Count on something else happening

The observation of this sidewalk game (three card monte) the other day in Geneva 5 minutes after starting a book by Howard Becker lead me to acknowledge the full veracity of the following quote:

"We can always count on something else happening, another glancing experience, another half-witnessed event. What we can't count on is that we will have something useful to say about it when it does. We are in no danger of running out of reality; we are in constant danger of running out of signs, or at least of having the old ones die on us."

Geertz, C. (1995), After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist, Harvard University Press.

Why do I blog this? this should be at the roots of scouting for insights and elements for design research. An interesting quote to be re-used in one my course.

White Glove Tracking

The never-ending discussions about MJ in various contexts sometimes leads you to talk about pop culture in conjunction with concepts such as "crowd sourcing" and "social web". This is what happened yesterday when I brought back the White Glove Tracking project in a social web meeting. It was a crowd sourcing experiment form 2007 created by Evan Roth and Ben Engebreth that asked an online community to help track Michael Jackson’s white glove from a televised performance, in 10'600 frames. It took then 72 hours to go from the txt files to user-generated visualizations of the data collected using Processing. Some of the results can be found in the white glove gallery.

Why do I blog this? beyond the MJ thing, I find this crowdsourcing instance quite curious (among others like the Nasa Clickworkers project) and some hilarious examples (like the big white glove that fits quite well with the Billie Jean bass line). A sort of testbed for distributed visual data analysis where human eyeballs are quite efficient.

What I also find intriguing here is the social dynamic around it, see for instance both the different categories in the gallery ("the winners") and the sort of "rankings" of participants (see below). I am always amazed by pervasive rankings even, perhaps they play a role in crowdsourcing experiments:

(ranking)

Energy production feedback - saved CO2

Encountered in Paris yesterday when visiting Aldebaran Robotics.

Yet another weird toilet interface

(Out)

(In)

This toilet door encountered in a french train yesterday struck me as fascinating. On both side of the door (in and out the toilet), you have a remnant of the past (a door handle that has its highly efficient affordance) and a set of button (open/close). As you can imagine, most the passers-by start by turning the door handle, which fails to open the door, they then froze and realize they can press a button. The next step is that they come in and realize that a similar masquerade happens inside. What is intriguing is that when outside of the toilet, the button set is close to the door handle, which is not the case inside (hence the presence of weird yellow arrow-shaped stickers).

What happened here? The combination of two interaction styles (buttons + door handle) is stunning and detrimental to this basic interaction (opening and closing a door uh!). What's the design rational here? maybe that it's less physically demanding to press a button and wait that the door automatically closes/opens. However, and you may expect, people IN the toilet are generally anxious about how to close this god damn door. Some even try to grasp and push the handle, which does not allow to lock the door.

Let's have a look closer:

Besides, the button set is perhaps not the best way to interact but the presence of both is even more confusing. Weird arrows, red circles for emergency opening, what a mess!

Why do I blog this? observing how everyday basic interactions can be transformed into complex encounters with objects. And yes, I always bring my camera when I go to ANY toilets, it's an interesting place to analyze weird technological innovations.

Micro/Macro Mobility

Different forms of mobility means, spotted this week-end in Geneva. Both need an energy source (electricity or gas).

3 pieces about ethnography and design

Some pieces I ran across recently about the role of ethnographically-inspired approaches in design:

Fewer Engineers, More Anthropologists (by Navi Radjou) highlights a so-called new R&D model based on interdisciplinarity. The authors describes to what extent "anthropologists" (or people who have skills related to anthropology) can help companies to "tailor their business models and offerings to match users' socio-economic and cultural context". What is weird here, as described by near future laboratory fellow Julian Bleecker is that this is definitely not really new ("2.0"). For example, Julian points to earlier work by Lucy Suchman at PARC (described in here book). What I find surprising here is that the notion that users should be taken care of in the design/R&D process is not new as well. Of course it was not called "design-based ethnography" in the past and "co-design" wasn't employed either. Perhaps the HBR has lowered his standards or forgot to ask an historian of science and technologies.

How to Turn Research into Innovation Gold (by Jessie Scanlon, Business Week) is a bit more mature as it do not highlight the originality of such approach. With such title, the assumption is clear: data from the field can be turned into gold. It basically points out with a problem field researchers have with the huge quantity of material they collect: what to do out of it? how to turn it into something that is fruitful for other stakeholders (such as designers, strategy people or engineers). What the article describes as "how to tease useful insights out of all of this disparate data". The author takes the example of a Steelcase case (I always like to make weird phrase like this, using two times the same word):

"With all of the research materials gathered in a room, the group convened for what they call a "big share"—a two-day event that included marketers, engineers, industrial designers, and other stakeholders. The field team began by telling stories and sharing observations. (Researchers record the latter in formal documents that include the observation, its origin, its significance, and other details.)

With their thinking primed by the stories, the group went through all of the research photos, organizing them into related themes—a patient's need for privacy, for instance—and taping those clusters on the wall. As they began to see common problems or workarounds, they added observations written on Post-It notes to the wall. "The goal is to take the knowledge gained from the research and make it explicit," says Bromberg."

They then apply a 100 to 50 to 12 insights "that could guide the design and development phases to come" in a sort of reduction process. The article also gives some ideas about the process itself (take time to look back at the data, look for patterns) which seems like the outline of a thick manual of ethnography.

In the last issue of Ambidextrous, there is an interview of a designer and an anthropologist who addresses the general issues raised by the role of field research in design. They discuss the existence of such approach for sometimes (it goes beyond the HBR piece for that matter) and focuses on the added value: the uncovering of "unmet needs or 'opportunity spaces'", "get business people a little closer to real people, to customers". Doing so is achieved through high-level goals: "understand people in their own terms", "through simplified models, a set of key stories or quotes", "eliciting the cultural constructs people have while keeping your mind on two places at once, both the native model [of the user] and your own analytical model [as an ethnographer]".

Some general comments about these pieces:

1. The first aspect that strikes me is the vocabulary. The general use of terms such as "ethnography" and "anthropology" sounds like they reference to established and well-respected academic disciplines and practices. It's a sort of indicator of their validity, relevance or maybe seriousness. However, what is generally meant is "field research" with a strong focus on "data" and data collection techniques. The absence of theories and theoretical constructs is quite astonishing. Of course, there are different schools of thoughts in anthropology, and some of them employ less theories than others, but still they argue about the reasons for that. That being said, I tend to prefer using the term "field research" (or scouting) since it's more humble and less anchored in a specific discipline (don't want rain on anyone's parade).
2. The focus on a utilitarian model is also important in these pieces. The point of using ethnography is to find "unmnet needs" with their obvious counterparts: business opportunities (or in engineering circle: opportunities to turn a technology into something that can be employed by peeps). Surprisingly, there's never a discussion about what is a "need" (isn't it a theoretical construct?) and the fact that this term is used with a very broad meaning do not account for the complexity of what it encompasses. Recently I was in a round-table with engineers and they were eager to find a "need" that could justify their developments. I find it intriguing but my interest vanished when I realized they stayed at an highly general level: a need for a mobile service could be "sharing content" or "communicating with one's tribe". It was really hard for me to make them understand that these needs are only broad categories and that it's important to go to finer-grained levels. Like... what is important for [a certain category of] people when they do X and Y, at certain moments in time/their life, etc.
3. The quantitative rhetoric grounded in temporal perspectives is also fascinating in these articles. See for example: "To effectively carry out their global R&D 2.0 strategy, CEOs of multinationals must give themselves a target of staffing at least 40% of their R&D labs in emerging markets with sociologists and micro-economists by 2015" in the HBR piece. Or: "the group had generated close to 100 insights (...) they "collapsed" these to 50 and then further." in the BW document". Maybe, it's a side-effect of the corporate world that desperately need indicators and quant stuff but the emphasis on such parameters is curious from an external viewpoint.

Why do I blog this? preparing material for my "Field research for designers" course for next semester, I try to find an alternative model to what already exist. I am particularly interested in the use of ethnographical techniques in a context where one do not try to jump on the "uncover needs" bandwagon. My assumption is that there are still some possibilities to employ methodologies and theories coming from ethnography in a meaningful and subtle ways to inform/constraint/inspire/question/help design and the different stakeholders of design-based projects.

(an interesting encounter from last week-end, a giraffe-shaped game in a public parc in Geneva, which nurtured some interesting reflections about public space and "how do people do what they do" discussions).

This topis is well present in the discussion I have with Julian, about how to go beyond the instrumental and explore fringes (the places where the unevenly distributed glimpses form the future may be located) for crafting weird near future explorations.

Library or antilibrary

Going through Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan another time, I stumbled across this inspiring quote at the beginning of the book:

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and non dull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with 'Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?' and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight read-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary."

Why do I blog this? mostly two reasons for this on a sunday evening:

1. Because it highlights to what extent books and resources like the one shown on the picture above (some of my books, including weird comics) can be seen as TOOLS. Mostly for researching insights, ideas, methods over the course of projects. Even comic books and awkward booklets have a role in research projects I conduct.
2. As a reminder to avoid the fear of having stack of un-read books here and there. It's sometimes menacing but reassuring at the same time (still some material to peruse). The importance of the "un-read" is in direct correlation with possible discoveries and new vectors. I often randomly take one of the books and look at it (be it read or unread) and adopt two strategies: quick scan OR focus on one page and deeply explore what is said.

Robust computing

A street interface seen in Marseilles, France the other day. Located in a very crowded and touristic area, and aimed at informing visitors, the specification that lead to this device certainly put a super strong emphasis on the firm and protected quality of the material. What is even more intriguing is the verticality of the keyboard with extra-large touch-keys.

In an era where public things are punched and molested, new design constraints call for new solutions. And it's often robustness that is perceived as the main possibility. See also the following example with the metal keyboard found at UBS in Switzerland:

Why do I blog this? observing current design constraints and solutions people have put in place, wondering about how, down the road, people use the vertical keyboard up there. The UBS bank machine is maybe slightly more usable though. Isn't there a trade-off between the robustness of the device and its potential usability?

A Sony walkman described by a 21st century kid

This account by a brit teenager of how he used a Sony Walkman from back in the days is highly intriguing. The kid tells his story and compare it to the ipod. Some excerpts I enjoyed:

"My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day. (...) Throughout my week using the Walkman, I came to realise that I have very little knowledge of technology from the past. I made a number of naive mistakes, but I also learned a lot about the grandfather of the MP3 Player. (...) It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette (...) Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn't is "shuffle", where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured. (...) This is the function that matters most. To make the music play, you push the large play button. It engages with a satisfying clunk, unlike the finger tip tap for the iPod."

Why do I blog this? this is both fun and inspiring as it is always curious to see how the naive usage of previous devices is described (especially in conjunction with the use of new artifacts). Of course, beyond the fun read, it's interesting because it allows to grasp todays' users perception of certain features and affordances. The need to have a reference ("the iPod of its day") and the understanding of switches and button is shows how mental model are shaped by previous usage of technologies.

ATM interface complexity

These four pictures depict different ATM interfaces from Lyon, Santa Monica, Lisbon and Paris. As usual, there is a lot to draw here: keyboard minimalism versus "a button for each bill needs", presence or absence of jack-entry for headphone, paper annotation, ATM receipts dumped in the cracks, etc.

Why do I blog this? An always-interesting approach to object and design analysis consist in taking pictures of similar items in various places, and to adopt an analytical perspective (drawing comparisons, observing exceptions or recurring phenomena, trends and patterns, etc.). I wish I had more time to spend on this sort of analysis.

Urban screens as skeuomorph

(an interactive display at Zürich train station)

In his chapter called "Extreme Informatics: Toward the De-saturated City" (taken from "Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City" by Marcus Foth), Mark Shepard offers an insightful critique of urban screens. He basically posit that they operate as "skeuomorph" in the evolution of urban informatics.

The notion of "skeuomorph" is taken from Hayles who borrowed it from anthropology to describe transitional objects and meme in the context of cybernetic theory:

"In archaeology, skeumorphs are material artifacts that simulate an aspect of a previous time using a technology that has superseded it. They are derivative objects that retain structurally necessary elements of the original as ornamentation, stripped of their original function. Skeuomorphs are often deliberately employed to make the “new” look familiar, comfortable and accessible. Examples include the simulated stitching of the vacuum formed vinyl replacing the fabric upholstery of car interiors, the mechanical shutter sound produced by digital cameras, or more abstractly, the metaphor of the “desktop” work-space of the personal computer introduced by Apple with the Macintosh computer in 1984, where the organizational syntax of files and folders serves to orient us within an otherwise unfamiliar space"

For Shepard, these transitional artifacts enable to soften the transition between technological phases. As he points out, "Artifacts (and by extension ways of thinking) of one moment are carried forward into the future by simulating aspects of the past". Quite an inspiring quote I think.

Using this notion, he then explains how urban displays are based on a longstanding model of information access and distribution in public space that is old (and flawed): the fact that we need to access MORE information (and that it should be broadcasted to a "public"):

"I would argue that the paradigm of large-scale “urban screens” operates as a skeumorph in the evolution of urban informatics. It is based on conceptual categories whose relevance vis-à-vis contemporary societies is questionable. While this paradigm may serve to smooth the transition of integrating digital information systems into urban environments, it does so by reproducing modes of information access and distribution that no longer hold sway. In doing so, it perpetuates design logics regarding “the public” and “public space” that are perhaps less reflective of the way we access, share and distribute information today."

The paper also offers an interesting exploration of other strategies for urban computing/informatics to offer alternatives.

Why do I blog this? I have to admit that I am often on the look out for such theoretical constructs that enable to reflect on technological design. The notion of "skeuomorph" seems relevant and largely applicable to other fields. It's surely important to use in a course I am preparing for next week about innovation and foresight.

City quantification devices

A quantification device encountered on a bike path in Marseille last sunday when riding "le vélo" (that's how they call the bike rental system down there). Two intriguing pieces of strings connected to a metal box. As an aside, the warning sign on top of it could even be re-used by angry punk-rock guitar players if they wish to start a new band.

This artifact led me thinking about how measurement devices could take different shape.

On one side you can have small and portable objects like pedometers or fancy nike+ shoes. You just take the damned thing and put it in your pocket or simply sport it while walking/running. It's individual, each human who like to have a reflective account of his/her own movement use it. And that's all good: as a user you can access the data and reflect on them. Of course, there are different levels of access ranging from reading them on the screen to exporting them in a fancy spreadsheet to run statistical computations.

On the other side, it's also possible to have measurements infrastructures like the one represented above. It's collective and generally put in place by a city stakeholder (be it a transportation company/institution or the city council). In this latter case, the information is less accessible to the users: it sits rights there in the weird box and some human comes uploading them before parsing the whole thing on the 7th floor of a building owned by his company. Obviously, the granularity of the information collected by this device is way different than our first category. In addition, the aim is also distinct. The point here is to get some insights about the number of cyclists riding on this bike lane. For the record, this is the "sensable city" from the 20th century: situated data-capture at its best, then-turned into a tool for decision-makers about how this place is "used" by people who ride bikes.

Why do I blog this? categorizing different measurement devices is intriguing and contrasting the approaches.

Location-based audio file in Marseille

A subtle cue on the pavement that indicate that you should press "2" on the audio-guide. An interesting location-based service which do not necessitate a GPS or any other positioning technology. In this case, it relies on people's curiosity and will to spot this sort of red dot on the pavement.

Why do I blog this? apart from the general aesthetic of the cue, it's interesting to contrast this sort of approach and a positioning technique. What are the pluses and minuses? What are the conditions under which it would be better to let people spot such cues (and hence be more active)?

Collecting street stuff

Sunday morning in Marseilles, France. This folk is collecting material and old devices in the city. I don't really know what he's going to make out of it but he seems to be fully equipped. Perhaps some tinkering and device repurposing, the fan may surely prove handy with Marseilles' hot temperatures.

A practice that I see more and more in occidental cities.

Soft infrastructure interruption

Somehow, this soft infrastructure, a zebra crossing in Marseilles, is quite intriguing: (1) it's yellow (which reveals that it's a temporary signage), (2) it's interrupted by a layer of concrete that has been added there.

Why do I blog this? observing the decay of soft infrastructure and how different layers pile up in the urban environment.

In Marseilles for Lift France 09

"in the land of the mute - the blind are deaf", the local version of "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king". This is Marseilles, France and today is Workshop-day, lots of things going on.

Omnipresent internet through chaotic arrows

A recent telco ad campaign aimed at showing the pervasivenness of the Internet in the physical environment... through a chaotic set of arrows that indicate the omnipresence of network access in the environment. 10'000 arrows have been deployed last saturday in certain swiss cities.

From another point of view, it may be perceive a physical spam.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

As shown in his book "Social Theory and Social Structure", Robert Merton coined the expression "self-fulfilling prophecy":

"a situation where "a false definition in the beginning... evokes a new behavior which makes the original false conception comes true (...) this specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the beginning"

Why do I blog this? preparing a course about innovation and foresight leads me to revisit this notion. The history of sciences and techniques has a great list of such prophecies.

Playful surveillance?

In the various interviews for my book about location-based services, privacy is often brought to the table, especially with french journalists who really want to deal with this angle. What happens is that most of the discussion revolves around the potential fear caused by Google Latitude, Aka-aki (I was even asked what I thought about the GPS bra). Most of the time, there is a big confusion between the imaginary representations some people of these technologies (trackable everytime everywhere) and what is really implemented.

It's generally hard to talk about something else so I try to move the discussion to different grounds. My point is to show that privacy is indeed a problem but that there are other interesting matters when it comes to locative media. In order to do that, I highlight how locative technologies can be repurposed or hacked through playful or critical practices. Projects such as iSee that that maps the locations of surveillance cameras in urban environments and propose paths to avoid them are interesting for that matter. The possibility to avoid surveillance becomes a purpose here.

Which is why I was interested in reading "Playing with Surveillance", a short paper by Judy Chen that deals with this issue. It basically presents a playful design of an application that exploits surveillance as a playful practice through a camera phone. The paper describes the application but I was more interested by the design rationale:

"Our design for mopix was inspired by an observation we made of a woman taking a photo with her phone in a shopping mall. The woman was photographing an object in a store across the walkway, but another woman sitting nearby hid behind a baby stroller in an effort to avoid being in the photograph. To the first woman, her camera phone was a device she could use to capture a memento from her experience at the mall. To the second woman, the camera phone was an unwanted surveillance device that was invading her privacy and anonymity. (...) By taking a playful approach in our design, we trivialize aspects of surveillance that are typically disconcerting to users, while at the same time, providing engaging experiences with the system and between users. "

Why do I blog this? documenting interesting examples of technology ambiguity and their non-neutral nature. This work is interesting also in the discussion about locative media and privacy or how to go beyond the general discourse about these 2 issues.

Workshop in Torino

Last tuesday I was in Torino, Italy for the "I Realize" conference organized by TOPIX (Torino Piemontre Internet eXchange). Participating as a workshop facilitator, I was told to focus on how people will move and interact in the city of tomorrow. We worked on identifying unsolved problems, suggesting possible (technological?) solutions. The day after the workshop, I presented a quick overview of the results that others such as Bruce Sterling commented during the panel. Annotated slides can be found here. The workshop was based on a quick field exploration in the morning, during which participants were told to collect some material about people practices and needs. The afternoon as devoted to material analysis and discussion of design issues and solutions.

Thanks Leonardo for the invitation!