Welcome to the fourth installment of an unfolding bibliography of secondary research that fueled our generation of themes for the Omni project. This time around we are focusing on the blurring biological boundaries between technology and our everyday lives (and bodies). We have seen a number of articles and other tidbits that hint at how far technology has advanced towards human behavior, brain function, and biomechanics. We also see quite a bit that suggests how far humans are leaning towards (and on) technology as inspiration, mediation, medication, and meme.
Elsewhere, Ferrucci has been more circumspect about Watson’s level of “understanding.” In an interview with IBM’s own magazine ForwardView, he said, “For a computer, there is no connection from words to human experience and human cognition. The words are just symbols to the computer. How does it know what they really mean?” In other words, for all of the impressive NLP programming that has gone into Watson, the computer is unable to penetrate the semantics of language, or comprehend how meanings of words are shot through with allusions to human culture and the experience of daily life.
How much is a life worth in pixels? [SocialMediaCollective] – An effort to quantify the value of a human life (or in this case death) as measured by screen space allocated to reporting it on the webpages of various news sites. Not the most rigorous metric, but certainly a clever approach to valuing human presence in the virtual world.
Frustrated by this, I decided to get a more objective assessment of the coverage by counting the number of pixels different news websites were assigning to the story of the massacre. I know web designers put a lot of work into every single pixel on the screen, especially of high-traffic websites. Visitor’s attention is scarce and every pixel counts. So I took screenshots of the front pages of some of the major news websites and calculated the amount of screen real state assigned to the story of the massacre.
The Cyborg in Us All [NYT.com] – Tracing the steps we are taking towards a totally hands-free interaction with technology where brains will send messages directly to devices. One less interaction to sit between man and machine.
Now it was my turn. Mukerjee removed the headset and moistened the tips of its electrodes with contact-lens fluid, then arranged the EEG device on top of my hair. The electrodes poked into my scalp like wet fingers. I held the iPhone in front of me and beamed a blast of willpower at it. “Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs,” I shouted inside my mind. The phone picked George Bush.
PUMPED UP KICKS|DUBSTEP [YouTube] – Here we see technology influencing body – this guy dances like what you are watching is a video effect; in the way that the audio IS an audio effect – loops, run backwards, etc. very digital. But the video is real – this is his way of moving his body, but the aesthetic is entirely defined by something created elsewhere as technology. Yes, we had The Robot in the 70s, but this is different – that was a human dancing like a machine, this is a human dancing like an effect – something that doesn’t exist except as the manipulation of data.
You are a robot [TheTechnium] – KK deconstructs dancing like a robot and highlights the myriad ways the human body can be molded to perform like a techno-being.
Everywhere we look in pop culture today, some of the coolest expressions are created by humans imitating machines. Exhibit A would be the surging popularity of popping, tutting, and dub step dancing. You’ve seen these dancers on YouTube: the best of them look exactly like robots dancing, with the mechanical stutter of today’s crude robots trying to move like humans. Except the imitators robotically dance better than any robot could — so far.
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design [worrydream.com] – Bret Victor has his finger (pun certainly intended) on the pulse of our future interactions with technology. The rant focuses on our bodies, namely our hands and fingers, and their place of privilege between humans and technology (I feel a Michelangelo Sistine Chapel reference coming on). If, as they say, all things are created twice (first in the mind and then in reality) then Victor has me wondering if technology has already infiltrated our minds and influenced the pursuit of Pictures Under Glass as opposed to, say, envisioning an experience rich with tactility and manual manipulation.
There’s a reason that our fingertips have some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body. This is how we experience the world close-up. This is how our tools talk to us. The sense of touch is essential to everything that humans have called “work” for millions of years.
Biomimicry’s Greatest Hits [FastCompany.com] – We continue to see blurring of the boundaries between humans and technology in this presentation which offers examples of how nature has inspired and informed some memorable technological advances.
The idea of taking inspiration from nature may be gaining traction in many industries today, but the natural world has always been a powerful inspiration for designers and inventors. Here are some of the most important objects that take their cue from the world around us.
By Steve Portigal at 3:19 pm, Friday November 25 2011
The other day, my car on fumes, I stopped at a 76 station. While I was filling up, I noticed some amusing signs. One was a taxonomy of bugs, as seen post-windshield. The other suggested some stretches to do while you waited. Master shot and details, below.
I guess they’ve had this campaign for a while now, but as an infrequent 76 customer, this was my first time seeing it. The tone confuses me: I can’t tell if they are wry or serious. I guess, yeah, it would be good to stretch during a long drive. But why are the names of the exercise all smart-ass driving jokes? And it would be good to learn about the bugs around us, but smushed ones? It seems like something BoingBoing would link to, but not something a mainstream American corporation would post next to the pumps. I’m all for brands unstodgying themselves, but they aren’t taking a holistic approach to the experience (go figure). Other than seeing those signs, everything about my gas station experience was like every other time I’ve filled up at every other station. Except the buyers remorse when I found gas cheaper elsewhere an hour later. If you want to reframe your commodity as a destination, you have to think a little bigger than just swapping out the credit card ads for bug posters.
By Portigal Consulting at 3:06 pm, Wednesday November 23 2011
Kilroy Was Here, our column about street art, was recently published in interactions. In the time between finishing the article and its publication we’ve found a range of articles and links that go with it.
‘Gold Mountain’ history mural marred by graffiti [SFGate] – Murals, a legitimized and desirable form of street art are still vulnerable to others with spray paint. We call one “street art” and the other “graffiti” or worse, “tagging.”
Someone has written “easy girls” next to the group of 1940s Forbidden City cabaret dancers. The Chinese Telephone Exchange pagoda is obscured by spray-painted green scrawls. The likeness of 9/11 flight attendant Betty Ann Ong that was added to the mural in 2004 is almost covered by a bright orange tag. In 2004, it cost $25,000 to restore the mural. Even as the artist repainted the mural, taggers continued to mar her work. Security cameras were installed in 2008, but new graffiti appears nearly every week. Now, officials at Chinatown Community Development Center, which owns the apartment building on which the mural is painted, say they’re considering re-creating the mural somewhere else. So far the nonprofit has been cited for the graffiti, but has not paid any fines. “It’s impossible to keep up with taggers, and we don’t have the manpower or the funding,” said Cathie Lam, the center’s senior community organizer. It was “determined not worthwhile and too labor-intensive” to restore it a second time, she said.
Vigilante Vigilante: The Battle for Expression – We attended the first screening of this film. The movie, despite its extraordinary bias towards street art, was extremely thought-provoking. The screening itself was dramatic and intense, with the post-film discussion devolving into shouting, name-calling, and some gang-related threats.
A new breed of crime-fighter now stalks the urban landscape: the anti-graffiti vigilante. These dedicated blight-warriors stop at nothing to rid their neighborhoods and cities of street art, stickers, tags, and posters. Yet several of these vigilantes have become the very menace they set out to eliminate. In their relentless attempt to stamp out graffiti, they have turned to illegally and destructively painting other people’s property. VIGILANTE VIGILANTE is the story of two filmmakers who set out to expose these mysterious characters and discover a battle of expression that stretches from the streets to academia.
Outside Elixir bar in the Mission district of San Francisco, graffiti taggers have left their mark — not on the wall, but on the living. Every tree on that 16th Street block has been spray-painted in shades of purple, red, white and black. “I can’t imagine why anyone would think that’s O.K.,” said Shea Shawnson, the bar manager. “What do you do to clean up a tree without messing it up?” In a city where graffiti abatement is swift — property owners are fined if graffiti is not immediately removed, and the city spends $20 million on the problem — taggers have discovered a way to ensure that their mark has staying power. Graffiti, taggers believe, is not easily covered or removed from trees without harming them. The vandalism has angered residents, and possibly threatened the health of some trees, which are remarkably rare in San Francisco because very few tree species are indigenous. The tagging also appears to violate one of the tenets of the graffiti subculture: it is supposed to be a reaction to urban life, not an attack on nature.
JR is a photographer and artist that describes himself as a “photograffeur.” He flyposts large black and white photographic images in public locations—in a manner that is similar to the appropriation of the built environment by graffiti artists. The idea is to show the world its true face by pasting photos of human faces across massive canvases. One of his most famous projects is called “face2face.” For this, he worked with Palestinian and Israeli citizens to explore the similarities of their daily lives, rather than focusing on the divisions; he highlighted fundamental human emotions. Israelis and Palestinians doing the same job—such as taxi drivers and teachers—agreed to be photographed crying, laughing, and making faces. Their portraits were then pasted without authorization from the local authorities in eight Israeli and Palestinian cities as well as on two sides of the wall that separate the two countries, demonstrating that art and laughter can challenge stereotypes. He explained his concept, by showing two portraits (one Israeli, one Palestinian) and asked them: who is the Israeli and who is the Palestinian. Most people couldn’t answer him. That’s when they understood that behind their cultural differences, they are very similar, and remain human first and foremost, and human with similar values!
“It will be a new landmark,” Barneclo said, pointing out that the painting near Seventh and Townsend streets will be the first thing commuter train passengers see entering San Francisco and the last thing cars zoom by as they take the Interstate 280 on-ramp from Sixth Street. “There’s nothing else like it.” Using large-scale icons, the piece aims to illustrate the many relationships between man and nature – from the nervous system to the solar system, computer operating systems to the ecosystem. “I’m just intrigued by how the world works,” Barneclo said. “It’s complicated, but I’m trying to boil it down and make a groovy mural.”
By Steve Portigal at 9:59 am, Tuesday November 22 2011
Separating You and Me? 4.74 Degrees – In 2008, Microsoft found the number to be 6.6; it depends on how one defines a connection. Can we infer anything from Facebook having a looser definition than Facebook?
Adding a new chapter to the research that cemented the phrase “six degrees of separation” into the language, scientists at Facebook and the University of Milan reported that the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the world was not six but 4.74. The original “six degrees” finding, published in 1967 by the psychologist Stanley Milgram, was drawn from 296 volunteers who were asked to send a message by postcard, through friends and then friends of friends, to a specific person in a Boston suburb. The new research used a slightly bigger cohort: 721 million Facebook users, more than one-tenth of the world’s population.
Who Uses SpiderOak? – More Personas Leaking Outside the Enterprise. Just because you have personas in your development process doesn’t mean you need to make that your marketing. It’s bad enough that you think and talk about your customers this way, at least have the good manners not to talk TO them this way.
Gavin the Geek – Gavin is a geek. He has been for as long as he can remember. Instead of playing with toy guns, he was ripping apart and rebuilding the Atari – a gift to his dad when he was a young boy. In his spare time, he builds servers for friends. In his professional time, he builds servers for friends. And then he gets to administer them all. Making sure they are all backed up, frequently, painlessly, and securely is crucial in maintaining his sanity. SpiderOak bounces into Gavin’s domain. Now, he can load SpiderOak on all of the servers, keep all the data secure, run everything from the command line, keep out of trouble, and never have to worry if, by chance, he didn’t build the server just right…
5 Ways to Think About Nuisance Fees [NYT.com] – Some great deconstruction of the way we respond to different types of fees, pointing towards some design principles for the creation of fees. The examples in this article are consistent with what we’ve heard in a number of studies.
The discussion starts with a three-pronged test of whether the fee is reasonable: is it fair, is it disclosed and do you have a choice about paying it? Fairness is the least clear, but Robin Block, a retired actuary in Manhattan, argues that the fee must have some relationship to the actual cost of providing the item or service. By that definition, the 3 percent currency conversion fees that credit and debit card issuers levy are unfair. Ditto the $10 or so a day that rental car agencies charge for GPS devices that retail for $100. Bank of America’s effort to charge $5 a month for debit cards is an interesting case study in this context of cost, given that it said that it all but had to add the fee because of new rules that limited what it could charge merchants for accepting the cards.
We know it’s been a while and you’ve maybe wondered what has been going on with us. The global financial crisis, revolutions, The New York Times now charging online… a lot has happened. And with the downturn and the state of publishing, it has been tough. We fought as long as we could and unfortunately must now close Ambidextrous. The magazine has been a labor of love, but it has unfortunately not been organizationally and financially sustainable. Since 2005, we’ve done our best to help designers share their stories and to build a movement around that. As a movement, Ambidextrous will live on, and we should have conversations about what great next steps are for fostering intellectual discussion and sharing in the design community. It’s the community that makes us hopeful and pushes us to find the next outlet, the next forum, the next thing for us to collaborate on. So keep in touch. Share your ideas. Let’s meet again soon.
Here we offer the third installment of an unfolding bibliography of secondary research that fueled our generation of themes for the Omni project. This time around we are focusing on the transformational role of technology in our everyday lives, both in terms of what is changing (us) and how, i.e. the process of moving ritualistically through the liminal space that sits between what (and how) we once did things and the activities that will become our daily doings. This theme captures not only the place between the old and the new, but also the processes of learning, relearning, and unlearning how to respond to the new and improved version of our lives that technology suggests possible.
Online Banking Bill Pay Changes Ahead [FastCompany.com] – Remember the last time you had to show up in person at your bank to conduct business? Yeah, me neither. Remember the last time you had a confounding online banking moment trying to transfer funds to or from one account or bank to another (be it yours or someone else’s)? Yep, me, too! We appear to be wading through the growing pains associated with a transition from institutionally-focused financial rituals to customer-driven (and designed) online personal financing that is largely institutionally-agnostic.
While consumers like seeing all their finances in one friendly place, they don’t like the fact that they can’t do anything about it there–namely pay those bills or move money between accounts–using the same site or app. That capability is gradually coming, with the help of new finance technology, business models and willing, often smaller, banks.
Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age [Chronicle.com] – Cathy Davidson puts her teaching (and learning to teach in this era of “This is Your Brain on the Internet”) under the microscope in an exploration of how technology is impacting the collaborative nature of knowledge including how it is consumed, crowdsourced, created, communicated, and (perhaps most fascinating of all) subjected to criticism by various stakeholders. Here we can begin to see that a focus on traditional ways of learning has created attentional blindness to the opportunities for new ways of learning.
Unfortunately, current practices of our educational institutions—and workplaces—are a mismatch between the age we live in and the institutions we have built over the last 100-plus years. The 20th century taught us that completing one task before starting another one was the route to success. Everything about 20th-century education, like the 20th-century workplace, has been designed to reinforce our attention to regular, systematic tasks that we take to completion. Attention to task is at the heart of industrial labor management, from the assembly line to the modern office, and of educational philosophy, from grade school to graduate school.
“When I walk,” he describes, “my impression is that a digital sensibility overtakes me […] the places or circumstances that have drawn my attention take the form of Internet links.” Referring to associative memory as being like hypertext is a perfect example of how the significance and description of walking changes in reference to the time and culture in which it is grounded. The metaphors we use to characterize things we don’t understand often change with relation to extant technology. For example the human mind once described as a tablet is now popularly referred to as being like a computer. But this use of figurative language also demonstrates how metaphor shapes the way we perceive and experience the physical world.
In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores [NYT.com] – Technology is obviously changing our institutions and, here again,education seems to be a classic meme. There is a defined dream that computers will fix THIS – every generation of tech, from the first Apple PCs to now iPads, are all hailed as “THIS is the thing that will truly, radically improve it!”; but in our measurement-focused education systems, evidence points to “no”.
To be sure, test scores can go up or down for many reasons. But to many education experts, something is not adding up — here and across the country. In a nutshell: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning.
The Gen Y Guide to Collaborative Consumption [Shareable.net] - Technology is enabling alternatives to the mainstream economy that are self-created and subvert standard modes of exchange and value. This easy-to-use DIY guide is a road map for leaving behind ancient rituals of consumption in favor of practices that values possibilities of use over possession.
American youth are slowly realizing that the old system is broken, and no longer holds the answer to all their dreams and desires. We’re discovering that stable, satisfying careers can be found outside the offices and factories around which our parents and grandparents built their lives. We’re acknowledging that the pursuit of bigger, better, and faster things have plunged our country into a time of despair and difficulty. We’re convinced that business as usual isn’t an option any longer–but what’s the alternative?
He relates a curious and cool aspect of their creative process, evoking the role-playing techniques (including informance) that we use in user research, facilitation, design, and more, whereby taking on characters can free oneself from a current constraint, including one’s own identity.
One of the tricks that we were already using then – that we still do – is that we make up other bands. “Today we’re not Rush, we’re The Fabulous Men.” That was our new age band, or we have an ongoing edgy kind of rockabilily band called Rockin’ F so when we want to bring out a different persona we say “Okay, make this part Rockin’ F.” That’s something we still use.
By Steve Portigal at 9:24 am, Monday November 21 2011
While the Reading Ahead project was a couple of years ago, we continue to find stories that resonate with or extend beyond our findings. Here’s a few!
For Their Children, Many E-Book Fans Insist on Paper [NYT.com] – A key Reading Ahead finding was that people select different content for different environments, situations, etc. By extension, it makes sense to see that people are also making choices among platforms for similar reasons. Reading is a multi-headed beast.
Print books may be under siege from the rise of e-books, but they have a tenacious hold on a particular group: children and toddlers. Their parents are insisting this next generation of readers spend their early years with old-fashioned books. This is the case even with parents who themselves are die-hard downloaders of books onto Kindles, iPads, laptops and phones. They freely acknowledge their digital double standard, saying they want their children to be surrounded by print books, to experience turning physical pages as they learn about shapes, colors and animals. Parents also say they like cuddling up with their child and a book, and fear that a shiny gadget might get all the attention. Also, if little Joey is going to spit up, a book may be easier to clean than a tablet computer.
Fulfilling the status role of books [Applied Abstractions] – An admittedly facetious concept that pokes at the ongoing struggle between objects, in this case books, as physical tangible demonstrable symbols versus digital and generally invisible personal content, an issue that arose clearly in the Reading Ahead research
The Norwegian publishing and bookselling industry yesterday introduced a new concept for e-books that is rather harebrained. They want to sell e-book tablets where you can buy books not as downloads (well, you can do that, too) but as files loaded on small plastic memory cards, to be inserted into the reader. According to their not very convincing market analysis, this is aimed at the segment of the book buying market who do not want to download books from the net (but, for some reason, seem to want to read books electronically.) I initially thought I would make a joke about having to replace my bookshelves with neat little minishelves for the plastic cards, when it dawned on me that perhaps we have the solution here – i.e., a model where we could get the accessibility of digital books with the status display of the paper version. Why couldn’t the publishing industry sell you a digital book (for downloading, if you please) bundled with a cardboard book model, with binding and all, to put in your bookshelf? This would look great, allow you to effortlessly project your intellectualism and elevated taste, while avoiding the weight, dust, and (since these books would only need to be a in inch or two deep) space nuisances of traditional books. You could even avoid physical distribution by letting the customer self-print and cut and fold the “shelf-book” in the right format. You could even electronically link the two, so that you cold pick your cardboard book from the shelf, wave it in the direction of the e-book tablet (using transponder, 2D barcoding or other identifying techniques) and the book would show up in your reader. If you really wanted to show off, you could add a little color coded bar indicated how far you were in each book, much like a download bar for your computer, to be displayed on each book. Moreover, such as book could be lent from one reader to another.
A Digital Whiteboard for the Kindle [WSJ.com] – Already two years old, this post evoked for me another key tension: are digital book platforms translations (with relevant, reading-related enhancements) of the book reading experience or are they new digital platforms for a range of digital activities? Our research suggested a stronger desire for the former, with fears of distraction around the latter.
Luidia, the maker of an interactive whiteboard technology called eBeam, is extending its reach onto another screen: Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader. The start-up is launching a system that automatically zaps a copy of notes and scribbles left on whiteboards into people’s Kindle or Kindle DX. It works by turning the notes (captured digitally by the eBeam system) into an image file, and then emailing that file to a Kindle. “We saw the potential not just to read a novel and textbooks, but also have other kinds of content created live in the classroom by students and teachers themselves,” says Jody Forehand, Luidia’s vice president of product planning…But apps that extend or go beyond reading are one of the most anticipated additions to e-book readers in the coming year. Kindle competitor Irex has said it would release a software development kit so that programmers can make their own apps for its e-reading device.
Welcome to the next installment of an unfolding bibliography of secondary research that fueled our generation of themes for the Omni project. Today we are focusing on the relational role of technology as a facilitator, participant, and obstacle. This broadly encompasses relationships between human and technology, humans and other humans, human with self, and even technology with technology. The nature of our relationships are changing, as our the tools that are available for us to make meaning of the data that they embody and generate. The items below begin to unpack this tangled web of interconnectedness along with rituals that arise and recede in response to progress and its discontents.
The tribesman who Facebook friended me [salon.com] - Really astonishing piece, especially since the whole “picture of a Kalahari desert warrior on a mobile phone” images became totally overdone in our field 15 years ago. Very intriguing characterization of the limited exposure to ideas this tribe had and in a very short time they are on Facebook. This article implicates technology in the evolution and revolution of relationships with (and within) tribes that hitherto were characterized by a lack of interaction with the rest of the globe.
But, what I am here to tell you is that it’s happening now. We now live in a world in which a tribe that had not even heard of a feathered arrow until two years ago, can access every idea in the world. For the first time in history, humanity is truly open-access. Our entire species is “logged in.” Should we mourn the passing of a phase in our history when bands of human minds still lived in isolation, or rejoice that we are finally all on the same page?
Life in the Age of Extremes [theatlantic.com] – The internet (which he seems to conflate or equate with processing power and computing capabilities) enables extreme reactions and responses that have great destructive potential. The author argues that interconnectedness via the internet amplifies feedback loops and therefore catalyzes extreme states and transforms the value of individual contributions within these collective contexts.
Optimists have long dominated the cyber-landscape, firm and vocal in their belief that the Internet creates a more transparent world, and that the quick and easy access to information it provides is bringing the global population together into one enlightened chorus of harmony. I have been deeply concerned that the Internet has created a centrifugal force that has the potential to tear us apart. The Internet’s reinforcement of uncompromising positions during acrimonious budget debate in Washington, the Internet-facilitated, high-frequency trading driving volatility in financial markets, and the use of Twitter to organize the recent street riots in the UK brought to mind Eric Hobsbawm’s 1994 book, The Age of Extremes. The book is about the extreme historical events of what Hobsbawm called “the short 20th century.” But he could just as easily have been writing about the 21st century, the Internet age.
Pew Internet Research Report [pewinternet.org] - Results of a recent study about cell phone use. Ironically, of the 2,277 interviews conducted about cell phones, 1,522 interviews were conducted by landline phone, and only 755 interviews were conducted by cell phone (that’s about 33%). So here we have a study that evokes questions about how we relate to others via technology and how that very relationship facilitates the study of the relationship. Is this relational research recursion?
83% of American adults own some kind of cell phone–and these devices have an impact on many aspects of their owners’ daily lives. Half of all adult cell owners (51%) had used their phone at least once to get information they needed right away. One quarter (27%) said that they experienced a situation in the previous month in which they had trouble doing something because they did not have their phone at hand.
It’s just one of many ways in which digital technologies now spill over into non-screen-based aspects of social experience. I know certain people who can’t bear to eat in a restaurant they haven’t researched on Yelp. And Google now tailors searches to exactly what it thinks you want to find. But this loss of randomness is particularly unfortunate for college-age students, who should be trying on new hats and getting exposed to new and different ideas. Which students end up bunking with whom may seem trivial at first glance. But research on the phenomenon of peer influence — and the influences of roommates in particular — has found that there are, in fact, long-lasting effects of whom you end up living with your first year.
The Rebirth of the Ringtone [theatlantic.com] – A little ditty about the rise, fall, and rise again of audible cell phone rings, alternatively about the rise and fall of ‘vibrate’ setting. Begins to track some of the rituals of taming technology to comply with social norms and how our personal (i.e. ringtone) choices are reflective of our relationships and (in some cases) responsible for them.
I rarely hear a phone ring these days. Hell, I’m lucky if I catch a stray beep. Only those without much experience in the wireless world continue to derive pleasure from hearing “Achy Breaky Heart” every time an acquaintance calls. A phone on vibrate gives you a slight informational advantage over the people around you, but at the cost of your public identification with a kind of music. Somehow, putting your phone on vibrate seemed politely self-interested, not just plain sneaky.
Does The Internet Make You More Or Less Connected? [npr.org] – There are two sides to the coin of constant connectedness. The distraction from immediate social situations is real, but so is the fact that connections with people can be more frequent and relationships can blossom using technology.
The distractions play an even more aggressive role when it comes to my connection with myself. Most of the moments once reserved for a little alone time have been infiltrated by the realtime Internet. I never just wait for a bus, or just stand in line at a bank, or even just sit and think as I sit stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. At these moments, I pull my phone out of my pocket faster than a gunfighter pulls his weapon out of its holster.
Information Consumes Attention Focus In The Age of Abundant Stimulus [boingboing.net] – The paradox of focus and how it can be improved by meditation and pleasure. A lovely little respite that suggests strengthening our relationship with the present moment and our Self in order to better navigate the influx of attention-grabbing information.
The most promising solution to our attention problem, in Gallagher’s mind, is also the most ancient: meditation. Neuroscientists have become obsessed, in recent years, with Buddhists, whose attentional discipline can apparently confer all kinds of benefits even on non-Buddhists. (Some psychologists predict that, in the same way we go out for a jog now, in the future we’ll all do daily 20-to-30-minute “secular attentional workouts.”) Meditation can make your attention less “sticky,” able to notice images flashing by in such quick succession that regular brains would miss them. It has also been shown to elevate your mood, which can then recursively stoke your attention: Research shows that positive emotions cause your visual field to expand.
Love in the Time of Robots: A Duet With Siri [theatlantic.com] – Interview with creator of the viral song/video duet between human and iPhone. This delightful little duet touches on how we derive meaning from our relationships with our devices and gets us wondering about artificial interpersonal communication.
Do you think humans will actually fall in love with their robots one day? Is it happening already? OOOOOOh. Yes. I’m really infatuated with the idea of machines eventually being capable of love. I think it’s kind of inevitable, but I don’t really expect to see it in my lifetime.
By Steve Portigal at 1:53 pm, Friday November 11 2011
I was in Boston earlier this week to speak at UI16. During a bit of downtime, I went for a walk and of course, started taking pictures. Given our recent interactions article about noticing and document street art, I wanted to share some of what I saw.
One tag (bundtcake? budcloth? badclam?) and stickers for a cutesy-brand pet waste removal service, a skater magazine, a web/movement/thingy, and a beer label that seems to be fake and actually points to a local art collective.
There’s that tag again, the Eye of Providence (a local reference?), and a DJ promoting himself with an homage to the locally dominant Dunkin’ Donuts branding.
Some buffing of previous stickers, that same beer cum art sticker, and the random and hilarious Vonnegut and crossbones (I found a better one here).
Much larger pieces, including Andre. I like how you can see a little bit about how these were done, as they emanate from the fire escape.
A number of streetlights near here had these colored plastic blocks in letter-like forms. I felt like it was probably “official” since it was in a vaguely design-y district and consistently placed on city infrastructure, but there was no information about it and so it was hard to be sure. And that moment – trying to determine if this is “legit art” or “street art” or one masquerading as the other – was delicious. I passed by here with my local friend Joe and asked him about this. While he didn’t know, for him it evoked the 2007 incident when 8-bit-graphics promoting Aqua Teen Hunger Force caused a bomb scare in Boston.
Under the bridge. Just a more familiar graffiti scene, one that seemed to typical, unremarkable, and even slightly comforting (despite the broken glass I had to step around to take this picture).
By Tamara Christensen at 2:02 pm, Thursday November 10 2011
Two nights ago I (and 194 others) received a Facebook message from an old friend. It outlined instructions for a post with the noble intentions of raising breast cancer awareness (spoiler alert) with instructions not to share with men. This conjures up a saying that has become something of a personal mantra for me: We often judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions.
It was undoubtedly with the best of intentions that someone sent me the message below; with the quite noble intention of raising awareness about breast cancer.
Sadly, I must turn a critical eye towards the ensuing actions because I genuinely believe they failed to support the noble intention. Why? I hypothesize that, in some ways similar to previous year’s viral FB booby-supporting memes this generates a flurry of chatter that is unfortunately decontextualized from the cause. In fact, in my case it was directed at all of the possible things I could/should or could not/should not do for 18 months in Amsterdam and numerous requests for clarification. And, for the record, I am certain that they do not let you on a plane from Amsterdam to the US with seeds. Fortunately, I believe Steve is still in the midst of a Facebook Fast (and boy, he ain’t alone) and has yet to ask me just how I intend to continue working here if I am overseas. (see? we’ve gotten a little far afloat from breast cancer here)
I recognize that my actions here (i.e. demystifying the meme) may derail the breast cancer awareness mission, but my intention is simply to direct some energy towards activities that have a more direct impact on the National Breast Cancer Foundation’s mission “to save lives by increasing awareness of breast cancer through education and by providing mammograms for those in need”. So, to walk my talk, I just made a (modest little) donation to support the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
So I’d like to offer up a reframe of this whole meme business: If you love boobies (and quite frankly, who doesn’t?) make a donation and use your FB status to celebrate your own actions! And you can tweet that, too, if you are feeling meme-y and aren’t up in a fuss about the word boobies (because some actually are). Come on people, get a pair. Or give a couple bucks to support someone else’s. #dollars4boobies
Entries are open now, and close on December 5 December 9, 2011. Be in the running to win a scholarship to Interaction 12 in Dublin, and take part in an exciting design challenge around the future of news.
The challenge theme for 2012 is Design the Future of News. We’re in a time of upheaval over how we stay informed. People follow breaking news via Twitter. Tablets, mobile phones, paywalls, RSS feeds, viral videos and other elements have found their way into the current news landscape. The experience has swollen far beyond the icons of the daily newspaper on your doorstep and the 6 o’clock newscast.
We know that people are consuming news differently, and these emerging practices are changing the news.
What is the future of the news? What do we even mean by “the news” anyway?
This year, Thomson Reuters and the IxDA challenge you to look beyond the forms of delivery to address the behaviors, interactions, and goals that surround news.
We want you to explore the interaction design implications of questions such as:
What are people trying to achieve with news?
How do we identify that a particular story is important or relevant?
What is the relationship between the different types of information that currently make up “news" (e.g., entertainment, local, breaking news, weather, data, etc.)
What is the potential for emerging trends in how news is produced, from hyperlocal to citizen journalism?
The challenge is open to current students and anyone who has graduated in 2011. It runs in two stages: an online entry (see how to enter) followed by an on-site masterclass and design challenge at Interaction’12 in Dublin.
Hollandia Produce LLC is launching a clamshell redesign — called the Squircle — for its Living Butter Lettuce. The design incorporates features of both a square and a circle, optimizing space and enabling automated packaging systems. On the shipping side, it gives a 20% increase in units per pallet…Consumer and frequent-user focus group studies showed the new design maintains brand recognition while attracting first-time buyers.
Thirteen movie poster trends that are here to stay and what they say about their movies [Oh No They Didn't!] – Compilations of visually similar, to put it gently, movie posters. In the way that the entertainment industry has created tropes within the content of the film that engage us in actively creating the plot at the same time as are following it, the marketing of film has established its own set of visual memes and cultural cues. Repetition and familiarity establish shorthand, and while we may decry the lack of originality, the predictability seems to work financially. Bonus from All This ChittahChattah years ago: Good ideas never go out of style.
Run For Your Life – Apparently all action heroes run through the same blue-lit, narrow alleyway when trying to escape/catch the bad guys. It’s also possible that graphic designers just re-use the same stock image of the running guy over and over again. The movies themselves are pretty similar to the Black/Orange ones except that all the explosions have been replaced with angst.
Hunk Gets Chunky: Personal Trainer Vows to Get Fat [ABC News] – While at one point in the article this is dismissed as a publicity stunt, the idea of producers experiencing what their consumers experience is compelling. From Black Like Me to Patricia Moore and now Fat Like Me. It seems unlikely that this trainer can replicate the motivational, cognitive, emotional, gustatory and many other issues that affect body image, diet, and exercise, but at least mechanically trying to lose weight as his clients are should be revelatory. I hope he does something with this experience.
The 32-year-old former underwear model has ballooned from about 180 pounds to 233 since last month. He has given himself until the end of March to get to his goal of 265 pounds, a weight he intends to keep for a few months. “A lot of my clients have been skipping classes,” he said of the motivation behind his burgeoning pudge. “I decided I really didn’t understand what they were feeling and their emotions.”
“Market value comes down to what a person is willing to shell out for a dinosaur,” says the 60-year-old dino dealer, who has been in the business since 1985, selling Jurassic ribs for $350 each, Cretaceous toes at $295 a digit and a 16-foot-long Camarasaurus tail for $20,000. Wall Street recognition will be fast and furious once he can supply the market with dinosaur genitalia, says Prandi…Hollywood stars Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio in 2007 entered into a spirited bidding war at I.M. Chait auctioneers in Beverly Hills over who would go home with a 67 million-year-old T. rex skull. Cage’s $276,000 bid won the day. “Whether a Brontosaurus looks good in your salon is a matter of taste, Lajotte-Robaglia says, “but these customers are young wealthy people who grew up mesmerized by Spielberg’s ‘Jurassic Park’ and find the aesthetics of a dinosaur more interesting than a Picasso.” Prandi says confirming a dinosaur’s provenance is just as tricky as verifying the authenticity of a work by the Spanish master. “A lot of people call me up from all over the country and say, ‘I found a dinosaur in my backyard,’ but it turns out to be a rock that looks like a dinosaur,” Prandi says. Even so, the United States remains the world leader in mining luxury dinosaurs.
By Tamara Christensen at 5:06 pm, Wednesday November 09 2011
I presented a workshop, Big Ideas, Focused Action, Problem Solved, on 11.1.11 with my friend Cynthia Rolfe at the Oklahoma Creativity Forum (#OKCF2011). I was blown away by a number of things about the event (not the least of which is the fact that there is an entire organization, Creative Oklahoma, dedicated to promoting creativity in the state, with the aptly chosen website address www.stateofcreativity.com). What struck me most of all was the design and delivery of the conference experience. I have been chatting with friends and colleagues who attended the recent Service Design Conference in San Francisco and their insights coupled with my own reflections about being both a conference producer and consumer got me wondering about what it takes to design a memorable and satisfying conference experience.
Thus I arrive at the conference-as-dating metaphor and my desire to anthropomorphize the service experience of large scale events. A conference, like a potential date, must attract, entice, and engage if it wishes to become adored by the object(s) of its affection. A conference, like a date, runs the risk of being a waste of time (punctuated by free food and drink) unless it establishes a meaningful connection and lays the groundwork for deeper interactions. A conference, like a date, creates dynamic tension. To use an oft-appropriated quote by JFK “When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.”
To help avoid the dangerous pitfalls of conference design crises (and perhaps some dating fiascos) here are a few suggestions for optimizing various conference experience ‘touch points’:
Eye contact (aka Deliver seductive visual and interpersonal communication from beginning to end)
OKCF2011 has a clear mission and a solid brand to support it. The conference logo and PR elements (like videos) were pretty and clever and, most importantly, they reinforced the mission of the event to catalyze creativity & innovation in education, commerce & culture (i.e. get people thinking outside the box).
Flirting (aka Pique prospective interest with digestible doses of self-disclosure)
OKFC2011 speakers and breakout sessions were revealed in the weeks leading up to the conference. This created anticipation, similar to what has been done with User Experience Lisbon (aka a hot date with many of the finest minds in UX like, ahem, Steve!)
Foreplay (aka Set the stage and help participants warm up until they find it irresistible)
House music pumping out of the main ballroom had heads nodding while we sipped coffee and looked for seats. In lieu of a standard emcee welcome, we were consumed by a cross-cultural multi-media musical collaboration that included dancers, violins, native American flute, images from Africa via the Wishing Well program, and laser light show. Sounds cacophonous, right? It was flawless and I was smiling with my whole head before a single person stepped up to the microphone.
The Main Event (aka Overdeliver on expectations and attention to the, um, details)
OKCF2011 rocked out their mission and the venue was palpably packed with creativity including collaborative sculpture, young artists gallery, random and delightful antics by youth improv troupes, musical performance, photo booths and book store (to name a few). Organizers found opportunities to weave local creative talent throughout the event. My favorites were performance poet Lauren Zuniga (whose way with words made me drool) and the local youth from Louder Than A Bomb (whose courage and cleverness made my creativity blush!)
Post-Coital Bliss (aka Reflect on the good times and stay connected)
The OKFC2011 event included plenary sessions with individual speakers and panels plus two breakout sessions with ample options to choose from. The fastidious documentation means I can go back and experience whatever I missed or wish to revisit. Silly sidenote: OKFC2011 had great shwag- the bags were great, but I am talking about the interactive souvenir stations. There was a dedicated photographer with a conference background and props who would take whatever pictures you wanted and print them on the spot. My personal favorite was the Picstories booth where 7 seconds of silliness were instantly transformed into a personalized flip book.
Keeping the Fires Burning (aka Amplify the good and commit to continuous improvement)
OKCF2011 waited exactly two days to follow up with all presenters and attendees to request feedback (who doesn’t appreciate a good feedback loop when establishing committed relationships?) and offer encouragement for bringing the learning back into our daily lives. They alert me to when the site has been updated with images and video triggering a trip down memory lane that takes me to the future (of possibilities) through the past. Sadly, I can’t say that about most of the conferences I have broken up with, er, attended.
Presentation, in its entirety, is below and beckons your comments and feedback (in an “oops! I dropped my handkerchief” sort of way).
We recently shared some of the themes emerging from our secondary research for the Omni project. In lieu of a bibliographic deluge, over the next few days we are offering up a sprinkling of the articles, art, commentaries, presentations and other miscellany that contributed to the pool from which our themes were drawn. You will likely find (as we have) that many of these items are illustrative of more than one theme.
First up is the theme of personal exposure and how technology is impacting our identities and behavior. Our participation involves a sacrifice of personal autonomy and control as various technologies require us to respond, reply, reveal, disclose, like, comment, protect, sign-in, sign up, secure, backup, manage, mitigate, translate and aggregate. We are making new choices about old behaviors and developing new rituals to replace outdated interfaces. The boundaries are blurring between private and public, at the same time we have more options than ever before for qualifying and segregating all of the different “I”s that we wish to be, depending on the context. Within this theme we are seeing the topics of identity, trust, consumption, production, control, privacy, regulation, and the facts and myths that capture (and perpetuate) it all.
Tiger Moms and Digital Media [psychologytoday.com] - A psychotherapist who specializes in Internet and video game addiction offers 9 guidelines for raising children who have “a healthy relationship to digital media.” This starts to point at issues of control and autonomy within families and raises questions about the role of the parent (and technology) in childhood development.
For reasons I cannot explain, I saw the approaching flood, when internet addiction was only a trickle. Now, that flood is upon us. Statistics tell us that between 6 and 13% of the general population meets criteria for Internet Addiction. In the college age population, that number stands between 13 and 19%! That’s a lot of young adults who are addicted to digital technology. In S. Korea and China, the problem is growing so rapidly that those governments have declared Internet Addiction to be their #1 public health threat. Think about it.
Internet Privacy: Is it overrated? [fortune.com] - A book review of “How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live” by Jeff Jarvis that dives into the challenges of defining the messy term ‘privacy’ and the even messier obstacles associated with information sharing, regulation, and ‘publicness’. Starting to unpack the tangled web of identity and privacy, including expectations of control that accompany acts of exposure.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has tried to recast the desire for privacy as a desire for control over our digital identities. He argues that people want to share information, but we want to determine who gets to see and use it. Jarvis says this definition is too tidy. Privacy is much messier. We live in relationship with other people, after all. How do we even define what qualifies as our own information? If I share information that implicates you, who gets to control that? …. His book is not so much a rallying cry for tweeting your breakfast choices and blogging your company financials as it is a field guide for how to navigate this new technology with optimism rather than fear.
Where an Internet Joke Is Not Just a Joke [nytimes.com] – In light of increasing numbers of detained internet artists and government critics in China, a discussion of censorship and egao (“mischeivous mockery”) that is employed by many to subvert the internet patrols. Example of governmental control and how it is responded to (i.e. averted) through subversive collective channels. Challenges assumptions of exposure as a privilege rather than a right and describes some consequences for individual identity in that scuffle.
No government in the world pours more resources into patrolling the Web than China’s, tracking down unwanted content and supposed miscreants among the online population of 500 million with an army of more than 50,000 censors and vast networks of advanced filtering software. Yet despite these restrictions — or precisely because of them — the Internet is flourishing as the wittiest space in China. “Censorship warps us in many ways, but it is also the mother of creativity,” says Hu Yong, an Internet expert and associate professor at Peking University. “It forces people to invent indirect ways to get their meaning across, and humor works as a natural form of encryption.”
Russian ATM can detect when users are lying [springwise.com] – Depictions of technology can create distorted views of the future and the present; the notion is that this technology exists but it’s in the lab and it may never make it to the market in a reliable consumable form. The mere suggestion of its potential existence raises a number of questions about current practices involving consumer data. How does disclosure of possible futures impact individual understandings of who we are and how our information is managed, regulated and protected from fraudulent misappropriation?
Though the new ATM design is still in the prototype stages, Sberbank plans to install such machines in malls and bank branches around the country, the NYT reports. Financial institutions elsewhere in the world: time to think about introducing something similar?
My Emergency Contact Information [mcsweeneys.net] – Delicious little piece on how to contact someone in the event of an emergency. It’s fantatsically and unnecessarily complex with hints on how to guess neighbor’s wifi passwords. Unravels the many ways we have learned to be protected, (dis)connected and affected (by easily consumable disasters around the globe).
First, if possible, try me on my cell phone. You should all have the number. I’d really prefer an emergency text message instead of a phone call, especially if the incidenct occurs before 8:00 p.m. on a weekday. Also, I don’t have a data plan, so please do not text images, regardless of the scale of devastation. Instead, Tweet or post pictures to your Flickr or Instagram photostreams and I will download or view them later, when I pass through a hotspot. Don’t forget to geo-tag them so I can determine your location.
