Pervasive games book

It seems that the book “Pervasive Games: Theory and Design – Experiences on the Boundary between Life and Play ” by Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros and Annika Waer (editors) is finally out, published by Morgan Kauffman:

“Quickly emerging from the fast-paced growth of mobile communications and wireless technologies, pervasive games provide a worldwide network of potential play spaces. Now games can be designed to be played in public spaces like streets, conferences, museums and other non-traditional game venues – and game designers need to understand the world as a medium—both its challenges and its advantages.

This book shows how to change the face of play—who plays, when and where they play and what that play means to all involved. The authors explore aspects of pervasive games that concern game designers: what makes these games compelling, what makes them possible today, how they are made and by whom. For theorists, it provides a solidtheoretical, philosophical and aesthetic grounding of their designs.

Pervasive Games covers everything from theory and design to history and marketing. Designers will find 13 detailed game descriptions, a wealth of design theory, examples from dozens of games and a thorough discussion of past inspirations—directly from the game designers themselves.“

Why do I blog this? just saw this on, need to get it and peruse this interesting compendium of case-studies (Killer, Insectopia, Botfighters, Uncle Roy, etc.). People interested can also listen to the podcast by the editors.

Design as part of R&D?

[A perhaps very high level and political post... emerging from recent thoughts about how to frame my work in the R&D public policy in Europe]

Can design be perceived as a component of Research & Development? Or is it mostly about “production” and commercialization of products? What are the design phases that can be part of R&D?

All these questions take an increasing importance in my work lately. Working with European companies, I often face them for a very simple reason: in countries such as France, Research and Development benefits from a series of financial incentives (such as tax credit). Since it’s not possible for States to directly help companies (although sometimes they try to do so), they have to figure out how to support their national firms in compliance with what the European Commission can accept and stated as regulations. This is why offering financial devices such as tax credits on R&D expenses/investment can be a good way to help. The underlying agenda is that backing companies to fund research project may facilitate the emergence of innovation (I won’t comment on this as this is another hot potato in political/economical theories).

Once you’ve said that you want to facilitate R&D, you have to deal with an important question: what activities can be considered as R&D? The answer generally lies in arid documents that define what constitutes R&D or not. Although different countries have different ways to formulate it, the common definition stems from something called the “Frascati manual“:

“Research and experimental development (R&D) comprise creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications. The term R&D covers three activities: Basic research is experimental or theoretical work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge of the underlying foundation of phenomena and observable facts, without any particular application or use in view. Applied research is also original investigation undertaken in order to acquire new knowledge. It is, however, directed primarily towards a specific practical aim or objective. Experimental development is systematic work, drawing on existing knowledge gained from research and/or practical experience, which is directed to producing new materials, products or devices, to installing new processes, systems and services, or to improving substantially those already produced or installed.
(…)
The basic criterion for distinguishing R&D from related activities is the presence in R&D of an appreciable element of novelty and the resolution of scientific and/or technological uncertainty, i.e. when the solution to a problem is not readily apparent to someone familiar with the basic stock of common knowledge and techniques for the area concerned.“

The definition is quite broad and the document gives lots of examples of what is considered as being part of R&D but my experience in France was that you had to follow certain criteria that are largely based on technology: what is the technological problem? how did you solve it? what prototypes have you put in place to solve it?, have you secured the IP through patents?, etc. In the end, this puts the emphasis on technological research, and it’s hard (but possible to stretch it a little bit for creative industries (web, video game for instance). What it means is simply that if you have a bunch of existing techniques (say… open source components and IP) and you try to innovate by tying them together to create something new and original, you will have trouble showing that it is “R&D” as defined by these criteria (so you’re sorta forced to create a new technology).

Therefore, it’s interesting to look more closely at the document and see what they have to say about “design and R&D”. See how it is summarized in this other EC document:

“The Frascati Manual includes some industrial design activities in this definition of R&D. Specifically, the Manual states that prototyping and industrial design required during R&D should be included in R&D for statistical purposes. Design for production processes and the less technical design activities are however not considered as R&D. Forms other than industrial design, such as service design, are also not included. (…) From a designer’s point of view, design includes some research (for example to identify user needs, preferences and behaviours). This means that there are overlaps between the concepts of R&D and design, but that there is no common view as to which is the overarching concept of which the other is part.“

Still digesting the implications of this, I am highly interested in the recent announcement Mark reported about the EC public consultation on design as a driver of user-centred innovation.
Why do I blog this? all of this means sounds boring and formal but these discussions and definitions have a great importance in innovation in Europe. Based on what is considered (or not) as R&D, some work can be funded (or not). And it has lots of implication about my daily work (when I carry out research studies for european clients OR when I work on a project about how such definition impacts web companies R&D).

Build your own burger

Personalized food composition seems to be pervasive lately, as exemplified by the “build your own burger” encountered in Palo Alto two weeks ago. Still looking forward a more participative steps in which the customer could be even more engaged.

Clive Grinyer at Mobile Monday Zürich

Quick trip to Zürich yesterday for Mobile Monday where I was invited to participate as a workshop moderator. The keynote speaker was Clive Grinyer who recently moved to Cisco as a customer experience director (after a position at Orange/France Telecom). His presentation was called “I’ve never used that: adoption and accessibility in mobile technology” and it addressed the disconnect between technology, and what users actually want and need. Here are my quick notes:

“I hear a lot this “i’ve never used that” and I worry about it, especially after 5 years working at FT

mobility is everywhere, cheap, and cool
how can we help clients using it?
what i love about mobility is that customer who are driving usages when it works for them: voice, sms text…
but people reject it when it’s wrong: overselling of WAP as the mobile internet, low (3%) uptake of 3G video calling, slow uptake of mobile music, complex user interfaces, menus and terminology. 90% of users access only 10% of functionalities. Customers differ widely in their use of mobile, from teenagers, old users, etc.

after 5 years of mobile internet, 18% of US and european accessed the internet once a month
after 1 month 98% of users did the same! they must have done something good!
and now there’s lots of internet phones, and normal people buy them (fully screen touch interface 3g and wifi enabled devices specifically designed for the internet)
now we even have usable applications that make money, which is a first

iphones, clones change game
this is purely because of usability and design

services finally work, since 2003, consumers have rated LBS a their favorite technology feature but usage was zero
until nokia, google and apple make it work
and a gathering of new tech is about to happen: NFC, new LBS

Grinyer’s law: “it takes 5 years before a new mobile tech becomes usable enough that people will actually use it”
it can work but it takes more time to be adopted

something’s wrong, how to improve?

• open system makes it easier to make applications but not be integrated and designed around the user; co-creation tells you what people think they want but they not what they don’t know they want!; wisdom of crowds is nice but what if great ideas remain inaccessible?
• we have to design our future: mobile experiences have to be better coordinated; we have to move to leaderships position and not jut experts; we have to make our colleagues aware they designing the experience with EVERY decision
• creating a vision of how things will be at the beginning (what about writing the user guide at the beginning?)
• find out what’s really going on, what do people do? you know what is going on when you go to the toilet of life!
• make it simple, co-create with users and prototypes, close user-testing and this should be part of design, not a different unit
• understand the future: use probes such as whirlpool’s washing machine (plants that grows in sort of washing machine) to try things, get feedbacks, have a dialogue with the future
• make it for everyone, people-centric
• put in love, even if you have usability. e-books generally have no love in them, they are horrible pieces of technology.
• hold your vision, management process where people give their opinions can lead to a total mess

Across all industries, usability unlocks adoption and finds great leaders (jonathan ive, bill buxton): we should not stay at usability departments, we need to make others know that it’s just a nice to have“

Lessons from Sci-Fi predictions

CIO has a recent article about the lessons learned by science-fiction writer about predicting the future of technology. This journal asked authors such as Larry Niven, Robert Sawyer, Nancy Kress and Charles Stross to discuss technology-related predictions. The whole article is a good read but I point here some of the lessons:

• “Look for the goals humankind will never give up. Instant travel, instant education, longevity. Then try to guess when it will appear and what it will look like.
• Pay close attention to parasite control. There is always someone who wants the money for something else.
• You’re obliged to predict not just the automobile but the traffic jam and the stranglehold on gas prices
• The trap we science and space buffs always fall into is thinking that everybody will want the things that we want, they don’t; they have their own agendas, and ultimately, as in everything, it’s the economy, stupid. Just because you personally want something doesn’t mean there’s a market for it. Just because we technically could do something doesn’t mean that’s how others want to see their tax dollars spent.”
• We can point to extrapolations of current technological and social trends, but we can’t extrapolate on the basis of stuff that hasn’t been discovered yet. For example: In 1962 it was possible, just about, to see the future of integrated circuitry (and even, if you were very far-sighted, to glimpse Moore’s Law and its implications), but the CD player was right out of the picture— solid state lasers lay at least a decade in the future.
• The standard advice is to be aggressive in your predictions; there’s this notion that the future always comes faster than you think it will (…) But, actually, I think a lot of us underestimated social inertia, Most of us predicted a secular 21st century, and it’s anything but that. The world is like a person: It doesn’t change as it gets older. Rather, it simply becomes more obviously what it always was. People always liked having phones and portable music, but most people never wanted to lug a camera, or an ebook reader, or a PDA around. The future is adding functionality to those things we’ve already admitted into our lives, not trying to convince people they need new categories of things; the iPhone—the all-in-one device that is, first and foremost, something familiar—is the correct paradigm.
• Study the cutting edge of the specific field. Create wild cards. And then don’t worry about being wrong—it’s science fiction.”

Why do I blog this? some good tips here and ideas to be mentioned in upcoming work about failed futures and the importance of understanding failures. It echoes a lot with the talk I’ve given at Design Engaged, I will maybe reshuffle this for my introduction to Lift09.

Social navigation inna jungle

Different forms of social navigation:

What’s more important: the yellow/blue tagging on the tree? or the fact that the passage of people left a continuous trace showing a path? Which one will you trust?

Head as prototyping device

A curious prototyping device for hairdresser students… sort of uncommon to see teenagers hanging around with chopped off head in train station.

Why do I blog this? fascination towards objects that can be employed as prototyping devices. Certainly to be contrasted with this one.

Dirt and the status of objects in design exhibits

An intriguing aspect noticed at the Design Biennial the other day concerns the status of objects presented in design exhibit. Most of the objects have warning signs forbidding people to touch/use/employ/walk on/sit on artifacts. However since most of the objects have clear affordances and are quite successful as calling for their own use… people cannot help using them (design success uh?). Which leads to pictures like the one above and below with foot traces here and there on some pieces.

Plus, given the huge quantity of kids there, this sort of audience inevitably wants and needs to touch artifacts.

As a matter of fact, I find this extremely interesting as a person intrigued by usage and the passage of time (generally synonymous of dirt, dust and rusted pieces). What do people think at the end of the exhibit? Is the quantity of dirt a measure of success (“ah the affordance of this couch is so great that it’s trashed by now”).

air interaction

Browsing through weird interfaces, I ran across this air-augmented display.

It’s called BYU-BYU-View and it basically adds air to the interaction between a user and a virtual environment, and communication through a network, by integrating the graphics presentation with wind inputs and outputs on a special screen:

“As a telecommunication tool, BYU-BYU-View could enable a system that presents a cutaneous sensation that distant lovers are sharing the same space. As an interface in a virtual environment, it could add the cutaneous sensation of air movement to sight and sound in a novel game. It could become a new input tool for people who have limited abilities with their hands or feet, or a communication method for deaf or blind people that delivers information directly to the skin.“

Why do I blog this? wondering about non-standard interfaces and how “blow” can be an intriguing interactions for users, all of this after a long discussion with friends about “blowing” in your nintendo DS in public when playing with nintendogs.

Design approach and capturing the “needs”

In the latest issue of ACM interactions, Steve Portigal‘s column is a categorization of different “approaches to making stuff” that I found both insightful and ironically intriguing:

“Be a Genius and Get It Right (James Dyson):
Be a Genius and Get It Wrong (Dean Kamen)
Don’t Ask Customers If This Is What They Want
Do What Any Customer Asks
Understand Needs and Design to Them“

Why do I blog this? an interesting typology of design, perhaps to exhaustive but that certainly tackle relevant issues. For example, one of my favorite is certainly the “Do What Any Customer Asks” as it is often the case with people confusing “user centered design” with “doing what users asked”. This is a problem I face very regularly when describing my work: there is this idea that being user-centric is about giving users what they want/asked. Which is of course different than what they need or would desire, since there is a wide gap between what people say to do/want and what they really do/need. It definitely shows the interesting tension in design between relying on users’ practice or inventing new futures. As Steve points out, the point is a feature request should be translated in a need request. He takes the example of a customer who want a handle; the important thing here is not that the person wants specifically a handle but simply a way to move the thing from one place to another, and the handle is only a solution instance.
So what’s a better way to get it? It’s all about grasping the needs:

“Needs, as considered in this approach, can be functional, like when a design firm discovered women shoveling snow more than men and redesigned the ergonomics of a snow shovel for this typically smaller user. Needs can also be emotional, such as when Sunbeam studied the backyard-grilling process and realized that the grill itself was associated with family moments and social connectivity rather than a set of meat-cooking features. Sunbeam then worked with Continuum to design the Coleman Grill to connote nostalgic camping cookouts. Needs can deal with shifting mental models of common behaviors, too. Work by B/R/S for Colgate identified that brushing teeth is seen by people as a way to maintain their entire mouth, not just scouring the surface of the teeth. This led to Colgate Total, which promises “Superior Oral Health.”“