designswarm thoughts

Interesting how this all started with a simple email conversation with Régine talking about some conversations I was having with ex-students and observers in London about the Interim show at the RCA and then WHAM… everything explodes… she writes no less than 6 posts about the show and a whole vibrant and slightly aggressive conversation starts on her posts, Handcircus and here on a post 3 months old.

This is good, the less we talk about what we’re doing, the more chances we are of diluting the field of interaction design which is only 25ish years old… this is a young field. There is no such thing as “traditional interaction design” as there is no tradition to follow, this field has always followed people and the technologies that have surrounded them both of which have changed radically in a very short amount of time. Anyway, it’s fun to get some action on this website for once!

• Doors 9: Juice
  I’m the blog concierge for the next Doors of Perception and will also be attending. First time in India, very exciting!
  (tags: conference india Doors)

You can find the details of the workshop i’m conducting on service design with industrial design students on the workshop blog.

My introduction presentation here (pdf)

Closing presentation here here.

Enjoy!

• designswarm thoughts » Blog Archive » Dilution of a field
  Started a shitstorm apparently with a 3 month old post! The internet is atemporal
  (tags: interaction design critique)
• handcircus » Blog Archive » Design Interactions Work in progress show
  Shitstorm part 2 on interaction design 2.0… A comment by Tony Dunne no less, i think Regine tipped him off : )
  (tags: interaction design critique)

• Le Willi Waller - Têtes à claques
  Quebec humour on a yourtube-like platform… highlarious… if you know how to speak “québecois”…sorry french wont do, its totally different ;)
  (tags: video Quebec)
• Extreme luxury for the jet set
  Extremely interesting trends for the uber rich of the bespoke products. This is showing an interesting trend away from the industrial age and slowly towards smaller and more catered services. Material for an upcoming rant for sure.
  (tags: luxury trend service)

I finally de-lazied a bit and am slowly putting up videos of my past works, there are a lot of them but with Youtube I no longer have any excuse : P

The Hungries videos.

Ok so this was the least carbon neutral flight ever, but I spent 16 hours in Helsinki and my camera was acting up so some key words/things for me to remember form the little I saw:

- I’m definitely staying at the Klaus K hotel again.
- They only serve brown sugar
- They can’t really do croissants
- They had salt flakes on the tables
- Jimbo is the name of a big supermarket chain i think
- Finland is the home of the Moomins
- They have little plastic boxes hanging from buildings with the address numbers (not sure if they light up at night)
- People have ash blond colored hair, literally, a pretty color i haven’t seen elsewhere.
- Aika means time
- Kiitos means thank you
- They played jazz classics (Nat Cole, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald) during the flight on Finnair, first time i had a soundtrack to a flight, felt like we were in a lounge waiting rather than on a plane, interesting.

There, a little cultural enlightenment for all. designswarm, travelling so you don’t have to : P

• Etherhill
  Great night photography from my friend Mike
  (tags: photography Amsterdam)

• handcircus » Blog Archive » Design Interactions Work in progress show
  Not to say “I told you so” but some interesting insights in the downfall of interaction design on an academic level.
  (tags: RCA design interaction)
• Real Life in Second Life from Guardian Unlimited: Technology
  Physical manipulations in the real world and consequences in Second Life from the wonderful Matt Biddulph
  (tags: secondlife physical computing)
• DIAGRAM :: LeisureArts
  Would make a great series of t-shirts
  (tags: visualization network trend)

As I mentioned previously I’ll be teaching a service design workshop at the Higher Institute of Product Development in Antwerp next week. This is the brief I wrote for them:

“Industrial designers, in light of our growing environmental concerns, are being asked to be more and more “green” or eco-friendly, choose the right materials to make more biodegradable, easy to recycle or disassemble objects. Another wave of thought though, fueled by the likes of John Thackara, Ezio Manzini and Live|work advocate for the development of services where objects become “touch points” to an experience or a service being provided. Who you are should be defined as what you have access to and not what you own in this model.

In this workshop we will be working to dig a little deeper in the roles that objects and products take on within services. We will try to design services, the objects that allow these services to exist and will explore some presentation and design techniques such as experience prototyping and video prototyping.

Useful for the workshop: Camera and/or Videocamera”

I’ll be working on the actual layout of the workshop and the presentations I will make at the beginning of the week and post them up this weekend.

• Passport rush is on as U.S. deadline nears
  Sleepy canada wakes up to the fact that they now need a passport to cross the American border. I’m surprised this wasn’t imposed before. I always used my passport to cross over. The US isnt a province for cripe’s sake.
  (tags: Canada USA border passport)
• Harper, Charest denounce Royal over comments about Quebec
  Sègolènre just opened her mouth and shoved her foot in it. The first rule of soverainty in Quebec is that there is no soverainty and we’ve kindof accepted that by now even if it sounded nice in the 60s.
  (tags: Quebec France politics independance)
• Touching the future
  Nice competition on NFC technologies from Timo Arnall’s research group “Touch”
  (tags: competition NFC mobile)
• Putting people first » Futurist John Seely Brown: To fix education, think Web 2.0
  Dumbest and most uninformed statement ever: “The evolution of the Internet can facilitate this approach, he said. Web 2.0 tools, such as wikis and blogs, make information sharing and content creation easier.”
  (tags: web2.0 blog wiki)
• Zazaziza
  Interaction design firm from my 2 friends: Alejandro Zamudio Sanchez and Dana Gordon. Great ideas and crazy design
  (tags: interaction design physical computing)

“You do not interfere in the affairs of a friendly country, you do not wish for the dismantling of a friendly country. Canada does not wish for the dismantling of France and France certainly does not wish for the dismantling of Canada.”

My country is entertaining.

The building in which i spent a year (should have spent 2) is for rent…. there are no words for the anger and bitterness i feel.

Via the excellent Experientia.

• Convivio Network- LIFT interview
  Interview about the networking event of the year, that's all it is, a repeat of last year with mostly the same speakers. Was nice, but not worth going to twice unfortunately.
  (tags: LIFT conference Geneva)

• MICHAEL WOLF | PHOTOGRAPHY | HONGKONG
  Absolutely beautiful and compelling exhibition on toy production in China. Makes you think: if we ever get “sustainable” will these people be out of jobs and starve? Can we make this idea of “the experience economy” be worthwhile for everyone, and not jus
  (tags: photography China toys productions)
• Announcing the Apple iProduct
  Another good one in the ibitch category
  (tags: iBitch Apple)