designswarm thoughts

I had a fairly shocking meeting with a man who was supposedly interested in redesigning Youth centres in the UK. This sounded great to me especially because the landscape of childhood now, with the addition of technology, is very different from my own. Growing up in the 80s I only had contact with technology later on in life through my first walkman at age 11 maybe, my first computer at the age of 15 and was introduced to it through school computers when i was young, and then DOS and Windows 3.1 classes in Saudi Arabia. Ok so maybe i didnt have a classic childhood to begin with, but that’s not the point… : )

Now children have access to cell phones at age 6, a computer present in the house from birth, and they probably try to suck on an iPod shuffle once or twice…Age compression they call it in large toy companies, or the changes that children have gone through that make their traditional toys irrelevant more quickly, is an example of this change.

As children grow up, their social dynamics are now shaped by the tools they have: cell phones, texting, emails, chat, online communities such as MySpace (or Bebo in the UK) etc…

With all this in mind you would think that anyone attempting to redesign Youth Centres would be interested , even a little, in the ways that “growing up” have changed. You would also think that as an adult designer, you would want to have a very user-centrered design approach to that problem. Why aren’t joung kids using these youth centres. What is their perception of them. What so they seek elsewhere that the centre doesn’t provide? What would they like out of an urban structure that is supposedly catering to them? Those would be just a few of a miriad of quesions that one could ask kids of all ages. Wouldn’t this be the perfect way to make sure you’re not perpetrating the “patriarchal designer” model… the “i know best” model which has proven to fail and has led to the web-2.0-user-generated- content generation of applications to emerge?

But no. I sat there in Greenwitch park listening to a man who thinks that when designing youth centres “people don’t know what they want”, “children are not my client, society is my client”, “i dont understand the web”, “we need to work with experts in child development”, ” a child doesnt know what it needs to grow up properly”. I’m not saying that i disagree with all of what he was suggesting… but this is such a dangerous approach to take. It was like talking to a product designer who doesn’t know that people use his product. It was like going back in time and as i spoke to him about Fresh Start and experience prototyping, iterative design, etc… I saw how far removed I am from the normal world. I think I need to dumb things down these days for anyone outside of my field to understand me. I’m not sure what this means for me as a professional, but what I do know is that as Ezio Manzini (who I admire greatly) said :

“[Start with the premise that] people are smart” and what you will design with ultimately be better.

A few days ago, some of my ex-idii colleagues started an email back and forth about the general state of affairs in the US with a ridiculous dose of Canadian-envy. I hate these types of conversations. People like to think of Canada as a “sleeping giant” in my industry, generally though we’re usually thought of as nice and naive people… as if coming from a country where nature is part of our heritage and ladnscape made our IQ sink and our sensibility became something laughable. There’s nothing enviable about a country that only makes the news when sad events happen. There’s nothing enviable here…

Today, I wish i were home.

I have been traveling quite a lot in my life and i think that i will work on illustrating my travels in different ways. One must note that I am only including my moves and not my touristic traveling. So as I leave Amsterdam tomorrow, this will be my 14th move… ouch…

So this is example one… too stale, this might be the perfect excuse to hack a Google map!

Here is an eclectic collection of my favorite spots of Amsterdam after the past 2 months of explorations:

1. Dutch bikes (even if i barely owned one), they’re just so damn beautiful.

2. Japanese Pancake World, pancakes the true japanses way, the only restaurant in Europe.

3. Cafe Latei on Zeedijk 143, a very cute coffee place that sells all sorts of vintage 70s stuff from France.

4. “De Tuin” in Rotterdam, lovely spot next to a lake with great oak trees around.

5. Smaak in Rotterdam as well.

6. 11 a very trendy bar/restaurant/club with a terrace with big beanbags overlooking Amsterdam, the view is amazing.

7. Zandvoort a lovely beach 30 minutes train ride away from Amsterdam.

8. Soupenzo for the best lunch thick soups ever (try the tuscany tomato one or the roquefort and potato).

9. Fet, the butcher on Zeedijk, has the “Broodje Zeedijk” or the best sandwich that i’ve had in a long time.

10. New King a chinese takeaway on Zeedijk 115. Good duck but watch out for the bones… big plates, definitely not for a light lunch.

11. De Jaren an absolutely beautiful and chic café-restaurant with view on the canal on Nieuwe Doelenstraat.

12. The Stedelijk Museum’s beautiful space and architecture. I went to see Airworld and Saskia Olde Wolbers’s The Falling Eye. They were both great and well curated.

More than a year ago, I worked, along with Dave Chiu and Haiyan Zhang on designing Fresh Start a service design project to prevent obesity that I am very proud of. The elevator pitch for it is:

“Two friends sign up for the Fresh Start service and make a commitment to cook with each other on a regular basis. On scheduled days, the Fresh Start service delivers to each of their homes a recipe, along with the required ingredients. Each friend receives a recipe with a different half covered. Using communication devices in their kitchens, each friend talks the other through their half of the recipe. At the end of cooking, the friends remove the sticker to reveal the complete recipe.

The Fresh Start service helps people develop healthy food habits they can utilize throughout their lives. By activating existing social networks, the Fresh Start service enables both the cultivation of routine and education through a process of learning by doing”

Curious? Well we’ve presented the project to the Design Council, TechnoGym and wrote a paper for CHI 2006 and now we’re presenting it at the poster session of Emergence, a service design conference going on in 2 weeks that Dave will be attending as well.

All details of the project will be released soon as we are also putting together a website for the conference.

I am now sitting in my cozy Amsterdam apartment for the last week and I thought I’d update you fine folks as to what I’m up to in the next month or so. First and foremost I’ll be relocating (thanks to a project with Blast) to Newbury, near London, for the month of Septmeber and so definitely spending most of my weekends in town!

I can’t wait, there are so many things happening in London I want to see, like the London Design Festival, friends to visit, and pints to be had.

Then in mid-october I will be attending the Nearfield communications workshop at NordiCHI (although I won’t be attending the conference itself as it is really expensive). I wrote a position paper entitled “Responsible design of connected objects” which is very much based on my thesis project Stint and a reflection on the way, as industrial designers we should consider the opportunities of RFID use and their impact on perception, use and disposal. I will be going there a day early perhaps to have a look around Oslo so if you’re there, ping me!