Archive for Design
August 13, 2008 at 10:56 PM · Filed under art, critical theory, Design, interdisciplinary, metaphors, visual culture
Yesterday I made a point of visiting the exhibition “Design in the Age of Darwin” at the Block Museum of Art on Northwestern University’s campus in Evanston, IL. The title of the exhibition caught my attention when I was flipping through a Chicago guide while visiting with some family there. The terms “design” and “Darwin” are usually brought up in a controversial opposition. However, this exhibition promised to take a deeper look at the relationships present in the fundamental orderings of Darwin’s work on natural selection and decorative design.
The exhibition takes a sort of auteur-like approach, focusing on a few men prominent in the decorative arts at th turn of the century and just before the birth of so-called modernism. The title includes the notables William Morris and Frank Lloyd Wright as well as C.F.A. Voysey, Louis Sullivan, and Christopher Dresser, an English botanist turned industrial designer.
I wrote in the comment book that the exhibition was well-presented, but that it lacked an engagement with the discipline of evolution as well as any other social and cultural field beyond traditional notions of design.
The missed opportunity lies in the ability to untangle well-tread debates of form versus function from ideas about natural and sexual selection, the role of mutation as a creative force, and the cultural and social appropriation of “selection” in the burgeoning onslaught of mass production and “upward mobility”.
I would have liked to see, for instance, a more overt discussion of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spandrel and the famous (at least within evolutionary biology) paper “The Spandrels of San Marcos”. In it Gould and Lewontin take on the adaptationist perspective which basically says that form must have function and needs a explanation. The adaptationists neglected the role of happenstance (technically, genetic drift) and frequently created “just so” stories to explain the unexplained. Gould and Lewontin’s view was that evolution is a side-effect of a true adaptation, where some traits arise from correlations between a networked body (i.e. gene networks), rather than arising from natural selection. Admittedly, I haven’t read the catalog for the exhibition, but here was a golden opportunity to flesh out the role that complex dynamism plays in evolution. As it stands, the exhibition just furthers the paradigm of intention and selection in the interplay of form and function.
I would agree with the curator’s thesis that Darwin’s ideas contributed to the design sensibility of the age, but it was probably only the case insofar as both Darwin and these designers relied on the metaphor of selection.
Another missed opportunity was the role that social Darwinism played in the development of modernism. For an excellent paper on the subject, see Christina Cogdell’s “Products and Bodies: Streamline Design and Eugenics as Applied Biology.”
What was there were some fantastic examples of Arts and Crafts and Prairie-style decorative and architectural renderings from Chicagoland area collections. It seems almost like the curator was constrained in the availability of ideas and objects to articulate the thesis, and while the show is a unified presentation, there isn’t anything novel to suggest that accounts of art history haven’t yet “speciated”. For the discipline’s sake, let’s hope it doesn’t go extinct.
Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. C. (1979). The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 205(1161), 581-598. Retrieved August 13, 2008, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/77447
Cogdell, C. (2003). Products or Bodies? Streamline Design and Eugenics as Applied Biology. Design Issues, 19(1), 36-53. Retrieved August 13, 2008, from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/074793603762667683
May 23, 2008 at 1:02 PM · Filed under boundary objects, cognitive justice, Design, design ecology, ecoregionalism, india, interaction, interdisciplinary, making it public, relational aesthetics, teaching and learning, technology
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.
For more on the project, visit their site.
April 4, 2008 at 3:39 PM · Filed under cognitive justice, Design, technology, visual culture
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.
February 20, 2008 at 9:14 PM · Filed under Design, interaction, teaching and learning, technology, visualization
I’m leading a lab this semester where two groups are developing new and interesting models for user interfaces and interactive experiences. One of the groups is looking at toys as a model for engaging intimately with science. The other day, we started thinking about toys as knowledge-networks and what that might mean for the design of interactive, tactile systems.
They’ve been using SCRATCH as a platform for development, but they’ve also been moving beyond. The team identified a few core values that they hoped to embody in the toys:
1. Astonishment
2. Play/ Tactile/ Haptic
3. Access
4. Information – Knowledge
5. Relatedness of things
6. Engagement – Belonging
Sounds like they’re off to a great start!
January 24, 2008 at 11:23 PM · Filed under complex systems, Design, design ecology, ecoregionalism, interdisciplinary, proposals, technology, visual culture
The Emerging Economy Report is coming! This is a project I’ve been working on over the last few months. It’s been in development for almost a year and a half and represents research in seven countries, all of which have been identified as emerging economies. An emerging economy is a country that is experiencing sustained economic growth as a result of rapid informationalization and limited or partial industrialization. Economic growth in the information economy will continue to be driven by these emerging economies who will benefit from rapid informationalization, innovation, and ephemerilization of the economy, leapfrogging many of the requirements and costs of the Industrial Revolution.
We’ve been working to develop insights into global trends and user perspectives across seven nations including: India, China, Indonesia, Kenya, Brazil, Egypt, and South Africa. By examining specific case studies, visual research, economic trends, and user perspectives on (among other things) technology, access to information, heathcare, and economic resources, we have been able to create strategic knowledge for those wishing to do business in these emerging economies.
The 7 emerging economy countries studied in this report account for 46% of the world population. The report offers a variety of innovative recommendations that will help businesses engage with these economies.
Visit emergingeconomyreport.com to find out more.
January 11, 2008 at 11:51 PM · Filed under art, cognitive justice, Design, design ecology, preferences
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?
December 19, 2007 at 9:29 AM · Filed under complex systems, Design, interdisciplinary, network entrepreneurship
Last week I was given the opportunity to participate in a workshop sponsored by the AIDI (Association of Industrial Designers of India). The deliberations of the event were intended to inform the implementation of India’s national design policy. It was a sort of pre-conference workshop held just before the Leadership Through Design conference here in Bangalore (more on that later). Many design professionals and educators came together from across India and the world to develop strategies and actionable recommendations.
There were a handful of breakout groups, each dealing with a different focus area. These were: Education (Srishti was a partner), Design Parks (these are intended to be urban design “hubs”), Branding and Communication of Indian Design (ahh, identity politics), Culture, Environment, Social Development & Effective Public Spending (the ‘everything else’ category), and Competitive Advantage by Design (my group).
All in all, it was interesting to gain a sense of how this is being approached. India is, after all, partially concerned with having a dialogue about such things. Could you even imagine a national design policy in the United States, much less a dialogue about it?!! So in that respect, I have to give those that have put in heir time and energy a LOT of credit. Mind you that this policy is seen as a partial solution to India’s competitiveness on the global scene. My impression is that by having a national design policy, India can put it’s financial, intellectual, and social capital resources into creating better solutions and opportunities…at least that’s what one would hope.
Designing for Competitiveness
Our group was fairly well mixed with Indian-based designers, design managers, and even two professionals from major U.S. design firms. Needless to say there was a lot of expertise willing to put their heads together and try to identify how India could become more competitive in design and design thinking. I hate to say it, but I do think we were hampered a bit by our group facilitator. Given the combined problem-solving techniques that the group had at its disposal, it was a bit disheartening that we took as long as we did to develop heuristics to accomplish the task. Every time we got something going, our facilitator would step in and question the approach, needlessly diverting our efforts. Nonetheless, we took it on and made a lot of progress in the end.
We started by brainstorming challenges and ways to build India’s competitiveness in design. Each of these was placed on a post-it and then one of the group members got the process going by verbally grouping them into common themes (my favorite which got lost in the end was ‘Design for Corruption’). That seemed to work because it got us to the next stage which was to develop further those ideas into specific strategies. We decided to split up into two groups because we were short on time and we had ten themes to work through. At the end of the day, each of the main groups got up and presented their deliberations. I’ll list them at the end, but before I do I want to address two things that really bothered me and that I want to avoid in future interactions like these.
Group Dynamics
The first was that one of the other groups (Design Parks) spent a lot of time deliberating around the issues. I am close friends with on of the participants from that group and he told me that the recommendations that were presented were not actually the ones discussed! It seems that the leader had actually prepared a powerpoint before the day even started with his recommendations and then presented that to the entire assembly. I do remember that the presentation looked way too good, but I didn’t ask. I guess the lesson is that we have to aim and ensure that the deliberations around these kinds of things are genuine. I’m not saying that his were bad ideas. I just don’t know why people’s time was wasted if their work wasn’t going to be represented. I didn’t participate in the group so I really don;t know what happened, but it certainly sends the wrong kind of message.
The second was that we “americans” really did create an imbalance in the conversation. I don’t know if it had to do with language (I doubt it) or what, but our Indian colleagues really backed off. This bothered me. I couldn’t tell if they were following our lead or that they just felt uncomfortable. Not all did of course. When we split into two groups though, one of the groups was entirely composed on people who either were from or worked in the U.S. I don’t think it was intentional, but it certainly was cultural in the sense that I wanted to just get to work and the group that just started doing it seemed to nucleate. Then again, I can’t really say how the other group formed. In any case, I was disappointed because group level diversity is something I try to implement, especially when approaching roblems like these. I don’t know how important it was in the end; you can judge by the recommendations. Can you guess which is which? I’ll give you a hint. One group did five themes; another did four.
Here were our group’s recommendations for how to enhance India’s National Design Policy for the purpose of building India’s global design competitiveness.
Networked Design
I am convinced that two of the themes our group proposed are critical. ‘Human Power’ (or social capital) and ‘Designers and Opportunities’ seem to be the key distinction in terms of what it is that designers actually do. By bringing together concerns, ideas, methods, and interactions from all over, designers leverage their own social capital to bring something into existence. Designers (like artists) do this because they can sense opportunity, much like entrepreneurs. How we develop our abilities to sense these opportunities is what will make new innovation possible. Bringing that innovation into existence only happens when good ideas are encouraged and allowed to form from the opportunities that social capital provides.
Here is an example of how new opportunities could be realized. Hidalgo, et al. (see below) argue that “The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations”. The authors use a network analysis of the relatedness among products to show that more sophisticated products (such as those exported by industrial, developed nations) are more closely connected. Their assumption is that “the ability of a country to produce a product depends on its ability to produce other ones.” They measure this in part by using the overlap among markets (read: concerns) for exported products. This has definite implications for the artist-designer that seeks to build relationships between people, services, and things as a design strategy. By creating and making dense connections, designers have a greater chance of developing new hybrids or artifacts that satisfy multiple concerns (cute and cuddly, for example). This is the essence of interdisciplinary strategy and approach.
Take a look at these graphs from the Hidalgo, et al. article*. On the far left are all nations combined along with a key. India is in the middle and the US is on the right. The thing to notice from this comparison is the distribution of the squares versus circles. Circles are the overall network. Squares denote the “revealed competitive advantage” for the product for that country. Thus, squares are where the country has an advantage. As you can see products which are more closely related (such as those that form dense clusters) are those that give the U.S. a competitive advantage. In India, the square tend to be at the periphery (in textiles and garments, for instance). The point is that so-called innovation is happening in these dense clusters. If designers begin to form networks and social capital among these disconnected hubs of innovation and expertise, then they may be able to leverage these as opportunities for innovation. Maybe that small metal cluster between garments and textiles needs to be remixed. Bronze kurtas anyone? Better yet, take a look at the electronics cluster and maybe we’ve got electric saris on the way!
*The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations.
C. A. Hidalgo. R. B. Klinger, A.-L. Barabasi, R. Hausmann.
Science 317, 482-487 (2007)
December 5, 2007 at 11:47 PM · Filed under biology, complex systems, Design, ecology, ecoregionalism, evolution, host-parasite
One of the questions that’s been nagging at me is if the CEMA lab that we’ve been building is an applied testing ground for Science, Technology and Society (STS) Theory and Practice. Wikipedia describes Science and technology studies (STS) as:
the study of how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how these in turn affect society, politics, and culture.
My interpretation is surely unidimensional, and I’m sure there are many examples of experimental media arts and technology spaces where critical questions are being addressed. Are there programs that take a specifically empirical approach to the propositions that come from STS and its metaview of science as it is practiced? Many of CEMA’s projects look at how technology and scientific enterprise are embedded in society and politics. Because we specifically implement creative art & design practices in the process, we seek to generate multidimensional perspectives that can further stimulate the ways in which artifacts are designed, situated, and discussed in culture and society. One of these outcomes may be so-called innovation. My curiosity leads me to wonder if the structures that STS identifies can be tested.
A recent article in Design Issues looked at how products and practices are linked under actor-network theory. The authors, Jack Ingram, Elizabeth Shove, and Matthew Watson, suggest that their concepts have the potential to bridge design and social theory. Studying processes of acquisition, specialization, scripting, appropriation, assembly, normalization and practice can lead one to recognize how artifacts, processes, and principles are tightly linked. These linkages may or may not lead to what Malcolm McCullough calls ‘deskilling’ – where individuals and their environment become increasingly estranged as infrastructural bias accumulates.
I suppose this is why I am excited about one of our students’ projects. Prayas Abhinav has created Not Alone, which is more or less the Indian implementation of TXTmob. TXTmob was successfully used during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions for protesters to actively coordinate their movements and demonstrations. One of the interesting questions to come out of this is how the implementation of this very socio-political technology will fare in India. What concerns and questions need to be addressed? I think Prayas is taking an interesting tactic by formulating the distribution of Not Alone as a form of social intervention designed to aid those in need.
What’s interesting to me is how technologies and scientific structures can be compared across landscapes to reveal how large-scale ecosociopolitical trends shape the differences in how technology and science are practiced and interpreted. Shelia Jasanoff took this approach in her book, Design on Nature, when she compared different conceptions for when life “begins” in the US, UK and Germany. By showing how the differing legal and political approaches led to the formation of different definitions of life, she showed how abortion issues reproductive rights are scripted and normalized (my interpretation).
So I’m thinking about all of this because I have long been interested in male-biased infection patterns which are especially prevalent in affluent countries. I started thinking about these patterns and how they might relate to Malcolm’s description of ‘deskilling.’ Are biological relationships like those between host and parasite affected and influenced by infrastructure and artifacts degrading or biasing over time? Is this a ratcheting effect and, if so, is it at all similar to the ratchet effect experienced by asexual populations as they diminish genotypic variation each generation through selection? Do landscape effects like the differences in infrastructure in the U.S. versus India contribute to this? hmmm…
November 23, 2007 at 5:56 AM · Filed under boundary objects, Design, ecology, ecoregionalism, interdisciplinary, network entrepreneurship, technology
How do you take into account the diverse factors that contribute to a product or service’s ecology? How do you determine which factors are more relevant than others? One of the ways to begin this process is by mapping these interactions at a conceptual level. Then, we an begin to map them in individuals, societies, and real-world environments.
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