A recent telco ad campaign aimed at showing the pervasivenness of the Internet in the physical environment… through a chaotic set of arrows that indicate the omnipresence of network access in the environment. 10’000 arrows have been deployed last saturday in certain swiss cities.
From another point of view, it may be perceive a physical spam.
In the various interviews for my book about location-based services, privacy is often brought to the table, especially with french journalists who really want to deal with this angle. What happens is that most of the discussion revolves around the potential fear caused by Google Latitude, Aka-aki (I was even asked what I thought about the GPS bra). Most of the time, there is a big confusion between the imaginary representations some people of these technologies (trackable everytime everywhere) and what is really implemented.
It’s generally hard to talk about something else so I try to move the discussion to different grounds. My point is to show that privacy is indeed a problem but that there are other interesting matters when it comes to locative media. In order to do that, I highlight how locative technologies can be repurposed or hacked through playful or critical practices. Projects such as iSee that that maps the locations of surveillance cameras in urban environments and propose paths to avoid them are interesting for that matter. The possibility to avoid surveillance becomes a purpose here.
Which is why I was interested in reading “Playing with Surveillance“, a short paper by Judy Chen that deals with this issue. It basically presents a playful design of an application that exploits surveillance as a playful practice through a camera phone. The paper describes the application but I was more interested by the design rationale:
“Our design for mopix was inspired by an observation we made of a woman taking a photo with her phone in a shopping mall. The woman was photographing an object in a store across the walkway, but another woman sitting nearby hid behind a baby stroller in an effort to avoid being in the photograph. To the first woman, her camera phone was a device she could use to capture a memento from her experience at the mall. To the second woman, the camera phone was an unwanted surveillance device that was invading her privacy and anonymity.
(…)
By taking a playful approach in our design, we trivialize aspects of surveillance that are typically disconcerting to users, while at the same time, providing engaging experiences with the system and between users. “
Why do I blog this? documenting interesting examples of technology ambiguity and their non-neutral nature. This work is interesting also in the discussion about locative media and privacy or how to go beyond the general discourse about these 2 issues.
Last tuesday I was in Torino, Italy for the “I Realize” conference organized by TOPIX (Torino Piemontre Internet eXchange). Participating as a workshop facilitator, I was told to focus on how people will move and interact in the city of tomorrow. We worked on identifying unsolved problems, suggesting possible (technological?) solutions. The day after the workshop, I presented a quick overview of the results that others such as Bruce Sterling commented during the panel. Annotated slides can be found here. The workshop was based on a quick field exploration in the morning, during which participants were told to collect some material about people practices and needs. The afternoon as devoted to material analysis and discussion of design issues and solutions.
Thanks Leonardo for the invitation!
The presence of scales in public space has always intrigued me. Such a quantification device is generally private but there are different occurrences of public appearances. The picture above in Torino depict street scales that people can use (and pay for) to know their weight, which is definitely a personal use, although it takes place in a public space. There is clearly a cultural thing to have this sort of artifact in the urban environment and I don’t really know the whole picture here. It seems curious though.
The one below, taken from a lift in an hotel in Paris shows the scale of the group: it’s a group indicator that is meant to prevent the elevator to break down if the weight is too important. I can’t help thinking about the awkward situation that may happen if the scale warns people that there are too much people in the lift. Will the negotiation process be fluid or will it lead to unexpected arguments. As usual with devices that make things explicit, I foresee surprises.
Why do I blog this? yet another example of quantification devices employed in our material world. The practices at stake here are important to document and compare to the whole discourse about how measuring our movements/activities can lead to original representations and services (will individual weight be a parameter in some sort of scary identification process? will we have elevator services based on group weight? how weird?).
The use of these measurement devices in public space is certainly an interesting locus of interest for people who want to explore what happens when “things that were implicit becomes explicit”… which is also what happens with ubiquitous computing as Adam Greenfield put it in his “Everyware” book:
“Everyware surfaces and makes explicit information that has always been latent in our lives, and this will frequently be incommensurate with social or psychological comfort“
Mapping is a favorite topic of mine, not only because I worked on locative media, but also because I find they are fascinating objects. Maps are really interesting these days as they exemplify one of the design trend I spotted recently: the transformation of non-digital objects by design techniques coming from the digital world. To some extent, lots of artifacts from the material world can be re-designed by applying insights learned when creating weird interfaces and new sorts of interactions.
This is what happens currently with paper-maps which design is reshuffled by people who grew up with video-games and on-line mapping tools, or by designers who consciously want to apply techniques coming from the digital. What is highly captivating in this context is that it also reshapes the user experience of the object at hands. Maps are a good example of such phenomena.
One of the most advanced project along these lines is certainly Jack Shulze’s Here and There. Although I don’t have the poster version, the Wired UK version will do to exemplify what it is:
Here is the idea:
“Imagine a person standing at a street corner. The projection begins with a three-dimensional representation of the immediate environment. Close buildings are represented normally, and the viewer himself is shown in the third person, exactly where she stands. As the model bends from sideways to top-down in a smooth join, more distant parts of the city are revealed in plan view. The projection connects the viewer’s local environment to remote destinations normally out of sight.“
There is more on S&W’s on-line web log where Schulze describes how he wanted to “exploits and expands upon the higher levels of visual literacy born of television, games, comics and print“. More specifically, he wanted to tap into the satellite representation as a symbol of omniscience and the reason why a platform such as Google Earth is so compelling. The point was to have “a speculative projections of dense cities (…) intended to be seen at those same places, putting the viewer simultaneously above the city and in it where she stands, both looking down and looking forward“.
Reading this in the train yesterday made sense when few minutes after, arrived at my final destination in the city of Lyon (France), I encountered this curious map:
The map depicts the city of Lyon from the train station at the bottom (in this white area) and the city itself in the upper part of the picture. There is a lot to discuss here and I won’t comment about what is not represented (can the white part be absent because it may have been perceived as not interesting for tourists?). What I find relevant there is:
Why do I blog this? trying to make some connection between online musing and urban scouting… and the map topic is highly intriguing for that matter. I am convinced there is a lot to work on to modify non-digital objects with this sort of design techniques.
Another item I found curious while spending time in Lausanne the the other day: a see-through toilet. Based on a steel-and-glass architecture, the toilet is based on a transparent system: when pressing the “voir” button (which means “see”), the glass gets transparent and it turns opaque when someone is inside and presses the button again. A motion sensor also turn the glass transparent if there’s no motion during a certain amount of time (to prevent people from staying there for too long or in case of a problem) OR if there is TOO MUCH ACTIVITY (no party is allowed in there).
It’s questioning as well to see that the button has been called “VOIR” (“see”), as most of the people who enter the toilet do not want to “see” but instead to “not be seen”. My guess is that it’s on purpose, to disrupt people’s behavior (who would want to press a button anyway to see how to make the glass opaque).
From what I’ve read, the point is to find an answer the recurring problems of toilet trashing. By looking at the inside, people can have a direct overview of the toilet state. Designed by Oloom in 2008, the whole point of this is explained on their website:
“Eleven glass sides for this toilet whose walls are partly made of liquid cristal glass. Under electric tension, the glass is transparent and the toilet shows its clean and functional inside/interior: the user feels safe and sound. Out of tension, they become opaque: the place is now occupied and the users intimacy guaranteed. An innovative concept to deal with insecurity problems whilst playing with transparency.”
An important feature in this design is the presence of a pine tree next to the transparent toilet. This tree has been especially chosen to be planted there because it’s aimed at bringing more pleasant smell. A sort of high-tech/low tech combination.
Why do I blog this? An intriguing piece of furniture with curious combinations (the pine tree, the syringe trash can). Is this the Everyware-like city toilet of the future? I don’t know but it’s certainly interesting to understand more the way the glass gets transparent or opaque. The rules embedded in the system, that I described at the beginning of this post, tells us captivating insights about what is considered as normal or not in society.
Interesting configuration in Lausanne: a WiFi area (that is indicated through the signage on the wall depicting both the waves and the usage with a laptop) and places to sit with a laptop (the wifi wave are also present there too). A small cluster of high chairs for people who pass by. And yes, it’s covered in case of rain. Looking at the chairs show clear sign of dirt and old remnants of cigarettes though.
Why do I blog this? urban scouting in Lausanne today led me to investigate this area. The design intent here is to support new forms of activities in our contemporary cities. I love the signage on the wall. The direction of the wave is clearly going from the user to the cloud. I see this as an echo of the “creative city” meme: it’s prosumer/active contributors to the network who are expected to use their laptops here.
Seen at the office today.
When the digital (in the form of a DVD that contains drivers and software) needs to be put close to the physical (this scanner) through the magical use of duct tape. DVD like this often gets lost although they’re generally needed, a quick trick to avoid losing it is to keep it close to the physical items it is related to.
Back to EPFL today for a lecture by Johanna Brewer about “What can ethnography do for technology?”. She basically presented how ethnography, as a methodological strategy, is relevant for design in the context of her PhD projects. Johanna did her PhD with Paul Dourish at UCI Irvine and she recently launched a new start-up called frestyl (in the mobile/web music business).
After a brief introduction of *what is ethnography*, she showed how Human-Computer Interaction, initially based in Computer Science, evolved to include cognitive psycho concepts with a quantitative understanding of how humans interact with technology. Researchers recognized that this approach, though fruitful for certain purposes, could be complemented by others, such as ethnography. Which is *Ethnography met HCI*: as technology has become ubiquitous, multi-purpose, embedded, social, there was trend to move beyond lab-based studies of individuals and instead understand social use of technology. The point was then to leverage ethnographic techniques to seek inspiration for new designs. This quick summary was interesting but I think it partly ignores the use of ethnographically-inspired method in the broader context of design (that happened in parallel).
Johanna then summarized what *ethnography can do for HCI*:
In human-computer interaction, the way ethnography is employed is different than its earlier roots in anthropology: field study is shorter (week-long rather than year-long but the rationale is that one day is better than no days at all!), there is a deep/narrow focus on particular setting (what’s like to ride the public transport in lausanne?), study of target users, with an eye towards technology design, not just understanding culture for the sake of it. Which led her to delineate two scopes: “open-ended, exploratory, revolutionary” versus “target, tailored, techno-centric” (look at a particular setting, or at particular features to be changed).
A big part of the presentation was then a description of the different techniques, which she categorized in two clusters:
After a brief description of the analysis part (documentation is analyzed through coding: looking for common themes in data), she presented the existence of various outcomes: a plan for follow-up ethnographic study (as it allowed to ask more questions), general guidelines for futures technologies, concept design, implementation of prototype, fully realized product. And all of this can take a large range of format: written document, video, photographic essay, design response/prototype to demonstrate ethnographic work.
She then showed various examples taken from her work. I enjoyed the part about how she chose the sample group for her interviews.
(undersound is one of the project that emerged from Johanna and her colleagues’ ethnographic research)
She used what she called “theoretical sampling”: chose a theoretically interesting sample of people (rather than statistically representative) who are interested by the experience of the context she was exploring (the tube). I was also intrigued by how she looked for inspiration for design, not guidelines, something that I was not surprised of given that this was the reason why I invited her PhD advisor to Lift last year. Her point was that ethnography can give an impetus that what you design is culturally relevant
as it roots your design in cultural underpinnings “when you go to a place and talk to people, you design sth that is relevant for them (and it also makes them appreciate what you do)“.
Why do I blog this an interesting overview that is certainly useful as I am preparing a course about these issues for next year’s class at the design school in Geneva.
Idioms going from the interwebs to the physical, seen on ads in Berlin last october.
Thought about it the other day when I overheard a goof on the streets screaming “lol” (in a french conversation), found it funny to think about the transfer of idioms.
Plus, I am always intrigued by speech bubbles on posters.
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