Interfaces and Us: User Experience Design and the Making of the Computable Subject
This new book (in full color!) by DH@MSU faculty member, Zach Kaiser, is an interdisciplinary artist-scholar monograph, which examines the role of UX design in the production and legitimation of the idea that people are both computing—meaning that they operate according to computational processes—and computable—meaning that every aspect of every person is fundamentally a computationally-legible piece of data. The book chronicles how the world becomes seen merely as an agglomeration of data, the resulting aspiration to computational legibility that individuals and societies adopt, and the new morality that is a product of this aspiration. Zach then addresses the role of design education in combating this computable subjectivity and its effects, concluding by exploring what he calls a “provisional program of Luddite design education.” The book telescopes between macro-scale political-economic and philosophical issues and the minutiae of interface design, drawing on discourses from the history of science and the history of computing, case studies of contemporary consumer tech, autoethnographic accounts of Zach’s own artistic practice, and his pedagogical interventions in the design classroom.
Zach recently wrote for FastCompany about the underappreciated role (and often pernicious effects) of interfaces in consumer tech, and discussed his book and some of his work on the AIGA’s Design Adjacent Podcast.
Buy Interfaces and Us through Bloomsbury (Zach’s publisher), Bookshop, or Amazon.
The following Research Highlight was originally created for the DH@MSU Newsletter and was featured in the March 13, 2023 issue. Subscribe to the Newsletter here.
