What is Contribution?
Design has a grasp on every imaginable aspect of our society which results in measurable impact on every
corner of this globe. But when we examine these interwoven systems more closely, especially regarding impact,
we rarely see them surpass the horizon of capitalist interest. Design had, since its beginnings, quite a few
changes in its self-understanding and pursuit. Critical reflections on its sustainability, its dependency on
capitalist systems, and its impact on our biosphere have already started in the 70ies and have since become
mainstream discourse. But nonetheless, its mode of irresponsibility persists. Thinking about said mechanisms
of irresponsibility, the usual suspects (systemic scale, individual weakness, existential dependency) present
themselves. But is that the point where we should stop our thoughts in despair?
When reflecting our roles as designers in said machinery, we could see every part of the machinery being
originated in a thought. An idea, a decision shaped the rules of said component. This idea originated in
someone, somewhere, that tried to find a solution to a set of specific requirements. When, in retrospective,
looking at said component, we could start wondering about the decision he made, wonder if he thought about the
large scale impact of his concept, or wonder how he came to the power of making said decision.
In my educational journey, many people have addressed me as ‘part of the future’. My decision to study in this
field was largely based on my subjective understanding of its future-proofness. Nevertheless, an uncertainty
always persited, doubting my ability to actually contribute something. An healthy dose of self-doubt? A
subconscious nudge to rethinking present action?
But how do we quantify contributions? What is the impact I already had on others? How do I reflect on possible
impact I could be making?
What made an impact on you in the last two years?
The possibilities on learning and working with and from other people.
The impact tools + new processes have on my own thinking & creation
The discussion about my role and the role of design in the world.
What impact did you make in the last two years?
Working with others, I was able to show things to others, and take part in an exchange of knowledge and
skills.
Teaching, 25.05.20
Innovation, 25.05.20
Visual Abstraction, 25.05.20
Evaluation: 27.04.20
Speculative Design, 18.04.20
Evaluation by Narration: 06.04.20
The Question of the Prototype: 30.03.20
Experience and user Experience: 23.03.20
Human Computer Interaction: 16.03.20
Design in the everyday context: 09.03.20
Perspectives of Design: 02.03.20
Deconstructing Interaction Design: 24.02.20
For this class, each of us had the task to teach a skill to a small group of other people from the class. When
i had to come up with a skill to teach other people, at first I could not think of one. I am someone that
considers himself mechanically and craftwise “a skilled person” but many of these skills require a variety of
tools, time, patience, and craft-related knowledge. But then a friend of mine gave me, unintentionally, an
idea.
I had to help him patch his bike inner tube, because he never learned how to do that. This seems to develop
itself to a hobby of mine, because i do this kind of stuff fairly recently. I would consider the skill to
repair a puncture by yourself fairly easy, because it is usually done in about 5 minutes, requires no just a
patch
kit, available nearly everywhere, and saves you from spending 30.- with bothering your nearby mechanic with
simple tasks.
As a final reflection on the module, I want to say that I really enjoyed taking part in it. All the
discussions and contents you tried to incorporate are highly relevant and interesting. But to add a last word
of opinion to the discussion about the amount of work necessary: When there is too much input and demand for
output, the whole teaching runs the danger of leading to blockade and disinterest. The overwelming nature of
stress greatly impacts on my ability and will to perform and profit from the contents, and I want to say that
my performance in this module rally suffered from this climate.
Where do ideas come from? How can our surroundings influence our creativity? The constant stream of information our surroundings supply can be a source of ideas. Learning how to embrace and process this constant stream is a skill a designer has to master. I see design as a mission rather than a job. This manifests in a possibly different attitude towards my surroundings. Everything I see is being reflected upon, how could this be improved? What is bad about that?
This week I had my own presentation, reflecting in retrospective, I wish I had more time to talk about further
aspects of the topic. But with english not being my mother language, I struggeled to present the way I usually
do. I am not the fastest speaker and in english it is certainly not getting better. Although I think of myself
as fairly good «explainer», I dont have a lot of charisma in my voice. Also, getting feedback from the class
on a monday morning is really difficult, the zoom format contributing to it even more.
Data – it has grown to a universal currency in the digital world. Data has the potential of being used to make
a service work more efficiently, to make a system adapt better, to spread knowledge and help us improve our
society. but it can also be used to earn more money, to manipulate weak opinionated people, to come closer to
the dystopian future that we all fear of. Here a reflection on different data types presents
itself:
The term “Big data” is on everyones lips nowadays. It represents all the bad associations with data collection and analysis that big corporations and nations practice. Be it for “technological progress” or a pretentious improvement in collective security. But all these negative associations aside, here we recognise the previously discussed pattern of quantitative data. As the citation states, Big data is inherently not aimed at a qualitative approach to evaluation but rather a quantitative way.
To apply this approach to design, we might have the situation where two possible ways of using a system
present itself. One way takes longer, than the other but statistical research has shown that this way is
chosen by a
majority of users. The other way, exemplarily more efficient and less time consuming, has a flaw or an
inconvenience that could be easily corrected, and upon its solving bring all the users to choose the more
efficient and logical way. But now, using big data analysis, the decision is made to keep the statistically
right way, and remove the other. With an approach of Thick data, and a comprehensive research on the users
motives for his behaviour the end result would have been the resolving of the issue in a qualitative instead
of statistical way.
What does it mean to evaluate a work, what are the tools, how is a project fitting its intentions? Is
evaluation even necessary in the context of design? Evaluation differentiates design from art, because design
has to be
applicable to its use. For a product to be successful or even usable, decisions have to be made. How will the
user interact with it? Is it intuitive? Are there any problems in using it? What other criteria might have an
impact on its success?
Through evaluation, the designer tries to answer these questions to improve the
product, validate his idea in terms of usefulness, and dive into the users’ psychology to guide the idea to
success.
There are many different methods to evaluate a concept. The evaluation happens before, during and after
implementation of a product. It is not just another step in the process but should be seen as constant tool of
reflection. When deciding on the evaluation method the designer has to ask himself what he wants to achieve.
For more emotional and subjective reflection, using natural settings would be the sensible choice, but when
evaluating technical detail, this subjective approach might not be fitting and a more laboratory and
analytical approach would present itself.
What always fascinates me with looking at other cultures is trying to leave the scope of my perception and
empathise on other perspectives. When reflecting upon my behaviour of aesthetic appreciation, I always tend to
prejudge this appreciation on the object deemed most perfect and closest to the ideals of beauty that I
learned through growing up in a european-centered society. The japanese notion of “Wabi Sabi” strictly opposes
this aesthetic scholarship.
Wabi refers to the bitter-sweet melancholy of individuality.
Sabi refers to a positive impermanence and a noble perception of time.
Applying this aesthetic to objects leads the beholder to an appreciation of an objects character. An object
with
history and long life is considered much more valuable than it sterile, perfect and soulless counterpart.
This understanding can help in designing and creating objects that are able to reach people and gain on their
value over time, trough accumulated patina and imperfections.
An idea, at first, exists soley in the mind. To materialize and leave the meta level of its creators mind,
its story has to be told. And how this story is told ultimately decides on the ideas fate. Mankind has a deep
connection with storytelling. Our whole society is built on the stories of older generations. Storytelling is
used as a scientific tool to evaluate on our society and its workings. Artifacts can, in intricate detail
tell us about its maker, his skill and background, and the long gone civilisation he lived in. By
manifesting an idea we always have to think of how we want to tell its story, to make it understandable,
usable, and convince others from its value. An idea could be fundamentally groundbreaking, but is of little
use if its story is not told. By its nature, the story of an object can be used to evaluate it. Telling
a story about something can give us many clues about how it works, and why it works like that. it is a valid
tool for evaluation an idea, because by putting the idea on the stage of the real world, we can imagine flaws,
possible problems, but also think about why people might identify with it or realise tis potientals.
In our everyday life, every object that we interact with, has a different haptic quality. Our body is
beautifully adapted in feeling and differentiating these qualities, and all our interactions with these object
are estimated on already learned or similar interactions. Our body is using all of his senses to react and
adapt to the situation. This richness of sensing information greatly affects our perception of an object or an
interaction. With digital information technologies, all this richness in our sensing is limited to a
really poor use of these senses. The interaction with a mouse or a touchscreen is pretty much one dimensional
in its use of our senses. With all the incredible senses that our body has, integrating these could make the
experience of interacting with an interface much more enjoyable, even leading to a whole new understanding of
controlling devices. Here the concept of «tangible bits» comes to exist. The goal is to create more
interaction depth than just swiping or clicking. For example connecting physical objects taken from our
surroundings to manipulate or interact with a digital sphere.
In a design process, at some point the idea has to be manifested into a physical form to be able to answer some questions about the idea. To be able to «prototype» efficiently is a basic skill that a designer has to master. But how does he decide upon the beings of his prototype? It all depends on the progress that he has in developing his idea.
For example when developing a physical consumer product, he would probably have to work out its functions,
inner wokings and Engineering principles to have a set of principles for the products’ affordance. He then
would, based on his perception of the affordances, prototype the use of the product, and try to make it
ergonomic and useful in its application purpose. Accompanying this process, he would always have to think
about how the product can be produced efficiently in large scale, and should have an understanding of these
processes, and assess them by using prototypes.
In the process of prototyping a product, the designer always considers a multitude of factors based on which
he will adapt his prototyping methods. Prototyping an idea with a functional, fine polished prototype would
not make sense when the idea is just in its beginning state, because there will be many changes to come. A
low-fidelity prototype would make more sense to test basic idea mechanics and gain some data from testing. At
contrary, presenting an idea with a rudimentary prototype to an audience which has to decide on supporting it,
can be an unsensible choice, because the audiences’ perception of it can be affected negatively by it.
An interesting discussion point was the use of the prototype as a tool to build your final product on. In some
fields of design, it makes sense to start out with a hi-fi prototype, just because the final product will be
resulting from just improving on this one prototype. Graphic design is a good example there.
User eperience can be described as the sum of all experiences the user has around using the product or service.
Beginning with the aquirement process, then unpacking/installing the product, using it, repairing it, and disposing it.
This is an important relisation to make as a designer, because we are ultimatively responsible for every part
of this experience, and we should try our best to enhance it as good as possible. But how do we evaluate the
problems the user could have in experiencing the product? At first, you should start not just considering the
product itself, but empathizing with the User and consider every part of his interaction with the Design. For
example having developed a service for video conferences the company could include guidelines about workplace
ergonomy to prevent discomfort in use of the service.
Testing can be an effective means of evaluating
the Users Experience in using a product, and is nowadays considered a basic necessity in the implementation of
a design. But with all user testing there is a risk of being biased in the testing procedure.
With nearly all our communication and shifting to digital channels, it makes sense to ask ourselves about
their workings and the possibilities we have to make these «Abstract» channels more Intimate and close to the
real world experience.
The issue I see with digital communication is the Abstraction of the process. This Abstraction comes from our
interaction with the computer becoming evermore quick, efficient, and reliant on processing information /
tasks simultaneously. This process changes our natural behaviour of interaction, with decreased attention
span, less distraction resistance and less overall patience for things perceived as boring or not demanding
enough.
With the digital communication, a lot of detail in our communication is lost. Sound and video
quality is not able to reproduce the fine tonal or behavioural nuances, that we are used to interpreting from
face to face communication. A lot of micro interactions go missing which really cuts on the experience of
Communication.
We started out with a retrospective on the development of computers, when looking at the first «computers» as research projects, mostly based in science applications, it became apparent that the use of these machines must have been highly complicated, specially regarding the corresponding interfaces and their size. With ongoing technological development, computers became more powerful and more advanced, and a commercial interest began to develop. With the need to sell their computers to users, manufacturers began to think more about the User. The field of human computer interaction emerged. In 1967, Willy Brandt held his first speech in color TV, and the technological development found its way into everyones’ household.
In 1973, Xerox developed the first computer with a graphic user interface, controlled by a keyboard and a mouse. This development opened the possibility of ordinary people to interacting with a computer without having to learn complex procedures. The field of personal computers was born, where computers were developed with the specific need of being intuitive and manageable by everyone.
In 1975, the term Human-computer interaction was used first, and with the term, a new field of research was
opened.
HCI could be described as a combination of:
- Computer Science: the study of processes that
interact with data and that can be represented as data in the form of programs.
- Human Factors
Engineering
(HFE): the act of studying how people use systems or equipment in order to design, develop, and create
technology that is safer, more effective.
- Cognitive Science: the interdisciplinary study of the mind,
intelligence, and learning, including research in psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and artificial
intelligence.
As interaction designers, it is really important be able to empathise on the user and
research on its needs and behaviours. That is the reason for us to look at this field of computer science and
learn from it.
When looking at the development of HCI, we can observe an increasing presence of computers, to the point,
where one can not escape its «ubiquitous» implementation in our society. By looking at Mark Weisers definition
of «Ubiquitous Computing», we can see some nuances in the terms definition, and try to look at it in a less
negative connotation. He envisioned the term as a technology embedded in the physical environment, providing
useful services without disturbing the natural flow of human activities. This definition brings up an
important part of HCI and the implementation of technology in our society, saying that it should not disturb
the natural flow of human activities.
Beginning his presentation, Aathmigan made a distinction between technology used in sci-fi and technology used in real design. He described the sci-fi technologies aimed at «entertainment» purposes and the real design aimed at «functionality». For myself, I totally disagree on this distinction, especially regarding the further contents of his presentation where he went on using various interfaces in movies and comparing them to their real world inspirations or imitations, and thus contradicting himself. In my opinion, Design exists because people use their imagination to create new things that are better in aesthetics and functionality. Which are essentially the same rules as applied to Sci-fi technology created for entertainment. We might not have the necessary means to realise those ideas, but we might someday arrive there. I think of Sci-fi as a really fascinating branch of speculative design, especially regarding the resources and effort that modern productions put into creating new concepts and evermore realistic scenarios to show in their movies. Even by looking at all the technologies that have been utopian imagination when they were shown in movies first and realising that many of them are reality now, we realise the huge impact that sci-fi had on the development of technology and design.
When people stand in front of modern art, they often ask themselves what the artwork the see has to do with
their definition of «art». Good examples to talk about are Mark Rothkos abstract paintings or Marcel Duchamps
ready-mades, where people have difficulties to see the artwork not as a work in a socio-cultural background,
but
soley value the work by its artisanal and aesthetic qualities. In the example of Duchamps Fountain, we can
learn
about the influences that cultural techniques have on each other. The term of «defamiliarisation» can be
traced
back to the russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky who described it by analysing Tolstoy, as following:
This is in essence, what had
great influence
on
the progress of Art as we know it today. Artists began to deviate from the traditional understanding of art
als
a craft soley for the purpose of aesthetics, because following a convention that is familiar to everyone
results
in an automated perception which will become dull and Familiar to all the previous perception. By deviating
from
these conventions, one creates a process of «defamiliarisation» which leads the consumer to questioning their
understanding and convention of normality. To come back to the example of Duchamps’ fountain one can see that
removing the pissoir from its usual context to a piece of art, he is «defamiliarizing» the viewers
understanding
of art from the artisanal and aesthetic point of view to the socio-cultural point of view.
Applying this
technique to design practice allows the designer to break out of the boundaries set by the projects’
iconography
and his perspective containing many subconscious biases.
The readings were once again talking about methods and processes in designing. One reading collected
different approaches to visualize methods or ways to find solutions in a process by using flowcharts and
diagrams. One that was particularly interesting applied this solution finding process to Bushs’ middle east
politics, resulting in a rather absurd, sarcastic and simplified image of geopolitical decision-making.
Generally the authors seem to have a fascination with war machinery and its role as an innovation leader in
design methologies to allow for greater efficiency in killing people. (Titan missile system and improvement in
tank ergonomics.
We then went on to discuss about the background information necessary to evaluate a texts credibility and
being able to reflect its contents differentiated.
Some of the important aspects that we collected were:
Year of publication,
Place of Publication
Profession / background (including gender, age, work experience etc.) amounts to trust
and credibility of this person
Nationality, ethnical background, location (environment the text was written in)
Related works, literature, references (diversity of those), data being used (accuracy and
credibility, peer reviews)
Writing style and format chosen (manifesto, journal, scientific paper, case studies, autobiographies
etc.)
Motivation, audience targeted, sponsoring
Regarding the upcoming Presentation exercises in the following classes, we collected and discussed important
aspects of good presentation technique and preparation.
A small selection:
Short introduction of yourself and your topic
good preparation of the content:
do not use notes or at least just as few as possible
Using images instead of too much text: denote it
with title, author, year, source
Involve the audience: eye contact, questions, short
activities
Most people are looking puzzled when I respond «Interaction Design» to their question regarding my studies
at ZHdK. By now, I never found a satisfactory one sentence answer to that question. As a first exercise in the
course, we tried collecting some of its definitions and tasks based on our own understanding of the term
«Interaction Design»
Interaction design adresses the following design-related fields:
Interaction design is adressing the connection between human and technology
Interaction design is adressing the connection between human and human trough technological means
Interaction design is adressing the usability and affordance of a technology
Interaction design aims to improve our use of technology
Interaction design aims to explore our perception and its technological opportunities
Interaction design aims to improve our society by technological means
Interaction design tries to imagine the future of our relationship with technology
After this discussion, we got the exercise to go through our last group project and reflect on our work
methodology and the different steps of our process. We discovered that
every group had more or less the same approach to their creative process. This process can be broken down to
the following steps:
investigation/ confronting topic, literature, related work
play/ prototyping, learning skills,
trial
and error
everyday life/ real world. pop culture, observation, discourses
tensions/
art vs.
design, individual vs team, compromises
enactment/ talks, demos, workshops, documentation,
submission
dissemination/ legacy, deliveries, sharing lessons learned, entrepreneurship,