Unrealistic use cases and personas

Browsing the previous content of Vodafone’s receiver, I ran across this old article by Adam Greenfield about persona that struck me as relevant for current discussions about the role of persona/use cases in design (in the context of video game design).

The main point of the article is that use cases, designed to capture the important aspects of various users’ interaction with an innovation are often “cooked and artificial with no realistic appreciation of people’s complex desires and contexts. This is often true and spectacular. if you ever participated in a discussion of personas, you’ve certainly noticed how sterile and utilitarian use case are described.

Some excerpts I found relevant:

“When considering the social practices around any new technology, the uses foreseen by designers, manufacturers and retailers – and, inevitably, featured in the advertising and marketing campaigns around these technologies – are so much less interesting than what people actually wind up doing with them. (…) I call the gaps between the assumptions and the reality “fault lines”: places where emergent patterns of use expose incorrect assumptions on the part of the designers, imperfect models of the target audience on the part of marketers, and social realities that might otherwise have remained latent.
(…)
there is good business sense in attending carefully to these fault lines, for along such lines is where the truly useful products and services wait to be born.
(…)
A basic problem with use cases, and the entire product development mindset in which they are embedded, is that they generally fail to anticipate the larger social context inside which all technology exists.
“

Why do I blog this? What is interesting here is that Adam is not suggesting to scenarios and use cases but simply to make them more realistic and human. Very often, the use case are so neutral and instrumental that they fail to capture the complexity of people’s ambivalent needs and desires. And of course, design needs to take this into account so that the innovation “become part of the everyday pattern of use for the majority of users”.

It would be relevant to understand why the situation if often like this, why use cases are sometimes futile and utilitarian, why people avoid to consider weird situations like the one described by Adam: “in the US, Cingular Wireless offers a service called “Escape-a-Date,” which provides its subscribers an emergency exit from bad dates“. Is it because it’s politically incorrect or worse is this because of wrong assumptions about what uses could be?

The problem with tools such as personas and use cases is less about the process itself, and rather about the type of behavior promoted (or forgotten) in them. Also read what Steve Portigal wrote about personas and how they patronize users.

Bucky Fuller Break

It’s friday afternoon and the week-end is almost there so it’s a good time to read few things about Buckminster Fuller, isn’t it?

First in Metropolis, there’s an interesting overview of his “legacy” by colleagues and admirers. And second, Popular Mechanics have a sort of retrospective called “10 Gonzo Machines From Rogue Inventor Buckminster Fuller:

“The late, great architect and inventor brought us the geodesic dome, but Buckminster Fuller’s often twisted, often brilliant vision extended far beyond air-conditioned sporting arenas. From super-efficient cars carrying lots of passengers to entire cities encapsulated by single roofs, he made Frank Lloyd Wright look positively normal, and his prescient engineering foreshadowed—and continues to inform—the movement toward green design and prefabricated housing. Here’s a handful of our favorite concepts from the Fuller retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York.“

The one which amazes me is certainly the “Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map” which shows the land masses as there true sizes:

“Frustrated with the failure of cartographers to develop an accurate two-dimensional map of the world, Fuller used his geometric knack to create his own distortion-free projection. His “Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map” appeared in Life magazine in 1943 and remains one of the most geographically accurate world maps. “

Why do I blog this? pure curiosity in thinkers about space, urban environment and design.

Ubiquitous computing vision flaws

Thinking about ubiquitous computing and the so-called “internet of things” lately, I have started to recognize the underlying process and how it is engineered. It’s as if the starting point was the “social” which is then cut in different chunks and “places”: home, work, etc… and then a second differentiation in “objects” or “things” that engineers try to “augment” or “make intelligent”: smart fridge, augmented maps, intelligent car, house 2.0 and so on. It’s as if the process was always like this, following both an incremental innovation path AND the assumption that objects should stay the same with an augmented smartness permitted by different sorts of Gods (AI, connection with 3D virtual worlds, networked capabilities).

Janne Jalkanen has a good post which also deals with these issues, it’s called “Ubicomp, and why it’s broken“). He basically describes 3 reasons why he things ubiquitous computing is flawed, some excerpts:

1. “People want to feel smarter, and in control. When you are overwhelmed with choice, you feel stupid. When you have five options, you can weigh them in your mind, and make a choice which you feel happy about – you feel both smart and in control. Apple gets this – the reason why iPhone is so cool is because it makes you feel powerful and in control as an user: you understand the options (no geekery involved), you can use it with ease, and you get to go wherever you want. Granted, your array of choice is limited, but that only exists so that you can feel smarter.
2. The second big reason why the ubicomp vision is broken is cost. Building infrastructure costs money. Maintaining infrastructure costs money. Making your environment smarter means that it needs to have maintenance. Yes, it can be smart and call a repairmain to come by – but as long as it’s not a legal citizen, it can’t pay for the repairs. Is it really ubiquitous, if it works only in very selected patches of the world where people can afford it? (…) However, consider your personal electronics – like the mobile phone. You get a new one every two years (…) Personally, I think the iPhones and Androids and Limos and Nokias of the world have a lot more claim to the ubiquitous computing vision than the internet-of-things folks. They’re already connected, and they’re everywhere.
3. The third thing that I find broken in the whole thing is how the human factor has been cut from the equation. Yes, it is said to transform our lives, but I’ve yet to hear one good reason what exactly would make two home appliances want to talk to each other? And note – I am specifically saying want. Because at the moment, they don’t want anything. They do as they are told, without any personality or desires. We need to figure out what a toaster wants (and not ask the one in Red Dwarf) to understand why they would need to network – and if they do, why aren’t they talking to me instead of each other?”

Why do I blog this? some great thinking here, especially about the underlying visions of ubiquitous computing and how it’s tackled by people who really implement stuff. It’s therefore interesting to see the perspective from someone at Nokia and about this claim that phones better relate to ubiquitous computing than other internet-of-things projects.

“Design in the age of intelligent maps”

(Maps of optic fiber routes in an urban environment taken from Jef Huang’s talk at the world congress of architecture)

Meanwhile, on the urban computing front, Adobe Think Tank featured an insightful article by Karzys Varnelis and Leah Meisterlin entitled “The invisible city: Design in the age of intelligent maps”. It described how today’s maps are not just about spatial relationships but rather about revealing invisible information (“previously hidden in spreadsheets and databases”) through new sorts of representation.

As the authors say, maps are now so ubiquitous that they’re a key component of network culture: we use map on the web, on mobile, in car GPS, etc. and even on the street.

Concerning the implications:

“…is not just a new representation of the city that emerges out of this data; its a new hybrid city, part physical texture and part data-driven map. (…) For designers, the implications are clear. As maps become richer, more complicated, and less predictable, cartography becomes less a matter of convention and more a matter of invention. Our age of intelligent maps demands intelligent map design
(…)
Instead of seeing ourselves as part of the city fabric, inhabiting a three-dimensional urban condition, we dwell in a permanent out-of-body experience, displaced from our own locations, seeing ourselves as moving dots or pins on a map. In doing so, we experience ourselves less as individuals and more as data moving along a planetary network, composed of both telematic circuits and the physical pathways of the global city.
(…)
[and also some critical perspectives:] If ubiquitous mapping systems are a powerful new tool, uncritical reliance on them can easily lead users astray. (…) it is also disappointing—and perhaps indicative of where Google is ultimately going in all this—to observe that layers of content for ubiquitous mapping applications remain so tied to traditional datasets“

(Picture of the book “Paris ville invisible” by Bruno Latour which deals with this issue)

So what can be done? how to design meaningful interactions and using alternative datasets? Varnelis an Meisterlin describe how “interventionist mapping” has started to gain some interest recently, mentionning examples like Stamen’s INdigital Wireless E9-1-1 or Justice Mapping Center and Columbia University’s Spatial Information Design Lab’s series of maps depicting the Million Dollar Blocks. These projects, by showing relationships and patterns can become more than expository: they allow to ask questions, draw conclusions and help to mobilize people politically.

And while maps’s role evolve, so does our relationship to the spatial environment

“In the past, maps existed as much to mark out the unknown, to slowly fill in areas blank except perhaps for the legend “here be monsters,” as to represent the known territory of the city. Today, however, with polar exploration, mountain climbing, and even space travel, becoming increasingly banal amusements instead of feats of daring exploration, maps are shifting toward a new relationship between the known and the unknown.
(…)
maps as navigational tools for the physical traversal of space are supplanted by intelligent maps for navigating a contemporary space in which the physical becomes a layer of data in a global informational space (…) Much of this world is invisible and it is the task of the designer to help us understand it.“

Why do I blog this? Accumulating material for a near future laboratory pamphlet about urbain comuting. The article reads as an interesting follow-up to Urban Computing and Its discontent by Adam Greenfield and Mark Shepard, since it looks at the same boundary object through another perspective.

Perusing this also made me think about what Dan Hill recently described about his position at Arup (and some examples of what is of interest to him):

“I’m currently exploring a few ideas in particular, such as extrapolating and aggregating Building Information Modelling (BIM) techniques up to the city level – to form a kind of ‘City Information Modelling’ (CIM). Taken with the feedback from urban informatics, this could then extend the design process out over the true life-cycle of the project, including inhabited and adapted, which would mean a four-dimensional modelling process taking into account the living city, or a ‘4D Urbanism‘. You’ll note these concepts are still a bit slippery, to say the least.“

Real-time information about electricity production

A basic instance of revealing the invisible through technology (urban computing!?). These simple electronic displays give some information about the production of electricity by solar panels located on this parking lot rooftop. Seen in Lyon, France yesterday, it actually represents the real-time production (percentage), the cumulated production since 2005 and the equivalent of saved greenhouse gas.

Superposition of urban layers

Some cities are amazingly good at keeping the different layers which constitute the “urban envelope”. In this example taken from Zürich last week, remnants from an old building have been kept to create a colorful playground. Where other cultures/regulation would tear it down, the city of Zürich amazingly allow this to happen, preserving a sense of different times in the environment.

Different sorts of touch-screen technologies

An interesting short description of common touch-screen technologies on by AP described by Peter Svensson:

• ” Resistive (Palm Treos, HTC phones and the Samsung Instinct.): Two layers of clear conductive material lie on top of the display. Pressing them together makes current flow between them. Resistive displays are cheap and can be used with a simple plastic or metal stylus, but are prone to damage because the sensor is on top of the display.
• Projected capacitive (Apple iPhone and the LG Prada): this touch sensor can lie underneath a protective sheet of glass, making it more durable. The mere proximity of a finger or other object of similar size changes the electrical properties of the sensor’s conducting layers, which is why the iPhone is so good at sensing light touches and quick swipes. Projected capacitive sensors can register more than one touch at a time.
• Surface capacitive (ATM, kiosks): Like resistive screens, they usually need recalibration, and because they’re mounted on top of the display glass, they’re prone to damage and wear.
• Surface acoustic wave (ATM, large screens): these touch screens vibrate very rapidly. Sensors pick up how the touch of a finger affects those vibrations. The screens can be crisp and clear, but the sensor can’t be sealed against the elements.”

Why do I blog this? a quick and dirty overview only to be aware of the field.

The nature of prototypes in design

In the last TOCHI issue, there is this paper called The anatomy of prototypes: Prototypes as filters, prototypes as manifestations of design ideas by Lim, Stolterman and Josh Tenenberg which deals with prototypes in HCI and design. They state how the role of prototype is well known but there’s a lack of knowledge concerning the “fundamental nature of prototypes”. They subsequently try to provide an “anatomy of prototypes as a framework for prototype conceptualization”.

Some excerpts I found relevant:

“we identify an initial set of design aspects that a prototype might exhibit. We call these aspects filtering dimensions. We use the term filter, since by selecting aspects of a design idea, the designer focuses on particular regions within an imagined or possible design space.
(…)
The Principles of Prototyping and the Anatomy of Prototypes

Fundamental prototyping principle: Prototyping is an activity with the purpose of creating a manifestation that, in its simplest form, filters the qualities in which designers are interested, without distorting the understanding of the whole.

Economic principle of prototyping: The best prototype is one that, in the simplest and the most efficient way, makes the possibilities and limitations of a design idea visible and measurable.

Anatomy of prototypes: Prototypes are filters that traverse a design space and are manifestations of design ideas that concretize and externalize conceptual ideas.“

Also about the quality of a “good” prototype:

“…can only be understood in relation to the specific purpose of the design process and to the specific issue that a designer is trying to explore, evaluate, or understand. The purposes for which prototypes are used can be broadly categorized into the following areas:
(1) evaluation and testing; (2) the understanding of user experience, needs, and values; (3) idea generation; and (4) communication among designers. These categories are not meant to be mutually exclusive, and any one prototype can be used for multiple purposes.“

Why do I blog this? documenting some aspects of design for project discussion with a client in the video game industry. The notion of prototype is intriguing in that field and would benefit a bit from design thinking.

Hacking and pervasive computing

This summer issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing is especially focused on hacking and its role in the field of pervasive/ubiquitous computing. As Roy Want, puts it into his editorial introduction, hacking can play a powerful role in pervasive computing as it can inspire “thought processes and reduce the time it takes to create a viable prototype. This process can take many forms: taking a device that performs one function and tweaking it so that it makes another, gathering unrelated components and commercial products to be repurposed or rapid prototyping.

In their introduction, the guest editors also highlight how “The advent of the Web along with the rise of open source communities have brought a resurgence in hacking” along with a good bunch of websites about this topic.

The issue covers examples about the Nintendo Wii, Chumby, bluetooth in cell phones among other things, as well as a more theoretical description of how hacking is valuable for user innovation by Eric von Hippel and Joseph A. Paradiso. In this paper, they show how the hacker is a “lead user” who reinvents and modifies products to better achieve his or her own needs.

Why do I blog this? simply looking at how the recent evolution of object hacking scene pervades the academic/engineering field.

While visiting a glass dump

… made me thing of Person, M. & Shanks, M. Theatre/Archaeology, London: Routledge (2001):

“The archaeological experience of ruin, decay and site formation processes reveals something vital about social reality, but something which is usually disavowed. Decay and ruin reveal the symmetry of people and things. They dissolve the absolute distinction between people and the object world. This is why we can so cherish the ruined and fragmented past“

Why do I blog this? Visiting this glass dump last week made me think about the intricate relationship between waste, detritus and how we use things…. which often leads to an intriguing typology of places where we drop detritus like the one above. Generally hidden from public view, it sometimes resurface. Beyond my fascination towards garbage, it’s intriguing to note the value of trashs described by Person and Shanks’s quote.