NewBraveWorld: ubicomp workshop in Brussels

People interested in locative media and ubicomp in the Brussel area (or in Europe!) might be willing to attends NewBraveWorld:

"An “Internet-of-Things” is under construction with technologies for unique digital identification (RFID), geolocation (GPS), embedded computing (ubiquitous or pervasive computing) and mobile networking (e.g. wifi, wimax, umts/3g). Places and objects become linked to digital media which can be everywhere people are.

Our digital life and social interactions are going to happen through tangible augmented objects and our physical environment will become the playground of new social and artistic behaviors, interventions, actions both in data and media spaces.

“New Brave World” proposes 4 workshops exploring the roles of artists, designers, media makers and creative scientists/developers in this context of the merge of digital and physical spaces."

The third workshop will be held on June 4-8 2008 produced by iMal with the support of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund. With the participation of Talkoo (Electronic Interventions in Urban Context) and the ubiquitous David Cuartielles:

"The Talkoo workshop intends to bring the practice of Electronic Interventionism teaming up with a community spirit for the realization of pieces to be set in the urban environment of the city center of Brussels. After a series of practical exercises with an introduction to Arduino, participants will look into the methods for carrying out interventions with electronic elements in urban locations. Divided into groups, participants will be the creators of electronic machines that will invade the city, provoking situations and stirring sensations in its inhabitants."

Date: from 4 to 8 June 2008 Fee: 100 EUR Maximum Participants: 15 Location: iMAL, Brussels

Detailled description and Registration Form here

"Lost futures" as traps

Still gathering stuff about "failed futures" for a project, I ran across this interview of Matt Jones by Adaptive Path peeps that is very insightful. Some excerpts I found relevant for my project:

"RF: You’ve mentioned the danger of “lost futures,” based on the success of a given device. One model becomes wildly popular, and other, more interesting ways of looking at the problem get cast aside… or at least ignored when they could be doing the most good.

MJ: Exactly - the gravity well of the iPhone is going to be hard for anyone developing innovative UIs to escape for the next few years. In hardware, you’re subject to the determinism of sourcing components.

RF: Our friends the cognitive anthropologists have warned us about the implications of subscribing to the wrong cognitive artifacts…

MJ: So everyone for the last 2/3 years has been offered the same touchscreen components more or less by a few suppliers. And we all (more or less) have similar dimensions we can work within in a touch UI.

RF: So thinking in hardware becomes even more constrained?

MJ: To an extent. UIs will not be so diverse in the next few years… inside a BigDeviceCo you’re going to find it hard to justify the investment in the out-there stuff (as always). But there’s still innovation a plenty to come, its just that for the next few years it’ll be all 16:9 touchscreens, I guess. And then… hopefully someone will Wii on their parade and breakthrough with something as different as the iPhone was to the existing crop of smartphones. That’s my hope anyway. And I think it might be in the area of physical/gestural interfaces, matched with ambient/visualisation tech to give us more natural ‘Everyware‘."

Why do I blog this? I am trying to collect material about what Jones calls "lost future" (in design+foresight), I quite like his stance here, not only about the example discussed (that 16:9 touchscreen device coming from Cupertino) but, rather, its possible consequence: how it eclipses other innovation. There are different consequences of failed futures, some are about traps like in this examples; others are about perpetuation of wrong ideas.

Social friction and urban computing

When Fabien and I had to find a title for our photo booklet "Sliding Friction: The Harmonious Jungle of Contemporary Cities", the notion of "friction" came up very easily in the conversation. Having read few books by Lefebvre in the last few years, it was certainly one of the reason for picking up that term. Digging my "Docs" folder on my laptop, I recently unburied a very good paper by Jensen & Lenskjoldabout similar issues. It's called "Designing for social friction: Exploring ubiquitous computing as means of cultural interventions in urban space".

Here's how they define this "social friction" (a notion they discuss using Lefebvre and De Certeau):

"Social friction is a fundamental aspect of everyday life. We use the term to denote the process, which separates different expressive behaviours and contexts from each other. Social friction is at play when people in the city act and express themselves in surprising and unconventional ways. When people challenge existing norms and leave marks and traces on their social and physical surroundings. (...) Social friction can also be described as the ‘rubbing of’ of people on each other. It is the kind of friction that occurs when people, who hold different backgrounds, understandings and experiences, meet on the bus or in the street and exchange opinions, stories or maybe just gestures and glances."

Now, what about "social friction" and ubiquitous/urban computing? The authors' point is that this notion is helpful "in the development and analysis of ubiquitous computing in relation to art and design". They articulate social friction a critical position, which could be applied as a strategy for design. Relying (or designing for) social friction is then seen as way to release new forms of social and cultural potentials. Which, is also related to Nicolas Bourriaud's idea of "art as a social interestice". Why do I blog this? my interest in urban computing and art practices led me to that paper, I quite like that notion of "social friction". Let's sleep on it.

Technical issues regarding location-based services

In an IEEE article called "Location-Based Services: Back to the Future", Paolo Bellavista, Axel Küpper, and Sumi Helal gives an interesting overview of the technical issues regarding location-based services. They take an intriguing viewpoint: projecting themselves in 2012 and backasting to discuss “What Was Wrong with First-Generation Location-Based Services?” (i.e. LBS of today). Starting with a brief history of how LBS evolved from Enhance 911 in the US to the explosion of projects which started around 2005. They then discuss this evolution of time, giving some hints about what they think the 2008-2012 axis can be:

The evolution they envision is made of 4 major changes:

"From reactive to proactive: Proactive LBSs, instead, are automatically initiated when a predefined event occurs—for example, if the user or a target (another designated person) approaches or leaves a certain point of interest or another target. Proactive LBSs demand much less user attention and interaction. (...) From self- to cross-referencing: Self-referencing LBSs are services in which the user and target coincide, while cross-referencing LBSs exploit the target location for service-provisioning of another user, thus requiring stronger privacy protection. (...) From single- to multitarget (the number of targets participating in an LBS session): In multitarget LBSs, the focus is more on interrelating the positions of several targets among each other. (...) From content-to application-oriented: the delivery of such dynamic applications is impromptu. In contrast to content-oriented LBSs, application-oriented LBSs provide a more powerful and richer interaction model, with autonomic installation and removal of dynamically needed components."

Why do I blog this? although I don't necessarily agree with all the points here, the articles gives an overview of the technical issues regarding LBS lately. Another comment I had after reading the paper is that all of this looks very cryptic from a UX POV.

How homeless people perceive urban and mobile technologies

If there's a population that is often overlooked (or dismissed) by urban designers or urban technology engineers, it's definitely the homeless. A CHI 2008 paper by Le Dantec and Edwards entitled "Designs on Dignity: Perceptions of Technology Among the Homeless" deals with this topic, trying to understand how technology — from cell phones to bus passes—affects their daily lives. Such a qualitative study allows them to challenge reseachers' assumptions about people's relationship with technology and discuss possible opportunities to develop services. Using Photo-Elicitation Interview, the researchers identified different unique needs homeless had and characterized perceptions of technology among them. Some excerpts from the results:

"Staying Connected: The first theme was the importance of staying connected to family members and friends during spells of homelessness. (...) Many of the participants came from places other than their current urban home and keeping in touch over distance was something they worried about.

Synchronous v. Asynchronous Connections All of the participants had voice-mail accounts through local organizations. These accounts were meant to provide a stable number of contact and aid in job searches and managing appointments or other personal business. (...) The difficulty for a number of participants was in accessing their voicemail, leading to a decidedly asynchronous style of communication when using the telephone.

Mobile Telephony The preferred way to maintain a stable connection to family and friends for many of the participants in the study was through a cell phone. (...) cell phones were not without problems (...) the ongoing cost, the need for access to power to recharge the phones, and the inevitability of theft when living in and out of shelters.of his extended friends he would tell about being homeless.

Identity Management: For participants in our study, different forms of identity management came out through their use of technology and social institutions. (...) Identity management took both technology- and non-technology-focused forms. For example, on the non-technologic side, identity management appeared in how participants managed their physical appearance

Access to Information, Social Networks: The social network was the primary mechanism participants in this study used to navigate the world around them.

The Digital Divide: Participants varied widely in the use of information technology, effectively resulting in an internal “digital divide” within the homeless community.

Health and Medication

Getting Around: Moving around the city was an imperative for our participants."

As the authors say, although these needs can suggest opportunities for designed solutions, they find it more relevant to consider the broader implications for urban computing:

The social dynamics that are playfully exposed through urban computing ideas could be more thoughtfully considered in their relation to the less-priviledged participants of the urban environment. Appropriate technologies need to consider more than the usability or psychological appropriateness of an interaction. We need to put careful thought into the social impact technologies have for non-users as well as users. In using technology to redefine boundaries, we have an opportunity to do so inclusively, bringing the periphery into sharper focuses, inviting in the disenfranchised and the under-served. "

Why do I blog this? This kind of research help to figure out alternative vision of current urban computing ideas as it allows to adopt another lens concerning people's relationship with technology and the city. All the issues described in the paper are extremely important to consider the situation in a more holistic way (and certainly not only as a quest for " design opportunities").

In addition, I also find interesting the way some concrete problems are considered here. For instance, the article describes how some homeless people make communication decisions based on their ability to predict cost using pre-paid cellular service. The problem of these phones is that purchased minutes expire after as little as 30 days and phone numbers that become inactive can be reclaimed by the service providers after 90 days (which is difficult for people with irregular incomes). What is interesting here is the notion that the problem is not necessarily about the technology itself but rather the whole model of its deployment (business model). This is a good example of a technosocial situation in which the whole ecosystem should be taken into account if a technology is to be adopted. Of course, in this case, this kind of limit in pre-paid phone contracts is generally aimed at getting rid of this sort of population... :(

The complexity of urban signs

Lots of signs on that picture taken in Geneva. Different meanings, some are official (street number), some aren't (graffitis); some are about navigation (street number), some about making explicit invisible phenomenon (the purple rainbow shows the availability of the wifi signal), some are easy-to-grasp ("COOL"), some are impossible to parse. The weirdest is certainly the black-scotch tape on the right.

Mapping The Emerging Urban Landscape

"Trace: Mapping The Emerging Urban Landscape" by Alison Sant is an interesting article if you're interested in the whole debate about digital traces and how wireless networks and mobile devices are "reforming our contemporary notions of urban place". It deals with a topic I am interested in, which is the boundaries of wireless technology. As the authors says, they have deep implications for our notion of space even though they are not physically obvious. Sant describes in this paper a project called *TRACE* which make the wifi topography visible, revealing "the intersection of the physical and immaterial infrastructures of the city" (I don't know why they say it's immaterial... as WiFi nodes are all but immaterial). Moreover, the project also reveals the fluctuating character of the wireless network, an important characteristic as it challenges the notion of "a purely static notion of public space". This sort of "Hertzian landscape" is represented as follows, with "binary qualities of being on and off the network, in locked or unlocked zones, and in areas of unique or default node name".

For instance, it can be represented like this, with the shapes are uniquely suited to each node and are at varying angles:

The process of building these viz also allowed the author to observe very interesting practices:

"The decision to leave a WiFI node locked or unlocked or to rename a base station communicates a bias to those that "see" these nodes through wireless devices. In addition, WiFI node names and encryption states become vehicles to express disparate attitudes about public access. An inflammatory declaration of privacy like "Go Away!" may be opposed by an open invitation to logon in the form of a web site address "go http://192.168.168.4/airport" (...) Our understanding of physical space becomes complicated by traces of electronic signals, the way they are formatted, and the information they project to us. The wireless network suggests a new subtext to urban space. In turn, these transmissions change our fundamental understanding of location. Instead of responding purely to the physical space around us, we also become engaged with the fleeting qualities of wireless signal. These "states" of the network begin to inform and direct our interactions with the urban landscape as significantly as the material landmarks on city maps."

Why do I blog this? I like how the author describes this wireless layer as an hertzian fooprint that is dynamic and reconfigure our relationship to space in novel ways. Very much in line with similar projects such as Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby's "Tunable Cities" (Architectural Design 68*, No. 11/12, pp. 78-79, November-December 1998):

"". . . [H]ertzian space is actual and physical even though our senses detect only a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Images of footprints of satellite TV transmissions in relation to the surface of the earth, and computer models showing cellular phone propagation in relation to urban environments, reveal that hertzian space is not isotropic but has an 'electroclimate' defined by wavelength, frequency and field strength. Interaction with the natural and artificial landscape creates a hybrid landscape of shadows, reflections, and hot points.""

That issue is important to me as there is an intriguing paradox with the advent of the "digital city" (which gets lots of visibility in the media) and its relative invisibility practically speaking.

Shopping carts culture

Beyond molested bicycles, street cleaning vehicles and bad wiring, shopping carts are highly ranked in my list of intriguing city devices. One of the reason is because there is always a small proportion of carts that are stolen, abandoned or used or other purposes. Some examples easily comes to mind, see for instance how this bunch of homeless people in LA use the cart:

OR, more intriguing in Madrid, I stumbled across these 2 guys who collect steel material on the street before selling it somewhere. The carts shown below served as a convenient way to carry steel stuff before heading to a buyer:

BUT it's certainly the abandoned shopping carts like that one encountered yesterday in Geneva, which ranks first in my list of cart behavior.

Abandoned carts always makes me wonder that there are strong design opportunities for micro-distance devices like this in our contemporary cities.

Vocabulary of public transport ticket validation

The vocabulary of interaction in this sequence of devices aimed at validating public transport cards in France: "validate here", "punch your ticket", "leave your card here". It's interesting to nice that only the "touch interface" explicitly tell people where to touch the card ("here"), whereas the "punch" interface (in french "compostage") does not have to specify where the interaction happen. Designers assume that if there's going to be something punched (a ticket) it can only be in the grey slit. it's also because people taking french trains have a long tradition of "punching" their tickets, as a sort of standard.

The shape and size of the boxes themselves is also interesting. People who know the context will remark that the one that look very cheap (on the right) is the city transport one, the second smaller box (on the left) is for regional card and the yellow box in the middle is the national system.

Map obstacles for disabled people with GPS phones

GENEVE*accessible by Antoni Abad is an intriguing project launched by the city of Geneva in partnership with the Handicap Architecture Urbanisme (HAU) association, with the purpose of making travelling easier for the disabled.

The project is simple: disabled phone are handed out GPS-enabled mobile telephones so that they can take pictures of every obstacle they come across in Geneva. By means of multimedia messages they create a map of the accessibility of the city on the internet. The resulting work will be presented at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, within a series of related live events: the “Créateurs Singuliers” week (27th May-1rst June).

Here's an example of the on-going map with a typology of different obstacles (stairs, entrance, etc.):

Why do I blog this? documenting interesting local projects around here. I like the bottom-up approach of the initative.

Assumption of seamlessness and cellphone boosters

Cell phone booster/repeater solution seems to be a trendy path lately, as shown by this NYT article which presents devices such as femtocell to extend mobile phone service coverage indoors, especially where access would otherwise be limited or unavailable. What I find interesting here is less the technology than the reasons why these solutions are brought forward (or at least the one mentioned/promoted by companies designing these solutions). Excerpt from the article:

"“Because more and more people are not taking landline telephones anymore, adding a signal booster is becoming much more popular,” said Richard Holtz, president of Infinisys in Daytona Beach, Fla. His firm plans the placement of cellular boosters in high-rise buildings, dorms and offices.

“People are expecting perfect coverage everywhere,” Mr. Holtz said, pointing out that being indoors or outdoors can make a big difference in call quality. (...) Many things get in the way of wireless signals. Trees and intervening buildings can degrade the signal from the cell tower, while brick walls and wallboard supports can block them completely. Sometimes many obstacles will conspire to create a “dead zone” of dropped and missed calls. (...) Of course, boosters require you to shell out your own money to improve a service you are already paying for. Pestering your carrier to upgrade its network is a cheaper — but slower — approach."

Why do I blog this? I'd be curious to know more about the real expectations of people but the seamless coverage might be a need. In our field studies, it's generally the case that people ASSUME wireless coverage (or perfect positioning through LBS) but then realize there are some discrepancies. It's then interesting to see both human and technical solutions to this problem. Technical solutions are boosters and repeaters described in this article whereas human solutions are behavioral adjustments (like sending an SMS instead of calling when you only have 2 bars on the signal reception display).

Sensors in condoms

Found here, a new vector in ubiquitous computing:

"A musical condom designed to play louder and faster as lovers reach a climax is to go on sale in Ukraine. Grigoriy Chausovsky, from Zaporozhye, said his condoms came fitted with a special sensor that registers when the condom is put on. It transmits a signal to a miniature speaker in the base of the condom which play a melody.

He told local media: "As the sex becomes more passionate, it registers the increased speed of the movements and plays the melody faster and louder.""

Why do I blog this? Wacky ideas are always weird, yet they often mean something. In this case, it's maybe not the proposed use of sensors that is important, nor the fact that you can use the condom context (but who knows?).

It's rather that it attests that sensors are so small and cheap they can be integrated in very thin membranes. It's a bit like the challenged that Violet wanted to achieve. Violet is the french company which does the wifi rabbit Nabaztag: their point was that "if you can connect a rabbit to the Internet, you can connect anything". So maybe here it's more relevant for people who want to develop health applications or disposable devices.

The digital traces of bike rental solution "Bicincittà"

When it comes to bike rental platforms, I am often intrigued by how digital technologies are employed and for what purposes. A description of how italian biking solution Bicincittà describes it in detail:

"Monitoring and organizational systems: Every movement of the bicycles is transmitted to a server that updates in real time their availability in the area. Upon receiving an electronic card, each cyclist is then registered in the server, having inserted his/her personal information and telephone number. This card is distributed for an indeterminate amount of time and can be deactivated remotely at any time at the director’s discretion. The system’s interface supplies us with the user’s personal information at the moment of the hire, giving us a general overview of who is exploiting the system. As a result we can analyze bike movements and study their statistics in order to increase or decrease the number of bicycles according to demand.

Tele-diagnostic system: Bicincittà is equipped with a remotely enhanced diagnostic system that allows us to know the conditions of the parking stations at any moment. Wherever there may be a damaged or malfunctioning unit, a remote mechanism allows us to reset the device, be it a single parking space or the entire parking station. The practicality of the tele-diagnostic system allows us to solve problems from a distance. This guarantees a completely efficient, indispensable organization in providing quality available alternative public transportation."

Seems to be very close to Velib/Velov and co. The website interestingly gives some random stats which seems to be more descriptive than explicative:

Why do I blog this? I find interesting to see where digital technologies play a role in bike rental solutions; and the description above is quite transparent regarding how the digital traces of physical activities (movement, parking, diagnosis). In addition, I like the way they describe the whole process. There must be intriguing tools and visualizations to reflect that kind of traces for diverse "urban audiences":

1. the company which needs to have indicators about his services (but the one above is maybe less informative since it's regardless of any explanatory variable such as city, weather, etc.).
2. local institutions that what to get information about bike mobility in their city, how the platform is used, etc. in a sort of descriptive way. Further out, they might also need to access to a more explicative dimension so that they could see what works (re-fill of stations, time spent on bikes, etc) and what doesn't. The point would hence be to modify the system (change the frequency of re-fill, add stations, etc.)
3. Customers who may want to get information about the service availability (number of bikes in real-time at what station) or more elaborated services (why not printing out special maps to depict the best areas to drop a bike, new routes to come past certain empty bike stations). This information could also be coupled with other one coming from other means of transport to help people to pick-up a more efficient succession of transport means (get a bike - use it to go to a metro station - get the metro and get out); in order - for instance - to avoid finding no spots for your bike (or a steep hill?).

"Everyday Engineering": be inquisitive about your environment

"Everyday Engineering: What Engineers See" is a nice little booklet by Andrew Burroughs from IDEO. A bit in the same vein of "Thoughtless Acts?: Observations on Intuitive Design" by Jane Fulton Suri, is about all these small things and details that I sometimes blog about: observations about the world, the complexity of assemblage, failures, cracks, misuses, etc. All these small details matter as they tell us about "the thought process behind designed things".

Compared to Thoughtless Acts, that book is more about the way to see the world in the engineer's eyes but it's definitely of interest for anyone interested in design or user experience research.

In addition, this collection of pictures is an invitation to be more "inquisitive" about our environments. As I sometimes try to do with picture I annotate here, the point is rather to ask questions concerning why things are like this or that. And as the author says, it allows to become "better observers":

"Perhaps we discover a point of failure that is completely counterintuitive, as when corrosion aggressively attacks the most protected part of a steel beam. And we can also see success, when things do go as planned and the end product proves to be a match for everything that is thrown at it. Regardless of whether we find inspiration or not, we owe it to ourselves and those around us to become better observers. Our environment is brimming over with information that can help us with our basic ability to navigate a course. The better we are able to refine our actions and our thoughts based on seeing what has gone before, the fewer mistakes we will make"

A taxonomy of "coded domestic objects":

In Software, Objects and Home Space, Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin (Environment and Planning A) examine the relationship between objects and software in detail. They describe how ubiquitous computing - through the embedding of sensors and computation in objects - is transforming daily artifacts, giving them new capacities. To do so, they came up with an interesting taxonomy of "coded domestic objects":

"Coded objects can be subdivided into two broad classes based on their relational capacities. First, there are unitary objects that rely on code to function but do not record their work in the world. Second, there are objects that have an ‘awareness’ of themselves and their relations with the world and which, by default, automatically record aspects of those relations in logs that are stored and re-used in the future (that we call logjects [an object that monitors and records in some fashion its own use]). (...) In broad terms unitary coded objects can be divided into those that function independently of their surroundings and those that are equipped with some kind of sensors that enable the object to react meaningfully to particular variables in their immediate environment. (...) We can identify two main classes of logject: impermeable and permeable. Impermeable logjects consist of relatively self-contained units such as a MP3 player, a PDA or satnav. Such devices trace and track their usage by default, recording this data as an embedded history; are programmable in terms of configurable settings and creating lists (e.g. play lists of songs, diary entries and route itineraries); perform operations in automated, automatic and autonomous ways; and engender socially meaningful acts such as entertaining, remember an important meeting and helping not to get lost. (...) Permeable logjects do not function without continuous access to other technologies and networks. In particular, because they need the constant two-way of data exchanges, they are reliant on access to a distributed communication network to perform their primary function. Such logjects track, trace and record their usage locally but because of memory issues, the necessity of service monitoring/billing, and in some cases a user’s ability to erase or reprogram such objects, their full histories are also recorded externally to its immediate material form"

And about how these coded objects make "home differently":

"the everyday use of coded objects reshapes the spatiality of the home by altering how domestic tasks are undertaken (and not always more conveniently for all), introducing new tasks and sometimes greater complexity, and embedding the home in diverse, extended networks of consumption and governmentality. (...) the transition into the fully software-enabled home is a slow process. Most homes contain a mix of non-coded and coded technologies. (...) a useful parallel can be drawn between the coding of homes and the initial development of domestic electricity. At first, there were no electrical appliances and whole classes of electrical tools had to be invented. Over an extended period of time existing technologies were converted to electricity (e.g. gas lights to electric lights, open hearth to electric cooker, washtub to washing machine, etc.). Today, the extent to which electricity powers almost everything of significance in our homes is largely unnoticed in a Western context (except in a power cut). "

Why do I blog this? The taxonomy of objects is relevant as it shows the sort of "current design space", mapping the different possibilities depending on the coded behavior. Moreover, the thing I like with these authors is that their reading of ubicomp is definitely more about the "messily arranged here-and-now" and less about the "supposed smart home of the future". Surely some material to reflect on in current writings with Julian, especially about the relationships between technologies and spatial bevahior/materialities.

The design and fading of pinball games

Last week, the NYT had an intriguing story about pinball machines, or - more specifically - the survivor of the pinball industry. Some excerpts I found interesting below: About how it went downhill ("a painful fading") that may be "turned around":

"“There are a lot of things I look at and scratch my head,” said Tim Arnold, who ran an arcade during a heyday of pinball in the 1970s and recently opened The Pinball Hall of Fame, a nonprofit museum in a Las Vegas strip mall. “Why are people playing games on their cellphones while they write e-mail? I don’t get it.”

“The thing that’s killing pinball,” Mr. Arnold added, “is not that people don’t like it. It’s that there’s nowhere to play it.” (...) Corner shops, pubs, arcades and bowling alleys stopped stocking pinball machines. A younger audience turned to video games. Men of a certain age, said Mr. Arnold, who is 52, became the reliable audience. (...) the pinball buyer is shifting. In the United States, Mr. Stern said, half of his new machines, which cost about $5,000 and are bought through distributors, now go directly into people’s homes and not a corner arcade "

About the design process per se:

"Some workers are required to spend 15 minutes a day in the “game room” playing the latest models or risk the wrath of Mr. Stern. “You work at a pinball company,” he explained, grumpily, “you’re going to play a lot of pinball.” (On a clipboard here, the professionals must jot their critiques, which, on a recent day, included “flipper feels soft” and “stupid display.”)

And in a testing laboratory devoted to the physics of all of this, silver balls bounce around alone in cases for hours to record how well certain kickers and flippers and bumpers hold up."

Why do I blog this? cultural interest in how certain things work and then fade away for diverse reasons that are interesting to observe. Some lessons can be drawn here about innovation, especially about the role of contexts (or the absence of context of play).

Roads patterns following biological patterns

Belle Dumé in the NewScientist addressed recently the idea that city road networks grow like biological systems. The article is basically a description of the academic work of Marc Barthélemy and Alessandro Flammini who analysed street pattern data from roughly 300 cities, including Brasilia, Cairo, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Venice. Using these cases, the researchers found interesting patterns showing that the road networks in cities evolve driven by a simple universal mechanism that follows a biological metaphor:

"The main influence on the simulated network as it grows is the need to efficiently connect new areas to the existing road network – a process they call "local optimisation". They say the road patterns in cities evolve thanks to similar local efforts, as people try to connect houses, businesses and other infrastructures to existing roads. (...) "Beyond the economic, demographic and geographic "forces" that shape a town, there are a myriad of small "accidents" that contribute" he says. "Although these are unpredictable, they can be understood in terms of statistics and simple modelling."

The team's model also reveals that roads often bend, even in the absence of geographical obstacles, and that road intersections are generally perpendicular."

And, as the authors described in their paper, "in the absence of a global design strategy, the evolution of many different transportation networks indeed follows a simple universal mechanism." Why do I blog this? I am not really into urban pattern modeling but I find interesting this notion of "local optimisation" and how it works for instance for roads and not for rail (because of its different nature and scales).

This is somewhat related to the elephant path (desire line) I often blog about here and there as pointed out by Space and Culture. A desire line can be turned into a design opportunity and thus into a new road.

Why is that interesting? certainly because it shows the contingencies of the urban infrastructure. I am wondering this hold true for other sort of infra, such as internet connections.

Waiting and mirrors

Read in The Psychology of Waiting Lines by David Maister (1985):

"the example of ‘the well-known hotel group that received complaints from guests about excessive waiting times for elevators. After an analysis of how elevator service might be improved, it was suggested that mirrors be installed near where guests waited for elevators. The natural tendency of people to check their personal appearance substantially reduced complaints, although the actual wait for the elevators was unchanged."

(An example pointed by Sasser, W.E., J. Olsen, and D.D. Wyckoff (1979), Management of Service Operations: Text, Cases and Readings. New York: Allyn and Bacon) Why do I blog this? made me wondering about the affordances of space, the design of a particular place and how it can accommodate people's behavior.

User research and informed opinions

An interesting sidebar from an old issue of game developer (november 2007) called "usability research commandment" by Randy Pagulayan (Microsoft Game Studio user reasearch) deal with the relationship between user experience researchers and designers. Some excerpt that I find interesting and relevant beyond the game field:

"Be flexible, it is our job to try an account for as many sources of bias and influence when we run usability tests and collect data, but sometimes the ideal is simply not practical. (...) Users have opinions, but designers make the call. During your research and testing, users will always have opinions on things they do or don't like. Your job isn't to adhere to user whims - your job is to identify areas where user behavior is not consistent with the design's vision. What you do from there will be context dependent. (...) Most developers aren't interested in the classic "it depends" answer to something [very academic]. They also aren't interested in inferential statistics, hypothesis testing, or the number of users you need for a valid test. When asked to do something or answer a question, do your research and testing, and give it your best shot. Don't be afraid to have an informed opinion, even if your research wasn't suitable for a scientific peer-reviewed journal."

Why do I blog this? All of this rings a bell with my current practice. There's even more to be quoted here but it's certainly that last bit which caught my attention. Working with designers for a while, I certainly shared that sort of feeling about what sort of material I needed to bring to the table to help them. However, it does not mean that the result should be overstated. As Pagulayan says, "What you do from there will be context dependent". Also see how Jan says about this notion of informed opinion and the risk of overstating:

"So why should anyone give your research the time of day? How to build credibility? For starters recognise and communicate the limits of (mostly qualitative) design research. We start out with opinions, and all things by the end of study we move onto having informed opinions or on rare occasions very informed opinions. Overstating the value of the research makes you a bullshitter."

When the affordance is not enough...

The need to put a "bell" arrow sticker to indicate the button position.