An old phone booth

Yes, phones are mobile and everywhere now. But before that, public phone used to sit inside a booth... and before that they were also out of the booth. People would take the phone and put your head inside this kind of device encountered at CERN the other day (te gent on the picture is Mr. Woebken).

Why do I blog this I wonder when this sort of protection will be re-installed in cities. A a sort of place where it's convenient (and acceptable) to make a phone call. It reminds me of the use of cell-phones in public phone booth.

Location-awareness sharing and affordances in the subway

Two recent articles about location-based platforms caught my eyes Seeburger, J., & Schroeter, R. (2009, Nov 23-27). Disposable Maps: Ad hoc Location Sharing. In J. Kjeldskov, J. Paay & S. Viller (Eds.), Proceedings OZCHI 2009 (pp. 377-380). Melbourne, VIC: The University of Melbourne.

"The gathering of people in everyday life is intertwined with travelling to negotiated locations. As a result, mobile phones are often used to rearrange meetings when one or more participants are late or cannot make it on time. Our research is based on the hypothesis that the provision of location data can enhance the experience of people who are meeting each other in different locations. This paper presents work-in-progress on a novel approach to share one’s location data in real-time which is visualised on a web-based map in a privacy conscious way. Disposable Maps allows users to select contacts from their phone’s address book who then receive up-to-date location data. The utilisation of peer-to-peer notifications and the application of unique URLs for location storage and presentation enable location sharing whilst ensuring users’ location privacy. In contrast to other location sharing services like Google Latitude, Disposable Maps enables ad hoc location sharing to actively selected location receivers for a fixed period of time in a specific given situation. We present first insights from an initial application user test and show future work on the approach of disposable information allocation."

(Thanks Antonio!)

Belloni, Nicolas and Holmquist, Lars Erik and Tholander, Jakob (2009)See you on the subway: exploring mobile social software. In: In Proceedings of the 27th international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 4-9 April 2009, Boston, USA.

"This project explores the social possibilities of mobile technology in transitional spaces such as public transport. Based on a cultural probes study of Stockholm subway commuters, we designed a location- based friend finder that displays only people in the same train as the user. (...) The interviews showed that the users did not always have an obvious idea for what actions to take once they realized that a friend was on the same train (...) This points to the complexity a social situation like this and the multitude of social layers that comes into play for designers of social services. In this case, it seems like the user didn‟t feel close enough to his work colleague for taking contact at this particular moment. (...) Adding the possibility to call the person or send a text message could be one of functionalities improving the user experience."

Why do I blog this? Collecting material for current projects about location-based services. Both papers describe relevant studies about the user experience of location-awareness and the complexity of building social applications on top of it.

Cern input interfaces

A bunch of curious input interfaces I encountered at CERN today. Interesting diversity: lots of specific affordances, several distinct constraints that lead to a wide variety of possibilities.

They control information and fluid through mechanical, electric, electromechanical and electronic mechanisms. Some are shiny and colorful, others are dirty and old.

And yes, we've had our fifth Lift conference!

Wifi sharing request

An interesting encounter last week in Lyon: a message stuck on a door from a person who want to share a wifi connection. The translation in English goes like:

"Hello, I would like to share a Wi-Fi connection with someone. I need the internet for my studies (till June) but I do not want a subscription for 3 months. Anyone interested? You can leave me a note in my mailbox or come see me on the 4th floor. Thanks."

Why do I blog this? An interesting example of how a technology (and also the business model of such technology) foster foster social interaction and forms of communication about it.

In addition, it's also curious to see what sorts of infrastructure are shared (or willing to be shared). While it seems socially acceptable to share wifi (or to ask for it), what would be the situation if someone asked for water, gas or electricity?

Recap of Lift seminar @ Imaginove

Yesterday evening, I co-organized a Lift seminar in Lyon, in partnership with Imaginove, a cluster of digital content companies. Located in a an old flour mill, the seminar was about new forms of video game play with a specific focus on Transmedia and Location-Based Games.

To deal with this, I invited two bright contributors: David Calvo who is Creative Director from French video game studio Ankama (as well as a fine writer, comic-book author) and Mathieu Castelli from C4M, who was also the founder of Newt Games, the now defunct company which was a pioneer in location-based games in Japan.

David started with a presentation in which he descried in personal vision of what the "Transmedia" domain consists in. He basically debunked the fuss around this term by showing how this term is now used as a buzzword. According to him, adopting a "transmedia" perspective corresponds to the following approach:

• Building a "world model" with its own background and constraints (because design emerges out of constraints)
• Nurture this world model by elements coming from users, but not in an explicit "user-generated content way" in which you would ask people to contribute: it's rather about having ears on the ground and observing Anakama players in game conventions, looking at forums, comments on websites, the way people name objects and gods in the game, etc....
• Instantiate these insights into characters, book chapters, magazine articles, game mechanics, background changes...

In sum, it's a sort of implicit user-generated content harvesting that can be turned into game material for Dofus or Wakfu (and all the books, manga, magazines and on-line platforms about them).

In the second presentation, Mathieu told us the story of Mogi, a mobile service in which which the game play somehow evolves and progresses via a player's location. Developed 7 years ago for the japanese market by a French company, Mogi was one the few commercial products that reach the market. Mathieu highlighted the difficult evolution of such games and recapped some issues they encountered such as: the fairly low number of phone with GPS (at the time and now), the difficulty to test game mechanics (because you need to go on the field), the need to have a critical mass of players, etc. which are very close to what I described in my book about locative media.

Mathieu concluded his presentation by showing Playground, a new initiative that aims at providing LBS designers with a point and click platforms to implement and test their own games. This "playground" system would be tool set for the creation of what they can "Real World games" and grow the community of developers.

Gestural interaction when reading

Observing how people read on displays is a fascinating endeavor. One of the interesting interaction mode with on-line media I noticed recently concern the gestures people make when reading. Lots of folks have focused on how people would touch or gesture to interact with information as an INPUT. But less attention is paid to the OUTPUT and how certain gesture may occur. The example below shows an interesting trick I noticed (and now use) when sat in the train in Switzerland. Some people (at least this is what the guy told me) are so overwhelmed by animated advertisements that they put their hand on top of it. In doing so, the guy reported not being "attacked by those constant moving crap" that prevented him to quietly focus on his perusal.

Calm computing to some extent.

Why do I blog this? collecting gestures with electronic content linked with new forms of interaction. This guy's insight could be a good starting point to explore other kinds of gestures linked with new media consumption.

Tangible interaction frameworks

Two interesting frameworks I often use in design research about tangible/gestural interfaces:

The first by Benford et al. (2003) is focused on three components: "Movements of interfaces can be analysed in terms of whether they are sensible, sensable and desirable. Sensible movements are those that users naturally perform; sensable are those that can be measured by a computer; and desirable movements are those that are required by a given application.". Their framework is based on these 3 components and they show how " how a systematic comparison of sensible, sensable and desirable movements, especially with regard to how they do not precisely overlap, can reveal potential problems with an interface and also inspire new features":

Source: Benford, S., H. Schnadelbach, B. Koleva, B., Gaver, A. Schmidt, A., Boucher, A., Steed, R. Anastasi, C. Greenhalgh, T. Rodden and H. Gellersen (2003). "Sensible, sensable and desirable: a framework for designing physical interface, Technical Report Equator-03-003, Equator.

The second is by Bellotti et al. (2002) and it proposed 5 "questions posing human-computer communication challenges for interaction design". Each of these issues can provide "the beginnings for a systematic approach to the design of interactive systems":

Source: Bellotti, V., Back, M., Edwards, W.K., Grinter, R.E., Henderson, A., and Lopes, C. Making sense of sensing systems: five questions for designers and researchers. In CHI, 2002, 415--422.

Why do I blog this? Preparing my interaction design course led me to these paper. Might prove handy to discuss framework (roles, interests, limits) in the context of gestural interfaces such as the one depicted at the beginning of this blogpost. As usual with theoretical insights like this, there are pluses and minuses, but I often find them relevant to systematically approach new kinds of interactions.

The complex relationship between people and domestic appliances

Reading the last issue of "Design and Culture that Basile pointed to me few weeks ago, I ran across this paper yesterday that deals with "homemaking". Working on a small projects about networked objects in the home context, it's quite relevant:

Crewe, L. (2009). The Screen and the Drum: on Form, Function, Fit and Failure in Contemporary Home Consumption, Design and Culture, November Volume 1(3) pp. 307-328.

The aim of the paper is the following:

"this paper explores consumers’ connections to their domestic objects. Focusing on two particular objects (televisions and vacuum cleaners), the paper reflects upon why consumers desire particular domestic objects and how they assemble, arrange and use things in the home. It reveals how functionality is intimately infused with form, how design informs the consumption of everyday domestic objects and how both function and form can fail, deceive and trick."

I found it interesting as it describes the complex relationships people have with their domestic appliances. Based on studying two specific artifacts (televisions and vacuum cleaners), the researchers explores 3 dimensions of this relationship: "the role of product branding, representation and design; the significance of consumer agency and desire; and the influence of commodity form and function in shaping home consumption".

Here's a summary of their conclusion:

"commodity meanings are mobile and diffuse; they are configured, inscribed and appropriated by consumers through placement and use and not just at the point of production. (...) commodities require emotional, sensory or performative investments by consumers in order that their value be realized. Brand value needs to be retrieved, or excavated through consumer practice – quite literally brought alive by consumers. (...) this is important as it suggests that the material qualities of objects may take on a far greater significance than those who produced them could possibly have envisaged. (...) what emerged from the research was how some of the most ubiquitous and ordinary domestic objects were those with the most interesting stories to tell. The important point here is that the normative assumptions one might hold about the aesthetic and technical conventions imputed to everyday objects are largely just that – scripts, projections, imaginings and conventions that are rarely, if ever, evident in practice."

The paper is full of interesting examples such as:

"Another focus group participant – Laura, the vacuum owner who had just left her husband – revealed her intentional destruction of an unwanted vacuum cleaner in order that she could purchase a Dyson. Such sabotage is clearly willful and goes beyond the mere incompetence of users who fail to read operating and maintenance manuals. Laura cut the cord of her old Electrolux, thereby disabling it. (...) One participant discusses how he uses an old conventional vacuum cleaner in the student house he rents out as a mechanism to ensure that his tenants vacuum the house once a week. Here we see how the traditional bagged vacuum cleaner serves a particular purpose that would be impossible with a Dyson. As their landlord, Henry prohibits the students from emptying the vacuum cleaner bag: he visits the house once a week and changes the bag (...) The vacuum bag thus becomes an instrument of surveillance at-a-distance, a tool for the external management of approved cleaning practices and a weapon of financial punishment where necessary."

Why do I blog this? Both the theoretical aspects and the concrete examples drawn from the field are important. In the context of the consulting project I am working on, it enables to broaden the scope of the very notion of networked objects.

Digital plumbing and the deployment of Ubicomp at home

(A broken interface that would certainly need a digital plumber, seen in Amsterdam)

An interesting article about the deployment of ubicomp at home: Tolmie, P., Crabtree, A., Egglestone, S., Humble, J, Greenhalgh, C. and Rodden, T. (2009) Digital Plumbing: The Mundane Work of Deploying UbiComp in the Home Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 10.

The article contrasts the vision of "invisible computing" by Mark Weiser to the concrete deployment of such technologies at home. It focuses on what the author calls "digital plumbing, i.e. the mundane work involved in installing ubiquitous computing in real homes". Based on an ethnographic study, it covers the work of installation, the competences involved on the part of users, the practical troubles they encounter, and the demands that real world settings place on the enterprise which create these systems. What is interesting here is that Ubicomp is here described as "an explicit intervention into everyday life".

(Some wiring installation recently encountered)

Some excerpts I found interesting about the challenges of deploying new technologies in existing home environments:

"Digital plumbing is indispensable to the migration of research technologies out of the lab into real homes. It is a largely ignored area of work however (...) the study has revealed four major areas where the development of support for digital plumbing might be considered:

• The deployment of research technologies in real homes requires a great deal of preparatory work. This includes planning what is to be installed and where in cooperation with household members, and understanding existing technological arrangements that new devices and components will be integrated with. The development of methods and tools that enable the digital plumber to map these may be of considerable use to the work of planning.
• In order to install planned arrangements the digital plumber needs to assemble the right tools and parts for the job. This includes configuring and testing the necessary hardware and assembling the software that will definitely be required and that which will possibly be required. The development of online solutions, including extensive archives of software versions, drivers, updates, patches, etc., and which permit reuse, may be of considerable utility to the work of assembly.
• No matter how well planned an installation is, contingencies inevitably arise. Online archives may go some way to address them, though troubleshooting and faultfinding rely on technical competences that extend beyond the particular technologies being installed. The development of online resources, including FAQs, knowledge databases, and even remote fault diagnosis, may be of considerable benefit in the effort to manage the contingencies of installation.
• Installation occurs over time and often involves more than one digital plumber, whether working consecutively or one after the other. Tracking and managing the changes made by particular digital plumbers therefore becomes a matter of some importance. The development of a ‘record of works’ that detail changes and their implications may provide useful support for coordination and awareness amongst digital plumbers."

Why do I blog this? Although these results echo with existing research about other installation work (from conventional plumbing to fitted kitchens, as pointed out by the authors), this article highlight interesting specificities. Quite handy for a current client project about networked objects in the context of the home environment.

Crowd dynamics determined by more than physical constraints

A long time ago, while still doing a bachelor degree in biology, animal cognition was a pet project of mine. Ants and bees or ethology methods were highly intriguing and paved my way towards more technology-oriented studies of behavior. I still keep an eye on this field and the following paper from one of the lab I followed recently caught my attention (via): Moussaïd M, Perozo N, Garnier S, Helbing D, Theraulaz G (2010) The Walking Behaviour of Pedestrian Social Groups and Its Impact on Crowd Dynamics. PLoS ONE 5(4).

(Pedestrian flows in Toulouse, France as observed in this study)

Some excerpts I've found interesting (my emphasis):

"Human crowd motion is mainly driven by self-organized processes based on local interactions among pedestrians. While most studies of crowd behaviour consider only interactions among isolated individuals, it turns out that up to 70% of people in a crowd are actually moving in groups, such as friends, couples, or families walking together. These groups constitute medium-scale aggregated structures and their impact on crowd dynamics is still largely unknown. In this work, we analyze the motion of approximately 1500 pedestrian groups under natural condition, and show that social interactions among group members generate typical group walking patterns that influence crowd dynamics. At low density, group members tend to walk side by side, forming a line perpendicular to the walking direction. (...) when crowd density increases, the group organization results from a trade-off between walking faster and facilitating social exchange."

Why do I blog this? what is interesting in this work is that the crowd dynamic model should take into account the presence of people who put more emphasis on social activities than on movement efficiency. It basically shows that pedestrian flows are complex and not determined by physical constraints induced by other pedestrians and the environment, but also significantly by on less utilitarian reasons (communicative, social interactions among individuals). This result is perhaps taken for granted in the social sciences but it's curious to observe it with this kind of modelling work.

Manual check-in versus automatic positioning

The picture above shows the difference between asking where someone is with an SMS and getting this information automatically with a location-based software such as Aka-Aki. This was a big debate few years ago. A more recent debate concerns the manual check-in versus automatic positioning with mobile social software.

The whole argument about manual check-in on platforms such as Foursquare versus automatic positioning (on Google latitude for instance) is fascinating to me. While some pundits criticize the idea of letting people manually check-in, various empirical studies shows why automation can be problematic. It's crazy how some people get grumpy and think that self-declarating one's location is old-school and passé. Some examples below of academic work about this issue. Of course it's not directly about current applications such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt or Latitude but it certainly gives some perspective.

Vihavainen, S., Oulasvirta, A., Sarvas, R. "I Can’t Lie Anymore” - The Implications of Location Automation for Mobile Social Applications. Proceedings of MobiQuitous 2009, IEEE Press.

The paper examines a sample of users of Jaiku, a social networking, micro-blogging and lifestreaming service bought by Google three years ago. Using this platform, the researchers investigated the appropriation of this service that automates disclosure and diffusion of location information. Here are some excerpts I found relevant in Vihavainen's paper:

"Human factors research has shown that automation is a mixed blessing. It changes the role of the human in the loop with effects on understanding, errors, control, skill, vigilance, and ultimately trust and usefulness. We raise the issue that many current mobile applications involve mechanisms that surreptitiously collect and propagate location information among users and we provide results from the first systematic real world study of the matter. (...) The results reveal both “classic” human factors problems with the automation’s logic and novel issues related to the fact that location automation at times compromised their control of social situations. (...) The results convey that unsuitable automated features can preclude use in a group. While one group found automated features useful, and another was indifferent toward it, the third group stopped using the application almost entirely. (...) These differences highlight the importance of needs, activities, and structures of the intended user groups as factors for acceptance of automation."

S. Benford, W. Seagar, M. Flintham, R. Anastasi, D. Rowland, J. Humble, D. Stanton, J. Bowers, N. Tandavanitj, M. Adams, J.R. Farr, A. Oldroyd, and J. Sutton. “The error of our ways: The experience of self- reported position in a location-based game”. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. (UbiComp 2004), Nottingham., pp. 70-87,

In this paper that is a bit older, the researchers studied how users of a collaborative location-based game employed self-reported positioning by manually reveal their positions to remote players by manipulating electronic maps. Results were the following:

" It appears that remote participants are largely un- troubled by the relatively high positional error associated with self reports. Our analysis suggests that this may because mobile players declare themselves to be in plausible locations such as at common landmarks, ahead of themselves on their current trajectory (stating their intent) or behind themselves (confirming previously visited locations). These observations raise new requirements for the future development of automated positioning systems and also suggest that self- reported positioning may be a useful fallback when automated systems are un- available or too unreliable."

Nova, N., Girardin, F., Molinari, G. & Dillenbourg, P. (2006): The Underwhelming Effects of Automatic Location-Awareness on Collaboration in a Pervasive Game, International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems (May 9-12, 2006, Carry-le-Rouet, Provence, France).

Finally, this is also an issue I addressed in my Phd research concerning the automation of location-awareness, I also address these problems with a different angle. We also used a collaboration location-based game (a quite common platform for running field studies at the time) and uncovered that automating a process such as location-awareness is not always fruitful. Letting people send their own position appears to be more efficient than broadcasting mere location information:

"To some extent, not giving location-awareness information can be a way to support collaboration more effectively; since players may communicate more and better explain their activity and intents. Self- disclosure can hence be more effective since users could express both information about their intents relevant for the task context and their location. They could also send it whenever they want to express either their current or past positions or the intended places they are heading to. Another interesting benefit of letting the users express their position is to give them the control of privacy issues, one of the major issue related to LBS usage. They have indeed the choice to disclose information about their whereabouts, which is of tremendous importance to avoid the users’ perception of privacy invasion."

Mobile social software norms

An interesting news on the Foursquare newsblog is about the "cheater code", i.e. a way to catch users who check in from their couches to steal mayorships. Interestingly, it seemed to be one of the most requested feature by people. Of course, it's not that easy to implement and the solution that has been chosen... lies in using the phone’s GPS (or another way to get the user's location) "to try to verify this". What I find interesting here is that the ambition is deliberately low (hence the "try"). The reasons why they do so are simply that it's hard:

" We are seeing some issues where people should be getting points / badges / mayors but they’re not. This could be because the GPS location your phone gave us was slightly off or because the address / pushpin where we located the venue wasn’t quite right."

Another valuable bit reveals a lot about the usage/norms about what is considered acceptable:

"Also worth noting that we’re fine with pre-checkins and post-checkins… you know, the checkins you send *before* you’re at a place (“I’ll be there in 10 mins!”) and the checkins you send us *after* you leave when you realize you forgot to check-in while you were there. (Trust us, we do it too to fill out our history pages!) The only difference now is that to unlock foursquare rewards - mayors, points, badges, etc - those checkins needs to be sent from that place."

Why do I blog this? I am fascinated by this kind of elicitation as it uncovers norms and behavioral issues that people put in place when using location-based services. Preparing a field study about the usage of this platform, I find interesting to take this into account.

RFID transitions

Istanbul's public transport system features an interesting aspect regarding "touch interfaces". Two validation solutions coexist in the form of:

1. AKBIL (deployed in 1995): an electronic transit pass made of a small stainless steel button ("1-Wire Interface") on a plastic holder. Interestingly, from a UX perspective, two or more people can use the same Akbil. The company which provide the solution mentions that " the communication rate and product breadth of iButtons goes well beyond the simple memory products typically available with RFID. As for durability, the thin plastic of smart cards is no match for the strength of the stainless-steel-clad iButton".
2. Istanbulkart (deployed in 2009): an RFID chip card that is slowly taking off (I have to admit that I haven't seen anyone using it). In this case, the card is personal and enable to take five trips using a single ticket.

Why do I blog this? Transition moment between different technical solutions are always intriguing as both are still in use. The new interface is deployed and users will be encouraged to use it. In this case, given the fact that it's an infrastructure, there's a lot to be done (adding RFID readers here and there).

This transition leads to interfaces with several points of entries as shown on the picture above. The current vending machine still reflects the prevalence of the AKBIL: it's funny to notice how the old AKBIL charging system is convenient (right below where you insert bank notes, which makes the interaction flows more easily).

Book proposal about joypad evolution

The game controller book project moves slowly but we tentatively wrote a draft of the book proposal that we intend to use. The provisional title is "The Joypad Continuum: tracing the evolution of game pad design" (by Nicolas Nova and Laurent Bolli).

For the record, there's already some interest here and there but we thought it would be good to confront the book ideas with potential readers. The poster above is one of the artifacts that reflect the work we're doing to analyze the game pads. And yes it's a book entirely focused on joypads. Joysticks will be mentioned of course, but we zero in the evolution of pads.

Feel free to comment on this, we already collected lots of feedback, which is very refreshing and insightful (thanks for those who sent comments and emails). The outline is almost there and we have lots of material for the different parts of the book. We'll post stuff later on.

Project description

This book describes the evolution of joypad designs over the short history of video games. It systematically tracks the process of change and how it happened in order to reach two goals. On the one hand, the book sets off to discuss the design decisions behind key interface attributes featured by this apparently banal class of artifact. It primarily focuses on joypad shapes, direction and action buttons as well as various other features that have enriched video game controllers. On the other hand, the book discusses the circulation and modification of such design attributes over time and between joypad models. Doing so, this work exemplifies general principles about patterns of change and highlights the specificities of this class of technical objects.

Among contemporary objects, joypads are peculiar given their existence both as physical artifacts and as interfaces to control characters in digital environments. Unlike joysticks, they correspond to a type of game controller held in the hand where fingers interact with buttons, sliders and tiny sticks. Therefore, observing this unique device enables to highlight critical implications about human-computer interaction and innovation in the field of new media: the intricate relationship between joypads and video game design, the evolution of game interfaces (and upcoming changes) as well as the evolution of technical objects in general.

In terms of theoretical framework, the book adopts an evolutionary perspective (Simondon, 1980; Deforge, 1985; Basalla, 1988) to describe the different paths taken by joypad design and to give the reader a critical overview of the underlying trends that shaped the various iterations of this artifact. However, the evolutionary analogy serves here as an organizing principles to track the iterative changes of objects and does not reflect any teleological assumption of progress. From a methodological perspective, this book is based on the ethnographical analysis of technical objects (Star, 1999), interviews with controller designers or the gathering of second-hand material about the design decisions that led to certain joypads (interviews, books, patents). Instead of adopting the common approach focused on studying usage and people, this work is based on the examination of artifacts. The systematic analysis of artifactual iterations enabled to build genealogies and to foster insights about patterns of changes (e.g. evolution of the number of buttons, evolution of the button/surface ratio). Furthermore, the evolutionary angle posits that objects are not explored independently but as being part of various lineages, which shares common design attributes such as controller shapes or navigation interface.

Such book targets mainly academic researchers in the field of Science and Technology Studies, New Media or Human-Computer Interaction as well as practitioners in the field of interaction design. However, the book is also meant to be relevant for video game fans who are interested in a deeper perspective about game controllers. It is intended to be short (140-180 pages) and illustrated by black and white joypad drawings and diagrams (genealogy trees, histograms as carried out by Deforge, 1985).

Fields of discourse: The fields of discourse adopted in this project are a combination of: - Science and technology studies (Simondon, 1980; Basalla, 1988; Akrich, 1992) for the analysis of technical objects and the description about how mundane artifacts are the product of various forces. More specifically, the work of Zimmermann (2010) about the circulation of cultural elements is informative for the analysis of how design choices about game pads spread and evolve. The book also relies on the work of Star (1999) concerning how ethnography can be applied to physical artifacts. - Human-Computer Interaction (Gibson, 1977; Norman, 1990; Gaver, 1991; Gaver, 1996) for the focus on interfaces and the notion of affordance. At first this term corresponded to the action possibilities present in the environment. This notion evolved in the field of HCI to refer to "the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used." (Norman, 1990). - New media studies and more specifically Platform Studies (Monfort and Bogost, 2009) because of the renewal of interest in platforms/technical objects.

Reasons for writing this book: The first reason to write this book stemmed from the personal collection of joypad we collected in the previous months. This material enabled to analyze and discuss the evolution of these technical objects and serve as the starting point for interaction and game design research in different contexts (workshops with students, seminar with practitioners).

A second reason is that the large majority of books about game interfaces are non-academic and take a descriptive approach with plenty of pictures but a limited analysis of their evolution (see for example Forster, W. and Freundorfer, S., 2003 or Miller et al., 2009). Our interested lies in providing an analytical perspective about joypads instead of a description of all the existing artifacts.

In addition, there is currently a renewed interest in studying artifacts (beyond their usage) in new media studies, as attested by the Platform Studies collection at the MIT press. We therefore believe the analysis of joypads is relevant both from the video game analysis standpoint and also as an introduction to the analysis of technical objects. Compared to other research foci (such as video game analysis or media usage), the joypad is a less-explored element that is paradoxical compared to its iconic nature as a powerful metaphor for video games. Because of the potential appeal of joypad to readers, the book is also an opportunity to exemplify general lessons about the history of technical objects (which generally draws upon artifacts that are less common for todays' readers such as washing machines or car engines).

Finally, from a video game standpoint, looking back at the evolution of game controllers is important given that the console manufacturers are transferring hardware cycle to the peripherals rather than console platforms. Furthermore, the disappearance of the controller in Microsoft Natal's project and its recombination in the case of the Wii and Sony's Motion Controller makes the joypad an interesting object to investigate.

References: Akrich, M. (1992), "The description of technical objects", in Bijker, W.E., Law, J. (Eds),Shaping Technology/Building Society, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp.205-24.

Basalla, G. (1988). The Evolution of Technology. Cambridge University Press.

Deforge, Y. (1985). Technologie et génétique de l'objet industriel. Paris: Maloine.

Forster, W. and Freundorfer, S. (2003). Joysticks. Gameplan; Auflage.

Gaver, W. (1996). Affordances for interaction: The social is material for design. Ecological Psychology, 8(2).

Gaver, W. (1991). Technology affordances. Proceedings of CHI, 1991 (New Orleans, Lousiana, USA, April 28 - May 2, 1991) ACM, New York.

Miller, F., Vandome, A.F., McBrewster, J. (2009). Game Controller. Alphascript Publishing.

Montfort, N. & Bogost, I. (2009). Racing the Beam The Atari Video Computer System. MIT press.

Norman, D. A. (1990). The design of everyday things. New York: Doubleday.

Simondon, G. (1980), trans. Ninian Mellamphy, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. London: University of Western Ontario, 1980 [1958].

Star, S.L. (1999). “The Ethnography of Infrastructure,” American Behavioral . Scientist, 43: 377-391

Tulathimutte, T. (2005). Controller Mediation in Human-Computer Play. Honors Thesis, Stanford University.

Zimmermann, B. (2010). Redesigning Culture: Chinese Characters in Alphabet-Encoded Networks, Design and Culture, Berg Publishers.

Remote control analysis

An interesting diagram encountered in London at the 'ergonomics' exhibit (thanks Alexandre Burdin for the two pictures). The horizontal axis corresponds to the duration of use of a certain button, while the vertical axis is meant to represent the frequency of use. Doing this enable to discriminate 3 clusters of remote control features.

As described below, this graphic emerged from an empirical study of remote control prototypes.

Why do I blog this? Definitely an interesting way to analyze a physical artifact. More specifically, this is a relevant way to visualize results from a study of how people use a remote control. It's also interesting (with regards to a design process) to understand how they employed this as a way to work out the buttons arrangement using this kind of data reduction method.

A similar graphic can be designed for joypads, considering the use of various buttons.

A visit to the Rolex Learning Center (EPFL)

Some quick thoughts about the Rolex Learning Center that I visited yesterday afternoon at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Designed by Sanaa, a japanese architecture firm, the building is an intriguing super large open space with a fairly low number of walls and partitions. This facility includes the school's library, the research lab where I've done my PhD research (Craft: Center for Research and Support of Training and its Technologies), the student and alumni association offices, an auditorium, two restaurants and a café. It's perhaps from above that the view is even more stunning. However, the most obvious way to see this is to take a flight to Geneva Cointrin (GVA) and have a proper wind that enables aircrafts landing route over Suisse romande instead of France's Jura Mountains.

The place is filled with natural daylight and only the restaurant and library, are equipped with refrigerating ceilings (which use cooled by water from the lake).

Given the interest here about user experience and weird insights concerning people, some details attracted my attention. Most people commented on the outside. As for me, it's some of the indoor elements that I want to describe.

Open space and Partitions

As described the architects in this interview with The Guardian:

""The main aim is to make a space for people to stay together," says Sejima, "but where you can also have some privacy." The design reflects their idea of "softening boundaries". She opposes "programmes that say a room is a place to learn and a corridor is a place to relax. I do not think that is a way to learn. Sometimes, activities become continuous. You might have a coffee outside the classroom and change your opinion." The role of architecture is to suggest ways to use the space, rather than to prescribe. Nishizawa pushes the analogy with landscape: "When people find valleys, they tend to settle there and build villages. When they find a hill, they like to build a beautiful cafe on the hill. When they find slopes, they cover them in terraces." In the same way, they think their artificial hills will prompt different kinds of occupation: "We hope students can find nice places for themselves." "

It's indeed interesting to confront the architects' intents to current behavior:

Although the partitions are not so present in the designers intents and in the building itself, there are still "invisible" boundaries, as attested by this map displayed on the library table. There are clear indications of areas where certain behavior are acceptable or not.

Another intriguing example lies in the usage of personal space. See for example how this Phd student re-created his bubble with "temporary walls". The coat is interesting for that matter but the use of the umbrella is even more striking. Daylight is so important here that sometimes yes, people needs a bit less light to look at the numerous displays present on everyone's desks.

Steep curves

In addition, the surface of the floor and the ceiling is both elegant and curious. Also, the curves are actually quite steep as shown by the examples below. There is therefore a need to have particular devices to bring people up and down. I do not know the designers' intents here but the Alpine context around (think about the Mont Blanc on the opposite side of the lake) turns the indoor walking experience into something closer to natural structures.

Signage

The use of what I would call "smooth podotactiles" is remarkable as well. These plastic lines on the floor aims at guiding people to the main locations of the Learning Center. Because of the curved floor, these elements sometimes give a very particular impression. It is as if perspective has been added to the interior architecture.

A funny aspect of signage is also the post-its people have started to put on glass walls... because of their translucence, it seemed that some folks bumped their heads into them. The repurposing of post-its was found as a solution to prevent this problem.

Time

Of course, it's impossible no to mention the importance of time in the context of this building. The main partner of this construction is Rolex (hence the name of the learning center) and it somewhat leads to the inclusion of clocks here and there. They act as physical marker of the presence of time. It's a library where people work so it's indeed relevant for students and researchers. But clocks also have another role here. if you look at the picture below, it shows time in different cities (the future is urban right?): San Francisco, Boston, Tokyo, etc. to remind people that the "outside" is as important as the inside. Perhaps it's also meant to represent a direct connection to other "knowledge places" which are relevant in this era of cognitive capitalism.

"you are here" updates

Recent encounters in London with other "you are here" signs". The first one is interesting because it also add a "walking time" limit through a circle:

This other one is a bit old and intriguing as it does not use a textual "you are here" but replace it with an elegant pointing finger:

Why do I blog this? i simply continue the systematic list of "you are here" elements that i encounter. Can be handy when working on location-based services interfaces as examples of current practices.

Impact! exhibition at the RCA

Spent two days at the RCA in London. A good opportunity to have some time to discuss with James Auger, Anthony Dunne and their class, give a talk to them and explore the "Impact!" exhibition. This exhibition is another highly interesting example of interdisciplinary collaborations between design and scientific research, as already discussed about this other project. As described on the web platform, 16 researchers have collaborated with designers from the RCA under the coordination of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Designers worked with them to produce conceptual designs (videos, photographs, interactives, prototypes, props and system diagrams and illustrations).

What's interesting here is to reflect upon the role of design. As described by Anthony Dunne, who curated the exhibition:

"Design can shift discussions about the impact of science on our daily lives away from abstract generalities to concrete examples grounded in our experience as members of a consumer society. It can facilitate debate about different technological futures before they happen, create dialogues between different publics and the experts who defines the policies and regulations that will shape the future of technology, and help ensure that we pursue the most desirable, and avoid the least desirable.

The design projects in this exhibition offer an alternative view of how science could influence our future. The purpose is not to offer prediction but inspire debate about the human consequences of different technological futures, both positive and negative.

There are no solutions here, or even answers; just questions, ideas and possibilities. They probe our beliefs and values, they challenge our assumptions, and they help us see that the way things are now is just one possibility - and not necessarily the best one."

Some projects were more revealing to me than others, I guess my choice reflects a personal choice rather than a judgement on their quality. Perhaps the most inspiring to me is the one called "Happylife" by James Auger and 3 other scientists. It basically explore the uses thermal imaging to analyse emotional states in a domestic context. This technology embedded in a HAL9000-like eye of Sauron can detect heat signatures (as shown on a video on the left on the picture below). Doing this, the system assesses a person’s physiological state and turn the changes into movements/dials on a family dashboard (with barometer-like displays). This project questions how imperceptible body parameters could reveal emotions such as guilt. What is highly intriguing (and smart according to me) is that the dashboard does not have any label... leaving its interpretation to the people who will live with it. How would this change social interactions in the family home? Would this electronic device enable family members to infer new things about their relatives? Would the device detect patterns invisible to people? All these issues are suggested by beautiful vignettes that I did not capture with my camera.

This Happylife project evolved from James and Jimmy's ideas about this notion of artifacts that would detect cues about our behavior and pre-empt what we feel and desire. Autonomous and adaptive devices have explored by science-fiction writers and researchers desperately want to implement them (sometimes urged by politics who find it could be a convenient solution against terrorism for instance). In their own words, here is how they frame their design research about this topic:

"The potential for this to go much further with the application of face recognition, thermal imaging and expression monitoring is obvious. The design challenge here is to explore how this might happen. How might products and services react to humans if they were aware of their mood."

Another project I enjoyed as the one called "The 5th dimensional camera" by Anab Jain, Jon Arden and three other researchers. It explores the notion of quantum mechanics and the possibility to access multiple dimensions. The project consists in a fictional camera that can capture "glimpses of 450 parallel universes suggested by quantum physics". By presenting such images, the two designers aimed at highlighting the "the strange processes at work within quantum computation to the wider public, and explore how they might impact our beliefs, our values and indeed our fabric of reality". To understand more the implications of such potential, the exhibit featured different narratives of test subjects who employs the camera in their own different ways.

Why do I blog this? these are quick and selective notes about the exhibit to keep a trace of what echoed with my interests. The two projects I mentioned as well as Anthony Dunne's framing are relevant IMHO in terms of how design research can operate and what sort of artifacts could be designed in such context. We're close to the idea of design fiction here.

People interested in this can also look at other write-ups by Richard Banks or building_space_with_words.

G.Basalla: The Evolution of Technology

George Basalla's book called "The Evolution of Technology" (Cambridge University Press, 1988) is another important resource for the game controller project. In this volume, the authors describes his theory of technological change based on the history of technology, economic history and anthropology. The whole book is driven by a strong theoretical perspective: the analogy between the evolution of technical objects and the evolutionary metaphor in order to show to that this metaphor can give insights otherwise unavailable to the history of technology Basalla uses the term "evolution" as a metaphor "at the heart of all extended analytical and critical thought" and highlight it as useful to apply this concept from biological evolution to evolution in technology. Initially this analogy was used from technology to biology (to describe living organisms in mechanical terms) and then the other way around, as a way to arrange technical objects into "genera, species and varieties and proceed from this classificatory exercise to the construction of an evolutionary tree illustrating the connections between the various forms of mechanical life". To him the difference is the following:

"the evolutionary metaphor must be approached with caution because there are vast differences between the world of the made and the world of the born. One is the result of purposeful human activity, the other the outcome of a random natural process. One produces a sterile physical object, the other a living being capable of reproducing itself. (...) Technological evolution has nothing comparable to the mass extinctions that are of interest to evolutionary biologists. History does not record any widespread, cataclysmic extinctions of entire classes of artifacts, although something similar might occur on a local level in remote communities or on isolated islands"

(The evolution of aboriginal weapons by Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers)

His theory of technological evolution is rooted in four broad concepts: diversity, continuity, novelty and selection.

Continuity Based on a fair amount of examples, Basalla debunks the notion of "technological revolutions" and the mere existence of "heroic inventors". To him, both are wrong and "key artifacts such as the steam engine, the cotton gin, or the transistor, emerged in an evolutionary fashion from their antecedents". Of course some changes are more important than others but: (1) There's always a continuity between techniques, (2) sometimes artifacts iteration is not based on other artifact but what Basalla calls "naturfacts": artifacts created after the analogy with natural elements (see the example of Barbed Wire based on thorny fence made of short trees).

He explains the origins of the discontinuous argument with the following notions:

1. The loss or concealment of crucial antecedents: "the first automobiles were little more than 4-wheeled bicycles. Henry Ford called his car a "quadracycle",
2. The emergence of the inventor as a hero: "Because heroic deeds are most often linked with revolutions, evolutionary explanations of technological change did not have a broad appeal. Nationalism also played a part in the 19th Century (...) The same exhibitions that glorified industrial progress, and the men who made it possible (...) A bizarre situation thus developed in which the heroic inventors of one country were scarcely acknowledged in another land"
3. The patent system: "All of patent law is based on the assumption that an invention is a discrete, novel entity that can be assigned to the individual who is determined by the courts to be its legitimate creator. (...) Such dissimulations are the result of a system that attempts to impose discontinuity on what is essentially a continuous phenomenon"
4. The confusion of technological and socio-economical change: the term "Industrial "Revolution" seems to imply the technological artifacts that made it up was revolutionary. Instead, it was evolutionary!

(Evolution of spark catchers for train locomotive smokestacks)

Novelty This chapter aimed at understanding how to account for differences and diversity in technological artifacts. In this part, the author substitutes the notion of "Homo Faber " ("Man the maker") to "Homo Ludens" ("Man the Player") to show the role of play in innovation. He then describes various sources:

• Fantasy and Play: technological dreams: "the machines, proposals and visions generated by the technological community (...) epitomizes the technologists' propensity to go beyond what is technically feasible", technological extrapolations: "conservative ventures well within the bounds of possibility, perhaps a step or two beyond current practice", patents, bold and fantastic technological visions or popular fantasies: sci-fi, cartoons, fantastic machines...
• Knowledge transfer by borrowing some aspects of a technology outside: cultural contacts because of imperialism, migration, trade, technology missions, industrial espionage, war.

In another chapter, he highlights how "human intervention can guide the variations toward a new artifact" and described the notion of skeuomorphs: "An element of design or structure that serves little or no purpose in the artifact fashioned from the new material but was essential to the object made from the original material".

Selection As defined by Basalla:

"Because there is an excess of technological novelty and consequently not a close lit between invention and wants or needs, a process of selection must take place in which some innovations are developed and incorporated into a culture while others are rejected (...) evolution by natural selection has no preordained goal, purpose or direction. This is not true for artificial selection as practiced by animal and plant breeders. Here criteria are established by the humans who select characteristics they consider worthy of preservation. (...) Variant artifacts do not arise from the chance recombination of certain crucial constituent parts but are the result of a conscious process in which human taste and judgment are exercised in the pursuit of some biological, technological, psychological, social, economical, or cultural goal."

Some additional quotes about the notion of "needs":

"According to functionalist anthropologists and sociobiologists, every aspects of culture, material and nonmaterial, can be traced directly to the satisfaction of a basic need. (...) Critics of the biological theory, however proposed a number of strong counterarguments. (...) We cultivate technology to meet our perceived needs, not a set of universal ones legislated by nature (...) the artifactual world would exhibit far less diversity if it operated primarily under the constraints imposed by fundamental needs. (...) a skyscraper is not simply a structure to protect people from the vagaries of the weather"

Why do I blog this? I was drawn to this book thanks to several discussion threads. Mostly the recurring chat about circulation of design choices with my neighbor Basile, as well as an exchange of tweets with Antonio Casilli who recommended the book. The material in there was highly useful in general and relevant to our project that aims at mapping the evolution of joypads. Given our interest in studying a "lineage" of technical artifacts, I was wary of using the "evolution" metaphor because of the underlying idea of progress that I did not want to imply.

Overall, three quotes about the use of the evolutionary metaphor are important for our investigation of artifacts evolution:

"I use the evolutionary analogy because of its metaphorical and heuristic power and caution against any literal applications, not the least, the process of speciation (...) On the most general level the evolutionary analogy serves as a useful organizing principle for studying technological change (...) A workable theory of technological evolution requires there be no technological progress in the traditional sense of the term but accepts the possibility of limited progress toward a carefully selected goal within a restricted framework"

Paris metro interactive map

On the most interesting "static" map I've ever seen is the "indicateur d'itinéraires" located on some of the metro station in Paris (this one is close to the entrance of Ligne 1 in Paris Gare de Lyon). You press the number of the metro station that you want to reach with the keyboard below and the suggested route appears displayed on the lights on the board.

Although some folks think there's a small person in there, the inner mechanism is closer to "Operation" with lights. Very low-bandwidth and based on electricity.

This device is actually called PILI, which stands for "plans indicateurs lumineux d’itinéraires" (Light-Based Indicator Plan for Itinerary") and has been implemented in 1937. A simple and straight-forward way to get both a general overview as well as information about where you want to go. It's intriguing to see how people from these times designed a map-based system without any complex display technology, and it's very efficient.

Why do I blog this? Going to the French capital quite often, I love to spend some time observing how people interact with these machines. There are lots of things to notice, see for example:

• User's proximity to the device, which depends on their purpose (getting and overview, looking for a specific route).
• The flexibility of usage: the device is very big and it allows people to use it in various ways altogether. If a person looks for a route, it doesn't prevent others to observe the map and look for their information (without necessarily using the buttons).

Interestingly, I found it much more efficient than the 21st century version that you can see below. Even though it has different features, this new version is rather small (intended to be used by only one person) and I generally rarely see people using it.