Half Title Page
Designing XR
Title Page
Designing XR: A Rhetorical Design Perspective for the Ecology of Human+Computer Systems
BY
PETER (ZAK) ZAKRZEWSKI
Thompson Rivers University, Canada
United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China
Copyright Page
Emerald Publishing Limited
Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK
First edition 2022
Copyright © 2022 Peter (Zak) Zakrzewski. Published under an exclusive license by Emerald Publishing Ltd.
Reprints and permissions service
Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-80262-366-6 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-80262-365-9 (Online)
ISBN: 978-1-80262-367-3 (Epub)
Endorsement Page
Never hope to realize Plato’s Republic. Let it be sufficient that you have in some slight degree ameliorated mankind, and do not think that amelioration is a matter of small importance.
… without a change of sentiments what can you make but reluctant slaves and hypocrites?
– Marcus Aurelius
Dedication Page
This work is dedicated to the memory of my late Father Wojciech Zakrzewski, who first introduced me to the “live and let live” doctrine at age six.
Contents
| List of Figures | xi |
| Acknowledgments | xiii |
| Introduction: The Birth of a New Domain | 1 |
| The Birth of a New Domain | 3 |
| The Birth of a New Realm | 5 |
| Designing XR: A Cautious Prometheus | 6 |
| But Wait, No Prototype? | 9 |
| Rhetorical Power of Design: A Reflection on 20 Years of Practice | 10 |
| Methodology: From a Critique to a Proposal for a Possible Future | 12 |
| A Chapter-by-Chapter Exploration of a Field That Does Not Yet Exist | 14 |
| Chapter 1: What is Mind? | 17 |
| What is Mind? | 19 |
| The Turing Machine and the Mechanical Platonic Foundations of Digital Computing | 22 |
| A Mathematical Demon | 26 |
| Imitation Game: Reduction and the Misplacement of Agency | 27 |
| Brains or Computers: Intelligence as a Product of Hunks of Matter | 29 |
| Consciousness: The Collateral Energy of the Anthropogenic Universe? | 33 |
| Mind as Machine | 34 |
| Cellular Automata: The Emergence of Complex Behaviors from Simple Rules | 35 |
| Toward the Ecology of the Augmented Mind | 37 |
| The Hive Mind | 38 |
| Swarms and Brains | 39 |
| The Uni-minded Honeybee Democracy | 42 |
| Mind is a Battlefield | 45 |
| Mixing Humans and Non-humans: Part I | 47 |
| Augmenting Minds: Purpose, Judgment, and Decision-Making | 49 |
| Chapter 2: Probing the Frame: Immersion is Not Interaction | 51 |
| The Comtean World | 52 |
| The Rise of the Machines | 53 |
| Human–Computer Symbiosis: The Birth of a Cultural Imperative | 54 |
| The Human-centered Turn in HCI | 55 |
| Operationalizing the Human Experience: Being in the Augmented World | 56 |
| Computer as a Medium | 58 |
| Object Orientation: Introducing the Non-human Agents | 59 |
| The Non-random Mutations of Parametric Design | 60 |
| The Unnatural Selection of Parametric Design | 63 |
| Integration + Decomposition | 63 |
| Shattering the Black Mirror: The Tangible User Interfaces | 64 |
| From Ownership to Agency: Conscious Selfhood and Virtual Bodies | 65 |
| The Internal Landscapes of Our Embodied Selves | 66 |
| From Behavior to Program: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology | 68 |
| Pathetic Fallacies | 70 |
| Operationalizing Emotion: A Closer Look at Affective Computing | 71 |
| Fingerprinting Emotions | 74 |
| The Emergence of Virtual Reality | 76 |
| Spatial Computing | 77 |
| Augmented Reality: Hamlet in the Cockpit | 78 |
| The Body Keeps the Score | 80 |
| Bravemind: XR Healing | 82 |
| Crossing the Line | 82 |
| Immersion Is Not Interaction: The Five Design Affordances of Immersion | 83 |
| World Building Media Environments | 85 |
| System-level Control: The Age of Social Engineering | 87 |
| Designing for Eight Sensory Channels | 88 |
| Social Physics: Environment and Behavior | 94 |
| Reality Mining | 96 |
| Procedurality, Control, and Creative Choice | 98 |
| Multi-minded Systems: Going Beyond Behavior as a Product without Choice | 101 |
| Immersive Media Environments as Sophisticated Bio- and Neurofeedback Mechanisms | 103 |
| The Honest Signaling of Biomarkers | 105 |
| Neurofeedback | 106 |
| The Mobile Brain/Body Imaging | 108 |
| Integrative Thinking: Living in the Post-Comtean World | 110 |
| Chapter 3: Designing the Artificial: Balancing the Ego-logical and Ecological Thinking | 111 |
| On Paradigmatic Incommensurability | 112 |
| The Unsettled Territory of Legitimate Knowledge Production | 113 |
| The Hypothetico-deductive Approach | 114 |
| The Interpretive Research Paradigm | 117 |
| Phenomenology and Intersubjectivity | 118 |
| Reflection and Reflexivity: A Design Knowledge System to Guide Us | 119 |
| The “0100” Kinds of People Who Make the XR World Go Round | 121 |
| Neither Art Nor Science: Design as Meta-discipline of Purposeful Transformation | 122 |
| The Liberal Humanist Turn in Design | 124 |
| T-Shaped People: The Trans-disciplinary Research Paradigm | 124 |
| Design Mindfulness | 126 |
| Perspective Taking | 127 |
| Data without a Face | 129 |
| The Circle of Empathy | 129 |
| Systems Thinking: Design as Ecological Practice | 132 |
| Wickedness and Complexity | 134 |
| Abductive Thinking: Making Propositional Statements | 136 |
| Feeding Forward | 137 |
| Pragmatism: The Best Obtainable Version of the Truth | 137 |
| Designing Purposeful Strategic Proposals | 138 |
| Participatory Design | 139 |
| Desire, Desirability, and Social Viability | 140 |
| Teleology: Design as a Meta-level Purposive Activity | 144 |
| The H+C ID Logic Model | 146 |
| Chapter 4: The Ecology of the Augmented Mind: Designing Immersive Human+Computer Systems | 151 |
| Meta-level Position: The Power to Create Immersive Systems | 152 |
| Meta-level Position: The Power to Transform Immersive Systems | 153 |
| Building Universes that Don’t Fall Apart | 155 |
| Immersion, Behavior, and Play | 155 |
| H+C Networks as Communication Behavior Spaces | 157 |
| The Foundational Premises of H+C Immersion as a Framework for System Design | 158 |
| Mixing Humans and Non-humans: Part 2 | 160 |
| Designing Digital Objects as Actants within a Network | 163 |
| Actors and Actants: Mixing Humans and Non-humans: Part 3 | 166 |
| semantics, or information Bonding in Multi-minded systems | 168 |
| H+C Networks as Systems of Communication Behaviors | 169 |
| The Content and the Relationship in Communication Systems | 170 |
| Feedback and Equifinality | 172 |
| Relationships: The Defining Characteristic of System Dynamics | 173 |
| Schismogenesis: Interactions as Patterns of Communication Behaviors | 173 |
| System Iteration and Regulation | 174 |
| Self-leadership: Determining the System Function | 175 |
| The Disciplined Process of Thinking and Deciding | 177 |
| Figure-ground: Visualizing the Actor–Network Relationships | 178 |
| The Five Life Phases of H+C Systems | 179 |
| Chapter 5: Extended Reality Experience Design: The Multimodal Rhetorical Framework for Creating Persuasive Immersion | 183 |
| Conversations with the Network | 184 |
| Immersive Persuasion: From Procedural Rhetoric to Multimodal Rhetorical Composition | 185 |
| Participatory Media Environments | 188 |
| The Transformative Potential of Rhetorical Design | 190 |
| Rhetoric and Informed Choice | 192 |
| Rhetorical Conflict Resolution | 193 |
| From the Discursive Chain to the Non-discursive Network of Ideas | 195 |
| Image-based Communication | 195 |
| H+C Immersion Design as an Act of Rhetorical Persuasion | 196 |
| Rhetorical Canons as Phases of the Design Process | 197 |
| Game Mechanics: Balancing the User Goals and System Function | 198 |
| The Six Principles of Persuasion | 200 |
| The Rules of Pre-suasion | 201 |
| The Evolved Human Capacity: (At Least) Five Ways to be Rational | 202 |
| The Multimodal Rhetorical Framework for XRX Design | 203 |
| Jobs-to-be-Done: The Rhetorical Lens of Utility | 204 |
| The Survival Value of Beauty and Pleasure: The Rhetorical Lens of Esthetics | 205 |
| The Behavioral Rhetorical Lens: The Unconscious Response | 208 |
| The Social Rhetorical Lens: Idea Flows Run Social Networks | 209 |
| Life is a Dramatically Constructed Thing: The Reflective Rhetorical Lens | 211 |
| Conclusion | 213 |
| Bibliography | 215 |
| Index | 225 |
List of Figures
| Fig. 1. | From Reality and Terminals to Environments of Ubiquitous Virtuality. | 84 |
| Fig. 2. | The Five Distinguishing Design-level Affordances of XR. | 85 |
| Fig. 3. | The XR Immersion Design Knowledge System. | 120 |
| Fig. 4. | Perspective Taking. | 128 |
| Fig. 5. | The H+C Immersion Design Logic Model. | 148 |
| Fig. 6. | The Seven Dimensions of H+C Immersion Design. | 161 |
| Fig. 7. | Mapping the Actantial Interaction Touchpoints (Digital Objects) in XR Systems. | 165 |
| Fig. 8. | The Layered H+C Immersive System Design Model. | 180 |
| Fig. 9. | The Five Rhetorical Lenses of XRX Design. | 204 |
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to Sharon Irving, Edward Slopek, Steven Bailey, Donald Gillies, David Tames, Carlos Teixeira, Alexander Manu, and Fiona Allison for their support during research, writing, and publishing of this work. I am also grateful to the various researchers and thinkers listed in my bibliography for offering me the ideas, which shaped my own understanding of ecological mind augmentation.
Special thanks to my Co-editor Bruno Lessard for the early support of this project, and for countless hours of editing and providing valuable feedback.
