ggalaxy

Don’t think I posted it here but this initiative about mapping and analyzing design process is of tremendous value. Hugh Dubberly collected “over one-hundred descriptions of design and development processes, from architecture, industrial design, mechanical engineering, quality management, and software development“. All this material is a great way to understand how people design and how they describe what they do. The process are often presented in a “designerly” way, mostly with graphics and process representations.

Why do I blog this? material for teaching as well as my interest towards representing designers’ process. A must read.

• Interactive Artifacts and Furniture Supporting Collaborative Work and Learning [Springer]
  Participated in writing the introduction

What? A quickly found picture to celebrate the 5000th post on this blog.
By Pierre la Police of course, depicting an imaginary sport elec competition.

Weird devices, electricity and strange people. Surely a good summary of this blog.

Two intriguing examples of prototyping in the urban environment. The two pictures above (taken in Geneva and Lyon) depict another form of trying to represent the upcoming colors of a building. Different colors are presented (stand-alone or with a combination of others) to the people who will take a decision.

The pictures below that I’ve already shown here is a basic model of how a soon-to be skyscraper would look like in Zürich, Switzerland. An intriguing steel structure that represents the volume which will be occupied soon by a new building.

Different range of representations using shapes and color. Although the color example quite minimally shows the future of the building, the steel structure is impressive.

Why do I blog this? interesting documentation of a certain design process and how certain elements can be prototyped to evaluate people’s reaction to a certain change. These elements acts as a sort of prototyping the near future of the urban fabric using shape and color probes. Very important in terms of user acceptation since colors and huge shapes can be problematic for city-dwellers (say, in continental europe).

Tangentially, it also shows that physical and situated artifacts can also be employed to design the city of tomorrow. It doesn’t mean however that digital techniques such as 3D modeling or augmented reality cannot be employed.

More about present and near future sci-fi with this interview of Cory Doctorow in The Guardian. It practically addresses “why he’s not interested in predicting the future using science fiction, but influencing it“.

Doctorow describes himself as a “presentist”, that is to say someone who writes metaphorically about the present (something every sci-fi writer do as he points out) and therefore “comment on the now” to “extrapolate the future”. He then contrasts this with other forms of engagement with reality:

“The job of a science fiction writer, historically, has been to understand how technology and social factors interact,” he says, “how technology is changing society. An activist’s job is to try to direct that change.“

Why do I blog this? simply find intriguing this sort of meme lately about the “near future”. It’s therefore interesting to observe what sci-fi has to say about it: an intriguing locus of interaction between the social and technologies. The reason why I am digging this down lately is that fiction plays an important role in both shaping our imagination towards various inventions and setting up the scenes about possible alternatives.

• Nokia premieres its newest research laboratory, in Hollywood, USA [Nokia]
  Nokia today announced its newest research laboratory has been established in the Hollywood area of California, US. "The laboratory will explore new entertainment experiences that combine the physical and digital worlds. Our research work will focus on mixed reality experiences, with a strong community flavor. We will develop new user interfaces that fully explore the role of the human body and human motion for more natural forms of interaction. Mobile devices will play a central role in this," commented Rebecca Allen, Laboratory Director of NRC Hollywood.

• Media Lab creates Center for Future Storytelling [MIT News Office]
  "The Media Lab and Plymouth Rock Studios will collaborate to revolutionize how we tell our stories, from major motion pictures to peer-to-peer multimedia sharing. By applying leading-edge technologies to make stories more interactive, improvisational and social, researchers will seek to transform audiences into active participants in the storytelling process, bridging the real and virtual worlds, and allowing everyone to make their own unique stories with user-generated content on the Web. Center research will also focus on ways to revolutionize imaging and display technologies, including developing next-generation cameras and programmable studios, making movie production more versatile and economic."

An intriguing aspect noticed at the Design Biennial the other day concerns the status of objects presented in design exhibit. Most of the objects have warning signs forbidding people to touch/use/employ/walk on/sit on artifacts. However since most of the objects have clear affordances and are quite successful as calling for their own use… people cannot help using them (design success uh?). Which leads to pictures like the one above and below with foot traces here and there on some pieces.

Plus, given the huge quantity of kids there, this sort of audience inevitably wants and needs to touch artifacts.

As a matter of fact, I find this extremely interesting as a person intrigued by usage and the passage of time (generally synonymous of dirt, dust and rusted pieces). What do people think at the end of the exhibit? Is the quantity of dirt a measure of success (”ah the affordance of this couch is so great that it’s trashed by now”).

A very simple list of touch interactions seen on the streets of Paris, France. As parking meters get more and more complex, the types of activities you can have with these devices is much more diverse. It therefore requires colors, shapes, cancel buttons and stuff. What I find intriguing here is that all the possibilities have been sketched down. A contextual manual if you will.

Reminds of my old Palm with its handwriting alphabet printed on the device:

The complexity of interactions with our electronic devices nevertheless leads to the issue of how to make visible (or reveal) the whole set of possibilities. Especially when it comes to gestural and touch interfaces: how to make them more self-revealing? would it be possible to design clear affordances? or, in a button-less world, how to make apparent the diversity of interactions?

Obama is ubiquitous in France. Beyond press articles, he is present in street art (Saint Etienne) but more interestingly as a bait or as weird cue to buy things such clothes (Paris) or pizzas (Paris):

Why do I blog this? not very related to the topics at hand here but this sort of pervasiveness is intriguing. Obama is clearly a meme spread in the physical environment. Perhaps it can show how people have certain hopes or want to benefit from the Zeitgeist.

CCTV camera turned into birds’ nest. Seen at the Design Biennale in Saint Etienne, France.