Innovation

Many Eyes: crowdsourcing + social computing + InfoViz

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After selling its PC division, IBM recently dropped the printer business. At the same time, they explore other paths such as the super-mediatized SL but also other interesting platforms. I have intrigued by Many Eyes. Internet News has a short discussion about it:

IBM (Quote) launched a new social computing site today called Many Eyes, which allows users to upload very large data sets, choose different visual representations for the data sets, and engage in an online discussion of what the data reveals. Each visualization will allow for an active discussion to take place and become a common area to share ideas, add insight and understand the visualization in a group setting. (...) an attempt to learn whether the principles of crowd-sourcing can be applied to the analysis of visualized data, in the hopes of generating broader and deeper analysis of data.

Why do I blog this? I find interesting the IBM attempts to try and test new applications in the domain of social computing.

User-centered design and LIFT

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Laurent and I have been interviewed by Fabio Sergio for the Convivio website (a European network for human-centred design of interactive technologies). What is interesting is that Fabio highlighted an aspect that we haven't really though about when organizing LIFT last year:

Fabio: I am not sure the term really makes sense in this context, but after experiencing LIFT 06 I’d be tempted to say that you applied a Human-Centered approach to the design of the conference last year, and all seems to hint you’re doing it again this year. Is this impression in any way correct?

Nicolas: Even though the human-centered approach nicely reflect what happened, it was actually not that intentional and this mindset emerged from how we thought a conference should be organized and from the type of event we would have liked to attend in the first place. Besides, when you start building a conference from scratch, you don’t have all the needed expertise so you do it with others.

Laurent: Actually, I feel LIFT06 was deeply human centered, but that was not really intentional, nor did I follow a method or something. It was more me trying to see how I could best accommodate the constraint I had: small budget (LIFT is auto-financed), short notice, small team, no previous experience in organizing events. So we tried to get help from the community as much as we could, as LIFT is a gathering more than anything else. We asked people to help us with some decisions and suggestions, outsourced a few things to the attendees, and after the event gathered precious feedback via a survey.

Why do I blog this? LIFT06 was really an occasion for us (Laurent, John, Steve and I) to learn how to organize an event based on a low-profile cross-pollinating approach. It's good when external persons highlight an aspect we haven't thought of (or maybe because we're so deeply into user-centered XXXX that we're shaped by this way of thinking?).

Street computing

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On of those thing I spot on a regular basis in occidental cities (I took that one in Geneva last week):Left on the street

Why do I blog this? this is IMHO, one of the most advanced incarnation of what happen when you have "street computing" so far. As a matter of fact, it's neither the intelligent sidewalk nor the über cool ambient displays. Once again, it's the dark side of computing. And for those who're wondering why I keep posting about this sort of things once in a while, I simply think it's good to ponder what I post here with the other "facets".

Turning a conference intro a creative event

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One of the innovation we're trying to bring forward at LIFT07 (7-8-9 February 2007 Geneva, Switzerland) is to have a more creative and interactive platform during the conference. This is going to be LIFT+, a concept intended as a bridge between creativity and pragmatism, allowing all possible forms of interaction, gathering individuals working freely on a specific topic - DIGITAL FRAGILITY – to evoke the overwhelming presence of connectivity in daily life. The whole point is to make the conference environment more creative so that people could participate and work out some ideas related to the concept of digital fragility. The website describes some of the project that we plan to have:

  • Plotter: Content and selected works will be printed (four plotters will output content uninterrupted) during the conference in the main entrance.
  • Double Photo: Build a tiny portrait-studio in the event’s premises, a small world (somewhat exterior to all the fuzz of such a conference) dedicated to shooting portraits.
  • Post-it Floor: You post literally – by writing on a post it - some words and its meaning. You’ll have to draw tehm with real pens
  • Snake Run: SnakeRun is an actual sized two-player snake game. Each participant controls a virtual snake that is projected on the playing field.
  • ...

Why do I blog this? as one the organizer, I can tell how stimulating it is to think about how to go beyond sit-and-listen-to-a-talk conference! We're trying to do our best to do something more innovative.

Creating a culture of design research

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I recently read "Design Research: Methods and Perspectives" (Brenda Laurel, Peter Lunenfeld, Eds.). One of the chapter that I found relevant for my work is the one about Creating a Culture of Design Research by Eric Zimmerman.

The author describes some of the strategies they took at the game development studio called "gameLab", pushing the boundaries of game companies and cultivating a "design culture". It's mostly based on 6 hints:

1. Create a space that encourages design research: "the office space we inhabit is filled to bursting with games, toys, and other play objects" 2. Build a design research library: " retail game titles, books and graphic novels, DVDs and videotapes, magazines (we have many subscriptions), board and card games, and toys of all kinds." 3. Attend and create events: "GameLab has attended films, exhibits, conferences, and other events connected to games, design, and popular culture / we also host our own design research affair" 4. Let them teach 5. Encourage side projects: "We encourage our staff to pursue personal projects." 6. Create contexts for experimentation: "from time to time we create opportunities for our staff to undertake experimental, noncommercial projects as a form of design research. "

Why do I blog this? I was looking for ideas of creative companies, especially in the game industry, I found those highlight relevant and fruitful for future projects. The idea of creating a proper environment, with a culture of design creativity is of interest to me (given that my role in various organization is too nurture designers).

Towards LIFT07

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Here we go! the LIFT07 website has been released! Some more information on the blog. In sum:

Join us next February to hear talks about the Web (Stephanie Hannon of Google, Pierre Chappaz, Sampo Karjalainen of Habbo Hotel, Lee Bryant, Colin Henderson or Daniel Kaplan), ubiquitous computing and the Internet of Things (Adam Greenfield, Anne Galloway, Daniela Cerqui, Julian Bleecker, Frédéric Kaplan), mobile technologies (Nathan Eagle, Jan Chipchase), interactive arts and design (Jan-Christoph Zoels, Régine Débatty, Christophe Guignard), entrepreneurship (Bernino Lind), Fair Economy (Paola Ghillani), Ethics (Beth Krasna), and many more topics like education, religion, the digital divide or technological overload.

An innovation we're working out this year to enhance the conference by a special event that will be a bridge between creativity and pragmatism, gathering individuals of various backgrounds to work freely on a specific topic: “Digital fragility“. Several interactive artifacts will be built on site, turning LIFT into a both intellectual and physical experience.

Registrations here.

User-centered design and vision-driven design

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In a UXMAtters article called "Designing Breakthrough Products: Going Where No User Has Gone Before", George Olsen explains how user-centered design (UCD) is of interest to new-product projects but often failed when designing breakthrough products. Some excerpts about this topic I found relevant:

When it comes to matters of aesthetics and fashion, UCD techniques offer little assistance. They can’t tell you how people will respond to products they’ve never seen before, products people have difficulty imagining [examples quoted: the internet, many examples of Web sites] (...) These were cases where the power of the designers’ vision created the demand, showing vision-driven design is sometimes the right approach. In such cases, the role of UCD is to help better the odds that a particular idea will resonate with a product’s target market and screen out those ideas that won’t. (...) UCD techniques have focused more on how to approach projects for which the problem space is fairly well understood—both by UX designers and by users. UCD techniques are best at helping us determine how to solve such problems—which is not to downplay the challenges of those sorts of projects. However, the situation is different for breakthrough products, where potential users often have difficulty imagining a solution to a problem. UCD techniques have some role to play, but often these sorts of projects require UX designers to make decisions more on the basis of their conceptual modeling skills and design experience than on direct user feedback.

And the continues by giving some meaningful advices to use UCD:

Show users something that’s technologically cool, and they’re likely to say they’d use it, even if they really wouldn’t. So, rather than asking users whether they’d use a product, it’s far better to ask them how they’d use it in their everyday lives. (...) When users can’t provide what seem to be realistic answers when asked how they might use a product, that’s a serious red flag. (...) During usability tests, it’s useful to ask people to describe your product “as if they were telling a friend about it”—not only to see whether they understand the product concept, but also to learn about bridging concepts that you can use to get people interested in using the product, even if they don’t fully grasp its potential. (...) as you’re gathering user feedback about a digital product, be sensitive to ways in which people might misunderstand or “misuse” what you’re building (...) While user-centered design normally warns us against designing for early adopters and power users, these are exactly the people whose needs you want to meet when developing a breakthrough product

Why do I blog this? because it gives some pertinent ideas that I could use in various projects regarding projects I have. Besides, the debate between UCD and vision-driven design is a recurrent discussion I have with colleagues, and I am trying to figure out where should I use UCD and when not...

From symbolic analysts to pronoiac meme-broker

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Quote from sci-fi novel Accelerando by Charles Stross:

Manfred is at the peak of his profession, which is essentially coming up with whacky but workable ideas and giving them to people who will make fortunes with them. He does this for free, gratis. In return, he has virtual immunity from the tyranny of cash; money is a symptom of poverty, after all, and Manfred never has to pay for anything. There are drawbacks however. Being a pronoiac meme-broker is a constant burn of a future shock - he has to assimilate more than a megabyte of text and several gigs of AV content every day just to stay current

Why do I blog this? This description seems to fit as the next step for "symbolic analysts" described by Robert Reich (in The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century). In this book, Reich developed a metaphor for the modern worker: the Symbolic Analyst, who identify, solve and broker problems by manipulating symbols/knowledge. Does Reich's definition will be expanded to Stross sci-fi description? using tools such as Amazon Mechanical Turk or innocentive-like places might be a first step towards this.

Provocative design process?

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Talking with Steve yesterday about Design, I was interested in the whole process. We compared the approach between research in my domain (cognitive sciences, hci) and user experience research/design. What I was mostly interested in was the main process: how from the same premices (roughly speaker: collecting data about users and their context) the design process evolves, how data are parsed/analyzed/presented and what's the use. Speaking about rigor and methodologies, he pointed me on this stunning description coming from Design Observer that I found revealing (and quite provocative to some extent):

"When I do a design project, I begin by listening carefully to you as you talk about your problem and read whatever background material I can find that relates to the issues you face. If you’re lucky, I have also accidentally acquired some firsthand experience with your situation. Somewhere along the way an idea for the design pops into my head from out of the blue. I can’t really explain that part; it’s like magic. Sometimes it even happens before you have a chance to tell me that much about your problem! Now, if it’s a good idea, I try to figure out some strategic justification for the solution so I can explain it to you without relying on good taste you may or may not have. Along the way, I may add some other ideas, either because you made me agree to do so at the outset, or because I’m not sure of the first idea. At any rate, in the earlier phases hopefully I will have gained your trust so that by this point you’re inclined to take my advice. I don’t have any clue how you’d go about proving that my advice is any good except that other people — at least the ones I’ve told you about — have taken my advice in the past and prospered. In other words, could you just sort of, you know...trust me?"

Why do I blog this? I am interested in how people do what they do, that's why

Unknown unknowns

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Interesting chat yesterday with Bill and Tamara about (among other stuff) "unknown unknowns" concept propelled by Donald Rumsfeld (taken from Slate compilation):

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don’t know we don’t know —Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Represented on a 2x2 matrix, it goes like that:

Why do I blog this? the concept is pertinent to Knowledge Management (and hence discovery) because it's the dimension that we're looking for: it's often through serendipity that implications are created/dots can be connected. Rumsfeld is refetring to the unforeseen contingencies of situations. And this, whatever one might think of Mr. Rumsfeld; it shows the guy's background, very well oriented towards "Decision Theory".

"a satellite for the stomach": interdisciplinarity in research

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Carefully reviewing the huge sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, I ran across this relevant article by Carrie Sturrock about "odd couples" in research: " odd couples doing extraordinary research: Gastroenterologists are working with aerospace engineers, geophysicists with pediatricians, radiologists with philosophers". Some excerpts:

The buzzword in higher education is "interdisciplinary," and at many research universities, professors are no longer judged primarily on how expert and rarefied their knowledge is in a particular area. Rather, they're expected to bridge fields to remain relevant in a world with increasingly complex problems -- from global warming to the spread of infectious disease -- that demand interdisciplinary solutions.

Stanford is among those at the forefront of this shift. It's pulling professors from their insular domains to work together in ways that could not only hatch profound new discoveries but also may create novel fields of study.

The articles also describes, how it can filter into the undergraduate education, how it can work out (not only buildings but also money) as well as the inherent difficulties; for instance:

Interdisciplinary work does have pitfalls if executed poorly, said Diana Rhoten, program director at the Social Science Research Council in New York. Some observers fear the movement could lead to an erosion of expertise in individual fields. And if it's going to succeed in the long run, universities must change how they reward young academics. Historically, promotion and tenure are based on individual projects, and if young professors take the risk of working with people outside their department, they need to be rewarded, she said.

Why do I blog this? working in interdisciplinary research, I am in a similar situation (working with a social sciences background in a computer science department).

Title mania

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The NYT has a piece about title-mania and what it might mean:

“group idea management director”? / “chief transformation officer” / “marketing evangelist” / “chief consumer officer” / “vice president for stakeholder relations” (...) Experts say the unconventional titles are intended to signal a realization by an advertiser or agency that in a rapidly changing marketing and media landscape, the time for the tried and true has come and gone. The titles serve the same purpose, in other words, as an agency announcing that it is opening a division specializing in e-mail marketing, getting into the field of branded entertainment or starting a blog. “The agency is saying: ‘We are contemporary. We get it,’ ” said Susan Friedman (...) The dot-com bust deflated some of the zest for nontraditional titles, but the ferment in the new-media field in the last year or two seems to have revived it.

The title trend is gaining popularity at the same time as the practice of giving agencies unusual names, to let potential clients know they take an unconventional approach to advertising. Some examples include Amalgamated, Anomaly, Droga5, Mother, Naked, Nitro, StrawberryFrog, Taxi and Zig.

“It’s a screening device,”

Why do I blog this? I am not that into unconventional titles (even thought I don't what can be my title judging my fuzzy hats) but I find the trend intriguing; it might reveal some more serious phenomenon.

Gartner Hype cycle 2006

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David pointed me on this instantiation of the Gartner Hype Cyle 2006:

Location-aware technologies seem to be in the end of the disillusionment phase; I agree with the disillusionment thing and hope that it's reaching the end with innovative and user-oriented potentialities...

why a concept car?

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According to the smart concept car presentation:

A concept is an abstract idea or notion and a concept car is exactly that, a theoretical prototypical perception. Concept cars are by design to analysis new designs, ideas and new shapes for the automobile. Concept cars always attract attention to themselves as well as their manufacturers. Concept cars are utilized to manufacture interests. These cars offer us a visual aid to the automotive future and it’s potential evolution. The innovative draft, unconventional options, and ground-breaking ideas allow the automobile to improve and encourage competition among the every expanding number of car manufactures. Speculation and rumors always surround the concept car theme. While concept vehicles are designed to inspire awe, others are just for fun. Concept cars come in different stages of presentation or completion.

Why do I blog this? looking at the new Citroën C-Métisse concept car, I was thinking about the roles of concept-car and then I ran across this definition by Smart; which I found interesting because it's given from the viewpoint of the company.

What I find curious here is that the car industry calls this "concept car" and do not sell it; it's only meant to show some new directions and to have an emulation between car-makers. Whereas the tech industry releases beta or early prototypes they sell as product but it often fails. There seems to be a very different stance between tech industries releasing gadgets and software and the car industry which release "concept products".

What's next? a beta car?

Innovation niches, beyond user-centered design

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In BW, an interesting article about next-to-be innovation niche: "What niche fields will contribute to tomorrow's great innovations? Ecology, gaming, and social networking, for starters" by Andrew Zolli. Some excerpts I found interesting below... first a statement:

Wander the halls of any of today's ever-multiplying corporate-innovation conferences, and you'll find experts playing to packed houses, evangelizing the power of user-driven design, the importance of ethnographic research, and the value of an internal "innovation culture." (...) Then what? To find the next deep wellsprings of innovation, you have to learn to listen to "weak signals"—fringe ideas today that will be common wisdom tomorrow.

It also addresses some innovation niches:

Videogames have begun to outgrow their entertainment context and find new uses as innovation discovery engines. That's because the agent-based models that drive games under the hood are becoming sophisticated enough to model real-world social, marketplace, and competitive scenarios. (...) Making the Invisible Visible: As companies such as Procter & Gamble (PG) and Target (TGT) increasingly look outside their walls for their next breakthrough, they must rely on specialized maps of their innovation networks. The fields of social network analysis and network cartography are rapidly maturing and allowing companies to visualize their customer base, their supply chain, and their field of influence.

New sony handheld

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Sony's Mylo (My Life Online) seems to be a cross-over between a Danger's Sidekick and a PSP. It's basically a new handheld device that has interesting capabilities as reported by BBC:

The pocked-sized gadget, called the mylo, will sell for about $350, according to the Associated Press. It has a small display and keyboard and is pitched at the young, mainstream market who use IM and are interested in making net telephone calls. Sony has formed a partnership with Skype for net phone calls and with Yahoo and Google for instant messaging. The mylo, which stands for "my life online", will only be available in the United States.

The so-called personal communicator doubles as a portable media player. It can play music, and screen photos and videos that are stored on its internal one gigabyte of flash memory or optional Memory Stick cards.

What about the PSP and Mylo? BBC's comment about that is also true:

It too has wi-fi, can play music and video, display photos and is technically capable of supporting instant messaging and internet telephone calls. But the wi-fi functionality has yet to be taken advantage of by the company. It is not clear if the mylo will be a rival to, or complementary to, the PSP.

Why do I blog this? yet another handheld, nice design, time will tell. With this sort of device (Swisscom release a sort-of similar product), I am always wondering about pricing, especially regarding IM but in this case; but if it can take advantage of Wifi, that might be easier (the next step is to find a free hotspot).

New interaction design institute in Europe: ciid

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Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design:

The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design is a new initiative happening in Denmark. The two key promoters of this initiative are Heather Martin and Simona Maschi.

The aim is to create a high profile design institute, which is small but dynamic and which interfaces with academia and industry. The institute will become an international setting for new thinking in design and technology in Copenhagen. The institute will encourage multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary learning, teaching and consulting in Interaction Design. We imagine that people both from the academic and the industrial world will come to Copenhagen to work with us on innovative products, services and technology for the future. The institute aims to become an international centre of excellence in interaction design and innovation by 201