Back from interaction10, the annual conference hosted by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) in Savannah, Georgia. A good occasion to visit the deep south (aka “dirty south 2) that I did not know at all. More observation on this at the end of this post, let’s focus first in lessons learned at the conference.

Before coming, I was not sure about the whole thing, wondering whether the talk/audience would be into web-stuff or other concerns. After three days there I have to admit that I am really happy with the quality of the talks as well as the diversity of the conference formats. As opposed to lots of events, it seems that the venues have certainly contributed to the quality of the interactions (definitely no big hotel-chain lobby with their cheesy carpets). Furthermore, I was also glad to present my talk about failures and get some interesting feedback to go further.

Instead of a selection of semi-automatic writings of the talks as I’ve done after the Microsoft Social Computing Symposium, I tried to put together a selection of insights I collected at interaction2010. Overall, I was struck by the following three elements:

Incentives and rewards

A recurring topic was sur toutes les lèvres: the notion of providing “incentives and rewards” for the use of certain services. Be it about changing one’s behavior to reach a more sustainable development model or as a way to let people use applications they wouldn’t otherwise. This was a term I’ve heard in talks, conversations, participative activities and side activities. The break-out group about Foursquare at the Microsoft Social Computing Symposium the other day also connects to this discussion because I think 4^2 epitomizes by-products of incentives. Simply because one the rewards the interaction designers of this location-based system created turned users into point-addicts. Although the design community has always talk about this, my impression was that design was more about creating “affordances” than incentives. Where the former lies in perceptual and cognitive psychology, industrial design and human–computer interaction, the latter stemmed from economics and sociology. I don’t judge anything here, I just see a pattern, perhaps design is well qualified to use both metaphors in its creative repertoire. The very notion for service design is perhaps useful here to understand this shift and I’ve heard someone arguing that an incentive was an “immaterial affordance” (which made me frown).

(someone typing notes without bothering looking at the blue-glow display)

About models

In addition, one of the theme I was interested in was the way designers work, achieve their projects and think. Which is why I paid close attention to tools, methodologies and abstractions. Fortunately, most of the presentation I attended showed some interesting examples of “models”. See for instance the two examples below: Nathan Shedroff’s model of experience/meaning (see his presentation for more) or Timo Arnall’s interesting model of the 3 levels for designing networked objects, and the one presented by Mike Kruzeniski.

Shedroff’s model was descriptive: as he explained, it helped him to show how meaning works in experience and the 6 dimensions of what constitutes an experience: significance, breadth, intensity, duration, triggers and interaction. As shown on this checklist, the role of the model is also prescriptive because it helps practitioners making decisions and acting upon other insights (i.e. user research).

Timo’s model is different, it originated in the categorization of experiences with networked objects, which can be:

1. Immediate tangible experiences: glanceable and that do not take too much attention as the Nabaztag, Nike+ or Chris Woebken’s animal superpower
2. Short term connecting and sharing: where the purpose is to share/get immediate feedback from friends such as the on-line component of Nike+
3. Long term service, data & visualization of the data produced that become social objects

What was interesting in Timo’s talk was that he showed afterwards how these three central aspects could be used to evaluate existing objects AND as a basis for designing new artifacts that could be used as an iterative cycle. The model is therefore evaluative and generative.

A third sort of model was the one showed by Mike Kruzeniski in his talk. In his work at Microsoft, his purpose is to connect engineers with a more emotional vision of innovating. The problem they encountered was that developers tended to cut features and design elements with a specific rationale which did not take into account emotional factors. The first model/metaphor they chose was the tree (cutting two many features of a product may lead to a weird tree) but it was not efficient. Thus, they adopted the “Body, Heart, & Soul” framework to qualifies, validates, and prioritizes the intangible qualities of design work alongside the more practical concerns of our Engineering partners. To put it shortly, categorizing features as “heart” or “soul” was a more legible way to prioritize (and suppress design elements). The soul is untouchable, the heart elements support the soul and the body is the rest. Each of this component has certain rules (”no more than 5 “soul” features) and it was a more humane way to prioritize than “p0″, “p1″ and “p2″. This kind of model was metaphorical in the sense that it helped engineers talk in a different way, a “beginner’s design vocabulary to start with an grow from”. Additionally, doing the simple work of categorizing features in these 3 topics was about articulating what matters emotionally to users (and then making choices). In this case, the model is both metaphorical (to convey this emotional sense) and operational (to enable easier prioritization).

These three examples are interesting given they exemplify the use of abstract models by designers from the ixda community. It as if the notion of model had been re-appropriated in a flexible way to serve the designer’s purposes, which is a relevant locus of observation. Make not mistake here, these are only examples I’ve seen and I won’t generalize from this sample. I am pretty sure you would also find predictive abstractions in designers’ work. However, it’s curious to point them out to show how models here are more seen as “tools to give structures to help you think” than explicative elements. The difference between designers and scientists in the way they build and use models, some epistemological comparisons may be intriguing here and I feel I am just scratching the surface.

(Wifi data points on a post-it in the washroom)

Showing products or not?

My third comment on the conference was the surprising lack of examples/products/services in lots of the presentation. I expected a design conference to be much more evocative in terms of design examples and it was not the case. Of course there are exceptions (as if Matt Cottam, Timo Arnall or Dan Hill’s presentation were exceptions) but it’s as if all the potential examples had been vacuumed and resurfaced in Paola Antonelli’s talk.

The interest in objects

The mention of Antonelli’s work allows me to make a smooth transition to a trend I find interesting: the increasing interest (or the resurgence of interest) in technical objects and a way to talk about them, to analyze them (Timo’s model is inspiring for that matter) and how the history of digital artifacts matter. In her talk, she described how objects have always spoken to her and she summarized an upcoming MOMA exhibit that will cover the evolution of new media/digital technologies. Perhaps it’s just me reading The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are (Henry Petroski), Carl di Salvo’s new blog about objects, discussions with my neighbor or the game controller project with Laurent Bolli, but I am feeling a renewal of interest in analyzing objects (rather than users).

Not so much time for a write-up about the city itself but some pics are always worth a thousand words.

(The intriguing repartition of green pockets in Savannah)

(The pervasive presence of a local design school)

(Savannah has remnants of old shops)

(Luxuriance on the street, lovable pipes and nature around)

(Cultural shock for me maybe)

(Gorgeous brick buildings to be rented, a common feature in this town)

(Evocative drain pipe)

The annotated slides from my talk “Design and Designed Failures: From Observing Failurs To Provoking Them” at ixda interaction10 are now available on Slideshare.

Failures are often overlooked in design research. The talk addressed this issue by describing two approaches: observing design flops and identify symptoms of failures OR provoking failures to document user behavior.

This talk was actually a follow-up of my introduction to the Lift 2009 conference a bout the recurring failures of holy grails. It was very much inspired by Mark Vanderbeeken (Experientia) who pushed me to go further than pointing out product failures and exploring why it’s important as a design strategy.

There was a good crowd of people and someone interestingly commented on the fact tat I may have made my presentation intentionally a failure to make the crowd react.

Thanks for the ixda interaction 2010 committee for letting my present this work!

“Charting the Beatles” is a project that I find highly intriguing. One of the visualization that I find highly interesting for that matter is the “Self Reference” representation. As described by the authors: “The lyrics of the Beatles include a number of references to their own previous songs. This diagram explores these connections, noting the exact referencing lyrics and at what point in each song they can be found.”

This is surely a recurring topic on Pasta and Vinegar. Perhaps because of the ongoing discussion I have with my neighbor who works on this the circulation of cultural elements and will surely appreciate (and re-use) this example.

Why do I blog this? looking for inspiration mostly, this chart provides a good example of the circulation of “designed elements” that may prove useful in out gamepad evolution project. The point would then be to map how certain elements (such as the direction-pad on the Game&Watch electronic games) have circulated over time to be adapted in different joypad iterations.

The link granularity (explicit/implicit reference, reference with melodic parallels) is very relevant because it shows the different granularities in how an element can circulate from one data point (a song in this case, a joypad model in the case of our project) to another.

Read in “Hailing, Failing, and Still Sailing” by Richard Saul Wurman, a chapter of “Design Disasters: Great Designers, Fabulous Failures, and Lessons Learned“:

“It made me think about the beginning of that wonderful film, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, in which you see a litany of failed aircraft. You laugh, but you also see how seriously involved everybody was in trying to fly. All the failure, all the things that didn’t work, make you realize that the Wright brothers were really something. All the paths taken, all the good intentions, the logistics, the absurdities, all the hopes of people trying to fly testifying to the power we have when we refuse to quit.

There should be a museum dedicated to human invention failure. The only problem it would face would be its overnight success. In almost any scientific field, it would add enormously to the understanding of what does work by showing what doesn’t work. In developing the polio vaccine, Jonas Salk spent 98 percent of his time documenting the things that didn’t work until he found the thing that did.“

Why do I blog this? Preparing a speech about failures led me to revisit my bookshelves. This chapter is great and I remember this very excerpts in the movie. As a kid, I used to watch this part again and again as I found it hilarious. More seriously, this excerpt is important in the sense that it reveals the notion of iterations in innovation.

A museum of human invention failure also strikingly connects with Paul Virilio’s Museum of the Accident.

An interesting definition of “supermodernism” found in Desolation Jones, a comic book series written by Warren Ellis:

“Supermodernism. The fact that we don’t build places to just be in anymore. We build places to go through. To wait in. To be transient. You ever watch ‘Cribs’ on MTC? All those pop stars’ houses? They’re all beige and white. They’re the colour of airports. All those houses are decorated like hotel rooms and waiting lounges. You never wonder why?

Supermodern spaces. Places to go through. An now look at this bloody city [Los Angeles] Two hundred thounsand fucking miles of road. Not event a city. A dozen towns stitches together by motorways. Housing that goes up today and get knocked down tomorrow. LA’s a supermodern space. A place you dont’ stop in“

Also check Ellis’s commentary on his website:

“Supermodernism: a term I first encountered in architecture, coined by Hans Ibelings, used to describe buildings constructed without context or integral information. Airports are supermodern spaces. Just pipes and sockets, there to pass through or plug into. Places to facilitate swarms and flow. An outsider’s view of LA. Which, I’d remind people, is exactly what Jones’ view is. He’s not looking at LA like a native, a committed long-term resident, or even someone who likes the place much“

Why do I blog this? gathering insights about society from various types of media is always a pleasure. In this case it’s about the evolution of spaces and places. Also look at the illustrator’s trick to put these quote in context with a “red line” that connects up the whole page with a map and the discussion with the two protagonists.

See also Jack Schulze’s remarks about this very same comic page.

The game controller was called “AppleJack” (a name that eventually has been re-used because it’s now a command line user interface for Mac OS X). White models like this one were called “Atmark” (for the “@” mark) and were only marketed and sold in Japan. What’s curious here is that it features two interesting elements:

• A centre built-in trackball, which is highly uncommon on game controllers (instead of a joystick)
• Two front mounted orange select buttons designed to replicate the features of a computer mouse.

Apart from that it’s quite common: boomerang-shaped, direction-pad on the left and four action buttons “laid out in the classic Super Nintendo diamond design + the button colors are a match for the PAL SNES controller” as pointed out here. What’s maybe relevant in terms of design is the button shape with tiny braille-like dots to indicate the user which one he/she is using without looking at it.

Another curious aspect is the fact that the Applejack controller was sold with a floppy disk that contains the “Applejack Software Developer’s Kit” for editing the `pippin mapping resource, and an Applejack 2.2.0 system extension file. Which means that you could customize the `pipp’ mapping resource of the Applejack input device drivers.

Why do I blog this? this pad goes straight into the collection/project about gamepad evolution. Although it was a failure, it’s definitely an interesting artifact that tried to innovate (trackball!) and its “boomerang” shaped was also the one Sony showed as an early version of the PS3 controller. A sort of evolutionary dead-end to some extent because of the trackball.

A to-do list found inserted between bike spokes, found in Geneva this morning. The urban scout is left to his/her own hypotheses about why this sheet of paper ended up here.

Circulation of the widget-meme into *other* touch-interfaces.

The famous drawing extracted from “Theory of the Dérive” (Théorie de la Dérive) by Guy Debord. As explained by the author:

“In his study Paris et l’agglomération parisienne (Bibliothèque de Sociologie Contemporaine, P.U.F., 1952) Chombart de Lauwe notes that “an urban neighborhood is determined not only by geographical and economic factors, but also by the image that its inhabitants and those of other neighborhoods have of it.” In the same work, in order to illustrate “the narrowness of the real Paris in which each individual lives . . . within a geographical area whose radius is extremely small,” he diagrams all the movements made in the space of one year by a student living in the 16th Arrondissement. Her itinerary forms a small triangle with no significant deviations, the three apexes of which are the School of Political Sciences, her residence and that of her piano teacher.“

Why do I blog this? Tracing some documents and insights about chronotopic representations.

Last week, I was at the Social Computing Symposium at the ITP in New York; a small event sponsored by Microsoft Research’s Creative Systems Group that “brings together academic and industry researchers, developers, writers, and influential commentators in order to open new lines of communication among previously disconnected groups”.

The theme of this symposium this year was “The city as platform”, which revolved around various sub-topic such as urban informatics, the city as a social technology, pervasive games and government infrastructure/data. My notes are definitely messy and incomplete but I tried to cobble some excerpts below as a reminder of what I learnt there. Sorry this is a blog and I have less and less time to make my notes very coherent.

Kevin Slavin gave an insightful presentation that connected lots of various fields that I found refreshing to hear about, I’ve taken (badly) handwritten notes (see below) so readers may want to access Liz Lawley’s more legible write-up.

In the afternoon, Adam Greenfield gave a short presentation about “what cities are for?”:

“what functions and activities they have evolved to support? plausible deniability (but with technologies such as social software… life become explicit and declarative), anonymity (but tech can determine whereabouts, activities and intentions), reinvention (but tech re-laminates our “separate masks”), forgetting (but tech leads to a global mnemonic), becoming urbane/confront the others (but networked tech can undercut the logic of networked sociality).“

In her ignite talk Alice Marwick dealt with the following issue: “Why kids do care about privacy?”:

“there is this misconception that kids don’t care about privacy
but this is not the case
there’s a range of privacy concern; 3 categories of people: privacy pragmatists (open-minded liberals), privacy fundamentalists (cynical concealers) and privacy unconcerns
overlapping spaces: public/private/semi-public…
opting out of social media is a great disadvantage for kids
AT&T family map = invasive privacy invasion!
kids deeply care about their privacy whatever they define it“

Which was nicely complemented by Alice Taylor’s presentation about the fact that teenagers don’t change much (”teens don’t have ADD, they’re just bored) and Genevieve Bell’s discussion about how the notion of “digital native” is a wrong paradigm… “because in general natives lost (at least where I come from [australia]
should we talk about refugees? squatters? there a new nomenclature. On a different note, she also cited some interesting statistics (26% of americans who don’t use the internet) and the fact that for some user groups “the internet is just for TV or for phone call“.

On Day 2, the morning was devoted to “The City as Social Technology”. As proposed by the session organiser (Mr. Tom Coates, thanks for the invitation!):

“It’s an attempt to bring together the various levels of the built environment (the home/office, the city etc) with the “Social computing” in the name of the event. The basic premise is that the city is an invented thing, designed to support, extend and derive value from human socialising, collaboration and labour - and that new pervasive technologies (sensors, programmable environments etc) are going to take all of that stuff to a completely new level.

Tom reminded us how the city emerged and different implications of the city as a social platform:

“the city only appeared VERY recently, about 12,000 years ago
urbanization has increased dramatically
but why? what functions did it fulfill?
numbers of theories: agricultural societies that fostered more resilience, static population are more robust/protected, better for trades
once cities have appeared, they gave massive advantages to the collective, making it more efficient
+ doing more together than was possible to do apart
not only the city is a social technology but other tech came from the city: money, alphabet & writing, law & government
le corbusier: a machine for living in
but the city has also costs: infectious diseases spread more in cities… hygiene, sewage, crime, pollution…
there is another leap forward right now. the city will be upgraded
sensors will transform the idea of the city as a social technology“

As a follow-up, Molly Steenson gave us an historical perspective on the way that architecture and computers were imagined as a symbiosis in the late 60s and early 70s. She started by quoting various quotes from the 60s by JC Licklider (”The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly” or “your computer will know who is prestigious in your eyes and buffer you from a demanding world“) to show that the ideas we are discussing nowadays have been around for quite sometime. Then she exemplified the 3 ways these ideas affect the city (or were supposed to affect it):

• Representing and visualizing: computer graphics… which comes from wing/cockpit design and mechanical engineering. Ivan Sutherland’s sketchpad (1962)
• Defining the right problems to solve: c. alexander, was interested in defining problem to solve and apply analysis (1963: “design today has reached the stage where sheer inventiveness can no longer sustain it”)
• Generating symbiotic systems: “someday machines will go to libraries to read and learn and laugh and will drive about cities to experience and to observe the world.” Negroponte, 1995 in his booked called “The Architecture Machine: Toward a More Human Environment.

Her presentation was very visual based on seminal texts by the authors mentioned above. See some example from my Flickr stream:

Then Duncan Wilson + Dan Hill from Arup showed some projects going on right now in the architecture community. They called it “digital built fabric“:

“Sustainable dev:
- making the invisible visible (barangaroo in Sidney) via real-time data on neighbourhood activity projected throughout site, acting as a civic-scale collective smart meter.
- infographic sketches for responsive street furniture throughout site, inspired by vernacular symbols traditionally found at docks
- smart-meter style dashboard schematic indicating zones of responsibility and contribution as well as consumption
- Forcefield (London, Arup): LED-based lighthing structure responds to proximity and movement of visitors
- unfolding resource use: fitzroy street, london (arup)… hard to read for people: who knows what is the baseline (what number is wrong or good?)
- EST (environment sustainable…) low2no (helsinki)… with web-based and phone-based services, carbon-shadow (yours in comparison with others)
- Kurilpa bridge, Brisbane: LED-based lighting structure capable of responding to environment… we tend to avoid the “big screens” (non-screen, LED instead)… to show collective wifi

“Encrusting the building with sensors”

Aaptive ambient information:
HINTeractions, Green screens (Chiswick park)

Wireless civic spaces: state library of queensland (use of wifi, transformation of public space, library used 23 hours per day, safer, more active)… what can we learn these activities? what sort of patterns can we reveal?
tag cloud of internet connections within public wi-fi space: what countries?
tag cloud of term extraction of public wifi: nouns or people’s names currently being browsed in this space?
what if we could put these viz back into the pace? interactive installations

Responsive architecture: mediamesh (UTS broadway competition entry): reveals character of production within building by tapping into the wifi

Mazdar: parasol star… plaza that plays back pattern of activities collated through the day; city centre acts as dashboard/central processing unit for wider city

Persuasive public transit: post-hoc analysis of large data-sets (real time rome), “smart light fields” (Jason mcdermott: traces of BT enable phone), “Mobile sensing” (can we trace where people are, how space is used in real-time…), active wayfinding“

In this talk, Usman Haque started by 10 things he doesn’t believe in” and turn them into insights about what he is interested in:

“
make data public …which becomes… public make data
more data is more useful …which becomes… more context is more useful
freedom from constraints is the end goal …which becomes… constraints provide hints
local = proximal …which becomes… local = shared (we have neighbor but they are asymmetrical) stanislaw lem’s about robots fucking other robots (inorganic evolution)
architecture is about organizing …which becomes… architecture is about disorganizing (h. von foerster: there are no such things as self-organizing system), it’s about putting something out there that reconfigure/re-adapt
people need simplicity …which becomes… we are complexity processors (granularity is essential), people learn to understand the tokyo map! we should not dumb down representations; it’s not about simplifying but creating multiple levels of granularity
individualism is the key to behavior change …which becomes… neighbours just as important! (natural fuse project)“

After that, we had different break-out groups. Mine was called “From instrumentation to social technology” and here is a summary of what we dealt with:

“ The digitization of the contemporary cities with technologies embedded into its streets and buildings and carried by people and vehicles has appended an informational membrane over the urban fabrics. Location-based services,  interactive architecture, real-time visualizations of cities activity provide new means to make decisions and navigate city space. However, by being more operationally efficient, there is a risk that the urban environment becomes limited to an utilitarian perspective: going from A to B as quick as possible, receiving geolocated-café coupons or getting updates about contacts’ whereabouts can be seen as the new cliché of this model.

Questions to be addressed:
1) Yesterday: What have we learnt from the past 10 years in the field (beyond the usual clichés I listed above)? Where did this system fail?
2) Tomorrow: How to go beyond these issues? What kind of problems will emerge? Is there a balance between utilitarian and more desirable systems? What’s the stupidest idea one can we think about?
3) Summary: Can we discuss a roadmap of possibilities/problems for the near future?“

In the afternoon of the second day, the topic was “Cities and Play”. Kati London started off by showing an interesting set of projects such as “avatar machine” by mark owens, and the surge in location-based games (or Mobile social software that uses game mechanics): Parallel Kingdom (a mobile location-based MMO), Mytown, or Monopoly city street. Dennis Crowley from Foursquare also showed some interesting lessons they drawn from the platform evolution and how it’s differentiated from other friend-finder systems.

Why do I blog this? It was an interesting event, very diverse in terms of the topics that people presented and perspectives. What I found relevant was that “social computing” was not taken to the letter, which is good. Surely, some elements to be directly re-used in current projects.

Some excerpts of the Data.gov.uk Newspaper that Russell Davies gave me last week. As described by the people who designed it, the purposes were the following:

“We’ve been thinking about the beta Data.gov.uk repository, and wanted to explore putting some of the information contained within into people’s hands in a form that is accessible, timely, and relevant.

It’s a prototype of a service for people moving into a new area. In our exercise we imagined you might receive it after paying your council tax for the first time.

It gathers information about your area, such as local services, environmental information and crime statistics.
(…)
We printed 50, and gave them out to a room full of civil servants, who seemed very excited its possibilities. Hopefully it’ll find its way around Whitehall over the next couple of weeks, acting as a demonstration of the kind of stuff people want to make with all this data that government has. And maybe that’ll encourage some more data to get opened up to the public.“

Why do I blog this? an interesting initiative to render local public data in an original way. What I find curious here is the use of paper: clearly an easy and convenient way to share content.

An interesting figure that I’ve found in a book by Bruno Jacomy, which depicts two drawings by A.L. Kroeber. They represent the evolution of beings on the left, and man-made artifacts on the right.

Why do I blog this? Working on my notes about the gamepads genealogy projects. More to follow about the use of evolutionary metaphor for artifacts. There is a lot to dig and there’s a considerable amount of problems when using this analogy.

Source: played a little bit with Graphjam to describe some artifacts generally viewed as de rigueur in *teh future*

Of course, this is definitely not based on existing data (someone could actually select a big corpus of sources such as movies and ads and count the occurrences).

Readers interested in reseachers-designers collaboration may be interested in the Material Beliefs project:

“Rather than focusing on the outcomes of science and technology, Material Beliefs approaches research as an unfinished and ongoing set of practices, happening in laboratories and separate from public spaces.
The lab becomes a site for collaboration between scientists and engineers, designers, social scientists and members of the public. Alongside existing research activity such as collecting experimental data, writing academic papers and funding proposals, the collaborations lead to a parallel set of outcomes including interviews, brainstorming, drawing, photography, filming and discussion.

The collaborations lead to the design of prototypes, which embed these parallel outcomes into something tangible. These prototypes are exhibited, transforming emerging laboratory research into a platform that encourages a debate about the relationship between science and society.“

The project is summarized in a booklet that I received (thanks Tobie Kerridge!), which is full of interesting insights (see highlighted excerpts below), interviews and project descriptions (some of them have been shown last year at the Lift09 conference).

Why do I blog this? highly interesting summary of how design and scientific research can be combined. Surely some good material to reflect on in current meetings and talk about what is design research, what’s research for/in/about/by design in different contexts (design schools I work for and clients).

Reading this during the xmas vacations alongside with Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy by Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes and Yannick Barthe was very curious. It occurred to me that “material beliefs” was a sort of “hybrid forum” as defined by Callon et al.:

“forums because they are open spaces where groups can come together to discuss technical options involving the collective, hybrid because the groups involved and the spokespersons claiming to represent them are heterogeneous, including experts, politicians, technicians, and laypersons who consider themselves involved. They are also hybrid because the questions and problems taken up are addressed at different levels in a variety of domains, from ethics to economic and including physiology, nuclear physics, and electromagnetism.“

An hybrid forum where design would play an important contribution as shown by the Material Booklet introduction:

“The inspiration for this project came from the perception that the discipline of design, and more specifically the tactics employed in certain design research, might act on the many issues surrounding bioengineering technologies and public engagement as an integrating and illuminating force, by bringing very different people together and provoking debate.“

Reading the video-game press is a rare occasion for me but this interview of Shigeru Miyamoto a funny piece during breakfast. Why? simply because it’s interesting to hear about the design process (and HR) at Nintendo. Of course there are some elements that can be perceived as a bit cliché but I find intriguing to observe how they categorize their products, try to recruit people or how Myamoto defines his participation in projects.

The return of the Tablet craziness echoed with the perusal of “A bitter pill to swallow: the rise and fall of the tablet computer yesterday during my flight.

The article analyzes Tablet PCs as a “product failure”. Given that it was written in 2008, it states that it “no longer represented the future of mobile computing”, which is funny as people got to back it recently after rumors of an Apple “bigger ipod touch / e-book reader”. Yet another “recurring holy grail” as I discussed last year in my introduction to the Lift 2009 conference.

The entire article is a relevant read as it summarizes some good elements about innovation theories (diffusion, ANT…) and take into account the various technical component of Tablet PCs (pen computing, touchable interfaces, etc.). Some excerpts from the article that I found interesting to highlight:

“So why has the tablet computer not been a successful product? In theory, it had it all
(…)
Yet many of the factors mentioned in the case study as to why certain individual tablet computers had failed are issues which subsequently have been resolved. Clearly, the technical problems which plagued early products such as slow processor speeds and software reliability have been overcome. The compatibility of software means that applications for such computers are far greater in number and, while still not perfect, issues of functionality such as the reliability and accuracy of handwriting recognition software have been greatly improved. The manufacturers currently involved are not start-up enterprises lacking in financial support or backing; and the products are now part of large ranges of computing equipment from well-known and respected companies, and have received marketing support of a suitably high level.
(…)
it would appear from the technical factors that have been resolved that the only possible barriers left to the acceptance of tablet computers are social ones. The concept of “interpretive flexibility” proposes that different groups of people have different views on the extent to which a particular technology “works” for them. However “natural” a form of communication writing may appear to be, perhaps, as Jeff Hawkins believes, people don’t want to write on computer screens, and a pen on a large display is not a good user interface for a computer. The feel of pen on paper is a difficult one to surpass.
(…)
Another factor could involve the complexity of a personal computer, which is clearly accepted if not desired in a desktop PC. This may not be acceptable in such a portable format as the tablet PC. Slow start-up times, large size and weight, and the compromises inevitable in multifunctional products such as a full computer do not cross over well to situations in which the computer is held and carried around by the user, and constantly turned on and off.
(…)
It is possible that the semantic associations of tablet computers and the body language employed when using them is an issue. “

Why do I blog this? Because I believe that understanding the reasons of product failure is always fruitful and relevant as a starting point in a design process. Although I am not entirely sure about the reasons explained in the article, it’s interesting to see that some of the pain points have been fixed and that the return of Tablets can be explained by different factors: confidence renewed by rumors that an industrial actor such as Apple would go into the field (which may or may also lead to the return of big fishes such as Microsoft and HP), the merging of the e-book and tablet PC metaphor (while 5 years ago the two were a bit distinct), etc.

“More than 70 white pointers have been tagged by scientists is Western Australia in a world first trial that will send beach lifesavers a text message when one of the predators swims close to the Perth shoreline. Wildlife officials and scientists will also receive the text or email warning when any of the tagged sharks move to within 500m of metropolitan beaches. The text messages will be triggered less than two minutes after a shark swims over any one of 18 acoustic seabed receivers.
(…)
The study is aimed at unlocking the secrets of shark migration patterns and how they relate to attacks on humans.“

Why do I blog this? amazement towards the reconfiguration of “nature”. What’s next? a surfboard with shark-location awareness tools.

Interesting kitchen hack noticed last week in France. A stopper duct-taped to a pan lid to prevent people from burning themselves. Note the interesting use of grey duct-tape to make it more coherent color-wise. Quite elegant.

The short article “Research through Design in the Context of Teaching Urban Computing” by Andrew Vande Moere and Dan Hill (Street Computing Workshop co-located with OZCHI’09, Melbourne, Australia) is an interesting read for people interested in both urban computing and teaching in design schools.

The paper discusses the role of interaction design in the field of urban computing by presenting various student projects. Interestingly, it also provides relevant resources in terms of approaches to student learning in this specific context (”research by design – design by research“). The project started with this issue of data that will soon “emerge from the street” and then be used as a material for new sorts of urban services “which in turn challenges new opportunities for designers across disciplines”“.

(Picture of students work by Dan Hill)

To explore these aspects, the following assignments were proposed:

• Photo-annotation: “An exploratory student assignment focused on the creation of annotated and illustrated photo-based montages, starting from existing street scenes rather than imaginary future cities. The overlaid textual and graphical notations indicated data sources that might shortly be inherently available in such streets, while also imagining the then possible urban services as a result.” As interesting as it is, it seems that the scenario envisioned “proved less impressive, with many scenarios feeling under- developed, and sometimes inappropriate or irrelevant“.
• Design Fiction: “students were asked to construct speculative textual narratives through which their proposed design ideas would be articulated, contextualized and critiqued“
• Prototyping (as well as documentation of prototyping to reflect on the design decisions): “the development of low and high-fidelity prototypes installed on and around the intended site location, in order to encourage students to explore their design ideas by confronting them with the reactions and opinions of passers-by”

Why do I blog this? Being involved in teaching activities in various design schools and working with Fabien on a series of workshop about urban computing, it’s always refreshing to hear about how others work on these issues. The range of activities you can propose to students and workshop participants is very rich. This paper provides some good insights about them and, of course, on the topic of “what to do with the data”.

On that note, I am happy to see that the authors encountered the same issue we had in different workshops. A conclusion like:

“much of the perceived innovation of the proposed student projects rests with the relative novelty of embedding communication technology and alternative information displays in a real-world, urban context. Discovering a genuinely compelling application for such technological platforms, and then making it work, however, proved to be a more challenging endeavor for the students.“

…echoes a lot with similar experiences. Nevertheless, as they say, it does not diminish the educational value of this work.

Although I did not include the students’ projects in my notes, they’re quite interesting. Readers may also have a glance at Dan Hill’s blogpost about it.

Besides, I was also fascinated by the following element:

“despite the emerging sense that much data is already currently created ‘in the street’, the infrastructure anticipated by the urban computing vision is still largely non-existent, out- of-reach, or so nascent as to be inaccessible. [hence the use of their own sensor infrastructure (a group was however “stopped and requested to remove all sensing devices by a worried police patrol”)].“

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery — celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.”

Why do I blog this? collecting quotes about circulation of ideas in different cultural spheres is an interesting exercise (and somewhat related to the discussion about the very existence of “breakthrough/disruptive” innovation).