Objects share our environments, interacting not only with us but with the other things around them. Some pictures of these inanimate conversations from a project we did on home charging and energy use with REACH Global Design Research Network.
Teapot and Apple power brick
Nokia and wicker chair
Scarves, belts, charger cables
The recruitment effort reflects a growing realization at Yahoo that computer science alone can't answer all the questions of the modern Web business. As the novelty of the Internet gives way, Yahoo and other 21st century media businesses are discovering they must understand what motivates humans to click and stick on certain features, ads and applications – and dismiss others out of hand.
Yahoo Labs is taking a scientific approach to these questions, leveraging its massive window onto user behavior to set up a series of controlled experiments (identifying information is always masked) and employing classic ethnography techniques like participant observation and interviews.
We work on ideas that will influence our future vehicles. We want to share our ideas, inventions and pre-production vehicle designs. We want to build the right cars and trucks for your future. We want your opinion.
Interpreting stories
* Experts
* Machines
* Participants
Story interpretation is best done by a range of groups (e.g. consumers themselves, a marketing department) that may have differing perspectives on the same situation. The most appropriate techniques often avoid direct analysis initially and allow different groups to immerse themselves in the stories to produce nuanced interpretations of the consumers' world.
(via DinaMehta.com)
The meeps, he said, came from all of the students in the class in rapid-fire succession. When he asked them what that meant, they said it didn't really mean anything.
But meeping doesn't seem to be funny to Danvers High School Principal Thomas Murray, who threatened to suspend students caught meeping in school.
In an interview with the Salem News, Murray said automated calls were made to parents, warning them of the possible punishment after administrators learned that students were conspiring online to mass-meep in one part of the school building.
(via MeFi)
It's a powerful idea and the movie's history from agit-prop to entertainment meshes nicely with some of the points I made about science fiction recently in interactions magazine, in We Are Living in a Sci-Fi World.
Under the Cybracero program American farm labor will be accomplished on American soil, but no Mexican workers will need to leave Mexico. Only the labor of Mexicans will cross the border, Mexican workers will no longer have to.
Using high speed internet connections, directly to Mexico, American farms and Mexican laborers will be directly connected. These workers will then be able to remotely control robotic farm workers, known as Cybraceros, from their village in Mexico.
In 2000, prior to Portigal Consulting, we conducted an ethnographic study with Sony to “provide awareness of unarticulated consumer perceptions about digital imaging on which to base future product development decisions…generating a range of new product and service concepts.”
Over the years we’ve seen Sony launch products that are similar to ones we proposed (see example here). We identify opportunities for our clients; the path they take to develop (or not) can be complex and fraught, and many opportunities are not addressed in the marketplace (although we find our clients value how our work helps them make that decision).
Here’s the latest:
Sony today introduced the Party-shot personal photographer -an innovative camera dock that pans 360 degrees and tilts 24 degrees, automatically detects faces, adjusts composition and takes photos for you.
This device makes it easy to capture more natural expressions and fun, candid moments of you, your family and friends without having to hire a photographer.
“With the Party-shot personal photographer, you no longer have to worry about taking photos when you are with your family or friends,” said Shigehiko Nakayama, digital imaging accessories product manager at Sony Electronics. “Party-shot captures candid moments that tell natural life stories and also offers a new style of photography that enriches time with your family and friends.
From our 2000 presentation to Sony
Market Opportunity : Freedom to Participate
Today
Defined set of occasions where
Opportunity to Increase Usage
Our concept (to illustrate the opportunity) emphasized video over still
Product Feature: Full Remote Control
Sony isn’t the only one to launch products that we identified. As we identified needs and proposed solutions, it’s inevitable that as time goes by, competitors will identify those needs and develop products. For example, three years ago I blogged about Granny’s Inbox where HP launched something similar to one of our Sony concepts.
Elsewhere, we see other products that have been developed by competitors since our work for Sony in 2000:
Digital Blue’s Tony Hawk Helmetcam
and our X-treme Cam concept
Hasbro’s VuGo Multimedia System
and our MPEG-Man concept
Casio EXILIM (and other models of still and video cameras from other manufacturers) feature Pre-Record Mode where
photos are not only taken at the moment the shutter release is pressed – they’re also taken before that! With continuous recording of up to 30 photos per second, a maximum of 25 photos can be saved in the camera’s buffer memory – even before the shutter release is pressed. The 25th image then corresponds to the photo that was taken when the shutter release button was pressed. This means that, in addition to the photo that you took at the moment the shutter release button was pressed, you can choose from a further 24 images that occurred just before that moment.
and our Capture Buffer concept (video but could be used for still as well)
Buffalo TeraStation Home Server
and our Digital Memory Vault concept
Samsung TL225 with front LCD to prompt subject to smile, etc.
and our Teleprompter Cam concept (video but could be applied to still)
Here’s some more articles, projects, websites, and other online ephemera that we’ve come across since we posted part 1.
The book as a form factor has been around for about 2,000 years, since Julius Caesar first decided to fold up a scroll, accordion-style, and mark the pages for later reference. In 1455, Aldus Manutius was the first to publish the portable paperback, and it has remained relatively unchanged since. XPLANE Founder and Chairman Dave Gray explores several questions about the future of the book and the web browser.
a sub-$300 touch-screen “Reader Touch Edition” and the $199 “Reader Pocket Edition,” which features a 5-inch display. The company is also lowering prices of ebooks. New releases and best-sellers will all be $9.99, matching Amazon’s price point for the first time.
Lynn, you cover books and publishing for NPR, so do you have a Kindle or an e-book Reader?
LYNN NEARY: Actually, I don’t, Linda. In fact, my cubical at NPR and my night table at home are loaded down with good, old-fashioned books because even though I’ve actually seen the Kindle work and I’ve talked to a lot of people who love it, I still can’t imagine reading some of my favorite novels on the Kindle. What about you?
WERTHEIMER: I love it. It’s especially nice for traveling. I really do not leave home without it. But I did have a very peculiar experience with Kindle. I was reading a book and all of a sudden, I was back at the beginning of the book. So I thought I’d punched some button somehow. But no, what I had was a book in two pieces.
Some 40% of North Americans who responded to a Forrester Research survey in Q2 2009 had heard of, but had never seen, an e-reader. Another 17% had never heard of one. But ownership more than doubled year-over-year to 1.5%.
Where there are bookshelves, there will be books!
When Eddie Bernays, the father of modern publicity, was asked by a group of book publishers to increase book sales, he said, “Where there are bookshelves, there will be books.” And then he went on to convince architects, construction companies, and interior designers to install bookshelves in new homes. That helped to launch the modern day publishing and selling of books. (thanks to Joshua Treuhaft)
This site is dedicated to design thinking for re-envisioning books, publishing models, and the cognitive activity we call reading. The many markets and models for books and distribution are changing radically and continuously. We, authors and designers, need to share what we have learned and are doing to recreate the forms, meaning, and thinking of books of all kinds. Sponsored by Redesign Research
Unlike the very static version we are familiar with today, the Primer is fully interactive. It not only offers the reader an open-ended narrative, but it also changes to the reader’s demands, among many other features.
As of this writing there are only 3 1 spots remaining for my EPIC 2009 workshop Moving from Data to Insights to Opportunities, September 1 in Chicago.
One of the most persistent factors limiting the impact of ethnography in business is that research projects often stop with a cataloging findings and implications rather than generating opportunities that directly enable the findings. How can designers and researchers work with ethnographic data to create new things for business to do?
Participants in this workshop will learn an effective framework for synthesizing raw data into insights, and then creatively using those insights to develop a range of business concepts that respond to those insights. While the framework includes a step to identify key filters that will ultimately prioritize across all generated concepts, the emphasis in this workshop will be to think as broadly as possible during ideation, truly strengthening the creative link between “data” and “action.” By the end of the workshop, participants will have developed a range of high-level concepts that respond to a business problem and integrate a fresh, contextual understanding of that problem.
You can check out slides and audio from an abbreviated version at BayCHI or come to the abbreviated version at Web 2.0 New York, November 17.
It looks to be a busy time between now and the end of the year, with a lot of exciting opportunities. Some details still TBD; I’ll update with links when we get ’em. Meanwhile, if you’re going to be at any of these presentations, please let me know!
Tracy and her younger son thinking about possibilities for books and reading devices
Our fieldwork sessions often include a piece in which we ask participants to brainstorm and fantasize about the future.
In an earlier post, we talked about the simple models we were building for the Reading Ahead interviews.
Book and device models for participatory design activity
We wanted to put something in people’s hands to help them show us what the “book of the future” and “reading device of the future” could be and do. (This fieldwork approach borrows from participatory design.)
We’ve had clients come out in the field with us and say after an interview, “That person didn’t give us any ideas,” so it’s important to clarify that we don’t expect this kind of activity to directly produce marketable ideas. Rather, it gives people another mode for expressing themselves, and it’s great for helping them communicate things which may not always be easy to verbalize, like:
Chris uses the device model to help express his thoughts about navigation
Often for us, the very act of making the props for an activity suggests new ways of using them. In this case, while making a blank cover for the “future book” model, we realized that we could also make a blank inner page spread.
Holding the “book of the future” model
As it turned out, this meant that when we were done with the sessions, people had created very nice book models for us, with a cover and inner spread.
Erica’s “telescoping shopping bag” book with digital annotations, hyperlinks, and built-in dictionary
Part of the preparation for each interview session was to get the models ready with new blank paper. Here I am on the trunk of my car, prepping the models before an interview in San Francisco.
Now that the fieldwork is done, we have a great collection of models made by the people we interviewed.
Artifacts from participants’ “future book” ideation
The last section (copied below) of our Topline Summary synthesizes some of what we gleaned from this part of the fieldwork. These are just quick hits; we’ll develop any themes and recommendations that come out of these activities much further in the analysis and synthesis phase of the project.
Excerpt from Topline Summary: Participant ideation about the “book of the future” and “reading device of the future”
NOTE: The first thing a number of the participants said when asked about what the “book of the future” could be and do was that it’s pretty hard to improve on the book-it works very well the way it is. In addition to all the qualities already mentioned, books are
Instant on-off Durable
But people did have ideas. Here are some of them:
Put yourself in the story Leave the story for more information Choose from alternate endings, versions
Able to morph from bigger size for reading to smaller for transporting
Book form with replaceable content: a merging of book and device, with a cover, and page-turning but content is not fixed-it can be many different books Books that contain hyperlinks, electronic annotations, multimedia, etc.
Hide what you’re reading from others, hide annotations, hide your personal book list and lend your device to someone (with content for them)
A device that projects words that float above it, so that the reader doesn’t have to hold the device in their hands
Here’s what my day looks like today–3 interview sessions starting this morning in Soquel, then up to San Francisco, and then over to Vallejo where I’ll finish up around 9 pm.
I’ve tried to schedule everything so I’ll have time in between each interview to write notes. It’s amazing how hectic what seems like an ample schedule often becomes once you factor in traffic, parking, eating, checking email, and the general miscellany of a day.
I got everything ready last night: video camera, still camera, release forms, models and materials for participatory design activities at the end of the interview session.
I went over the interview guide, and am feeling really good about it. I always get kind of charged up when I run the interview through in my mind the night before fieldwork starts. There’s this unique feeling that comes from knowing that I’m about to go out and find out things from people that, sitting at my desk the night before I go, I can’t even imagine.
Participants in this workshop, collaborating in teams, will learn an effective framework for synthesizing raw data (to be gathered before and/or during the workshop) into insights, and then creatively using those insights to develop a range of business concepts that respond to those insights.
Starting any project means we inevitably come across any number of articles that pertain to the topic or the themes that emerge from the research and synthesis.
Sometimes we’ll dedicate some time at the beginning to collect articles and summarize ’em, but more often we’ll just do a quick scan and opportunistically look for issues to inform our recruiting and planning for fieldwork.
Here’s what we’re reading now (and we’ll do a part 2 if and when we find more articles of interest):
Among the many complaints made about the shift from reading on paper to reading on screen, perhaps the most common-and most difficult to counter-is that we are moving from a medium that requires concentration to one that sows distraction into every syllable. This complaint assumes that the act of flitting from one reading to the next is necessarily inferior; but what if that were not always the case?
Prominent examples include:
* Plastic Logic (2010)[8]
* txtr by the German start-up txtr (to be presented in the Oct 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair)[9][10]
* Cybook Opus by Bookeen (August 2009)
* Readius foldable eBook reader by Polymer Vision (Will never release due to bankrupt)[11]
* COOL-ER ereader by Interread (2009)
* Digital Reader 1000 SW by iRex (2009)
* Kindle 2 by Amazon (2009)
* Sony Reader PRS-700 by Sony (2009)
* Digital Reader 1000 by iRex (2008)
* Sony Reader PRS-505 by Sony (2007/8)
* Kindle by Amazon (2007)
* Cybook Gen3 by Bookeen (2007)
* Hanlin eReader by Jinke (distributed as “Lbook” in Estonia, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine as “BeBook” in Europe; also distributed by Pixelar) (2007)
* Wattpad (2006) for Mobile Java devices and other mobile phones
* Sony Reader PRS-500 by Sony (2006)
* iLiad by iRex (2006)
* Librié by Sony (2004)
Lexcycle today announced that more than 2 million users have downloaded Stanza, the popular electronic book reader application for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch, since it was launched one year ago. Stanza’s award-winning reading experience, which features customizable formatting, searching, library management and over-the-air book downloads on demand, has led to more than 12 million book downloads.
These milestones highlight that many people are quite comfortable reading full length books via Stanza on their iPhones and iPod touch.