Archive for July, 2006
Entry 2006/07/28/about_making_things
About making things, and a little about why innovation is hard:
Thinking through making
Part of the shtik at Schulze & Webb is thinking through making. It was at the core of the Nokia Personalisation project, where (in part) we explored the interactions and experiences that come into being around mobile phones made using new, short-run manufacturing processes. We took some of the materials that could now be used and made non-functional phones out of them. Then, holding them and considering the physical things, we were able to (I hope) innovate, and allow other people who held these objects to do the same.
Tom Hume, on his mobile work: you can’t tell how well something will work until it’s sitting there in your sweaty palm.
So right. So right.
Jack, the S of S&W, talks about this method of discovery by citing – of all things – a comment from Donald Rumsfeld that’s won an award specifically for being baffling. It’s discussed at LanguageLog: Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
Unknown unknowns!
Grain
When we engage directly with the material – whether that’s plastic or code – we test the grain of the object. We see that wooden buttons don’t want to be pressed, and we’ll need a different operating mechanism. When a material thing sits in our sweaty palm, or on our cluttered desk, we test the grain of the world. A phone with a surface too rough to hold (discussed here) lets us see whether the usual behaviours of constant handling and social display are contingent upon my social world or the mobile’s physical form.
The grain of a thing is usually hidden, and I use the term in reference to Manuel de Landa at Tate Modern in 2004, on carpenters: not sanding against the grain is not a social construction. you can, but it’ll look terrible. you’re in a partnership with the microstructure of the wood.
What is the grain? We don’t know! How should we respond to it? We don’t even know that we should know!
Thinking through making is about revealing the unknown unknowns.
Sometimes revealing the unknown unknowns points to opportunities, and that’s where innovation comes in. My company is about thinking through making in order to find the innovation possibilities ourselves, and we do that for other people and companies too.
I won’t say that there aren’t other ways of innovating. But take successful entrepreneurs in this new wave of the Web: they know, deep down, the grain of the business world and the grain of the Web itself. And although a lot of the innovation is done in brainstorms and cafe conversations, eventually prototypes are necessary to think through making. And, before Flickr, Game Neverending [has the GNE Museum disappeared?] was what else but a process of grain discovery?
Carpenters.
The online grain is pretty fluid. But the grain of stuff is pretty well-established–and it feels this area is only going to get more important as smart objects get cheaper, grow out of every website, and inhabit our homes. (I barely need add that, as designer-makers who cut their teeth online, helping figure this out is where S&W is positioned.)
Availabot
When you make a thing which is innovative, you often have to sand against the grain. That’s okay, because you can rewrite the technological grain as you go, and the social grain is based on expectations, and you can sometimes shape those too. (Also it’s okay because this quality is often what makes something innovative.)
It leads to unsatisfactory experiences when the grain of a product isn’t in alignment.
I’ll give an example: Availabot (our first prototype product of our own, and part of Jack’s RCA Show entry. It’s a push puppet that stands to attention when that special buddy of yours come online on IM). I coded some and helped out just a little with the puppet–but I observed everything. Mainly what I observed was that making a thing is tough.
Availabot has three parts: the puppet itself, which can remember IM details; the various mechanisms and chips; the software on your computer. This is not to mention the IM and network infrastructure it requires. Since the game of the puppet is that it’s a reverse voodoo doll, that it really is an instance of your buddy, right there on your desk, the whole illusion is unsatisfactory if you consider independently the microcontroller chips or the software on your computer.
The three parts need to be bound into a single object: the Availabot.
In practice, creating the new object was a long and effortful process. The puppet was a little LED, then a mechanism with some more logic, then a badly cut plastic model. The logic sat on a breadboard, plugged into a PC for debugging, a power supply, and a Mac for control. Wires were everywhere. The client software on the computer consisted of prototyping software (without IM support), then replaced with code glue for AppleScript, then replaced with a GUI-less client application (and, of course, another computer on the same IM network).
All the parts had to be carved separately. In the world, mechanisms and microcontrollers and software are three types of thing.
The moment these parts first worked together, I had a glimmer of the object the Availabot might become. But it was still tied down: to the power, to the PC, to the breadboard, to rough-and-ready electronics, to a clunky script that only 2 people could operate and that lived on only a single laptop.
When Brian Cantwell Smith, in On the origin of objects, is figuring out what we identify as objects [p101], he makes a distinction between objects and artifacts. Artifacts are by definition products of human labor; there is no way to claim that they live independently of us.
But once you remove the artifacts and the trees and the animals from the world, he says, you’re left only with infinitely variegated but not very cleanly divided rock outcroppings, muskeg, bramble patches, cloud formations, lichen, and the rest.
I’d make the point that what artifacts, trees and animals have in common is that they’re divided from the land. They can move and be moved.
Availabot, as an early prototype, was more like a cloud formation than a movable thing.
Making things is hard
How was Availabot to become an artifact and separated from the land? It turns out that the borders around artifacts are hard fought (this perspective on making things comes from reading Pandora’s Hope by Bruno Latour).
Armies are recruited to fight battles.
Simply to make the prototype videoed for the web page, a fabricating and assembling process must be invented to lift the puppet and mechanism from the breadboard. The army of USB standards and factories makes the puppet transferable from desk to desk. Huge libraries of code created by multiple corporations are enlisted to develop software that can be packaged and dropped onto any computer (although the software is still tied to the land of Mac OS X 10.4).
(Going further, to mass production, we’ll need to recruit the knowledge of the entire manufacturing industry, for plastics pouring and quality control and so on. Then logistics. Etc.)
To bind all these parts into a single conceptual object, the puppet needs to remember IM details as it is moved around, and we need to bring experience design in to complete the illusion. Argument and presentation is required to allow Availabot to be a puppet, having its own social life and grain, rather than a shallow representation of something else. Without this argument, Availabot is a software application and it’d be hard to fully engage with the physical end of it. Only with all of this can Availabot – both the idea and the thing – be handed from person to person.
Mobility!
Another example: The iPod is a physical thing plus a screen interface plus music plus a management application plus a music store plus marketing. Somehow the experience of it has become your music in your pocket
. Binding these things together so that the thing-people-touch-and-see is also the thing-you-recommend and the thing-you-value is why the iPod is so satisfying, so simple, and why it can be sold for so much (that is, you’re happy to pay for the physical thing, and it’s not just an outboard version of iTunes which is free). It’s also why it’s so important for the iPod designers to provide as few breaks as possible in the flow of music from anywhere (be it their store or your CDs) to your ear, and prevent, as much as possible, you engaging with toys on the screen instead of with your music.
Very clever. Very hard. Very successful.
A broader interaction design
While making prototypes, as thinking through making, reveals grain and opportunity, simply making things is sweat and struggle.
But making things well is extremely rewarding.
Making things is also rewarding from an innovation perspective, because it means engaging with the materials of manufacture, marketing and vending. Once interaction design expands its canvas to these huge territories, even more opportunities become available.
I’m one of two principals at Schulze & Webb. We work in prototyping, innovation and interaction design, in product and on the Web. If my comments resonate with you, and if we can help, please get in touch: contact@schulzeandwebb.com.
Originally
from Interconnected
reBlogged
by michael
From A-to-Bee
Interesting story filed in the ‘Navigation/Wayfinding‘ section of the BBC News site today. (Sorry, that should read "the ‘Science/Nature‘ section of the BBC News site". I forgot to remove my filter.)
On bumblebees. And their extraordinary facility for wayfinding.
"What we are showing is that it is eminently possible for bumblebees to forage more than five kilometres from the nest," said co-author Dr Mark O’Neill, from the University of Oxford … It is not entirely clear how the insects navigate but their vision seems to help keep them on course and recognise landmarks. "We believe there will be a difference, because they use vision, especially the horizon edge for guidance. So a cluttered environment is liable to be more problematic and challenging to the bees than a green field environment," said Dr O’Neill."
"The insects’ "maps" also include odours, but these are limited to less than 2m (7ft). For example, when a bee has emptied the nectar in a flower, it leaves chemical "post-it notes" to tell others where it has been. The countryside has a more varied scent composition than the urban landscape, and researchers are now plotting bee routes to see which kinds of environment the insects prefer. "We are trying to find out more about how bees forage, or look for their food," explained Dr O’Neill. "We’re particularly interested to see if they find certain environments easier to navigate."
Interesting stuff. Full story.
Coincidentally, I picked up a couple of books for the office recently, neither of which appear to mention bees but perhaps ought to. The first, entitled ‘Wayfinding‘ (Rotovision) has been out a while, and looks OK if a little mundane. The second – and perhaps I’m being seduced by the sheer quality of Lars Müller publications here – looks far more interesting, and is called ‘Wayshowing‘ by Per Mollerup.
It’s utterly beautiful and looks to pull of the trick off being thorough, imaginative and practical. For example, Mollerup’s introduction includes a couple of definitions of ‘sign’:
"The first meaning covers the sign outside the butcher’s shop, the directional signs in the airport, the traffic signs in the street, and so on. The other meaning uses the word ‘sign’ to stand for any phenomenon that has a meaning. That usage is related to Umberto Eco’s definition of a sign as anything that human beings can use to lie. In this meaning, the word ‘sign’ is used more or less synonymously with with such words as ‘mark’, ‘symbol’ and ‘signal’. A letter, a whistle signal, a red beret, a hand waving, and a Nike swoosh are all signs. But so are the signs outside the butcher’s shop and any other sign in the narrow meaning described previously. The broad meaning includes the narrow meaning, not the other way round"
By widening the scope, ‘Wayshowing’ is deliciously ambitious. Yet it’s full of practical examples, models and photographs, and it looks like I’ll be drawing from it for years. As to the title:
"Wayfinding’ is a term that many designers and manufacturers of signs and signage systems like to use. They claim that they work with wayfinding. Perhaps they do, but they haven’t found a way to precise language. In their work as sign writers, they should be occupied with ‘wayshowing’. Wayshowing relates to wayfinding as writing relates to reading and as speaking relates to hearing. The purpose of wayshowing is to facilitate wayfinding. Wayshowing is the means. Wayfinding is the end. Wayshowing is a new terms developed by the author of this book to clarify this distinction."
Some page spreads and a handy link below.
Wayshowing, by Per Mollerup [Amazon UK|US]
Originally
from cityofsound
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Jul 26, 2006, 2:08PM
Urban Autobiographies
In April 2006, a city-wide writing program began in Philadelphia. Called the Autobiography Project, the program’s basic idea was to invite residents of the city to tell ther own life stories – or simply individual stories taken from their lives – using 300 words or less. The Project even sponsored community writing workshops for those Philadelphians unsure of their literary abilities – and some workshops were so successful that similar such groups may become regular fixtures at the institutions involved.
More than 340 memoirs were submitted over a six-week period. A panel of local writers and cultural figures then chose 20 particularly memorable autobiographies, and these were printed as full-size posters, complete with a photograph of each author, and installed within bus shelters throughout the city. The posters were taken down on July 23rd.
You can read more about the project at WorldChanging, where this post was originally published.
Originally
from BLDGBLOG
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Jul 28, 2006, 1:38PM
National sovereignty and the detention market
[Image: A partially inflatable immigrant-detention center, photographed by The New York Times – though their article is now pay-per-view].
Between statelessness and Westphalian sovereignty you apparently get inflatable architecture, instant cities on the carceral edge between two systems of power: “As the Bush administration gets tougher on illegal immigration and increases its spending on enforcement,” the New York Times reported last week, “some of the biggest beneficiaries may be the companies that have been building and running private prisons around the country.”
This is referred to as the “detention market,” and it is “projected to increase by $200 million to $250 million over the next 12 to 18 months” – an astonishing increase of 400%. (Invest now).
These “beds within the border region” are managed with Wal-Mart-like efficiency. Indeed, making beds “available quickly is considered an advantage in the industry since the government’s need for prison space is often immediate and unpredictable. Decisions about where to detain an immigrant are based on what is nearby and available. Immigration officials consider the logistics and cost of transportation to the detention center and out of the country.”
All of which defines a new political space wherein real-time logistics, transport infrastructure, the rise of the market-state, private investment, and post-Archigramian inflatable architecture strangely merge.
Two quotations seem appropriate here, both taken from Philip Bobbitt’s recent – and extraordinarily dense – look at historical mutations within the concept and practice of constitutional sovereignty.
As the nation-state is superceded by the market-state, Bobbitt explains, we are witnessing a clash of tactical responsibilities: “What is appropriate for the market-state – with its porous territorial concepts and its responsibility to preserve the opportunities for personal development, including, of course, access to a safe environment – seems to clash with the absolute sovereignty of a nation-state taking steps it alone can determine are necessary, within its territory, to protect the nation.” Of course, this is exactly what we see today in the U.S. immigration debate: an argument for the economic necessity of immigrant labor, including financial opportunity for all, vs. an argument for national border security and the protection of legal citizens.
“There is a grotesque disparity,” Bobbitt writes, “between the rapid movement of international capital and the ponderous and territorially circumscribed responses of the nation-state, as clumsy as a bear chained to a stake, trying to chase a shifting beam of light.”
The almost Dr. Seussian world of inflatable immigrant-detention camps, as explored by The New York Times, is perhaps evidence of this sovereign clumsiness.
(The NYT article was also covered by Bryan Finoki over at Subtopia; meanwhile, a rather old BLDGBLOG post explores the idea of “criminal aliens needing beds“).
Originally
from BLDGBLOG
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Jul 26, 2006, 3:37PM
Designing for Interaction Now Available!
My book Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices is now in stores and is available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
I was recently interviewed by Liz Danzico for AIGA about the book. Here’s one of the highlights:
Danzico: Why is it important to design hackable products?
Saffer: That’s a good question: I’m not sure it is important. People will hack your products anyway! That being said, leaving “seams†in your product for people to customize it to suit their needs is a very interesting practice.
Danzico: Seams?
Saffer: As designers, we’re traditionally taught to get out of the way of the product, to leave no trace of ourselves or how the product was made. Think of the iPod in its hermetically sealed case, for instance. But Matthew Chalmers had this idea of “seamful systems (with beautiful seams)†where, for those so inclined, you could see and take advantage of how the system was created and adapt (hack) it for your own use. Seams afford hacking, in other words.
Companies can get new ideas for new products through exposing the seams and affording hacking, and could even repurpose their existing product to take advantage of the modifications people are doing to it. Of course, it’s also a dangerous practice. People can hack things in dangerous ways that could open up the companies to serious liability issues. If they are going to build in seams for hackers to rip open, designers need to make sure just what it is exactly they are exposing. On a financial website, of example, it’s one thing to expose the CSS so that someone could change the colors of their version of your site. It would be quite another thing to expose users’ financial data!
Danzico: For some time, people have been able to hack their TiVos to view their flickr streams on their televisions. Next, you might imagine a similar hack for YouTube videos, streaming on our TV as well. With users having this much control over the design of their environment, where does the interaction designer’s role start and end? Are interaction designers in danger of losing control?
Saffer: The idea that we as designers control any product is a myth. It’s a useful myth, to be sure, since it allows us to actually make the product. But once it is out of our hands and out into the world, we can no longer control what people do with it. Sure, we can design how we hope people will use it, but there’s no guarantee they will use it that way.
I’ve also posted the first section of chapter one (832k pdf) on the book’s website.
Happy reading!
Originally
from Adaptive Path
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Jul 27, 2006, 12:03AM
Quirky Shelves
Stumbling upon Jim Rosenau’s site – “This into That“, I instantly regreted for succumbing to the dreary 1keA bookshelves. Jim’s functional art furniture is racked (excuse the pun) with innovative quirkiness.
Jim first began collecting discarded hardbacks and began experimenting in his workshop with them. Those experiments have to led creations of tongue-in-cheek curio shelves, book cases, bookshelves and much more. You can also commission custom-made shelves.
related links
This Into That
Originally
from sensoryimpact.com
by
reBlogged
by michael
on May 29, 2006, 6:39PM
The Elements of Style for Designers
What if E.B. White had written “Hanging Commas 99% Bad” instead of a gentle list of reminders for young writers? Wodtke outlines how White’s list of 22 reminders for writing can be just what young designers need.
Originally
from Boxes and Arrows
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Jul 25, 2006, 4:44AM
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Adventures in Glass and Plastic
[Images: Three "refractographs" by Alan Jaras (©), aka Reciprocity, taken from his public Flickr pools. One such pool, called Bending Light, documents ghostly "patterns made by light passing through various glass and transparent objects." (Jaras has a thing for glass). The images in Twisting Light, meanwhile, capture "the manipulation of light refraction patterns through moulded and formed plastics." The first photograph below is part of Jaras's ongoing "experiments with the refraction patterns of light through formed and shaped plastics. Here is the first attempt at introducing colour into the plastic shape while still trying to retain the fine detail and rainbow patterns in the clearer and lighter parts." Amazing results; objects as microcinemascopes. Finally, don't miss another of Jaras's Flickr sets, the novelistic nano-surfaces of MicroWorld, discovered via gravestmor].
(All images in this post ©Alan Jaras).
Originally
from BLDGBLOG
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Jul 25, 2006, 2:30AM
