A curious cardboard mailbox inserted in a phone booth in Lyon, France. It seemed to be an for a foundation that helps homeless people (it subsequently plays on the idea that phone booth can become communication nodes for them).
There's an interesting short article by Bill Gaver in the latest issue of ACM interactions. Beyond the focus of the research, I was interested by the description of the approach and the vocabulary employed. Very relevant to see how they define what "design research" can be.
He starts off by stating that their place is "a studio, not a lab": it's an interdisciplinary team (product and interaction design, sociology and HCI) and that they "pursue our research as designers". Speaking about the "design-led" approach, here's the description of how they conduct projects:
"Our designs respond to what we find by picking up on relevant topics and issues, but in a way that involves openness, play, and ambiguity, to allow people to make their own meanings around them. (...) An essential part of our process is to let people try the things we make in their everyday environments over long periods of time—our longest trial so far is over a year—so we can see how they use them, what they find valuable, and what works and what doesn't. (...) Over the course of a project, we tend to concentrate on crafting compelling designs, without distracting ourselves by thinking about the high-level research issues to which they might speak. It's only once our designs are done and field trials are well under way that we start to reflect on what we have learned. Focusing on the particular in this way helps us ensure that our designs work in the specific situations for which they're developed, while remaining confident that in the long run they will produce surprising new insights about technologies, styles of interaction, and the people and settings with whom we work—if we've done a good job in choosing those situations."
Why do I blog this? Collecting material for a project about what is design research. Even brief, the article is interesting as it describes studio life in a very casual way (I'd be curious to read the equivalent from a hardcore science research lab btw). The description Gaver makes is al relevant as it surfaces important aspects of studio life (prerequisites to design maybe): interdisciplinary at first (and then "most of the studio members have picked up other skills along the way"), fluidity of roles, the fact that members contribute to projects according to their interests and abilities.
As a researcher interested in human-technology interface, I have always been intrigued by robotics. My work in the field has been limited to several projects here and there: seminars/workshops organization about it, the writing of a research grant about human-robot interaction for game design (a project I conducted two years ago in France) and tutoring design students at ENSCI on a project about humanoid robots. If we include networked objects/blogjects in the robot field (which is not obvious for everyone), Julian and I had our share of work with workshops, talks and few prototypes at the near future laboratory.
Robolift, the new conference Lift has launched with French partners, was a good opportunity to go deeper in the field of robotics. What follows is a series of thoughts and notes I've taken when preparing the first editorial discussions.
"I can't define a robot, but I know one when I see one" Joseph Engelberger
The first thing that struck me as fascinating when it comes to robots is simply the definition of what "counts" as a robot for the people I've met (entrepreneurs in the field, researchers, designers, users, etc.) For some, an artifact is a robot only if it moves around (with wheels or foot) and if it has some powerful sensor (such as a camera). For other, it's the shape that matters: anthropomorphic and zoomorphic objects are much more "robotic" than spheres.
Being fascinated by how people define what is a robot and what kind of technical objects count as a robot, I often look for such material on the World Wide Web. See for example this collection of definitions and get back here [yes this is a kind of hypertext reading moment]. The proposed descriptions of what is a robot are all focused on different aspects and it's curious to see the kinds of groups you can form based on them. Based on the quotes from this website, I grouped them in clusters which show some characteristics:
What do these clusters tell us anyway? Of course, this view is limited and we cannot generalize from it but there are some interesting elements in there:
It's interesting to contrast these elements with results from a research study about the shapes of robot to come (which is a topic we will address at the upcoming Robolift conference).
I found this on BotJunkie few months ago, I ran across this interesting diagram extracted from a 2008 study from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne:
"Researchers surveyed 240 people at a home and living exhibition in Geneva about their feelings on robots in their lives, and came up with some interesting data, including the above graph which shows pretty explicitly that having domestic robots that look like humans (or even “creatures”) is not a good idea, and is liable to make people uncomfortable."
Some of the results I find interesting here:
"Results shows that for the participants in our survey a robot looks like a machine, be it big or small. In spite of the apparent popularity of Japanese robots such as the Sony Aibo, the Furby and Asimo, other categories (creature, human, and animal) gathered only a small percentage. (...) The preferred appearance is therefore very clearly a small machine-like robot"
These results are consistent with another study by Arras and Cerqui. These authors looked at whether people would prefer a robot with a humanoid appearance. They found that "47% gave a negative answer, 19% said yes, and 35% were undecided"".
Why do I blog this? Preparing the upcoming robolift conference and accumulating references for potential projects about human-robot interactions.
As usual, observing people who collect steel pieces, metal parts and discarded electronics will never cease to interest me. This picture depicts a guy I spotted last week in Sevilla, Spain. As the quantity of manufactured artifacts made is increasing, the fact that some folks toss them on the street make this kind of re-collection pertinent for certain people... who will re-use this and sell them to other parties.
Exploring End User Preferences for Location Obfuscation, Location-Based Services, and the Value of Location is an interesting paper written by Bernheim Brush, John Krumm, and James Scott from Microsoft Research. The paper presents the result from a field study about people’s concerns about the collection and sharing of long-term location traces. To do so, they interviewed 32 person from 12 households as part of a 2-month GPS logging study. The researchers also investigated how the same people react to location "obfuscation methods":
Results indicate that;
"Participants preferred different location obfuscation strategies: Mixing data to provide k-anonymity (15/32), Deleting data near the home (8/32), and Randomizing (7/32). However, their explanations of their choices were consistent with their personal privacy concerns (protecting their home location, obscuring their identity, and not having their precise location/schedule known). When deciding with whom to share with, many participants (20/32) always shared with the same recipient (e.g. public anonymous or academic/corporate) if they shared at all. However, participants showed a lack of awareness of the privacy interrelationships in their location traces, often differing within a household as to whether to share and at what level."
Why do I blog this? Gathering material about location-based services, digital traces and privacy for a potential research project proposal. What is interesting in this study is simply that the findings show that end-user involvement in obfuscation of their own location data can be an interesting avenue. From a research point of view, it would be curious to investigate and design various sorts of interfaces to allow this to happen in original/relevant/curious ways.
The blogpost Julian wrote yesterday about Primer reminded of this curious diagram that David Calvo sent me few weeks ago. The diagram is a tentative description of what happens in the movie.
Since the movie is about two engineers who accidentally created a weird apparatus that allows an object or person to travel backward in time, it becomes quite difficult to understand where is who and who is where. The diagram makes it slightly more apparent.
Why do I blog this? Rainy sunday morning thought. Apart from my own fascination for weird timelines, I find this kind of artifact interesting as a design/thinking tool... to think about parallel possibilities, about how an artifact or a situation can have different branches. Taking time as a starting point to think about alternative presents and speculative future is quite common in design as show by James Auger's interesting matrix.
(Traces of human activity revealed on a building encountered in Malaga, Spain)
An interesting excerpt from Gilbert Simondon's On The Mode Of Existence of Technical Objects:
"He is among the machines that work with him. The presence of man in regard to machines is a perpetual invention. Human reality resides in machines as human actions fixed and crystalized in functioning structures. These structures need to be maintained in the course of their functioning, and their maximum perfection coincides with their maximum openness, that is, with their greatest possible freedom in functioning. Modern calculating machines are not pure automata; they are technical beings which, over and above their automatic adding ability (or decision-making ability, which depends on the working of elementary switches) possess a very great range of circuit- commutations which make it possible to program the working of the machine by limiting its margin of indetermination. It is because of this primitive margin of indetermination that the same machine is able to work out cubic roots or to translate from one language to another a simple text composed of a small number of words and turns of phrase."
Why do I blog this? This reminds me of this quote by Howard Becker: "It makes more sense to see artifact as the frozen remains of collective action, brought to life whenever someones uses them" that Basile pointed me few months ago (which is very close to Madeleine Akrich's notion of script described here).
Currently in Spain, spending few days of vacations till next week-end. A good opportunity to work on a book project (in French, about recurring failures of technologies), read books, take some pictures and test applications such as World lense.
In general, I am quite critical with Augmented Reality but in this case, I find the idea quite intriguing. This app is meant to "translate printed words from one language to another with your built-in video camera in real time". Of course, the system does not work all the time and you often get weird translations and tech glitches (especially when pointing at a large quantity of text on a newspaper)... but the use case itself is quite interesting and I am curious to see how such a concept can evolve over time. It's basically relevant to see how an old technology such as OCR has been combined with the ever-increasing quality of cell-phone lenses. Lots of problems to be solved but interesting challenges ahead.
Best wishes for 2011!
An interesting superposition of sigmoid curves. Judging from the data about the internet and cell-phones, the data are not brand new, but it's interesting anyway to compare the various products:
Why do I blog this? compiling data for an upcoming book about recurring failures in innovation.
As usual, let's be cautious about such stats (methodologically speaking), to be compared to data by PEW.
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed
or numbered! - My life is mine.
- Is it?"
Excerptfrom The Prisoner. Why do I blog this? great quote to be re-used later on.
One of the key problems of global knowledge concerns the circulation, adoption and adaptation of concepts in translation. The English word assemblage is gaining currency in the humanities and social sciences as a concept of knowledge, but its uses remain disparate and sometimes imprecise. Two factors contribute to the situation. First, the concept is normally understood to be derived from the French word agencement, as used in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (who, furthermore, do not use the French word assemblage in this way). Tracing the concept in its philosophical sense back to their texts, one discovers that it cannot easily be understood except in connection with the development of a complex of such concepts. Agencement implies specific connections with the other concepts. It is, in fact, the arrangement of these connections that gives the concepts their sense.
Why do I blog this? attempting to find a proper English word to express what Deleuze and Guattari meant by "agencement"...
Several pictures of a lovely electronic shop in neighborhood (Geneva). I just love the way the vitrine is decorated. Each moment of the year leads to specific artifacts and light. Each event (such as Michael Jackson's death on picture 6) leads to the addition of weird artifacts.
Why do I blog this? I take this as sort of "ballet of electronic devices in an highly slow motion". All of the artifacts presented there represent an interesting ecosystem of possibilities. A very Latour-ian perspective for Christmas.
And those who find it particularly funny might be those who’ve actually experienced both claims (booze wreaks havoc in their lives, but they also drink to ease their pain).
In fact much of what we find humorous can reveal our beliefs. Since laughter is typically an unconscious, automatic response it is a useful measure for laying bare individual biases.
This month in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior Robert Lynch of Rutgers University published the first scientific evidence for the conventional folk wisdom: it’s funny because it’s true. But Lynch is not referring to objective truth, rather what we think is true.
Why do I blog this? just thinking about the role of humor and how observational comedy can help to surface interesting insights about culture and human-technical objects relationships.
"The search for industrial inheritance" by nick foster is a super insightful talk presented at Interesting North 2010. It deals with the evolution of artifacts and the continuity of industrial innovation:
[slideshare id=5790491&doc=industrialinheritance-101115193829-phpapp01]
Why do I blog this? This material is very close to what we are addressing in the game controller project (as well as in my course series about interface evolution). The examples given (digital cameras in particular) are quite intriguing and it's pertinent to see the conclusion reached by the presenter (1. Be willing to launch a risky mutant, it may just succeed, 2. Make sure you make it genetically agile, 3. Have a think what its kids might be like).
Seven years ago, I wrote a short entry on this blog about seats arrangement in Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. I happened to pass by yesterday (en route for a seminar in the neighborhood) and the seats struck me as a fascinating assemblage to capture with my camera.
"A perfect arrangement for grooming"
The "we stand together" group
"Mom, Dad and a bored kid"
The lonely urban observer
The "hidden and lonely soldier"
The "unidirectional couple"
The "main group and the left-overs"
"Some of us are closer than the others"
Why do I blog this? To some extent, the pictures below shown below represent different arrangement... that reflect social configurations. The "movable" chairs from this park in Paris can be seen as an interesting example of the implicit "traces" people leave when undertaking very simple activities. It's definitely a good material to expand my thoughts about the social aspect of "urban traces". Along with the pictures above, I tried to infer some meaning (about social configurations); I might be wrong but the exercise is valuable in itself.
Readers interested in this kind of artifacts might have a look at "Seating arrangement and conversation" by Mehrabian and Diamond.
Why do I blog this? Looking for material for one of my student, I ran across this curious diagram recently and found it interesting. It's curious to see how a comic artist and theorist (Will Eisner) propose a way to describe embodiment in the language of comics. The body postures and gestures are important in comics and they definitely helps to convey meaning in the sequences, as shown by the quote by Eisner: "In comics, body posture and gesture occupy a position of primacy over text. The manner in which these images are employed modifies and defines the intended meaning of the words"
Critical Mass is a research agenda currently explored at Obuchi Lab in the University of Tokyo, Global 30 Architecture and Urbanism. The course is dedicated to the research on the emergence of global network society and its effect on architecture, urbanism and design culture. It is an interdisciplinary experimental design research connecting architecture, engineering and computations to theorize and to develop design proposals that negotiate the ever-changing contemporary built environments.
Why do I blog this? intriguing kind of flux visualization (circulation in a built environment) by Critical Mass.
As described by Toru Iwatani, Pac-Man creator:
"Well, there’s not much entertainment in a game of eating, so we decided to create enemies to inject a little excitement and tension. The player had to fight the enemies to get the food. And each of the enemies has its own character. The enemies are four little ghost-shaped monsters, each of them a different colour - blue, yellow, pink and red. I used four different colours mostly to please the women who play - I thought they would like the pretty colours.
The brief encounter with this real-world Pacman in Geneva (made by Bufalino Benedetto & Benoît Deseille for the "Arbres et Lumières festival) was particularly curious in conjunction with this insightful short paper called "Why do Pinky and Inky have different behaviors when Pac-Man is facing up?" by Don Hodges:
"In the videogame Pac-Man (and in many of its sequels and clones), it has been previously established that the ghosts, Pinky and Inky, track Pac-Man by examining the direction he is facing and use that information as part of their determination of their respective targets. For example, Pinky usually targets the location four tiles in front of Pac-Man's location. However, if Pac-Man is facing up, this location becomes four up and four to the left of Pac-Man's location. Inky has a similar change in his targeting when Pac-Man is facing up. Why do Pinky and Inky have different behaviors when Pac-Man is facing up?
The short answer is, in my opinion, because of a programming bug. Here is the evidence."
Why do I blog this? I find it interesting to think about the Pacman ghosts algorithms, especially in the context of real-world Pacman instantiations... and how it would apply to other kinds of actors (humans/non-humans) in the physical environment.
... is a new side-project of mine. It basically consists in the articulation between two sources of insights about the urban environment:
My aim was to select quotes and pictures so that a peculiar kind of relationship emerges out of the juxtaposition. To some extent, this articulation between the two elements could be seen as some vague correlation: sometime there is indeed a cause-and-effect relationship (the quote exemplifies a certain trend that has influenced the architecture of the building represented on the picture), sometimes there isn't. The idea is to show that some notions, paradigms and system thinking either shaped urbanism or provided a certain framework/cultural Zeitgeist which led to the shapes and representations depicted on the B&W pics.
This is a work-in-progress thing. I guess some assemblage are better than others of course. Let's see how things unfold, I'll try to keep this going and select the best juxtapositions in a booklet once I have a certain quantity of material. My perception of this is simply that some patterns and categories will emerge at some point and perhaps a narrative could be constructed at some point.
As usual here, comments are welcome.