Most of what I liked about the GROCS lab at the University of Michigan Media Union was how the activities of various groups, classes and projects were in an open, shared space. Mix that with some movable furniture and a close proximity to other resources in the Media Union and it made for a good space to come up with ideas, share them and work them out with each other.
Ok, the pic isn’t great but you get the idea. This is “The Cube” at the MIT Media Lab. I visited the Lifelong Kindergarten group there and saw how their close proximity to tools, shared workspaces, and each other facilitated their work in progress. I really liked how the space was large with high ceilings, that it was a mess of projects, and that there was a table where lab members would work individually with a tacit sociality.
See-through walls at the Center for Complex Networks Research allow behavior to be observed while keeping conversations in common areas from interrupting focus. Shared offices help maintain an additional level of cohesion among lab mates.
The common space at the Center for Complex Networks Research allows for group interaction, impromptu exchanges, and reception of visitors. Lunch, printing, library, and coffee all converge near conference rooms and shared offices.
A group of researchers made up of advanced students from the Center for Experimental Media Arts (CEMA) and the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DAIICT) set out to learn about ethnographic practice and to experience the places and people that may have something to add to our understanding of how the technology fits (or doesn’t fit) with their everyday life. Their goal was to identify how user context could affect the landscape of educational technology…or at least that’s how they started out.
Playpower is a initiative to support affordable, effective, and fun learning games. The project is starting with an existing $10 TV-computer as a platform for learning games in the developing world.
The video below introduces the Playpower Foundation’s mission.
Playpower: An introduction from Playpower Foundation on Vimeo.
Working on a set of social research practices means getting to know or getting NOT to know (depending on how you look at it) the places and practices of the people who can potentially create something valuable from changes to the exiting technology and it uses.
We held a summary and feedback session at the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy after their first week of training and observation. They shared their process of ethnographic research gathered feedback to develop it further and begin to implement more observations on a wider scale.
The research team gave a great introduction of their process with some initial results. What followed was a fantastic discussion among approximately 15-20 staff and researchers at CSTEP as well as visitors and the Playpower team.
Many themes began to emerge, and it became clear that the exciting thing about the Playpower project was more than its concept of low cost computing. Instead, I think it raises as many questions as it answers and engages its audience with problems about the role of technology in education and everyday life.
We explored multiple themes in more or less detail, but overall the session was a fantastic success and good model for how to bring about discussions that relate social science, technology, economics, and education in exciting ways.
Questions and themes for further follow-up:
1. What is the role of ethnographic researchers in relationship to the design process and the Playpower project more generally? That is, how do perspectives gained “on-the-ground” compete with held assumptions about the project and its implementation?
2. How do we move from perspectives of technology as a solution questions about peoples’ goals and aspirations? That is, are we working on the Playpower technology as a panacea for educational constraints rather than understanding how family and individual wants and needs articulate their own technology (or otherwise) solutions?
3. Understanding context means that we may need to do some questionnaire redesign – to understand more than just the landscape afforded by people’s lifestyles and incomes towards an understanding of how practice and purpose shape socio-technical interactions.
4. How can the conclusions and assumptions held by programmers and designers be refined? Put another way, do designers or researchers feel free, comfortable, or motivated to redress cultural biases and modes? Also, how is the distinction between game design and development articulated?
5. Does ethnographic research inform through techniques beyond the interview-questionaire-film? What are additional techniques for research?
6. What are the values that Playpower is proposing, advocating, or nominating? For example, are fantasizing, empathy, or transitions in behavior and practice something the project aims to make durable in its presentation and game design? What about the game or software content? How do these values translate into design – e.g. process or pattern knowledge as bird’s eye views and 2nd order perspectives.
7. Can film and cinema provide media and narrative precedents for games and instruction?
8. Did they buy (the original keyboard/game sets) because they are educational? Or for other purposes?
9. Are there game paradigms to move beyond the screen and into interaction and engagement with the real world.
Love this talk by the designer of evoke: the ten-week crash course in changing the world. Besides her breakdown of what gamers are good at, she nails a critical point: games can give you lots of characters who are willing to TRUST you and match challenges to your level–providing collaboration, feedback, and an engaging story–something we all need more of. She ends with a a better tactic around futurecasting: imagine the best scenario possible—then empower people to achieve it.
It’s not often that unfunded proposals make their way into disinfecting daylight. Sometimes you try again, and sometimes you just let them waste away among the dusty electrons of your hard drive.
I don’t know which category this one falls into, but I do feel it’s worth sharing and making public. Perhaps someone will even comment with improvements. I can only hope.
In any case, this proposal was dependent on a constellation of partnerships (and funding) to make the project move forward–at least from my perspective. Sometime a little cash can help develop needed projects and spur collaboration. This was a submission to the Knight News Challenge which is supposed to announce its winners sometime in mid-June. Since I know I’m already out of the running, there isn’t really a compelling reason not to share—but please tell me if there is!!!
Describe your project:
Envirocasting adapts global weather information to the cultural and operational needs of local [international disaster preparedness organization] branch offices and communities, supporting their risk assessment and preparedness needs. A wealth of information exists to support disaster preparedness, but a gap exists between the design of information services and their local use-contexts, limiting widespread use and effectiveness. The benefits of these information services are clear to local decision makers, and they are anxious to put the tools and news sources into practice.
However, exposure to digital news platforms is low, and the capacity to use them in decision making contexts is minimal as a result of this disconnect between design and use.
Envirocasting takes a design anthropology approach to inform the design, distribution, and acquisition of digital weather information services to local decision makers. Design anthropology seeks to understand the role of design artifacts and processes in defining what it means to be human. Using this approach, local patterns of information consumption and culture related to futures, information design, and technological metaphors can be identified, allowing for the design of appropriate services. Design principles as well as specific, local use-applications will aid in the distribution and assessment of weather forecast efficacy. Thus, weather news for risk assessment can flow more precipitously to decision makers, allowing them to coordinate the disaster preparedness efforts more quickly and strategically.
Simulation games for local communities will support learning and the application of information services in context. This provides use-case memories of the future and practice in managing uncertainty with minimal risk.
How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?
Envirocasting aims to localize climate information by making it simple, non-technical, clear, easy to use, and as meaningful as possible. Maps are relevant when their colors, numbers, icons, and scales are relevant and supported by culture and context. Information that connects with specific actions can be used confidently in planning and decision making. Specific use-cases communicated by local communities will drive the development process and will help weave the digital media fabric with aesthetics, narratives, and metaphors. Games support critical thinking and social play to help decision makers and communities explore the dynamics of news and information-based decisions for climate-related disaster preparedness.
How is your idea innovative? (new or different from what already exists)
Envirocasting innovates by translating connections between design and use. When local conditions refract the design and dissemination of information from distant or multiple sources, innovation is an inherent byproduct. Envirocasting is designed with the mind in mind, understanding cultural legacies that influence the recognition of uncertainty and metaphors. It bridges experience, play, and interactions, creating memories of the future. The project identifies appropriate implementations of open-source digital information services and defines a set of prescriptive resources for innovating across disaster risk contexts and cultural processes based on abstractions and lessons from six local communities in three countries.
What unmet need does your proposal answer?
A fact-finding mission conducted surveys, interviews, meetings and workshops over two-month periods in 2008 and 2009.
Explicit unmet needs include:
And don’t take my word for it:
What will you have changed by the end of your project?
More-Measurable outcomes:
Less-measurable outcomes:
How will you measure progress and ultimately success?
The uses of weather and hazard preparedness information can be measured using surveys, interviews, meetings and workshops and compared to current estimates of use and use cases, but those data are useful differently for different people including the decision-makers, their constituents, their supporting agencies, and funders of this project. Thus, we intend to cast progress in varied terms for the different stakeholders and partners.
Some of these guiding questions include:
Success, on the other hand, is more elusive. Disasters are sporadic and may not always afford a direct link between information effectiveness and risk reduction. However, existing case studies show that these types of information, when combined with specific actions, can lead to significant reductions in both the vulnerability and negative effects of a disaster such as flooding. The key to assessment it to engage in a continual processes where we value choices and transitions in practice. The design of this project take into account the high-stakes involved in the decision-making and information uses by providing opportunities for both high stakes (post-hazard) and low stakes (simulation-games) assessment.
Do you see any risk in the development of your project?
The biggest risk at present is that the organizations listed do not have a history of working together (this is indicated by the generic names rather than their proper ones), but this is also where the opportunity exists. The leadership (particularly of the larger orgs) is wary of their participation in the project without first-hand knowledge of all partners and/or certain funding. This conversation is ongoing at the time of this application and continues to develop. If the proposal moves through to the next round, we should at that point be able to name each of the partners in more specific terms.
Supply-side risks (design-mediated)
Demand-side risks (user-mediated)
What is your marketing plan? How will people learn about what you are doing?
The conduits for marketing are, in many respects, already in place. The organizational structure and extent of [intl. disaster preparedness agency] branch offices will facilitate branding and distribution using existing networks of community organization, tactical planning, and response offices. Though the value of the services should be self-evident in the design and cognitive acquisition of the services, the goal is to help users to practice using and applying these information services. We also recognize that aesthetic values can elevate the recognition of value and the maintenance of that value through everyday use. Thus, arriving at these values will be a principle objective for all participants.
In order to increase domain knowledge, the outcomes can be shared among the participants, their centers, and via professional and interest networks including the design research community which actively engages with similar project goals. Because some of the project partners include university centers, schools and research organizations, the outcomes will be shared with emerging professionals including graduate students and visiting fellows.
Tactically, the marketing plan for simulation game-based training is slightly more difficult because it requires additional preparation, training, and presentation. Nonetheless, with a bit of effort, these games will reinforce the marketing strategy for the primary goal of adapting weather information using the same local community branch office network structure. We also expect to develop videos that demonstrate our process as well as the use and value of the informations service under construction. But ultimately, the best marketing will be the effectiveness of the adaptation process.
Is this a one-time experiment or do you think it will continue after the grant? If it is to be self-sustainable, what’s the plan for making that happen?
Envirocasting is the application of a process to translate meaning across cultural contexts with relevance for local concerns. We do not view it as an experimental process so much and an underutilized one. Luckily, there are many resources, case studies, and additional expertise to draw from in the process. Our goal is to assemble them and to draw the pieces together into relevant platforms and prototypes for weather information services.
The project will accomplish this goal as a one-time research project that will publicly document its methods and outcomes as guides so that they can be applied in new use-contexts and for wider information arrays. We fully expect that the different project partners will continue to apply the work and experience in varied ways after the initial project, although they may carry it out to their own ends.
Our method for fostering rhizomatic-like dissemination of the results (and thus, sustainability) is to link with additional strategic partners whose networks span varied social groups, languages, use-contexts, and concerns. Furthermore, the acquisition and integration of the research (as well as the information services it supports) can be broadly advocated from a policy perspective because successes arise from its application and benefit in specific, local communities. The overall plan for sustainability is to demonstrate that these information service platforms reduce risk by enabling decisive action before pending hazards become disasters. If this is demonstrated, sustainability will ensue, even if not in the form described in this proposal.
