The first day was organized to enumerate problems and the criteria by which to evaluate responses to those problems. The second day focused on our responses as ‘designers’ and the methods that we could use to find tactical responses to the difficult problems posed by water (and the lack thereof).
We began by discussing what it is that designers do. I asked students what is is that artists and designers do? I asked the students to describe what they felt was their strongest characteristic as an artist/ designer. Surprisingly, almost all of them described characteristics that were domain-free and overwhelmingly social. I showed them Burt’s (2002) concept from sociology of a network entrepreneur, and we used his assessment tool to see how individual personalities and the class as a whole tended towards network entrepreneurship.
We continued by discussing Bowker and Star’s (1999) article about classifications an boundary objects. I expanded the initial discussion by showing them examples according to Star and Griesemer’s four types of boundary objects. We came to realize that boundary objects do and could play an important role in mediating different groups, particularly those that might have conflicting goals.
We concluded the morning session by sharing candidate solutions to the difficult problems posed by water. A couple of these dealt with making groundwater (and its hidden concerns) visible ‘above the ground’. This would be a metaphor to build on later that day.
In the afternoon, I showed them Paris: Invisible City and navigated through the multimedia map- a demonstration of all that helps to construct Paris as a city. With this in hand, we questioned how we come to describe the components of a city and how existing ways of seeing are, perhaps, constrained by existing representations. We discussed sex differences in navigation as one example relating to how maps are rendered and what it means for cognitive justice. We started to see that all of the components of a city- its water systems, street systems, entertainment systems- are constructed in numerous places and not just at the sites of consumption.
As the afternoon waned, we adjourned to the water cooler in the corner of the room where we were able to have a refreshing drink and a new perspective on the networks that supported our taking that sip. We reflected and surmised deeply all of the actions and passing of signs, documents, and behaviors that are needed to make sure that the water cooler is there when we need it, that it tells a particular story, and what we miss when we take is existence for granted. WE connected it to the electricity plant, to the staff that keep it clean and full of water, to a history associating the color blue with water, to the friendliness of ‘eco friendly’ technology, to the construction people who built the building, to the architects and the central planning board whose permits probably had something to do with the fact that it was in the southwest corner and very near the bathrooms whose water systems run all alongside the building there.
We all shared what technical skills we had after that…from illustration, film shooting and editing, writing, 3-D rendering, and so on. We decided that we would make boundary objects as our designs and solutions for creating awareness and solving problems associated with water’s future. We decided we would make films to share our scenarios because they carry stories and build empathy. We decided that we would be like the tide, starting from shore and moving out to sea, returning to shore with our collections and documentation, moving back out again during the interim, and then back again…to sea what we can see.
We started by looking at the neologism ‘watercasting’, coined for the purposing of re-imagining what it is that we would be doing in the class. Casting for the purpose of making a mold, a cast that one would find in theatre or film, to broadcast, and even futurecasting were brought up by some of the participants.
We discussed difficult and wicked problems by comparing them to tame ones such as one would find in science and engineering. We formed groups based on complementary zodiac signs (in part to introduce forms of classification and grouping). Students were asked to develop symbols or logos for each of the characteristics of difficult problems as described in Horst and Rittel (1973). This required them not only to have read but to work toward synthesizing that information in the form of a visual response.
We ended the morning session by brainstorming and expanding a list of difficult problems associated with water. Pairs of students articulated the problems and then as a class we grouped them according to the themes they seemed to be suggesting.
After lunch I introduced the students to twitter and kluster, software platforms for 1) assembling a symphony of interactions around water in the case of twitter, and 2) choosing among proposed solutions in the case of kluster.
I asked students to come to the class with examples of good and bad design from around Srishti. They described many instances, and for a minute it seemed as if it would be a ‘crib’ session about the things the students didn’t like. Instead, we found out that things we might perceive as being ‘designed’ were often vestigial or happenstance. We also used examples of so-called bad design to recognize was it is that we value that seemed to be missing. In this way we turned these examples into opportunities as we transitioned into finding a list of criteria that we could use to evaluate or responses to difficult problems over the course of the semester.
We ended the afternoon session by compiling a list of these criteria as a first step towards understanding what kinds of traits our designs should have if they were going to be progressive responses.
I’m picky when it comes to using metaphors. They reveal so much about the biases and commitments that underscore our thinking and, more importantly, how that thinking gets translated into physical manifestations and action.
Having spent a day pulling book after book after book off my shelf, and looking at the proforma and obligatory evolutionary argument that almost inevitably comes in the final chapter of an otherwise careful description and discussion of brain functionality, I am convinced that the word “selection” has a lot to answer for.
The point she makes in the article is that the use of the word selection is directly linked to ideology. I think she is right here, and it should have been incumbent on the evolutionary biology community to recognize this and have proffered a solution early in its history. My fear is that, to do so, would be seen as a mocking retort to creationists that so recently cloaked their arguments in the guise of intelligent design. Well, maybe that a good thing.
Expanding on the relationship of the selection metaphor and its connection to ideology, Margret Evans, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, studies some of the ways that children, potential users of evolution, acquire evolutionist and creationist beliefs. Evans describes how Western religious and philosophical traditions emphasize essentialism, teleology, and intention, and in the process limit the cognitive appeal of natural explanations for the origins of species. She argues that because these ideas tend to show up repeatedly in public representations, they constrain the inferential reasoning capacities of the developing mind. It’s an observation that suggests science’s own predilection for categorization is at the root of evolutionary biology’s social friction.
Maybe we ought to have namethis.com come up with a new term.
Jay Silver is a researcher in the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. I first met Jay when I arrived in Bangalore about ten months ago. While he was there, he made all kinds of cool things that allowed us to interact in interesting and fun ways with our environment! His recent work has been looking at how to make touch, sensation, and interaction with the world around us astonishing, especially for kids! I made this video while discussing his work with him in the Media Lab.
I was up this morning thinking about the kinds of spaces, communities and interactions I would like to see. Somewhere between physical computing, synthetic biology, evolutionary ecology, and design is a space where species can speak and be recognized by each other, where urban infrastructure becomes adaptive in the space of days and not decades, where the threshold of difference is lowered to such a degree that new networks between otherwise unrelated groups and individuals can find common ground.
Perhaps for the first time, I am beginning to see how things can be connected for the purpose of builing empathy. Whereas previously, I think the difficult work of etting to know a species was largely out of many peoples’ desires and time banks, perhaps there are now ways of making the opportunities both immediate and resource-efficient.
Rather than always seeking to decouple tightly-linked host-parasite relationships, can we find ways to make new ones…perhaps ones that can grow into mutualisms and symbioses? Is hardwiring a step in the process? What are the costs, benefits, sources and sinks? Can we create or link networks of co-dependence? What models of covariation should we adopt: linear, dominance, epistatic, topological?
This semester I have the pleasure of being able to lead and help two teams of students create engaging, socially-embedded, interactive design projects. The experience was a success both for me and the students. I learned a lot about my students and what they needed to do excellent work. I think we also found some new ways of working here at Srishti that may prove valuable in the long-term.
The teams also took part in a competition in which the winning team is invited to present their work at the Microsoft Research Design Expo, part of the Faculty Summit held in Redmond, WA in late July. We’re all looking forward to attending because we are very proud of the students’ accomplishments.
The ‘Moon Vehicle’ project consisted of a system to create interactive storytelling experiences around themes of the moon, space exploration and colonization, and India’s forthcoming launch of the Chandrayaan-I moon satellite.
Screen captures from the \'Moon Vehicle\' project design.
The Moon Vehicle team’s design developed in part from the Bangalore Space and Culture Initiative, an interdisciplinary endeavor of artists, scientists, designers, and technologists that began in late September, 2007 and coordinated by Srishti, NIAS, and ISRO.
The Play Revolution project changed many times, but it was always focused on the idea of building a socio-econo-technical system for improving the knowledge-networking opportunities of children living in slums in and around Bangalore.
The lab itself and the social interactions were influenced in part by the GROCS lab at the University of Michigan. Thanks go to Linda Kendall-Knox for her willingness to share aspects of their process.
The course started as a relatively straightforward user interface design series of topics, but this plan was quickly abandoned for a more socially-embedded model that would adapt to the different concerns and questions we were going to encounter. The primary article guiding this process was entitled “Products and Practices: Selected Concepts from Science and Technology Studies and from Social Theories of Consumption and Practice” (Ingram et al. 2007). The article stressed six stages of technological adoption: acquisition, scripting, appropriation, assembly, normalization, and practice.
We used these stages to guide our design process.
The students were given a design brief that consisted of two challenges: one consisting of Srishti’s existing commitments to cultural, educational, artistic,and design-based engagements with society, and another consisting of a more general challenge to design a user interface and/or interactive experience around the theme of learning and education. They were asked to develop a project that synthesized these challenges into one unique approach that incorporated the concerns, commitments, and constraints that were implicitly and explicitly embedded in the issues raised.
The theme of this year’s competition was “Learning and Education”, and students were challenged to design a user interface and/or interactive experience around the theme of learning and education that improves the daily life of a wide variety of users through learning and education, promotes creativity and curiosity in new topics, demonstrates novel ways of providing instruction, and rethinks education systems and tools.
Here is a new visualization of the cell cycle using a combination of Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML), Flash, and database-driven graphics. This new version from Chris Landau and Jamie Cope’s nformation design demonstrates the yeast cell cycle in 3D cycle stages along with educational information about the process.
Try zooming in and see changes in the nucleus as the cycle progresses.
Yeast Cell Nucleus During Metaphase
This project started as a collaboration at the University of Michigan with Anuj Kumar’s lab in the Life Sciences Institute and first led to the OrganelleView project.
Check this: This report is intended to help companies design specifically for the so-called base of the pyramid in Emerging Economies such as Brazil, China, Indonesia, India, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya.
An EMERGING ECONOMY is a country that is experiencing rapid informationalization under conditions of limited or partial industrialization. In the past, some of these regions have been understood as being in the process of industrial development, and were therefore described as ‘developing countries.’ Alternatively, they have been described as ‘emerging markets’ for goods and services created in the industrialized nations of the world. Our conception of Emerging Economies, however, recognizes that these parts of the world are not merely slow to industrialize, nor merely markets, but strategic centers for the emerging networked knowledge economy.
One of the biggest challenges found in India is convincing others about the value of design and design research. On the other hand, I have never been in a better place for learning and conducting research that takes into account the views, perspectives, and voices of others. Call it a post-colonial mandate or whatever, but in terms of making design adaptable and responsive to user needs, the context couldn’t be better for innovation and the creation of appropriate technologies and product service systems.
There is a critical issue at the core of the discussions about innovation that isn’t being discussed. I hesitate to say that it’s the elephant in the room, but when in India…
This issue is encapsulated in an exchange I had with Gregg Davis during the questions period following his presentation at the “Leadership through Design Summit” in Bangalore just before the end of the year. In reality it was only a question and response, but it’s worth sharing.
Davis presented a talk during the IDEAS section on “Innovation for Business Transformation.” The presentation was titled something like “Brand, Design and The Brain: A New Methodology for Building Design and Brand Attributes Based on Recent Scientific Studies of the Brain.” I grabbed this title from a recent talk he gave at the CONNECTING’07 Congress of Industrial Designers, but it was basically the same thing.
What is interesting about this topic is how cognition studies are being used to inform business and communication practices aimed at better attracting customers. The talk itself was fascinating and full of insight and ideas from cognitive science. Davis presented Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) imaging as a tool to more closely predict how consumers make choices. MRIs “take a picture” of the brain basically by showing where blood flow is most intense. MRIs can even be performed over a time-interval to show how changes in blood flow happen over time. The basic idea is that blood flow increases to parts of the brain that are being used most intensely. So if you are having an emotional response to something, then the amygdala may light up. If you are recognizing metaphors, then the angular gyrus may be involved. If you are involved in reasoning or planning, then the frontal lobe may show a signal (and so on). When Davis and collaborators presented people with “familiar products” they observed that regions associated with comfort lit up. When they showed “unfamiliar products” the regions associated with anxiety lit up.
Here is where it gets really interesting. Davis suggested that one of the purposes of this approach was to do many of the things that artists do. He put it another way by saying that there is an assumption that artists typically “unlock” those regions of the brain associated with emotion that also, incidentally, affect non-rational consumer choice. Given that marketers and business folks are interested in understanding (and in fact controlling) choice, it’s not surprising that they would be interested in those factors and patterns in the brain that affect consumer decision-making.
Okay, let’s assume that artists do indeed capitalize on those “emotional” and “non-rational” regions of the brain (I think it’s reasonable). Why then do we need to expend the vast resources and put people under the enormous imposition of MRI technologies in order to do things that are already possible if you involve artists in the business and design processes? The response I received was great. Davis started by commenting that this was a hugely dangerous question and that it got to some of the issues of the relationship of business and artists. He didn’t go much further than that, and it was fine by me. I could understand why he wouldn’t.
This is the key question. Why do we do things that are technically feasible but ultimately more harmful and manipulative to individuals? Why are big problems approached from a technological perspective rather than the more complicated social one? I understand why this problem exists; artists talk back and make suggestions that businesses do not want to hear. MRI machines just do what they were made to do. While there is some interesting data and observations that can be made, where will the real design innovation come from? Will it come from the more precise matching of people’s preferences to product offerings, or will it come from people who have the ability to predict and enliven design ecologies to respond to the cognitive changes that cause people’s preferences to shift and flux in an ever-changing environment?
We started by looking at the neologism ‘watercasting’, coined for the purposing of re-imagining what it is that we would be doing in the class. Casting for the purpose of making a mold, a cast that one would find in theatre or film, to broadcast, and even futurecasting were brought up by some of the participants.
