The 11th Hour

In our current People and Design project we have been given the task of envisioning a future society in 2108. We also have to imagine a ritual that our society would partake in and then embody this through design.

We have had a series of lectures to get us thinking a lot about issues such as climate change, and how they will have a large effect on what the world will be like in a hundred years. My group have been doing a bit of research and we have set up a blog here to illustrate our process.

I've been doing a bit of my own research into the area, mainly by watching the two films An Inconvenient Truth and The 11th Hour.

Both of them bring up some pretty astonishing facts and statistics, and I'd say a lot of them are quite disturbing. We have been asked to consider what we think the main drivers of the issues that will affect the future of earth. Even though the glaring issues are global warming, soil erosion, fossil fuel depletion, population growth, from watching these films it is plain to see that the problem is humankind, and our disillusionment that we are separate from nature.  

I am interested to look at the positive side, in the 11th Hour it says that this could be the generation to turn things round and make a difference. I've been looking at sustainable design and how it could have a great impact. Bruce Mau's book Massive Change presents some really interesting thinking, and provides possible solutions for the future.

Visualisation

Today we had a really good session with Phillip Joe on Visualisation. I had read his report for the Design Council back in second year of my undergrad, and back then I had found what he was saying really valuable, and so I always tried to implement some of the ideas in my work. It was great to get a chance to get hands on with the methods, and participate in the exercises, as there's nothing better than learning by doing. The discussions our group were having whilst drawing were really active, dynamic and playful.

In his talk, he mentioned how visualisation can be used for whatever you need to communicate, and that it's good for making things tangible and shareable. It's also about storytelling, and progressing ideas through visual thinking. He mentioned 5 stages to remember;

• Visualise early
• Iterate often
• Visualise just enough
• Visualise neutrally
• Be aware of the the responses to different types.

He referenced 3 books in his talk, which I had a brief look at, and hopefully I'll get a chance to have a further browse. They were The Back of the Napkin, Marks and Meaning, and VizAbility.

The value in drawing with stickmen

Whilst watching the videos of Scott Kim from MetaDesign I was reminded of the interview with Bill Verplank from Designing Interactions. I discussed this with Phillip over lunch, as I feel it can be very engaging to watch someone as they explain an idea, and sketch it out at the same time. Sometimes I feel that when explaining an idea after it is drawn it becomes more difficult. I questioned if he knew of any examples of interactive sketching tools, to allow for real time conversations. Although he thought there were some being developed, he further explained how visualisation is predominantly for a conversation between people, and that it is a way of "unpacking" or "encoding" ideas. I tended to agree with him, and a good point that Gus made was that there's nothing better than a pencil and a bit of paper to show someone an idea. He also said that when you are explaining the visual to someone else, it is important that you work out what the major points you want to get across are, and then tell them.

I also mentioned that I was interested in how to communicate research, and particularly to designers. He told me about the company Sonic Rim, who are a design research firm. From the services they offer, they do seem like the type of environment I feel I would be most at home in. One of the methods that seems to be coming up a lot at the moment it participatory design.

Phillip showed a short presentation on the work he had been doing with Microsoft along these lines, with the velcro modelling. The toolkit could elicit some insights by allowing the users to present their ideas in a physical and flexible way. A really good point he made was that "users find it difficult to imagine out-with what they already know". If you ask them to design something for Microsoft, the chances are they will make something which looks like a laptop.

Design for Social Inclusion

Whilst doing a bit of research into the group project I found a few interesting articles and initiatives. The Public Sphere Project talks about using technology for social engagement of the aged.

I also came across the concept of Telecentres, which revolves around the idea of bringing people in a community together to a physical, public space, which allows them to access information, predominantly through digital means. Whilst looking into them I found this report on the sustainability of telecentres and how to help them adapt and evolve in a changing world. They generally seem to be in countries outside the UK although I feel there may be some relevant information which could relate in how to design inclusively.

Lastly I looked at a how the issue of social inclusion was dealt with by the Best e-Europe Practices (beep) Project. Sometimes I find it a bit difficult looking at initiatives and strategies, as they seem to say what needs to be done without providing real solutions. I suppose this is an issue for a design ethnographer, in that we need to decide how much we look at ideas and solutions, and how much of that is left to designers to work out from our findings.

Mobile Social Interaction

I've been having some further thoughts on my essay and third semester project. Generally still looking at possibilities for mobile interactions.

On the nytimes.com I found this article, in which Jan Chipchase discusses how mobile phones could aid in ending global poverty. In the article it explains how through human-centred research they are finding out insights, particularly in regards to how people are adapting phones to suit their needs. In response to the questioning of wide spread technology, he explains how communication is a right, and how some "people once believed that people in other cultures might not benefit from having books either."

I've also looked at Nokia Resarch Africa, or NoRA, the video showing the Music Project in Nairobi. It presents a way of helping to develop opportunities within a fairly disadvantaged community.

I feel Nokia's Data Gathering is a good example of a design solution created through mobile interaction technology. The mobile data collection "helps to improve the operations and service provided by public and private organisations." It appears to have a lot of benefits over other methods, such as laptops, PDA's and paper.

I also briefly looked at other examples of mobile phone projects having an impact on the Third World on textually.org. A particularly interesting piece, was how people in South Africa could use texting to find out information on AIDS, and it became advantageous as it was discreet.

I think what is most appealing to me, and what I hope to try and tackle in the essay, is how the findings and insights from these approaches are or might be considered by such a large company. I suppose this gets back to the idea of how the research could actually inform design.

Also, how a company can help with social and economic issues in a country, in a moral way, when they are predominantly driven by profit?

Structuring Creativity

This week in DLPSI we were given the task of exploring a speculative product for Apple. We were divided into six groups, and then each group was given a new technology to base the product/service on. My group's technology was the ability to control a computer with the mind. A pretty frightening thought if you ask me.

Over the two and a half days we employed a series of methods, using various tools, to generate ideas and explore the concept further. These were,

• Edward de Bono's "6 thinking hats"
• Brainstorming and Mind Mapping
• Physical Modeling and Prototyping
• Evaluation Screening
• Stakeholder Profiling
• Ethical Profiling
• Intellectual Property

Most of the tools were useful, particularly in provoking discussions and leading into new ideas. Our group's idea "material mind", was a device which would allow people to engage, share and explore their thoughts. It involved the user wearing a wristband that could read their mind and display their thoughts via a three dimensional visualisation.  

Physical modeling

To look further into creativity and innovation I've been reading Tom Kelley's The Ten Faces of Innovation. I've just finished the first persona - The Anthropologist, which was particularly interesting to me as an Ethnographer in the making. However I felt it was relevant to this project as well, mainly the idea of adopting and switching between various roles. It is suggested that the key factor for innovation success is "when you gather several roles together and blend them into a multidisciplinary team."

Alienation through technology

For our group project this semester in DE we have been discussing ideas and looking to focus our research. We all agree that often technology can alienate individuals or even entire communities. We feel that design has the potential to prevent this alienation, and we hope to look at how people interact with publicly-cited information in order to inform this.

Through looking at and understanding peoples needs and actual requirements, we feel that a design could help prevent this alienation. We are under the opinion that it would be a good idea to concentrate on the elderly as a group. We feel that as a group they are often not taken into consideration when new technology is produced. We also feel they will have a good insight into the community aspect of the project, and there will be a lot of areas to look in to. 

I got a bit ahead of myself and started thinking about how we might present the research. I remembered the paper by the RED group at the Design Council I looked at last year when I was researching how to present my findings. I feel their booklet on ageing is a really good example of how to tell and present the stories of the people we spend time with.

Nokia Open Studios

I've been doing some more research into my essay and ideas for the third semester project. On Jan Chipchase's blog I found the presentation entitled Nokia Open Studios.

It illustrates how they engaged a community in the design process. The broader study was the exploration of "the impact of mobile connectivity within the context of global urbanisation".

The research was done in partnership with Younghee Jung, and the full paper can be found here. I think it is particularly interesting to see the emotional links people have with mobile phones, often the participants wanted their mobile to symbolise something about their personality. Also there were examples of the people presenting a need for the phone to solve problems they have or include functions they desire.

 

The video above shows Younghee Jung talking about the Nokia Open Studios project at the Lift08 conference.

Mobile interaction

I've been looking into what I would like to cover for my essay in DE, as well as thinking about areas of interest for my third semester project.

Generally I have been looking at mobile interaction, and I've been trying to look at it from a variety of angles. Jan Chipchase's presentation Where's The Phone? for Nokia was quite useful, as it shows how the research methods produced specific observations. I found the conclusion notable;

"The last 10 years have been about converging more functionality onto a single device - instant messaging, radio, television, music, cameras and so on. Each feature creates new modalities of use and can subtly or drastically change carrying and interaction styles. How does having a camera change how a device is carried? Or access to mobile banking?

We are rapidly moving to the point where, due to miniaturization, flexible components and economies of scale, it maymake sense to de-converge functionality on the phone. Hypothetically, if you took all the features on a phone today and distributed them around the body, clothes and in other carried objects, where might these functions be carried, accessed? And why?"

This notion would seem to contrast to what Intel Research are suggesting with their Carry Small, Live Large Research Program. This says to me that they are proposing that phones will get smaller with more platforms converged within them.

I feel that it could go either way. What I think is important is that they are both looking at how people interact with the devices, as well as looking at contexts and environments.

Space and Place

I've been doing a bit more research in relation to the DE project, which we'll hopefully be finding out more about next week. I've tried to divide my research into three main areas:

• People (and their behaviour)
• The space and it's environment 
• The object or interactive system involved.

I found this paper, which deals with social interactions in public spaces. It was geared towards researching possible frameworks for mobile information systems. I like how they have structured their research and hopefully I can take some of this into how we manage our task as a group.

Whilst thinking about people's behaviour in space I remembered a blog entry I came across last year on desire paths. I always find these desire paths captivating, it helped me realised how people will make a space work for them, even if the design of it impedes them. It's visual evidence of where a designer has "imposed their own will onto the site, as opposed to finding a solution that accounts for the wants and “desires” of the users." I think it will be interesting to also look into urban, environmental and architectural design in relation to the project.

Desire Path - Flickr

In relation to objects and interactive systems, I am often drawn back to my roots in interaction design. I find it hard to get away from looking at big interactive systems like display screens and a lot of the examples on Interactive Architecture. I do like a lot of this stuff, although sometimes I feel these interactive pieces can verge too much on the art side of things and fail to acknowledge an actual requirement.

I did find this blog Interactive Displays in Public Spaces, which had some interesting insights, particularly in regards to zones and behaviours around the displays. There's a link to a good write-up on SlideShare, with some useful diagrams.

Diagram of interactive display in public space

The web in the world

I had a brief look at a presentation by Timo Arnall called The web in the world. He describes how emerging technologies are impacting on mobile platforms and concentrates on "ideas around presence, location, context awareness, peripheral interaction as well as haptics and tangible interfaces".

Arnall's work can also be seen here and here, with some interesting insights into design and research.

Simplicity

Something else which I thought about whilst in London was the notion of simplicity. I saw the film Powers of 10 by Charles and Ray Eames in the Design Cities exhibition, and it struck me as a fairly perfect piece of information design. It manages to communicate a complex subject through an animation, which is simple, understandable and interesting.

Powers of 10 - from YouTube

I think I will take another look at some of John Maeda's work as well, he's moved from MIT to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). I think it is important in ethnography to try and make complex information understandable, particularly when communicating research findings for instance.

This also started me thinking about the role of technology today and how it can transform how we behave, for example the introduction of the walkman shaped the way in which we listen to music. I feel today people sometimes rely on technology too much. Don't get me wrong I like to see evolution in technology, just as long as it enhances rather than complicates. 

I hope that I can explore this deeper this year, potentially through projects but also through further reading.

People in Space

Whilst in London I was attempting to observe things in relation to the group project we have been set in DE. The full brief has not yet been handed out, however we were told that it will involve people, and how they collaborate in space, particularly with big interactive systems. I tried concentrating on watching how people behaved in public spaces, and how they dealt with systems such as ATMs and ticket kiosks. It was also interesting to see people interacting with other information devices such as maps and some of the exhibits in the Science Museum. I found that in different situations behaviour became quite similar, especially when it came to queueing for things.

People interacting at the Science Museum

Often I found myself reminded of Jane Fulton Suri's book Thoughtless Acts? It illustrates how "we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment; things we do without really thinking." I kept finding examples in London such as an empty coffee cup left on a ledge at a tube station, someone sitting on the steps at a statue, and people keeping behind the yellow line at an ATM.

Thoughtless Acts

Jane Fulton Suri is involved in the human factors section at IDEO. Last year I read the article Informing Our Intuition, which I found related to me and my desire to understand people in order to create intuitive design. It was also interesting to read her describe the need for design research to be "integral to the innovation process, rather than as an external activity."

I actually saw another book along a similar theme in the Design Museum called Design by Use: The Everyday Metamorphosis of Things, which sadly doesn't appear to be in the library here.

London

On Thursday I travelled down to London for a field trip with the MDes/MDE group. We spent a couple of days exploring the city whilst visiting a few museums and landmarks.

Here's a photo whilst on the move in the underground.

On Friday we walked from Westminster to the Science Museum, passing many tourist attractions along the way. The Science Museum was really interesting and it was useful to observe people reacting to the space, and how they navigated the various interactive exhibits.

It all getting a bit snap happy at Westminster.

Afterwards I headed to the Design Museum with a couple of the others, where we saw the Designers in Residence exhibition. I also went in to see the Design Cities exhibition and briefly saw some of Alan Aldridge's work, which was upstairs.

I've uploaded some of the photos to flickr.

Synthesizing

For this week in DE we were given the task of combining all the information we have collected so far, from interviews and observations, and producing a report or communication of the findings. I have been exploring ways of presenting the information so that it is straightforward to read and interpret.

I've been trying to think of different ways to use images/diagrams, and accentuate what I think are important points. This is something that I attempted to deal with in my project last year, where I found that it was important to make the material visually engaging, particularly when communicating with designers.

Gotomedia

Whilst researching into mobile communication I found the Gotomobile blog, which looks at it usability and user experience.

This led me to the company Gotomedia, who create interfaces for mobiles, products and the web. It was interesting to also look at their strategy and process in regards to the My Strategy exercise for the DLPSI module.

Kelly Goto is involved in both the blog and the company, and the blog states that she is "dedicated to understanding how real people integrate products and services into their daily lives". I also found an interview with her here, where she explains the process and project management involved in producing online brands.

I hope to take some of this onboard, as I am interested in people centred research for the creation of new products and ideas.

Everyware

I have been doing a bit of research into ubiquitous technology, and came across a series of papers on the AIGA website.

The first paper I looked at was Mobile Computing in High-End Retail. It shows how an ethnographic study into how managers guided clients through the experience of buying their fashion related products led into the design of a prototype and set of requirements. It was interesting to see how quickly the process was completed, and how valuable they found involving users in the process.

The second paper I looked at was Mobile Essentials: Field Study and Concepting, which looked at the study of"what people consider to be mobile essentials, how those mobile essentials are carried and problems typically encountered." I liked how they looked at the context and situations/places these Mobile Essentials (MEs) were being used in, rather than concentrating on the objects themselves i.e. they looked at the why and how as well as the what. I laughed at the paragraph describing how people remembered their MEs, as I am often seen doing the Phone, Keys, Wallet pat down before I leave the house.

The paper Nokia Sensor: From Research to Product goes into much more detail, providing some insight to the process and decisions made. The product itself can be seen here. Personally I'm not sure on the product's success, however I found an interesting comment here stating that it seemed "like yet another mobile product looking for an application". So I suppose that even when the design is user-centred, and done with all good intentions, the end result can still be ineffective.

Essay thoughts

For our first assessment we have the task of critically reviewing a fieldwork based user research, which has been published by a company or organisation.

I have not looked too thoroughly into the actual company yet, however by looking at the blog Putting People First for my blog review, I have been thinking about the area or theme to focus on.

I want to look into what it is that people actually want technology to do for them. I could explore this in relation to devices such as mobile phones, the Internet, interactive services and home entertainment etc.

I think sometimes there are so many applications and possibilities in today's society, that the genuine needs of people become lost in the design. Often people are often given too much information to handle, and in the end services and products become overcomplicated.

I am still looking at this very generally at the moment. I saw this book, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum the other day, which I am keen to get soon, as it looks quite relevant.

Recap

After starting this blog about a bit later than intended, I will try and summarise what has gone on so far. Over the last 3 weeks we have been doing 3 separate modules in the Design Ethnography course at Dundee. They are Design Ethnography, People and Design and Design Led Product and Service Innovation.

The Design Ethnography module has mainly contained learning and practicing various fieldwork techniques including interviewing and field-note taking, and also learning about the professional debate.

The People and Design module has so far included 2 lectures from Terry Irwin, on Worldview and the McDonaldization of society. There has been some very interesting points on certainty, sustainability and the future of design.

The DLPSI module has involved learning about innovation, strategy and processes in relation to design, particularly in a business sense.

It's been a fair amount of information to try and take in, analyse and then relate to a personal stance, and I think it will be easier to do this once the projects get in to full swing.

I blog, therefore I am...

Having been unsuccessful at keeping a blog going before, I will attempt to keep one again, this time in relation to my thoughts and musings on Design Ethnography.

Hopefully I will be able to document my reflections on the Design Ethnography course content in which I am partaking, as well as looking at other sources of inspiration.

I am eager to look at how user-centred research can help design better products, services and experiences for people.