WRITTEN BY Erin Marranca, Noelle Peach & JAMIE HUSEREAU
Rationale
Artist Joel Fisher wrote, “…failure only exists in contrast to success” (2010, p.116), a familiar binary opposition that supports a belief that everything outside the narrow definition of success, must be failure. This restrictive perspective ignores the infinite range of possibilities that occupy the spaces between the binary. Le Feuvre (2010) opines that “in this uncertain and beguiling space, between the two subjective poles of success and failure, where paradox rules, where transgressive activities can refuse dogma and surety, it is here, surely, that failure can be celebrated” (p.19). We too believe that the exploratory and iterative space of process and play is a space where failure can be celebrated, or alternatively, where success can be redefined.
In Woolgar’s (1990) experience with usability testing, the user is configured in ways that not only ensure their success but are predictive of potential failure. As Woolgar states, “insiders know the machine, whereas users have a configured relationship to it, such that only certain forms of access/use are encouraged” (p.89). The configuration of the user intentionally restrains their activity, not explicitly from the position of achieving success, but from a perspective of avoiding failure. However, Woolgar’s reference to these configuration failures alludes to something taboo, forbidden, exciting even, “this never guarantees that some users will not find unexpected and uninvited uses for the machine. But such behaviour will be categorised as bizarre, foreign… It is in this light that we might best understand the occurrence of ‘atrocity stories’ – tales about the nasty things that users have done to our machines” (p.89). What if users’ behaviour was configured to invite these occurrences, rather than to avoid them?
Users are accustomed to being configured within the constraints of right and wrong, success and failure; because of this, we aim to radically reconfigure users to be open to something else: exploration, curiosity, play, fortuitous and varying outcomes, none of which can be absolutely defined as successes, and which may at first be perceived as failures. We wish to explore usability as ‘unusability’ and play with the notion of the user experience to contradict expectations and design for the consideration of failure. In terms of learning, we want to create an object that helps users reflect on their outcomes to recognize problems or appreciate the unexpected in support of the creative process and to reconsider the value of the unfinished state. “We no longer need to face the unfinished with a negative prejudice or a suspended judgment. We have begun to look at a work as somehow complete at every point in its development” (Fisher, 2010, p.117). These ideas will be situated within Woolgar’s idea of user configuration, exploring how failure can be embedded into the user experience and what kinds of responses it engenders.
Description
We propose the creation of a digital artefact in 3D space for users to interact with that challenges the normal sequence of actions, placement of interactions, or expected outcomes that users may anticipate from prior ‘configurations’. We hesitate to call it a game, as the focus is not results-based, yet we garner inspiration from environmental design in gaming to conceptualize a 3D space that houses areas for various activities such as creative exercises and maker-focused experiences. This digital environment is targeted toward young adults such as learners in upper high school or higher education, as part of an introduction to creative practice. When users enter a particular area in the space, they will be met with a task, challenge, or activity to complete (or not complete), or simply to experience and explore. Each area will implicitly include our expanded notion of failure in the design, to challenge users to act in unconventional ways that lead them down different paths, and ways that may make them uncomfortable or frustrated. In this way, users are encouraged to work through their failures, think more critically, learn through exploration, and unconfigure themselves.
We aim to use this project as an opportunity to research and learn web-based applications for building interactive 3D objects and environments, as our team currently has limited experience in this realm. Since we will surely be undergoing our own failure reconfiguration throughout this creative process, our objective is to create at least one interactive space (Minecraft Education Edition), accompanied by prototypes created through digital (Vectary, SketchUp, Block Craft 3D, etc.) and analogue (paper model, wireframe) mediums. Some ideas of activities that we may create in our digital world include:
- Art-based activities (drawing, painting, etc.) with prompts
- Digital building, constructing, or making activities
- AR, VR, MR activities
Educational Usability
A key factor in characterising failure is intention. Failure comes from the embarrassment that arises when our creations and actions land outside intention (Fisher, 2010). Setting intention enforces accountability and allows for space for the failure to exist – it is this space that we are interested in exploring. As failure is essential to the creative process, we want to change and expand users’ perception of it as not simply a negative outcome, but as a dynamic process and range of potentials.
Within the digital 3D space in which our configured users strive for learning, we want to play with the notion of intention. We are considering failure as the intention; intention and chance; undefined intention; and multiplicities of intention. In this world, failing to achieve a goal, may in fact be the intended result, where the goal of that action and the effort of it locates itself within the work that was accomplished, or perhaps through an activity, the user will discover an outcome that differs from their initial expectation, expanding their perception of what is possible.
The intent that is set that provides the opportunity for failure also generates expectations (Burden, 2010). The space we create will subvert the expectations of a learning environment, reconfiguring the space as one in which failure is generated and generative. Expectations are generated by intentions and generate failure in our efforts to meet them. We will attempt to provoke critical thinking, learning, and experimentation by designing a space for users that understands they will fail, yet our design and the users it configures will be prepared to cope with this eventuality.
As our focus is on arts education, a distinct parallel can be drawn between the practice of failure in a safe environment that is without consequence, damage, or risk, and the design of our educational space. We are configuring the user to help them understand that failure while learning is both promising and productive (Lange, 2010).
References
Burden, C. (2010). On Pearl Harbour. In Le Feuvre, L. (Ed.), Documents of contemporary art: Failure (p. 128). The MIT Press.
Fisher, J. (2010). Judgement and Purpose. In Le Feuvre, L. (Ed.), Documents of contemporary art: Failure (pp. 116-121). The MIT Press.
Lange, C. (2010). Bound to Fail. In Le Feuvre, L. (Ed.), Documents of contemporary art: Failure (pp. 131-137). The MIT Press.
Le Feuvre, L. (2010). Introduction // Strive to fail. In Le Feuvre, L. (Ed.), Documents of contemporary art: Failure (pp. 12-21). The MIT Press.
Woolgar, S. (1990). Configuring the user: The case of usability trials. In The Sociological Review, 38(1_Suppl), 58-99.