The Chapter: Presence as Value for Design

This chapter elaborates on design for the value of presence. As digital technologies have made it possible for us to connect to each other at a speed and scale that is unprecedented, presence is acquiring many new stances. The distinctions between being-there (in virtual worlds), being-here (making the being there available here) and the merging realities of these two, is essential to the notion of presence. Understanding the essence of presence is the focus of current presence research to which many disciplines contribute, including computer science, artificial intelligence, artistic research, social science and neurobiology.

The definition of presence used in this chapter is ‘steering towards well-being and survival’, and this definition introduces a neurobiological perspective on presence fundamental to the approach on which this chapter focuses. This perspective recognizes the choices and trade-offs involved in presence design. Presence design is a meta-design, which creates the context for human experience to emerge. Presence as a value for design can be a design requirement, a factor of analysis and a key value in a process of Design for Values.
This chapter discusses a number of analytical and design frameworks for constructing and deconstructing presence design. Acknowledging that presence is a fuzzy concept, and that a variety of open issues can be identified, presence as a value for design is fundamental for human beings to accept responsibility in complex environments. Further research will need to address how we, as human beings, change and how our sense of presence changes, as result of living in a network society with ubiquitous technology and all pervasive media being part of our day-to-day lives.

Keywords: Presence, value, design, trust, experience, networks

Introduction

Presence is a word that appears in many social, political, religious and economic contexts and refers to an array of meanings. In the era of ubiquitous media, networks and many complex infrastructures on which society depends, presence is no longer solely coupled to physical reality. Presence has acquired new virtual stances, with completely new dynamics.

We, as human beings, connect to each other in many different ways. We meet virtually and participate in many different types of networks in merging on- and offline realities. We also participate in new types of communities such as energy communities in which participants organise their own exchange of energy. Energy communities rely on communication and visualisation technology, but also on technology needed to provide data, for example, on usage, pricing, availability, accounting and expected market developments mandating distributed data aggregation and service level agreements between participants.
To take responsibility we, as participants in such communities, need to have some form of presence for each other, both in on- and offline context as well as in information and communication trajectories. The design of presence is a prerequisite to participation: understanding the value of presence is a prerequisite to the design of large distributed complex participatory systems.

Human kind has been mediating presence since the beginning of times: leaving traces, making maps and drawings, telling stories, performing rituals, music and play. These are all ways with which we communicate presence from one time or place to another, from one human being to another. Technology has made it possible for us to mediate our presence in new ways facilitating communication, interaction and transactions over distance, often simultaneously. With the introduction of every new medium, new ways of establishing connection, and being able to say ‘hello’ for example, is the first achievement and source of surprise and curiosity. Soon after, when many people start to use a new medium, this is integrated in day-to-day practices of millions of people and new habits, customs and understanding emerge (Wyatt 2004). While new technologies produce increasingly better ways to produce mediated presence, natural presence is still distinct from mediated presence.

We, as human beings, are creative, and find unexpected ways to survive and serve our own well-being. New technologies, new systems, are emerging continuously, connecting people across the world, creating connections between family friends and total strangers. These connections can be beneficial or detrimental for those involved. Facebook, for example, is designed to anticipate specific types of behaviour with participatory scripts to build on this human potential of connecting with others. The outcomes of human behaviour, however, cannot be predicted, and unintended side-effects happen. The real-time connection between dozens, hundreds and thousands of people Facebook provides has shown to be powerful for gathering people both for the good and for the bad. Social networks were instrumental to the rising of the Arab Spring between 2010 and 2012, to the hooligan gathering in London in 2011 and to Project X in Haren in the Netherlands in 2012. In all of these events the behaviour of many individuals together creates a different situation and experience than any individual alone could have anticipated. In social networks individual behaviour is contextualized and inspired and this leads to new formation of (historical) experience, which is focus of further research in a variety of domains (Castells 2012).

This chapter elaborates on the notion that presence is essentially the strive for well-being and survival. Designing for the value of presence is not designing for a specific behaviour. It is designing for experience, as argued in this chapter. Presence as a value for complex systems design has great societal relevance. Research into this value is timely.
Explication of the value of Presence

In today's ever changing network society the amount of multi-media information we can access within seconds is unprecedented: we are, in fact, experiencing a tsunami of information at a speed that society has not experienced in the past. Our experience of time, place and authenticity is changing (Benjamin 1936, McLuhan 1964, Baudrillard 1983, Postman 1985, Virilio 1989, Lovink 2012).

Some argue there are possibilities as never before, others claim that in the tsunami of copies at grand scale and speed the concept of ‘meaning’ implodes. In these times of fast transformation into the network society, place and time are still distinct factors in human lives and the social structures that are built. It is often, however, unclear how the ‘space of places’ in the physical world relates to the ‘space of flows’ in the many networks in which we participate (Giddens 1984, Castells 1996). In the collective experience of the emerging society a new culture and a ‘next nature’ is emerging in which we redefine, design and establish how we want to live our lives (van Mensvoort 2012, Lunnenfeld 2003). In the flow of images, text, and audio-visual communication a new sense of authenticity is emerging creating media-auras as a result (van der Meulen 2011). Key to this new culture and next nature is how we perform presence and participate in the complex networks that constitute our day-to-day reality (Brazier & Nevejan 2014).
The many online experiences and representations of selves mandate a new perspective on design of social, technical and ecological networks and infrastructures, including consideration of related values such as privacy, integrity and trust. The ethical dimension of presence design, including augmented reality design, is acknowledged as a value for the design of larger social technical en ecological infrastructures in a variety of public debates around privacy, integrity and trust (Hamelink 2000).
As mentioned above, different notions of presence function in a variety of social, political, religious, spiritual and ideological contexts. The focus of this chapter is on our natural presence qualified by breathing and a heart that ticks. It grounds presence in our physical nature.
What does it mean to design for Presence?

Designing presence in complex systems in the context of the functionality and non-functional requirements on which a system is based should target specific functionality, such as: to facilitate social interaction, to facilitate collaboration, to facilitate exchange, to facilitate a marketplace, to facilitate distributed structures of governance. As the design of presence is not often explicitly addressed as an explicit requirement, it is often neglected. Developments in the outsourcing industry in India, for example, indicate that neglect for presence design is detrimental for the workers involved (Ilavarasan 2008, Upadhya 2008). Presence as a value for design, as a requirement, facilitates designs that make it possible for us to be able to have agency, accept responsibility, and be able to engage with others in meaningful interaction, making it possible for us to steer towards our own well-being and survival.
Three examples of Presence as Value for (meta-)Design

There are three ways in which values can play a role in a design process: as design requirement, as factor of analysis and as the value driving a value sensitive design process (Vermaas et al 2011, van den Hoven 2005). To shed light on each of these roles the YUTPA framework is used to analyse and design presence as value for (meta) design (see section 3 under ‘meta design for choices and trade-offs’) (see figure 1).
Open issues and further work

Little is known about the embodiment of virtual and mediated experiences. Looking at data of users it seems that millions of people engage daily in network activities. How such activities affect us human beings is unclear. Effects on human psychology, on how communities and societies function, on how markets adapt, and many more questions are open issues and subject of further research.

How does network reality influences the mind maps we make? How does networked reality become embodied? How does network reality affect our feelings and emotions and are emotions and feelings also fundamental to steering in network realities, or are there other drivers in the online world? The relation between performance of presence and imagination needs to be explored much deeper for being able to answers question like this.
Network reality is part of our daily negotiation for performance of presence, but most psychological and sociological theories are based on a world in which network reality does not play a role. It is unclear whether psychological and sociological mechanisms can be transposed to network reality. In mass communication, media studies and in net critique these issues are being explored, a new paradigm for analysis and design is emerging but is not yet clearly defined.
A confusing issue is that we, as people, negotiate performance of presence based on how we trust a situation with which we are confronted. Trust may not be granted for appropriate reasons and performance of presence may not be beneficial in the end. As in the Facebook example above, it is easy to trust Facebook because its presence design supports us to significantly steer in each of the 4 dimensions of time, place, action and relation. However, this trust may be misleading. Power relations in the network society are often opaque, but not less relevant. It is an open issue how distributed transparency can be designed. Also it is unclear how we, as individuals, are positioned in personal-global dynamics. Whistle blowers like Edward Snowdon and Julian Assange show how technology in the hands of a few, control many. They reach a large audience via the media, but little political action happens as a result. These open issues have great societal impact and further research is timely.
Conclusions

This chapter focuses on the design of presence in merging realities as approached in the social and design sciences. Presence is a fuzzy concept. Many methodologies implicitly include or exclude presence as value for design.

Current presence research focuses on creating the sense of presence in being-there, but it most often does not address larger issues of societal impact of presence design. In our day-to-day lives in social networks and pervasive ubiquitous technologies upon which fundamental processes of life depend in network societies, on- and offline realities merge. The being-here and the being-there are one in human experience.
Presence design is not design for specific behaviour for presence; it is meta-design; it is designing for choice and trade-offs between choices. It is design for experience in which current and historical contexts are taken into account together with actual perceptions and understanding. Both scientific, design and artistic research contribute to presence design.
Despite all of the current models of thinking, the current speed and scale of technological innovation is changing our lives profoundly. It is as if we are part of a global experiment in which dynamics of information, communication and transaction, all fundamental to society, are changing. Dynamics that have existed for over a thousand of years of building up experience and social structures, markets and structures of governance to be able to live together. Today systems of law and systems of value exchange are all under pressure. We, as human beings, are changing as result of the global network society.
The strive for well-being and survival is deep in our DNA and will keep on defining what will happen next. By incorporating presence as a value for design, and configuring design processes accordingly, ‘old’ human experience will have a chance to resonate and inform future generations to come for designing and creating a social, technological and ecological environment worth living in.
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