designswarm thoughts

1. London doesn’t want you here, which is why the weather is always shit. It’s your job to carry an umbrella at ALL TIMES. Even on those sunny-looking days. It’s a trick, don’t lt it get you.

2. Always remember to comment on how shit the weather is, it’ll make you agreeable to the locals.

3. If you’re Canadian, when accused of being American, enjoy those few moments of embarrassment the person will go through, while finding a reason they really loooove Canada and have been skiing there once.

4. London still doesn’t want you here, which is why it’ll try driving you off the sidewalk by put half of its inhabitants in your way on Oxford Street. You need to develop an equally agressive and fast pace and directional skills usually required for video games.

5. Alcohol is social glue here. If you don’t want to become a functional alcoholic, and antisocial, make sure to pay for the next round, but leave enough in your glass to not end up drinking at everyone’s pace. (Remember, glasses are larger here as well so when they serve you a “large glass” of wine, that’s actually a quarter of a bottle.)

6. You are here  because you WANT to be here, not because the quality of life is high, believe me it isn’t .

It’s election day tomorrow in London and it’s been sort of entertaining and depressing at the same time to follow the campaign (I’ve been keeping track of the one on the other side of the pond through the excellent Bagnews notes).
It’s almost like we’re collectively confused about the difference between entertainment and politics.
Chris’s excellent links on this issue here.

(Disclaimer: My company Tinker.it was sponsoring this event)

Few events in London care about defining interaction design like thishappend does. It’s third edition took place last Tuesday at the Roxy Bar near London Bridge and in a matter of an hour or so really framed the current challenges the field faces in industry.

First and foremost thishappened is an opportunity for interaction designers to leave their laptops and post-its behind, have a drink and a good chat with each other as there are few other “industry events” (this one sold out in 2 hours) and only that in itself is extremely valuable.

Jussi Ängeslevä, Schulze & Webb, Kenichi Okada and Snug & Outdoor had been invited to speak about a project, it’s challenges and the lessons learnt, a format we don’t see enough and that allows for much reflection on the design process. What I found great in this edition is that each presenter ended up talking about a different aspect of the project and creative experience.

1. The problem with remote projects is…

Jussi started the evening by talking about Art+Com’s project Duality an interactive walkway surrounded by water which, when someone would walk on it, would display ripples of light that would then extend out to create real ripples in the water. This sounds fairly straightforward, but the project was entirely conducted between their Berlin office and Tokyo, through a myriad of emails, testing by the japanese team on the other end, exchange of videos to see if the theory was proving right or wrong. Sounds tedious no? I asked Jussi if he had found there were any additional cultural issues in overseing the project, he talked about the fact that the Japanese were always quite keen to say everything was alright, and not talk about having any issues, until the very last minute. Lessons were certainly learnt in this process and it was great to get to hear it first hand.

2. Design in R&D

Jack was up next to talk about Olinda the social radio project for the BBC. It was a lovely and simple presentation of their challenge in mashing up an online concept of sociability into an everyday object. Coming from a typography background, I could see why he made some of his aesthetic choices. I also think this presented the array of challenges that face you when the outcome of a project is something you’re not entirely familiar with (even if the thought process is) : the learning curve, the time you take in understanding the implications of your design, the way in which your design decisions impact the use of an object, are all part of a challenge that presents itself when you are master and commander of the project. It’s also something that rarely happens in commercial projects in equally large companies like the BBC as those challenges would be broken down into tasks that would be divided up among “specialists” and glued together by project management. ugh. I think a lot of people in the room felt envious of Jack and Matt’s freedom.

3. The utopia of design schools

A similar freedom can be found in design schools. As Kenichi presented his project Animal Superpowers I was having flashbacks of Ivrea. Quick, efficient, with no sleep and little food and no money, the best ideas are often created, prototyped and presented in no time at all. The resources are part of the school’s infrastructure and materials available everywhere. The deadline of the work-in-progress show allows him and Chris to present one of the most successful pieces of their course. The caveat was subtle though, as they struggled to find children to use their capacity-enhancing toys, and showed a picture where Kenichi was pretending to be one of the kids. I can totally relate to that struggle, as designing for children can be one of the most elating activities and at the same time full of restrictions and limitations. When you’re doing a quick project user research is the least of your worries.

4. Implementing is awesome

Access to children wasn’t a problem for Hattie, who presented a great documentation of Snug and Outdoor’s work on London playgrounds. It was great to hear that they had been thinking about undirected and open play way before the topic was an internet meme. Although they label themselves as artists, their approach is a user-centered one and captured everyone’s imagination by demonstrating the different prototypes they had designed and tried on children. This eventually led them to receive NESTA funding and manufacture the Snug Kit. I overheard someone say “Why couldn’t they have just used trees and grass instead. What’s the point?” and to that I reply: show me a school with a playground that isn’t made of concrete. Their challenge was in dealing with the existing social infrastructures that children build in the schools of today not the landscape design.

The fact that the project was tested, changed, accepted, and manufactured made most people in the room clearly envious. The creative process in interaction design can often feel limited to one-off events, screen-based interactions and generally projects that are very “precious” and need tending, so seeing real products being made with the kind of creative independence and scope that Hattie and her partner had was a breath of fresh air.

This crescendo concluded the official part of the event which turned into a mixer of 60 or so people having drinks, catching up and perhaps talking about where it is all going.

In anycase, I look forward to the next edition in June and hope you’ll join me too.

“Web one b, not my Webb”

Jack from Schulze & Webb at thishappened 3 last night.

If you’re wondering what I’m up to, I’m spending most of my days this week walking around the London design festival, so go have a look at my pics and comments.

Most “normal” people, when they relocate, take a comfortable flight, try to minimize their stress levels and enjoy unpacking with a glass of white wine and a nice meal. Not this girl.

I woke up last wednesday at 6 in the morning to take a cab with my flatmate D’arcy to Schipol to drop my worldly possessions packed into a suitcase and a travelbag, then took the train back into town, at around 8, waited for the office to open, spent the day there, stepped out into another cab at 3 30, took a flight to Stansted, took a train into town, kissed Matt hello, then hopped back on a bus to attend ThisHappened.org, the first of a series of talks, featuring distinguished speakers, about the practice of interaction design.

I was invited to attend by one of the organisers: Chris O’Shea and felt very honored, considering it’s a “50 people only” event.

What happens when you step out of a plane is that you tend to forget you’ve stepped into someone else’s culture and this also applies to professional circles. I definitely felt I had stepped in someone else’s living room for a few hours as there was a homey feeling that everyone knew each other and knew who so-and-so and thingypoo were. Jokes about certain companies and people were flying left and right, which set off my mental to-google list.

The highlight of the evening was of course Moritz Waldemeyer’s presentation of his work with fashion designer Hussein Chalayan’s on his spring/summer 2007 collection. If you’ve been hiding under a rock in the past 6 months, well let me point to the recent NYT article written about him. A poster-boy for the technology-saavy designery crowd, he’s been working with the likes of Zaha Hadid, Ron Arad and Yves Behar helping their technological and interactive wet dreams come true. As he went on to explain the grueling task of sewing electronics onto the dress of a beautiful model, I could hear the jaws of many a people in the audience drop. The room was of course, mostly full of men and some moody looking women in great skirts (very London).

There was definitely designer-envy. As a professional, you don’t often get to get your hands that dirty. I know people in the field who do production work by spending weeks on Illustrator, so the picture that Moritz’s career paints would make anyone drop their dayjobs and go study engineering for a few years.

His presentation was followed by a man whose work I’ve always respected immensely: Durrel Bishop, now co-founder of Luckybite, also former head of the Interaction design program at the RCA. He went on to present the excruciating process of designing for cell phones for a project he did for Mixi, the Japanses MySpace. Always witty and gracious, he lead us through the the process of developing a cell phone photo-based community tool and the hurdles of dealing with hardware and software for cellphones to build a prototype.

Set on the upper floor of a pub, with the rest of the town watching football (I heard Liverpool Manchester United lost) this event was cozy and engaged enough to be worth repeating monthly. If I’m lucky enough to be invited again, I will surely keep reporting as the stories behind interaction design projects definitely deserve their 15 minutes of fame.

Official pictures for the event here.

Ok, so I’m sure this has been a little confusing for people to figure out where I am on any given week, but now it’ll be easy. As of next week, I am relocating to Amsterdam till late spring 2007. Hopefully I’ll find a cozy place of my own, I’m getting a bit tired of not having a place to buy plants for and decorate. So if you’re in that neck of the woods, come and say hi!

On my list of things to do: Make your own wearable workshop at Mediamatic, hunt for a flat, and buy a winter coat.

Hanging out in London cafés as i am these days, i often position myself next to windows (whenever i’m in buses, i always somehow unconsciously end up next to the emergency exit windows but that’s another story) and find myself staring out and observing how people interact with their surroundings. I’ve started noticing the way that people use architecture for flirtatious reasons or as a way to play out dramatic events of their personal lives… for example:

1. Sitting in the bus, I saw a young 20-something couple crouched at the foot of 2 marble columns, each of them sitting in that little space that somehow became suddenly private having one of those “we need to talk” conversations. The woman was lecturing while the young man was staring at his feet.

2. Sitting in Starbucks at Bishopsgate, where i can usually be found, I was staring out onto the huge office building in front. Every woman that would come out to smoke would ultimately turn to the glass-plated windows and stare at themselves as in a mirror in that “do i look fat in this?” kind-of-way, oblivious to what was going on around them.

3. Waiting for the train last week, I observed as a woman talking on her cell phone on the platform opposite me, in a business suit, leaned head first on the brick wall in front of her, shielding herself from being heard i guess, for about 15 minutes. It was almost like a praying position that the Jewish take on the Wall of Complaints in Jerusalem…

People, architecture, technology, all intertwine.

Oh my god, this is really the last time I get a stupidly early fllight. My easyjet flight was supposed to leave at 6:10AM so of course in the not-yet-so-european-frequent-flyer attitude I adopt at these times, I decide to try to get there early enough so I don’t have to go through the embarrassment of having my name called out 10 times over the microphone (something that a passenger going to Ibiza obviously didn’t have a problem with). So I went out for a drink and indian food with some of my favorite people in London and then proceeded back home to keep working on some CSS and finish packing, as one does at midnight on a tuesday evening : ) At 3:30 I got a taxi company to send a car that could have been the end of me… some guy looking like he had either just woken up or been out drinking pulled over in an unidentified black BMW, disheveled, with a thick east-european accent. I thought to myself, “better text Richard” so that if i get diced and thrown at the back of the car, he can proudly show the policemen his phone and say “look she texted me on her way out”…sigh… technology is useless sometimes : )

Anyway, I leave the taxi from hell behind at Gatwick airport and cue up forever at the Esyjet counter… this was the first time where I saw that they didn’t even have dedicated lanes for specific flights, it really is the McDonald’s of air travel. As usual I had extra luggage and had to dig deep down into pockets to find the remaining pounds i owned… then off to wait for yet another delayed flight… a oversized italian bus, that’s what that airline is like! We were delayed because a woman in a nearby Air Nigeria flight gave birth in the plane and they didn’t want anyone i the vicinity to take off… cute. I wonder if the baby is nigerian because of this?

After a fairly quick flight I get to Schipol and get my heavy luggage, but of course, to make this trip extra special, I had to get into the wrong train and end up in the middle of nowhere (ie Utrecht)… where I had to carry my luggage up and down stairs several times before figuring out which platform to take to Amsterdam Centraal… arriving there an hour later than planned, I got into a cab to my new apartment and of course he didn’t know the street… arghh. I think ill hitchhike next time, it’s simply not my time for travelling… good thing I’m in Amsterdam for a month at least. I need coffee…

Ok this whole internet dating thing is really creepy…I’ve gotten, in the span of less than 24 hours an impressive amount of “fans” in their mid to late 30s and already 3 messages… arghhh…I’m deleting my profile, this is too creepy. I think I’ll go back to walking around town on my own…

Off to Amsterdam tomorrow for an undetermined period of time in the company of Blast Radius.

Having a chat with my friend Jude while looking for a knob for her dresser on Portobello Road, we were catching up and we started talking about internet dating. Since I’ve been out of that loop and kindof stuck in the IDII bubble for so long, I wanted to know more. When I was in Montreal 2 years ago, internet dating was something you talked about in a half-apologetic hushed voice over coffee with your friends on a cold winter afternoon, so I was interested to know what a 28 year old working professional in London thought of the scene.

She’s been using Guardian Soulmates for a few dates. I thought it was interesting that in a way reading the Guardian and therefore using that particular dating site, you’re also making a political and social statement as to who you’d like to meet.

The homepage boasts: “Soulmates is a unique service so you can be sure that you will be part of a group of like-minded people” so already I guess you’re talking to people with similar political views although i pointed out to her that this wasn’t necessarily something that was a given seeing as you don’t have to prove to the site that you read the Guardian… although that would be funni, to have a secret question that you could only find in the Guardian as a security question to have access to the site…: )

Anyway, she’s been on a little more than 5 dates with different types of men and these are some of the things that she mentioned which could perhaps lead the design of better online dating services:

- The pictures posted are completely inaccurate, some men post pictures at weird angles, old pictures when they were younger and more athletic, the level of accuracy plays a lot on whether a woman will choose to meet someone in real life, so why delay the reaction? Let’s be honest here, men expect us to look great at any time and to show it all, why can’t men do the same? Maybe this could lead to using people’s webcams or cellphones… ie take a picture of yourself now and send it within the next 3 mns to this email adress or phone number…

- She ended up meeting people with completely different objectives, so what someone is actually interested in is something that needs granularity… check boxes are boring… “im looking to someone to write to” defines nothing at all and “let’s see what happens” sounds more like “let’s see what you are like in real life and then we’ll decide”… sigh… clarity is king!

- Jude actually met other women who were on the network as well and they started chatting about the men they met and quickly realized that they had actually dated the same men and so started discussing them and giving each other advice. Is there opportunity here for a community-aspect to this online dating thing… reputation? commenting? how many people on the network has that person “favorite”? I’m sure there have to be design opportunities here. Just like life…

So of course after this conversation I really had to give this thing a try, and see what the online interactions were. I really enjoy reading the Guardian and I think they’ve done a really nice job for their website recently but this was ridiculous…I really felt like i was filling in a shopping list of requirements and personal criteria. People don’t post up that many details about themselves and they’re actually little that would make you choose between one guy or the next apart from the picture! And of course this comes back to my first point…accuracy is key. The navigation is very poor and to be honest, information like “so and so is a 85% match” with blue ticks next to each item of the shopping list are really not helpful. The only items which seem to translate what a person is like are the photos, the voice message (but what exactly does one record on these…”testing one 2 one 2, this is my voice”?) and the personal rant entitled “why i would be a good pick”… there’s so much missing here…

So I think what I’ll do is stay on this service and use it as user research if i should ever actually find someone to go out for coffee with. I think it would be a great design exercise for the Guardian to reconsider this service and actually design it properly. They could actually become innovative in their supposed desire to “bring like-minded people together”.

Oh my god, I just saw the profile of someone i know! Gulp!

I don’t have a camera right now and this is really annoying. It’s an old cliché that “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” but this really made me think about the way that i document my travels (usually through Flickr) and what inspires me. Have we stopped reading? Are we a see-image-only society of designers? Is the bad joke about designers not reading true? I guess this blog is an exercise for me to try to defend myself. And what better opportunity than the “no-pictures-please” RCA show 2 I went to see yesterday! I have a few friends who graduated this year and I went to their commencement ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall on friday and had a peak at the show but quickly realized this was worth coming back to when there would be less people. So I went and spent about 3 hours walking around on Saturday, on 3 floors of all the RCA work from product design, through to animation and illustration and of course the interaction design work i simply couldn’t miss.

Surprisingly enough, there were a lot of industrial design work (or product , but whatever, i hate that term, will leave this for another rant) that started crossing the boundaries into the realm of what interaction design likes to think it is, which gives me some hope about the industry in general. Maybe they’re finally starting to understand what it means to live with objects and technology and that product design can be more than a teacup or a shelving system.

Robert Philips has designed a really lovely wooden stool that produces sounds when someone sits, crosses their legs and bounces it, taking the action of waiting for someone in public space and making it playful. Great portfolio as well and lots of work for children.

Lisa Stroux designed a fashionable bag that unfolds into a raincoat. The execution and attention to details is lovely.

The work of Shay Alkalay was really poetic and inspiring. From head-less teddy-bear-shaped garbage bags to stickers you iron on top of stains on clothing, I was really seduced by his work, and simple website too.

Manolis Kelaidis explored the future of the book with his “Bluebook” and designed a book with a printed circuit at the back which can be read and link to online content.

Emily Simpson designed a really sweet shelving system that uses folded cushions to hide things in. A very tactile experience, like that of searching for one’s pyjama under a pillow at night.

Jennifer Chan designed some nice vases out of Oasis foam called Disposable Vases, which reminded me of my work for the Commitment Radio. I’m not sure I approve of the waste involved in this idea though : )

Bernadette Deddens designed “Vicky had a hickey” a pump that sucks out the blood in the shape of a hickey if you want to fake your “popularity” with the opposite sex.

On the same subject, the work of Bjorn Franke really impressed me and reminds me of my friend Dana Gordon’s work at IDII. The project was a kit to make your loved one jealous, and another one was a wearable apparel that would give you a small shock whenever the color on the US National Terror Warning System changes.

Yet another project in the same line of thinking (i.e. bordering on art) is Kok Chian Leong’s work with the Rapid Carbonizer that renders unreadable anything that you write with a pencil by spraying the handwritten note with a spray of carbon.

The Cone Clock by Oscar Diaz is simply beautiful. It’s a cone that moves slowly in a circle as time goes by, drawing the line of time and so spatially making you aware of time and allowing you to manage your space with this intrusion, using it to your advantage to remind you of things to do at specific times of the day. Just brilliant!

Mathias Hahn designed a lovely coat hanger/ light called “the unexpected visitor” which highlights the presence of a guest in a dramatic way.

In the illustration department I really enjoyed Julie Hill’s 100 Scriptures as well of the rest of her graphic work. (love the Chirst Chip too : )) I also enjoyed the sonic typography of Grit Hartung.

In the animation department I adored Monica Santos’s film “Your words”.

And of course last but not least I saw the interaction design work of a few of my friends and it was really inspiring. Yumiko Tanaka‘a Plable project, a table which hides an entire world for children underneath it. Mathew Brown’s great work with creativity and musical instruments. I absolutely loved the Sprochs from Daniel Goddemeyer, a series of small containers which release messages after a certain time or with a person’s participation. Again in the “design imitates art which imitates art” section, Sohui Won’s work “Weird objects for weird users” is interesting. And finally in the “brings up more questions than it answers” category, Michele Gauler’s service “Digital Remains” explores what happens to your data after you die.

Ouffff…..my head is spinning…

(Warning…incoming rant) : )

I am now sitting on Richard’s plaid red and white puffy chair writing for the first time in ages and I thought I’d recount my journey door to door from Milan to London last week, simply because through the pain and agony of it, I think there are some design lessons to be learnt somewhere in there…

I left my full-of-stuff-that-wouldnt-fit-in-my -2-suitcases milan hotel room/apartment with the help of Victor and Tristam and after a very long and expensive cab ride to Centrale, I realised that the not so trusty Trenitalia website had indicated the wrong time to my plane on their online timetable. Victor has a ticket booked for that same day with Easyjet as well so we walked across the street to an internet café and exchanged tickets, names, departures, etc… so an expensive last minute flight became a really expensive, really last minute flight… ok so that wasn’t so bad considering that it would have been impossible to fathom such control over your flight less than 5 years ago…

So i wait with them for a shuttle bus to Linate, my new aiport destination (the first flight was leaving from Turin, silli yes, but less expensive), get there too early, wait forever as the checkin hasnt started… then get to the check-in. Of course to process 100 or so people there are only 2 people behind a booth. My limit on my luggage was exceeded and so I had to pay for extra luggage, but instead of actually doing that on the spot I had to go to Linate’s ticket booth. I leave my luggage in the care of a kind Australian whose husband had to run there too and line up for 15 mns at least, waiting for my turn to pay for my 10 kilos of excess luggage, thank god my flight wasnt leaving right there and then like some other people in line… Get to a booth eventually pay my fine, go back to the lovely woman retrieve my bags and check them in immediately (at least i didnt have to line up again).

That’s of course when I notice that the flight is actually 1h 30 mns late…arghhh can’t anything go wrong today! So i get through customs, getting the usual raised eyebrow for my passport picture (I had shaved Sinead-like hair at the time it was taken some 4 years ago, and yes a boyfriend too :P) and go get something to eat for the first time in about 6 hours. I then proceed to the gate, second passport check, then slump into a hot waiting room with 2 flights to London, ours from easy jet and the other one from Allitalia. I must have waited about an hour there and 2 flights from Allitalia took off during that time. I was really sleepy so didn’t really care at that point and dozed off on the uncomfortable plastic-moulded chair. The eventually the flight was called, and people lined up, (although i find that the Americans are better at lining up for things, in Europe, no one cares about that sort of thing) hot and tired already before even have set foot in the plane. A hot and sweaty bus after we pack into the plane, which was the first time that i went into a plan with a “first come first serve” attitude to the seating and no assigned numbers. It really felt like i was in a strange over-sized bus. I slept through most of it, as i had slept 3 hours only the night before, seeing Shawn and Alejandro off in the early morning. The Easyjet “flight attendants” were nice enough although at this point id call them waitresses…

Arrival at Gatwick eventually after a rather bumpy landing, you’d think they’d get the hang of these things, even the first ever flight from a pilot i had coming into Europe 2 years ago was smooth as cream… is that what you pay for? or that you don’t? I started to wonder what was so fabulous about low-cost airlines and if they weren’t actually missing a lot of opportunities in terms of services. As i visited the RCA show today (more on that in the next post) I saw something which made me think real hard about this issue. Apparently, Ryainair will gain so much money from in-flight gambling that they might come to a point where they might not have to charge at all for the flight… so in that case, will the services totally dissapear? will we get small vending machines next to the bathrooms to choose a sandwich from if we’re hungry? Nowadays I have to remember to bring a blanket and my headphones for a flight, but what about all the commercial posibilities of dealing with people who are tired, exhausted and would actually pay 3 pounds for a coffee? Could there not be the sale of zen-like products for the flight? Could you not order your food at the same time as your ticket and have it delivered to you as you check in? Would an association of cab and flight services be lucrative? “Come and get me with my heavy luggage for this and that flight and ill pay a little extra but will be much happier….”.

I believe that there truly are opportunities for low-cost companies to actually gain some market share by understanding people’s needs and how they are missing out on part of the market. At this point, people would rather pay a little more to be treated properly than with efficiency. That’s the real service economy, an economy where businesses understand the opportunities presented by their customers needs, and not business models whose only value is the low cost of the service. The day an airline company will provide customer-sensitive services, at a low price, the market will be seduced immediately… so in the meantime, ill book my flight for Amsterdam…ugh.