#book notes october 2012

Quick notes from books i've read recently: NOT WHAT IF / WHAT IF NOT (Task #2) "For most clients who want a sellable product, 'what if? is not the most comfortable starting point."

This book is part of the "task newsletter" initiative, a once-a-year publication meant to "use design as a perspective, designed objects as evidence of larger systems, and designers as researchers." has been edited by Emmet Byrne, Alex DeArmond, and Jon Sueda. It's focused on "mundane science-fiction" and I found plenty of curious insights in there. It's about "fictious assets", "badly wired automata", "being forced to see things differently" and overall how "design is tied up with the future since design is usually a speculative proposition". The best bit is certainly this question Emmet asks "Instead of 'what if'" they ask 'what if no?' and in doing so hope to create a new literature that explores the wonders of our daily reality."

Thanks Emmet for giving me a copy!

Apple (CLOG)

"Apple" is published by "Clog", a series of book that explores, from multiple viewpoints and through a variety of means, a single subject particularly relevant to architecture now. It's about Apple architecture:

"CLOG : APPLE showcases over 50 international contributors, including architects, designers, cartoonists, comedians, engineers and other industry leaders. Highlights include an examination of Steve Jobs's Eichler-designed childhood home; the evolution of Apple's store designs; its leading role in innovative glass engineering; the symbolism and urban implications of the new Cupertino headquarters design; reactions to Apple Campus 2 by notable architects and critics; and an interview with one of Apple Computer's original three founders, Ronald Wayne."

The book is interesting, and typical from an architecture series, as it make intriguing connections between architecture, apple design and cultural issues. I mostly bought it as an example of how different objects (pictures, patent excerpts, diagram, graphic mock-ups) are employed to generate arguments and examples about this topic. I was less interested in the stories about Apple than in the way these elements act as a "vehicle". The comparisons between the iPod circular interfaces, the Apple building and other similarly-shaped artifacts (e.g. the Cern LHC) is interesting for that matter.

Créatures! by Amandine Prié and Joël Bassaget

Published by Les Moutons Electriques ("Electric sheeps" in French), the book is a compendium of creatures one can find in tv shows. Ranging from vampires to robots and werewolves, it basically describes these characters and show their cultural implications or their underlying meaning.

Why do I blog this Forcing myself to take somes notes after reading books.

What's up here!?

Sorry for the silence here but the last few weeks have been super hectic because of various projects. So, as a quick summary of what I'm up to:

• I just finished writing the French manuscript of a book about the history of game controllers. It's called "Joypads! Le design des manettes" and it's going to be published in January 2013 by Les Moutons Electriques (The Electric Sheeps), a Lyon-based editor. The book is a joint project with Laurent Bolli from Bread and Butter/OZWE in Lausanne.
• With the laboratory, we organized a workshop in Detroit called "To Be Designed" that focused on " the hands-on, pragmatic ways in which one can imagine and then create things from and for the near future." It was a great event and I still have to publish my notes.
• The Print-On-Demand version of the "Curious Rituals: Gestural Interaction in the Digital Everyday" book is almost ready. We had to spent some time fine-tuning the last bits.
• The school year resumed and I'm currently preparing different courses at the Geneva University of Arts and Design. There's going to be a workshop at the end of the month about design and ethnography, in which we'll focus on urban animals. There's another class at EPFL about design process, and a seminar class about the history of interaction design. On top of that, I have 6 masters students for whom I'm a masters thesis tutor.
• At the design school here in Geneva (where I work part-time), I just received a research grant for a study about the relationship between ethnography and interaction design. More about this later.
• Raphael Grignani and I are working on a week-long workshop at ENSCI-Les Ateliers in Paris.
• For a client, as a follow-up to last summer's field study about car-sharing in the US, I'm going to do a series of interviews and observations in Switzerland. For another client in Madrid, there's also going to be a workshop about digital data in November.
• There are several talks lined up in the near future (UX Paris, a game-related conference in Hamburg, a design lecture in Edinburgh, the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston) but I'm accepting less and less of these. Mostly because my schedule is a mess and also because it's hard to be productive (or relaxed) when always on the road.
• After organizing half of the program at Lift France, I'm taking care of three sessions at Lift 13 and will do a workshop there about urban bricolage.

Phew... and that's why there's less time to blog.