Humorous nteraction Design 😂
The “Alternative Routes” UI attempts to undermine the bias in technology systems towards optimization - in this case, Google Maps biases towards getting you to your destination as efficiently (time) as possible. With the Alt Routes systems, I considered the playfulness of humans and allow the user to choose alternative routes like “Best Smells Route”, “Most Dogs Being Walked”, “Coolest Trees”, “Best Looking People to See” routes and more.
The design research I conducted at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute reveals the impact of memes on digital social communities and focuses on the development of humor and play-oriented design research strategies.
Why humor?
tl;dr: By understanding how users respond to humorous and playful interactions with technology, we can strategically design better experiences with technology.
Humor is a core part of the human social experience. It’s a commonly enjoyable mechanism by which humans are able to connect, share, and deepen affinity. As HCI, including the sub-fields of educational technologies, human-robot interaction (HRI), and technical HCI - move rapidly towards designing, developing, and incorporating new human-like digital and robotic technologies, in addition to new modes of interaction (including VR and AR) it’s valuable to consider how humor, a natural social function, might be incorporated into these technologies, and what the impact of humor might be on a user.
Intuitively, many HCI researchers know that the concept of incorporating humor in systems, platforms, and digital agents has merit. As more human-centered design approaches are used in HCI, humor is an emergent frontier for design research. If one is inclined to observe human behavior, occasions, where humor is employed in social contexts, are plentiful, useful, and enjoyable.
To learn more about this work, visit my team's humor-computer interaction blog - bits & giggles.
Humorous Interaction Design
My research team and I developed hundreds of humor technology ideas over the course of several months. These ideas range from practical to absurd, and span across a variety of humor styles, including slapstick, sarcastic, and ironic.
Seven prototypes that represented larger trends in the humor-tech ideas list were developed through role-playing and low-fidelity prototype development. They were subsequently tested with users who provided feedback on their experiences.
Below are videos that showcase humor-computer interaction prototypes we developed.
The Gesture Delete interaction allows the user to “sassily” wave away junk and spam emails. This gesture interaction style harnesses the natural way emotive speakers use their hands when annoyed with a stimulus.
The “Drink More Water” bottle nudges you to drink more water by spraying you intermittently.