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?

catch up

I identified the problem of communication of ideas in the design process to users (I don’t like using this word as it suggests a stereotype of certain people).

Communicating and prototyping ideas of interactions or, more complexly, of ubiquitous computing can be difficult and very time consuming.

But what is the value of prototyping? Is this immeasurable?

Richard Banks mentioned at his talk to IPD in November that a mistake would be to “get precious” about your prototyping. Rather than spending time on a final, well-finished product, it is often more rewarding and efficient to work through ideas quickly and communicating them as unfinished ideas as opposed to finished ones. Besides, most people are more interested in the process of a design rather than the outcome.

With Fable, I spent a lot of time neglecting people and working on making it work. Surely it should be the opposite?

However I did find it extremely difficult to communicate the ideas of ubiquitous computing to people during the project. When you tell someone a mug can be an input device to a smart-surface table, the immediate questions are always: why and how!

My initial aim, as discussed with Richard in August, was to develop tools and techniques to help designers communicate complex ideas within the interaction/ubiquitous computing design paradigm. Yet after some preliminary research, I have become clear that this is not necessary.

There already exists tools in which can be used to communicate and visualise ideas, such as storyboarding and paper-prototyping. I mean whatever happened to good old-fashioned drawing? Then there are animation software’s such as Flash which can be used to bring drawings and storyboards to life by applying movements, changes and communicating cause and effect.

“Faking” is also an unwritten method. A wonderful example being the Sketch-a-Move video by Anib Jane where she communicates the idea of controlling the behaviour of a toy car by drawing a path on its roof. No fancy electronics or computer programs, just smoke and mirrors (well, in this case a few magnets).

So I aim to put these traditional tools to the test and use them in new ways.

This happens to blend in nicely with another project I’m working on at the moment; the T3 project.

T3 (Transferability 3) is a joint research project between Deutsche Telekom Laboratories (t-labs), Berlin and the School of Design University of Dundee, exploring case transfer as a method to develop new designs for information communication products and services for older people.

Although only 2 weeks old, the project overlaps with some of the work I am doing in that it is very people-centered yet probably more demographically focused. “Older people” are seen to be 60 and over (still a huge demographic; there are more “older people” than ever before and this trend continues to rise).

the value of prototyping and where I went wrong

I had a conversation with Richard Banks a few months back about communicating ideas and concepts for multi-touch products. He showed me some of his ideas in the form of sketches which had a pair of hands "photoshopped" on top of the image to suggest the idea of multi-touch.

These images got me thinking about other ways to communicate my own ideas, not only for multi-touch application concepts, but for some of my other ideas for interactive products.

On Tuesday, a board of industry designers and researchers came to Dundee to answer questions from undergraduate Product Design students. Richard himself was one of the members, along with Tim Reagan and Nicolas Villar, fellow researchers from Microsoft Research in Cambridge, Anab Jain from Nokia, Bill Gaver now at Goldsmiths and Charlie Rohan from NCR, Dundee.

Above from right to left: Bill Gaver, Nicolas Villar, Anab Jain, Richard Banks, Charlie Rohan, Tim Reagan and Jon Rogers (member of staff from the UoD)

Some interesting points came up from the discussion, particularly about the relevance and value of prototyping. 

Richard said we "using our hands helps us to think" which I found very refreshing. I have often said I like to get my hands dirty when it comes to design but have of late doubted such an approach. During the Fable project, I spent around 3 months of the 7 month project prototyping the software with the immense help of my tutor Andy Law. And all I wanted to do was prove a point and the value of the concept. But was it really worth months of neglecting the people I was designing for only to produce a tangible and physical artifact which was the materialization of my research and development?

Above: an early prototype of Fable

In some ways, yes. I proved a lot of people wrong when they told me I didn't have enough time to make a fully working prototype and it meant a lot to me (and my ego) when I was able to show Fable, my creation, to the public in Dundee at my Degree Show, and London at New Designers. But as I mentioned in a recent post, people were more interested in the story of Fable itself, from my research into people right the way through the application of technology. So should I now focus on communicating the story of my work rather than the physicality of the work itself?

Tim Regan answered this question without me even having to ask. He said "When I prototype, I often use it as a way in learning new software. Don't do this! Use the materials you are comfortable with."

Why spend weeks computer programming when I am not a computer programmer? I am a communicator.

Richard's advice was to "understand the question" and "get precious [with prototypes]," giving an example of how Anab Jain communicated her "placebo" prototypes from a postgraduate project in a short video. play full film

From both Richard's and Tim's advice, I think I got halfway there with prototyping Fable. I understood the question and who I was designing for and I was very precious with my prototyping.

I just didn't use the materials I was comfortable with.