Props, Design Fictions and the Near Future

My Everest

I give up.

It's taken me a long time to admit it, but I've struggled on for far too long now.

About nine months ago, after a couple of months of commuting through to Edinburgh from Dundee, I decided it would be a good opportunity to get some reading done. I have about an hour in the morning and another hour in the evening every Monday to Friday, and so I thought I could use the time productively.

I'm usually more likely to watch a film or TV programme than read if I have some spare time. Although it is a completely different media, I can watch some films over and over. It’s a lean-back media where I can immerse myself in the story or reflect on the cinematography. When it comes to reading I tend to leave it for when I'm on holiday, as it can take me ages to read a book. However, I thought the concentrated time would compel me to focus more.

Spending my time reading on the train also tied in to another idea I had a while back, which was to read as many ‘modern classics’ as I could. I was happy to be selective enough, as I know I prefer certain styles and genres. I also included a few novels that possibly aren’t referred to as 'classics' by everyone, but I knew they were still well revered.

Over the last couple of years I have read:

• The Catcher in the Rye
• The Great Gatsby
• Lord of the Flies
• American Psycho
• Trainspotting
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• The Road
• The Beach
• Nineteen Eighty-Four

Looking at that list, with the exception of 'The Catcher in the Rye', you can see the influence of films, so I thought I should try and begin leaning more towards books without film adaptations*. This brings me back to my opening statement, and my latest reading material, Catch-22.

I have come to hate this book. Hate is a strong word, but I have been toiling with this book for the last six months or so. At first I thought that I was possibly too tired, and I was only able to manage a chapter or two at a time. I’m sure there are many people who would shake their head at me, and give me a look of disbelief. I’m sure there are many people who love this book, and see me as some form of blasphemist for my aversion to their masterpiece.

In six months I have managed a grand total of 135 pages. It has felt like nothing but hard work. I’ve found it so confusing, with a new character appearing every couple of pages and the writing style tying my brain in knots. Perhaps I missed the point. Maybe it is all meant to reflect the madness and absurdity of the environment and the story, but it does nothing but frustrate me further. I’ve not enjoyed it, and with that is my confession; I give up.

One day I may pick it up again, but I doubt it.

My Everest

*Catch-22 does have a 1970 film adaptation, but I had never come across it until writing this post.

20:20 Vision

Last night I went along to view a discussion being held at Sensation in Dundee as part of the Dundee Science Festival taking place this week.

It included a series of talks from a number of researchers who had come from all over the UK, who each had 20 slides, and 20 seconds per slide, to present their thoughts on the role that technology will have on our digital future.

Some speakers chose to pick a single project whereas others gave a quick overview of their background and research focus using highlights from a number of projects. There were some really great ideas being brought forward, particularly in regards to how technology can create relationships and act as a bridge between people and communities.

Often in the media we see a vision that depicts digital technology creating a divide and alienating people from society, and so it was invigorating to see a group that were on the whole using technology to bring people together and solve these issues.

Lalya Gaye and Joëlle Bitton, both from the Culture Lab at Newcastle University, illustrated the work that they had partaken within the SiDE project. It was interesting to see how they were using craft and creativity to tackle social exclusion by teaching people about digital technology and the benefits that it can bring.

It was also fascinating to see the work from Chris Speed and Simone O'Callaghan, who were applying stories through QR codes to traditional artifacts, which in it's own way was also connecting people and places.

Lastly, I found the talk from Mike Chantler to be particularly engaging. Although he was talking about textures and their visual attributes, which had the potential to be a fairly mundane topic, the passion and enthusiasm he showed for the topic grabbed everyone's attention and made it just as appealing. Hopefully I can take this into all the presentations I do in the future.

Persuasion, Emotion and Trust

About a month ago I came across the video below from Susan Weinschenk on Persuasion, Emotion and Trust. It's an excellent video, and I recommend taking a look at the The ROI of User Experience as well. They're both great examples of how to explain a concept with both clarity and authority.

The main idea behind what Human Factors International (HFI) describes as PET design is to ensure that users come back to your service/website and do so repeatedly.

This has tied in with my realisation that it's not just about usability any more (although it is still a key principle and there are still a lot of companies not getting it right).

In order to get customers to use a service they need to be able to do more than just find what they're looking for. They need to have a reason to go a step further, and they need to have a positive experience in order to come back again.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy

A colleague recently recommended taking a look at Steve Krug's Rocket Surgery Made Easy, as although it is primarily aimed at individuals/companies who wish to conduct their own usability testing, some of the insights and ideas are useful from the perspective of a consultant.

Krug gives clear and succinct instructions for running tests, as well as guidelines for identifying and fixing issues.

There were some really good points to consider, particularly when it comes to considering how to making findings actionable. There were also a few good pointers in regards to a few of the basics which can sometimes get lost/forgotten.

Will need to have another look at Don't Make Me Think, as well as some of the suggested reading.

Walk round East London

I recently took on some of the suggestions from the book in the previous post and went out and explored my local area a bit more.

It's really interesting to see how much is going on in the area, and I ended up stumbling across a few random sights that I wasn't actually aware were so close-by.

Some of the photos can be found on my Flickr page.

Eyes Open

I recently bought the IDEO Eyes Open guidebook for London from Amazon as I was interested in it's concept, which is to explore and experience your surroundings in a different way. It is essentially a guidebook that highlights a number of places not on the traditional tourist trail, but I like the idea of really looking at what is going on around me as I feel that my observational skills may be a bit rusty after becoming desensitised by the bustle of the commute.

I'm keen to check out some of the suggestions that are nearby, especially as I've been here for almost a year and I still feel like I haven't seen all the things that I should have by now. It will also give me an excuse to take a few photos again (another thing which I seem to have neglected since moving here).

Long overdue update

As the title suggests it has been rather a long time since I last updated this blog. I will try to quickly summarise what I've been up to, and hopefully this will instigate more regular postings.

So, I have now begun my career in user research at One to One Insight in London. I'm doing customer experience research and learning more and more every day. London life is hectic but enjoyable and definitely gets a bit more sun than Scotland in the summer!

From now on I will attempt to more frequently document my thoughts and observations on people, design and technology. I am also now the owner of a twitter account, and so may use it to give brief updates.

Mementoys

Last week I attended an interesting talk by Walid Hassanein, help by the SUPA. Walid's presentation gave an interesting insight into his project, which explored the emotional connection we have with physical objects, and looked at how memories could be stored by the objects themselves, and in particular a child's toy.

By using digital technology, such as audio recording that would be triggered by manipulating the toy, they hoped to capture different memories of childhood, and store them in a way to be accessed in the future.

The Q&A brought up many questions on data storage, but the more interesting topic discussed was how to distinguish between what the toy should store as a 'memory' and what to disregard. The concept of value vs. quantity is relevant in many other devices that we use today.

I wonder if the ability to store large amounts of photos on digital cameras/hard drives has led to less 'quality' pictures e.g. memorable and cherished photos.

Project process

Having neglected this blog for a while, I will attempt to summarise what has happened in the last month or so.

Having completed my observations in Edinburgh I returned to Dundee and worked through the observations that I had recorded through my notes and sketches. I found this task at times quite demanding, and it took longer than I had expected to analyse and synthesise the data into something which I was happy with. On reflection I feel that this could have been due to working alone, as I appreciate the value that a team can bring to this stage, particularly when it comes to bouncing ideas around etc. In addition to the fieldwork I consulted a two regular rail commuters through informal interviews, primarily to gain some feedback on my analysis but also to gain a bit more data. I had considered forming a focus group, and using it as a participatory design session, to gain some design ideas. However, lack of numbers combined with a change in decision resulted in the further analysis/data gathering route.

Afterwards, I managed to group my data into some themes, and then was able to merge them into a couple of core ideas - infrastructure and behaviour. Underneath each of these themes I have established a series of issues/topics that are illustrated through my observations.

I am now working on how to communicate these themes and issues effectively, and also in a way that they could be useful in the design of future technologies within transitory spaces. I have almost completed the illustrative report, which will outline the process along with the results, and I have also been working on the online presentation that I will do next week as well.

So it is coming together quite well at the moment. The biggest challenge will be making sure that I get my points across successfully, and hopefully show the value in my work.

The Medium is the Message

Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage

I found this book again whilst I was in Edinburgh doing a more extended period of observation at Waverly. Not too sure where this idea is going, but maybe just something to mull over for a while.

"All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered."

Personal Space

So I've been doing my first round of analysis and some codes/themes have been emerging. One of these was personal space, and particularly how the environment and the individual's actions affects this.

Coincidentally I came across this post by Alan Rapp on the Design Observer blog. It mentions Robert Sommer so I think I will take a look into his book Personal Space: The behavioral basis of design. I've also started finding a few articles on how things such as listening to music can alter people's perception and awareness of the space around them.

Primary Observation

Last week I was down in London beginning my observational fieldwork at St Pancras Station. I was able to spend a couple of days in the space, and get a feeling of how people were acting in the environment. I was most aware of the amount of people still working/communicating whilst on the move. These "mobile workers" came in various forms, from the businessman/woman working on a laptop at any opportunity to someone simply on talking/texting on their mobile phone whilst on the move. It was just something that stood out to me, and something to consider during my analysis. It was also intriguing to see how people adapted the space and objects within the space to suit their needs.

My next step will be to do an initial round of analysis/synthesis to see what stands out.

Landworkers

I attended the Landworkers Symposium, held as part of the RIAS Convention, at the DCA last Thursday. It presented a series of collaborative projects where the land itself was considered the medium.

I found the first presentation by Gavin Renwick particularly engaging. He showed his work in the Canadian Northwest Territories, and how he had spent time with the local people, and thus built up an understanding of their culture. An interesting insight was the Inuit relation to space. For example he stated that they have no words for inside or outside, as you are always home, as the land is your home.

In a similar vein, the second presentation from Juhani Pallasmaa included two examples of projects he has been involved in. The first was the design of the Siida museum for Sámi culture and the nature of Northern Lapland. The main exhibition in the museum had been spatially organised, where every space had meaning relating to the seasons and work cycle of the Sámi people. The second project was a monument design for a T-junction in Detroit at Cranbrook Acadmey, which they wanted transformed into a feature. The final solution was again rooted within context, with local glacier rock used as the main material, and Juhani described this as a collaboration between architecture and nature and history.

Siida Museum interior

I was lucky enough to meet Juhani the day before the symposium, and this idea of collaboration came up then as well. He talked about collaboration not just being between a designer and users, or a designer and experts, but collaboration should also be with tradition and history, and what has been done before. He also pointed me in the way of some more literature that I might find interesting, mainly in regards to human behaviour and architectural history.

The most significant points that I will take with me from these two days are the concept of collaboration being with everyone, from the people you are designing for, to the client, to the past and all the other people that may be affected. Also empathy for everyone is important, as by understanding how others think it will be easier to interpret their motives and needs.

Research Proposal Presentation

Today we presented our research project proposal, as if pitching for funding from the Research Councils UK for their proposed research programme on "Connected Communities".

As a team were very happy with our proposal, and I think this aided us in the presentation. All four of us believed in and had confidence in our concept, and were comfortable with pitching the idea. I hope that we managed to sell the idea as well as we could. We have all been thinking about the project for a while now, and so the most important factor will be if we have managed to succeed in communicating our thoughts to other people.

In conclusion, after this project I feel that I have a much better sense of how I would go about planning a proposal for a research project in a real situation. At the start of this module it's fair to say that I wouldn't have a clue how to even begin thinking about costing a 3 year research project, however now I hope I could get somewhere close.

In a general sense I hope I can take some of what I have learned and I apply it in my own work. As Tom said, it is the theory behind what we have learned that we will be able to apply. It doesn't matter what the subject matter of the project is, but it is the design methods and approaches that we have learned that will be applicable across many realms.

K.N.I.T.

Our group has finally come up with the name for our project proposal. It is Kommunity Networking for Information Transfer, or the acronym KNIT, and the tag-line is "weaving the community together". It arose from a discussion about how to incorporate all of our ideas, and we felt it encompassed our concept as a whole quite well.

As it is an important factor of how we would brand and advertise the project Grace has also worked on a logo, which encapsulates the concept quite well. We have done some work on branding previously but I feel in this particular project the branding of it would be quite significant. If the project was not branded correctly then it would be very difficult to get support from local people and businesses. It would have to be able to cross a wide range of stakeholders and incorporate both new and old associations with Dundee.

Urban Computing

Whilst doing a bit of browsing for ideas on my 3rd Semester Project I found this PDF called Sliding Friction: The Harmonious Jungle of Contemporary Cities. It really relates to the Urban Traces project we worked on.

It's been written by two of the contributors to Liftlab, Nicolas Nova and Fabien Girardin, who are both "designers methodically searching for processes and interaction within the urban environment". They both look at how understanding people could help in the design of future technology, particularly this notion of urban/ubiquitous computing.

On Girardin's blog I found this old post on Mapping Urban Computing. It depicts the image below, which was created by Karen Martin. I could really relate to the image, and saw how my own interests fall into this diagram. I wonder how I can make sense of it all, and find out how I can tie everything I'm interested in into a project.

I realised that Karen Martin had worked with Giles Lane in the past. Giles had come to IMD during my 3rd year, I think, to talk about his work with Proboscis.

I did a bit more digging around on Urban Computing, and found this article on Bruce Sterling's blog, where he mentions The Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series that "explores the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism: How are our experiences of the city and the choices we make in it affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, ambient informatics, and other “situated” technologies?"

You can download the PDF from the The Architectural League NY's website.

Dundee Waterfront

Yesterday Annabella and I went to Tayside House to find out about the Dundee Waterfront redevelopment. We thought that it might be interesting to look at in regards to the DIR project as their vision has some similarities to ours. Their vision is "to transform, energise and connect the city to the waterfront, threading the city and water together to create a special sense of place". We were lucky enough to meet with Les Banks from the Planning and Transportation Department, who shared a great deal of information on the project, and explained the whole process and the wider factors that effect it's progress. He also talked us through the recent 3D animation, and explained the reasoning behind many of the new waterfront's features.

I found the meeting really useful, particularly for the DIR project but also in regards to my own interests in urban design. It was surprising to see the large amount of factors and considerations that have to be consulted when undertaking a project as large as this - traffic counts, local business losses during Christmas, local residents opinions on the greenery and the strengthening of the rail tunnel were just a few of the things mentioned.

Space and Place

Whilst browsing through the Space and Place listserv archives, which I finally managed to sign up to (to some degree anyway), I found the Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action & Research, or Pukar. 

Most engaging was the Gender and Space project, which has an interesting Ethnographic study conducted in railway stations. They also present how their research led to public interventions, specifically the Railway Lighting Campaign.

Fibrecity

Our group met to discuss our DIR project, where we talked about the title for our project, as we felt it may help us to tie it all together. We were considering how to relate the project to Dundee, as we thought that the general population may not actually relate to the Art/Design and University based culture in the city, and would identify Dundee with the past associations such as Jute, Jam and Journalism. We thought it may also be useful to look into the language used in promoting the idea, as it would be important to look into the mindset of the people that we would hope to involve.

We found out that Dundee is to be Scotland's first Fibrecity. We really liked the term, and thought about ways to incorporate the idea of "weaving" the old and new images of Dundee to connect the people of the city together to form the "fabric" of the city.

The concept of Fibrecity also brought us onto a discussion of the digital divide, and how something like this which proposes the connect the community better to the outside world may inadvertently cause some people to become more detached.