PlaylistsACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology10.1145/368839815:6(1-68)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3688398
Fabre ÉSeaborn KVerhulst AItoh YRekimoto J(2024)Juicy Text: Onomatopoeia and Semantic Text Effects for Juicy Player ExperiencesProceedings of the 26th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction10.1145/3678957.3685755(144-153)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678957.3685755
Kamath PMorreale FBagaskara PWei YNanayakkara S(2024)Sound Designer-Generative AI Interactions: Towards Designing Creative Support Tools for Professional Sound DesignersProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642040(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642040
Knaeble MNadj MMaedche A(2024)Paintings, Not Noise—The Role of Presentation Sequence in LabelingInteracting with Computers10.1093/iwc/iwae008Online publication date: 15-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwae008
Regan MMullaney K(2024)Emotion, Ethics, and Military VirtuesJournal of Military Ethics10.1080/15027570.2024.231388422:3-4(256-273)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2024.2313884
Navon M(2024)To Make a Mind—A Primer on Conscious RobotsTheology and Science10.1080/14746700.2023.229453022:1(221-241)Online publication date: 18-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2294530
Verweij MDamasio A(2024)Economics from a biological perspective: the role of sociocultural homeostasisJournal of Economic Methodology10.1080/1350178X.2024.2352388(1-18)Online publication date: 22-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2024.2352388
Sedikides CSkowronski J(2024)The Inductive Reasoning Model: A Step Forward into the Future or a Step Back into the Past?Psychological Inquiry10.1080/1047840X.2024.236680335:1(56-61)Online publication date: 31-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2024.2366803
Vyas DKhristi FWorthy P(2024)“Making for Others”: A Creative Inquiry Into Understanding Older Men’s Motivations for MakingInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2387917(1-11)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2024.2387917
Queirolo LFacco EBacci CMucignat CZanette G(2024)Impairment of Hypnosis by Nocebo Response and Related Neurovegetative Changes: A Case Report in Oral SurgeryInternational Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis10.1080/00207144.2024.231190872:2(189-201)Online publication date: 16-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/00207144.2024.2311908
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten