richard harper

The down side to drafting into a word processing document and then copying/pasting into my blog is that sometimes I forget to actually copy and past into my blog! This following post has been sitting dormant in my computers hard drive... until now.

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Professor Richard Harper from Microsoft Research, Cambridge, spent a morning with us to discuss how people of various disciplines see the world we live, and how this can cause problems in the design process.

He began by talking about how we gossip and how this act can be translated through metaphor into solutions for design problems.

I found this notion very refreshing as it coincides with work I have done in the past on touch-screen systems. My ideas for interactions were all based on human gestures I took as metaphors and used to act as inputs for computer systems. Richard calls this language (or method?) "Human Acts."

Richard's advice was to be aware of the difference between ourselves (designers) and others, such as scientists for example. Designers show their portfolios to other designers but seldom do they communicate their work from people outside of our discipline. He suggested we must have trust in other people and don't show them only the finished article. The process behind the finished article is often more interesting; so is communication of design all about telling a story rather than showing an artifact?

I agree with Richard. Whilst exhibiting my honours project work at the Degree Show and then New Designers, people were more interested in how the project materialized over time and why I made the decisions I did throughout the process. This was, at the time, a little disheartening in a way as I wanted people to be in awe over the prototype that I spent so long getting right. Instead, all they wanted to do was to ask questions and, I suppose, understand me rather than what I made. All I had to do was tell my story. Richard Banks' advice is not to get to precious about prototyping; and this is probably the most valuable piece of wisdom I've taken on board since I started my Masters.

After spending an hour or so with Richard Harper, we were lucky enough to be invited to his evening lecture, entitles "Changing Humans." Here, he explained how the designers of computers and computer systems have changed their visions of users.

People love to gossip and communicate with each other. People network themselves naturally and now also digitally, through the introduction of text messaging and video messaging (and subsequently social networking sites like Facebook). The metaphor of gossiping is what inspired ideas such as video messaging; a tool that enables people to send friends videos, presumably to make them laugh.

The morning session and evening lecture made me think about a lot of things to do with common languages between people in different disciplines and interaction design in general. But the most valuable theory I took from today is all to do with language. Language is the key tool that we can use to communicate and be understood as designers. We can achieve this by applying metaphors and other language sub-tools. Language is the only common ground we all have.

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death, inheritance and heirlooms

I had an interesting conversation with Richard Banks today over lunch.

Richard has been looking at what it means to design digital artifacts with longer time spans in mind, and taking heredity of objects into account. He explained his interest in the design of a form of technology which he refers to as technology heirlooms. 

In my understanding, a technology heirloom is a technological product/object that is designed with the intention that it might live longer than its owner and therefore be "handed down"  embodying an impression or sense of its owner. (Richard, please correct me if I am wrong!)

Digital objects are normally thought of in the short term. But Richard is now asking what happens when we consider these objects in the long term that may have unpredictable and unexpected value to our children and families. 

I find this notion of digital objects being un-obsolete (have I just made up a new word?) fascinating. If I were to pass my iPod down to one of my grandchildren, how will they perceive it? Will they keep it in a shoe box under the bed as they feel obliged to keep it but not to use it? Will my (varied) music collection be loved or hated? Will my iPod still be "cool"?

What will "retro" designed object look like in 2109?

Death is something we all experience whether it be through bereavement or through the approach of death itself; it is part of life. Considering digital products may outlive their owners introduces a whole new principle in the way we design objects themselves; design for the dead?

Which leads me to think: Who will I pass my Facebook profile onto?

visualizing friend networks

Sebastian Van Sande has developed Visualizer, a tool that allows you to explore your Facebook social network graphically. This is the "Visualization" of my Facebook account.

It's great as I can see friends connected to other friends and also the ones who are only connected to me. The tool allows for filtering your network by gender and relationship status.

However I'm confused as to the length of the connecting lines. What do different line lengths represent? Some of my close friends appear close to me on the map, and others far away. Does the program determine who is close and who is further away through a friends activity?

It would be even more useful if short lines represented close friends and vic-versa. This way, we would be able to visualize not only our map of friends, but also the various levels of relationships between each other. 

Imagine if we were able to connect our maps with each others! If everyone on Facebook did this then I would inevitably be connected to, say, Barrack Obama (presumably through 6 corresponding people considering the "6 degrees of separation" theory to be accurate).

Wouldn't it be great to see a whole world networked graphically using a social networking site?

As a visualization tool, Van Sande has created an interactive application that communicates a complex network greatly. As with the underground maps, credit is given to those who achieve simplistic communication of labyrinth-like infrastructures.

However in comparison to Nexus by Ivan Kozik (Below), Visualizer is lacking as both an interactive and informative tool for the search for information within a complex infrastructure. 

Nexus is another friend grapher for Facebook. It calculates friend similarity by parsing profiles, and highlights links between friends who share interests and groups. The visualization resembles a costilation and looks far more striking than Visualizer. 

And the method of retrieving information is far more straight forward. Another great example of a "walk up and use system."

ethnography study: is online time "good for kids?"

I have a Facebook account which I use now and again, and I find it very useful for keeping in touch with friends whom I may otherwise have lost contact with. It's true, if Facebook did not exist then I would have lost touch with some friends from High School, so why use this new tool as a method of communication with people I would otherwise have forgotten about? 

I suppose in a way it makes me happy to keep in touch with these people. After all, these friends from the past are tagged with many memories, some of which would have evaporated if it weren't for the occasional email from them to my Facebook homepage.

However my opinion of social networking sites is not all that of hope, happiness and reminiscence. children and teenagers are spending far too much time surfing the internet and socializing online through the likes of Facebook and MySpace. 

There are many dangers related to these past-times such as childhood obesity and the risk of meeting pedophiles disguising themselves as teenagers through the mask of the virtual world. In fact,  25% of 8-15 year olds in the UK admit to having "Facebook" friends; people they have not met in real life but have befriended through the social networking website.

However this morning I read how a study has shown that spending time on social networking sites is important for teen development. 

The report really counters my opinion and probably the stereotypical views of parents and teachers nationwide.

"They are learning the technological skills and literacy needed for the contemporary world," said Dr Mimi Ito, the reports author. 

"They are learning how to communicate online, craft a public identity, create a homepage, post links. All these things were regarded as sophisticated 10 years ago but young people today take them for granted."

The aim of the Digital Youth Project was to provide an ethnographical view of how children use social media to socialize, learn and relax. More than 800 teenagers took part in the study.

Dr Ito also says that the internet provides teenagers the opportunity to explore in their own creativity whilst providing a "hang-out" place for teenagers, rather than public places where some are perhaps likely to cause nuisance or even commit petty crimes.

This has made me realise that there are opposing advantages and disadvantages to online socializing. On one side we can argue that children are not getting out enough to exercise, for example, as they spend so much time in front of a computer screen; surfacing issues such as childhood obesity which then leads to health problems in later life. There is also the danger of children not always knowing who exactly they are talking to online. 

However the on the other side, the argument is more related to the younger generations ability to use technology and explore their creativity. 

As a designer interested in technology, it would make sense for me to now argue for the latter, however I am indecisive (for a change) and find myself swaying between both arguments. 

So here is a final thought: "Modern" learning has become very peer-based and networked, so with more teenagers now possessing technical abilities partnered with creative thinking, will this path the way for a new breed of designer?