German status

A korean car license plate encountered last week that features the European Union flag and the "D" which corresponds to Germany. It's of course a german car and I also noticed it on BMW and Mercedes here and there in Seoul. What is intriguing is that the plate shape is also the one from the EU and different from other korean cars. The status of the EU + german industry is thus sported and shown to other people.

Why do I blog this? an interesting sign of a social and cultural status embedded in a mundane artifact. Nothing really new here but it's funny to document such phenomenon that takes multiple forms.

Exploded TV

One hour after being in this tv-enabled taxi in Jeju the other day, I read this quote in Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis:

"Think of it as exploded television. Every station has at least one show you want to see, right? Well, on my network, your favorite show is on all the time. Everyone’s favorite show is on all the time, whenever you want to watch it. Add up all the viewers on my network, and I have a bigger audience than HBO. This ain’t fringe anymore, friend. If you define the mainstream as that which most people want to watch, then I’m as mainstream as it gets. (...) Exploded television. I am the ultra cable company. This is the way of the future. Anything you want on a computer screen, whenever you want it, through a subscription or a micropayment of a few bucks through your credit card. That eel thing? For a buck a time you can download the day's highlights to your iPod and watch it while you're in the can."

Spot on! Korea was indeed a good place to spot different forms of "exploded television" (and certainly a good place to read Ellis). Indeed there are explosions in terms of devices themselves (in-car tv, mobile phone, some urban screens) and services too.

Mobile TV is certainly an interesting instance of exploding television one can notice in Korea, as shown by the pictures above. Mobile TV penetration is slightly over 30% and of course mobile phones are designed with this in mind. Some of them indeed have screen that can be twisted to get a landscape view. It's now 4 years that the koreans have access to access this (through satellite DMB (S-DMB) and terrestrial DMB (T-DMB) service).

Why do I blog this? connecting the dots and finding curious metaphor for socio-technical trends after a refreshing trip to Korea.

Future numbers, letters and idioms

Weird brand and idioms encountered in Lisbon and Seoul.

Why do I blog this? it makes me think about the use of certain letters and idioms that made people think about the future. Numbers like "3000" (now that 2000 is in the rear-mirror) and letters like "X" are still employed nowadays to give a futuristic touch. Reminds me of this quote by Douglas Coupland: "he thinks the future will be like rap music and computer codes, filled with Xs, Qs, and Zs”.

Networked objects session at Lift Asia 2009

The "networked objects" session at Lift Asia 09 was a good moment with three insightful speakers: Rafi Haladjian (in transition from Violet to his new company called sen.se), Adrian David Cheok (from the Mixed Reality Lab in Singapore and Keio University) and Hojun Song. My notes from the session hereafter.

In his presentation entitled "Demystifying the Internet of Things", Rafi Haladjian shared his perspectives on the Internet of Things. Starting from his own experience with the Nabaztag and other Violet products, he made of point of adopting a down to earth approach to the Internet of Things. Based on a analysis of the Darwinian evolution of devices and connectivity, he gave examples such as the Teddy Bear (which went from the basic version to the talking bear (because the maker needs to recreate value and then new products) and finally new toys with rfid now that we have cheap technologies. He also took the example of the scale (mechanical bathroom scales - digital scale - wifi bathroom scale).

He then highlighted "a raw and cynical definition of the IoT":

• The expansion of the internet to any type of physical device, artifact or space. Which is not a decision but something that is happening "organically" because of the availability of cheap communication technologies
• The product of decentralized loosely joint decisions
• Something that will be technology and application-agnostic

This three characteristics led him to pave the way for possible evolution of the IoT. To do this, he stated how it is important to look at past experiences. The mechanical typewriter (one purpose) evolved into the word processor (a computer that could only be used to type in text) AND into another branch: the personal computer (multi-purpose, not just a word processor) that then took the form of laptops or netbooks (with an infinite number of applications). If we look back to things such as bathroom scales, now that we have ICT in there, the wifi scale does the same job as a scale only better but it can be done other things differently (send recommendation, update doctor, personalize the gym equipment, make the information completely social, games with prizes and promotions, organize strikes!). As he explained, this sounds weird, but is it so different than the iphone? The iphone showed that you can have a device and let third-parties make applications and you do not need to bother what should be done for this device.

According to him, the IoT change the way devices should act in the following ways:

• From one purpose to a bundle of sensors and output capabilities designed for a context
• Leads to application agnostic open to third party
• Most probably you will not be able to create new types of devices: it's easier to piggyback on existing devices and use habits (that people are familiar with)
• You must be economically realistic, you cannot turn a device into an iphone, you must solve the cost/price/performance issue

In addition, such a system helps solving what he called the "Data Fishbowl" effect: today all our data are like fished in a fishbowl and there is just one spot in our environment where the information are: the computer. The IoT has the ambition to have vaporize information... like butterflies, or, more simply, like post-it notes. It's about putting the information in context.

He concluded by saying that the purpose is to go from a world where with have a handful of single-purpose devices to give sense to everything: which is what Rafi is going to be doing in my next company: sen.se

(Poultry Internet)

The second presentation by Adrian-David Cheok was called "Embodied Media and Mixed Reality for Social and Physical Interactive". It outlined new facilities within human media spaces supporting embodied interaction between humans, animals, and computation both socially and physically, with the aim of novel interactive communication and entertainment. Adrian and his team indeed aim to develop new types of human communications and entertainment environments which can increase support for multi-person multi-modal interaction and remote presence.

Adrian's presentation consisted in a series of ubiquitous computing environment based on an integrated design of real and virtual worlds that aims to be an "alternative" to existing systems. His examples aimed at revealing the paradigm shift in interaction design: it's not "just" sharing information but also experiences.

He started from the well-known examples he worked out at his lab with Human Pacman (Pacmen and Ghosts are now real human players in the real-world experiencing mixed computer graphics fantasy-reality) or the hugging pajamas (remote-controlled pajama that could be hugged through the internet). He then moved to "human-pet interaction systems":

• Poultry Internet: remote petting through the internet (red door / blue door to test pet preference to interactions & objects)
• Metazoa Ludens, that allows to play a computer-game with a pet: the human user controls an avatar which corresponds to a moving bait that an hamster tries to catch. The movement of the animal in the real world are translated in the digital environment and the pet avatar chases the avatar controlled by the human)

He finally spent the last part of his presentation dealing with "Empathetic living media", a new form of media that follows two purposes: (1) To inform: Ambient living media promotes human empathy, social and organic happenings around a person’s life, (2) To represent: Living organisms representing significant portions of one’s life adds semantics to the manifestation. Examples corresponded to glowing bacteria (Escherichia coli) or the curious Babbage Cabbage System:

"Babbage Cabbage is a new form of empathetic living media used to communicate social or ecological information in the form of a living slow media feedback display. In the fast paced modern world people are generally too busy to monitor various significant social or human aspects of their lives, such as time spent with their family, their overall health, state of the ecology, etc. By quantifying such information digitally, information is coupled into living plants, providing a media that connects with the user in a way that traditional electronic digital media can not. An impedance match is made to couple important information in the world with the output media, relating these issues to the color changing properties of the living red cabbage."

(Babbage Cabbage)

In his conclusion, Adrian tried to foresee potential vectors along these lines:

• Radically new and emotionally powerful biological media yielding symbiotic relationships in the new ubiquitous media frontier
• Plants which move: Animated display system, plants as sensors
• Ant-based display system
• Cuttlefish Phone

The third presenter in the session, korean artist Hojun Song, showed a quick description of his current project: the design and crafting of an DIY/open source satellite. He went through the different steps of his project (design rationale, funding, technical implementation) to show an interesting and concrete implementation of a networked object. Concluding with a set of potential issues and risks, he asked participants for help and contributions.

Lift @ home

Lift Asia 09 just finished and we're announcing a new side-project to the conference. It's called Lift @ home and is based on community meet-ups. As described by Laurent the other day:

"Lifters meetups have been happening around the world. Zurich, Toronto, Lausanne are the few we are aware of, but we know our community likes to meet up around an idea - or a beer.

Last year Michele Perras told me the that as she and others could not attend Lift09, she organized a Fondue back at her place, watching the Lift videos from the previous day. "It was pretty cool!" she said, and this reinforced the idea that we needed to do something to encourage these gatherings as much as we could. Lift at home was born!

Every conference has to become more open, letting external contributions in, reaching to global audiences via online talks. Today's conferences are not conferences, they are communities of people who share the same interests and values.

At Lift we have considerably extended our community in the past years, adding social features to our site, launching a conference in Korea, one in France. Lifters are all around the globe, living in different locations, sharing a common envy to meet, brainstorm, share and explore. We decided to encourage such gatherings, to structure and promote them. Here comes Lift at Home!

This is beta, we don't know where it will end up. But we think that a good idea and good people always end up creating something interesting. We look forward to see you at the upcoming events, and to hear your propositions!"

Digital keypads in Paris

Among the various objects that we touch on an everyday basis, the outdoor keypads always catch my eyes each time. Called "digicode" in France (standing for "digital code"), the examples in this blogpost are a small sample that I ran across in Paris last week-end. The first one (above) is definitely the classic and clean version of the standard model in Paris. The keypad layout, a topic we already addressed here about the iphone is the classical "dial layout" that comes from the telephone set (as opposed to the calculator layout) with 1 2 3 on the first line.

The other examples below reveal some interesting features about touch interactions:

This one nicely shows what happens over time when people input codes. Buttons with dirt and patina on 1 2 3 6 9 A reveal their frequent usage (and possibly inspire stalkers and people who want to sneak in). Nonetheless, it's inevitable and it's how things age. But wait a minute, this one has the "calculator layout" with the 7 8 9 above, another intriguing component, which may be caused by the fact that this "coditel" brand could prefer this setting.

At night, Paris doorways features these red (or blue)-lighted versions that aims at helping people to locate the correct keypad structure.

And finally, this one, a bit messed-up for some reasons beyond my understanding depicts a nice and nonchalant design.

Why do I blog this? documenting everyday objects, as usual here. In a time of "touch interactions" craziness (towards iphone and interactive table), I find interesting to revisit existing touch interfaces and understand the whole gamut of design issues.

Lift Asia 2009

Back to Jeju for the Lift Asia 2009 conference. We're in the final rush given that the conference starts tomorrow. We have a fantastic set of speakers from lots of different place, more than 400 participants and we recently added a surprise to the program:

"20 years of Korean internet: the pioneers who built the Korean internet will share their story, reflecting on a soon-to-be 20 years old industry, offering insights on the future of a media that went from being an early adopter tool to become a society changing technology used by 40 million people in Korea.

Speakers:

• Jin Ho Hur, CEO of Neowiz, operators of Korea's second largest social network,
• Jaewoong Lee, Founder of Daum,
• Soon Hyun Hwang, Vice President, NC Soft
• Dong Hyung Lee, cofounder of Cyworld and Runpipe"

Extreme car dashboard

Extreme car tuning of a dashboard, encountered in Paris yesterday afternoon. The owner interestingly added a cockpit GUI, some potentiometers and removed the steering wheel. Given the whole appearance of the car, I am not very sure whether it's still used.

Why do I blog this? curiosity towards this sort of tinkering as it allows to ask questions. Although the car is obviously not unusable any longer, it's interesting to wonder about what is can be like to drive with this kind of interface. Out of its original context, it makes no sense but should there be some interesting transfer that car-dashboard designers never thought about?

About non-users of technologies

Most of the research about people in HCI and interaction design focuses on technology usage. This is all good and there are lot of things to get from such studies. However, it's also important to take this issue the other way around: non-usage of technologies is relevant as well. Researchers in STS (Science Technology Society) and HCI tackle this issue as shown in the book by Pinch and Oudshoorn which introductory chapter is entitled "how users and non-users matter". Earlier work in computer sciences and HCI have also considered non-usage to understand limits and acceptance problem, to a point where anxious engineers and tech researchers looked at "non-users" in terms of "potential users" A recent article by Christine Satchell and Paul Dourish also deal with this topic (at the upcoming OZChi conference in November). More specifically, they are interested in "aspects of not using computers, what not using them might mean", and what researchers/designers might learn by examining non-use as seriously as they examine use.

The article sets off to go beyond the narrow and reductionist vision of the "user". It clearly acknowledge the notion of "user" as "a discursive formation rather than a natural fact" and "examine use and non-use as aspects of a single broader continuum". Which approach is somewhat different from earlier work. The main point of the authors consists in highlighting that "interaction reaches beyond 'use'". What this means is simply that the experience of technology per se may be shaped and influenced by elements that are outside or beyond specific circumstances of 'use'". This is an highly interesting point that is very difficult to address, especially with certain peeps who think that the UX is solely shaped by the technology itself (not to mention the good folk who told me once that what "users" are looking for is "simple enough algorithm").

The meat of this paper also lies in the description of six forms of non-use:

1. Lagging adoption: non-users are often defined "with respect to some expected pattern of technology adoption and diffusion" [the 4 Pasta and Vinegar readers may have recognized here the notion of s-curves]. The problem is that this view tells nothing about "who do not use technology, but rather about people who do not use technology yet.". As if technological usage was inevitable and "non-use" a temporary condition.
2. Active resistance: "not simply a failure to adopt – i.e., an absence of action – but rather, a positive effort to resist a technology". This can take various forms such as infrastructure resistance (home-schooling, people who live "off the grid").
3. Disenchantment: "this often manifests itself as a focus on the inherently inauthentic nature of technology and technologically-mediated interaction, with a nostalgic invocation of the way things were", which may be an appeal to a "way we never were",
4. Disenfranchisement: "may take many different forms. Interest in universal accessibility has largely focused on physical and cognitive impairments as sources of technological disenfranchisement, but it may also have its origins in economic, social, infrastructural, geographical, and other sources."
5. Displacement: some kind of repurposed usage of the artifact that make it difficult to understand who is really the user.
6. Disinterest: "when the topics that we want to investigate are those that turn out not to be of significant relevance to a broader population"

And the conclusion gives insightful arguments about how this may influence design:

"From the perspective of system developers, a utilitarian morality governs technology use. The good user is one who adopts the systems we design and uses them as we envisioned (Redmiles et al., 2005). Similarly, the bad or problematic user is the one who does not embrace the system or device. (...) what we have tried to show here is that non-use is not an absence or a gap; it is not negative space. Non-use is, often, active, meaningful, motivated, considered, structured, specific, nuanced, directed, and productive."

Why do I blog this? Non-usage of technologies is a topic that has always attracted me, and it's perhaps related to my interest in product failures. The typology proposed here as well as the discussion of "non-users" is of great important IMO to understand technologies.

"The World As Seen From New York’s 9th Avenue"

While discussing the Here and There project by BERG with Etienne, he pointed me on this great New-Yorker cover from 1976 by Saul Steinberg. Entitled "The World As Seen From New York’s 9th Avenue", is directed towards the West (Europe is absent as if the authors wanted to turn is back to it) with the big-rectangled USA right across the Hudson river and then the Pacific with foreign countries such as Japan, China or russia.

Why do I blog this? There's a lot to be drawn here concerning the implications of such representation of course (see here). However, I was rather intrigued by this sort of mapping that represents a subjective view of the world, and how this sort of viewpoint could be curious for paper map design.

A bunch of game controllers

A bunch of stuff about game controllers is a new project I recently started with Laurent Bolli from Bread and Butter. The aim of the project is to focus and analyze "game pads" in terms of historical evolution as well as meaningful issues regarding their design. We collect lots of game-pads and will analyze them according to various issues, asking questions and drawing implications. The point here, from a research perspective, is to examine objects themselves. For once, in my UX work, it's less about how people use/what people do than "what do these artifact have to say about interaction design?" Will try to put my projects notes on this tumblelog.

@ and interweb idioms

My fascination towards the use of web-related symbols always leads me to spot occurrences such as the one shown here. Seen in Lyon this week, the pictures depicts the use of the at sign in two interesting configurations.

If we look carefully at the idioms that are created here, we notice a naive-but-interesting mixture of the interweb meme.

"Web n'c@ll" is quite intriguing as it reveals that this shop provide its customers with a web access and the possibility to make phone calls abroad. The presence of the "at" in the "call" word is curious because it does not really mean something (I take the "at" as the symbol for emails, so it's hard to call using the email protocol). it must definitely be a trick to make the "web n'c@ll" brand much more hip (!).

The second picture tells us a different story. I love this sign although nervous graphic designer will find it ugly. IMO, it represents the hybridization of mobile phone communication and the interwebs. The shop actually sells cell-phones, among which one can buy smart phones that allow a connection to the internet. It's interesting to notice how this symbol is used for representing the possibility to access the information super-highway.

Why do I blog this? observing traces of interweb culture in everyday objects. Now that the terms "web" or the "@" sign is much more common, it's curious to see how they're employed here and there to communicate various meanings. I take it as an example of the meme circulation in the public sphere.

That said, it seems that the sign is not very common yet, as shown by the picture below, taken in the same street, with a weird capital "a" in the "at sign":

Broken RFID

or how to make users aware that they cannot swipe their RFID card on a tag reader. Seen at EPFL, Lausanne.

Mountain cues

The presence of patina on mountain rocks is an interesting "footsteps in the snow" sign: the activity of people modify the environment, which in turn reveal relevant cues for other persons. Especially when hiking in a rocky environment. It allows to find your way and avoid unnoticeable crevasse and cracks.

The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schön

The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action by Donald Schön was a good summer read. The book was highly relevant to me for two reasons: (1) the case studies themselves were interesting (especially the architect one, which is related to my interest in design), (2) Schön's objective, which was about setting an epistemology of practice that place "technical problem solving within a broader context of reflective inquiry, shows how reflection-in-action may be rigorous in its own right, and links the art of practice in uncertainty and uniqueness to the scientists' art of research". To some extent, what I appreciated in this book was that the author recast the notions of research and practice in novel ways. This was important to me as I constantly try to rethink my own stance. Actually, this is what happen when I state that I am a researcher although I left academia or that I avoid mentioning any "academic discipline" next to the term "researcher". Besides, having a BSc in biology, an MSc in Human-Computer Interaction from a psychology department and a PhD in in Human Computer Interaction from a computer sciences department doe not really help here.

Schön basically shows that the world cannot be split in two categories such as practitioner and researchers, on p. 308-309

"Clearly, then, when we reject the traditional view of professional knowledge, recognizing that practitioners may become reflective practitioners in situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and conflict, we have recast the relationship between research and practice. For on this perspective, research is an activity of practitioners. It is triggered by features of the practice situation, undertaken on the spot, and immediately linked to action."

This activity that we calls "reflective research" can be discriminated into four types:

1. Frame analysis: the study of the way in which practitioners frame problems and roles.
2. Repertoire building research: accumulating and describing description and analysis of images, category schemes, cases, precedents and exemplars to be brought to unique situations
3. Research on fundamental methods of inquiry and overarching theories: discover how the process of recognition and restructuring works by examining episodes of practice to enter into a way of seeing, restructuring and intervening which they may wish to make their own.
4. The study of reflection-in-action: research done by practitioners triggered by features practice situation, undertaken on the spot and is immediately linked to action.

Later on in the book, he confronts the epistemology of technical rationality (research produces abstract theories that could be useful to solve problem, applied in practice) and what he calls an "epistemology of practice" which is more inductive and substitute "problem solving" by "problem setting/spotting":

"In real-world practice, problems do not present themselves to practitioners as givens. They must be constructed from the materials of problematic situations that are puzzling, troubling, and uncertain. In order to convert a problematic situation to a problem, a practitioner must do a certain kind of work. He must make sense of an uncertain situation that initially makes no sense. "

What is important in this piece is also the critique of the technical rationality. Inherited from Positivism, the model of practice for lots of professions has the one of the Engineer. The practitioner's question ("How ought I to act?") becomes a scientific question and answers could be derived through scientific theories. Schön criticizes this through the book and I won't enter into the details here. What is interesting to me is the part about how the technical rationality often leads to the "mystique of technical expertise", the sort of wizardry some folks impose on others, showing that "they know (and you don't)". Schön as a good take on this:

"The idea of reflective practice leads, in a sense both similar to and different from radical criticism, to a demystification of personal expertise. It leads us to recognise that for both the professional and counter professional, special knowledge is embedded in evaluative frames which bear the stamp of human values and interest. It also leads us to recognize that the scope of technical expertise is situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and conflict. When research-based theories and techniques are inapplicable, the professional cannot legitimately claim to be expert, but only to be especially well prepared to reflect-in-action"

Which leads him to state some tips about how to judge a claim without being an expert. I like them a lot and think they should be used more often (p301):

• "judge the man rather than his knowledge". Challenge him and see how he responds to challenge. Look how he responds to challenge. Look for the combination of confidence and humility, advocacy of a position, and openness to inquiry which is characteristic of reflective competence.
• Use your own ignorance. Do not be afraid to admit ignorance, ask for help in understanding and expect to get it.
• Ask for sources of risk. Push for the limits of the other's confidence. Ask what risks are attendant on a proposed course of action.
• Seek out more than one view. Assume that is is normal and legitimate to compare practitioners' approaches to a problem. Use multiple meetings to build up a sense of the proper questions to ask and the criticisms of a particular approach that need to be answered"

Finally, a great part of my interest has been devoted to the description of the "reflection-in-action" process per se, or how practitioner do what they do. Schön's contribution here consists highlighting the "fundamental structure of professional inquiry"

He explains how the first step is about identifying the problem ("There is a problem in finding the problem") where the practitioner has "a reflective conversation" with the situation at hand: "The practitioner conducts an experiment in reframing the problematic situation (...) judges his problem-solving effectiveness in terms of an objective function". At this point, the person does not really know what the solution to the problem will be (nor that the problem is soluble) but the frame imposed on the situation is one that lends itself to a method of inquiry in which he/she has confidence. Nevertheless, Schön lists a set of question employed to evaluate the fitness of the frame:

• Can I solve the problem I have set?
• Do I like what I get when I solve this problem?
• Have I made the situation coherent?
• Have I made it congruent with my fundamental values and theories?
• Have I kept inquiry moving?

Then, there are two possibilities when it comes to "solving the problem". On the one hand, the practitioner can bring past experience, familiar categories. This is close to analogical reasoning/case-based reasoning as described by cognitive psychologists. On the other hand, he/she "conduct" and experiment, that he refers to as "a game with the situation" which is done through hypothesis-testing. In the context of design, this corresponds to what he calls “move experiment”: iterations that are evaluated and serve as a basis for generating new solutions. He insists also on the fact that this move experiment is an "interaction of making and seeing", which is an important characteristic of design. This notion of experiment is described in thorough details by Schön because he wants to show the differences with what the model of technical rationality implies when it comes to "experiments". In the case of practitioners' work, there are three types of experiments that correspond to 3 types of reflection-in-action:

• Explorative experiments, which follows a "What if?" logic: "when action is undertaken only to see what follows, without accompanying predictions or expectations"
• Move-testing, which implies an intention on the part of the practitioner
• Hypothesis-testing, that corresponds to the traditional notion with formulated hypothesis consisting of different variables. Unlike move-testing hypothesis-testing is much more complex and analytical.

And what are the consequences of such experiments? let's get back to the book because the phrasing here is REALLY important:

"When a move fails to do what is intended and produces consequences considered on the whole to be undesirable, the inquirer surfaces the theory implicit in the move, criticizes it, restructures it, and tests the new theory by inventing a move consistent with it. The learning sequence, initiated by the negation of a move, terminates when new theory leads to a new move which is affirmed. (...) Other theories of action or models might also account for the failure of the earlier move and the success of the later one. But in the practice context, priority is placed on the interest in change and therefore on the logic of affirmation. It is the logic of affirmation which sets the boundaries of experimental rigor."

With this quote, I end here this chaotic review because it circles back to I started to discuss at the beginning: the different definition of rigor for practitioner. I am pretty sure I will now used this quote (and material) to discuss practitioners' work with my student. I found it strikingly revealing and highlight the difference of attitude between academics and professionals.

Why do I blog this? lots of excerpts and quotes here but this blog is my notepad, the place where I reference this sort of material for futures enquiries. The place where my frame are being built and where futures moves are being hypothesized.

Of course, there are tons of others theories of knowledge and problem solving, some coming from cognitive psychologies, others from management sciences. However, I find interesting to read Donald Schön's approach given its proximity to different practitioners' field and its peculiar theoretical stance.

People interested in this book may also have a glance at Dan Saffer's extensive review as it uncovers interesting connection with designers' work.

Street signage complexity

Seen in Chania, Crete. Someone there should read about cognitive load and signage.

Is the future about jetpacks or curious-but-ordinary things?

(Albert Robida's vision of the future in 1890)

Last june, I participated in a panel at the i-realize conference in Torino with Bruce Sterling and Geoff Manaugh. The starting point of the discussion was a short presentation I gave which resulted from a workshop I organized the day before about how people move and interact in Torino and how this may evolve over time. As one can see on the video of the panel (apart from the fact that I am a bit stressed out because my VGA adapter is screwed), Bruce picked up on the results to describe his personal interests. He mentioned how as science-fiction writer, he was into "big futuristic things". But he also stated how as a tech journalist he fancies small details/improvements/additions/modifications in our daily life (exemplified by the booklet i did with Fabien).

He used the street example (see picture below) to describe how innovation can be very basic... like this curved sidewalk that allows people to roll up instead of having a big step.

Interestingly, reading Warren Ellis august column at Wired UK, I also find an echo to this discussion:

"The future bubbles up under the floorboards.

We spend a lot of time looking for our spaceships and jet-packs, but – and consider this bit, it gets bigger and weirder the more you think about it – in a matter of days we can genetically sequence a mutant virus that’s jumped the species gap. People try to make an ordinary thing of that. There’s a strong tendency to cast the present day, whenever that may be, as essentially banal and not what was promised. Stop looking for the loud giant stuff. The small marvels surround us."

Why do I blog this? referencing material about the balance between big futuristic things and ordinary change, interesting quotes to be re-used in my upcoming course about how to observe the world for design purposes. This discussion about small marvels directly connects with George Perec's notion of "Infra-ordinary".

SXSW 2010 Proposal about Design Fiction

Julian proposed a panel for SXSW about Design Fiction at the following url: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/5066. Feel free to vote on the platform if you're interested in the topic.

It's called "Design Fiction: Using Props, Prototypes and Speculation In Design" and here's the summary:

"This panel will present and discuss the idea of “design fiction”, a kind of design genre that expresses itself as a kind of science-fiction authoring practice. Design fiction crafts material visions of different kinds of possible worlds.

Design’s various ways of articulating ideas in material can be seen as a kind of practice close to writing fiction, creating social objects (like story props) and experiences (like predicaments or scenarios). In this way, design fiction may be a practice for thinking about and constructing and shaping possible near future contexts in which design-led experiences are created that are different from the canonical better-faster-cheaper visions owned by corporate futures.

This panel will share design fiction projects and discuss the implications for design, strategy and technology innovation. In particular, how can design fiction bolster bolster the communication of new design concepts by emphasizing rich, people-focused storytelling rather than functionality? How can design fiction become part of a process for exploring speculative near futures in the interests of design innovation? What part can be played in imagining alternative histories to explore what “today” may have become as a way to underscore that there are no inevitabilities — and that the future is made from will and imagination, not determined by an “up-and-to-the-right” graph of better-faster-cheaper technologies."

If this all happens Julian will be joined by people such as Sascha Pohflepp (http://www.pohflepp.com/), Jake Dunagan (http://www.iftf.org/user/958). Bruce Sterling (http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/), Stuart Candy (http://futuryst.blogspot.com/) or myself.

Dieter Rams' interview

Interesting interview by german designer Dieter Rams read the other day at the train station in Zürich.

What struck as fascinating was that Rams was, at first, hired to design stuff but with a different mission that led him to nail down design process:

"One of my first jobs in the design department was to harmonise the relationship between the designers and the technicians and so build up trust. There was certainly no form to the design process; for example, as yet there were no briefings. Later on we created teams consisting of designers, marketing people and technicians who, from the start, all worked together on a product. Such a framework does have a huge effect on the design process. The design projects then followed the tasks set by each of the individual areas – whether it be hi-fi, body care, health care etc. There was a business director who was at the same level as the technical director and the design director."

He also tackles relevant aspects in terms of marketing issues:

"[reacting to the marketing take-over at Braun]This always had to do with the ever-increasing quantities that had to be produced. And with the fact that more complex production technology also necessitated huge investments in toolmaking and production facilities. Marketing gained in importance at the end of the seventies as it was responsible for ensuring competitiveness and a return on investment. (...) the reason for the actual problem may be that no one wants to admit that at some point they have reached the end of the line. Yet you can't always be making a new shaver or a new coffee machine unless you come up with a real innovation – and here I'm not talking about tinkering with the shape or the colour. And then people think that this will increase sales a bit more. They're dreaming! Yet for all this it seems as if most managers still believe that just having a sheer mass of products on the market achieves something. Right now, that is the problem with the car industry. They have been shoving more and more cars onto the market yet it is obvious that the markets have long been saturated. And yet these are precisely the development programme targets being set by the design divisions of larger companies. But I still maintain that the way is to produce less, but better. "

Why do I blog this? curiosity towards Ram's approach and thinking.

New chapter about design issues in location-based games

" Digital Cityscapes: Merging Digital and Urban Playspaces " a book edited by Adriana de Souza e Silva and Daniel Sutko that deal with location-based games and urban informatics:

"The convergence of smartphones, GPS, the Internet, and social networks has given rise to a playful, educational, and social media known as location-based and hybrid reality games. The essays in this book investigate this new phenomenon and provide a broad overview of the emerging field of location-aware mobile games, highlighting critical, social scientific, and design approaches to these types of games, and drawing attention to the social and cultural implications of mobile technologies in contemporary society. With a comprehensive approach that includes theory, design, and education, this edited volume is one of the first scholarly works to engage the emerging area of multi-user location-based mobile games and hybrid reality games."

The book features a chapter called "Framing the Issues for the Design of Location-Based Games " written by Fabien and myself (at the time I was still at the Media and Design Lab at EPFL). It basically describes an overview of the three main design issues we tackled in CatchBob!: the role played by physical features (physical world structure, staircases, etc), the importance of the technological infrastructure (namely, WiFi) and finally the user experience of mutual location-awareness.

Why do I blog this? this is the final paper about the CatchBob! project which occupied Fabien and I from 2004. A big part of the project was about the socio-cognitive influence of mutual location-awareness (which has been done when we were at CRAFT but the one described in this chapter has benefited from my stay at the Media and Design Lab. The discussion we had at the time (2007-2008) were more geared towards architecture and design and certainly shaped some ideas that we discuss.

On a different note, although the chapter and the book are about games, there is a lot to draw out of this specific domain. Urban informatics as a whole could benefit from the elements discussed there.