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Thinking with things
March 17, 2014 Editor 0
Editor’s note: we’re running a series of five excerpts from our forthcoming book Designing for Emerging Technologies, a compilation of works by industry experts in areas of user experience design related to genomics, robotics, the Internet of Things, and the Industrial Internet of Things.
In this excerpt, author Stephen Anderson addresses the importance of embodied learning and stresses that those concepts need to extend to the way we design and interact with our increasingly connected environment, noting that the digital devices today are painfully unaware of our many human capabilities.
You may wonder, “why should we care about tangible computing?” Isn’t interacting with our fingers or through devices such as a mouse or touchscreens sufficient? In a world constrained by costs and resources, isn’t it preferable to ship interactive software, that can be easily replicated and doesn’t take up physical space? If you look at how media has shifted from vinyl records to cassette tapes to compact discs and finally digital files, isn’t this the direction that everything is headed?
Where learning and understanding is required, I’d argue no. And a definite no wherever young children are involved. Jean Piaget established four stages of learning (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations), and argued that children “learn best from concrete activities.” This work was preceded by John Dewey, who emphasized first-hand learning experiences. Other child psychologists, such as Jerome Bruner and Zoltán Dienes, have built on these “constructivist” ideas, creating materials used to facilitate learning. In a review of studies on the use of manipulatives in the classroom, Marilyn Suydam and Jon Higgins concluded in their 1976 report “Review and Synthesis of Studies of Activity-Based Approaches to Mathematics Teaching” that “studies at every grade level support the importance and use of manipulative materials.”
And what of adults, who’ve had a chance to internalize most of these concepts? Using Piaget’s own model, some might argue that the body is great for lower level cognitive problems, but not for more abstract or complex topics. This topic is one of some debate, with conversations returning to “enactivism” and the role of our bodies in constructing knowledge. The central question: if learning is truly embodied, why or how would that change with age? Various studies continue to surface this mind-body connection. For example, studies have found that saying words like “lick, pick, and kick” activates the corresponding brain regions associated with the mouth, hand, and foot, respectively. I’d add that these thinking tools extend our thinking, the same way objects such as pen and paper, books, or the handheld calculator (abacus or digital variety — you choose!) have allowed us to do things we couldn’t before. Indeed, the more complex the topic, the more necessary it is to use our environment to externalize our thinking.
Moreover, there is indeed a strong and mysterious connection between the brain and the body. We tend to gesture when we’re speaking, even if on a phone where no one else can see us. I personally have observed different thinking patterns when standing versus sitting. In computer and retail environments, people talk about “leaning in” versus “leaning back” activities. In high school, I remember being told to look up, if I was unsure of how to answer a question — apparently looking up had, in some study, been shown to aid in the recall of information! Athletes, dancers, actors — all these professions talk about the yet unexplained connections between mind and body.
As magical as the personal computer and touchscreen devices are, there is something lost when we limit interactions to pressing on glass or clicking a button. Our bodies are capable of so much more. We have the capacity to grasp things; sense pressure (tactile or volumetric); identify textures; move our bodies; orient ourselves in space; sense changes in temperature; smell; listen; affect our own brain waves; control our breathing — so many human capabilities not recognized by most digital devices. In this respect, the most popular ways in which we now interact with technology, namely through the tips of our fingers, will someday seem like crude, one-dimensional things. Fortunately, the technology to sense these kinds of physical interactions already exists, or is being worked on in research labs.
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