Lift09 is over and I only have enough energy to post this intriguing light sign we encountered when visiting the cathedral in Geneva. It’s supposed to indicate to visitors when they can go down the stairs (to avoid traffic congestion in the narrow staircases). An interesting example of signage.
Cris sent me this highly interesting paper that is spot on my Lift presentation: Why the overwhelming numbers of design flops? by Alice Rawsthorn. The article tries to list the reasons why design goes wrong and misses the point (besides reasons such as budget issues, deadline pressure and lack of talent). The list consists in:
- “Designing for other designers (…) ignoring entire consumer categories
- Change for change’s sake
- They made us do it (…) one reason why cellphones are so infuriatingly difficult to use. The market is dominated by the cellular networks, which are understandably anxious to ensure that new phones are compatible with their technology. Unless the manufacturer complies, they refuse to sell the phone.
- Innovation for innovation’s sake: why invent a new version of something that doesn’t need to be improved?
- As long as it’s green: sustainability is often used to excuse other deficiencies in desig
- Design by committee: The more ambitious – and expensive – the project, the more vulnerable its orchestrators seem to feel. That’s why such projects end up being subjected to so many people’s opinions, that they become as bland as a Hollywood blockbuster with a plot determined by repeated test screenings.
- Up, up and away: As corporate life expectancy shortens, ambitious executives have so little time to make their mark in particular roles that they meddle unnecessarily.
- But it worked for them/me-tooism, or copy the competition”
Why do I blog this? This is great material as it uncovers an interesting typology of failures with some underlying reasons.
In this insightful blogpost Clive Grinyer, formerly designer a Orange, now at CISCO, reflects on his experience of customer experience design in the mobile industry. Some excerpts I enjoyed:
“In the conventional industrial product development process at that time, my design specification was handed to a mechanical engineer, with specialisms in a greater level of detail of material and process. It was a shock to then realise that the design was treated as merely a guide, where the engineer would take hold of the reigns and steer the object in whatever route made the production easier and more robust. (…) It is only in exceptional circumstances, such as at Apple, where their leadership, investment and strategy embraces those values, that you see the full impact.
(…)
In the mobile world I saw this repeated through a culture dominated by technology and decisions and assumptions made at every level that impacted badly on the end experience of the user. The situation was worse, in that I was not in the right order of process and “design” had already happened by the time I or my team had anything to do with it. This leads to technology developed without any thought of how it would be used, or 3rd party application providers incapable of customising or improving usability.
(…)
For the last months I have also struggled to understand what to say about the mobile. It seems so exciting that millions of people can be walking round with so much technology in their pocket but find so little use for it apart from speaking and texting. Open platforms, the promise of Android, ever more capable devices failed to unlock my cynicism in the ability of the mobile to deliver useful applications to normal people. And then the iPhone 3G did it.“
His conclusion about “what to do” is basic: Talk about people (look at what people do), Discover the customer journey, Tell stories of how it could be, which are relevant aims in technological companies, and as he points out generally a surprise (“Hardly rocket science but revealing to most people still“).
Why do I blog this?some good hints here to be re-used in my user experience course. The “talk about people” is a familiar trope to me. I often face the same situation, delivering a speech to technology people in a certain company (e.g. video-game industry, mobile software organization, design students) and I see the fascination towards the material I show them. Most of the time, documenting people’s life is of great value to them as they smile and see how things work (or don’t work) in a concrete way. However, it’s then important to show them how this is valuable for the time being, for what they’re achieving. Which is why what Grinyer describes about telling “stories of how it could be” is important. Perhaps I would add as a preliminary step “showing problem, issues, pain points and dreams”, as a sort of material to inspire design.
Along with duct tape, clothe pegs are perhaps one the most intriguing tool to modify the purpose of things in order to meet new objectives. The example above, encountered this afternoon in a french bathroom shows a striking example of a thoughtless act: how wooden clips can keep a tube of toothpaste properly squeezed.
Why do I blog this? documenting thoughtless acts is always a pleasure at Pasta and Vinegar.
Overemphasis on technology? Seen last week in Geneva.
Pervasive computing to the maximum.
The distinction between “space” and “place” is commonly discussed in recent academic work in ubiquitous computing/HCI by researchers such as Paul Dourish. In a seminal paper form 1996, Harrison and Dourish express that “space is the opportunity; place is the understood reality.” They raised the social construction of space by exploring how human actions are structured by the spatial organization of our environment. Unfortunately, as Dourish pointed out in his 2006 paper, this discussion lead to a misunderstanding: some people tended to exaggerate the distinction between spatial and social components.
Interestingly enough, reading Assia Kraan‘s paper “To Act in Public through Geo-Annotation shared location“, I ran across this interesting paragraph:
“ It is important to make a distinction between space and plek. Anglo-Saxon theoreticians talk about space and place. The Dutch word plek (plural plekken) will be used here because the alternative ‘place’ does not express its meaning adequately. ‘Place’ is used, for instance, to refer to the physical space of a settlement, while plek refers to the meaning that a physical space has for somebody. A plek can be described as a complex ensemble of physical characteristics, cultural experiences, history and personal logic. Geographers target the navigational characteristics of plekken, but the computer scientists Paul Dourish and Steve Harrison emphasize an aesthetic quality. They recognize the function of plekken in a creative appropriation of the world and describe plekken as ‘developed sets of behaviour, rooted in our capacity to creatively appropriate aspects of the world, to organize them, and to use them for our own purposes’“
Why do I blog this? ruminating about different words and their cultural meaning is relevant here as it can express underlying dimensions.
A short poem written on a post-it stuck in the subway in Paris. A basic form of location-based annotation.
(via) Sometimes you don’t expect titles like that in scientific press but “The importance of stupidity in scientific research” by Martin Schwartz in Journal of Cell Science is an intriguing read. Some excerpts I liked:
“we don’t do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don’t feel stupid it means we’re not really trying. I’m not talking about `relative stupidity’, in which the other students in the class actually read the material, think about it and ace the exam, whereas you don’t. I’m also not talking about bright people who might be working in areas that don’t match their talents.
Science involves confronting our `absolute stupidity’. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown. Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong or gives up and says, `I don’t know’. The point of the exam isn’t to see if the student gets all the answers right. If they do, it’s the faculty who failed the exam. The point is to identify the student’s weaknesses, partly to see where they need to invest some effort and partly to see whether the student’s knowledge fails at a sufficiently high level that they are ready to take on a research project.
Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. (…) The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.“
Why do I blog this? although I fully agree with the importance of absolute stupidity in scientific research, I think it’s also an important attitude in design research. Some ideas to be explored later about this issue.
Possibly some weird work for computer case and cell phone designers: Parents should have a “red button” to disable a game they feel is inappropriate for their child, says the EP Internal Market Committee.
So, the solution to avoid kids playing with games that are not suitable for them is… a red button. More information on the European Parliament website:
“Members of the committee are particularly worried about on-line games, which are easy to download onto a PC or a mobile phone, making parental control harder. Until PEGI on-line is up and running, the report proposes fitting consoles, computers or other game devices with a “red button” to give parents the chance to disable a game or control access at certain times.“
Why do I blog this? A sort of red-button-determinism like this is quite hilarious. The idea of adding a new button that would comes out from the blue (like this) to prevent kids from inappropriate content sounds so passé that I can’t help thinking about odd game devices (cell phones with gigantic buttons, desktop computers with switches) and, of course, the inherent problems that may happen!
There’s an interesting discussion of the term “ubiquitous computing”by Mike Kuniavsky at Orange Cone. Mike basically explains the ambiguity of terms and deconstruct the very notion of ubicomp:
““Lately, I’ve been thinking about why “ubiquitous computing” has such problems as a name. When I talk about it, people either dismiss it as a far-future pipe-dream, or an Orwellian vision of panoptic control and dominance. I don’t see it as either. I’ve never seen it as an end point, but as the name of a thing to examine and participate
(…)
Why don’t others see it the same? I think it’s because the term is fundamentally different because it has an implied infinity in it. Specifically, the word “ubiquitous” implies an end state, something to strive for, something that’s the implicit goal of the whole project. That’s of course not how most people in the industry look at it, but that’s how outsiders see it
(…)
As a side effect, the infinity in the term means that it simultaneously describes a state that practitioners cannot possibly attain (“ubiquitous” is like “omniscient”–it’s an absolute that is impossible to achieve) and an utopia that others can easily dismiss.“
The problem is then that “Anything that purports to be a ubiquitous computing project can never be ubiquitous enough”! Then, what shall be done? As Mike points out, other terms such as “artificial intelligence” also had the same issues.
“Do we need to rename “ubicomp” something like “embedded computing product design,” something that promises less so that it can deliver more? Maybe. I still like the implicit promise in the term and its historical roots, but I recognize that as long as it has an infinity in part of its term, there will always be misunderstandings“
Why do I blog this? preparing my Lift talk about failures I am interested in the difference between the imagined futures (endpoints such as ubiquitous computing, artificial intelligence or flying cars) and the reality as it is experienced by people (users?). Mike Kuniavsky makes interesting points about this issue here by looking at the how naming research domains/trends can be misleading.
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