Aesthetic interactions : raising ethical awareness through multisensory systems

This thesis investigates the relationship between ethics, aesthetics, and emotion, in the user experience of multisensory interactive systems. With a special focus on design for critical awareness, the study offers new insights into the aesthetic communication strategies that underlie the conveyance of conceptually sophisticated messages through multisensory interaction. Today's massive spread of interactive technologies has changed the lives of millions, affecting all dimensions of everydayness. This change makes it urgent to understand how interactive artefacts drive people’s beliefs and choices, especially when ethical issues are to be faced. While the role of aesthetic pleasure and emotion in the user experience of smart systems has been widely studied, the relationship between ethics and aesthetics, in this domain, is an uncharted territory. What remains under-explored, in this regard, is the power of the aesthetic(s) of interaction to affect people’s beliefs, decisions, and actions, by embodying ethical issues. The present study sheds light on the mechanisms that underlie this complex form of communication, so that it can be governed upstream the design process. By extensively reviewing the literature on the subject, this research clarifies the interconnections between aesthetic of interaction, affective response in use, and ethical awareness in interaction. The three dimensions of the user experience are understood to play a key role in shaping meaning making, and thus they are thought to be crucial drivers of the user’s thinking and acting. Hence, the interplay of them underpins processes such as critical awareness and active behaviour change. On this theoretical basis, four main dimensions are identified, as part of a conceptual framework of multisensory interactive experiences: psychological; aesthetic; artefactual; and communication related. Initially used as structure of an in-depth case study analysis, the framework is later turned into a design tool. Based on secondary data, the in-depth analysis reveals four groups of design strategies, one for each dimension. The strategies hinge on aesthetic communication, a key dimension of multisensory interactive experiences, which emerges as the result of the interplay of what can be directly manipulated (artefact properties) and what can be indirectly influenced (human experience). Complementary to each other, framework and strategies are tools that can help designers control the effects of their choices on the experience of the end user. This ability proves critical when complex messages, aimed at raising critical awareness, are to be conveyed. Building on a holistic understanding of interactive experiences, these tools can endow designers with the ability to foster an aware change of the user’s beliefs and behaviours, towards a more sustainable lifestyle. As a closing stage, an exploratory study is conducted to assess the effects of the aesthetic communication design strategies on the three dimensions of the user experience of interest — aesthetic, affective, moral. Within the context of a research-through-design project, some of the strategies are implemented to develop a prototype of a multisensory system for (critical) nutrition monitoring. Tested with 28 participants in a lab environment, the research prototype acts as a tangible manifestation of a specific conceptual design, mediated by the strategies. Hence, the strategies are tested, indirectly, through the prototype experience. Data are collected about the three dimensions of the user experience, combining quantitative and qualitative research methods. The results of the study suggest that the strategies have the power to influence the moral reaction of users, although there is little evidence that the same is true for the affective and the aesthetic responses. While not devoid of ambiguity, the results of the prototype experiment indicate that the aesthetic communication-centred design strategies have the potential to influence the user experience, stirring ethical thinking through aesthetic. This partially supports the theoretical foundation of the research, making the strategies worth to be further investigated. In this regard, the strategies can be the starting point of a new line of research, which focuses on how to design for interactive experiences where ethics, aesthetics, and emotions are all stimulated and integrated.