Sustainability, with readings on the side

Now that we're several weeks removed from our Sustainable Design class, we can flex our brain muscles, dig up Amory Lovins and that big green packet, and start spreading the environmentally friendly green butter. Hah.

Well, not everyone is willing to cough up a couple thousand to make it all back in energy savings over the next decade, but as designers, shouldn't we be excited about sustainability, especially in our own design mantras?

Core 77, a very well put together design blog/online mag, has thrown together a new subforum dedicated to sustainable practices, or as they say, to share "designers accord." It still in the infant stages, but it seems that you could definitely make some bold statements about design and sustainability. Check it out here.

With that in mind, what is your designers accord?

Thoughts on a (somewhat) free day

First, I would like to say, because I missed out on celebrations, and did not get to speak to everyone, that the presentations all were really great. Obviously there is some sort of equation here, where working students to death, giving them projects with a wide variety of options to pursue, and late hours of voice/video recording, documenting, and flash wizarding produces high quality results.

Second, it has been a strange week. I managed to sleep during the day Friday following our presentations, and my sense of time has been all wrong sense then. I might blame Ford for not having windows with natural lighting in our EDI office. I've been living a "Liz" lifestyle, staying up too late, and sleeping in (too late). Not good. Liz, your health may be in jeopardy.

Third, I still have a large workload, which I left for myself to do. These decisions to put work off until the last minute always end up poorly (for my mental health), yet I continually do it because I'd rather play frisbee during the day and not sleep at night.

Fourth, does anyone still read this?

Onto the real stuff. I won't post on Dan Kraemer yet, although I've had some really interesting thoughts come up (in relation to several of the things we spoke about. Rather, I'll choose to post on several interesting things that I've read through my other RSS feeds (not too many posts lately). I'll keep it brief, as I have DXD to work on, but if you guys who have time to kill or spare before your trips home, these articles proved interesting.

Objectified

Objectified (read reviews/discussion for SXSW here and there) is "a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability."

Sounds like a great film, which covers a lot of topics that we've discussed (formally and not), and would make a great primer or wrap up film. I checked about tickets (out of personal interest), but the April 28th screening in Chicago is sold out, unfortunately.

For me, I'm interested in the final line of that summary where it says "It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability." There, if any, is a great way to get any one with any remote interest in design, to immediately bite the hook and try to see this film. Sounds good

3 Dudes Gone 3D

This is a series of short films produced by the company that created SolidWorks, and they are actually funny. A brief remission from the work that I should be doing. Actually, chances are, if you were online Thursday night before the Miller presentations, I showed this to you.

Spring

This past Monday and Tuesday, I have enjoyed the weather, chomping at the bit to shirk my duties and responsibilities to instead, toss a disc around at Deering field. On Monday, I threw around with my roommate and Ben, and I realized being outside is something that is key to my sanity. Anyways, I really enjoyed it, and hope that there will be many more afternoons spent outside relaxing, at least with an even ratio to nights spent inside Ford working.

Well that's a few things that has been on my mind. Service designing has been on my mind. Well, no, but it will be (very soon). Have a good break!

A (product) role for the (human) soul

Designing for the self at this point sounds like a very foreign concept. After almost two quarters of designing for other people (Pedro, is not me), John Zimmerman's lecture discussing design research, designing product, and the philosophical gap seemed foreign and new, but also refreshing. Let me elaborate.

Zimmerman's studies often took the perspective of pursuing an experience, or life goal, and through the interactions with product to find these experiences or achieve these goals, users built up relationships and became attached to the product themselves. An interesting example, which simple and logical enough, was also startling and intriguing, was the example Zimmerman gave of parents and the books which they read to their children.

Now, reading a book to one's child at night seems to be a simple enough task, requiring (usually), no more than fifteen to twenty minutes, and usually the books would rotate between a set number of favorites that the child held. Now fast forward 15 years. One example of product attachment that was given was the attachment parents build with books that they read to their children. Now obviously, these books are not held so dearly because of their content, market value, or age. Rather, Zimmerman discusses, these books were kept because they are a manifestation of the goals that the parents held when their children were younger. While the book did not matter, the book(s) represented the parents desire to be good parents, and these books were tools to reach that goal.

Perhaps, one might attribute the retaining of the books to nostalgia, and for scrap booking purposes, but I think that is really interesting to look at how parents interact with the products that their children use. Very often, we look at what the children keep or remember, such as that stuffed animal that they loved and dragged everywhere (Hobbes), or the security blanket that we never let go of (Linus), but what about the parents? Perhaps the discussion of retaining books that were read often touched a string of my soul, but I think that this is indeed something that we can look into, and perhaps find out a little about product attachment at a very personal level. So the next time you call mom or dad, ask if they've got anything hidden.

I offer an interesting thought though: do people develop stronger attachments when they are undergoing role transitions? My thought is that generally mom or dad will keep scrap books, old toys, video tapes, etc of the first child more so that the second, the thought being that these items represent strongly the transition from being husband and wife to being father and mother. Likewise, are we more prone to develop strong attachment to items that are crucial to our transitions from middle/grade school to high school, high school to college, college to working/single adult, etc. In our pre-lecture luncheon, John Zimmerman spoke about how the little things that people never considered about college to be the things that were recalled by freshmen he studied. Take for example, the shower caddies that students use to transfer their toiletries to and from their dorm rooms to the communal showers. While communal showers aren't the highlight of college, why is it that so many students recall it? Because it is so strange, foreign, so unlike their former residence (home), that it sticks out in their mind? While I doubt any of us have built any sort of attachment to our shower caddies during our relatively short tenure as freshmen (and college students), can any think about items that they feel any special relation to?

With all of us (except Mark, who will be ancient when he finishes school) leaving school (again) and (hopefully) entering the working world, what products would help you with the transition? I asked one of my friends, who responded "a teleporter" and explained that with free and instantaneous travel, he could keep up with all of his college buddies at no expense. Discussing with other already working friends (and this was also discussed during our luncheon), the working world is not really there to accept you as a person, but rather as an employee. Co-workers will be friendly (hopefully), but probably not necessarily want to be friends. So what do you want? Teleporters? A more grown up Facebook? All your college buddies? Sigh... on second thought, maybe the working world isn't for me.

Interaction Design Association

For those who are interested in interaction design (user interfaces sound related don't they)? You can read about this conference going on right now in Vancouver, here and here.

Briefly IxDA is a member driven group of international designs in the interaction design field. They're holding a conference this year in Vancouver, called (creatively) IxDA Interaction 09, with a lot of big name designers going. They've got people from all backgrounds, working and academic, but a lot of people from smaller firms and a lot of consultants.

You can read over most of the topics here, but to summarize, there are a bunch of workshops and lectures about using sketching to help design research, how to perform new and innovative research about user interactions, as well a lot of speaking just about user interactions in specific fields (software and hardware interaction design), and lectures by a lot of high-up designers. Check out the descriptions, and hopefully we can someday host a similar conference at NU.

Press Button, Receive Bacon, Enjoy Bacon

This week has been, and will be a busy one. So far, I haven't been hit over the head by a surprise assignment, but I'd almost prefer that to looking forward and seeing several very large ones looming in the distance. Ah well...

In class on Monday our guest lecturer spoke about the her personal experiences in user interface design, and the steps and methods that she took. It was pretty interesting, as our projects this quarter are focused on user interface design, and helped to shed some light on the direction our projects and research was taking. What I found most interesting was her take on user interface and usability today, and how the expectations for UI have changed.

"Usability is a given, consumers and clients are both looking for a signature moment"
I thought that this was pretty poignant message. What is a signature moment? Where can we find it? How can we capture this?

"Dialogue happens in a variety of ways (people to: people, culture, environment, and things)"
Interaction is something that can seem so abstract and is difficult to grasp. However, viewing and treating as a dialogue between the user/person and something/one else is simple, yet can change the perspective of the designer entirely.

For instance, looking at the interaction between a hand dryer in a bathroom and the person whose hands need to be dried, the interaction has changed significantly through time. In the olden days, a butler would stand in the bathroom, and as I'm not really an expert on what he did, I can only spectulate. However here are three services I believe this butler served:

1. The butler would dry your hands
2. The butler would tell you gossip and other things that he heard from other bathroom guests
3. The butler would could give advice about the location where the bathroom is... located.

Inherently, these were people to people interactions, serving a job of drying ones hands, but also being a person to converse with in an otherwise very... functional and one use environment.

Nowadays we have a variety of hand drying options, as butlers became far too expensive, unionized, and discovered that being a human towel rack is rather boring. Thus, bring out the paper towel and air hand dryer. These modern day contraptions have the following interactions:

1. Do something, and paper/air is distributed to dry your hands

Seems pretty lame. I guess that is a poor people to thing interaction.

Where can we find room for improvement? Maybe we could try to imitate a person to person interaction (the automated dryer play snippets of conversation overheard in the bathroom, or have a LED face that smiles and say "have a good day" when you leave). Maybe a person to culture interface, where the hand dryer offers styling tips as to what you're wearing, complementing the well dressed, and offering suggestions at the less well. Or maybe a hand dryer with an RSS feed describing news related to the location of the rest room.. Options abound.

Perhaps user interaction is something where design research, or research through design, can play a tremendous role. Too often things are designed with the traditional usability being the only requirement, but today, with generation demanding (aka us), the desire and opportunity for a well designed, well thought out item, such as a new era of hand drying and personal stylist devices can help us become more hygenic, and better dressed.

Until that day comes though, I will look forward to the simple 'press button, receive bacon, enjoy bacon' icons that exist. I forget what kind of icons they are though...

A super bowl sundae

Ah, the weekend. Nothing is more relaxing than being able to spend all weekend doing... homework. Ah, well so goes the college life.

Highlights
- Northwestern 66, Wisconsin 63
- Duke 79, Virginia 54

Anyways, what is this really for?

This past week in school, I've been thinking about the EDI program so far, and what I've learned, and how I may or may not be applying stuff from first quarter into my second quarter work. Part of this blog series is supposed to have us discuss the past week's speaker(s) from the Segal Design Seminars, and now, I will.

This past week, we benefited from having Jodi Forlizzi, a prestigious professor and lecturer from Carnegie Mellon University speak to us about research and design, the combination of the two, and the application of the two. She herself has come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and has a lot of experience in different fields, such a graphic design, interfacing, robotic technology, etc.

The subject of her presentation was the "cautious revolution in design research", covering briefly topics about different types of research, design research (or research through design) in particular, and then giving examples of applying this 'revolutionary' approach to a variety of projects studying human interaction and the application of technology to every day life.

I think what struck me was how much sense "research through design" made in the cases she gave. The examples and the methods she presented to use via examples (NurseBot and SnackBot) resonated with me, as through the EDI program we have been utilizing a lot of this research method. The cycle of research to concept to additional research is something that although sound simple, when presented from a completed manner, provides a very clear and 'whole' picture of the project, much more so than a simple 'research to concept' study. Take last quarter, where the entire class for DSGN 401-1 participated in group projects studying the use of bottle closures in the home (home cleaning, baby products, dry and wet foods). In the EDI program, the method for performing research and doing these projects is one of iteration, whereby doing research promotes creating concepts, and the feedback promotes (or is) additional research. This is true for EDI, the EDC program, IDEO, and an indefinite number of other firms and organizations.

Although I was initial guarded and doubtful of the term ‘cautious revolution’, I believe Professor Forlizzi is onto something very important, and that this revolution will really actually change how research is conducted in many situations (I know, revolutions usually mean change). As with any research, there are flaws or shortcomings, but I believe for many situations, a change or move towards a more ‘research through design’ approach will result in better analysis, better concepts, and a better end product.

Of course, so far, this is all “should be’s” and “can be’s”. This past week, I was also thinking about life after school, and how much I will actually take away from this program. So far, I feel like I understand a lot of the concepts and methods taught, and had the opportunity to apply them through my classes, but what after in a year? I think that one difficulty for a designer, or an engineer trained in design is there is the obstacle of adapting your knowledge and skills to the organization you are working for. There are many companies in product development that are adapting to have a more whole and pure approach to the research they perform, but many others who choose not to change, or have yet to hear about this magical research method.

The question remains, who will change these companies? Are these companies being driven out of business by the more success companies? How much of a difference does design research make in the marketplace? Perhaps what might be best would be to run a double blind study on two studies, one that is a research through design study, and one that is a typical research study, and by developing quantifiable and qualitative markers for research we could determine that…

I’m calling Cardinals by 10.

I hope everyone has had a good week and a good weekend.

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2009/01/the_true_21st_century_begins.php (cool article for the bored)