I’m currently writing two papers. At this point, bits of these papers seem to resemble two chapters of my thesis.

The first paper discusses what I’m calling the affinity gene (apologies to Peter F Hamilton) or a way of framing design capability in terms of affinity. This idea came out of a lot of reading, practice, and the realization (while presenting on a public panel at ozchi 2009) that just about every aspect of design has a dependence on the designers ability to activate and modulate their perception of affinity between objects.

If I was writing science fiction, I’d say that better control of affinity makes for a better designer. Which leads me to the second paper.

Designers use artifacts to activate their perception of affinity. There, I said it. Seems obvious, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Krippendorf has talked about this, and I particularly like his expansive take on artifacts, ranging from objects to discourses.

In this second paper we’re not looking at this aspect of activation, mainly because it relies on the first paper, and neither are published yet . My colleagues Hugh Macdonald, Yoko Akama and I are using Dewey’s model of the expressive object to frame artifacts in terms of how they help people inhabit an experience. In Dewey’s terms, some artifacts are statements, that lay out the circumstances under which an experience may take place; while other artifacts express an experience, or are an experience. These expressions are what we’re talking about when we say that artifacts can help people to inhabit experience.

I’ve been thinking about where this term inhabit came from, and realised that I’ve picked it up from James Wood. In How Fiction Works, Wood uses the term in two ways. Initially, he suggests that writers should inhabit their stories – or attempt to empathize with their characters. Secondly, he describes the “free indirect style” – a technique writers use to help readers inhabit the experience of a character.

So, lets riff on this for a moment, as we follow Diana, an interaction designer, down the street… The cracks in the sidewalk slip away as a couple round the corner, spines scrunched in an iPhone gait, oblivious to anything outside their user experience bubble…