| FT-286107-22 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Neta Alexander | Interface Design and Digital Exclusion | 6/1/2022 - 7/31/2022 | $6,000.00 | Neta | | Alexander | | | | Colgate University | Hamilton | NY | 13346-1338 | USA | 2022 | Media Studies | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 | Research
for a book on the history of, and assumptions behind, user access to digital
infrastructure and interface design.
My second book, Interface Frictions, studies the effects of unreliable digital infrastructure and flawed interface design. Centering on the experiences of differently-abled users, it advances a new theory of the digital user. It focuses on four newly ubiquitous design features and the type of media consumption each one produces: refreshing and buffering, playback speed and speed-watching, autoplay and binge-watching, and Night Shift and soporific media. These features are growing ever more pervasive yet remain understudied, as scholars and users tend to ignore the ways that digital design shapes temporality, storytelling, and immersion. Interface Frictions fills this lacuna by revealing how the interfaces through which users interact with stories, information, and each other often perpetuate the assumption that every user is able bodied. By studying inequalities of access to media, this work contributes to the growing scholarship on the exclusionary potential of emerging technologies. |