Last: July 2004
Next: September 2004
August 27, 2004
night of the long grill
Last night was Night of the Arts in Helsinki, traditionally a time for art to come onto the street, and more importantly, much teenage drinking.
Helsinki's had a bad run this year - the weather hasn't generally been bad for extended periods, apart from when there's some kind of outdoor celebration. The Finnish Barbeque Championships, Helsinki Pride, the Finnish Firework Championships and Night of the Arts has all been accompanied by torrential rain. That didn't stop people from enjoying themselves (however I am still wet).
A bit of ballet at the Opera House (too wet to stay for the actual opera), some contemporary art meets breakdancing at Kiasma, and finally, opera at Jaskan Grilli.
We had been recommended the Jaskan Special, the contents of which I am still unsure about. A beefburger, a spam(?)burger, and a nakki sausage hidden under "everything", which I think consisted of onion, garlic, cheese, ketchup and mustard. Maybe pineapple as well. Needless to say, it was wrapped in a savoury donut.
I can still unfortunately taste it.
The menu at Jaskan Grilli is long and seemingly varied. I may not vow to eat the menu (as I did to Jones last night), but I think more snack food diversions are needed. I rates cities a lot on their street food, and I was worried that Helsinki was like Copenhagen, with just limp hot dogs. How wrong I was!
last photo by bbj
link | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
August 24, 2004
running, running
I'm frazzled. A very busy period at work coincided with running around Europe, giving presentations on all kinds of subjects. Eurofoo was fun, mainly for the friends old and new I met. Too many to list; it was great to finally meet Jarkko and Elaine (even though I only live a few blocks from them), and other Finns including Alex Nieminen and Herkko Hietanen (and his amazing Russian vodka). Talks were very Open Source focussed, not enough hardware for me. Where are the Europeans building real things? Did get to pick my first lock though. Makes me want to get coding and get soldering again. A few ideas knocking around my head for Etcon next year.
And I'll reiterate an offer I made in the Open Source Usability talk: if you're working on an Open Source project, and would like some interaction design input, please get in touch. Don't expect complete designs for large projects (such as Mozilla or OpenOffice), although I can provide some usability testing and expert review of such projects. User centred design is a collaboration between designers and programmers, and as such both parties have to be open to suggestions.
What else? Got some Dutch deep fried snack food, one of my favourite delicacies. Reading some of the notes emerging from ISEA, I'm gutted to have missed some of the sessions. At least I got to catch up properly with Timo before he left. I'm still proud of the speech I gave - I sometimes think it's a lot harder to push this discipline forward than something like programming, and it's good to create some work that people seem to find relevant. In other news, some of the work I did at Orange, working with the lovely people at Iconmobile, is finally being released (the home screen design here - admittedly on a phone and platform I'm not too enamoured with, and seemingly not completely implemented).
Today I went to Nokia.
link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
August 21, 2004
exhibitionists and voyeurs
this is a public draft of my submission to the final ISEA2004 proceedings; please comment and help me whip it into shape. Original presentation here.
exhibitionists and voyeurs
human communication patterns and their impact on locative media
Chris Heathcote
Locative media is not new; it is as old as human evolution. The recent attempts to digitize and socialise this media falls down when basic communication patterns are not respected.
People have always created public annotations, from cave paintings (designed to communicate actions, places and messages - where food is available), through Greek and Roman graffiti and flags (used to indicate ownership and conquest). In recent times, such public annotation has been quashed by private ownership of space.
This has led to modern graffiti, which indicates ownership of a place in a parallel mental construction to real land title. The most social version is the toilet wall, used to communicate and converse in itself, but also as a medium for organising real meetups (often of a sexual nature). As technology has advanced, so has public annotation, incorporating stickers, scratching and etching.
So, learning from the past, can we determine what future locative media will look like?
taken from Hotel & Farm by Ben Katchor, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #13
Most current digital locative services either rely on just making technology available, or concentrate on unusual communication patterns - public speaking, talking to strangers, exhibitionism, and display of real identity to all. This is compounded by a move towards more voyeuristic media consumption, and display of the general public's banal lives as entertainment.
We cannot and should not expect digital media to be different. We need to build on the patterns of public anonymity, the population split between exhibitionists and voyeurs, and use of our identity to reinforce trust, gain respect and worth within small known private groups.
On the Internet, we have seen several examples of services where the few create for many. Most online communities work this way, with a small number of people creating the core of content, and tending and managing the community to ensure survival. Marc Smith of Microsoft Research quotes a figure of 2% taken from newsgroups. As long as 2% of the community care, and are willing to work (normally purely for credit and recognition), the community will survive.
Conversely, many online systems, especially file sharing, rely on much higher active participation rates. Those that just 'take' content get branded as leechers. This goes against older warez communities, where a select few cracked software to prove and brag about their technical prowess. Locative media has also so far concentrated on mass active participation (citizen journalism, locative storytelling, geopositioned photography), and correspondingly the services have been designed for creators rather than consumers.
When designing social and locative software, we need to respect the distinction between exhibitionists and voyeurs, and create interfaces designed for consumption as well as creation.
Being digital, we have a distinct disadvantage over physical media: visibility. I cannot see digital slices of my current space. If I do interface with a digital representation, it is unlikely to be the same representation (media or service) that others have. This makes the basic need for creators (of exhibitionism, space and place ownership, community recognition) very hard to fulfill. You also lose the voyeurs, as they have nothing to look at.
This is a side effect of one of the advantages of being digital. We are not bounded by physical space, even though we can reference it and use it for contextualisation. Physical space is bound in three finite layers: physical geography, built environment and places, and physical augmentation. Digitally, we are constrained only by what we can visualise and how much information can be modelled mentally. This means that information visualisation and filtering become our most important needs (and therefore becomes the critical focus for interaction design in the future).
The other big advantage is that we can grant selective access to digital spaces. As well as public anonymous spaces, we can create many private layers, and even personal places for just ourselves.
One way to create understandable, usable locative services is to place the service within a situation. Current online services suffer from trying to work everywhere (or at least over a large area, such as the US), for large groups of people. These are hard to use, especially when context such as location is needed, hard to write and manage, and do not scale.
Situated software is a term used by Clay Shirky to describe services that are normally physically grounded in a particular place, and maybe for a particular user group, defined for a real-world situation.
These do not even have to be connected to the public Internet: wi-fi and LANs replicate the physicality defined by the design of the service. However, adding dislocated access for those part of the situation allows the place to become elastic.
An example of this is Bass Station, a project by ITP students at NYU in New York. This places a ghettoblaster in a student lounge. The ghettoblaster is fitted with a computer, MP3 player and wi-fi. Any student in the room can throw an MP3 at the device, which is either played immediately or queued. It is bound by its context - the people and place.
However, this idea could be extended by adding access via the Internet just for those who also regularly inhabit the lounge. This keeps the situation, but allows the place to become slightly virtual. Those outside the room cannot hear the music, or know who is there to hear it, but anyone who is there knows that someone from their peer group has put the music on (and has someone to complain to if Britney Spears is put on a continuous loop).
Airport Express incorporates some of the ideas, and I'm waiting for a hacker to create a software version of Bass Station. Suddenly this idea blooms from one situation to thousands.
Situating software can also make it easy to deploy and use. I created an experimental location based review service called Gaslamp, situated in downtown San Diego. The physical boundaries meant that location could be found easily, using street crossings: the context of San Diego was implied. As well as being easy to use and easy to design, I managed to code it in under 2 days, mainly because I didn't have to deal with larger context such as the whole of the US, or the world.
More services will be used at a sociable level. This means authentication can be carried out via human communication rather than more technical breakable solutions. Monitoring of the public Internet means that much activity will move to smaller hidden networks (or hinternets, defined by Jo Walsh, Simon Wistow and Simon Batistoni on the (void) mailing list - a place outside the "controlled web", the back alleys and the dark, unregulated bits of the Internet). With wi-fi, these can be created in seconds, and have physical understandable bounds (at least with 802.11b). File sharing will be carried out in pubs and bars, with the transaction agreed over a pint rather than the anonymity of the Internet. We're back to the sneakernets of the 80s and early 90s.
As shown, people have always appropriated place for their own ends. Digital places will be no different. People will hack, bend, shape and destroy service to meet their own ends, not those of the creators. A few examples - wi-fi SSID, a technical hook that lets computers see each other via wi-fi, has been used by people in a space to communicate. I saw this happen at a conference called DIS (which definitely falls into the idea of a situation), where several people could not figure out the correct SSID to get Internet access. This is the conversation I saw:
rate DIS so far -1 to 10
8-altogether, cool projects
this is the best talk ever
heh, i sense sarcasm
no sarcasm, this rocks!
actually, this is kindamything
naw DIS is the best conf ever
are you DISpleased?
DIS rocks!
don't DIS DIS
iamonline... type \"DIS2004\"
create network... \"DIS2004\"
aolIM - pobs09
DIS2004 didnt work
dis2004
still there?
and then it broke up, presumably as they found the proper SSID. This group (2 or 3) had no idea who they were conversing with, but shared a situation (and a need).
Another example of appropriation is the social networking site Orkut. The only way to access Orkut is to be invited by a current member. Well, one invitee was Brazilian, and they invited their friends, and they invited their friends. This would not have been noticed, apart from the fact that many conversations on the service switched from English to Portuguese. When appropriated, some incumbents tried to get the service to mandate English use; they felt their spaces had be appropriated. They failed, and presumably have either left the service and found another, or found a way to coexist.
Situation, more than context, allows us to create truly locative services. Understanding human communication, carried out both off and online, means that these services have real social value, and consequently gain and keep users. These users will start off consuming information, watching how others act and react. Some of these will turn out to be digital exhibitionists, creating content and becoming the soul of the service. Appropriation or change will happen, and it is up to the core users, not the owners, as to how the systems react.
link | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)
August 19, 2004
ISEA 2004: Mapping space
Well, the talk seemed to go well - even heard people on the tram discussing it. It was in a big scary hall with the hugest projection screen ever.
Presentation (Exhibitionists and Voyeurs - Human Patterns of Communication and Their Impact on Locative Media) is here until I write it up.
Ben and his mind
Also on the panel was Ben Russell, who has just finished a book called Not Free, which sounds like it'll be worth a good read, and Andrew Morrison, doing lots of good work at the University of Oslo.
Finally an apology for casting off performance pieces as 'prancing about'. Not a wise move in a room full of electronic artists! But, as I said, don't expect everyone to want to perform, especially in public.
link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
ISEA2004: Japanese mobile phone culture and urban life
at ISEA 2004 in Helsinki - will try and take notes for some of today's talks.....
Machiko Kusahara
Japanese mobile phone culture and urban life
http://www.f.waseda.jp/kusahara/media
bit of a show 'n tell rather than a thesis, but some great photos - hopefulyl they'll be online soon
Ketai - mobile as culture
25% of japanese live in Tokyo and vicinity
50% of Japanese population live in 3 major urban areas
80% live in cities
typical 1-2.5 hours commuting
dense population, limied space (20% inhabitable)
anything is available, any time
afraid of being alone
afraid of being left behind
young women led the trend and use of mobile phones
(photos of Felica enabled keitai, use of 2d barcodes in libraries, sonic bone conduction speaker, phone-as-daily-tool)
keitai start being used in advertising other things
"we are already virtually next to each other" - new reality tool
keitai denwa - portable phone (chinese chars)
keitai (japanese alpha)
ketai - gone from 8 syllables to 2
60-80% of usage non-oral
also extension of one's body
use of phone as periscope
platform for cultural activities
very easy to create cHTML website
moblog - easier than weblog
push and pull media - information retreival and offering
boudary between art and entertainment not rigid (ketai haiku party)
3 day bonsai (virtual bonsai - Konami game)
88 million (70% of population) [seems low to me; other countries have gone >100%]
change of model every year
postpet and virtual characters now migrated to PC software, toys etc.
strappu!
hello kitty strappu!
chanel strappu
tube of wasabi strappu
plastic food strappu
comes from history - kimono don't have pockets, purse would be under sash belt, attached via semi-visible strap - netsuke (personalisation, miniturization, communication tool)
mobile phone covers available earlier in Finland than Japan
sticker and t-shirt printers for cameraphones
11.8m broadband connection, 35m Internet users (compared to 80m ketai)
phone is infrastructure - e.g. robot control using mobile phone [the. robot. has. trainers!]
link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
August 16, 2004
conferences and weddings
I'm running around a bit over the next month, quite a few interesting conferences (and 3 weddings in 2 weeks)... if you see me, say hi!
Firstly, ISEA 2004 - 19th-21st August, Helsinki.
I'm speaking in the Mapping Space session on the 19th at 1530. There's a great lineup, but unfortunately I'll miss Nina Wakeford and Matthew Fuller on the 21st, due to
EuroFoo - the same weekend in Enschede. I'll probably do a little talk about RFID.
Then there's Mobile HCI 04 - 13th-16th September, Glasgow. Last year's conference was very strong (and the food was fantastic), so I'm hoping to learn and eat a lot again.
I'm seriously considering Design Engaged, but other temptations include NordiCHI in October, and the Alvar Aalto Design Seminar, choices, at the end of August.
Needless to say, any talk I give will end up here, as well as some notes from others' presentations. And videos of hilarious wedding incidents to send to You've Been Framed.
link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
August 14, 2004
dance dance dance
Have I told you I love dancing? I love dancing. I don't do it often enough, but this weekend there's no excuses; it's the Koneisto festival in Helsinki. It's a great mix - something like a large school hall for the main arena, and then 4 basements playing music ranging from house to electro to really really bad fast trance (and I used to like trance music). Also there's an outdoor stage, by the water, but that had finished by the time I got there.
Last night saw Jimi Tenor, Plaid, and Richie Hawtin amongst others. All of these were ok (I won't mention the dire Way Out West), Tenor (Moog and full band) started off as a bit world music-y for me, but then proceeded to get his p-funk on (enough to even excuse use of saxophone and flute). Plaid (2 Powerbooks; a few computer problems) started a bit lost, as well, but reached a pretty dark wall of sound by the end. Pretty hard to dance to some of it though. Richie Hawtin (DJing on two decks with a table full of electronics, including 2 Powerbooks (one widescreen), *and* a table full of records) forgot that techno is about machine funk - the first half an hour went nowhere, with just bang bang bang music. Occasional greatness, but no momentum. Well, my brain didn't think much of it, but I was dancing away happily.
Best thing was discovering some new fantastic acts. Silicon Scally (iBook and mini keyboard) played a very tight electro set, the LBJ Soundsystem (2 iBooks, 2 MCs) was just utterly fantastic, probably the highlight of the night, and just the most fun to dance to (and it's great to see local talent signed to a really good label). On the DJ side, Lil' Tony (own mixer, no noticeable Apple products) played an amazing deep techno set - a complete mixture of styles and speeds, and technically very accomplished. He stole the show just before Plaid came on. And he dances to the music.... I don't trust DJs that don't dance.
What was odd compared to London was the pretty complete lack of drugs. It's not a bad thing - people were there for the music, and seeing that many people at 5 in the morning still with coordination was fantastic. No walking over some kind of fluoro battlefield to get out of the venue.
So, 8 hours of non-stop dancing later, walking back at dawn (and a loss of 3 pounds of weight somehow), I'm happy. And I get to do it all again tonight! If I can move. Or hear. Or see.
(One Koneisto niggle: not allowing water bottles - they pour out a water bottle into a plastic pint glass. Insane! It's a club night! You need water!)
link | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
August 04, 2004
DIS2004: aesthetics, ephemerality and experience
designing for ephemerality
paradox of the 'new' office
main reason - increased learning and collaboration
BUT
works against
rendering activities, persons, materials invisible
Learning NOT just as hearing
Participation while away
Transition between locations and cooperative systems
hence desire for common information spaces/KM
Grudin 2002 - 'group dynamics of this new world'
ephemerality of face-to-face meetings
privacy around novice experimenting and failing
can stay at the periphery of social gatherings
support the 'here and now', not 'evverywhere and always'
how and when does ephemerality and peripherality matter?
*****
Understanding Experience in interactive systems
CMU & Uni of Art & Design Helsinki
http://goodgestreet.com/experience/home.html
interaction design is designing product behaviour, sometimes extended over time
need to understand the interactions between products and people, and the experience that results
question: can we design an experience?
no!
We can suggest, frame and provide for particular experiences and their interpretations
to design for experience, we need:
a systematic way to talk about experience
a way to make theories of experience useful to designers
existing models are product-centred, user-centred, or interaction-centered
[very hard to take notes in this one (too many quick slides); a framework for interactions is described]
*****
aesthetic interaction
http://www.interactivespaces.net
emote - physical UI for remote control
(mentioned in http://www.katrinebjerg.net/nyhedsbrev/nov03/peterk.htm )
Shusterman 1992 - Pragmatist aesthetics
aesthetic experience is a potential result of a use relationship
experience not just through the eye, but the entire human body
from efficiency to imagination
from tool to play
non-work related contexts
create involvement, experience, suprise, serendipity and improvisation
aesthetics is about invoking imagination
designers should prvide users with a map to explore, not a route
classic aesthetics - 'does it go with the couch?'
disinterested pleasure vs. engagement with the context
classical - aesthetic lives in the object
pragmatist - aethetics exists between user and object - a use relation
designing for body and mind
HyCon Explorer
http://www.interactivespaces.net/main.php?section_id=124
body becomes cursor in the city
city gains an extra virtual layer
users choose whether they want to be seen
pragmatists insist on the unity of the experience
not just enough to provide tangible interactions if just mapping button pressing to a bigger button pressing
aethetic experience - bodily sensation and intellectual challenge
emote - not intriguing to use, more annoying!
making a video for Dissappearing Computer - 'playful interaction'
with a physical experience, should there be error dialogs, or should real-world retrieval and human interactions be used to correct when things go wrong?
link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
August 03, 2004
DIS2004: tangible UIs
Tangible UI
The Calder toolkit
wired and wireless components for rapidly prototyping interactive devices
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~nx6/pubs/Lee_HWTK_DIS_04.pdf
what are interactive devices?
a computer!
but also all electronic gadgets
vary in shape, size, colour, wearables, one/two handed - no keyboards or mice
divide between physical interfaces and engineers who create them
graphical interfaces have got to the point where non-experts can create GUIs
DIS2002 showed background study of this work
will focus on design and implementation of the toolkit
observed design process-
form creation
and
interaction sketches + mockups
don't come together until the first functional prototype
can we iterate form before functional prototypes and bring it together with interaction?
create foam forms and rapidly match interactions with parts of the physical sensor toolkit
(uses Director / Java / C++ for creating the interaction)
wireless components can be easily and quickly tried in many positions on the foam form
questions:
How/where will computation be performed?
Where will the power come from?
solutions for global / local / distributed
wired devices similar to Phidgets (Greenburg) and iStuff (Ballagas)
digital/analog input hub - 4 dig switches and 4 analog devices to USB
used in physical computing classes at CMU
as it's made to support design, the components were optimised to be as small as possible
*****
Interaction Frogger
TU/e Eindhoven
http://www.industrialdesign.tue.nl/portfoliosAndPublications/publications/wensveen/DISFrogger.pdf
freedom of interaction leads to embodied interaction
take full advantage of person's motor skills
offer many ways to access functionality
freedom of interaction is not unlimited, to avoid the user getting lost
natural coupling of action and reaction
time / location / direction / dynamics / modality / expression
don't have to use the tight natural couplings of the physical world in interaction design
but then have to use an interface to mediate
information is needed
feedback - tactile / sound / light
another categorisation - functional / inherent / augmented
functional appeals to the needs of the user
augmented feedback - red light when you turn on a tv
inherent - information provided as a natural consequence
feedforward - how will an action be taken - labels, onscreen help, icons
mapping functional information to action, through augmented information and inherent information
an interaction framework
six practical characteristics for coupling action and information
interaction can leave a trace, control becomes display (e.g. a tape recorder)
*****
Hands-only Scenario
Video Action Wall
Mads Clausen Institute
http://www.itproducts.sdu.dk/djajadiningrat/publications/04BuurDISHand.pdf
rich actions
physical manip of computer data - revolution of PC design
rich interaction with intelligent products - evolution of product design
is it easier to learn to think than to move?
reaquire balance between body and mind
Zense - optical instrument to visualise and regulate heating control
workshop from DIS2002 - Look Mama, with hands!
create vs. control
actions vs. objects
hands-only scenario
'close up' version of dramitised use scenarios
focus attention - what will the hands do, when interacting?
video action wall
live 'post its' on a computer screen
qualities of motion or action
design strategy - design actions before the product
(but this is nonsense! - can help us understand though)
scenarios
handling everyday objects - find similarities
using hands only to replicate similar actions
how can products then replicate these actions?
describing the qualities, technical vs. metaphor
'make repetitive circular movements and adapting force to feedback'
vs.
'like a dog chasing its own tail'
a lot of physical UI isn't subtle - like banging a B&O stereo
Laban framework for understanding movement
http://www.xoe.com/LisaSandlos/lma.html
link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
DIS2004: design for hackability
design for hackability
Anne Galloway
inspirations: hackers, punk d.i.y, pirate radio, dj/remix, Lego Mindstorms communities
if technology isn't being used to buy you, it's used against you
if you don't like something, d.i.y! change it!
what sort of hackability?
political - production not consumption
ethical - respecting people, places and practices / diversity
beautiful - being graceful and comfortable in one's own skin
*****
Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Hacking the network
http://www.coin-operated.com
Hacking context
from fixed to mobile
Midi scrapyard challenge
creating interfaces from discarded materials
how does the re-appropriation of context change an interface?
collaborative systems
http://www.simpletext.info
shared audio visual performance
collaboration potential of mobile devices
what are the strengths of non-verbal communication?
change context of use, not the device itself
physical display
Policestate
reappropriate network traffic through to display via 20 remote controlled police cars
networks of coincidence
http://www.umbrella.net
weather acts as a coincidental experience
spontaneous networks
visual footprint of a network (umbrella illuminates)
coincidence vs constant
*****
Elizabeth Goodman
as a designer you actually don't always like having your stuff hacked
artificial distinction between designers and users
hackability is not usability, or ease-of-misuse.
hackability is not inherent in artifacts. It arises from social tensions.
hacking game engines to create films in the game, that can then be edited and distributed
sanctioned transgression is no transgression at all
hacking barbie and action man voice boxes
rtmark - "I embarrassed a whole company"
FIASCO - open system for urban gameplay
hacking of public space
someone used the game in Portland, rather than New York
is this a good hack?
in the end, the streets are the judge
http://www.asphalt-games.net
tension between designers and users was effective, but took time to get used to
systems are not for us, but the users, and only they can judge
****
Lalya Gaye
http://www.viktoria.se/~lalya
ubicomp triggers new aesthetic practices that enable people to transform their everyday life into a raw material for creation and personal expression
Context Photography
camera captures the invisible context with sensors and changes photos due to context
Sonic City
A real-time personal soundscape of electronic music by walking through and interacting with urban environments
paths become scores
music is articulated by ad hoc bodily interactions
Tejp
low-tech location-based personal layers in public space
audio tags - audio whispered to by-passers
embodied interaction, away from PDA sreens
enable everyday resources (right away, in context)
sample&hold - e.g. iobrush
use as controllers and interface - Sonic CIty
reveal
amplify
parasite
modify
end-users have to creatively deal with constraints
how does the designers take into consideration all these aspect (inc. effort, urgency)
*****
Dan Hill
http://www.cityofsound.com
BBC has cultural context to deal with, and wide diversity
background of Adaptive Design - Tom Moran, Stewart Brand
focus on usefulness rather than usable
South Bank architecture - 'people will just assemble the bits and pieces for themselves'
context-centred design
Steam - pulls info from radio listings and streams
things created for themselves that others find useful
no user testing
'always consider the next larger context'
don't expect their stuff to scale - and that's ok
Ripples around broadcast events
blogs / chat
feeds / watercooler
specialist sites / press reviews
hackable layers
the Smithsons - Sheffield University
internal hackability in the BBC
URLs built to last - enough URLs for 25 years of radio
transparency and openness
designers as communicators
Archigram were more magazine publishers than architects
open-source thinking rather than code
publicradiofan.com
bleb.org
trying to give these sites feeds in more useful formats
issues for clients and process
+ve
increased innovation
multi-context
better fit to purpose solutions
-ve
potential loss of resilience (ethics? - what is abuse?)
loss of control over context & brand
*****
is there a culture of hacking?
changing physical things seems 'harder' or need to be more empowered
people chaining together things at hand (without having to get hands dirty)
O'Reilly Make magazine
Ready Made magazine - furniture hacks
why now?
more dissemination of information
quicker broadcast of ideas
now being taught
but hacking has always been a part of culture (e.g. automobile as a hobby, hot rods, lowriders)
any tech that becomes ubiquitous enough, with common ownership, with have some people starting to hack [Marc Smith's 2%?]
what about people who hack things that cause discomfort for other users?
is it the role of the designer to mediate? (or the law?)
emotional harm can/will happen
communities know when their norms have been violated
diff between civil disobedience and terrorism is a fine line
don't design 'for' or 'against' hackability, but how to let things happen on their own
but it is good for designer to know or the issues and engage them
people will always find a way to break things - have to learn from those episodes
reappropriation of tools
people even home-brewing car cleaning products
mobile phones as flashlights
is hackability ever going to be anything than a subculture?
several examples have moved near to/over the line (mashups)
is there a high barrier-to-entry?
tools to build things on top of other things
e.g. pull delicious and audioscrobbler into blogs
cut and paste
hardware hackability still difficult
hackability can be taken to the level of leaning against a wall or putting your feet on a chair
everyone shouldn't be a hacker - lots of people don't want to do it
[is there a diff between hacking for yourself or hacking for a community?]
[is designing for hacking too sanctioned?]
how can it be made fun?
what a re the visual affordances of hackability?
ipod is very unhackable, feels unhackable
mobiles have hardware affordances - batteries taking out, sim card changing, replacable covers
'hacking' as a notion may be a Western hemisphere thing - other emerging cultures just do it to survive
hacktivists working on every continent - but still an online culture
link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
August 02, 2004
DIS2004: ubicomp at home and on the move
ubicomp at home and on the move
the 'missing what' of Brand's model - social interaction
ecological habitats of devices
activity centres - where devices are used is often different to where they live
coordinate displays - places such as where mail is distributed, a noticeboard
produce a space-plan showing all 3 on a physical plan. Shows assembly and manipulation of stuff at functional sites
Two parts to ubicomp in the home: placement and assembly (reassembly). 'Piecemeal' migration (Edwards and Grinter). Allows stuff to assimilate and disappear from view (already happened with TVs, telephones)
Configuring ubistuff:
compositional approach -
physical to digital transformers
digital to physical transformers
digital transformers
emerging physical and digital spaces
a basic interaction mechanism - the jigsaw editor - only services that are compatible can be fitted together
can people understand this abstraction? is it intuitive and efficient?
cooperative analysis carried out using paper-based mockups and seed scenarios (Ehn & Kyng 1991), married with situated evaluation (Twidale et al 1994)
3 criteria of analysis (morgensen 1994)
users provided ideas for new devices, components and applications
Broader lessons:
Inhabitants as designers and developers
Reasoning with diverse elements
Interleaving the new and the old
Linking outside the home
****
Gate Reminder
Samsung Electronics
Reminds user of objects they should take when going outside
Reminds users of messages they should be aware of before leaving
Installed at the front door
Based on Smart Home project from 2002
scenarios - books you borrowed from a friend, DVD rentals you should return, take out garbage on a particular day, forgot to buy bread even they passed it several times
Don Norman - Signal + message
but, should be signal + message + context
the right moment (person/time/place/atmosphere)
(don't remind about bread when in a meeting at 3pm)
two types of contextual-aware reminder:
mobile reminder - carried by a user
ubiquitous reminder - installed into your surroundings
front door - right place
before going outside - right time
user identification - right person
3 common reminding methods - post-it on a door, place the item by the door, ask someone to remind you
potential needs -
missing objects
weather information
regular reminding
writing reminders from outside
RFID used, tags attached to objects (medium-range type - 1m)
User detection - motion detector, door sensor, face identifier, speaker identifier, RFID again
cultural factors affecting design - shoes placed near front door in S Korea, people have to spend a few seconds in the area to put shoes on
mobile phone control system
whiteboard application used as a lightweight reminder
evaluation results -
mirror put near face identification cam to encourage usage
fixed eight of screen a problem
RFID - if it works, provides natural & transparent interaction
everybody loved whiteboard
showing photos and videos of objects - not everyone got this
[this was a good talk, at least they built something and carried out UCD - seems to be getting hard pointed questions from academia]
****
privacy risk models
Carnegie Mellon
"what about my privacy?" - especially with location and ubicomp
privacy means different things to different people
new issues - genetics, telemarketers
need a design method to identify and manage privacy risks
analogy - security threat model - what you are trying to prevent and what your adversaries have
analysis - common questions, like a task analysis
privacy risk management
help teams prioritise and manage risks
this model provides *reasonable* levels of protection for forseeable risks
questions:
social and organisational context
who are the users?
who shares information?
who sees it?
(difference between sharing info with coworkers or spouse, what people will share (e.g. health))
start with *most likely* users
e.g. people in your mobile phone book
what kinds of personal information are shared?
current location vs. home phone no vs. hobbies
some information already known between people
different ways of protecting diff pieces of info - location can be withheld/revoked, name or birthday cannot
what is the relationship between sharers and observers?
risks w/friends are unwanted intrusions or embarrassment
risks w/paid services are spam, 2nd use, hackers
incentives for protecting personal information
mechanisms for recourse (in the real world!)
what is the value proposition for sharing personal information in the first place?
e.g. nurse locator badges - initial reaction is bad, but has let them prioritise their work
risk vs. benefit of privacy info
technology questions
how is personal info collected?
do users have practical control over their information?
network based approach vs client based approach
push or pull?
do you send the info?
can others pull information about you?
need to make people aware of requests
provide understandable level of control
one-time or continuous disclosure?
e.g. observer gets snapshot
granularity of information shared?
spacial granularity (city, neighbourhood, street, room)
temporal (at boston next month, 5-6th August)
identification (a person, a woman, me)
keep and use coarsest granularity needed
risk management
estimate:
likelihood of unwanted disclosure
damage that disclosure causes
cost of adequate protection
focus of high likelihood, high damage, low cost risks first
not about the numbers, but relative, and just carrying out the process in the first place
how does the disclosure happen?
accident? bad UI? bad conceptual model? malicious?
what kind of choice and control and awareness are there?
opt-in, opt-out
what are the default settings?
Better to prevent or detect abuses?
case study - location-enhanced IM
can request a friend's current location
automatically show your location
invisible mode, reject requests
default location is 'unknown'
what about ethics?
that's different to a design judgement
should i be able to lie?
[really good talk]
link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (3)
DIS2004: reflection
Reflection, reaction and design
in touch
Interact Lab
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/interact/projects/intouch.htm
(service designed with Victoria Real)
How do people manage and maintain contact details across many technologies?
Drawing of social networks over two weeks
32 participants
Issues
Multiple address books
Remembering who, when, what
Under 35s
Larger networks, more devices/tools, more change in networks
Evaluation challenges
Familiar service but novel implementation - wanted to evaluate the whole service
Relationships happen over time
Evaluation in real community settings, not a lab
Tested over 4 weeks to let people really use the service
Could evaluate the learning curve, and how strong existing conceptual models are
Time could be reduced by cutting down feature set or incentivising usage between sessions
*****
Making tea: iterative design through analogy
http://www.smarttea.org
designed to help design for highly expert, loosely structured, longitudinal, concurrent tasks
gap between design team knowledge and domain expertise practice
process difficult to observe to completeion (based on study of long-term scientific experiements)
Task analysis not confident
Existing UCD elicitation methods assume shared domain knowledge and observable tasks
related work:
participatory design - Bodker
cultural probes - Gaver
story telling - Gruen
apprenticeship and mockups - Sperschneider, Bagger
artifact walkthroughs - Beyer
deconstructing experience - Dix
Use the analogy of making tea as a shared knowledge 'experiment'
(there is a long history of chemists and tea making)
analogy is safe, known, observable, repeatable, interogatable
asked questions about what is and isn't recorded
asked questions about differences between analogy and real life
then introduced chemistry apparatus rather than kitchen apparatus
got better payback because the analogy was 'fun', and people enjoyed participating
*****
design in the absence of practice
http://www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/~axc
Little or no grounding in existing practice for innovative design (wearables, pervasive etc.)
responses to the challenge
'ethnographic' point of view
Breaching experiments
Steve Mann: public performances as breaching experiment
taking wearable tech into real world (specifically those that spend time watching us - watching the watchers)
Can You See Me Now? - mixed-reality game
GPS highly innaccurate; inaccuracy not a significant problem for the runners
How?
players learn that gps is dodgy, and certain places work and don't work
players use blackspots as advantage
players exploit local knowledge of physical environment
develop shared vocabulary to describe areas and places of the game area
redesign will take unexpected learnings from the technical gap - enhancing collaboration and place augmentation
Experiencing uncertainty
working with 'constant interuption'
lots of diagnostic work, to work out if local problems, personal or entire system
Augment the game environment and interface with coverage map
move breaching experiments from 'making trouble' to evolving practice
not so much ethical considerations as the spirit of the thing
link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
DIS2004: William Mitchell
Start of conference mode - at DIS 2004. Notes as and when...
Rethinking Campus Design
William J Mitchell
$1 billion dollar construction campaign
HCI meets architecture
and
HCI meets urban design
Forms of learning spaces changing as architects take advantage of ICT
Lectures have become like Etech - everyone staring at laptops rather than taking notes, using the web and IM (passing notes in class)
Wants a utility to be able to take anyone's screen and project it
Classroom is a setting to create a community to have a shared learning experience
Dynamic of teaching and learning changing, especially seminars - any reference is instantly Googled and the results thrust back into the conversation... very high-speed investigation. Changes style of teaching - no superior command by the teacher (some have banned it)
(pic of design studio)
Studio space goes against stand architecture practise - separate forms and functions
Happens due to wireless connectivity and portable devices, allowing appropriation of space as you need
Cafe space doubles as work space
Extraordinarily efficient - less demand for specialised work spaces
Increase in demand for informal nomadic space
Earlier they wired up the dorm rooms - exacerbated the geek factor, encouraged anti-social pattern of behaviour (cave dwellers)
Increased roommate conflicts
Portable + wireless means work happens in semi-public places, still visible but quiet enough to do work
Ad-hoc problem solving groups form, random coincidental encounters
Designing spaces explicitly for these new patterns. Classrooms with circular tables (atelier model moved into physics and other very formal teaching)
Students can grab experimental apparatus and bring it to their table. Group hands-on joint working on problems, both physically and electronic.
Teachers act as coaches and encouragers
Traditional campus design - design around people, and books, to encourage physical interaction (Jefferson example)
Bosworth and MIT - again, iconic library, central green space, collonaded wings (in MIT, around workspace rather than residential - commuter campus)
newer projects - Simmons Hall (freshman dormitory). Goal is to intensify on-campus life. Metaphor is permeability. Freeform sponge pattern meshed with that of a formal grid.
Emphasis with all buildings - natural ventilation and light, operable windows. Possible with better control systems, but also portable devices allow usage in any lighting condition, and any temperature
Ray & Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences (Gehry) - 700,000 sq ft. Giant geometric cad model [therefore this could be used with photo-analysis to find out your exact location]
Media Lab - Fumihiko Maki
Public spaces at the top (restaurants, lecture halls), drag people up the building, showing people the work of the people in the building (like a shopping anchor at the opposite end to the car park)
Lab space is double height, with offices on mezzanine level.
"wasted space" may become the most important
Computer-supported social interaction becoming increasingly important
Varied spaces rather than modular repetition - growing feasability with cad/cam technology
Paradox of good technology - more technologically advanced a space is, the less high-tech it looks. Technology disappears into your pocket, disappears into the woodwork. Smaller, more robust, more graceful, more powerful. Use tech to get into basic human needs - light, air, sociability, view.
(Mitchell has the DVD of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms on his computer)
[how does the move towards fundamentally small screens (laptops) change software use, and the designs, output and work that is done alter?]
