Towards grassroots consumer electronics recycling

The digital space is not only made of bits but also of such phenomenon ...expexted to find a new home

Curiously enough, my encounters with devices like this (not to mention office chairs, desktop pcs, screen, dishwasher) down the streets in Geneva (among other european cities) makes me wondering about the future of these artifacts. What I found intriguing is that they often disappear out of pick-up days, which means that some good folk take them and do something out of it.

Tossed bikes are now gathered by some not-for profit association which recycle them and use the bits and pieces to create new ones that they sell. Will we see similar operations doing consumer electronics recycling based on elements picked up ont the streets?

Kids and technology

Reading this marketing study from MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft, I was more interested by the qualitative aspects than the quant stuff. The part that I found the most interesting is the following that shows how "Young people are not geeks":

""technology" itself is irrelevant to kids and young people. (...) "For kids and young people, 'tech' isn't a separate entity now, it's organic to their lives," said Fahey Rush. "They are completely focused on functionality." Apart from a few key new media terms, most young people avoided industry jargon. Only 8% of those questioned used the term "multi-platform," and only 16% admitted to using the phrase "social networking." The terms they use most frequently are those relating to accessing content for free, like "download" and "burn." They also use brand names rather than category terms, with MSN, Google, and MySpace amongst the most popular. The term "web 2.0" is used by very few people (8%) outside China."

Why do I blog this? this is very interesting in terms of "what does that mean" for industries that I know like video game design or mobile application development. Simply, it ponders the overemphasis on technology and the so-called coolness around it. The naming of technologies is particularly important, that is really something which struck me here, listening to kids talking about "mp3" for the device playing the file and not the format.

The designer's stance

Paul Dourish about the designer's stance (embodied combuting), described in Where the Action is:

"while system designers have control largely over just the representations encoded in the software, the meaning of the system extends beyond simply the software to the whole environment in which the software is used. (...) The "designer" formally designated, still has the primary responsibility for the artifact. However, the second responsibility ascribed to the design - responsibility for the way the artifact is used - is open to considerably more debate. Obviously, artifacts must be designed with at least some expectations of their probable use. (...) Instead of designing ways for the artifacts to be used, the designer needs to focus on ways for the user to understand the tool and understand how to apply to each situation. The designer's stance is revised as the designer is less directly "present" in the interaction between the user and the artifact."

Why do I blog this? going through the book this morning (again), this quote echoed with some thoughts that I had lately about multiple affordances. Was thinking lately about how artifact interactions (like an "intelligent home, whatever that means) are fragmented in ubiquitous computing and how, at the same time, artifacts can have multiple affordances.

New departure with Pierre la Police

As a tribute to my first blogpost 4 years ago, let's get back to real things with some Pierre la Police stuff (a french cartoonist that I like):

Taken from an exhibit with Marthes Bathori, pierre la police - "sans titre" - 2003 gouache sur papier marouflé sur bois - 46 x 34 cm

Perhaps an interview of the author will be more helpful to grasp his attitude towards "the future":

"It occured that I brought some drawings I made in my dreams back into the real world. But never made it a guiding line for my work. Surrealism is the artistic expression of something that exists anyway and that is part of each of us. I wasn’t particularly interested in it. I think a walnut is more surrealistic than I am.

What are your other influences (writers, science fiction, music, cinema...) ? A tuna tin, gunshots, dog clothes, certain types of dust bags, the phenomenon of steam, microwaves..."

Why do I blog this? as with the interview of William Gibson the other day, I often find interesting to know how people write about the future. Pierre la Police is very relevant for that matter... revealing how a tuna tin and dog clothes, as small details, are important to show new avenues.

New blog platform

As you may realize... Pasta and Vinegar has moved to a new platform/server... hosted by LIFTlab. LIFTlab is actually the umbrella network/company that takes care, among other things, of the LIFT events, consulting work... and the publication of diverse things. Other blogs are gathered under this banner. See the ones from Laurent, Fabien or Roberto (and others will join). The idea was to join our forces on a common platform.

What does that mean in terms of content on this blog? actually, pretty much nothing will really change, strange stuff (vinegar) will be mixed with more serious researchy content (pasta). It's just that it was time for a bit of change.

Time for me to give a very warm and special thanks to TECFA (University of Geneva, see the unit logo here), the research unit where I did my masters and which accepted to host my blog for the last 4 years. I am especially grateful to Daniel K. Schneider who supported me in this. + Thanks to Roby and Fabien for taking care of the migration (Technorati Profile).

Facilitating Serendipity or Encouraging Homogeneity

The following paper supports a claim that always struck me as pertinent and curious to think about: the fact that most (mobile) social software designed for serendipity "create a more homogeneous representation of the city by encouraging users to socialize more exclusively with those they already know and by privileging a type of urban experience based on consumption and entertainment". Thom-Santelli, J. (2007). Mobile Social Software: Facilitating Serendipity or Encouraging Homogeneity?, IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 46-51.

The author gives examples, of interest for people into multi-users location-based applications:

"When users announce their location using Dodgeball or arrange a meetup using Mixd [9], the selective aspects of the chosen recipients of these broadcasts encourages homophily to the point that serendipitous interactions are only really possible with those who probably have similar interests as you, at locations that have been pre-approved by those who are just like you."

Interesting enough, the paper suggests design strategies aimed at widening the "representations of the urban experience" promoted by mobile social software, through arts-inspired practices. IN order to leave space for alternative interactions, the point is to focus on the "Recognition of the non-user" (interesting for 80/20 David!). For example:

"In another case, Dodgeball and Mixd highlight venues for consumption of food, drink and entertainment, but they are defined in these systems solely by reviews of the venues’ customers. There is almost no recognition of the first-hand experience of those who work at these places as any depiction of the staff within the design of the system involves the mobile social software user’s view of the service that he or she was provided. Disenchanted waitstaff have begun to use the Internet to keep track of badly behaved customers who leave inadequate gratuities so one could imagine a mobile social system serving a similar function"

Why do I blog this? some good elements here, the idea that social software are designed for serendipity has often lead me to think how, instead of creating new connections, it reinforced communities... leaving the "non-users" behind. Applying this to mobile applications is very relevant and promising in terms of possible user experiences. Of course, the paper has much more to offer, I only limited my notes here to what I found close to my research about mobile social software.

Arkanoid game facade?

This facade spotted in Lyon this morning looks like a breakout game. Please do photoshop it.

How communication and identity play out through "portable objects"

Read this interesting essay this morming: Ito, M., Okabe, D. and Anderson, K. (2007). Portable Objects in Three Global Cities: The Personalization of Urban Places, In Rich Ling and Scott Campbell Eds., The Mobile Communication Research Annual Volume 1: The Reconstruction of Space & Time through MobileCommunication Practices. Transaction Books. In this paper, the authors acknowledge that most of the research about mobile devices has focused on (1) mobile phones (2) interpersonal communication as the primary mode of usage. They then propose to focus on the whole range of portable objects (media players, books, keys, credit and transit, ID, and member cards) "to understand the diverse ways in which information and communication technologies shape our experience or urban space and time". Their purpose is to understand they ways in which communication and identity play out in public and semi-public places and infrastructures. The methods employed here is ethnographic, based on a mix of diary and interview techniques.

Their results suggest certain "behavioral frames" or "genres of presence" that involve people's use of IT in locations, a process they describe as "placemaking":

"Almost all of our research participants carried around devices and media that were meant to create a cocoon that sheltered them from engagement with the physical location and co-present others (...) functioning as mechanisms for “filling” or “killing” in-between time when people are inhabiting or moving through places that they are not interested in fully engaging with. (...) the process of constructing personal work space “encampments” by bringing portable media to public places of choice. The most common form of encampment involved using cafes and other spaces like libraries or public parks as places to camp out and work. (...) Just as people seek out beautiful campsites to set out there gear and reside for short periods of time, urbanites find attractive public places to temporarily set up camp with the help of their information technologies. The attraction of working in a specific “camping site” can include the personal relationships fostered there, food and drink, infrastructures (tables, electricity, WiFi), and most importantly, diffuse social ambience. (...) The process of maintaining records of customer transactions can be considered a process of “footprinting” or leaving traces in a particular location. (...) The overall trend is towards increasing reliance on information-based, automated, and impersonal systems for managing relationships with urban infrastructures and services."

Why do I blog this? it's a good summary of interesting phenomenons about the usage of portable objects in mobile situations. Although it may seem intuitive for people who have this kind of behavior, it's interesting to read a more thorough academic description of such things, especially as a starting point to describe the peculiarities of situations (the inter-individual or intercultural differences for instance).

Sidewalk edges/curb

The difference of size between sidewalk curbs, first example in Geneva, Switzerland, second in Torino, Italy:

There would be a lot to say about the different sort of curbs (insurmountable, rolled, or rounded, surmountable or traversable and barrier) but here I'm only stuck by the difference of size between these two examples.

The evolution of objects through ubicomp

Bits from Appliances evolveby Mike Kuniavsky (Receiver), which describes the advent of ubiquitous computing applications:

"We are on the cusp of another profound change akin to that seen by the Baby Boomers. Ubiquitous computing appliances will change the fundamental nature of the home and our experience of it. The house of 2047 will likely not be filled with robotic humanoid servants, be an automated factory of leisure or resemble any of the other images that current domestic technology programs envision. It will be something different, and it will change imperceptibly, appliance-by-appliance, upgrade-by-upgrade, shift-by-shift, year-by-year. Our understanding of what constitutes an object will change: is an ATM a single device, an outpost of a system, or the physical manifestation of a service? Is a phone? Is your bed? And as we use and change these appliances, they will change us, too, as every great shift in the capabilities of our tools has in the past."

Why do I blog this? some good starting thoughts here about upcoming things; will object still be objects? what will count? the physical objects or the ecosystem of services around?

Conextualized norms of interaction

Pictograms obviously not for anyone, specific norms of interaction that only concern a minority, but still made public.

Designing for deterioration and the affordance of aging

Via Experientia, this very interesting blogpost about "designed deterioration by Khoi Vinh. Taking the example of a cast iran skillet that had developed a coating from oil and food (called "seasoning" by manufacturers), Khoi Vinh shows how it's a beautiful piece of design and "how its very deterioration has been incorporated into the design of the object, at how it’s gotten more attractive — less ignorant — the more I use it". He then wonders about the fact that designing an object is "based on an assumption that it would remain perfect forever, which is obviously impossible:

"the concept of what we might call designed deterioration is fairly anathema to digital hardware. The objects we purchase from purveyors of digital technology are conceived only up to the point of sale; the inevitable nicks, scratches, weathering, and fading they will encounter is not factored in at all. The result is that as they see more use, their ignorance may recede, but they wear it poorly. They don’t age gracefully."

Why do I blog this? Deterioration, failures, breaking, rip-offs are very intriguing phenomenon to me. And of course, it raises pertinent questions about design. What are the functions of aging? To what extent the traces of time are important?

Alexandra described how this is important for building a positive history of interaction with an object (see my notes from what she described at the NordiChi workshop) but what else is conveyed by aging? ownership? uniqueness...

Besides, this applies differently to digital objects like webpage or video games, since the aging often corresponds to the disappearing of the designed object. Although some projects try to add a "time dimension" on webpage, see for example the Lucent’s Live Web Stationery which add a digital patina on a webpage.

(Picture taken in Toulouse, an aged wall that have seen loads of concerts posters in the area, conspicuously removed by folks over time)

"Digital entertainment and mobility" seminar

A short of summary at the "digital entertainment and mobility" seminar I attended yesterday in Lyon, France. My notes about what I found relevant for my work. The event was organized by Imaginove, a cluster association representing video game companies such as Atari, EA as well as animation/audiovisual producers. Philippe Jeudy (Sega Mobile) At SEGA, the mobile gaming department is different from the Mobile console department (Nintendo DS/PSP), which sparked lots of discussion about why (different competencies, different business models) and why not integrating them in a single business unit (even with the game design) to try to create a much more holistic experience, as well as connections/continuity between console games and mobile phone games. From my point of view, in terms of user experience, it's clear that it's not "2 industries" as people use to say in that business... the time spent playing on a Nintendo DS is definitely competing with the time spent on a mobile phone for example. There are different visions there and business examples shows that some like UbiSoft prepare selling their shares from their mobile arms (Gameloft) whereasr Electonic Arts is more integrative, as I've been told by a manager from EA Mobile Europe.

The most interesting part of Philipe's talk concerned the limits in the mobile gaming domain: - hardware and software: the mobile is no yet a laptop, smart phone only 5% of the european market (I've seent he same figure 2 years ago... the evolution is dead slow). When it comes to downloading a basic games, 15 millions of people in France can do it (out of 43 millions of call phone users). In addition, developing games for more than 300 models is terribly difficult (different resolutions...) then. - Network constraints: apart from 3 in italy, the mobile internet is not broadband (still have to wait 18-24 months). - Conditions of sales for phones, and people often don't know how to use them - Very complex return on investment, much more than the web - Usage and practices are still fuzzy, but research gives some hints - (Flat) Mobile Internet Fee aren't there yet, it's still way too expensive.

He also challenged the idea that the future of video game is on cell phone... a sort of gung-ho statement that is a bit fuzzy. Of course, as he said, there is a good and exciting potential but what happens is rather that mobile gaming support the trend started by Nintendo with the Wii and the DS about expanding its user base.

Currently when an editor sells a game for 5 euros, it earns 1... which is really low to invest in R&D, marketing, etc.

Marie-Christine Crolard-Lepany (NPA Conseil) A consultant in new media forms, she gave a very good overview of the near future changes to be expected about mobile television, comparing point-to-point/unicast (streaming on cell phone using 3G networks) to broadcast (one content broadcasted to all through DVB-H). The interesting thing with DVB.H is that it can reach lots of mobile devices (phones, mp3/video players, etc). Unlike streamed videos on cell phones, there is a crux need for quality images and no lag in this case.

She talked a bit about the demand for such mobile broadcast. The first demand concerns the accessibility to existing content (tv channels and shows that people miss). Showing charts, she demonstrated how the audience curves are different from home-tv, with peaks between 6-8pm (big peaks in home tV are after 8pm). They discovered that most of tv-channels are wondering what to put there.

The main limit she mentioned in mobile situation is the autonomy of the device, lots of people need to limit their mobile-tv usage on their phone, to keep some power left for using it to communicate with others.

Anne Bationo-Tillon (France Telecom R&D) Anne, an HCI/ergonomist researcher addressed the usages and practices of mobile devices related to Mobile TV, through various studies her team carried out at Orange. The sort of studies they do are mostly qualitative, aiming at revealing usage logics and dynamics about reception/production of contents, when and where they are used and the link with the context in which they're employed.

Some results: About the place where mobile contents are consumed: - at home: sit or on bed (protected space), avaiability of preferred content (when dad or husband is watching soccer) or used as a second screen. The interesting aspect they notice is the flexibility of the posture in diverse situations (people laying on bed and looking at the phone above) - "static mobility": sat in public transport, or in gardens...

The content is mostly consumed as an interstitial moments (free time, between two activities), also targeted at short contents. Some means: For 3G: 10minutes, For Video glasses: between 20 and 45 minutes, for laptops: 90minutes. As for the links with the environment: in private places = to isolate oneself (one's "bubble") and in public places to be disengaged from others (in public transports for example) and get some distractions.

Anne also tried to describe her vision about the mid-term evolution of mobile devices. Some highlights she gave: - a different place depending on the ages: multimedia (kids) versus instrumental/utilitarian object (more than 30s) - the range of usages is increasing depending on the memory of mobile phone - purists will still have their dedicated devices (console for gaming, camera for pictures) but the cell phone is a way to replace them when you can't carry lots of thing or in certain contexts. - a fine and reinforced articulation between the mobile phone and other devices... As Ernest Adams (that I mentioned the other day), she claimed that other mobile devices will include phone (or communication) capabilities. It's indeed the case with the DS and the pictochat but the inclusion of 3G in a game console or a digital camera remains to be seen...

Why do I blog this? a very interesting overview of the area, and good discussions with practitioners who really have pragmatic issues far from über cool pervasive gaming applications (but still opened to hear about it).

[near] futures of digital entertainment

Yesterday I gave a talk in Lyon for the video game/mobile game industry about the "near futures of digital entertainment". Slide are available here (english) and ici (en français).

The talk started by a quick overview of research projects about mobile/pervasive gaming (location-based games, mobile tagging, etc) showing how this is difficult to throw to the markets (hardware/software issues + infrastructure problems...). I then tried to show some hints about what to do with examples that I find interesting and very down-to-earth: using the phone microphone, tv-phone tie in, etc. The point was to show people from the industry that they can do something almost overnight, not using ultra-tech fancy GPS solutions and stuff.

I concluded the talk with a mapping of the possibilities (in the form of an uncertainty cone):

The horizontal line shows the consumer market. When circles/things are close to the edges, it means that it’s not certain to be around before few years? The problem is to find what can turned them into more market-orientated products. For example, a way to bring location-based games closer to the market would be to forget the use of GPS but to let people self-disclose their locations.

IEEE Pervasive Computing about Urban Computing

The last issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing is devoted to urban computing (edited by Tim Kindberg, Matthew Chalmers and Eric Paulos), a topic defined as "the integration of computing, sensing, and actuation technologies into everyday urban settings and lifestyles". What is interesting is that it gives a sort of overview of the current subtopics and main issues of the field:

"rban settings are challenging places for experimentation and deployment, and they remain lit- tle explored as pervasive environments for largely practical reasons. For one thing, they’re complex in terms of ownership. For example, placing sensors in a city will typically require permission from many stakeholders. Urban settings also tend to be far more dynamic and dense in terms of what and who would participate in an application or system. People constantly enter and leave urban spaces, occupying them with highly variable densities and even changing their usage patterns between day and night. (...) The articles we selected confirm that urban computing is a practical reality but that research is still at an early stage, with much of the subject still to be mapped out systematically. "

Why do I blog this? lots of content to read but this is definitely worthwile to see the cutting edge projects and the current trends. Besides, Fabien, Josep and I wrote a short bit (in the work in progress paper section) about the use of Flickr picture to analyze the behavior of people in cities.

Gaming in South Korea

In SFGate, there is a great forecast article by Jeff Yang about MMO evolution and South Korea. He basically describes the success of MMO in Korea, showing how this "american invention" has been turned into a "a $15 billion market cap" due to two main reasons: "the nearly universal availability of broadband Internet, due to a concerted government effort to invest in its digital infrastructure during Korea's boom years of the early and mid Nineties". And the "dramatic collapse of the South Korean economy in 1997" which led laid-off people to on-line game to avoid being depressed (!).

More interesting to me is this part of the article that shows how koreans/asians see the game industry, as something different from the European/American vision:

"E3 is a gathering for the old school videogame industry," he says. "It's driven by consoles, and it's all about the retail channel -- people pushing hardware and selling boxes. We think the future of gaming is very different. The Internet has given developers a real opportunity to play on a level playing field--to create a market where the best ideas win. And the breeding ground for the best ideas right now is here -- in Asia." (...) "We think the whole concept of spending $50 to buy a box, and then paying $15 a month just to try it out -- that's ridiculous," says Hong. "In Asia, virtually all of the new games that are being released are 'free to play' games. What this means is that you can try a game out just by downloading it and registering. But if you want certain enhancements -- special items, more abilities, unlockable characters -- you pay for those. About half of the revenues in the Korean games market today come from virtual item sales. People get hooked on the game, and they want to build up their characters beyond a limited level. Get it free, play the damn thing for free, pay for what you like. It's an enormously powerful concept."

In addition, Yang also presents some game design issues that seems very relevant:

""The entire Lineage experience was possible because of the 'blood pledge' feature," says Hong. "It's the key ingredient of the game --it forces gamers to build relationships and creates social hierarchies. (...) This counterbalanced relationship between "seniors" and "juniors" is written into the cultural DNA of many Asian societies (...) Sword of the New World as his magnum opus, a sweeping epic inspired by European Baroque style, set in a fantastic variant of the Age of Exploration. The game had been developed with a unique new concept in mind: Instead of creating individual characters, players would create families consisting of as many as 36 characters, of which three could be controlled at any time. "It's very much an Asian concept," says Hong. "Korean players, for instance, tend to create multiple accounts, so they can experiment with every class and skill variation. And because players would always complain about not being able to juggle all of their different accounts easily, Kim thought, well, what about a game where you could have all these characters together? And making them into a family -- all the characters in an account have the same last name -- well, that's very Asian too."

Why do I blog this? some relevant material/data here to be employed as appetizers in discussion with game designers. I find interesting the way the korean do not make differentiations/silos between what is in the game industry and what is not, a recurring problem here in Europe.

William Gibson's interview

Some excerpt from an interview of William Gibson that I found relevant:

"trying to get a handle on our sort of increasingly confused and confusing present. (...) when I started, one of the assumptions that I had was that science fiction is necessarily always about the day in which it was written. And that was my conviction from having read a lot of old science fiction. 19th century science fiction obviously expresses all of the concerns and the neuroses of the 19th century and science fiction from the 1940's is the 1940's. George Orwell's 1984 is really 1948, the year in which he wrote (...) There's a character in my previous novel, Pattern Recognition , who argues that we can't culturally have futures the way that we used to have futures because we don't have a present in the sense that we used to have a present. Things are moving too quickly for us to have a present to stand on from which we can say, "oh, the future, it's over there and it looks like this." (...) I would find that spookier if I had been believing all along that those sort of dystopian themes in science fiction were about some sort of vision of the future. I think they were actually like being perceived in the past when that stuff was being written. 1984 is a powerful book precisely because Orwell didn't have to make a lot of shit up. He had Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin as models for what he was doing. He only had to dress it up a little bit, sort of pile it up in a certain way to say, "this is the future." But the reason it's powerful is that it resonates of history. It doesn't resonate back from the future, it resonates out of modern history. And the power with which it resonates is directly contingent on the sort of point-for-point mimesis, like sort of point-for-point realism, in terms of what we know happened. (...) When you're writing about a present, whether it's imaginary or not, and there's some major imaginary elements in Spook Country , the rules are different. It isn't the same. I have to come up with something that allows me to suspend my disbelief in my fantastic narrative and which I hope will allow the reader to suspend their disbelief. So actually, it is more work. It requires a different sort of examination of my own sense of the world outside myself."

Why do I blog this? some good points there (especially regarding the process of writing about present/future), although I am curious about the "things are moving too quickly to have a present".

Taskscapes

Tried to dig the notion of taskscape lately as described in Ingold, Tim. (1993) "The Temporality of the Landscape", World Archaeology, 25(2): pp. 24-174:

"Just as the landscape is an array of related features, so -by analogy- the taskcape is an array of related activities. (...) In short, the taskscape is to labour what the landscape is to land, and indeed what an ensemble of use-values is to values in general"

The "taskscape" then describes the whole ensemble of activities undertaken by a society (or individuals). Why do I blog this? culture.

Yoga?

Use of weather data feeds in video games

The change of seasons in Animal Crossing (Nintendo DS) always struck me as an interesting example of digital/physical interconnection but there is a now a leap forward described in TR:

"Electronic Arts's new sports game will have a novel level of realism: live weather that affects play. (...) With online play increasing in popularity, EA developers are focused on improving the user experience. "We try to add whatever technology, feature, or function to games that gives the player real-world experience," says Kyle Hanley, a producer for EA Sports. With broadband Internet now widely available, the company decided to try to incorporate dynamic data into the games. (...) Developers at EA Sports made this capability a reality in NCAA Football 2008 by integrating a live feed from the Weather Channel."

Why do I blog this? I've always been curious about weather in video-games, that's the sort of curious feature that is interesting to examine (and think about how to design for). In this case, I find it IMHO very intriguing and at the same time very trendy: the availability of data ("traces" left by humans or nonhumans) leads to design opportunities. What's next? weather as new interaction partner (or as an opponent) in games where you can compete against the weather.