Phantasmal Media

The whole time I was reading Harrell’s piece, I couldn’t stop comparing it to a talk from Are.na founder Charles Broskoski. In Broskoski’s talk, he asks the audience to imagine what their favorite social media platforms would be like as a physical space. Harrell’s framework for analysis using morphic semiotics to analyze interface design choices applies directly to Broskoski’s talk. You can use morphic semiotics to reflect on how the signs are situated within a system. How emphasized should you make a follower count? Should you call them followers or friends? Should you display friends at all? How would these decisions play into how the platform’s cultural nroms develop?

Gestalt Principles

I had mentioned it earlier in class, but my first exposure to Gestalt principles was in machine learning. Explainability of models has been trending recently because there are lots of black box deep learning models. And humans don’t know if computer vision models interpret images in the same order that humans do: aka do computer use Gestalt principles to understand objects? Been Kim is a researcher who has explored this if you are interested.