Lessons learned from studying Nintendo DS appropriation

A Nintendo DS attached to a luggage encountered in Marseille the other day.

Some excerpts I found interesting from a user study about the Nintendo DS appropriation by kids written by J. Alison Bryant, Anna Akerman, Jordana Drell:

“handheld gaming systems, and particularly the Nintendo DS, are coveted entertainment devices. As older children in the household “graduate” to newer versions, the younger members of the household inherit their old systems. This opens up the opportunity to create games for the younger audiences, particularly preschoolers.
(…)
Preschoolers cannot read, which means that all instructions need to be in voiceover and include visual representations. (…)
Text instructions take up minimal memory, so they are preferable from a technological perspective. Figuring out ways to maximize the sound and graphics files we have while retaining the clear visual and verbal cues that we know are critical for our youngest players is a constant give and take.
(…)
Preschoolers may use the DS stylus or may use their fingers, or both! (Although they are not very accurate with either.
(…)
Although preschoolers do not have trouble holding the small stylus, they do have difficulty making small movements that require fine motor skills. This means that the “hotspots” for interaction within the game must be forgiving for them (i.e., larger).
(…)
While rhythm games seem ideal for the DS, and are very successful with older demographics, preschoolers find it difficult and frustrating to tap in a rhythm or on a beat.
(…)
The microphone is a big hit with preschoolers! They love to yell or blow into it and see the game respond.
(…)
Combining directional pad mechanics with stylus movements is a problem for young children.
(…)
Two-step processes (i.e., drag the item over here and then tap on it) are not as successful with preschoolers.
(…)
Preschoolers love immediate (and positive) responses to their actions
(…)
Replayablity is key with both parents and preschoolers. (…) Being able to re-use graphics or sound for new variations on a game is a good way to make the game feel “new” to the child.“

Why do I blog this? Certainly useful material to be shown in my course about user research in interaction design. The findings echoes a lot with similar ethnographical exploration I conducted for a video game studio in the past. This sort of insights also have implications beyond gaming, there’s a lot to draw from the paper about the research paper: methodology, implications for design as well as ideas for mobile computing services.

Why mobile phone users engage in vivid nonverbal communication that do not benefit their communication partner

An interesting read for a Friday afternoon: “Not crazy, just talking on the mobile phone: Gestures and mobile phone conversations” by Carolyn Y. Wei from Google research.

The paper addresses why mobile phone users engage in vivid nonverbal communication behaviors that do not benefit their communication partner, e.g., gesturing, smiling, and nodding their heads. The insights presented here are not coming from a user study. Instead, they are derived from a literature review about nonverbal aspects of mobile phone use and on the communicative functions of nonverbal behavior (such as the use of gesture in speaking when the partner is not visually present and how it can influence conversations).

Some excerpts I found interesting:

“Much of the literature about gesture in conversation suggests that it has cognitive benefits for the speaker. (…) The gestures can help speakers think through a complicated task, explain complex relationships, and find substitutes for missing vocabulary. Gesture has a definite purpose in communication and is not performed merely for color. It is easy to see why mobile phone users engage in these nonverbal behaviors to aid themselves as they speak even without an audience in sight – it is instinctual and probably spontaneous.
(…)
speakers intend gestures to help their listeners better understand communication. They use gesture in concert with words and to convey semantic meaning. Further, they tailor gestures relative to the listeners. Gestures are purposefully designed for the listener – with fewer and different gestures used with people who are not face-to-face. Thus, the gestures employed by mobile phone users are probably more muted than they would normally be in face-to-face conversation.
(…)
Despite all these studies that suggest speakers gesture to help themselves think and to help their listeners, there seems to be inconclusive evidence about whether the gestures actually help listeners.“

And about all of this can influence mobile phone design:

“Mobile phone design can be sensitive to nonverbal communication behaviors. (…) Gesture could be taken advantage of in a similar way to create innovations in mobile phone design, especially to improve the “user experience” for surrounding people. A simple design could be a phone that alerts nearby listeners that the user is speaking on a mobile phone, perhaps by turning on a signal whenever the phone is engaged. One example of this might be a phone that is linked to a wristband, and the wristband visibly glows whenever the phone is in use.
(…)
Mobile phone design can also respect existing research that suggests gestures are more meaningful to the speaker than the listener, and thus focus on innovations that aid the speaker. An example of this kind of design would be a mobile phone that senses gestures or other nonverbal behaviors and compares them with the words being spoken. If the words being spoken match the amount and nature of gesturing, then the phone might alert the user that she is performing well.“

Why do I blog this? because the paper highlights interesting insights about the role of non-verbal communication in cell-phone usage… which is something that has always fascinated me when observing people on the street.

Field research for interaction design: slides from my course

This year, at the Geneva University of Arts and Design (HEAD-Geneva), I gave a course about field research in interaction design. It was a combination of lectures, readings and applied projects. The point was to engage student from this Masters in Media Design in understanding and applying field research for design purposes. Moreover, I tried to push them as much as possible in turning the results from their exploration into material that can be relevant for design (beyond mere “results”).

See the slides below, it’s the version that I will update/expand/modify for next year’s courses for the same program and in different design school who asked me to do it. There is certainly room for improvement but it was good to spend some time with all these students and see how they can appropriate these elements. My role here was not to turn them into ethnographers. Instead I wanted to see them taking these techniques and using them for their own projects/purposes.

Into the night with Jason Rohrer + Chris Crawford

Yesterday, I watched the latest episode of the documentary series called “into the night” on Arte (the French/German television). The point of this series is to have two intriguing people and get them to talk to each other. In this episode, the conversation happens between the Indie game designer Jason Rohrer and legendary game designer Chris Crawford over the course of a day during the GDC 2009 in San Francisco.

The 52-minutes documentary shows Crawford and Rohrer playing and discussing different indie titles, show their approaches to one another, and wonder about the evolution of game design. There are some funny moments where the “old fart game designer” (as Crawford defines himself) complains that he has seen “everything under the sun” and that all the games today are “derivative or some old variation of hand-eye coordination”… but he admits that Rohrer’s stuff is new and original. However, the overall impression is that both of them seems to be trapped… as shown by the uncertainty expressed by Crawford’s difficulties with interaction storytelling or Rohrer’s cluelessness about what to do in the future. Quite sincere indeed but a bit sad for the game industry.

Two aspects in the discussion struck me as important, with regards to my interest in game design. They’re very short and maybe not that conclusive, but at least they surface interesting issues.

First, the brief conversation about space and game design is insightful. Crawford is interested in how Rohrer sees spatial metaphors. Rohrer shows an excerpt of Passage in which the player can choose to join a companion who appears in the game. Once you do that, you realize you can’t get into certain spaces of the maze where two people won’t fit. Rohrer defines it as a spatial trade-off. Crawford then wonders: “What is most important about your approach… you’re taking out the spatial navigation, which is always done too literally and you turn it into a metaphor and explore what kind of metaphor can be created. How far do you think it can be pushed?“. Rohrer then describes why he is so much interested in 2D games (as opposed to 3D) showing how the level of Pacman enables to see the whole environment (in contrast to FPS in which you only see what is around you).

Second, I find important that these two game designers are interested in interaction rather than glossy graphics (“graphical sugar“). As claimed by Crawford: “the entertainment lies in the interaction, not the presentation… you have to make the interaction entertaining, it should influence your experience (…) I am very dismissive of the techie approach to game design (…) Do not be prescriptive, be descriptive“.

Why do I blog this? quick summary of what I felt when watching this documentary about game design… from a standpoint that can be seen as an alternative to mainstream video games. The uncertainty expressed by the two designers here is stunning and left us wondering about the possibilities for the future.

Design by Use and object repurposing

Design by Use: The Everyday Metamorphosis of Things by Uta Brandes, Sonja Stich and Miriam Wender is a wonderful book I’ve read recently about object appropriation or reinvention and the role of design into this.

The book basically gives a design perspective to how people redefine objects, which is very complementary to what Michel de Certeau described in The Practice of Everyday Life
(see some excerpts in this earlier post). The authors defines various notion such as:

• “intentional redesign”, when “objects are used differently from their intended purpose“
• “non-intentional design” (NID), by exploring “similar forms are used for the same purpose even if they were not created to fulfill the same function (…) If, in the spirit of NID, things are used for purposes other than they were intended for, this is not due to a misinterpretation of their original function, but is instead rooted in our ability to see beyond this and discover abstract or open forms.“

As described in this review in Metropolis:

“Just as Roland Barthes posited that readers (rather than authors) create meaning in a text, here it’s the user’s intentions that matter. Brandes throws down a gauntlet, writing, “Each object must be investigated from two opposing perspectives: from the perspective of design and from the perspective of use.” In other words, people aren’t thinking about the concepts that lead to products; they’re simply looking for things that fulfill specific needs. Once designers begin to take that indepen dent agenda into account, she argues, “then we can expect a qualitative and open design approach as a result.”

Brandes also pleads for simple things, since they are the easiest to transform into ad hoc solutions. The more complex a design, the more needs it’s supposed to fit, but the harder it is to rejigger to meet your own. Knives may be made for eating, but Brandes reminds us that they serve as quite good letter openers. And in that vein, how many times have you used a chair as a bookcase, a lamp stand, or a bedside table? (The chair in my bedroom is not at all as Ebert Wels intended it when he designed it in 1928; instead, it’s bedecked in sweaters and ski pants.)”

Some inspiring quotes:

Why is this interesting? well, this quote from the Metropolis article speaks for itself:

This “design misuse,” “post-use,” “post-design,” “nonintentional design,” or whatever you decide to call it, can create evocative, meaningful objects—more meaningful, in fact, because of the user’s par tici pation in the process. The British sculptor Richard Wentworth once said, “I find cigarette packets folded up under table legs more monumental than a Henry Moore. Five reasons. Firstly, the scale. Secondly, the fingertip manipulation. Thirdly, modesty of both gesture and material. Fourth, its absurdity and fifth, the fact that it works.”

Robot memory in Blade Runner

Roy Batty, in Blade Runner, who tells Deckard about the things he saw in his life and how all those memories would vanish. He is about to die and give this memorable final speech:

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those … moments will be lost in time, like tears…in rain.
Time to die.“

…when a replicant/robot loved his life and tells what it meant.

Why do I blog this? a curious quote to be used at some point.

“Design Unlikely Futures”

… is a pervasive meme as attested by this tag found on a clothe I bought few days ago:

Networked objects 2010

An update for myself. Various networked objects that I’ve ran across recently and that seems to be curious for my projects:

Analogue Tape Glove (Signal to Noise)

“This interactive sound installation deals with “exploring the physical connection between people and technology”. A tangible user interface is provided in the form of a glove, worn by the participant as they are invited to interact with an analogue tape surface. As the glove comes in contact with the tape, sound is generated and can be manipulated via touch and movement. The pre-recorded sound on the tape is a random collage of compiled material including a range of musical styles & found recordings. According to its creators, the work “explores the somewhat obsolete medium of tape through a playful and sonically interesting experience.“

Daily Stack (sebastian rønde thielke and anders højmose)

“The simple design allows users to help track their work flow by creating physical representations of their tasks. The design consists of a small base and a series of wood blocks that each have a different colour and shape. Each colour represents a different task and the time interval is determined by the size of the block. The user stacks their tasks on the base, committing to them. the base contains electronics that communicate with a computer, tracking time and tasks in progress digitally. The user can even go back through their archive and look at previous stacks. the design helps the user better visualize their time, helping them make the most of it.“

Slurp:

“Slurp is tangible interface for manipulating abstract digital information as if it were water. Taking the form of an eyedropper, Slurp can extract (slurp up) and inject (squirt out) pointers to digital objects. We have created Slurp to explore the use of physical metaphor, feedback, and affordances in tangible interface design when working with abstract digital media types. Our goal is to privilege spatial relationships between devices and people while providing new physical manipulation techniques for ubiquitous computing environments.“

Kokonatchi / ココナッチ (University of Tokyo and Waseda):

“ Looking something like a hybrid stress ball and giant butter bean, Kokonatchi connects to your computer via a USB lead, sits on your desk, wiggles and lights up when a new tweet enters your account feed. It contains RGB LEDs which change color according to the context or ‘emotion’ of the tweet, and vibrates or ‘shivers’ when it is scared“

Olars (Lars Marcus Vedeler)

“Olars is an electronic interactive toy inspired by Karl Sims’ evolved virtual creatures. Having thousands of varieties in movement and behaviour by attaching different geometrical limbs, modifying the angle of these, twisting the body itself, and by adjusting the deflection of the motorised joints, results in both familiar and strange motion patterns.“

OnObject:

“OnObject is a small device user wears on hand to program physical objects to respond to gestural triggers. Attach an RFID tag to any objects, grab them by the tag, and program their responses to your grab, release, shake, swing, and thrust gestures using built in microphone or on-screen interface. Using OnObject, children, parents, teachers and end users can instantly create gestural object interfaces and enjoy them. Copy-paste the programming from one object to another to propagate the interactivity in your environment.“

Species (Theo Tveterås and Synne Frydenberg)

“Interactive toy that tunes in on bacteria frequency and amplifies it.“

Why do I blog this? a kind of messy list but it’s sometimes good to collect curious projects and see how they compare to what has been done in the past. Some interesting new trends ahead in terms of interactions: augmentation by other channels than visual representation, new forms of object connectivity (slurp), the importance of original material (wood, textiles). It’s not necessary brand new in 2010 but what’s curious is that the implementation and the usage scenario are intriguing and beyond classical utilitarian ideas.

Joypad memory game

The game controller project moves slowly but we’re definitely onto something. We’ll release soon an iPad/iPhone application that would correspond to a visual corpus to all the joypads. Each pair of pages will describe one of the 42 official joypads along with various data: date, brand, corresponding console, total surface, action button surface, d-pad surface, connector pin type, wire length, weight, etc. But there’s more.

Given that Laurent Bolli had a curious machine that enabled us to print badges for participants at the Lift10 conference in Geneva, we repurposed it and create a Memory/concentration game with all the gamepad visuals we had. Each card features a graphical representation of the game controller as well as information about the joypad surface (total surface, action buttons, menu buttons, d-pad surface, etc.). A first prototype of the card game here:

Maes-Garreau Point/horizon

Read at Kevin Kelly’s blog:

“The latest possible date a prediction can come true and still remain in the lifetime of the person making it is defined as The Maes-Garreau Point. The period equals to n-1 of the person’s life expectancy.

This suggests a law:
Maes-Garreau Law: Most favorable predictions about future technology will fall within the Maes-Garreau Point.
(…)
Because the official “Future” — that far away utopia — must reside in the territory of the unimaginable, the official “future” of a society should always be at least one Maes-Garreau Point away. That means the official future should begin after the average lifespan of an individual in that society.

Why do I blog this? referencing material for my book about technological failures/failed prophecies about innovation.