Making Abstraction Concrete: A Design Space and Interaction Model of Abstraction in Interactive Systems

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive design space and interaction model for abstraction in interactive systems, addressing gaps in existing frameworks and guiding future design practices.

Contribution

It introduces a new design space of abstraction techniques, reframes the gulfs of execution and evaluation through abstraction, and offers a unified model for understanding interaction design.

Findings

Synthesized a design space of abstraction techniques along six dimensions.

Reframed the gulfs of execution and evaluation using the abstraction lens.

Demonstrated how the model integrates existing perspectives and suggests new design opportunities.

Abstract

The principle of abstraction guides the design of interactive systems, yet we lack a conceptual framework to understand how it shapes interaction design. Existing models, such as the gulfs of execution and evaluation, do not explicitly model abstractions in the system or in users' mental models, and therefore lack actionable guidance for designing abstractions. To investigate how abstractions are employed in interactive systems, we surveyed 457 papers and synthesized a design space of abstraction techniques along six dimensions. We use this design space to reframe the gulfs through a lens of abstraction, explicitly articulate the cognitive and design processes by which users and systems bridge and navigate the abstraction gap, and demonstrate how this model integrates existing perspectives and surfaces new opportunities for future systems.