Point of no Undo: Irreversible Interactions as a Design Strategy

Rossmy, Beat ; Terzimehić, Nađa ; Döring, Tanja ; Buschek, Daniel und Wiethoff, Alexander (2023): Point of no Undo: Irreversible Interactions as a Design Strategy. CHI '23 : CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Hamburg Germany, April 23 - 28, 2023. Schmidt, Albrecht; Väänänen, Kaisa; Goyal, Tesh; Kristensson, Per Ola; Peters, Anicia; Mueller, Stefanie; Williamson, Julie R. und Wilson, Max L. (eds.) : In: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 140 New York, NY, United States: Association for Computing Machinery.

Abstract

Despite irreversibility being omnipresent in the lifeworld, research on interactions making use of irreversibility in computing systems is still in the early stages. User freedom – provided by the undo functionality – is considered to be a pillar of “usable” computer systems, overcoming irreversibility. Within this paper, we set up a thought experiment, challenging the “undo feature” and instead take advantage of irreversibility in the interaction with physical computing systems (tangibles, robots, etc). First, we present three material speculations, each inherently utilizing irreversibility. Second, we elaborate on the concept of irreversible interactions by contextualizing our work with critical HCI discourses and deducing three design strategies. Finally, we discuss irreversibility as a design element for self-reflection, meaningful acting, and a sustainable relationship with technology. While previously individual aspects of irreversibility have been explored, we contribute a comprehensive discussion of irreversible interactions in HCI presenting artifacts, a conceptualization, design strategies, and application purposes.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
• Faculties: Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics > Computer Science
• Subjects: 000 Computer science, information and general works > 000 Computer science, knowledge, and systems
• ISBN: 978-1-4503-9421-5
• Place of Publication: New York, NY, United States
• Language: English