Ambiguity as a resource for design

By William W. Gaver, Jacob Beaver, Steve Benford. International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2003

1,528 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Mechanical Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/39b22e4b9efa2616224123adcd3bf7f8e8192057

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In Mechanical Engineering

In Human-Computer Interaction

Citations in the corpus

"My Roomba Is Rambo": Intimate Home Appliances (2007, background): “By contrast, Gaver voices different vision of ambiguity as a powerful resource that can promote close personal relationships fueled by curiosity and engagement [13].”
Reflecting on reflection: framing a design landscape (2010, methodology): “For example the Home Health Monitor (Gaver et al., 2003) is embedded with various sensors such as light, temperature and door sensors to monitor people’s activities around the home, the results of which are then used to give feedback in the form of a horoscope to allow people ‘to reflect on the emot”
Interactive public ambient displays: transitioning from implicit to explicit, public to personal, interaction with multiple users (2004, background): “As Gaver et al [6] argue, having some ambiguity in the display, at least initially, can draw users into interaction.”
HCI as heterodoxy: Technologies of identity and the queering of interaction with computers (2011, background): “There are designers whose products exist to question and raise questions, such as Dunne and Raby’s Designs for Fragile Personalities in Anxious Times: (www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/projects/71/0), or Gaver’s studio and work on ambiguity (e.g. Gaver et al., 2003).”
Aesthetic interaction: a pragmatist's aesthetics of interactive systems (2004, neutral): “In a pragmatist perspective we have to move beyond ideals of meeting human sensor motor skills and somatic sensing, to include among others the human intellectual capacity to grasp and make sense of complex, contradictory and even ambiguous systems and situations [18].”
Uncomfortable interactions (2012, background): “celebrating the role of ambiguity rather than clarity [15], provoking interpretation rather than giving information”
The familiar stranger: anxiety, comfort, and play in public places (2004, background): “Can we develop social tools that interface to groups and crowds rather than individuals? Can we buildup social connections to strangers anonymously and without explicit programming or revelations – perhaps by simply walking around? Ultimately, the design must incorporate ambiguity [19], leaving user”
Staying open to interpretation: engaging multiple meanings in design and evaluation (2006, background): “Gaver, Beaver, & Benford argue that ambiguity can be a desirable property not only for artwork but also in interface design, for example to express uncertainty in a systems’ precision, to support users in rethinking the roles systems play in their lives, or to raise questions about people’s moral re”
Reflective design (2005, background): “…can be accomplished a variety of ways: actively setting out to make the familiar strange [3], introducing and encouraging ambiguity as a resource and not as a factor to be eliminated [19], and building open-ended systems where the reflection itself is an irreducible part of the final experience 2.”