Design by fire 2011 closing party
Friday October 14 the fifth edition of the Design by Fire conference took place. Like in other years, the conference offered a nice mix of talks giving an insight of contemporary topics that are important for the interaction design community. Not a lot of surprises were presented, but it is still a nice source of inspiration to pinpoint some trends.
Design with the context. The first speaker of the day, Didier Hilhorst of Flipboard pleaded for looking beyond the input box as main start for interaction. To underline this he showed the app into_now where the sound of a tv serie is the start of a social service. Comparable with Shazam, but with a different goal: to share and have a second-screen experience.
Design the context is the most important trigger for use. “Create a context for interaction and the use will follow”. Social is a standard part of new services and a trigger for usage. Turntable.fm is a good example, but his statement that the essence of Flipboard is to be a social too, can be questioned: the most appealing content of that service is the social stuff itself of course.
Talking context. Jamin Hegeman introduced the concept of service design to the audience. Not so excited for long lasting service design-minded folks like we are, but once again it stressed the importance of designing for more than the touchpoint for those who were not aware of that yet.
Seeing his talk I was again convinced that a common danger for designers is to go for a full design, godlike experience. Designing the complete context is not the aim of service design, and impossible also. Designing the fundaments and rules for the use is the name of the game.
Design for tangible experiences is another theme that is getting hot. Since a major part of the user experience designer community has a background in industrial design engineering, the Internet of Things is always of special interest. In his talk, Jordi Parra focused on our need to design for this tangible experiences. He quoted Hiroshii Ishii: “the digital world is not using all the richness of our senses”. Something Didier Hilhorst was talking about earlier when he explored the different interaction means like sound. The Teague radio showed how different interactions can make exiting products.
Jordi was openly searching for the product and service focus, and showed with his Spotify Radiohow you can make an online service with tangible interactions. In the end his talks remained a bit on the surface. There is a difference in a tangible product that contains the service and a real tangible experience of a service.
In the little game that was played with all the people in the audience we had to work on an upgrade for the Dutch OV Chip card: how to make this an appealing service. We used some techniques from gamestorming, which was fun. The case did especially combine some of the aspects like thinking on the total context and making a virtual service tangible (or the other way round). Putting the chip in the shoe laces as one of the presented solutions did, or like our group; adding a game layer where a collecting game of virtual animals was added to the journey experience. The animals where a means to make that experience tangible. Using hidden gesture check-in moves for extra animals, dating with other animals in the coupe and adding animal sounds to the check-in points.
It would be a great exercise to see if this little game layer really adds meaning to the service, helping passengers not to forget to check out for instance.
This makes a bridge to the design for social responsibility, another theme of the day. It started of with Nynke Tromp, with her design for social dilemmas. The metaphor of the gun was nicely chosen; is a gun responsible for killing a man? Or is it the man using it?
You can ask the same question as a designer. Are you the one that can take responsibility for the way people make use of your designs? Or are you the facilitator of good behavior? If you want to increase social behavior, you need to stimulate solidarity. An example to design this solidarity is the experimental project Solidshare in the Afrikaanderwijk in Rotterdam. In this project, people were stimulated to get in touch with their neighbours by introducing a sharing service for domestic tools. It creates a context for possible social behavior, without garanteeing that it change the behavior in depth of course.
Nynke stated that designers are the new politicans, that you have a responsibilty by making choices. Something Eric Reiss reflected on a lot in his finalising talk. He made a interesting case for the political role.
In his statement, he used the talk of Matt Sheret as counter point. If you play with the data, use will emerge, Matt said. Or as Eric put it: finding uses of the data drop out of a service is like playing with your own shit. An interesting point, but too easy. Matt Sheret had a very solid talk on the way youdesign with data. He is a so-called data griot and looks to the uses of the data within the Last.fmservice. He presented three elements that are important to his work: reveal the human input, create playful data and set a new tone of voice with the data. Always create stories, because you need stories to make date accessable.
A story is something the guys of Catalogtree had in mind for sure when they designed the Money & Speed app on the flashcrash. An appealing app, but not the most interesting of the work they showed. The research of New York diplomats parking tickets and the way they made the collected data accessable, showed the true craftmanship of Daniel Gross and Joris Maltha. Important is also that their approach is not to design the visualisation only, but to attempt to create the tool to visualise this.
After all, the Design by Fire conference showed a great mix of topics that count now in our design field. With a important role for the power of big data as design material, and the starting point of big design for context. And with a clear message to us all: don’t forget your responsibilty as designer for shaping meaning.
It is a pity Yohan Creemers and his team decided that this was the last edition of this conference. They did a wonderful job in composing some inspiring conferences.
Back to reality at dConstruct 2011
September 2 happened another edition of dConstruct. A conference I visited before in 2008 and always follow because of the interesting mix of makers culture and design thinking. This edition was interesting again. The struggle with reality turned out a big thing, if you can consider these talks as the barometer for the times ahead.
The closing talk of Kevin Slavin was one of the most clear in that sense probably. I saw his talk earlier this year at Momo in Amsterdam, where his plea against AR was even more subtle and direct at the same time because of the presence of the people of Layar, one of the subjects of his talk. He pinpoints that we don’t need a augmented reality to live a better life, even worse; it makes our life poorer. As the example of heads-up display in cars illustrates; the tool is for a jetstream pilot the complete reality because of the lack of notion of the outer context, in a car it is the other way around; focusing on the augmented knowledge in the head-up display limit your view on the world.
notes on the talk by Boon Chew
The vision of Slavin is great and very true. The question though is interesting how it works the other way around; can we enrich our established digital lives by connecting reality? That is something most of the other talks where about in direct of more distinct way. In several talks reality is connected to the aspect of time. In the sense that we want to connect memories to things, a theme that was very present also at FutureEverything earlier this year. If we can add memories in the context of a service or product, this product will be more real.
Frank Chimero was talking on these memories; the web has a past now. We need an architecture of arrangement to create value. Take a step back to find the value. Start is the difference between digital and analog. Where the digital world is invisible, not visible; and the digital world we forget, not remember as the analog things. And where we find stuff in the analog world while we search in the digital context. In this comparison you find this hunger for realness by pointing out what we miss. With three rules for design decisions for revisiting. How we sort. thinking of LATCH (location, alphabet, time, category and hierarchy), and 2nd: how we move throught time; think of the postponed experiences Instapaper offer us. And third: what media is supported. Culmination. Biblion of New York.
Notes by Boon Chew
Matthew Sheret used another angle. Our digital self translated to a pocket scale. A pocket scale that is bigger on the inside. He was talking also on the object that carry memories. We are not creating mass personalisation but real personalisation transforming our data trails with different meaning. The difference between the ‘old products’ containing lots of visible stories, like a set of keys. Compared to an Oyster card that hides it past in the data.
We need intimate, meaningful objects that humanise networks make time travel a bit more fun. His self-made remote control beam made his points very tangible. Hacking as way to personalize things.
Notes by Boon Chew
Those memories are the way to connect the realtity to the digital products, and that is the important thing as it seems this day. Don Norman started the morning by calling for a focus on designing for memories in stead of experiences. Designing with time as material and with good and bad experiences to create memorable stories, turns out to be present in a lot of talks.
The quest for this reality check in our digital life was challenged the most by Kars Alfrink. In his highly engaged talk he tried to find explanations for the riots in England of last times. He compared the alienation between the classes, and the conscious avoiding of interactions in these neighbourhoods where rioters were let alone with other inhabitants. Like in the brilliant novel of The City & The City and showed in practice with the example of schizophrenic town of Baarle. You can say that our moving into a digital life accelerates those gap with reality, and is especially the provider of a system for avoiding each other. He argues to use gaming to reconnect, like the game of Nomic where defining the rules of the game is part of the game. This talk turned out the ultimate urge for getting the reality back into our digital life’s and create a new elan in self governing.
Notes made by Boon Chew
Without any doubt I think this focus on reality connected to our digital life will be a big theme the coming times. Conceptual by creating new contexts of time and memories, and literally by using the possibilities of the Internet of Things to enhance our digital services with tangible qualities. It will be interesting next year to have also designers of psychical products share their existing knowledge and build some new bridges.
The impact Steve made Apple make
I read a lot (too many) stories on the resignation of Steve Jobs last day. I find this one on O’Reilly Radar the best, really focusing on the impact and change he made Apple make.
In an era where entrepreneurialism is too often defined by incrementalism and pursuit of the exit strategy, Jobs’ Apple was always defined by true husbandry of a vision, and the long, often thankless, pursuit of excellence and customer delight that goes with it.
Ironically, though, Jobs’ greatest innovation may actually be as basic as “bringing humanity back into the center of the ring,” to borrow a phrase from Joe Strummer of the seminal rock band, The Clash.
Nuff said? Well, the article doesn’t go into the impact of the resignation itself. Is Jobs replaceable? He may have raised Apple to stand on its own feet, and he may also have built in the right insurance by staying in the board, but time will tell if this is enough to resist the urges from a market leader too control its positions in stead of keeping the view on the future product leaps.
I truely hope it will. But there are enough signals it is moving into a new phase. Not only based on the lawsuits for market protection and the patent wars, I think this was probably always a invisible part of the business. And also not only based on the fact that the new CEO Tim Cook has earned it credits in making the business more effective. But definitely by the next phase of lock-in strategies with the introduction of iCloud. How great the service seems to be, it could be well used to play the world domination card like we know it from Microsoft the last decades.
I’m a big lover and collector of the Apple products, and enthusiastic user of the service ecosystem. And I give it a fair chance that the DNA of the company is strong enough to inspire us with more disruptive human touched products. But it will be exciting times for sure…
The battlefield continues in the war of ecosystems
Today Google announced to acquire Motorola Mobile division. Superficially a strange move; why would Google danger its position as open platform maker by creating his own devices that compete his partners? The explanation can be found in the battlefields in the war of the ecosystems that definitely has started and will come to new heights the second half of this year as Apple will go for even more market share with their iCloud offer and Nokia and Microsoft will finally introduce their integrated products. Google is clearly focusing on more control too with the open platform philosophy as a marketing story mainly.
There are two aspects to it. Google will have discovered that there is a crucial role for controlling all aspects of the ecosystem getting to the next step in user loyalty. Rumors on 30% returns by clients of their Android phones underlines this. With full control over all touch points, there is a better chance to be a serious competitor to Apple. This goes also for Google+ and all services that have more design focus than ever. It helps to build a better ecosystem and create trust for the clients, also those with devices from other manufacturers. And they would be more capable of controlling the quality of the apps, the success factor of the new operating system.
It would not easy to challenge Apple in this of course, but Google will have more chance together with an experienced player.
Another more hidden aspect can be find in the dungeons of lawsuits and patent wars. In this article it is extended described what is happening. On the background a fierce battle is going on fighting each others patents.
All in all a clear sign that the control on the ecosystems is crucial in the next phase of the Internet and the war is severe. And is not over yet for sure.
How Foursquare is paving the road to relevant services
We see a lot of stories on the success of Foursquare, or better, the lack of success. The tool is popular with 10 million users world-wide, but absolutely per country the use is modest. A Dutch analysis show for instance that only 4,4% of restaurants had claimed their page, and just 1% offered specials. On the other hand, 64% of the restaurants are present in Foursquare, and 71% has also people checked-in. Foursquare is relatively small compared to Facebook check-ins, but also there the use is still low.
So what to make of this kind of findings? I believe it is not so important to look to the services on its own. I think the use will still grow, stimulated with the adding of deals in Foursquare with Groupon and Facebook deals. But it will never be a mass service. A substantial part of the population will never be active in checking in.
What I think is important however, is the influence check-in services have on the development of relevant services. We will see that the services will adapt to the user, but that the user will be in the lead to activate these relevant services. The behavior of giving permission to give relevant offers and adaptive services, is trained in the way we use check-ins tools. We can learn a lot on how these work and what makes them tick. I think the tools will integrate in services in general, will be a tool for service providers and producers to make services relevant.
In that sense it is interesting to use the check-in tools and learn what works. From playful and collecting behavior to the commercial drivers and levels of transparency to make the use acceptable. Let the check-in services pave the road for a future with ad-hoc relevant services.
Design for privacy at the Annual Internet of Things Europe 2011
I attended the Annual Internet of Things Europe conference in Brussels last week. The conference gives an overview of the current state of the development towards an Internet of Things where not only computers and mobile phones are connected to the world wide network, but also all kinds of other objects become part. And just like computers make the Internet by being the hubs, this will happen in the Internet of Things where object are hubs in the network. This generates lots of new challenges and opportunities. The conference discussed both societal as technical consequences with an important role for standards and enabling technologies. I was invited to a panel and talk on the way this developments influence the design of online services ecosystems as we make them within Info.nl.
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Master your freedom at This happened #11
Last Monday This happened #11 took place at Theater Kikker again. Another great event in the series. It was also a bit special because we at Info.nl did support the event together with Springtime. But that of course does not influence the event, the fine ensemble of speakers did the trick again.
First of was Roy Gilsing, the designer and iniator of Grabbit. A handgrip for the iPad. It do free your movements with your tablet, as Ianus shared from his own practice.
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How Apple boosts the real Internet of Things
We are entering a new phase in the Internet of Things. It is a promise for years, but it seems that we are heading to a tipping point. And Apple’s new iOS5 could be a accelerator. Tomorrow the new version of the mobile operation system for the iPhone will be introduced, and one of the most interesting speculations on the news is the integration of Twitter deeply in the OS, together with the introduction of iCloud. The real difference of a Twitter integration comes not with the sharing your pictures directly from the tools, but will be the way Twitter will evolve in a notification platform for smart objects via your phone. How does this could work?
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