"Design in the age of intelligent maps"

(Maps of optic fiber routes in an urban environment taken from Jef Huang's talk at the world congress of architecture)

Meanwhile, on the urban computing front, Adobe Think Tank featured an insightful article by Karzys Varnelis and Leah Meisterlin entitled "The invisible city: Design in the age of intelligent maps". It described how today's maps are not just about spatial relationships but rather about revealing invisible information ("previously hidden in spreadsheets and databases") through new sorts of representation.

As the authors say, maps are now so ubiquitous that they're a key component of network culture: we use map on the web, on mobile, in car GPS, etc. and even on the street.

Concerning the implications:

"...is not just a new representation of the city that emerges out of this data; its a new hybrid city, part physical texture and part data-driven map. (...) For designers, the implications are clear. As maps become richer, more complicated, and less predictable, cartography becomes less a matter of convention and more a matter of invention. Our age of intelligent maps demands intelligent map design (...) Instead of seeing ourselves as part of the city fabric, inhabiting a three-dimensional urban condition, we dwell in a permanent out-of-body experience, displaced from our own locations, seeing ourselves as moving dots or pins on a map. In doing so, we experience ourselves less as individuals and more as data moving along a planetary network, composed of both telematic circuits and the physical pathways of the global city. (...) [and also some critical perspectives:] If ubiquitous mapping systems are a powerful new tool, uncritical reliance on them can easily lead users astray. (...) it is also disappointing—and perhaps indicative of where Google is ultimately going in all this—to observe that layers of content for ubiquitous mapping applications remain so tied to traditional datasets"

(Picture of the book "Paris ville invisible" by Bruno Latour which deals with this issue)

So what can be done? how to design meaningful interactions and using alternative datasets? Varnelis an Meisterlin describe how "interventionist mapping" has started to gain some interest recently, mentionning examples like Stamen's INdigital Wireless E9-1-1 or Justice Mapping Center and Columbia University's Spatial Information Design Lab's series of maps depicting the Million Dollar Blocks. These projects, by showing relationships and patterns can become more than expository: they allow to ask questions, draw conclusions and help to mobilize people politically.

And while maps's role evolve, so does our relationship to the spatial environment

"In the past, maps existed as much to mark out the unknown, to slowly fill in areas blank except perhaps for the legend "here be monsters," as to represent the known territory of the city. Today, however, with polar exploration, mountain climbing, and even space travel, becoming increasingly banal amusements instead of feats of daring exploration, maps are shifting toward a new relationship between the known and the unknown. (...) maps as navigational tools for the physical traversal of space are supplanted by intelligent maps for navigating a contemporary space in which the physical becomes a layer of data in a global informational space (...) Much of this world is invisible and it is the task of the designer to help us understand it."

Why do I blog this? Accumulating material for a near future laboratory pamphlet about urbain comuting. The article reads as an interesting follow-up to Urban Computing and Its discontent by Adam Greenfield and Mark Shepard, since it looks at the same boundary object through another perspective.

Perusing this also made me think about what Dan Hill recently described about his position at Arup (and some examples of what is of interest to him):

"I'm currently exploring a few ideas in particular, such as extrapolating and aggregating Building Information Modelling (BIM) techniques up to the city level - to form a kind of 'City Information Modelling' (CIM). Taken with the feedback from urban informatics, this could then extend the design process out over the true life-cycle of the project, including inhabited and adapted, which would mean a four-dimensional modelling process taking into account the living city, or a '4D Urbanism'. You'll note these concepts are still a bit slippery, to say the least."

Real-time information about electricity production

A basic instance of revealing the invisible through technology (urban computing!?). These simple electronic displays give some information about the production of electricity by solar panels located on this parking lot rooftop. Seen in Lyon, France yesterday, it actually represents the real-time production (percentage), the cumulated production since 2005 and the equivalent of saved greenhouse gas.

Superposition of urban layers

Some cities are amazingly good at keeping the different layers which constitute the "urban envelope". In this example taken from Zürich last week, remnants from an old building have been kept to create a colorful playground. Where other cultures/regulation would tear it down, the city of Zürich amazingly allow this to happen, preserving a sense of different times in the environment.

Different sorts of touch-screen technologies

An interesting short description of common touch-screen technologies on by AP described by Peter Svensson:

• " Resistive (Palm Treos, HTC phones and the Samsung Instinct.): Two layers of clear conductive material lie on top of the display. Pressing them together makes current flow between them. Resistive displays are cheap and can be used with a simple plastic or metal stylus, but are prone to damage because the sensor is on top of the display.
• Projected capacitive (Apple iPhone and the LG Prada): this touch sensor can lie underneath a protective sheet of glass, making it more durable. The mere proximity of a finger or other object of similar size changes the electrical properties of the sensor's conducting layers, which is why the iPhone is so good at sensing light touches and quick swipes. Projected capacitive sensors can register more than one touch at a time.
• Surface capacitive (ATM, kiosks): Like resistive screens, they usually need recalibration, and because they're mounted on top of the display glass, they're prone to damage and wear.
• Surface acoustic wave (ATM, large screens): these touch screens vibrate very rapidly. Sensors pick up how the touch of a finger affects those vibrations. The screens can be crisp and clear, but the sensor can't be sealed against the elements."

Why do I blog this? a quick and dirty overview only to be aware of the field.

The nature of prototypes in design

In the last TOCHI issue, there is this paper called The anatomy of prototypes: Prototypes as filters, prototypes as manifestations of design ideas by Lim, Stolterman and Josh Tenenberg which deals with prototypes in HCI and design. They state how the role of prototype is well known but there's a lack of knowledge concerning the "fundamental nature of prototypes". They subsequently try to provide an "anatomy of prototypes as a framework for prototype conceptualization". Some excerpts I found relevant:

"we identify an initial set of design aspects that a prototype might exhibit. We call these aspects filtering dimensions. We use the term filter, since by selecting aspects of a design idea, the designer focuses on particular regions within an imagined or possible design space. (...) The Principles of Prototyping and the Anatomy of Prototypes

Fundamental prototyping principle: Prototyping is an activity with the purpose of creating a manifestation that, in its simplest form, filters the qualities in which designers are interested, without distorting the understanding of the whole.

Economic principle of prototyping: The best prototype is one that, in the simplest and the most efficient way, makes the possibilities and limitations of a design idea visible and measurable.

Anatomy of prototypes: Prototypes are filters that traverse a design space and are manifestations of design ideas that concretize and externalize conceptual ideas."

Also about the quality of a "good" prototype:

"...can only be understood in relation to the specific purpose of the design process and to the specific issue that a designer is trying to explore, evaluate, or understand. The purposes for which prototypes are used can be broadly categorized into the following areas: (1) evaluation and testing; (2) the understanding of user experience, needs, and values; (3) idea generation; and (4) communication among designers. These categories are not meant to be mutually exclusive, and any one prototype can be used for multiple purposes."

Why do I blog this? documenting some aspects of design for project discussion with a client in the video game industry. The notion of prototype is intriguing in that field and would benefit a bit from design thinking.

Hacking and pervasive computing

This summer issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing is especially focused on hacking and its role in the field of pervasive/ubiquitous computing. As Roy Want, puts it into his editorial introduction, hacking can play a powerful role in pervasive computing as it can inspire "thought processes and reduce the time it takes to create a viable prototype. This process can take many forms: taking a device that performs one function and tweaking it so that it makes another, gathering unrelated components and commercial products to be repurposed or rapid prototyping. In their introduction, the guest editors also highlight how "The advent of the Web along with the rise of open source communities have brought a resurgence in hacking" along with a good bunch of websites about this topic.

The issue covers examples about the Nintendo Wii, Chumby, bluetooth in cell phones among other things, as well as a more theoretical description of how hacking is valuable for user innovation by Eric von Hippel and Joseph A. Paradiso. In this paper, they show how the hacker is a “lead user” who reinvents and modifies products to better achieve his or her own needs.

Why do I blog this? simply looking at how the recent evolution of object hacking scene pervades the academic/engineering field.

While visiting a glass dump

... made me thing of Person, M. & Shanks, M. Theatre/Archaeology, London: Routledge (2001):

"The archaeological experience of ruin, decay and site formation processes reveals something vital about social reality, but something which is usually disavowed. Decay and ruin reveal the symmetry of people and things. They dissolve the absolute distinction between people and the object world. This is why we can so cherish the ruined and fragmented past"

Why do I blog this? Visiting this glass dump last week made me think about the intricate relationship between waste, detritus and how we use things.... which often leads to an intriguing typology of places where we drop detritus like the one above. Generally hidden from public view, it sometimes resurface. Beyond my fascination towards garbage, it's intriguing to note the value of trashs described by Person and Shanks's quote.

"A Social Dimension for Digital Architectural Practice" by Chris Speed

Chris Speed's PhD thesis seems very relevant for people interested in architecture and digital technologies, and more specifically the notion of "social navigation":

"Through a literature review of the introduction and development of digital technologies to architectural practice, the thesis identifies the inappropriate persistence of a number of overarching concepts informing architectural practice. In a review of the emergence and growth of ‘human geography’ it elaborates on the concept of the social production of space, which it relates to an analysis of emerging social navigation technologies. In so doing the thesis prepares the way for an integration of socially aware architecture with the opportunities offered by social computing."

As the author describes in his conclusion, the thesis:

"...adressed the research question by analysing how digital architecture had positioned itself without a social agenda through its adoption of a split model for time and space. It went on to discuss the way in which human geography, through an identification of social agency in the production of space, has demonstrated how a combined approach supports many new models for understanding experience. It introduced social navigation as a contemporary form of social computing that offers the methodological techniques for supporting the construction of digital architecture. The author's own art and design practice was reflected upon, as it was through this that a methodology was developed and applied to the large-scale design project, and evaluated through a substantial ethnographic study. "

What's interesting in his work is the different projects he designed to illustrate his theoretical claims. One my favorite is certainly the Random Lift button that I already mentioned here.

(Photo by Chris Speed)

Why do I blog this? I only had a glance to the whole thing because there's a lot of material in there but it looks like an impressive attempts to put together different theoretical bodies and design projects in a very coherent and relevant way to address the relationship between digital and physical space.

Touch interface with or without RFID

Where the first picture only requires to gently caress the button, the second is strikingly more aggressive and requires the presence of an RFID tag to open up the access. In the first case, the symbol depicted is the hand, the situation is more complex in the second one with this non-universal pictogram. Besides, there is also this very non-user-centered number on a white sticker that reveals a different interaction "flavor". Finally, the concrete wall also reveals the different context definitely more oriented towards car drivers who want to enter a parking lot.

Folded map on the bike

A nicely folded map for a careful bike-rider? At first glance, its looks as if the owner folded a map intelligently to find his/her way in the city. But the same map is on every bike around and if you read it you notice that it's a warning about the upcoming removal of the bike. An interesting signal of map usage with bikes anyway. Seen in Zürich, Switzerland this week.

Expliciting the invisible: magnetic movie and pollstream

Two interesting projects that I ran across recently and which aims at making invisible phenomena more explicit: Magnetic movie b Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt) shot at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, California, USA.:

"In Magnetic Movie, Semiconductor have taken the magnificent scientific visualisations of the sun and solar winds conducted at the Space Sciences Laboratory and Semiconducted them (...) In 1744 a simple experiment was conducted in Sweden to reproduce the underlying cause of the Aurora Borealis in a laboratory, what we would now think of as a room. A small hole in a shade "the size of a large pea" let through a ray of sunlight that then was refracted through a prism. The small patch of light broken into a spectrum of colours then traveled through a medium of turbulent air directly above a warmed glass of aquavit. (...) scientists at the SSL at University of California in Berkeley theoretically model, conduct experiments, and develop instruments to study the magnetic fields of the sun. They study them deep inside the sun's core, their effect on the looping of the corona flaring above its surface (the photosphere, that lights our days), and the solar winds of charged particles that interact with the earth's own magnetic field, creating the auroral displays at the poles. Magnetic Movie is the aquavit, something not precisely scientific but grants us an uncanny experience of geophysical and cosmological forces."

The Pollstream series

"Pollstream is a collection of ideas, forms and images that explore man-made clouds. We are fascinated by clouds because of their movement, and because of their natural undefined form - which makes them difficult to be fixed in time. Across a number of projects, clouds are used as a visual metaphor to aestheticise emissions and chemical toxins. (...) This project is an intervention in environmental ethics. It creates a series of environments and processes to monitor and localise pollution at the very same time that it is produced. (...) Pollstream, using visual, kinetic and sonic technologies, undermines these typical defences of disengagement by speeding up the normal time it takes for our actions in and on the environment to have consequences. Across a number of projects, a sense of constant rather than delayed feedback is created. Thus, in its final form, color coded communal information is projected onto the vapor of a power plant that is visible to all residents. The movement of the green vapor emission changes size to show levels of energy being consumed at any given time; the chimney becomes a community measuring tape, a shared canvas. Nuage Vert is the ultimate aesthetisation of pollution, while seeking to draw critical attention to it. "

Why do I blog this? two "pervasive art" projects that I've found intriguing recently, when looking for documentation before preparing the talk I gave last week in Torino. Can this be part of the "4D urbanism" described by Dan Hill?

Beyond the aesthetic of these projects I am often amazed by how recurring is the visualization of pollution in new media project related to ubicomp. Of course there's a growing concern about the environment but it's interesting to see how the locus of representation is geared toward this topic.

Bottom-up urban practice: tune your city

Just saw that in a the newspaper this morning, there seems to be a guy in town who's attaching those little ashtray in various places because he's fed up of people throwing paper and cigarettes on the ground. A bottom-up urban fux of some sort if you want.

Public telephones and public space culture

URBAN TRACES - TELEPHONE is a project I recently stumbled acrosss, which examines public phones in different countries. Alina Tudor & Răzvan Neagoe sees public phones as a interesting sign of daily urban life that reveal the relationship between certain cultures and public space:

"We start up from the idea that the identity cannot be anything else but the object of a horizontal analysis and can’t be simply defined as an urban artefact. It represents a cultural sign as long as the virulent changes affecting all the social structures register as a natural answer a form of resistance over the all these mutations.

TEL. continues the series of unconventional spaces as part of the Urban Traces project. Following the interactive “Up in the flat there’s a house” and “Courier” projects, this one brings in front a small but… sizeable space, which is ignored. We have chosen the public phone because it is getting sick of daily urban life syndrome. It has become a place for passers by to have rest, a shelter to hide from the rain… it is vandalised and almost none of the phone booths has the door. This project is a warning sign regarding the collective indifference that is representative for big cities."

An example from this project:

This project is also part of a "Bank of images", that is to say a collection of public telephones from different countries and regions of the world:

"The Bank of images project has the intention to collect a series of photographs of public phones searching to offer them a new identity. Images that are representing different telephones and phone booths used accordingly to any other destination besides their primary one, but also the public phones which are placed in different contexts and thus acquiring a double sense in relation to that place are expected."

Why do I blog this? Public telephone (with or without phones) is definitely a urban signal I am always looking at when visiting a city. A topic we covered in Sliding Friction as well. What I find intriguing in that project is the idea of thinking how they can reveal the state of public space cultures in modern societies. Other public services can also be relevant to observe, such as public toilets, benches or traffic lights.

Urban computing (behind the scene)

A recurring topic here, as seen in Zürich yesterday: what it takes to support urban computing: infrastructures and configuration issues.

Towards LIFT Asia

SO... LIFT is going to South Korea for LIFT Asia 08, a three-day event taking place on Che-Ju island on September 4, 5 and 6. As in Geneva, the conference theme revolves around social change in information society. What we mean by that is that we will focus on the influence of technologies such as the web, mobile software and ubiquitous computing on our societies in domains such future cities, social media, mobility, sustainability or money transactions. Our goal is to spark discussions about the important changes, challenges and opportunities brought by technology, with the great diversity of the participants and their contributions providing a global reach.

An envigorating mix of researchers, designers, entrepreneurs, policy-makers and other thinkers will present us their viewpoints on eight topics: Beyond the web we know, Online for better society, Towards a Networked City, From robots to networked objects, The near future of social worlds, Techno-nomadic life, Virtual money and green tech. Since the conference is going to be held in South Asia, it's also our purpose to have a mix of westerners and asian speakers for each session so that discussion deal with a mix of perspectives.

Sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling and UK consultant David Birch will talk about virtual money: Recent changes in the digitalisation of money are less perceptible than more glamorous technologies, but they are of considerable importance. New banking solutions and money circulation practices are around.

In "Aiming for a better society" Wonsun Park from Hope Society and Raphael Grignani from Nokia will describe how technologies can help shaping a more inclusive and sustainable society as well take advantage of the world's diversity.

Given that the urban environment is of considerable importance when it comes to technological development, we will have a dedicated session about the Networked City with 2 architects Jeffrey Huang and Yang Soo Yin as well as user experience specialist Adam Greenfield. They will describe how new digital layers provided by ICTs on contemporary cities have now become reality and what it will mean for its inhabitants.

Close to the future of the city, mobility will also be a hot theme with the "Techno-nomadic life" session with design researcher Jan Chipchase, i-mode inventor Takeshi Nastuno and Christian Lindholm. They will talk about the user experience is reshaped by mobile technologies, and whether the mobile Web is going through the same process as the Web of the 90s.

Social platforms and media such as the one developed by Nexon will also be an important topic with Jonmoo Kwon, among other speakers. Social platforms on the Web and Massive Multi-Player games are indeed now merging in a new category of digital entertainment platforms with new business models and screens such as mobile phones. This will eventually lead to innovative usage and new forms of sociality.

In the "Beyond the web we know" session, we will talk about what's exciting on the web from the near future, what comes after web2.0 with Laurent Haug and Eric Rodenbeck from Stamen Design.

Moreover, a special event about sustainable development will feature Dan Dubno who will talk about green gadgets and an upcoming speaker coming from a NGO.

The final session will be about robotics and the convergence towards networked objects, or how current robots are going beyond the traditional anthropomorphism and start to communicate with Tomoaki Kasuga, Frédéric Kaplan and Bruno Bonnell.

If you're interested you can register here.

Hertzian space and architecture

Obviously related to my talk about the invisiblity of ubicomp, Kazys Varnelis wrote an intersting A+U paper that you can find on his blog about how we live in "Hertzian space" the cloud of electromagnetic radiation that surrounds us and wonder how architecture that actively engage Hertzian space would look like:

"Two examples tentatively suggest ways in which urbanism might take into account our radically changed environment. The first of these forces us to confront the invisible forces in our environment. The second proposes to warp the very fabric of the city. (...) In Osman and Omar Khan’s project “SEEN-Fruits of Our Labor” the designers crafted (...) acrylic screen, (...) The designers set out to foreground questions of labor in the United States by asking members of three groups crucial to the Silicon Valley economy—technology workers, undocumented service workers and outsourced call center workers—the question “What is the fruit of your labor?” The Khans displayed the responses on the screen via a grid of infrared LEDs. (...) viewers saw a message that otherwise existed only in Hertzian space, invisible to the eye, on their camera screens (...) Robert Sumrell and I produced the second piece, “Windows on the World” (...) Windows on the World proposes to site multiple portals in multiple cities to create a true world planetary network, based not on capital and planning but on chance encounters. Remixing Hole in Space and Guy Debord’s map of the “Naked City,” we propose a telematic dérive, with each portal becoming what the Situationists called a plaque tournante, a center, a place of exchange, a site where ambiance dominates and the power of planners to control our lives can be disrupted. "

Why do I blog this? documenting interesting examples of the interlinkage between the digital and the physical, as usual.

Renamed bus stops

Seen in Torino, last week. The practice of changing names (and also to put a random "grazie").

Salient design factors for kinetic user interfaces

In a recent issue of Communications of the ACM, Designing kinetic interactions for organic user interfaces, Parkes, Poupyrev and Ishii reflects on the notion of "kinetic user interface":

"Kinetic interaction design forms part of the larger framework of Organic User Interfaces (OUI) discussed in the articles in this special section: interfaces that can have any shape or form. We define Kinetic Organic Interfaces (KOIs) as organic user interfaces that employ physical kinetic motion to embody and communicate information to people. Shape-changing inherently involves some form of motion since any body transformation can be represented as motion of its parts. Thus kinetic interaction and kinetic design are key components of the OUI concept. With KOIs, the entire real world, rather then a small computer screen, becomes the design environment for future interaction designers."

They also discuss "salient design parameters and research" issues to consider when utilizing kinetic motion in interaction design:

"Form and Materiality. In order to recognize and comprehend motion, it must be embodied in a material form. Hence, a crucial and little-understood design parameter is how properties of materials and forms affect motion perception and control. (...) Understanding the material affordances, their interaction with the user and other objects, environmental light and sound is crucial in designing kinetic interactions.

Kinetic Memory and Temporality. While computational control allows actuated systems to provide real-time physical feedback, it also offers the capability to record, replay, and manipulate kinetic data as if it were any other kind of computational data. We refer to such data as kinetic memory (...) for example, objects can fast-forward or slow down motion sequences, move backward or forward in time; or the objects can "memorize" their shape history and share them with other objects.

Repeatability and Exactness. We can easily distinguish artificial motion because of its exact repeatability. In designing kinetic interactions, repeatable exactness is the simplest form of control state, and in many behaviors it is easily identifiable.

Granularity and Emergence. If this principle of dissecting form and mechanics into single elements—kinetic phrases—is combined with contemporary digital control structures, new materials, and actuators, it becomes possible to imagine a system where a kinetic behavior could be designed both concretely and formally."

Why do I blog this? working recently on tangible UI project in which sensors can be put on everyday objects, the ideas expressed in that paper are relevant to what sort of design parameters should be taken into account (and serves as design constraints).

Yet another incredible architecture: Lingotto rooftop

Last week in Torino, Italy, I spent some time in the Lingotto building which was a huge FIAT car factory built from 1916 and opened in 1923. A place Le Corbusier called it "one of the most impressive sights in industry", and "a guideline for town planning". It's now a complex, with concert halls, theatre, a convention centre, shopping arcades and the hotel where I was staying.

The most impressive part if of course the rooftop track for testing cars. I ain't a car enthusiast by any means but that piece of architecture is very intriguing to observe. Especially, if you consider how it has been pointed out as an "example for the future". According to Jonathan Glancey in Architectural Review:

"The Futurists claimed that 'Fiat Lingotto was the first built invention of Futurism', although Matte-Trucco (1869-1934) was a level-headed, if adventurous, structural engineer, much indebted to Albert Kahn, and very much not a Futurist. His famous reinforced-concrete factory boasting a test-bed race-track on the roof, and now remodelled as a civic, commercial and arts centre, by Renzo Piano (AR November 1996), was designed very much in line with Giovanni Agnelli's curt instruction: 'You will not be allowed to enter the Biennale Exhibition. You must have no aesthetic concerns. That's how you must work for industry.' Matte-Trucco did not question his FIAT boss. The result, in any case, was a masterpiece, a building that was all but mythical before it was completed."

Wandering around the track is still a curious experience, especially when the weather's very hot. The ground looks like a skateboarding grip and the curves are quite steep as attested by how Mr. Greenfield is taking care not to slip:

Moreover, the structure is not only about a flat rooftop... there is also the path to get the car on the very roof:

Why do I blog this? Like the Atomium, la Grande motte, this piece is inspiring to me as it exemplifies the avantgarde of the industrial era... the very presence of a tremendously big testbed as part of the architecture of the factory. Surely an interesting remnant from a past future, relevant to keep in mind when doing foresight research. Both in terms of urban and design research.

Bruce Sterling about failed futures

In his talk at Frontiers of Interaction in Torino, Italy last week, Bruce Sterling dealt with the failure of technology and why we don't have jetpacks or flying cars:

"to say a word is not the same as engineer a thing (...) we/people think it's a smooth and practical process but it's not (...) they don't fail because of science they fail because of political frontiers between groups that we don't know how to cross (...) the real frontiers are no longer engineers' law like Moore's law or Metcalfe's law but social and legal practices"

Why do I blog this? this echoes with the list of failing factors I am trying to write-up for a project.