Interfaces have agency: what an anthropology of art taught me about UI
We like to say an interface is "just a layer." A thin skin over the real system, there to get out of the way. I don't think that's true. Before I wrote code, I studied social anthropology, and one idea from that world changed how I look at every screen I build: objects act on people. Not metaphorically. They make us do things, feel things and assume things about whoever made them. Interfaces are…
Alfred Gell, an anthropologist, taught a reporter about interfaces having agency. Gell argued that objects act on people, not just metaphorically, but physically. In his book, "Art and Agency" (1998), Gell stopped asking if objects were beautiful and started asking what they did in social relations. He described four roles in these relationships: artist, index, prototype, and recipient.
Each role can act or be acted upon, and roles can switch. Abduction, borrowing from Peirce, is when people meet an object and infer the intention behind it. The reporter applied Gell's ideas to product design, seeing interfaces as objects with agency. The car cluster serves as an example, where warning lights demand attention and competitors with the road.
Interfaces can have agency like a warning light competing with the road. The payment button example shows how labels can influence user behavior. The reporter also discussed how activation flows can attribute agency to brands instead of infrastructure. Four habits the reporter developed from Gell's ideas include asking what the interface makes people do, designing for abduction, treating workarounds as data, and considering who is excluded from the relationship.
Interfaces are never neutral; they carry the intentions of the people who made them, imitate cultural references, and are read, bent, and judged by users.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
