How perception influences interaction.

Phenomenology — what a word! Just trying to say it seems to twist the tongue in a million directions. As designers, we are familiar with the terms that grace our eyes when we approach our field from an academic viewpoint. To break things down to a simpler perspective isn’t often easy, which makes the task of understanding things like phenomenology much harder than they need to be. However, it can be argued that phenomenology plays an important role in our everyday lives and in our design work. The science of phenomenology has many practical uses and encompasses everything from how you see the world to how you interact with it. This science is key to understanding the human consciousness and how it derives meaning from the objects the comes into contact with. It can be summed up in one simple phrase: we see the world in terms of the possibilities for action that it affords us.

Phenomenology’s Use In Everyday Life

Humans are like biological computers, constantly inferring upon their environment by making judgements and acting on them.

As designers, we have phenomenology to thank for its many contributions to human computer interaction. How else would we understand the concept of affordances and how humans create meaning from objects suited for human use? When we see an object and touch the same object, we are interacting with it from a human perspective. This means that every possibility that can be derived from the object’s use is automatically seen from a human-shaped lens. How we use the object is influenced by our senses — touch, sight, smell, and so on. What to do and what not to do with the object is determined by our phenomenological lens, or our intersubjective view. By intersubjective, I mean the subconscious ideas that govern our past experiences with the object that inform our present view of the same object. Humans are like biological computers, constantly inferring upon their environment by making judgements and acting on them. Phenomenology simply breaks this down to a scientific standpoint so that we see our instincts from a design perspective. From this understanding, we will break down phenomenology…