Subverting User Experience
Abstract
This article investigates the practice “Subverting the Network,” an experiment in Strategic Design focused on the OLX platform. Developed in an academic context, the methodological steps applied were: engaging in a project situation and prototyping spaces for debate. Unexpectedly, the project contrasted with the concept of User Experience (UX), revealing the weaknesses of the interface’s interaction capability in the realm of feeling. The theoretical-methodological and narrative shifts made in the article aim to discuss a priori the concepts of UX and Feeling in Network. The narrative of the experiment highlights the system’s insensitivity to aesthetic and affective exchanges, critiquing the anthropocentric approach and the rhetoric of technical neutrality in interface design. The article concludes that the practiced design is situated and not generalizable, but proposes an openness in the design of digital platforms towards the sensitive dimension – a hybrid feeling engendered in an ecological sensitivity between humans and non-humans.