Archive for January, 2011

Date: January 31st, 2011
Cate: Final Project

People, Design and Technology

When I’m doing projects I like to break everything down into three areas of concentration; users, design language/aesthetics and technical implementation. These are much more easily referred to as People, Design and Technology and will probably crop up quite a lot over the next eight months.

Obviously, any good designer must start with their user, so I’ve spent a little bit of time recently tentatively sketching out some user scenarios to imagine the sort of situations my final outcome might operate in. It’s a little bit difficult when you still don’t know exactly what the final object/item/outcome is going to actually be, but I think it’s worth doing as obviously the situation in which it’s going to be used can have a huge impact on both the design and the behaviour/experience.

I’m presuming, at this stage, that it’s going to be some sort of tabletop device, although the form this will take is yet to be determined.

Date: January 31st, 2011
Cate: Final Project, Thoughts & Reflections

Proposed Final Project

For my final project, I’ve known since before I started the MRes that I wanted to look at digital intimacy/presence.

I would like to conduct user research into when and where people miss their lovers ones the most and, from these findings, will aim to develop networked objects which will allow subtle, non-interfering interactions between them. These interactions will be deeply meaningful encounters with technology and would merge seamlessly into an individual’s everyday life.

Whilst exploring intimacy over the Christmas break, my initial user research highlighted the key moments and situations in which individuals miss their partners the most. Going to bed at night is the situation which induces the greatest feeling of absence but, as I explored this before (Pillow Talk, 2010) I am choosing to look at another. Therefore, at the moment I am exploring ways in which I can enable or enhance intimacy between couples at mealtimes. My aim is to develop a networked technology solution which will make dining alone less lonely and allow a subtle connection and interaction to their partner who is also, presumably, dining alone.

As I was supposed to start a PhD last September, I’ve had a pretty in-depth proposal drawn up for a while, the problem I’ve had is picking something “small” enough to achieve by August. I don’t want to skimp over anything or fail to do my research justice – my worst fear is that I’ll get so caught up in it all that I won’t want to have to force it to a close after only eight months. I guess the key thing I need to do here is define milestones and key goals, to ensure I remain on target and can force myself to move onto the next stage.

The mealtimes thing is a bit of tangent. I wasn’t 100% sure what aspect of a relationship I wanted to focus on, and then the other week I was having lunch with an old university professor, one who is quite likely to be my PhD supervisor next year. We were talking about my PhD proposal and ways in which intimacy could be explored and – probably because we were sitting in a restaurant at the time – we started observing the ways people were dining. This made me think back to the cultural probes I did for my degree project; the top “lonely time” for couples separated by distance was bedtime, but this was very closely followed by mealtimes. So, ever since this meal with my old lecturer I’ve become obsessed with intimacy whilst dining. It’s driving my boyfriend a bit crazy, he doesn’t like eating with me in restaurants anymore because I keep creeping on all the other people eating! But I’ve read a lot of interesting papers on the topic and I think it’s definitely worth pursuing.

Date: January 31st, 2011
Cate: Final Project
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Mapping Research

I’ve been collecting/gathering loads of stuff that’s relevant to my project but I’m never really sure what to do with it. I file all the papers, articles etc I read but the actual projects/other work I come across just get bookmarked. So, I’ve decided to try and come up with a way for me personally to keep a visual representation of all the relevant work.

I’d like to categorise everything and be able to see it all clearly, so I’ve decided to try and “map” my research. I’ve started with a big sheet of A2 paper, a thick pen and some post it notes. An ethnographer would be proud!

As it’s all based around communication and interaction, I’ve created two scales. Two-way communication versus one-way communication, which is pretty simple. The other “scale”, I struggled to name. I think what I’m getting at is crude, emotionless communication in contrast to more engaging, tactile interactions. I’m calling them “hard communication” and “soft communication” right now, but I’ll maybe change this if I come up with a better way to name them.

It’s a work in progress but as you can see in the photo above, I’ve started to lay various methods of communication (mobile phones, email etc) and other projects that are relevant (Pilow Talk, Mutsugo) onto my cross-scale. I think it’s working well, there is still a lot more stuff to go on but even already I’m finding it much easier to see where my work will be positioned amongst others.

Date: January 31st, 2011
Cate: Inspiration

Air Pollution Detecting Clothes

Pollution has never been so fashionable: A pair of NYU grad students have created a high-tech sweatshirt emblazoned with pink lungs that suddenly show blue veins when exposed to dirty air.

Nien Lam and Sue Ngo came up with the idea for a class on wearable technologies in the interactive telecommunications program at Tisch School of the Arts.

“The organs in your body are invisible to you, just like pollution and the other silent killers out there,” said Lam, 32, who lives on the upper West Side. ”We wanted to bring up that visualization, bring the inside out,” added Ngo, 27, of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. “This is a stark reminder for yourself and others around you.”

A dime-sized carbon monoxide sensor attached to the sweatshirt detects pollution from cars, factories, and even second-hand smoke. It sits on a microcontroller programmed to send electrical currents through the shirt, warming wires that run under the lungs – or on some shirts, a heart. Because the organs are made of thermochromic fabric that changes color dramatically when heated, blue veins become visible when the sensor finds toxins in the air.

“They went for something that’s at once subtle and quite in your face,” said designer Despina Papadopoulos, who co-taught the class. “It was a perfect project. It’s a conversation starter.”

Some of the conversations have been awkward. ”Students going out for a cigarette came up to us and told us they feel guilty,” Lam said with a chuckle. Ngo said she tried to kick the habit after making the shirts. ”I smoke less,” she said. “I don’t really smoke anymore.”

The duo hope to find a way to cheaply mass produce the shirts, which use about $60 worth of material, and organize mobs to wear them around the city.They are also experimenting with other kinds of sensors – including a booze detector. ”If you were drinking alcohol,” Ngo explained, “the sensor would pick up the fumes and change the color of the liver.”

I love this. It’s right up my street – non-invasive interactions that provoke a deeper train of thought. I’ve been working with a girl who studies textiles at Dundee University to help make her work interactive – she is interested in producing maternity clothing which reacts when people are smoking around you, to make you (and the others around you) aware that the smoke could be damaging your baby. Aside from the interaction design, I love how something like this can have a huge social impact.

Date: January 26th, 2011
Cate: Thoughts & Reflections

Twenty Eleven

Despite actually doing rather a lot of work over the Christmas break, I fell off the blogging bandwagon slightly whilst other things took over my life for a while (namely eating turkey, playing scrabble and building snowmen). However, fear not, for I have returned to the mental place (by which I mean state of mind, not Newcastle!) in which I ponder copiously and blog appropriately.

I’m glad that our essay submission is finally in. I decided to write about interaction design, and to what extent we expect technology to engage with us. One of our first Thinking lectures was on interaction design and I found it raised a lot of questions for me. The implication was that something had to give each user a truly unique output to be considered truly interactive, but this went against everything I’ve learned over the last 4 years at university, so I wanted to explore it in more depth. Ideally I wanted to explore it in relation to what each argument (standard output vs. unique output) meant for me as an interaction designer, and the implications it could have on my work or even on the way I perceived other interactive works. I wrote my essay plan around this but my feedback asked me to remain critical and not get emotionally involved. Although, after I’d submitted I found in the module handbook that it stated “the essay should explore the relationship between observed social or cultural phenomena, theory and philosophy, or the student’s own practice and the ideas and theories encountered in the module“ which kind of suggests I could have pursued my first avenue. I think I must have read that bit before I wrote my essay plan, but I suppose it’s what I get for then not spotting it again until after finishing my essay! But yeah, definitely going to ask Brigitta about this one before Essay 2 because I wasn’t really happy with my submission and think it would have been a lot richer when approach from a more personal angle. (Or does that mean it’s not really research writing? Hmmm.)

With the essay submitted, all thoughts have once again turned to my final project. I have a rough idea of what I’d like to achieve but need to really narrow it down and try and be more specific. I’ve done a lot of user research over the break so I’m hoping to spend the next day or two organising it all and posting it all – not just for the benefit of my blog, mostly as an exercise to help me see “all the branches of my tree” so to speak. The prospect of having to make such a huge decision actually makes me a little bit nervous. I have so many ideas, picking one that will not only keep me interested but also go the distance is going to be a huge task. How I am EVER going to top Pillow Talk, I don’t know.