Randomly juxtaposing diagrams of two everyday objects

The Creatomatic by Nova Jiang:

“The Creatomatic is a piece of software designed to accelerate the imagination and prompt new inventions. It works by randomly juxtaposing diagrams of two everyday objects from a selection of hundreds. Through free association, the two objects can prompt the invention of an entirely new object, which can be practical or nonsensical. Inspired by the accidental nature of creativity, the Creatomatic uses the technique of surprise to overcome habitual ways of thinking and short circuit rational control.“

Why do I blog this? I find interesting the way a piece of software can integrate such a design tactic (creating chimera).

Lift12 ahead

The release of the Lift poster is always an important step in the preparation of the upcoming conference (Feb 22-24).

Unveiled last week, it highlights the evolution of the event as a moment of cross-pollination as shown by how Bread and Butter describes their graphic work for this year:

“Lift aims to act as an accelerator – a kind of Large Collider of ideas – where sketches become successful start-ups and melted cheese becomes life friendship.
In the design of this year theme, we wanted to visualize this. To focused on what happens during lift, this special sparkle so hard to keep alive.

The hand-made sketched and roughly cutted paper shapes are fragile and inaccurate as may be the participants thoughts, ideas and expectations. A polymorphic collection of simple elements, with no apparent link, but their own vague future. The blue flash is the lift effect. It’s the verb in a sentence: the action. It transforms, moves, accelerates, gives sense, enlightens, opens, shapes and lifts up. It’s the kind of energy we want to give to the participants: the capacity to move forward, toward their future.“

The program is also moving forward with a set of confirmed speakers (Gordan Savicic, Kars Alfrink, Fabian Hemmert, Patrizia Marti, Mark Suppes, Steve Song, James Bridle, Gesche Joost and Ashley Benigno. They will address various topics ranging from the interplay of technology and crisis to the new face of gaming, the evolution of finance to the practices of extreme amateurs or trends from the mobile industry.

Early bird prices end pretty soon (October 31).

Notes from Playful 2011

My super quick notes from the Playful 2011 conference I attended in London last Friday.

The main reason I enjoy going to Playful is that it always deal with peculiar aspects of playfulness and game-related technologies. It’s more about the culture of play than the problem of the game industry. For instance, no one talked about the notion shown on the picture below, except to say that we need to move forward and talk about something else:

The topic this year was close to the one I handcrafted for the Lift09 conference (labelled “Where did the future go?”). The starting point of the conference was to consider the gap between the “future we were promised” (jetpacks, the Death star, AI, robots, big technological devices) and what currently have (the Hummer as opposed to a flying car, Siri instead of sentient robots). Some in the audience (or the twitterverse) noticed how this impression is a cultural construct:

“There was apparently a generation of British men seriously duped by science fiction a few decades ago and v disappointed now.“

A big car from a sci-fi comic book, we don’t have this kind of stuff today but we have Hummers

This gap is quite common in people interested in technology foresight or human-computer interaction. Researchers working on Ubiquitous Computing may be interesting in reading about this in a paper from Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell entitled “Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision“. In this article, the author describes how:

“the centrality of ubiquitous computing’s ‘‘proximate future’’ continually places its achievements out of reach, while simultaneously blinding us to current practice. By focusing on the future just around the corner, ubiquitous computing renders contemporary practice (at outside of research sites and ‘‘living labs’’), by definition, irrelevant or at the very least already outmoded. Arguably, though, ubiquitous computing is already here; it simply has not taken the form that we originally envisaged and continue to conjure in our visions of tomorrow.“

… a lesson some speakers certainly followed during their speech, as they gave us some good insights about glimpses from unevenly distributed futures.

A quote from William “unevenly distributed futures” Gibson showed by Brendan Dawes that exemplifies this delusion

A side-effect of the aforementioned disappointment towards the “promises of the future” is the fact that human beings seem to be less prone to dealing with “big and futuristic projects”. As Toby Barnes claimed, “there’s not enough people trying to make a dent on the world”, as exemplified by Neal Stephenson’s recent comment about innovation starvation:

“Still, I worry that our inability to match the achievements of the 1960s space program might be symptomatic of a general failure of our society to get big things done. My parents and grandparents witnessed the creation of the airplane, the automobile, nuclear energy, and the computer to name only a few. Scientists and engineers who came of age during the first half of the 20th century could look forward to building things that would solve age-old problems, transform the landscape, build the economy, and provide jobs for the burgeoning middle class that was the basis for our stable democracy.“

Although this delusion towards the future looks a bit sad, the talks were funny and engaging and I took plenty of notes… some might be loosely related to this topic but it’s generally what happens in this kind of context.

In his talk called “Time Lords, frothing and Dungeon Maste”, Matt Sheret relied on how his friends “play with cities” to highlight curious perspectives about the near future: role playing games, the Tower Bridge twitterbot and BERG London design projects. Above all, and because I knew the other projects, it’s the perspective about RPG and the role of game masters that I quite enjoyed. He basically discussed how fictional cities in such games are somehow co-created by the players and the GM. The way dialogues between players and artifacts such as maps or urban descriptions can be seen as an interesting way to show how a “city talk to you”.

A quote from Richard Lemarchand that I enjoyed: “people are not necessarily mean, they just want to see what happen if they try things out”… he showed how him and his fellow game designers noticed how playtesters were punching other people in their game… which led them to create characters that shake hands with players. Although this anecdote seems a bit futile, it’s a good example of (1) the importance of playful interactions in games, (2) how you can rely on testing prototypes to tune a design proposition. It’s always interesting to hear designers discussing how their understanding of player’s psychology help them reconsider their work. This topic was also dealt with by Louise Downe in her talk about self-flushing toilets and automatic air-refreshener:

“I don’t walk out toilets thinking it’s OK, I need control over them. Intimacy with machines really requires trust. Trust that they think in the same way we do“

Chris O’Shea gave a quick overview of interesting toys and interactive projects for kids… based on some relevant data: how kids expect anything to be touchscreen (trying to zoom in), how “84% of parents are interested in asynchronous gaming to play collaboratively with their kids”.

Also an important topic at Playful was the role of prototyping in the crafting of Playful experience. O’Shea showed how he used basic material (cardboard, plastic, lego bricks) to create iPhone casing and apps that can engage kids with basic activities:

This “low-fi prototyping” attitude was also exemplified by Brendan Dawes and Matt Ward, who gave a great presentation on designing peril, the fine line between entertainment, humor and fear. He showed how low-fi interaction is key to learn in a design research approach and that suspending people’s disbelief is easier than they thought at first.
(as shown in this video of their bomb project)

And finally, two highlights in terms of format. First Scribble Tennis was an entertaining idea: two players competing with drawings on an overhead projectors:

Second, a so-called artificial intelligence called Siri gave a talk on the stage table:

Well, actually, this didn’t happen but this giant screenshot of the iOS-based personal assistant application next to a table (altar?) on stage gave me the impression that the future is not boring and brilliant.

Computer-readable stickers?

Seen yesterday in London. I like the evocative and colorful visual, especially on this phone booth. They look like sifteo-turned-into-stickers.

“Practicing Theory or: Did Practice Kill Theory?” symposium

An interesting follow-up to the Swiss Design Network Julian an I attended last year is organized in Geneva on November 25 at the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD). It’s called “Practicing Theory or: Did Practice Kill Theory?“:

“The Swiss Design Network 2011 Symposium Practicing Theory aims at understanding what are the real theoretical contexts of designers practicing design research, how these theoretical backgrounds are formed, explored and broaden, and what use is made of them in the everyday practice of a research project in design. Not only will we seek to understand where from designers think, but also in what directions their research could possibly push the activity of thinking. At the end of each Paper presentation session, a round table will mix design researchers and theoreticians from various related disciplines, in order to discuss more deeply the interconnections of design research and theory.“

Why do I blog this? The presentations will address the relationship between theory and practice in design research. Writing research projects related to this topic, I’m curious to see what can come up out of this.

Visual representations of Primer’s plot

Some visual representations of Primer‘s plot written, directed, and produced by Shane Carruth:

Meerkat and Tuba: serendipitous presentation of digital content

Having a large quantity of pictures on my Flickr account, I enjoy using Photojojo time capsule, a system that send me twice a month photos from a year ago. I like this kind of almost random selection of my past appearing in my (boring) Mail app.

Which is why I was intrigued by this design prototypes described in “Meerkat and Tuba: Design Alternatives for Randomness, Surprise and Serendipity in Reminiscing
by John Helmes, Kenton O’Hara, Nicolas Vilar and Alex Taylor:

“People are accumulating large amounts of personal digital content that play a role in reminiscing practices. But as these collections become larger, and older content is less frequently accessed, much of this content is simply forgotten. In response to this we explore the notions of randomness and serendipity in the presentation of content from people’s digital collections. To do this we designed and deployed two devices – Meerkat and Tuba – that enable the serendipitous presentation of digital content from people’s personal media collections. Each device emphasises different characteristics of serendipity that with a view to understanding whether people interpret and value these in different ways while reminiscing.“

Meerkat is aimed at exploring the notion of getting the user’s attention to push content to him/her:

Unlike the previous one, Tuba requires the user to deliberately pull content of the device:

Why do I blog this? I find it interesting to see how time and asynchronous interactions can be embedded into tangible artifacts such as these two examples.

Video games with less video

Discussion with colleagues here at the design school about “screenless interaction design” led me to present some projects that I find interesting in the field. It seems that there’s starting to be a cluster of projects that aim at creating playful and digital interactions with less emphasis on the visual senses. Some examples I find interesting:

SAP (for Situated Audio Platform) a “Barely Game prototype” by Russell Davies:

“The Situated Audio Platform, a browser for geotagged audio files. The idea is that it only has one button, the whole screen, which you use to switch it on, and then you never have to look at it. You can leave it in your pocket, monitoring the world for tagged files, quitely pinging, while you listen to your music. Then if it detects something, you hold it at your side and sweep the area until you home in on whatever it’s found. You could browse AudioBoo with it, or get it to read geotagged wikipedia files to you.
That’s the useful bit.

But if you wanted to do some pretending, and some stupidness, it could turn into a social fighting game. Where the files you explore are mines and traps laid by other people and you sweep and destroy them to stay alive. All while never looking at your device.“

Oterp by Antonin Fourneau (development by Kevin Lesur):

“Oterp is a mobile phone game project using a GPS sensor to manipulate music in real time, depending on the player’s position on Earth. It generates new melodies when travelling. The objective of Oterp is to mix the reality of our everyday environment with a video game. This is a new way to imagine our movements in a society increasingly on the move and dependent on mobile interfaces.“

Papa Sangre:

“Papa Sangre is a video game with no video. It’s a first-person thriller, done entirely in audio by an award-winning team of game designers, musicians, sound designers and developers. We’ve created an entire world using the first ever real-time 3D audio engine implemented on a handheld device. Which was BLOODY HARD.“

It seems that there’s a continuum based on the degree to which the user need to look at his or her own device: from no need to do this to a quick glance once in a while. Interestingly, this connects to another interest of mine: asynchronous interactions between the user and digital realms… which led me to this kind of design space (teku teku angel is a Nintendo DS game in which you have to walk with a pedometer to raise so tamagotchi-like creature):

Why do I blog this? This is just a quick note for myself about the possibilities of non-video pervasive games (what an ugly term). Food for thoughts for the laboratory!

Neal Stephenson on failure and innovation

A good excerpt from a text by Neal Stephenson:

“Most people who work in corporations or academia have witnessed something like the following: A number of engineers are sitting together in a room, bouncing ideas off each other. Out of the discussion emerges a new concept that seems promising. Then some laptop-wielding person in the corner, having performed a quick Google search, announces that this “new” idea is, in fact, an old one—or at least vaguely similar—and has already been tried. Either it failed, or it succeeded. If it failed, then no manager who wants to keep his or her job will approve spending money trying to revive it. If it succeeded, then it’s patented and entry to the market is presumed to be unattainable, since the first people who thought of it will have “first-mover advantage” and will have created “barriers to entry.” The number of seemingly promising ideas that have been crushed in this way must number in the millions.

What if that person in the corner hadn’t been able to do a Google search? It might have required weeks of library research to uncover evidence that the idea wasn’t entirely new—and after a long and toilsome slog through many books, tracking down many references, some relevant, some not. When the precedent was finally unearthed, it might not have seemed like such a direct precedent after all. There might be reasons why it would be worth taking a second crack at the idea, perhaps hybridizing it with innovations from other fields.“

Why do I blog this? This kind of situation echoes with my feeling in certain meetings and projects. Besides, I find interesting to rely on failures in order to move forward, as described in this excerpt.

Designing a marker system for the next 10,000 years

“Permanent Markers Implementation Plan” is a project initiated in 2004 by the U.S. Department of Energy in order to provide a permanent record which identifies the location of nuclear waste repository and its dangers. The report is quite big and it’s perhaps easier to peruse this shorter version, more focused on the design component.

This report described the task handled by one of the expert group made of an anthropologist, an astronomer, an archaeologist, an environmental designer, a linguist, and a materials scientist. The brief for them was basic:

“The site must be marked. Aside from the legal requirement, the site will be indelibly imprinted by the human activity associated with waste disposal. We must complete the process by explaining what has been done and why.
The site must be marked in such a manner that its purpose cannot be mistaken.
Other nuclear waste disposal sites must be marked in a similar manner within the U.S. and preferably world-wide. A marking system must be utilized. By this we mean that components of the marking system relate to one another is such a way that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.“

This team work led to the definition of design guidelines, which, in turn, served as the starting point for several alternative designs for the entire site: “Shunned land…poisoned, destroyed, unusable”, “Shapes that hurt the body and shapes that communicate danger”:

Their conclusion is also fascinating:

“To design a marker system that, left alone, will survive for 10,000 years is not a difficult engineering task.
It is quite another matter to design a marker system that will for the next 400 generations resist attempts by individuals, organized groups, and societies to destroy or remove the markers. While this report discusses some strategies to discourage vandalism and recycling of materials, we cannot anticipate what people, groups, societies may do with the markers many millennia from now.
A marker system should be chosen that instills awe, pride, and admiration, as it is these feelings that motivate people to maintain ancient markers, monuments, and buildings.“

Why do I blog this? I find the brief utterly curious: designing a system that would work for 10’000 years is an inspiring starting point in the age of planned obsolescence.