Igoe’s point in Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage, then Shut Up and Listen brought me to reconsider a persistent comment made by our professor about my midterm: it should have an on-off switch. I disagreed, pointing out that pressing the reset button on the arduino or simply removing a battery would reset the machine. Now, however, I realize that both of those things require the user to interact with the background, to move outside of the immediate interaction using context they may not have. Without a clear place to turn the machine on and off or reset it, one person would solve the lock, and it might never be used again.  This is a small moment, but an important idea. Designers often fall prey to the trap of creating a design which is too clever for its own good; so seamless that it not only goes unnoticed, but completely unused. Avoiding this trap means empathizing as much as possible through creating user personas and running usability tests as is feasible. While Igoe does not go into these practices specifically, he proceeds to analyze common physical computing projects based upon how clear and stable the interaction is, rather than how clever the technology or mechanism behind it is.

In this analysis Igoe also offers the point that interactive art students should not dissuade themselves from executing a project because it has been done before, and should focus instead on expanding upon unique themes. I appreciated this point and how it is applied in the design of this course. While the frustration of the freedom to do whatever I can with what we have learned so far is palpable at the beginning of each build, by the end it is satisfying to be able to work on a concept I chose rather than one imposed on me. I do, however, have reservations about conceptual art due the unintended consequences. Igoe covers this well in the first text, with how ideal ignorant users will interact unexpectedly. It’s important, then, to strike a balance between behavior constraints and conceptual hindrance.