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.
Archive for the ‘Stint’ Category
Virtual Counterparts of RFIDed Objects
May 9, 2006I 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.
Service design broken down
May 4, 2006I 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? : )
Designing for Interaction
May 4, 2006Will 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!
Nokia and music on the go
May 1, 2006I 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.
ICSID at my old school!
May 1, 2006Oh 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…
Last.fm
May 1, 2006So 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.
Exam 1
April 24, 2006Had my exam 1 on friday, some really nice crits were there: Mark Delaney from Plan Design, Jay Melican from Intel research, Chris Downs from Live|Work and Steve Thompson from Newport School of Art and Design in Wales.
I hate to say the critique was very harsh and pointed out some really important gaps in my thinking , maybe related to the fact that i had so little time to prepare for this exam, right after Salone. Well that’s no excuse really. So i thought id make a diagram of the foundation of my thesis so i avoid having to discuss it again and can go: here it is and avoid a lot of communication problems i encountered in my presentation.
So essentially I am looking at sustainability and the ways in which our society is supposed to address it. Through concepts like PSS (Product Service Society and service design, we are advocating that we should do more with less; use more services and less material objects, transition from a society that values access versus ownership. I think that this is a very valuable way of looking at the future but it hardly addresses the designer’s role and how we design within and for these services. If we are advocating that we should use less, does that mean that we should care more and therefore throw away or discard less? When we talk about high tech personal devices, we often find ourselves with a little bit of ause-phobia mainly because use and the degradation of those objects is not something that is desirable or appealing. I am calling this negative history. What i seek to find out is if we can design for “positive history” or to create meaningful object-subject relationships by using and treating fabrics as a material that displays history in an appealing and engaging way. History of use is something desirable in a pair of jeans or a teddy bear, so why not in a high tech device?
To test this theory out, i wanted to find a design space that would allow me to address mack of emotional relationships and i found that the area of music and its more recent form the mp3 and its player was a convenient case study. With the disappearance of a physical token for music and an ephemeral attachment to its containers, this was the perfect area to start.
So there, I have laid down the foundation of my thinking for this thesis and can now concentrate on the design work that is necessary for the next review which will take place on the 15th and 16th of June 2006.
Salone 2006
April 11, 2006The redesigned radios were on show at Salone del Mobile 2006 and are still at La Fabbrica del Design till the 22nd of april from 12 to 17 every day except the 16th and 17th.
Hope to see you there!