Digital Patina -

shaping user behavior with activity patterns

Bachelor Thesis

Mark Jensen
&
Kristoffer Solberg Hansen

BA(im), CBS
Supervisor: Mads Bødker

104725 STU

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Abstract 5

Introduction 6

Thesis and Research Question 7

Relation to Information Management 8

Data 9

Information 9

Literature review 10

Method 11

Website 12

User observation 13

The tasks 14

Contextual Inquiry 14

Affinity Diagram 16

Interviews 16

Smaaland Kindergarten 17

Empirical Material 18

Expectations to findings 18

Findings 19

Physical Interaction 20

Patina 21

Desire Path 21

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 Motive 23

Rationality 24

Social Proof 24

Wall of Decision 28

Intuition 29

Activity analysis 30

The theoretical framework 30

Empirical research 31

Analysis 33

Implications of Activity theory 35

Analysis - Digital Interaction 35

Theoretical framework 36

Analysis 38

User Interfaces 40

Mental Models 40

Metaphors 41

Experience 42

Defining Digital Patina 44

Starting point 44

What is Patina? 44

Digital 46

Social Activity 47
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 Social Navigation 47

A Working Definition of Digital Patina 49

Conclusion 50

Method Critique 50

Applying the theories 51

Analytical findings 51

Recommendations for Further Research 53

Acknowledgements 54

Bibliography 55

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to give a qualified answer to how the principle of patina can be
applied to a digital setting, and how it can shape user behavior. To define digital patina we
include material from Human-Computer Interaction as well as supplementary theories
from other disciplines to give a satisfactory answer to our research question. Theories on
Activity, Ubiquitous Computing and Mental Models are applied to user tests as they go
beyond the idea of patina as limited to perishability and signs of wear. User tests
confirmed this and led us to conclude that illustrating the activity users engage in with
information creates structures for others to perceive as points of navigation and act upon.

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Introduction
This paper serves the purpose of examining how the concept of Patina can be brought
meaningfully into a digital context. In the physical world patina is seen in use patterns
where surfaces has been worn. Can we transfer that metaphor to a digital environment or
do we need to rethink what patina is a representation of?

The underlying reason for addressing a topic like patina is expressed very well in the words
of renowned blogger Jason Kottke:

One might argue that patina is a type of filter we unconsciously put on top of objects in
order to better understand what to do with them. If we do not understand the context in
which we interact, we can not navigate optimally or achieve what we want to. Therefore,
we observe what others do around us to get guidelines on what to do. Some actions might
be silent and we are perhaps unaware of our observation, but we act according to others
none the less.

Before conducting any research our understanding of the issue at hand took offset in the
idea that it would be characterized as a design task. Design in the sense that it would
involve designing a test environment on how our users perceive information and a change
in navigation, but our approach to the analytical work as well. We believe that the term
Design is very descriptive - not just in relation to creating test sites, but also in its
relevance to Information Architecture. Jason Fried from the company 37 Signals expresses
this in a somewhat directly manner:

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We agree with this because in many ways it sums up the understanding of how our
analyses approaches activity and interaction, and the relation it has to the discipline of
information management.

The research we have conducted will be of interest to people that look into how interaction
and activity are engaged in a digital setting. Especially how analogue principles are
perceived when transfered to a digital setting and the implications it can have on user
navigation.

Thesis and Research Question

As we approached this work we had many thoughts as to which direction to go. One
method could be to take offset in the theory we knew and try to let that shape our image of
the research in mind. Another was to take offset in our interests and how they keep
blending into our perception of things - theory, web services, daily life etc. One could then
argue that regardless of how we read and interpret modern theory it will always be our own
formulation.

But one thing caught our interest when discussing own-perception and interests. That was
how could one research the traces we all leave behind that others use - consciously or not.
It can be the physical things that we do in our everyday life that leaves traces, e.g. putting
up a poster in a public place, or just taking a walk in the nearby park. Most of our everyday
actions leave traces behind that others might adopt just like we might have done. If we
unconsciously act upon the traces of others are we then doing this as an assessment of best
practice in the given situation or is it a sign of accepted rules or norms that must be
followed in the society? It is difficult to answer but it is certain that in many cases people

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will adopt the behavioral patterns of others regardless of the incentive. And equally
important will these patterns and structures also be present in the digital world?

We found that it is in the real world these patterns are meaningful, so would even it be
possible to transfer these into a digital context and how would that be expressed? This
question began the actual formulation of our thesis and was used in the beginning as a
working title but we needed to be even more specific. The first aim of research was to find a
proper term for these user patterns and for that purpose we adopted the term Patina.
Patina meaning a trace of something influenced over a long period of time but also being
“an appearance or aura that is derived from association, habit, or established
character“ (Merriam-Webster dictionary, 2009 ed.). Nevertheless patina was only
interesting if we were able to import into a digital setting so that our main research point
would be built around the term Digital Patina, something that we discovered few others so
far have tried to examine. Furthermore we wanted to examine the activity that digital
patina occurred around and how the users react when they experience it. This lead us to
the formulation of our main research question:

How can user behavior be shaped by digital patina?

As a tool we could use in conducting this research we divided our research question into
two sub-questions:

How do users behave based on previous activity and their own motive?
How do we understand digital environments?

From this thesis we began conducting research in order to be able to answer the questions
raised here to the fullest.

Relation to Information Management

Before we are be able to answer our research question in relation to Information

Management, a clear definition of and distinction between data and information would

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need to be formulated. As a result of this, we use the following definitions of data and
information throughout this paper:

Data
“Data is a set of discrete, objective facts about events” (Davenport & Prusak 1988:2-3), in
other words, it is the smallest set of building blocks around which you can create context
and meaning. It is purely objective facts, neither positive nor negative - they are simply
just there.

Information
Once you start applying a meaningful context of any set of data, they become
information. The fact that today’s temperature is 25 degrees does not give me any
additional meaning, but if you are told it was 23 degrees yesterday and 21 the day before
that, a pattern arises.

The starting point for this paper is found in the change from data to information.
Whenever we interact with data and use it in a certain context, the information that erupts
is shaped by our activity. Our thesis on digital patina concerns principles of usage as they
are found in the physical world and how they can be applied to objects in a digital setting
to understand and manage the information. If the discipline of Information Management
is about “presenting the right information to the right people at the right time”, it is
essential that studies on how the information is presented are conducted.

Moreover, this kind of paper does not call for the organization to be the main focus of the
analyses, but rather as a part of the empirical studies. A large part of our empirical studies
is on how an organization - in our case the kindergarten “Smaaland” - have introduced new
and interesting ways of presenting information, not how interesting ways of presenting
information could be introduced to them.

Lastly, we find that our final recommendations are general enough to be applied to the
user interface of any kind of digital information system that is centered around multi-user
activity.

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Literature review

For this work we have aimed at closely selecting the most applicable literature in order to
approach our research in a proper manner. To be able to restrict our selection to the most
applicable literature we have structured 3 main areas of research. These will not, however,
reflect the way that we structure the actual analysis but only serve as a means to isolate the
single element of research.

First area is centered around Activity Theory with the purpose of being able to research
deeply into the single action, in a particular context and situation. We will address activity
analysis in order to gain an understanding of the cultural and technical mediation of
human activity. So that the focus is not only on the artifact but the mediation through the
artifact as well as the socio-technical environment (Suchman 2006). This way we do not
solely rely on the intent behind an action but also the context it is carried out in and the
action that follows. Activity theory aims at analyzing exactly this. The activity theorists
used in this work will be, Engeström (1999), Nardi (1996) and Suchman (2006).

In close relation to activity theory we will draw on theories from Interaction Theory and
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Since our type of research requires users testing in
different environments with different structures and to be able to analyze on the
interaction between user and artifact. From the well-established interaction field we will
use Winograd & Flores (1986) and Leont’ev (1974).

As additional literature in this area of our work we will address issues that will relate to
experience and motivation behind their actions through the theory of Tacit Knowledge
Davenport & Prusak (1988). This part will aim at how some of the things we know is rooted
in the process of what we are doing which also relates to Suchmann’s (2006) idea on in
situation interaction. We will be using theory from the CSCW framework (Grudin 1989 and
Bødker 1989) - however it will not have a main focus in this work.

Another main area of this work we will take into account is the past development of
technologies evolving more and more as a natural part of our everyday life and how this

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impose certain challenges. If technology is everywhere, information must be present
everywhere (Greenfield 2006) and how do we then address this? This question and several
more are all part of the framework on Ubiquitous Computing (Weiser 2006) and
Everyware (Greenfield 2006). This framework of ideas crosses the line of how users
perceive when we act in “real” life or in the “virtual” A barrier that gradually becomes more
and more difficult to distinguish between. The supplementary used in this line of analysis
will focus on metaphors and intuition and how these are carried in the mind of the user
when approaching new territory. Moreover, in conjunction with these theories, Craik (1943
in Johnson-Laird 2005) and Blackwell (2006) will be used to describe the theory of Mental
Models and how they can be applied to the work with digital user interfaces, with a clear
focus on the GUI.

Lastly we will try and define Digital Patina, a topic approached by others but none has
succeeded in reaching consensus. Besides basing our definition on the tests and research
done by ourselves we will also approach the theory that has been conducted by others in
the field - in particular Jessen (2009). He tried to conduct his own studies in the field and
therefore it makes good sense to rely on his thoughts and see if their is something we can
learn before formulating our own definition. Some of the areas that we will address in this
part of the work are centered around the structures that we have in both the physical world
and the digital counterpart, and if these will clash when brought together? Complementary
theory will be Social Proof (Cialdini 1993) and Desire Paths (Bachelard 1958) that will both
provide input on how the users adopt behavior from other contexts and the behavior of
others. An essential angle to the definition which will be deeply rooted in our empirical
data on user behavior and logics.

Besides the theory proposed above we will also apply complementary theory from
frameworks closely related to this work. However it will be sparse and with no central role
in the research. The only theory used in this paper which is not described here is the theory
used in the Methodology paragraph.

Method

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It can be an overwhelming task to examine how principles from one discipline applies and
works in another, and in the interim between physical and digital it is no less of a daunting
task.

Bardzell (2009) defines the twin anchors of Interaction Design (IxD) as the user and the
artifact, so when we set about examining how we could transfer physical interaction
principles to a digital setting, we looked closely at what we could and should study about
user behavior and interaction with the artifact. Before we started, we divided the study into
two tasks - developing a prototype website that would act as an artifact and observation of
users interacting with the website.

Website
The website is fairly simple in nature and provides nothing more than content anyone can
find at the product website for a Nilfisk vacuum cleaner model Extreme X100. We chose to
make the website center around a vacuum cleaner because it is a very arbitrary product
most people buy rarely and thus might be less likely to have gathered extensive knowledge
of.

Building the website was done using HTML, CSS and a bit of Javascript for which we
received help from a friend. The Javascript would enable us to make any object change
whenever clicked by the user, thus making way for a gradual change of the object which
was essential for us to be able to test how the users perceived the change.

The navigation menu is located on the left side of the page with the following items:

• About Us
• Features
• Mail
• Support
• Company
• Help
• Specifications
• Contact

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To make sure the user had to think about their choices, it is basically four areas of
information that is presented; About Us and Company provides information about the
company behind the site, Mail and Contact are ways to contact the company, Features and
Specifications details what the vacuum cleaner can do and Support and Help aids the user
when they want look for assistance.

User observation
After building the website, we tested the system on 12 users - 6 men and 6 women with
varying technical capabilities and of varying age. They were split into three categories with
four people in each; four users saw a menu that had black, same-sized links that would go
from full black to white in max. 10 clicks - four others saw a menu that changed from
bright orange to dark orange in max. 10 clicks and the last four users saw a menu with
black links that changed size from 1em to 2em.

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We chose to conduct studies on three different menus for two reasons. It would make it
possible for us to check if the users noticed a change in the menu in general (fading,
darkening, increasing) and/or if there was a difference in how the first impression of the
menu shaped their behavior when presented with a set of tasks.

The tasks
To make sure that the user clicked around the site purposefully, we created four tasks for
the user to solve:

1) How many years of guarantee does the cleaner qualify for?

2) How much does it weigh in kilos?
3) What are the last four digits of the phone number for the support hotline?
4) Find the user manual.

Contextual Inquiry
After the user completed the tasks, we asked four followup questions:

1) Did you use any points to navigate after?

2) Why did you choose X instead of Y?
3) Did you experience any changes in the menu as you clicked the items?
4) Did the change support or prevent your navigation in any way?

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This is perhaps the most interesting part of the test as it allowed us to go into depth with
the users’ behavior based on the theory of Contextual Inquiry. Seeing that we had limited
resources and time, we tested a limited amount of users which made the test act more as a
discovery method than an evaluation method (Wixon, Hackos, Ramey, Rosenbaum,
Holtzblatt, Meyer, Page, Laakso & Laakso, 2002).

Contextual Inquiry acts within a “synthesis of ethnographic, field research and

participatory design methods that provide detailed knowledge of user work” (Wixon,
Flanders & Beabes 1996:354). Therefore a dialogue is required in order for us to uncover a
user’s understanding of their work as it preserves the integrity of the material as opposed
to stand-alone data collection. Moreover, Keinonen, Jääksö & Mattelmäki (2008)
describes “contextual performance data” as a way to uncover issues the users did not see
themselves - a subject that will be thoroughly presented in the findings-section of this
paper.

Keinonen, Jääksö & Mattelmäki (2008) goes on to describe three ground pillars of user
observation - Context, Partnership and Focus - that are critical when learning about the
interplay between actors, products and environments. The pillars are described as follows:

- Partnership: Refers to trust between the designers and the users

- Context: Conduct the studies in the actual physical and social context where the
behavior takes place
- Focus: Reminds the designers to take notice of problematic situations.

In our test, this meant that we wanted to make a website that did not “scare” the user, but
present information in a manner that is as natural as possible while examining their use of
the website without obtrusive cameras etc. A piece of software called “Silverback” allowed
us to do screen capture and simultaneous webcam-recording while the user clicked around
the site, allowing for a setting as natural as possible. Furthermore, it allowed us to
concentrate on conduction the studies on-site and then analyze them at a later time.

The goal was to get the user in a self-reflecting mode - or what Bødker, Knudsen, Kyng,
Ehn & Madsen (1988:382) call “detached reflection” - where they rationalized their
behavior and answered questions from us regarding patterns that they might not have
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discovered themselves (“Why did you choose X instead of Y?” and “Did you notice any
changes in the menu?”).

Affinity Diagram
Because of this test method, we ended up with a lot of a lot of qualitative data. We chose to
break it down by applying a method called Affinity Diagrams (Holtzblatt & Beyer, 1999).
Usually you will use affinity diagrams after a team brainstorm-session where a lot of ideas
have come forth and they need to be grouped. We used it to watch the videos and write
down themes that came up when talking to the test users rather than writing down their
every move and transcribing the dialogues extensively. The reason for using the affinity
method is that thematic problems will arise when gathering the post-its in connected
groups and as such problematic issues with the site will be evident.

We split the process into a series of tasks for us to do:

1) While watching the video, write down any issue that comes up on a post-it
2) Gather the post-its related to a user on a piece of A3-paper (and write the user’s
initials on the post-it)
3) Once every video has been seen and themes written down, place all related post-
its on a whiteboard in 5-10 clusters
4) Refine the placing of the post-its until satisfied
5) Name the clusters

The results are described extensively elsewhere in the paper, but we found the affinity
Diagram-method to be very applicable to this type of extraction of rich data. Because we
used a rich test-method as Contextual Inquiry it would be problematic to extract raw data
in the same way as you would from a questionnaire.

Interviews
Besides testing three version of the same website to 12 users, we chose to interview a
variety of people that could shed some light on the different aspects of user behavior in
social situations, user experience methods and the digital architecture that goes on behind
the scenes.

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First we interviewed Anders Pollas, co-founder and partner in Hoist, a Danish company
developing online learning environments for enterprise and educational use. He gave
insights on the thoughts they had made on creating “virtual rooms” in the form of team-
based project-sites in their system. This have us an understanding on the aspects of
creating a digital space for learning-based activities.

The next interview was with Jane Mejdahl, an anthropologist working in Creuna, an
agency focusing on delivering digital solutions. She is conducting user tests and based on
her anthropological background we learned about user behavior in online as well as offline
settings - and the similarities between the two.

Morten Just, a User Experience Designer from the telecommunications company

Vodafone, talked about how we shape the digital world to fit the way users think it should
execute the input they give.

Lastly, Steffen T. Christensen from the “visual sharing company”, 23, answered a couple of
questions regarding how he thinks structure into the digital architecture he creates when
developing new services. Being a student of Political Science as well, he gives an interesting
insight into the problems of online services acting as “silos” because of the closed
structures they are built upon.

These four interviews were conducted to give us a variety of views on the way users act
with digital services besides only studying them in a closed environment as we did with our
test website.

Smaaland Kindergarten
To gain a perspective on organization structures and dynamics, we conducted an interview
with the leader of a kindergarten called “Smaaland”, placed in Ørestad near Copenhagen.
We discussed the kindergarten’s untraditional approach to displaying information and
communicating with the parents of the children as well as documenting the processes in
the everyday life. Especially their reluctance to having a whiteboard or message board of
any kind is interesting, seeing that it is the usual approach in institutions of this kind that
communication visually with the parents.

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Our approach to the interview was to get concrete examples from the everyday life of an
organization that has an innovative view of managing and presenting information.

Empirical Material

As described in the section on methodology, we have conducted user tests and interviews
in gathering data to examine. It was a deliberate decision to focus on collecting qualitative
data as the resources we had at hand were limited and we resonated it would provide a
deeper understanding of the issues we wish to examine. Having only quantitative data, it
would be hard to collect a reasonable amount of data from user testing seeing the website
was specifically made for test purposes that would qualify for contextual inquiry to follow
up on the tracking of user activity.

Expectations to findings
With this we will outline what our expectations to our findings were. Hence our main
empirical collection of data is gathered from our user tests these will be the aim of this
paragraph.

As we approached our user tests we tried and develop websites that facilitated the
opportunity for the user to generate patina in the context given to them. However we
would have to test if at all the would notice the changes they would transfer to the website.
Would the patina-effect have any influence to the user and will the user notice the changes
happening?

As we tried to make the patina-effect as an organic part of the site we would make the
gradual change relatively noticeable as a starting point. Therefore the expectation was that
half of the users would not notice any changes to the site whereas the other half would. We
knew that some of our test persons would have rather intensive knowledge to websites and
therefore we would expect these to notice color and size changes.

The next thing was whether or not our test users would conscious or unconsciously react to
the changes they caused on the site. We had built the structure of the test sites around a
menu where two of the menu points, out of a total of eight, would have great similarity. By
imposing a change in size or color through interactivity with the site, we expected at least

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some of the test users would in one way or the other respond to the “patina-effects”. If they
would respond consciously or not is difficult to assess before the actual user testing, but
the fact that there were close to no response was not something we had thought of before.
Especially not in the case of the patina-effect that made the menu fade away.

Findings
To structure our evaluation of the empirical findings our user tests lead to we chose, as
explained in the method paragraph, to make an affinity diagram (Beyer & Holtzblatt 1998).
After going through the different steps of the affinity diagram we ended up with four main
headlines - Nomenclature, Design, Experience & Critique.

Our first finding was categorized as Nomenclature where especially one factor stood out
from the rest. As our test users approached the site they tried to form an overview of the
site and where they would expect to find the information required from the tasks. At the
beginning most of the test users navigated according to the name of each menu point. Due
to the fact that two of the menus had great similarities in meaning we thought there would
be a more even division between the different menu points selected. This did not seem to
be the case as many of the test users chose the menu ‘specification’ as their first click. It is
not certain why they chose this menu point in the first place; one idea could be that it just
fitted the users’ logic sense - another that their experience from other websites influenced
their choice here. Also related to the Nomenclature category was a tendency among a small
number of users to carefully read the content of the site. We believe that this was
influenced by the nature of the assignment and the fact that the user knew they were being
studied. All other tendencies in this study showed a much more casual and random
browsing among our test individuals.

The next area is the Design Issues that we found in the tests. This is where we found the
main part of the user patterns. The biggest factor was that almost all users did not notice
the changes that happened in the menu. Neither change of colors nor the size of the text.
As an example of this , one of the users clicked a menu point that was faded away to a point
where it was not visible any longer. But the user somehow had stored the memory of the
menu being there which made the user completely ignore the lack of visibility. The next
major issue was that a rather large number of the users were, as they got deeper and
deeper into the test, unconsciously clicking some of the darker menu points on the test site
where the color darkened. The same happened when testing the site where the text in the
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menu intensified. There were no signs of users reasoning before clicking the darkest or
largest menu, along with almost no users noticing the changes, which lead us to believe
that they were unconsciously guided by the intensified menu points. A side note was that
only one or two users actually noticed changes on the site but argued that they saw the
change as a guidance for navigation.

Another area is the way users were able to gain experience of the site and how they would
use this later on. Two things were very apparent here - one being that users were very
quick to form an overview of the site and use that actively in their search for our case
answers. This caught us by surprise and will play a significant role in design issues. The
second thing is that a significant amount of users quickly adopted a behavior of clicking
randomly in order to find content and form an overview of the site. This tendency of course
influenced some of the effects in the menu. The most surprising discovery was when two
users unmotivated said that the faded or bright colors was an evidence that other users had
been there. Something that by far was the biggest surprise of the whole test phase.

Lastly we discovered a few critique points in the way we conducted our tests. One
regarding the task questions that seem both a bit too specific in some cases along with the
risk of asking the question in a leading manner. The last finding and critique point of our
research is that there were some cases where it was difficult to separate whether users,
midway in the test, were driven by their knowledge of the site structure or by the effects we
had designed for the menu. This stressed the significance of our follow up questions in
order to properly analyze the motivations behind the actions of each user.

Physical Interaction

Analyses of physical interactions are common and have been conducted for many years,
but for us to be able to apply them to a digital setting we must first look at the principles
and theories and figure out their core idea. Many of the theories are about human
interaction with the city and nature that surrounds us and how we perceive and act upon
the feedback we are given.

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Patina
Related to how we as users of our surrounding environment act according to visible use is
the concept of patina. Patina is the word for continuous use that shapes the coating or form
of the objects. On copper and bronze, a layer of copper carbonate known as verdigris
forms after prolonged exposure to air and water (as seen on e.g. Statue of Liberty in New
York), whereas non-metals react differently (Hughes & Rowe 1991). Degeneration as a
result of continuous use is particularly visible with Desire Paths that involve grass fields as
the dirt becomes more and more visible. The same is visible on the terrazzo floor in the
picture below from a café in Copenhagen. Everybody who enters the shop steps in the same
place on their way in which results in the degeneration of the floor.

Basically, patina refers to the wearing that is a result of continuous and extensive use of
physical objects.

Desire Path
One of the most interesting shapings of the city and nature is Desire Paths. The term is
coined by Gaston Bachelard in his book “The Poetics of Space” published in 1958 and
covers the idea of human or animal foot trail shaping an unintended path in a landscape.
Typically it is because it is the shortest distance form one point to another and no
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purposefully path being given, so people will start shaping a path of their own based on the
wearing of the grass or similar (Bachelard 1958).

In 1987 Elizabeth Rogers wrote a book describing how the recreation of paths in Central
Park were shaped by the desire paths the users had already created. Instead of applying
paths that were perhaps easier or more convenient to create, they followed what people
had already done.

Our field study showed interesting desire paths being shaped in the park “Søndermarken”
in Copenhagen. One person eventually started taking a certain path and others followed
until a dirt track is revealed:

Another interesting desire path is seen in this picture taken by The Lakes in Copenhagen
(Just 2009 - used with permission). It is not necessarily easier to walk besides the paved
path, but one could imagine runners wanting to thread on easier ground than the hard
concrete or dogs walking beside their owners:

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Desire paths are relevant to us because it shows that intended paths are not necessarily the
easiest or most convenient route, and thus people (or users of digital services) will start
shaping their own paths. Carl Myhill (2004) talks about studying users of software based
on their natural interaction with the program as a means of externalizing the actual use of
the software as opposed to the originally intended.

Motive
The theory of desire paths shows interesting things in human behavior. Using the shortest
distance possible to go form one place to another might seem obvious, but according to
Jane Mejdahl (2009) it is fairly complex to study: “People don’t always want to take
shortcuts - they want to feel safe.” Taking the idea of desire paths it could be interesting to
study if people would start taking a shorter route when they are unable to see the end of
the path. The examples above shows desire paths where the person can see both the start
and the end of the path, and thus feels “safe”.

The desire paths are a very physical solution to a physical problem, and according to
Mejdahl (2009) “users are rarely digitally motivated when they want to find a solution to
a problem”. Using a digital tool is merely a means to a problem they want to solve - e.g.
finding a timetable for busses leaving from Copenhagen Central Station might as well be

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solved with a timetable in a book as on a website. The tool for solving the problem depends
on the context in which the problem presents itself rather than wanting deliberately to use
a digital tool for problem solving (Mejdahl 2009).

We will go more into depth with the motives behind activities relating to artifacts in the
analysis on activity theory, as it is an integral part of the understanding of the theory and
how it applies to user behavior.

Rationality
Desire paths and problem solving both share some sort of Rationality behind them - that
people search for the shortest distance possible and solve problems with whatever tools
they have available to them. There is a problem in this thinking of people as purely rational
thinking: Some actions are socially motivated.

Social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook.com and MySpace.com have a fundamentally
different approach to content - it has sprung from an entirely physical and time-consuming
action that is “social grooming” (Dunbar 1998). Maintaining relationships to family and
friends have never been easier and with over 225,000,000 members on Facebook (http://
www.allfacebook.com/2009/05/facebook-user-count/) as the barrier for following a large
amount of people is lower when the information is pushed to you rather than pulling it by
calling or visiting every friend or acquaintance.

In the words of Mejdahl (2009) “Facebook and other SNS does not cover any needs as
such, but gives us what we want”. We do not need to use Facebook, but it is something we
want and have access to, so we do it in spite of its apparently limited use for direct problem
solving.

Social Proof
The thoughts behind the term rationality are important to understand the behavior
patterns in social situations. To further elaborate on the sociality behind physical
interaction the theory of Social Proof (Cialdini 1993) is applicable. Despite the thought
behind social proof is based in socially constructed situations, it is the individual actions
that are of interest in our line of work. However, we need to outline the social premise
behind the theory before we can uncover the individual choices that are made one the basis
of this sociality.
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When presented with an unfamiliar situation, according to the theory of Social Proof,
people will start analyzing the behavior and act according to the “norm” of that particular
situation. A famous example of social proof is an experiment from Washington DC where
the Washington Post convinced the famous violinist Joshua Bell to play on his Stradivarius
worth $3.5 million in the subway during rush hour. The thesis behind the experiment was
to see what would happen when a musician that normally attracts people from near and
far, willing to pay hundreds of dollars to hear him play, is taken out of context and playing
in an unfamiliar setting.

During the one-hour session he collected $52 in donations which includes a $20-bill from
one who recognized him. You could argue that the masses are not used to appreciate
classical music and other theories, but according to the theory of social proof, what
happens is that when (close to) no one stops to listen, nobody will. The norm is to just keep
walking as you - or the ones around you - do every day so that is what people who are
unfamiliar with the situation do.

In the world of web services, the term Critical Mass is closely related to social proof. As
Grudin (1989:96) puts it: “Even in an idealized situation in which every individual will
benefit once critical mass is achieved, the early adopters may well abandon it before the
critical mass of users is reached.” When you are an early adopter of new technology - and
in particular social networks that are based on users being active - according to the theory
of Critical Mass, the problem is that there are so few creating content you end up feeling
lonely. When a Critical Mass of users are achieved, something new might have shown up
and then the problem is restarted before it is being solved in the first place.

A service such as Twitter.com is at the time in a process where they see a dramatic increase
in users and page views on their website. They grew 1382% from February 2008 to
February 2009 according to a recent Nielsen study (http://news.cnet.com/
8301-13577_3-10200161-36.html) and had more page views than both the websites of New
York Times and Washington Post in April 2009 (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
twitter_passes_nyt_wsj_in_unique_visitors.php).

The newly registered users of Twitter may not know what to do with the web service and
try to find high-profile users such as talk show host Oprah and actor Ashton Kutcher that
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have 1 million and 1.7 million followers respectively (http://twitter.com/oprah and http://
twitter.com/aplusk). They see that others have followed these profiles and will do the same
based on a perceived norm that it is “what you do” when signing up for Twitter (who even
provides a list of potential users to follow when signing up so you see activity on the site
(http://twitter.com/invitations/suggestions)).

In our field study we took a picture that illustrates another form of Social Proof - the
posters telling citizens about cultural events and the like. As seen in the picture below, a
social norm of putting up the posters has erupted over the course of time. Besides using
cylindric information boards authorized by the municipal, the people that puts up the
posters have found certain spots where they, most likely silently, have agreed to put up the
posters.

The people who put up the posters do not cover the wall in different places, but stick to the
same spot as they can see that somebody else has done it before them - in this case it is a
very popular place to put up a poster and anybody who has a job of putting up the posters
can quickly determine this is a place for posters to be displayed.

Another example is from the kindergarten where we interviewed the leader, Britta
Staugaard Mortensen (2009), about their use of posters, whiteboards and electronic tools
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for messages and notices. They have an alternative approach to communication with the
parents of the children enrolled in the kindergarten as they do not use a whiteboard or
message board in the traditional sense, but sends out email newsletters and print out
photos taken during their field trips etc. One way of giving notices, however, is by posting a
piece of paper on the back of the front door for the parents to see on their way out after
picking up their children.

At the moment of the interview, a drawing of a boy with lice was posted on the door to
inform the parents that some of the children had lice. Furthermore, one of the other
employes had posted six pages of relatively text-dense information about food that had
high levels of sugar. According to Mortensen (2009) this was problematic as it sends out
mixed signals about which kind of information the wall should contain, but with the theory
of Social Proof in mind, it is safe to conclude that the employee figured that the door was
the appropriate place to post such information.

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Wall of Decision
In the example above, the employees in the kindergarten navigate their environment based
on what they can see others have done before them. They put up the information on the
door because they believe that it is the appropriate place based on what is there already. It
is the same principle in User Experience work where the designers aim at making the
interaction as easy and simple to use as possible. They remove all obstacles that might
confuse the user while still maintaining the possibility to go beyond the contextually
obvious path (Mejdahl 2009).

What is interesting in anthropology, however, is when the user is forced into a situation
where they have to make a decision because the object they interact with has an
unexpected outcome. Hooker & Kitchen (2001) created a project named “Hard Shoulders
Soft Verges” that allowed them to examine how digital interactions in the urban
environment enhanced the users’ perception of their surroundings. By making the users
aware of the decisions they had to make, they introduced what we - based on the thoughts
put forth by Mejdahl (2009) have named “Wall of Decision”.

A Wall of Decision is “when a user has to stop the interaction and think about their next
action because of a deliberate decision made by the designer” (Mejdahl 2009). An
intended breaking point, so to speak.

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Human beings often find ways of eliminating breaking points in situations where they are
unfamiliar with the setting and the reigning norms they emit. They do this by following
what others do as the theory of Social Proof describes. Instead of having to stop at every
point of interest, they follow what the majority of people does - e.g. walking past the
violinist in the subway. In other words, other people’s behavior helps shape our own
navigation and ability to make a decision quickly based on their current activity. This will
be more thoroughly analyzed with the activity theory.

Intuition
One could argue that Intuition is another way of determining how to act in unfamiliar
situations, and it is a part of everyday expressions to use your instinct, “follow your gut
feeling” or “trust your heart”. Basically, friends and family can encourage you to go with
what you feel is natural. These feelings often arise before any motive is formulated and is
as such the absolute individual decision.

Philosophers, however, describe Intuition as something more than just - figuratively

speaking - going with the flow. Especially Immanuel Kant (1781) and the subsequent
response form Henri Bergson (1934) aid in the understanding of Intuition and what is the
Absolute truth.

They disagree heavily on whether or not it is possible for human beings to understand
what the two philosophers define as the Absolute. According to Kant, it is impossible for us
to understand the world in itself as we will always perceive it as it appears to us, not in its
absolutely objective state (Kant 1781). In other words, that we will always analyze what we
are presented with and can thus never be truly objective. Bergson argued that as long as we
are not envisioning the Absolute through representations (e.g. a complete photographic
documentation of a city as opposed to being physically present in the city) we are able to
create symbols that are strong enough to accurately represent the Absolute.

In Bergson’s theory these symbols were more than just thoughts and deserved a category
for itself - Intuition. The later theories of Intuition base themselves upon this definition -
that it is more than thoughts and Eugene Sadler-Smith (2008) argues that more
experience gives a better Intuition as there are more points of reference to base one’s
conclusion on.
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In relation to theory on Social Proof, Intuition tells us that in a situation where we are
unaware of what is the norm, we follow the majority of people as it is rare that most are
wrong in such a non-complex task as walking from one point to another. Typing a PIN
code in a credit card terminal is also a non-complex task and it is only when the numbers
are deliberately switched into random places we are presented with a breaking point - a
Wall of Decision (Mejdahl 2009). This awareness of how we interact with objects and our
motives for doing so will be analyzed extensively in the next part of this paper.

Activity analysis

As we continue our analysis of physical interaction we will now direct our understanding
towards the motives of our actions, and how these spring to new actions that follow. When
we approach our analysis on physical interaction we aim at understanding the motive that
and the level of consciousness of their actions that our users bring to the table. In the
previous analyses we went deeper into how the user might do or react to certain things
without being aware of it, which leads us to studying the conscious parts of user behavior.
Through activity theory we are given the tools to do exactly that as activity is defined as
“...being composed of subject, object, actions, and operations” (Leont’ev 1974 in Nardi
1996:37).

The theoretical framework

As quoted above activity theory aims at the analyzing the motive a given user or person
formulate before initiating any activity. Any actor will not do anything without having a
certain goal, or as the theory calls it Object, in mind. With that being said, any object can
be of various character. Some things are done in order to meet objects of less importance
and others in order to reach more complex goals. I.e. we might read the newspaper every
morning in order to keep up with what is happening in the world around us or because we
want to grow an educated mind. Whereas we choose to attend a certain education program
due to future employment aspirations. Another perspective when referring to the object of
activity theory is that any activity might serve different objects as “... they are conscious
(because one holds a goal in mind), and different actions may be undertaken to meet the
same goal” (Nardi 1996:37). An important notion when it is time to draw our empirical
research into the analysis.

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The actions we carry out repeatedly might become routinized and unconscious with
practice exemplified with the example of when learning to drive a car, shifting gears is an
action with an explicit goal that must be consciously attended to. Later, shifting gears
becomes operational and “can no longer be picked out as a special goal-directed process:
its goal is not picked out and discerned by the driver; and for the driver, gear shifting
psychologically ceases to exist'' (Leont'ev 1974 in Nardi 1996:37-38). This example is
found in the analyses of our empirical research.

The last part of our theoretical outline will address how the actor comes into the picture
when dealing with activity theory is about how activity theory emphasizes motivation and
purposefulness and is optimistic concerning human self-determination (Engeström 1999).
In other words activity highlights that whatever object there must be ahead for the actor it
is exactly this that fosters the motivation that drives the action. There must be a precise
purpose to the activity. Of course the purpose can variate from being helping others to self
satisfaction but nevertheless the motivated activity is prevailed in the self.

Empirical research
The empirical material we have collected for this part of our analyses have mainly been
situated around interviews and a case study in a kindergarden. The kindergarden was
chosen as a situation of quick and practical contextual information-exchange between
employees and parents. The management in the kindergarden used past experiences from
other kindergartens to see where there could be barriers in delivering only relevant
information to the parents. Mortensen (2009) stressed that the circumstances that parents
had when dropping off their children and picking them up were rather intense. Often there
were not enough time and often these pick up settings were full of confusion. Therefore the
management of the kindergarden aimed at making the tools they wanted to give the
parents as simple as possible and vacant the right places at the most convenient time.

Mortensen (2009) used the example of one big bulletin board used by many other
kindergartens as an example of confusion for parents. Often these boards are quite messy
and have not undergone any structural strategy as how to best present the relevant
information. The effect of this was then that parents were forced to use a large amount of
time in order to form an overview of what information was relevant for them, which
possessed the risk of parents missing important information. To avoid these scenarios
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Mortensen (2009) implemented different tools for different purposes. One being a
calendar for parents to write in when their child were to be picked up by another beside its
parents, i.e. go home with a friend or picked up by a grandparent. Another tool was created
so the parents could gain full insight in the child's experiences and development. The
employees have made a book for each child with pictures and text which the parents can
take home during the weekend. That way the parents were given an opportunity to follow
its child’s development when they have time and in more depth than 15 minutes at pick up
and drop off would allow.

Another distinct case of confusion was that many parents as well as new employees had
troubles in understanding the difference in the purpose of each tool. Mortensen (2009)
tried to “teach” parents that most of the information would be available through the
website and as such the website would primarily be a one way communication tool. Its
primary focus was for the kindergarden to give information to the parents - not the other
way around. If the parents wanted to contact the employees there were very specific tools
for that. One being the calender mentioned earlier, another a booking calender on the
website for parents to book when they had planned vacation for their family. If the parents
wanted more direct contact there were regularly parents-meetings and they can send an
email or make a phone call.

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Analysis
Now that we have our framework in place we can begin our analysis in order to understand
the elements of action within a physical setting. These elements are essential as the
structures and patterns in the physical setting will be part of our aim of this work to see if
the patterns repeats itself in the digital world. As our thesis is investigating whether or not
these pattern can be transformed into the digital environment and if so, will they be
meaningful?

We start by taking offset in the case that Mortensen (2009) highlighted - the fact that
many parents and employees had difficulties in telling the tools apart. An example of this
was that one of the doors pointing to the entrance hall was used for quick and practical
information that the kindergarden felt obligated in informing new visitors. An example of
this was that often it was the case that some of the children in the kindergarden had the
case of lice. On the other side of the door small paintings with the names of the newest
children committed to the kindergarden. A sign of welcome for the new children and their
parents. As an individual initiative one of the employees had put up information regarding
healthy lunch tips in order for the parents to be aware of what is good for the children. This
information was displayed as 4 pages of A4 paper with mostly text and a couple of pictures
(shown in the section on social proof).

This information is rather intensive to read in the way it is displayed but helps us prove an
important point about how the operation in which we act in order to reach our goal the
goal does not change. As Leont’ev (1974 in Nardi 1996:38) formulates it:
“Operations depend on the conditions under which the action is being carried out. If a
goal remains the same while the conditions under which it is to be carried out change,
then only the operational structure of the action will be changed.”

So in the case we would present for our test users, we might be able to affect the operations
through the conditions the action is carried out in without compromising the goal or object
as such. Something we need to take into consideration when evaluating our user tests later
on.

In the case of the kindergarden we need to understand the complexity of the context in
order to analyze it. The question is then how can the context be defined when dealing with
an activity system? Nardi (1996) argues that both object, action and operation is the
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context. That the “...context is constituted through the enactment of an activity involving
people and artifacts. Context is not an outer container or shell inside of which people
behave in certain ways. People consciously and deliberately generate contexts (activities)
in part through their own objects; hence context is not just out there.'' (Nardi 1996:38).

To be more concrete Mejdahl (2009) argued that in her experience with users the motive
of which we act is the dominating factor. It is the motive that foster the action, which
corresponds very well with the quote above that people are every conscious about
generating activities or contexts. Mortensen (2009) knows form her work that parents has
an object in closely following their child growing up, but in the context of picking up the
child after a day of work the context does not allow for a sufficient amount of time to fully
reach that object. Therefore the kindergarden has tried to generate a new context in the
form of the Child’s-book that all parents can take home and read. The artifact, that is the
book, gives the parents the opportunity to see what their child has been doing the last week
or two and thereby reaching the object of following the child grow up. By creating the
context centered around the Child’s-book the management of the kindergarden triggers
the motive of the parents that is to understand and interact with their children.

The example described above also shows something else. With the creation of the child’s
book the conditions change for the parents to raise their child change. Kuutti (1991) tells us
that artifacts carry with them a particular culture and history which mediates our actions
as we saw in the example above. This may lead some of the parents to reframe their object
- now that the can take something from the kindergarden with them home. By doing so the
parents mediate their activity which fit the idea of Kuutti (1991) who argues that artifacts
are created to control their behavior. It works both internal for the parents as mentioned
but also external as all the child-books becomes a way for the employees to document their
work with the children. This underlines the point “that in activity theory, external and
internal are fused, unified” (Nardi 1996:38).

Regardless of the changing conditions caused by the artifact it is essential to mention that
people and artifacts are asymmetrical (Bødker 1989). This means that despite the fact that
artifacts may be able change the conditions - as mediators of human thought (Nardi
1996:38), under which we perform our action it will always be the intent or motive and the
object that is of essence.

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Implications of Activity theory
Now that we have gained a more in-depth understanding of activity theory it is important
to be critical towards the conditions that this theory brings to our work and later the
analyses of our user tests. When observing activities of our test users we must remember
that “activities are longer-term formations and their objects cannot be transformed into
outcomes at once, but through a process consisting often of several steps or
phases.'' (Kuutti 1991 in Nardi 1996:47).

We have tried to abide by this in documenting all observed artifacts but we have not seen
all in action, and since it was only possible to interview the employees of the kindergarden
and not the parents we have only heard the story from one side.

Moreover, in the documentation phases of our empirical research it is important to direct

our “attention to broad patterns of activity rather than narrow episodic fragments that
fail to reveal the overall direction and import of an activity.” (Nardi 1996:47). As activity
theory always will aim at the overall focus of research.

Therefore we must be critical towards the representation of these data and ask ourselves if
these interviews are sufficient in order for us to meaningfully outline the structures and
patterns of the kindergarden context? As the collection of our empirical data are not
restricted to solely focus on our kindergarden study we must aim at using our user tests as
well as a more in depth representation of activity patterns that we are also able to
document in detail.

Analysis - Digital Interaction

In the following analysis we begin our digital research which will account as the offset
before defining digital patina. We will use the theories of ubiquitous computing and
everyware (Greenfield 2006 and Weiser 1991) along with some of the frameworks of IxD
(Winograd & Flores 1986). As we take our starting point in the digital analysis we do this
because we need to understand the development that is taking place in the technologies
and trends today. With this in mind we will make use of part of our user tests to investigate
user reactions and transformation in our own controlled setting along with expert

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interviews with Steffen T. Christensen (2009), developer at 23 (photo and video sharing
service).

Before outlining the theoretical framework of ubiquitous computing we spend a few lines
the thoughts that precede this. Despite the somewhat technology outlook of the computing
part this analysis is also very centered around how designers of technology has developed.
Winograd & Flores (1986) argue that as participants in society today we are all engaged in
the transformation of technology. But when asking Christensen (2009) about his notions
on structure in the development of new systems or applications he argue that his
prerequisites is still build around a well working database and sensible structured indexes.
He adds that he is actually quite conscious about the gap between technical architecture /
digital architecture and social architecture. So how do we then understand and research
the gap between these two opposing arguments and how does technology shape our
interaction - primarily in a digital environment? This will be our main focus in this
analysis.

Theoretical framework
Initiating our analysis, we start by defining the frame in which we operate that will be
centered around Winograd & Flores (1986) ideas on HCI, Greenfield’s (2006) and Weiser’s
(1991) thoughts on ubiquitous computing and everyware. Ubiquitous computing and
everyware evolves around the theory on how technology is gradually diffusing into
everything around us. As Adam Greenfield describes it “...computing has leapt off the
desktop and insinuated itself into everyday life.“ (Greenfield 2006:9). To avoid further
confusion on when something is ubiquitous computing and when something is everyware,
beside having different authors, the two must be considered two sides of same matter.
Modern technology is built around small microprocessors that we find in our mobile
phones, iPods, car systems and so on. These micro-technologies are what we refer to when
discussing computing or -ware in every-ware, and the fact that we know find these things
everywhere in many types of context just mean that they are ubiquitous. The big
uncertainty that these theories pose is that if technologies are to be found in every context
we navigate in then we most likely will not notice this, which imply that our interaction
with these will become fluent and natural (Greenfield 2006).

The greatest leap in this movement of technology is that until now we have not been
influenced directly by these technologies, since they more or less just worked for us and
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never had any directly interaction with the human user. But what if these small
applications and services were able to pass information through it to become more
relevant? This means we are “...contemplating the extension of information-sensing, -
processing, and -networking capabilities to entire classes of things...” (Greenfield:18).

As these micro processors spread into everything the opportunity of passing information
through these artifacts increases. As Greenfield (2006) argues that if technology is in
everything then information is as well. This increases our exposure to information but in
our interaction with the different artifacts that carry these technologies we are not always
aware of what we do with it. Moreover are we capable of receiving information at that time
and how will we address it? Greenfield (2006) argues that everyware can be engaged
inadvertently, unknowingly, or unwillingly, which reinforces the fact that we might not be
able to control the information exposed to us. Meaning that information can be expressed
just about anywhere which brings a practical effect ;how do one bring about a relationship
to the information? This is what Greenfield refers to as ambient informatics (2006:24).

These perspectives on everyware brings forth new approaches on how to design for the
user experience. Earlier, the tools used by the designers to deliver information to the users
had the ability to let them know, or control when, the user received the different
information. But the notion of everyware creates new implications for the display of
information as the user experience is closely connected to the physical design of the user
interface as well as the interplay between the artifacts and the user (Greenfield 2006).

Personal computing used to be the only frame for user experience, and the context
personal computing was present in consisted solely of structures the designers were able to
understand and control. Lately, a tendency has emerged for technology to be present in
many other places than personal computing were able to before (Greenfield 2006). An
example of this is that by diffusing into the things around us, everyware can scale
according to the surroundings and is limited only by the constraints of the buildings, cities,
streets and other public spaces we interact in.

An example of this is an experiment, called The Image Of The City (Greenfield 2006:63),
where MIT professor Kevin Lynch tried to explore and structure the quality of a city. A
measurement that he called legibility that basically should measure to what extent a given
city was able to aid you in your navigation. The experiment tried to map how users where
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able to figure out where they were, how it was connected to their destination and how to
get there. Lynch were able to identify certain permanent guidelines that users would use.
The result counted landmarks, city and street sign etc. The importance here is not which
tools Lynch found that users take hold of but these tools are now becoming subject for
computational enhancement. By taking a simple study of something that many users do
everyday (navigating the city or streets), we now open up for new ways of interacting with
a city or a street.

Analysis
The aim with this analysis is to go deeper into what mechanisms and structures that are
apparent when we as a user interact in a digital environment and the elements in play.
Despite our primary focus on everyware in the theoretical framework we will not neglect
important notions from HCI and IxD in general in this analysis.

The micro processors that have gradually diffused into our society we will, in the words of
Winograd & Flores (1986), gradually engage more and more in the information and
technology development. It is somehow inventible but when asked about how Christensen
(2009), as a developer, designed new services and system he answered that he found a
clear distinction between the different tasks ahead - from the conceptual whiteboard
brainstorm, to the strategy on how to implement users and get them to interact with each
other as well as the other parts of the internet ecosystem. This leads us to the fact that
most interaction in the digital environment is engaged through a motive-driven activity.

A strongly related thought is the ideas Winograd & Flores (1986) brought forth on when
action is given primacy over cognition, knowing is always engaging activity, and thereby
influencing our ability to experience. In other words the way we understand things is by
doing them in the digital environment which then shapes us in different ways depending
on the context. Consequently, this could also be assumed to be culture related. Because as
Christensen (2009) explains, “systems and services are often designed under the influence
on how user can interact and what technical ground lies behind”. Despite the notion that
Winograd & Flores (1986) believes that technology should be seen as something inherently
social, we can still make this notion fit with the though of Christensen (2009) - because the
technology is rooted in the activity and that the activity, in the everyware concept, is rooted
in our interaction.

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This shows how strong the actual activity is connected to the technology the user is
interacting with. This sets even higher demands for interfaces and the connectivity in
between applications or services. As the theory of everyware argues it is not until this
connectivity is present the value for the user emerges, which is confirmed by Christensen
(2009). “In most cases where I have been involved the embedding of data in the most
known social services like Twitter, RSS, video and other mash-ups, in most cases it has
been build on top of the project afterwards.” This does not completely discard the
connectivity point but is perhaps an indication of how great the possibilities in the
technology are now. As Christensen (2009) later in the interview points out “the
complexity of the technology and the open standards that are evolving are maybe greater
than we imagined”. By opening up, people are not just getting access to data but also code.
An evolution that due to this openness might evolve quicker and in more complex ways
than expected.

With this development the everyware idea also indicate that we might not know when we
interact with the technology around. However it will always take place in a particular
context (Greenfield 2006). But as we know from Interaction theories put forth by Suchman
(2006), action is founded on local interactions with our environment informed by
reference to abstract representations of situations and actions. The function of these
abstract representations is not to specify local interactions but to exploit some
contingencies of our environment and to avoid others. So if it is the local interaction we
interact more or less conscious with the technology surrounding us, in accordance to
Greenfield (2006) will users interact with information and process information in that
moment. This extends the information processing into intense rate but it might also open
new doors because no one mentioned what type of information there should be processed.
This is especially the case with the Lynch experiment (Greenfield 2006) where the city
tools were made into computational components. What if our navigation framework in a
digital context becomes equally enhanced? This will mean that we will have access to far
richer tools when interacting digitally due to the increased information process.

This scenario becomes even more interesting if the digital context is able to take both the
willing and unwilling interaction and use it constructively and organically. Much indicate,
however, that we should perhaps not put our trust in the technology to moderate the users
but - as this analysis has shown us - rely on the actions of other users to moderate our
digital context. The essential point is to find the level of universality that everyday objects
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such as chairs, tables etc. have reached. We know these objects’ function and place in a
physical environment, but one might argue that we have not reached this level of
universality with digital devices yet. As Greenfield (2006:261) expresses the dilemma: “The
real struggle will be to find an appropriate place for ubiquitous computing in our lives.”

User Interfaces

To be able to fully describe the problems related to presenting information in digital

settings to users that interact with a user interface, the theories of mental models and
metaphors are applied to our user tests.

Mental Models
The application of computational capabilities in objects that differ in form from the
personal computer provides interesting problems for the developers and designers of said
objects. How people perceive the possibilities the newly developed interaction models
present can be described with the theory of mental models. In 1943, the Scottish
psychologist and physiologist Kenneth Craik wrote:

“If the organism carries a “small-scale model” of external reality and of its own possible
actions within its head, it is able to try out various alternatives, conclude which is the best
of them, react to future situations before they arise, utilize the knowledge of past events
in dealing with the present and the future, and in every way to react in a much fuller,
safer and more competent manner to the emergencies which face it.” (Craik, “The Nature
of Explanation”, 1943:61 in Johnson-Laird 2005)

What he proposed is that human beings react to situations they are unfamiliar with taking
offset in what the are familiar with based on their creation of a “small-scale model” in the
same way an architect create a model to represent a house before it is built. Rather than
having a physical model, a mental model is created based on input regarding the situations
one has encountered at an earlier point.

The theory’s base is older than 1943, however, as Charles Sanders Peirce published the
major system of logic known as “Predicate Calculus” in 1883 (Johnson-Laird 2005). He
described three different properties of signs that includes thoughts:

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 1) Iconic
2) Indexical
3) Symbolic

An example of an iconic sign is a visual image, but they are only truly interesting when
combined with similar images. Three images of mountains might not look the same, but
the representational similarities in showing what a mountain looks like makes it iconic.

Indexical properties is the act of pointing towards an object as it is a way of separating the
objects found in the surroundings in distinguishable categories. Talking about them, on
the other hand, is merely symbolic representations as the objects are not there, but human
beings have settled on adequately advanced linguistic systems that makes it possible to
describe the differences between two objects.

According to Johnson-Laird (2005), the theory of mental models builds upon the iconic
properties of logic and are essential for their existence. Craik separates himself from the
modern view of mental models in one critical point, however: What Johnson-Laird refers
to as “the iconicity”. Although Craik also argued that a model’s structure can differ from
what it represents, it still has to parallel or imitate reality. Modern mental model
theoreticians would argue that understanding theories on e.g. quantum electromechanics
are beyond “commonsense interpretation”, even though we can make accurate calculations
about their behavior.

Therefore, Johnson-Laird argues that “a principle of modern mental model theory is that
the model has the same structure as the situation that it represents” (2005:181), and this
is where it gets interesting for applying to the area of HCI and the concept of the personal
computer.

Metaphors

“[Y]ou can take advantage of people’s knowledge of the world around them by
using metaphors to convey concepts and features of your application. Use
metaphors involving concrete, familiar ideas and make the metaphors plain, so

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 that users have a set of expectations to apply to computer environments.” (Apple
Computer Inc. 1992 in Blackwell 2006:492)

The rise of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) with its well-known Desktop Metaphor,
created at Xerox and made popular by Apple’s Macintosh computer and Microsoft
Windows, relies heavily on the use of metaphors to give users an idea of the action which
the items shown in the interface can perform. The basic idea is that what the user see on
the computer resembles what can be found at an office desktop; a table, paper basket,
folder, file etc. The user us familiar with these objects from their everyday life, and will -
theoretically - understand their function based on their previous experience with the object
the metaphorical representation within the GUI refers to.

As described in the section on mental models, Craik (1943) argued that the mental model
should parallel or imitate reality whereas Johnson-Laird (2005) argues it merely has to
have the same structure as the situation it represents. In relation to the desktop metaphor
it becomes clear that Craik’s understanding of mental models is less applicable to the
digital setting compared to Johnson-Laird’s. In a Craikian setting, throwing something in
the paper basket in the GUI would move something physically within the hard-drive of the
computer, whereas Johnson-Laird’s definition better captures the actions that are
performed digitally. The structure of moving something from a folder to the paper basket
is similar, and it does not imitate reality directly, but rather gives an idea of the same
situation. The difference might seem subtle and almost indifferent, but as our user tests
showed, it is of great importance to how users perceive actions within GUIs.

Our test website that changed links from black to white, representing a change from
existence to complete removal was not registered by the user at all. Questions about
whether or not he saw a change in the menu proved to be negative, even though he had
clicked the link enough times to make it disappear completely. The metaphor mimicked
that of a Craikian setting, but the mental model failed in this case as it is uncommon for
links to be removable in that way.

Experience
Our user tests gave interesting results in relation to the theory on mental models and
metaphors. We put together four sets of themes found in the process of writing affinity
diagrams that we thought to be related under the header “Experience”:
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 1. Lack of aid tools
2. Exploration - clicking
3. Users’ experience
4. Previous Activity

As explained in the part with findings of the paper, we were caught by surprise by some of
the results from the test. One user found the faded links in Test 1 to be an indicator of
another user’s previous activity with the site - something none of the other testers even
mentioned. Since the thesis for the user test was to see if users reacted to the change and
would subsequently perceive the changes that were already made to be a result of former
user activity, it is safe to conclude that with only one positive result that mental model is
invalid.

Another interesting find was that when users were presented with the tasks, we had set
them to be found under one of two menu points that had somewhat similar meaning (e.g.
Features and Specifications). Once they had clicked around looking for the first and second
answer they had built an experience with the site that enabled them to remember where
the information was categorized and thus act based on that experience. The same user that
perceived the links as a result of previous usage even clearly distinguished between
Specifications and Features because of extensive knowledge of looking for technical
information for computer parts.

When the users found that their mental model based on previous experience failed, they
looked for an aid tool such as a search engine to help them - something that is not possible
when interacting with physical information artifacts such as books, signs and the like. The
mental model for the users was that you would be able to search across the site and when
they found out that was unavailable, they relied on clicking everything until they found
what they sought after in the same way you would flip through a book.

To sum up, our test website put forth some interesting findings in how our test users
perceives the digital interaction that is a website. The mental models they have formed
based on previous activity with similar settings proved to be unavailable, and as a result
they relied on the same basic principle as they would use when interacting with a physical
medium.
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Defining Digital Patina

Starting point
At this point in our work we have come to the part where we will try to examine what the
previous analyses have discovered and use these as a point of reference in order to define
Digital Patina. Our path so far has led us through an analysis on the physical activity
driven by motive through activity analysis, over how we interact in a digital environment to
an outline of which types of mental models we carry with us on this journey.

This work took its starting point in the patterns and traces we leave behind when we as
users travel through streets, cities, systems or whatever paths we choose. We began to
investigate the possibility of transferring these traces from the ‘real’ world to the virtual.
But have the previous analyses brought us any closer to the definition of digital patina?

What is Patina?
As our emerging thoughts show us we have so far only been able to describe patina as
something that is worn. Worn in the sense that the worn traces leave in them the sign of
others. However when conducting our framework of user tests this metaphor was not
possible to transfer directly. Both in the sense that it would not make sense in a digital
setting and because it simply was not possible to satisfactorily show the worn path
digitally. We documented our early field studies with photos of the things we see in the city
around us. One of the most significant examples was the image of the door phone (Just
2009 - used with permission) that showed who the majority of the visitors came to visit.

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If we try and use the door phone example as an illustration of what the term patina means
in a digital context, we came up with a valuable point in our activity analysis. We know
from that analysis that actions always carry a motive and a goal that direct the purpose
(Leont’ev 1974). Or, as Engeström (1999) explains it, that activity concerns the self-
determination of humans. So what we previously defined as patina is now centered around
activity. The reason for this is that through activity we are able to visualize the structures
that we “leave behind” when we navigate in a certain context. Returning to the door phone
example, the interesting activity in a digital sense is not the action of pressing the button,
but what comes before that particular action and what follows afterwards.

It is the way we found the path to the entrance with that specific door phone, and the path
behind us when leaving the phone that will be visible, and it is that structure other users
can use later on. These paths have great resemblance to the paths described in the
paragraph on ‘Desire Paths’ and ‘Social Proof’. The question might be then whether or not
the user is able to adopt and use the paths left behind, which is something our user tests
gave proof of. We were surprised by the tendency with which most users were able to recall
information they had stumbled upon earlier when clicking around. An equally significant
tendency was that many of the users were able to use that knowledge when required later

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on in the tests, which fits perfectly with Winograd & Flores’ (1986) point that knowing is
the engaging activity and shapes the way we experience.

This concept of patina also matches Greenfield’s (2008) concepts of the Long Here and the
Big Now, which refer to the fact that at certain points a lot of people are gathered at the
same place (Big Now) and their traces are visible long afterwards (Long Here). People who
encounter that point outside the Big Now-moment can still find value in the action that has
occurred.

To summarize, patina is defined as the shaping of physical objects by activity over a period
of time.

Digital
The challenge and the opportunity for digital interaction are the differences it has to the
physical world we have interacted with for thousands of years. The method we have used
so far to grasp the possibilities of digital interaction is to apply metaphorical
representations of real world objects in a world with an unlimited amount of shapes
consisting of 0s and 1s. Lars Jessen (2009) wrote about patination of data and the related
problems:

“Whereas most products are made of natures own material, digital objects main
substance is superficially constructed by human. [...] Consequently, when we
perceive the digital material we only see what is mediated by physical materials
and analogue outputs – the digital by itself happens to be indiscernible.”

The mediation Jessen (2009) writes about is supported by applying metaphors of real
world objects to their digital counterpart, but because of how we construct mental models
and think of digital settings, they can fail. It is especially seen in cases that go beyond what
the premise is for digital interaction that it becomes problematic, as seen with the virtual
world “Second Life”. People found it tedious and confusing because it was far from reality
while still trying to mimic the way we act in the physical world (Hansen, Jensen, Jespersen
& Hansen, 2007).

In Second Life you are able to buy perfumes and in order for you to see your otherwise
intangible purchase, you get an aura of a certain color around you. Moreover, you are able
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to drive a car, but it is somewhat unnecessary when you also have the ability to fly
(Hansen, Jensen, Jespersen & Hansen, 2007). Both of these examples show us that it is
problematic when transferring elements of physical interaction directly into a digital
setting, which our user tests confirmed.

Ten of twelve test users did not notice any changes in the menu at all, even though the
links faded, changed size or darkened. Based on this, we are able to conclude that the users
are not used to links that mimic the same behavior as perishable materials found in the
physical world. One of our users said that she clearly thought the various sizes in links
were an intentional design decision as if to draw attention to certain links. She did not
interpret it as “used links”, but rather links she should pay attention to from the start.

Social Activity
What we tried to research with the user test is how we could create a feeling of “simulated
patina” in the digital setting (Jessen 2009). What we found was that people do not
interpret the perishability as intended in the digital setting, but rather as design decisions
because that is what their mental model they have created for digital interaction says they
should interpret it as.

What is interesting to analyze are the social structures patina is the result of. In the
example of Desire Paths, the wearing of the grass field is not very interesting in itself, but
why we choose to follow the majority of people before us is. The same goes for the example
from our analysis on Social Proof; walking past a famous violinist is not something
extraordinary (most people probably do something similar every day without noticing), but
it is interesting when you do it as a result of using the context in which you are situated to
navigate.

Social Navigation
We see this kind of patination as the basis for our definition of what can work in a digital
setting with regards to digital patina.

When a user browses around the web shop on Amazon.com, their activity is being
anonymously monitored. Once a couple of items are bought and they have browsed enough
to detect a pattern, recommendations start showing up. Beneath the item information, a
section for similar items is shown: “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”. This
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gives the user the ability to navigate based on previous activity by users with a similar taste
in books, music and everything else Amazon sells. In this example the context inspires the
user to adopt a buying behavior related to other users.

Instead of navigating alone, my navigation is shaped by the previous activity of others in

the same way as a Desire Path can make me take a shortcut because others have found that
particular path to be faster than the paved one. Had Amazon chosen to showcase all their
items in an alphabetically sorted list, it would not facilitate recommendations to me from
other users’ activity as easily.

The same principle is seen in the music tracking service, Last.fm. When a user listens to a
piece of music a notice is sent to the web service so the listening patterns can be tracked.
Once a certain number of tracks have been played, recommendations for further listening
start appearing. If a user listens to pop artists like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera a
recommendation for Justin Timberlake might occur. A structure in the serendipitously
driven discovery of new music is created - the user can choose to listen to Justin
Timberlake as a result of the fact that others with a similar taste in music also listen to
that.

(In this example last.fm is recommending the artist “Rumpistol” based on similar artists
within the electronica genre.)

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A Working Definition of Digital Patina
Digital Patina is not about perishability or an ability to wear out data. Because of the
structure of the binary system and the intangible nature of data it can never show any
aging in itself, but only a representation of the user’s activity. The activity is bounded by a
motive that precedes it and an illustration of this interplay between the artifact and the
user is essential for digital patina to be present. The illustration must show the structure
formed by the users’ motive for activity in order for other users to perceive it as points of
navigation and act meaningfully upon it.

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Conclusion

Method Critique
Our user test was based on 12 voluntary helpers that tested three different sites while we
documented how they approached a set of tasks we gave them. The sites were built quickly
and because of the limited time and resources at hand, they were very simple to build and
served only as very strict test sites.

If we had expanded the user test to more users and a more complex site in terms of
technical features, we could perhaps have tested users more thoroughly in a website that
resembled more of a complete experience. Having more than 12 testers and a technically
more advanced test setting would definitely add weight to the results of examining how
people perceive the direct transfer of physical interaction principles to digital settings.

In spite of this, we believe that the test sites served the purpose well enough for us to get
valid answers and interesting points to analyze. Seeing that only two of our testers noticed
changes in the menu was very surprising and as such we determined the tests to be fruitful
enough for us to draw valid conclusions upon.

Moreover, our interviews with Jane Mejdahl, Anders Pollas, Morten Just and Steffen T.
Christensen gave us a very qualified insight into the different approaches people working
in the web industry have. Their backgrounds range from anthropology to political science
and graphic design and as such provide different opinions on the same subject. However,
we could have benefited from having more interviews with people in other sectors of
interaction such as architecture and the like, but for the scope of this paper and to keep it
within the frame of reference, we chose to interview the four people mentioned above.

We also feel that going on a field study around Copenhagen looking for desire paths and
similar traces of human activity was beneficial and if one wanted to provide an even deeper
insight into this field, spending more time on these tests would definitely add value.
Furthermore, studying how Smaaland Kindergarten used the rooms and building as a
whole was very inspiring and the interview with their leader, Britta Mortensen, gave us
crucial information on the interaction principles they have set up for themselves in
communicating with the parents. Staying at the kindergarten at drop-off and pick-up times

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would have provided us with responses from parents that could confirm if the
communication is as successful as Mortensen (2009) found it to be.

Again, the scope of the paper did not allow us to go deeper into data collection of this kind,
and we still found that what we gathered from the interview was sufficiently insightful to
analyze.

Applying the theories

The theoretical framework of this paper ranges from philosophy to urban architecture and
we believe that traditional theories from HCI go well with theories on other aspects of
human behavior. Analyzing the differences and similarities of results found in user tests
with theories on how we navigate in urban architecture allows for us to give a nuanced and
untraditional answer to our research question. We found that the theories all shared the
same background in user interaction with information artifacts in one way or the other.
Therefore, they as such share the same frame of reference, despite at first seeming to stem
from vastly different disciplines.

Moreover, seeing that the basic principles of what we analyze in this paper - patina and
user behavior - stems from chemistry and anthropology respectively, new thinking and
approaches that go beyond what is usually expected in a paper about creating websites are
needed.

Analytical findings
In the analytical parts of this work we have maintained a focus that was centered on a clear
distinction between physical and digital structures. For the physical interaction part we
tried to analyze how the behavioral patterns of users in a physical setting were formed with
a focus on how users engaged actively with the artifacts around them. In the digital
analyses we wanted to gain an understanding of the interaction that takes place in a digital
context and what was significant for user interaction along with the mental models that
users seem to bring to the table. Models that have their origin in the physical world and
might clash when brought into the digital environment. Lastly we wanted to formulate our
own definition of digital patina based on our empirical findings and the work analysis.

In the analysis on physical interaction we found tendencies to adopt patterns made by

others in i.e. small user-made roads in parks and parts of the city. We categorized these as
51 / 58
Desire Paths, which showed us that users will break out of the pre-determined structures
they were following if they regard an alternative as easier or more convenient. In a way
they create their own paths that can be adopted by new users through the trails of activity
they leave behind.

Closely related to these paths is Social Proof. This showed us that when users are
introduced to a new or unfamiliar situation, they have a tendency to self-analyze their
behavior and try and adjust according to the norms of that particular situation. This
underlines the idea that users have a tendency to follow the lead of others. When one starts
putting up posters in one place, many quickly adopt this behavior and will start doing the
same. Or, as in the case of the kindergarten,, when one employee starts to put information
in a particular place, others will follow and do the same.

The last part of our digital analysis involved how users act within a context through the use
of artifacts. We examined that artifacts in fact can mediate user behavior and are able to
change the conditions in which the users search for the object of their actions. In other
words, we as users create their own contexts by engaging in activities through artifacts.
Should the conditions change, the object that initiated their actions will remain the same.

As we moved into the digital part of our work we examined how activity and interaction are
connected when emerged in a digital space. We found that one’s previous knowledge
always influences activity and, through that, our ability to experience. In short, much of
our learning lies in interaction. Keeping our focus on digital, we went into depth with the
ubiquitous transformation of technology today. This transformation shapes the way we
receive information, both consciously and unconsciously, and these enhanced information
processed enrich the tools that we use to interact with. Thereby they also enrich the
relationship the user might have with both the artifact and the information.

To finish our digital analysis we applied the approach of mental models to understand the
interplay in difference between two objects and the user understanding of these. The point
of these models is not to imitate reality but rather give an idea of the same situation or
object. In addition to the mental models we analyzed the metaphors we bring into the
digital context and more concretely to the User Interface. Metaphors that indicate to the
user what the items on the desktop can perform which showed us that the worn metaphor
could not be used digitally.
52 / 58
To return to our research question we now know that digital patina is bounded by the
activity that we perform and the motive that precedes this activity. Digital patina can then
shape that activity in forms of understanding the context we interact in better. We may use
the activity of others to understand how to react in a digital environment or understand
the Interface that we are presented with. To know how others have done may be just one
simple way of understanding our digital space and when acting based on our own motive
we basically let others’ patina direct the conditions in which we conduct our digital
journey.

Recommendations for Further Research

As we argued in the method critique section of the conclusion, our analyses is based upon
initial user testing within one part of the aspect of researching on digital patina. For the
area to be covered in more detail and depth, additional research would need to be
conducted.

We suggest that were one to dig deeper into the area, more thorough user testing would
need to be conducted in technically more advanced settings. Having a larger and broader
base of test users would give a more diverse and representative result to base the research
upon. It would be equally interesting to experiment with the context in which the patina
appears - e.g. using computational interfaces in a large, physical space.

The important point is that the test setting should reflect a variety of the aspects of
navigation points to be found in the physical world and how users react to those when
applied to digital settings. The essential focus is on how the perception of these elements in
digital interaction shapes the user behavior when managing and processing information.

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Acknowledgements

Writing this paper would have been impossible without the help from the following people:

Kenneth Auchenberg
- for helping us with the technical aspects of the test-site

Morten Just, Jane Mejdahl, Steffen T. Christensen and Anders Pollas

- for letting us ask them silly questions

Aaron Bateman and Morten Kirckhoff

- for giving us the opportunity to spend immense amounts of time in the Advance-office

Britta Stougaard Mortensen

- for showing us an alternative approach to managing a kindergarten

Julie, David, Line, Cecilie, Carl-Christian, Allan, Christina, Dan Ho, Carsten,
Eline, Lone and Signe
- for giving valuable responses in our user tests

54 / 58
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