Last week, I’ve been interviewed on my book about failures and it’s located there on the infosphere.

“Meggy Jr RGB is a new kit that we designed as a platform to develop handheld pixel games. It’s based around a fully addressable 8×8 RGB LED matrix display, and features six big fat buttons for comfy game play. (…) A unique feature of Meggy Jr RGB is that it is designed to be mounted inside a “handle set” — a wooden or plastic case that’s safer and more pleasant to hold than a bare circuit board. You can make, mod and customize your own handle sets to suit your taste– These are like faceplates in that you can switch whenever you want to suit your mood or the game that you’re playing, however different handle sets can radically change what the Meggy Jr looks and feels like. Above, you can see what our basic handles (left) look like, as compared to a set of custom smoke-colored batwing handles (right).“

And you can even make your own handle (or to have them fabbed) on platforms such as Ponoko or Pololu. I’d be curious to test it and see whether the interface itself is easy to play with, without a shell.

Why do I blog this? What fascinates me, beyond the fab/open platform, is the device aesthetic. That might be the equivalent of Centre George Pompidou (Beaubourg) for digital devices! Showing the internal guts of a technical apparatus is an intriguing approach that can be traced back to other architecture/industrial design traditions. It can be about making things visible and transparent to the users/people.

It also reminds me of this Mehmet Erkök’s Extreme Personalization phones. The phone shell, personalized in a very expressive way, can be seen as an interesting approach to customization:

Found in Hotel by Boichi, a Japanese manga that I only found in French.

Why do I blog this? I like the way the one-eyed face has been turned into something more human-readable through basic pencil drawings. This may be the equivalent of the “Transmetropolitan” smiley face.

“One audience member did ask the obvious question: where is the role for such out there work in everyday interaction design? His answer was that these students come from work and many return to the commercial field being employed by big corporations: it’s not the strangeness of the work as much as their thinking process that counts.“

Why do I blog this? that’s simply a good quote/answer to the question since it reflects the value of design.

A quick summary of the results:

“Families do not use location tracking: Only 1.7% parents reported using this technology with their children (implementation stage).
(…)
A significant number of parents, over one third of our participants, were not aware these technologies existed
(…)
Values are the motivating force in the adoption of location tracking: Our findings inform the technology adoption literature by showing that contrary to previous work, demographics (e.g. age and gender) did not predict adoption.
(…)
A small group of parents, 16%, were favorable toward location tracking (persuasion stage). Location tracking was seen as a tool to reduce uncertainty by providing constant information about children’s movements (uncertainty reduction category). More generally, parents’ accounts show that location tracking technologies are understood to be ‘preventive innovations’ that have the ability to reduce the risks facing children. Despite their positive attitudes, however, it is noteworthy that parents had not adopted these systems.
(…)
Parents do not need location tracking: The control provided via location tracking was considered to be a threat to self-direction and trust (trust and self direction category). Parents wanted to preserve their children’s ability to freely explore their environment without being judged“

And, interestingly, this last bit about declarative location (“checkin-in” in the Foursquare parlance) caught my attention:

“Systems that feature spontaneous location disclosure (e.g. checking-in) might be more reflective of this web of values and behaviors. By weakening the power relationship previously established through one-directional control, spontaneous location reports can give choice to children and nurture a sense of responsibility as well as honesty without stifling their freedom and autonomy“

Why do I blog this? Following the appropriation of location-based services, I am often surprised by the discourse that surrounds the use of such platforms. Articles such as this one, backed by data, are relevant in the sense that it shows the current usage and perspective in a specific context.

Alexis Madrigal has a good piece in The Atlantic about QR codes, their proliferation in advertising and their low adoption rate by users. Some excerpts I enjoyed

“ This is a picture of a roller-skating horse named Jimmy. I think he is a great analogy to explain why QR codes, those little black-and-white squares in magazines that you’re supposed to use as a paper hyperlink, continue to proliferate. Let me explain.
(…)
For now, though, we’ve got QR codes. And it appears we’ll continue to have them. Don’t be fooled, though: this is a novelty more than anything else. I think print magazine ads work and I think digital campaigns work. But when I look at a QR code, I don’t see the future, I see a roller-skating horse. Advertisers deploying QR codes are like people in 1900 wanting transportation to be faster, saying to themselves, “Well, we’ve got horses and we’ve got roller skates — I think we’re on to something! It seems gimmicky, but we’re innovating.” Meanwhile, inventors in garages were building the first janky, bug-ridden automobiles, the Model T just a few years away.“

Why do I blog this? Given my interest in technological trajectories, it’s relevant to put things in perspective and see how they fit in the global picture. Will the QR code eventually work? Is it just a “bridge technology”? I don’t know but there’s something worth digging here. Also, make sure to read the comments, the arguments in there are quite insightful… the way people defend QR codes (“QR is a good technology for condensing lots of information into a small physical space”) is sometimes very tech-oriented and does not account for issues related to human usage.

Lift 12 is almost there… and I will co-organize two workshops there:

1. Game mechanics in location-based games, in collaboration with Mathieu Castelli (C4M):

“Location-based games now exist for quite ten years. They have always been a creative platform to test innovative propositions (beyond gaming) based on geopositioning.

The game mechanics in this field is stable now with treasure hunt, geocaching and people tracking. Interestingly, the evolution of these platforms is quite slow; mostly because it is difficult to tune the game component properly. Beyond contextual issues (the city you’re in, its architecture), the experience is very much dependent on details such as the number of participants at a given time, the reactivity of the game or the accuracy of geopositioning.
This workshop will look at this in a very “hands-on” way as we will test different game mechanics with a prototype. It is aimed at participants, interaction designers, web and mobile app developers and game designers interested in testing ideas about the user experience of location-based applications.

The session will consist in a series of group activity based on Meatspace Invasion, a location-based game recently developed by C4M and Mekensleep. After a quick introduction about these, we will form groups who will test different combinations of game parameters. We will then go on the field in Geneva to test these scenarios and regroup after the game session to debrief the outcomes.“

2. Foresight surprise!, in collaboration with Anab Jain and Justin Pickard (Superflux):
This one will be devoted to exploring near future scenarios but it’s going to be a surprise. No spoilers, you have to be there to know what will be going on.

This workshop was followed by an open session entitled “Beyond Smart Cities” at BBVA’s Innovation Center, with Adam Greenfield, Kevin Slavin and yours truly.

My talk was a critique of the “prediction trope” in the discourse about Smart Cities. Slides are on Slideshare and I’ve included some notes in the document:

There’s a write-up of the event at the following URL

Some excerpts that I found relevant to my interests in technological accidents and problems:

“But most of the flashy technology today sits idle, abandoned by employees who never quite embraced computing chic and are now too overwhelmed by large crowds to coolly assist shoppers with handhelds. On top of that, many gadgets, such as automated dressing-room doors and touchscreens, are either malfunctioning or ignored
(…)
In part because of the crowds, the clerks appear to have lost interest in the custom-made PDAs from Ide. During multiple visits this winter, only once was a PDA spied in public–lying unused on a shelf–and on weekends, one employee noted, “we put them away, so the tourists don’t play with them.”

When another clerk was asked why he was heading to the back of the store to search for a pair of pants instead of consulting the handheld, he replied, “We don’t really use them anymore,” explaining that a lag between the sales and inventory systems caused the PDAs to report items being in stock when they weren’t. “It’s just faster to go look,” he concluded. “Retailers implementing these systems have to think about how they train their employees and make sure they understand them,”
(…)
Also aging poorly are the user-unfriendly dressing rooms. Packed with experimental tech, the clear-glass chambers were designed to open and close automatically at the tap of a foot pedal, then turn opaque when a second pedal sent an electric current through the glass. Inside, an RFID-aware rack would recognize a customer’s selections and display them on a touchscreen linked to the inventory system.

In practice, the process was hardly that smooth. Many shoppers never quite understood the pedals, and fashionistas whispered about customers who disrobed in full view, thinking the door had turned opaque. That’s no longer a problem, since the staff usually leaves the glass opaque, but often the doors get stuck. In addition, some of the chambers are open only to VIP customers during peak traffic times. “They shut them down on the weekends or when there’s a lot of traffic in the store,” says Darnell Vanderpool, a manager at the SoHo store, “because otherwise kids would toy with them.”

On several recent occasions, the RFID “closet” failed to recognize the Texas Instruments-made tags, and the touchscreen was either blank or broadcasting random video loops. During another visit, the system recognized the clothes–and promptly crashed. “[The dressing rooms] are too delicate for high traffic,” says consultant Dixon. “Out of the four or five ideas for the dressing rooms, only one of them is tough enough.” That feature is the “magic mirror,” which video-captures a customer’s rear view for an onscreen close-up, whether the shopper wants one or not.“

Why do I blog this? It’s a rather good account of technological failures, possibly useful to show the pain points of Smart Architecture/Cities. The reasons explained here are all intriguing and some of them can be turned into opportunities too (“otherwise kids would toy with them.”)

That said, it’d be curious to know how the situation has changed in 7 years.

Seen in Madrid last week.