Design process at Experientia

Read the english translation of an interesting article about Experientia from “The Marker. The description of their design work process, by Jan-Christoph Zoels is interesting:

"“We spend a lot of time thinking about future trends, about the enjoyment of the user, about his current AND future needs, about the obstacles to usability and how design can eliminate those. Usually, designers focus on their process of creation. We get out inspiration from the issues the end-user faces.”

We produce a prototype relatively quickly, to allow us to test and assess ideas, and to check on potential profitability. We’re very fast and interactive. This is unique in this market.”

Usually, the process of design starts with a thousand ideas drained and ends with the one product on the market. R&D departments or academia narrow down the one thousand ideas into a hundred business opportunities. Traditionally, they also eventually reduce them to five that then get developed and tested before one is put on the market. We believe that if you can prototype these ideas quickly and cheaply and test them with potential consumers, it will be much easier to make a decision on how to best move forward. Our added value is that we offer 60%-80% certainty that the final product will indeed sell, because it is already based on experience with the consumers.”"

The articles goes on with examples of their current projects (and insights they rely on for their projects in mobile services for instance). Why do I blog this? pure curiosity towards others' process.

Using Nokia model # as terrorist messages

Some of the curious codes used by terrorists are described in the Washington Post (in an article by Craig Whitlock):

"In September 2005, a British court convicted Andrew Rowe, a Jamaican convert to Islam, on terrorism charges after authorities found a secret code book in which he gave double meanings to the brand numbers of Nokia phones. Pretending to be a traveling cellphone salesman, Rowe would use "Nokia 3310" to refer to money, "Nokia 3410" to signal potential trouble from the police and "Nokia 3610" as code for weapons. Rowe received a 15-year prison sentence, even though prosecutors and police said his precise plans remained a mystery."

Why do I blog this? curiosity towards random facts about codes used by terrorists. A new usage of Nokia phone model names.

Extreme case of location-based services: parole offenders

In Accountabilities of Presence: Reframing Location-Based Systems, Troshynski, Lee and Dourish address the extreme case of paroled offenders tracked by GPS and describe lessons that can be drawn from this unconventional realm of location-based systems.Here is how the system works:

"Location information is continuously reported to a monitoring center through a direct link to a localized cellular telephone network. (...) The GPS system allows correctional officials to define geographic areas from which released and supervised offenders are prohibited, a condition of their parole (...) The GPS monitoring devices are able to trigger alarms or warning notices upon approach of any such previously defined prohibited zones."

Some excerpts about this that I found relevant to my research:

"the use of GPS tracking technologies are intended to maintain a series of spatial prohibitions for this population, to limit their mobility and enforce a series of proscriptions that are part of the conditions of their parole (...) In a dispute between MapQuest’s view and the evidence of the odometer, it is MapQuest that will generally “win. (...) it is the representation of the space provided to the technological system that matters, because, however inaccurate it may be, it is the system against which measurements are made. (...) This study illuminates the relationship between technology and the legibility of space, that is, the way in which spatial organization manifests itself for people who occupy and navigate it. (...) The participants in our study are primarily concerned with understanding how their movement appear to their Parole Officers. The question of course is how that understanding is developed. How does one learn how one is seen by another through the system? How does one learn, for example, how to account for the vagaries of GPS positioning or the problems of “drop-out”? (...) The offender tracking system is inherently asymmetric, at least in its current configuration, so that offenders are unable to see how their movements can be read as potentially appropriate or problematic except as a consequence of infractions, at which point the mediating technology may become a point of discussion. (...) The issue is not where one might be, and when; it is to whom one might be accountable for one’s presence, to whom, under what circumstances, and how one might be called to account. (...) accountabilities to different social groups are heterogeneous—the settings in which action is undertaken are rich and complex. (...) the heterogeneous nature of accountabilities does not presuppose any particular structure of everyday space but rather situates accountability within the context of the practices from which spatial organization emerges (...) the heterogeneous nature of accountabilities necessitates an orientation towards spatiality as an ongoing form of participation in social and cultural life."

Why do I blog this? The study of less common case of LBS is interesting a it leads to different issues and effectively help to reframe the perspective about their design and usage. I rather insisted on spatial consequences but the discussion about the temporal implications is important (charging time of the GPS unit, dynamic reconfiguration of places where the parole can or can't go...) as well as the GPS system as a device affixed to the body

Kid book about why owning a server

Via, I payed close attention to the screenshot capture of thisincredible book by Microsoft called "Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House? helping understand the Stay-At-Home Server". The book basically describes how a server "is a funny looking-box" who "makes friend with computers" which are generally in "boring offices" but sometimes can go to your house ("some servers aren't boring, they don't go in offices, they go in houses"), especially when "a mommy and a daddy loves each other very much the daddy wants to give the mommy a special gift". In essence, it describes the advantage of owning a server: sharing content, accessing it remotely, being regarded as a nerd, looking at blinking lights

Why do I blog this? ...

Surrounded by objects whose workings are a total mystery

In "Why Toys Shouldn't Work "Like Magic": Children's Technology and the Values of Construction and Control ", Mark Gross and Michael Eisenberg describes the tension between "ease of use" and user empowerment" that is at stake in kids artifact design. Starting from an interesting quote from physicist and science writerJeremy Bernstein, they how the design of toys (and the incorporation of technology in objects) raises the same set of issue. Here's the quote from Bernstein that I quite like:

"Most of us, myself included, are increasingly surrounded by objects that we use daily but whose workings are a total mystery to us. This thought struck me forcibly about a year ago. One day, for reasons I can no longer reconstruct, I was looking around my apartment when it suddenly occurred to me that it was full of objects I did not understand. A brief catalogue included my color television set, a battery-operated alarm watch, an electronic chess-playing machine, and a curious fountain pen that tells the time. Here I am, I thought, a scientist surrounded by domestic artifacts whose workings I don't understand.

The whole discussion, exemplified by toy project is about how technology seems like magic when we do not understand how it works. The authors then argue for intelligibility of use.

Why do I blog this? this discussion is quite common in design as it deals with issues such as transparency and glass/black box model of technologies.

Mark D. Gross, Michael Eisenberg, "Why Toys Shouldn't Work "Like Magic": Children's Technology and the Values of Construction and Control," digitel, pp. 25-32, The First IEEE International Workshop on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning (DIGITEL'07), 2007

Expressions of privacy

Privacy concerns spotted in Geneva over time:

And the answer as proposed by this huge sticker hat encourage people to pay attention to digital cameras:

Notes on "Hertzian Tales by Anthony Dunne

Reading "Hertzian Tales by Anthony Dunne was quite interesting as it echoed with some other readings/feelings/discussions. Although the book is maybe more suited to a designer audience (format/references), it's a must read for people involved in HCI or innovation/foresight. Some excerpts I found relevant to my work:

"... the Human Factors community who have developed a view of the electronic object, derived from computer science and cognitive psychology, that is extremely influential in the computer industry, for example Donald Norman's The Psychology of Everyday Things. A serious problem with the Human Factors approach though, in relation to this project is its uncritical acceptance of (...) the ideological legitimation of technology: "All problems whether of nature, human nature, or culture are seen as 'technical' problems capable of rational solution through the accumulation of objective knowledge, in the form of neutral or value-free observations and correlations..." (B. Waites) (...) The result, as the computer industry merges with other industries, is that the optimisation of the psychological fit between people and electronic technology, for which the industry strives, is spreading beyond the work environment to areas such as the home which have so far acted as a counterpoint to the harsh functionality of the workplace. When used in the home to mediate social relations, the conceptual models of efficient communication embodied in office equipment leave little room for the nuances and quirks on which communication outside the workplace relies so heavily. (...) design is always ideological. User-friendlyness helps conceal this fact. The values and ideas about life embodied in designed objects are not natural, objective or fixed, but man-made, artificial, and muteable (...) Current design approaches aim to optimize the experience of using an object, with the effect of constraining our experience to the prosaic (...) Although transparency might improve efficiency and performance, it limits the potential richness of our engagement with the emerging electronic environment and encourages unthinking assimilation of the ideologies embedded in electronic objects""

And this is from 1999, it definitely rings a bell as every discussion I have about entertainment, city of the future, mobile communication are often hijacked by people who want "city inhabitant to be effective" or "home cooking system to rely on maximum reliability and allow to communicate information in real time". So where does this research about the "post-optimal object" can be achieved? The conclusion offers a good summary:

"one result of this research is a toolbox of concepts and ideas for developing and communicating design proposals that explore fundamental issues about how we live amongst electronic objects. The most important elements of this approach are: going beyond optimisation to explore critical and aesthetic roles for electronic products; using estrangements to open the space between people and electronic products to discussion and criticism; designing alternative functions to draw attention to legal, cultural and social rules; exploiting the unique narrative possibilities offered by electronic products; raising awareness of the electromagnetic qualities of our environment; and developing forms of engagement that avoid being didactic and utopian"

Why do I blog this? Lots of interesting material there, especially the vocabulary ("user-unfriendlyness", "inhuman factors", "post-optimal object"), the richness of example and the aims. Certainly food for thoughts about critical design that I need to integrate in my work and connect to foresight research.

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets

Enrico pointed me to this curious empirical study of the effectiveness of aluminium foil helmets conducted by MIT people (Ali Rahimi, Ben Recht, Jason Taylor, Noah Vawter). Their point was to examine the efficacy of different aluminum helmets often employed by paranoids who want to protect themselves against invasive radio signals. They actually examined 3 configuration using a $250,000 network analyser.

Here are the results:

"we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason. (...) The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the US government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz. According to the FCC, These bands are supposedly reserved for ''radio location'' (ie, GPS), and other communications with satellites. The 2.6 Ghz band coincides with mobile phone technology. Though not affiliated by government, these bands are at the hands of multinational corporations. It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings."

Why do I blog this? found the project weird enough to be spotted, especially as it shows the irrationality of the aluminum craze.

Weather stations, weathervanes, cuckoo-clocks and ubiquitous computing

In a tiny street of Bern, Switzerland, I stumbled across that machine yesterday:

Why do I blog this? As it says in german, it's a "weather station" with time, temperature, pression, etc. Beyond the interface that I find amazingly retro-like, I find intriguing to have this sort of device on the street. It's actually an example of an ubiquitous computing device (so to say) that would make explicit invisible/implicit phenomena (such as temperature) to city dwellers. That machine is actually translating information about the state of the world to passers-by.

Of course, weather station comes from a long tradition (especially in Switzerland), with analog devices such as thermometers or manometers. Perhaps the oldest analog device would be the weathervane. I was thinking about this a sort of metaphor of information-pull device. Which is obviously opposed to information-push device (to which the ultimate stereotype would be the swiss cuckoo-clock as Frederic Kaplan stated in a talk I attended last week).

It's only two metaphors for how information can flow from source to "users": (a) Information Pull, where a user takes (or is given) the initiative to get it, (b) Information Push, where a supplier takes (or is given) the initiative to deliver it. It might be a bit limitative, what are the options in between? What can we learn from weathervane or cuckoo clock behavior? Is there any manual about designing cuckoo clock or weathervane?

Nintendo DS and ebooks

Some random facts about how ebooks might be relevant for the Nintendo DS: According to this press release:

"Darren Reid, author of the best selling Fantasy/Science Fictionfusion novel The Lord of Darkness and Shadow: The Chronicles of the Shadow Book One, today announces the release of a free ebooklibrary for Nintendo Wii, DS and Sony PS3. The free ebook librarycontains a collection of short stories, novels and novellas whichhave been optimized for use with the browsers in the Nintendo Wii and DS. "

An homebrew comic reader on the Nintendo DS by Francis Bonnin. It also seems that a french company is heading into that direction.

Notes from the person who described it:

"Actually reading the comic on my DS was a pleasent experience. With all of the display options, I had little-to-no trouble finding one that suited me. Everything worked as advertised, and I was enjoying an issue of The Books of Magic on my DS in no time. As expected, there’s a loss in “the experience,” due to the 256×192 resolution. Using anything that wasn’t the Dual Screen mode did not show enough of the page for me. Despite the limited screen space, text was legible, and the images appeared just as nicely as on the original pages."

Further away, Toshiba released an interesting DS-like e-book, using the same affordance:

Why do I blog this? gathering some thoughts about the topic for a client project (not really a research project). As shown in this blogpost, some projects about using the DS as a way to convey textual content are starting off.

Some limits to have ebooks on the Nintendo DS: - how to get the content: since Nintendo is less an less happy with homebrew developments/flash cards, what should be the best medium to convey texts? cartridges? download through the Internets/wifi? - screen size and resolution are peculiar, what sort of content would be appropriate? - the DS has incredible wifi capabilities (mostly in terms of practices and how people gather to play together), what would that mean for ebook applications? There might be great opportunities to design innovative applications based on ebook reading/educational applications. - Same with annotation capabilities with the pen - ...

"design" at the WEF in Davos

The IHT reports on a discussion about design at the WEF last week in Davos. It lists some of the themes of interest there:

"Alice Rawsthorn: designers will devote more time and energy to the underprivileged majority, the 90 percent of the world's population who can't afford basic products and services. (...) Another theme was dematerialization. Rather than creating new things, designers will also strive to make existing products disappear, often by integrating them into digital devices (...) guiltless consumption. At a time when none of us can ignore the environmental and ethical consequences of the things we buy, an essential element of "good design" is feeling free from guilt about how they were designed, made, sold and will eventually be disposed of.

Paola Antonelli: 3D printing, the extraordinarily precise rapid manufacturing processes now being developed by companies like Materialise in Belgium. (...) yearning for privacy - or Existenzmaximum, as she calls it - will be an increasingly important issue for designers in the future. (...) the potential for design to translate advances in science and technology into things we need or want. Recent developments in bioengineering and the cognitive sciences have tremendous potential, but need to be applied intelligently

Hilary Cottam: "design as a political force - the ways in which a design approach has real power to address the big social issues of our time." She advocated using design to encourage people to change their behavior. (...) to develop new ways of tackling social problems through mass collaboration (...) the role of design in policy making, arguing that designers are better equipped than politicians to understand the ambiguities and contradictions of daily life.

John Maeda: the moral responsibility of designers. He stressed the importance of transparency in design, and of extending the participatory "open source" development process now popular in software design to other sector (...) simplicity, and its importance at a time when our lives are increasingly complicated, often unnecessarily so (...) the importance of appreciating the beauty of the everyday objects and places that are often taken for granted.

Why do I blog this some interesting trends and insight spotted there, although very general. It sorts of show where the emphasis is located in this crowd (no one mentioned critical design?).

Unconventional solution to a conventional problem

Just discovered this new "jugadu" term reading this article:

"'jugad'-street slang for the distinctly Indian ability to find a way around the system. And in this case, as ironies go, the origin of the word that has come to define the can-do attitude of an entire country lies in a makeshift vehicle popular in rural India.

Literally, 'jugad' is the colloquial name for water pump sets and a wooden cart miraculously assembled by any local carpenter into a mode of transportation that runs on diesel fuel. The vehicles are not recognised as 'cars' by the official transport authorities and so escape paying road tax. They are said to manage 40 km per hour and cost about Rs 40,000 to manufacture. No wonder then that 'jugadu' - a word that may have once had the hint of vice - has today come to be the ultimate compliment for the ingenuity of the ordinary Indian.

Basically, the word means finding an unconventional solution to a conventional problem. Whether it is using washing machines to churn butter, spreading out stacks of rice and hay on highways for some natural threshing by passing tracks, drawing electricity from overhead wires or magically converting the rim of a cycle wheel into a homespun dish antenna, it's all about never taking no for an answer."

Why do I blog this? yet another exemplification of people's creativity that has profound design implications. I also find intriguing the sounds of that term, especially when you think about this other practice called "chindogu".

Seamful design and cell phone reception bars

Different approaches have been developed under the "seamful design" term. Chalmers, McColl and Bell indeed proposes to reveal seams and technology limites to empower users. In a paper from Eurowearable in 2005, they give an example: "By revealing such seams, users can better understand when and where to use digital resources such as network connectivity—and when not to—as they go about their work and use our systems in their ways". A common example is the one of cell phone reception bars that allows people to adjust their behavior (one bar = SMS, 3-4 bars = voice communication, 1-2 bars = assumptions that the communication quality would be bad).

But what does those reception bars actually mean? I cannot remember how I ran across this Metafilter discussion about "this topic. Some excerpts:

"They don't mean much of anything, it turns out.

I don't know what they're displaying for GSM, but probably what they're displaying is the signal strength. For CDMA (which is what I know about) that's what they display, but in CDMA the signal strength is highly deceptive because it doesn't inform you of what the noise floor is.

The technical term is "EC/I0" (pronounced "ee-see-over-eye-naught") and it refers to the amount of the signal which is usable. In CDMA you can have strong signal (4 bars) and lousy EC/I0 and not be able to carry a call, and you can have low signal (zero bars) and excellent EC/I0 and carry a call fine. (...) Even worse... there is no industry standard for what "one bar" or "two bars" means. None. Everyone just sort of sets some thresholds, and even from the same manufacturer it can change from phone model to phone model. (...) The GSM standard does not specify the meaning of the signal bars on your handset (correctly known as the "signal quality estimate"). Each manufacturer uses their own formula to work out how many bars you see. This varies not only between phone makers, but also between models, and between firmware versions of the same model. In short, you can't compare phones using signal bars. You *can* - to a limited extent - compare the signal strength in different locations using the same phone, but even that isn't reliable."

Why do I blog this? this is an interesting example of how seamful design is hard to put in place. However, it would be intriguing to have behavioral adjustments (such as the one we often see with reception bars) even with reception bars that do not mean anything. As if the design itself was more important that the meaning of the information represented.

Paul Dourish on reflective HCI

Been reading this paper from Paul Dourish tonight in the train: "Seeing Like an Interface" (a paper he presented at OzCHI 2007). The author concluded about "the burgeoning interest in a reflective approach to HCI" that would be concerned by the "critical dimensions of design". He basically describes technologies such as computers as "an effective site" at which to engage in critical engagements about the cultural values and assumptions. What does that mean for the everyday researcher/practitioner? Here are some hints described in the paper:

"Reflective HCI suggests an approach to interaction design in which cultural assumptions and values play as important a role as traditional usability metrics both as measures of success and as elements of the design process. (...) The discipline of HCI has evolved considerably over several decades, but so too have computer systems themselves. What I want to draw attention to here is not simply the fact that computers have become faster, smaller, and more powerful as technological artifacts, but that they have emerged as cultural objects in a radically different way than they did before. They are elements of the landscape of daily life in many different forms. Digital devices are embedded in our cultural and social imagination in very different ways than they were when HCI was emerging. To the extent that our discipline thinks not simply about user interface design but about interactions between humans and computers, these transformations suggest that we need to look more broadly for theoretical perspectives that help us understand how computation manifests itself as a cultural object"

Why do I blog this? surely some elements to be connected with what Anthony Dunne described in Hertzian tales about "critical design" (although the two visions are not the same). On a more general level, I find interesting to see when different disciplines (such as human-computer interaction or design) come-up with close concepts.

What is then interesting for the layman (for example when I am working with game designers on gestural interfaces usage for the Nintendo Wii) is to see how these ideas can be turned into (pragmatic) actions. In other words, what would "reflective HCI" brings to the table when I am surrounded by level designers, scenario planners, the production manager and the lead coder? Well, it's certainly different from showing graphics about usability issues (that bloody tester missed the door 14 times on that level!) but it does bring questions, insights, discussions that sometimes allow to reconsider problems and results from tests/observations/ethnographic accounts of playtests.

Graffiti removal selectivity

Seen in Lyon, France last week:

Some graffitis removed, some other still there. How to establish a hierarchy of what should be removed? Is it the cost to remove big graffitis? the possibly-offensive content?

It gives an intriguing flavor of selectivity anyway. Stains are always curious as they are traces of activities and decisions taken by people.

Embracing innovation

In this NYT piece called "The Risk of Innovation: Will Anyone Embrace It?", G. Pascal Zachary deals with interesting issues regarding innovation. Some excerpts:

"Even today, when adding video to a phone is a trivial cost, consumers may rebel. Video-conferencing often remains an activity forced on people by their employers. Resistance to technology is an omnipresent risk for every innovator. Even a device as fabulously freeing as the personal computer struck some people as an abomination (...) Adaptable humans usually trade one technology for another, rather than reject any and all. To be accepted, innovations must deliver benefits — enough benefits to make change worthwhile. (...) FOR technological innovators, the cash register can ring either way. They may achieve a smash-hit breakthrough, or simply make a slight improvement in a technology that humans already feel comfortable with. Most innovators no longer even try to predict human reactions to their creations. Henry Kressel, a partner at Warburg Pincus and a co-author of “Competing for the Future: How Digital Innovations Are Changing the World,” says, “You throw technologies into the market and see what sticks.” The hope is that passionate “early adopters” will blaze a path toward mass acceptance of a new technology. Yet the truth is that no one can tell in advance which innovations people will adapt to and which will become the next example of the Picturephone."

Why do I blog this? some general-and-controversial thoughts about tech/usage foresight.

How to kill an elephant path

The last step of a neverending story (see previous episode here and when it all started). The tagline for this would be "how to kill a an unofficial route, a path that is formed in space by people making their own shortcuts“ July 2006:

February 2007:

January 2008:

(the last picture shows the sign that say "please take care of the lawn, don't cross it please")

Why do I blog this? this is one of the most interesting aspect of urban life, how people's intents materialize ('desire lines' as one of the comment on my Flickr picture says) and how this is prevented by others forces. In this case, it's "to protect the lawn", which is a quite intriguing reason.

In addition, other things to think about: what's more efficient? the barriers or the warning sign? why isn't there any other elephant path starting on the other side (where there is no sign)? is it because you just get out of the building and it's acceptable to take a longer path?

Putting Space in Its Proper Place

Morning read in the train: "Toward a Geography of a World Without Maps: Lessons from Ptolemy and Postal Codes" by Michael R. Curry. In this paper, the author describes the implicit and widely accepted history of space:

"the world (and, indeed, the universe) was, once upon a time, seen as vast, too vast to be grasped in its entirety. While knowledge of the world was limited to knowledge of the local, the local was imagined as situated within this vastness. Through what might best be described as an evolutionary process, people gained an increasing knowledge of the local, of places, but began, too, to be able to situate those places within an increasingly comprehensible whole, which came to be called (but had always been) ‘‘space.’’ By the time of Ptolemy, a sophisticated—and familiar—geographical ontology had developed, wherein there was a hierarchy from place to region to space and wherein knowledge of places tended to be tinged with subjectivity, while that of space became increasingly amenable to more rigorous, mathematical understanding. On this view, the situation today, where geographic information systems, global positioning systems, remote surveillance systems, and related technologies are increasingly parts of everyday life, is continuous with that past, and is in a sense an expected step in that evolutionary process. "

And then shows us the flip side of the coin, describing how this is a "telic fantasy" using the postal code example:

"there are good reasons for believing that a more empirically grounded account of the relationship between the concepts of space and of place will indicate that that relationship has been, and remains, far more messy than on the ‘‘standard’’ account. (...) such an analysis will show that prior to the invention of written maps and lists, the means for the storage of information were far too feeble to underpin anything resembling the homogeneous and metrical idea of space that we find in, say, Ptolemy; ‘‘space’’ was, in fact, invented rather late in the day, in societies that offered the appropriate affordances. (...) People do not, on the whole, walk around with anything that could seriously be termed ‘‘maps’’ in their heads, and to attempt to resuscitate that idea by redefining maps as ‘‘sets of directions’’ (to take just one example) is to be dishonest."

Why do I blog this? I am more and more interested in human geography and the way they deal with space and the individual as it is far more interesting than what has been done in psychology recently. Furthermore, there are important conclusions to be drawn for ubiquitous/urban computing as it describes people's representation of space and place.

Curry, M. R. 2005: Toward a geography of a world without maps: lessons from Ptolemy and postal codes . Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95, 680-691

Old-schoold handheld electronic games

What does handheld electronic game such as Parker Brother's Split Second can teach us? The curious box/enclosure? the super straight select-start-4-arrows buttons? the rockin' analogic screen? the okay-for left-handed and okay for right-handed design? the symmetry of the system with sound on one part and display on the other?

Maybe it's the whole experience or even the expectations back in the days, when playing with very near 3x15 red matrix was like being immersed in Tron. What impresses me now is the "one-device = one game/purpose" equation. The interface was so rough and basic that you could only play one sort of game. It was even crazier with Nintendo handheld a la Donkey Kong since part of the level design was DRAWN and PRINTED on the screen. Would there still be devices like this? Or only converged phones?

Very curiously, this sort of electronic games have always received a very low interest from both thinkers and academics. In the book "Electronic Plastic (see also here), the authors of that nice compendium state how "the recourse to supposedly primitive games leads us back to the creative source of the contemporary entertainment revolution" and that these game provide as much fun as recent Sony or Nintendo platforms.

The interface transition of common artifacts

Recently read L'Age du Plip by Bruno Jacomy, a french book about stories concerning the evolution of techniques. The book haven't been translated in english but there are some interesting aspects I wanted to report here. Using different examples of techniques, the author describes different rules of technical innovations The first example is about the "plip", the remote keyless system to access automobiles. One of these device, invented by Paul Lipschutz received the name "plip". Jacomy finds interesting to describe "the fact that there is a mutual coexistence in drivers' pockets, of 2 distinct objects with the same function" (to open up doors and start off the engine). According to him, it shows that we're in a transitory phase with: the physical key made of metal with weird shapes and the "plip", that small box full of electronics. He also take two other examples a different transitory phase from sailing ships to steam ships (with a co-existence of both steam engines and sails) or the use of crank to start engines in old cars. In these cases, it took 50 years for the innovation (steam instead of sail, removal of the crank) to be fully deployed.

The second case study he observes is the difference between cook handles depending on their use of gas or electricity. To be started gas handles need to be turned counter-clockwise (to the left) and electric handles do not have standards, and generally need to be turned clockwise (to the right). The author shows that this is caused by the two different "cultures" behind the design of such instruments. Gas are fluids, and as every other liquids, one open handles by turning it to the left whereas electricity comes from a different culture in which things has been derived from devices employed to take measures (such as voltmeter). The modifications of voltage for example was measured by a small increase that would go clockwise (because of the resemblance of the measuring device and a clock). Then, when people had to design electrical appliances, they figured out that it would be better if an increase was translated by a clockwise movement. Things get complicated when the interface that evolved from two different culture can be found in the same cooking device (gas and electricity). Jacomy uses this as a second law in which he shows that the confluence between two techniques will have three phases: the two ignore themselves, then they coexist, then one win over the other.

We're in the midst of such a situation with the examples below: a telephone, a computer keyboard and... a lovely-but-dusty minitel.

This has been caused by two different technical cultures: calculators (started with Felt and Tarrant's Comptometer) and telephone keypad. The minitel is the most interesting because it's a sort-of computer designed with the phone interface culture. The author also mentions how ATM use both interface.

Why do I blog this? few notes and thoughts about that book (which have more to offer!). I find interesting this timescale dimension that also give some interesting elements to consider in terms of foresight issues and the evolution of artifacts. Moreover, the notion of "design culture" who set standards is also important, especially when things start to mix because of the convergence between manufactures objects. Surely material and food for thoughts for a near future laboratory pamphlet.