designswarm thoughts

Ok so here are the final official details about the end of year show!:

Limited Edition

You are invited to experience 17 thesis projects from the final graduating class of Interaction Design Institute Ivrea

Opening: June 7th 2006 (18:30-23:00)
Exhibition: June 8/9/10th 2006 (noon-20:00)

Where: Galvanotecnica Bugatti
Via Gaspare Bugatti, 7
Zona Tortona
Milano 20144

More details: http://milano.interaction-ivrea.it/
info@interaction-ivrea.it
www.galvanotecnicabugatti.it

I’m finally done writing.. which says nothing about the work i have left to do to prepare for the end of year show…hmm so much to do so little time.

You can download my full 52-pages-in-single-spacing report here or read this handy resumé : )

Stint
By Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino

With the global growing concern around sustainability and over-consumption we find ourselves having to question our relationships with high-tech personal devices and the business models that support that industry. Using the mp3 player as a case study, this thesis proposes to explore the design opportunities that surface when we design high tech devices with forgotten behaviors, community, status and emotional attachment in mind, using textiles as a way to display history and emotionally rich platforms. Stint is the result of this.

A music sharing service made of physical tokens that represent links to people’s virtual music that are coupled to a widget that talks to the main music application. Each “stint” represents one friend and is made of leather. By giving it to a friend, one links it to the main player, collecting the stints into a network. By pressing each one, a song from that person’s music collection that she has sent it to you, is played. A song can be sent to a friend by holding both the stint containing that music and the one representing the friend we want to send it to. As you interact with the stints the ones with a richer interaction get used and worn, showing history of the relationship. The online widget will show the listening the origin of each song as well as who you have sent it to and how often they have listened to it since receiving it. This builds a visualization that will help you choose better or more appropriate music for that person or to discover what they’re musical tastes are. Stint creates a meaningful relationship between the user, the container, the content and how they affect each other, allowing for richer and long-term relationships to exist with high-tech devices.

Stumbled upon this interesting collection of RFID-related conferences this year around the USA and Europe.

Oh my god I’m graduating in a month!!! So much to do. I have a review on tuesday afternoon to present to my advisors Jan-Christoph Zoels and Heather Martin what i intend to present and develop for the exhibition.

Basically I’m thinking of doing the following:

-3 Video scenarios
- presenting screen shots of an interface
- developing a working prototype of the products
-clearly presenting the service around these touch points

Oh and i have to hand in my thesis report for the 22nd…gulp…

This has been a question that has been on my mind for the past couple of weeks whenever i’ve needed a paper bag to help me breathe (which occurs often enough these days considering i have 4 weeks left to this thesis) or was interviewed by tristam sparks for his thesis prototyping. A mantra of the school, thanks to Gillian Crampton Smith, its founder has always been “JEP” Just Enough Prototyping. This means that you need to illustrate your idea with the right amount of prototyping, and not push it too far, this also implies that you are able to prototype your project yourself and you will know when to say “when” in a way. I find myself however in a situation where i could go 2 ways with prototyping: 1. video prototyping the service i am designing using props and smoke and mirrors, or 2. spend an indecent amount of time trying to come up with a functional prototype that ultimately i do not have the skills to build and will only be asking Massimo Banzi to help me with this.

This is part of my frustration with considering technology in design within the school. I see a difference between understanding what technology can do and designing within those constraints and being limited by what i can personally implement. It’s as if my school was expecting me to develop a skill-set some people spent years developing and that by being able to hack a fridge, i’d somehow be able to infuse more value and meaning into what i am designing.

At this point in time i think that video scenarios have a much bigger chance of explaining the value of my project and the interactions through time than a functional prototype which might be just one touch point of the service. So frack it as my friends would say : )

It was about time that this came out, i mean i initially thought that that was how it worked to begin with! Podcasts on the go using to be broadcast within 100 meters with these mini FM transmitters.

I found a paper written by Kay Romer called Infrasture for Virtual Counterpart of real World Objects which is quite interesting for my thesis. The paper deals with RFID and the relationship between what is tagged and an online presence, which is also what i am trying to achieve by using active RFID tags in my dedicated musical elements. I would like to have small active RFID chips inside tokens that would be exchanged between people to allow a link to a person’s on the go use of another person’s virtual musical gifts.

I’m also looking at the use of RFID and especially am interested in the hacking of it, how a person could perhaps remotely abuse of the system and make anonymous musical donations perhaps.

I found this great servic design conference at Carnegie Mellon, through Jan-Christoph my secondary advisor for my thesis and this just makes me want to grab a ticket to the US and go AWOL for 2 days during our exhibition : P

I especially like the breakdown that was given which illustrates perfectly the different aspects of service design, better than what i was taught actually:

Discover:

Territory Maps
Environment or servicescape
Stakeholder models
Process maps and customer journeys
Touchpoints
Core competency and brand vision
Broader context for the service design
Competitors and peers

Synthesize and Construct:

Customer typology (personas) and culture
Mapping service ecologies
Service moments, string and event concepts (processes)
Experience prototyping through scenarios and enactments
Drafting experience strategies (values, tools, etc. across touchpoints)
Service blueprinting
Service testing and implementation toward integrated service experiences

I want to get sponsored for life so i could go to events like this!!! Where have all the curious investors gone? : )

Will my night-stand ever clear up (and why would someone read to sleep is beyond me, reading makes me stay up all night)? A new book from Dan Saffer is coming out soon called Designing for Interaction: Creating smart applications and clever devices,and i can’t wait to read it!

I like Nokia sometimes, they’re very direct about the R&D work they do and The Culture of Mobility website is a great way for them to mark their territory in terms of interests and research. i especially like some of the articles about music sharing such as this article entitled Trends: permission to play which poses a critical (yet obviously corporate) point of view of the state of music sharing at the moment:

“But ultimately, illegal downloading will most likely be eradicated with a combination of methods, perhaps the most important being education: hammering home that music is not free and artists, however wealthy they might be, should be paid for their endeavors just like anyone else.”

I guess that in my thesis I’m trying to shift the business model from music and its individual elements to the notion of accessibility and charging people to have access to certain functions through the use of tokens. I’m hoping in this way to change the paradigm of music sharing and make companies realize that DRM is actually hurting their image and their potential to accept and make their mart of the market grow because of it.

Oh my, this is the first time there’s a stellar evening associated with the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design is organizing an event with senior members called Voices of Design which take place on May 3rd and is moderated by my once-upon-a-time professor and experience designerLuc Courchesne. Don’t miss it, thoughts about the world of industrial design and how far its gone…

So because of feedback during the exam, i decided to sign up for Last.fm and see what all the fuss is about.

Good things:
1- Interesting ways to surf for music and good indication of the popularity of a song
2- I like the simplicity of the interface and browsing through the different elements of the “service” if one can really call it that, i’m not sure at this point.
3- Kind of a direct way to buy music, not so dissimilar to iTunes
4- I like the friends/neighbours category.

Elements that might need improvement:
1- How on earth do you find someone with your tastes??? Very hard to properly browse for users although each user has an interesting profile. i think that this is the feature that lacks the most innovation for tis service. It’s also extremely anonymous in the visual display of users, no sense of where users are from, and can one really look for someone based on location? isn’t the great thing about music to be able to hook up with people who share your interests and not your location?

I think that i am definitely no interested in making this service i am developing a way for people to browse other users as a main element. I am much more interested in displaying and developing a platform for music exchange that documents use and history of the listening habits, catering to small communities of people who know each other, are flirting, are using music as a way to discover what they are about. This, i think is the best way to discover someone and be introduced to new music.