“Research” in Design

Lift10 is over and I finally found some time to work on my stack of books. Which lead me to this book that Lysianne gave me during the conference: Recherche-création en design. Modèles pour une pratique expérimentale. This book (only in French) is the final milestone in a swiss research project called “CreaSearch” that I discussed a while back. For English readers, some of the material covered in this book can also be found in “Creasearch – Methodologies and Models for Creation-based Research Projects in Design” (from the proceedings of the Swiss Design Network Symposium 2008) by Magdalena Gerber, Lysianne Léchot Hirt, Florence Marguerat, Manon Mello and Laurent Soldini.

The aim of this project is to discuss the different forms of “research” in arts and design practices out of commercial spheres: What’s doing research when you are a designer working in an academic institution? How does (academic) designers’ activities compare to researchers practices? Can research in the field of design go beyond new product development or sociological/aesthetic studies of designed artifacts? Is there a common thread between all the activities based on creating objects? Fueled by the current debate about doing research in arts and design schools, the questions addressed in the book echoes a lot with my current interest in design research.

In this research project, the authors defines the notion of “creation-research”: “research activities, in design and in art, which incorporate the creation process (or the conception process) in a research process“. They than maps how it is understood and practised in design/arts communities and to what extent it provides a pragmatic context for developing research models that are methodologically acceptable for designers focused on a creative activity and for the international design research community. As such, it sets off to propose an epistemology of design research by showing the specificity of the knowledge it can produce.

Exemplified by case studies, this proposition revolves around a methodological model for research creation projects in design that is copiously described in the project deliverables and the book. See for yourself:

Why do I blog this? This is an interesting framing to engage (or continue) the discussion about what is research in the field of design. I liked the way the authors did not fetishize too much the idea of a framework. The elements that are defined in the model above can be seen as heuristics, instead of a prescribed step-by-step process.

It’s also interesting to compare the discussion about “research in design” with the current debate about “design research” and its role in new product development. The two are very distinct and emerges out of different constraints.

A definition of transduction

An interesting quote that will certainly frame our current work on the gamepad project:

“the term [transduction] denotes a process – be it physical, biological, mental or social – in which an activity gradually sets itself in motion, propagating within a given area, by basing this propagation on a structuration carried out in different zones of the domain: each region of the constituted structure serves as a constituting principle for the following one, so much so that a modification progressively extends itself at the same time as this structuring operation. (…) The transductive operation is an individuation in progress; it can physically occur most simply in the form of progressive iteration“

From: Simondon, G. (1964/1992) ‘The genesis of the individual’, in J. Crary and S. Kwinter (eds.) Incorporations. New York: Zone Books.

Why do I blog this? This quote struck me as highly useful to frame the evolution of joypads in the game controller project. Will certainly include it in the theoretical framing of the study as it enable to describe how different objets evolves through iterations with “constituting principles”.

An old phone booth

Yes, phones are mobile and everywhere now. But before that, public phone used to sit inside a booth… and before that they were also out of the booth. People would take the phone and put your head inside this kind of device encountered at CERN the other day (te gent on the picture is Mr. Woebken).

Why do I blog this I wonder when this sort of protection will be re-installed in cities. A a sort of place where it’s convenient (and acceptable) to make a phone call. It reminds me of the use of cell-phones in public phone booth.

Location-awareness sharing and affordances in the subway

Two recent articles about location-based platforms caught my eyes

Seeburger, J., & Schroeter, R. (2009, Nov 23-27). Disposable Maps: Ad hoc Location Sharing. In J. Kjeldskov, J. Paay & S. Viller (Eds.), Proceedings OZCHI 2009 (pp. 377-380). Melbourne, VIC: The University of Melbourne.

“The gathering of people in everyday life is intertwined with travelling to negotiated locations. As a result, mobile phones are often used to rearrange meetings when one or more participants are late or cannot make it on time. Our research is based on the hypothesis that the provision of location data can enhance the experience of people who are meeting each other in different locations. This paper presents work-in-progress on a novel approach to share one’s location data in real-time which is visualised on a web-based map in a privacy conscious way. Disposable Maps allows users to select contacts from their phone’s address book who then receive up-to-date location data. The utilisation of peer-to-peer notifications and the application of unique URLs for location storage and presentation enable location sharing whilst ensuring users’ location privacy. In contrast to other location sharing services like Google Latitude, Disposable Maps enables ad hoc location sharing to actively selected location receivers for a fixed period of time in a specific given situation. We present first insights from an initial application user test and show future work on the approach of disposable information allocation.“

(Thanks Antonio!)

Belloni, Nicolas and Holmquist, Lars Erik and Tholander, Jakob (2009)See you on the subway: exploring mobile social software. In: In Proceedings of the 27th international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 4-9 April 2009, Boston, USA.

“This project explores the social possibilities of mobile technology in transitional spaces such as public transport. Based on a cultural probes study of Stockholm subway commuters, we designed a location- based friend finder that displays only people in the same train as the user.
(…)
The interviews showed that the users did not always have an obvious idea for what actions to take once they realized that a friend was on the same train (…) This points to the complexity a social situation like this and the multitude of social layers that comes into play for designers of social services. In this case, it seems like the user didn‟t feel close enough to his work colleague for taking contact at this particular moment. (…) Adding the possibility to call the person or send a text message could be one of functionalities improving the user experience.“

Why do I blog this? Collecting material for current projects about location-based services. Both papers describe relevant studies about the user experience of location-awareness and the complexity of building social applications on top of it.

Cern input interfaces

A bunch of curious input interfaces I encountered at CERN today. Interesting diversity: lots of specific affordances, several distinct constraints that lead to a wide variety of possibilities.

They control information and fluid through mechanical, electric, electromechanical and electronic mechanisms. Some are shiny and colorful, others are dirty and old.

And yes, we’ve had our fifth Lift conference!

Wifi sharing request

An interesting encounter last week in Lyon: a message stuck on a door from a person who want to share a wifi connection. The translation in English goes like:

“Hello, I would like to share a Wi-Fi connection with someone. I need the internet for my studies (till June) but I do not want a subscription for 3 months. Anyone interested? You can leave me a note in my mailbox or come see me on the 4th floor. Thanks.“

Why do I blog this? An interesting example of how a technology (and also the business model of such technology) foster foster social interaction and forms of communication about it.

In addition, it’s also curious to see what sorts of infrastructure are shared (or willing to be shared). While it seems socially acceptable to share wifi (or to ask for it), what would be the situation if someone asked for water, gas or electricity?