What happens when you turn a radio on?
Sound comes out. Then you pick the sound you want.
Radios are silence-suckers, not sound-creators.
I find it weird that a lot of Internet radio and music apps and services (and even products like iPods) go the other way; silent when you start them, causing you to select the music you want, before getting any sound out of it. In some ways it’s the optimal interaction design, or at least it’s the most rational, but I think there’s something nice in just starting and letting you guide it into what you want.
It’s certainly a different way of looking at interactions from the traditional action-reaction flows that seem to dominate computers and technology.
[1]
Still digesting Design Engaged, meanwhile…
I had a thought kicking around in my head, and it was amplified by nicolas’ presentation at Design Engaged.
The future is terribly easy to predict. It’s predicting the instantiation that’s hard.
Human needs change very slowly. Sometimes they suddenly become possible to fulfill, but more normally, they just get better, easier, cheaper. Future visions are always filled with the instantiations, even not mentioning the fulfilled need.
I disagree with Nicolas that the videophone was a failure. Personal communication with pictures as well as sound is very human – and it’s happening all the time. It’s just that the instantiation that took off was laptops and PCs with webcams, and Skype, rather than a box plugged into the phone line, or indeed, webcams in mobile phones (I personally think that this will take off quite soon too).
I remember watching Tomorrow’s World in the 80s, and it was filled with exotic shopping trolleys, each equipped with a computer (hard to find early examples, as, well, it’s still happening – 1998, 2002, 2004, 2005 and, oh look, 2008, 2008). The need – shopping is boring and annoying – remains, and is true; the reality was online shopping, in all its forms. Service design, rather than technology design.
It’s true that the future is not evenly distributed. My present is about 3 years in the chronological future, both in my work and the way I’m using technology. I’ve generally noticed that big technologies, like the Internet, Bluetooth, wifi, DVDs take at least 6 years to become mass-market, from the first true consumer product. So my present can be 9 years ahead of even sophisticated, monied, privileged Western people. I’ve had several serious meetings about 2015, even 2017 at work. Big ideas take time…. self-parking cars: 17 years, digital radio: 8-9 years.
I’d also say that if you can’t predict rough instantiations 3 years out, you’re not paying enough attention. In 3 years, there’s unlikely to be revolution, but many weak signals are around. If it has physicality in any way, companies have to work this far out, and the research would have been done years before that. Pay attention!
[6]
It’s interesting to watch Google start rolling out advertising to Google Maps. It seems to be travel related websites – I’ve noticed activehotels, hotels.com and Expedia so far, and this careful selection of ads seems to make sense.
On the web, little square boxes pop on the map as well as the search results.
I suspect that activehotels either didn’t have a logo that fit well in the square, or my adblocker blocked it. I thought it looked like a speech bubble, and expected a comment or some other geo-encoded content.
Now it’s gone mobile.
It’s the same deal; adverts on the map added as square pushpins.
However, there are two obvious problems and a bigger dilemma when turning this mobile.
The first problem is screen size.
On the web, a banner is 1-5% of the page; on a mobile it’s close to 30%, and it isn’t like Google search, where the ads are carefully positioned in a separate part of the page – they’re first. You have to parse it before getting to the place you were actually looking for.
The second is interactivity.
Clickthroughs make less sense: the links aren’t mobile-optimised (in fact, it’s an 800k full, heavy page) and it isn’t just opening another window. Multitasking is hard. In this particular example, it’s even weirder – they’ve pre-filled in that it’s for a hotel tonight, for 2 nights, leading to an error in this case. Saving the link as a favourite (which makes more sense) only contains the hotel name – there’s not even the full address or phone number.
The big dilemma is that needs are different. I’m normally on Mobile Google Maps when I’m frantically trying to find a place, often the hotel I’ve booked. I’m lost, I want to sleep – I’m not exploring the possibility space, and I don’t want to wade through marketing garbage. Note that this doesn’t make sense for these kinds of advertisers either: I’ve booked already, and I don’t want alternatives.
It’s good to see Google experimenting with this. It’s a hard problem, and I hope everyone learns what’s good and bad, and changes and optimises accordingly. It’s weird that marketers just want to copy techniques from other media, that people will be willing to have to make the decision to pay attention in these new spaces, and that advertisers will think this the best way of promoting themselves.
[1]
There is no such thing as user experience.
I sometimes go a bit stir crazy in workshops, especially when I’m told off for using too many post-its… but there’s a sliver of truth to my facetiousness.
There’s certainly no such thing as managing the user experience. Or designing the user experience.
Something doesn’t work? Bad user experience.
Doesn’t do what I want? Bad user experience.
Can’t understand it? Bad user experience.
Bad service? Bad user experience.
It broke? Bad user experience.
Warranty or insurance issues? Bad user experience.
They were rude? Bad user experience.
The store was out of stock? Bad user experience.
User experience is just a strategy. A way of thinking – one that illuminates the possibilities to improve. One that shows new potentials, by looking at things in a new way. One that I believe in. But it’s certainly not the only strategy, and it’s a really hard strategy to implement well.
Name some companies with a good user experience. Virgin Atlantic? Yes, pretty good, but I’ve seen it break down many times – whilst they have an advantage in that the main experience can be scripted and even timed (you’re sitting prisoner in a metal tube), there’s still so much to go wrong. Airports, for example. And flying requires interaction with many employees, and each one has to believe and be empowered to make things better for customers. The jungle drums report that there’s lots of anger from flight attendants about their pay; it’s clear that people’s experiences will suffer quickly if the main people responsible for good service are unhappy.
Apple? Every time I go into an Apple Store in the UK, it makes me angry. From condescending staff, to product faults, to formal policy on a number of issues, Apple isn’t the joined-up experience company it could appear. Product experience? Pretty exemplary. Service? Not so much.
User experience is a personnel problem. Or HR, if you work in a company the size of a small country. Everyone in the company has to care about what they do. Everyone has to be paid and judged on how they improve the user experience. Furthermore, this has to be communicated to the investors and shareholders, and they have to believe that the company can pull it off. It’s a differentiator that’s hard to compete with, precisely because it’s so hard to do. So, there’s only one or two people in a company that can be a user experience manager. Normally it’s the CEO – they have to believe in the singular goal of an awesome experience at all costs.
Just as the words consumer and user are condesending to people, the word experience is condesending to the activity of people, or life. And it’s condescending to the people who work hard to create the products and services. Everyone seems to be an experience manager these days, but we should be proud of what we do. If you’re a UI designer, say you’re a UI designer. Or an interaction designer, a customer service designer, a product manager, a retailer, a repairman, a researcher… all play a part in the overall experience. Otherwise, you’re just angestellten – a salaried worker. Don’t try and fix everything (or be the one person who has to fix everything): find a company that believes in user experience, and find your niche and craft that lets you optimise your particular interaction for your customers. Play your part. Do your job.
That’s the only way to improve the experience for everyone.
[8]
The difference a day makes.
In the UK, we’ve seen three recent attempts to revive and recall modern architecture, and I’ve been surprised at the reactions.
During the London Festival of Architecture, there was a call to reconstruct Skylon, the 1951 Festival of Britain icon. As a lover of the Festival of Britain, I could be seen to be for this, but as a modernist, it strikes me as retrograde, and backwards looking, rather than a modern statement. This video report highlights the problem – architecture has grown bigger and better since the 50s – what should a truly new, bold structure be?
Developers are having another go at the forever doomed development of Battersea Power Station, this time into an ‘ecotown’, with a glazed commercial area and large tower outside the station, and a mall, residential units and hotel in the station itself. The central ruined area of the station will become a park, with no roof. The chimneys will have to be rebuilt completely, making the power station its own complete lifesize reconstruction. The new ecochimney completely dominates the power station, with the two sitting uneasily together. In my mind: knock the power station down. Seeing inside, it’s a wreck, and there’s seemingly no design that can turn it into a useful usable building in and off itself.
photo by joseph beuys hat
The third is Robin Hood Gardens, the Smithson’s postwar housing project. Whilst flawed, unloved, and unlooked-after, it’s a unique piece documenting a particular period. I’m not saying reconstruct it, or copy it and make new estates on a similar design, but it could be turned into a working estate, filled with people who like the feel. It’s an important piece as the Smithsons were part of the modern art discourse of the time, and these grand architecture projects describe a certain period and style of housing. Similar efforts in Sheffield are being converted into new living and working environments. Whilst modernism should provide the shock of the new, this can only be done by remembering the past, in all its glories and failures. Reuse, not reconstruction. Real life, not spectacle.
[2]
I saw two wonderous films by Simon Martin at Tate Britain today. I’d like to see them again. I’d like to be able to show them to you, too. But in the crazy world of art, this is impossible. Art can’t decide if it’s trading in ideas or artefacts (something Martin Creed touches on in his interview about work 850, also currently at Tate Britain.)
Martin’s films are close in style to those of Patrick Keiller and Chris Marker, even directly referencing Sans Soleil in Wednesday Afternoon. Narrated documents. But they’re declared art, and not film, and therefore there’s no DVD, no BFI screening. It’s catch them in an exhibition, or nothing.
More well-known video art exists in an even more quasi-state: Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle is ripped to pieces on Youtube, there’s an official DVD of a small part of one of the films, and, there’s a small band of video art filesharers. It gets shown in galleries and shown in cinemas.
I think there’s room to shake this up. Many galleries are starting to digitize their collections, of still work at least. Either the galleries do the same for their video, or the artists realise that the art itself/the idea makes them no money – only the physical object (like the 20 sets of Cremaster Cycle DVDs, or say the DVDs of San Soleil and The London Nobody Knows) or the ephemera (the Cremaster props). In fact, putting the art somewhere online would no doubt increase the knowledge of many artists.
As an aside, I think Tate Britain’s Lightbox is a great idea, but most people don’t know how to watch video art (which can, admittedly, be antagonistic to viewers – nothing is more soul destroying than seeing a piece billed as 4 hours, 23 minutes). Also, the showings didn’t even warrant an exhibition page on the website.
I loved this book – there’s a lot of “I was right”, but he probably was right, most of the time.
This is posted to annoy graphic designers.
“Simple fact is, there’s a great divide between a graphic designer and an artist. Graphic designers only know how to use a computer – they’re the visual equivalent of an audio typist. They bounce out of college with very boring ideas. I’d rather do it myself than hand it over to one of them. They’re too in control of what they’re doing, they have to be – it’s a fucking computer after all. That’s why it doesn’t flow as it should.
I’ve noticed that a lot of new covers are poor imitations of the stuff that Peter Saville did in the 80s. All very minimal and cool. It was good when he did it, but not so good when it’s Ben or Luke with his new computer and he’s trying to pass it off as his own. There’s nothing wrong with being influenced by somebody, that’s all part of the process. I’m not that naive. But there comes a time when your own ideas have to take precedence.”
Made me smile constantly. The book, the artist (seems pretty broken though), the interviewer. Part of an interview.
p30 : “We always used to look at a map if we couldn’t find our way around a city. Now the map is part of the city, and you can either experience the city guided by the map and just be on the map, or you can go into the city and just be in the city. The map is not better or worse than the city; it just has a different representational level. The problem arises when freedom is limited – when you’re told that the map is, in fact, the city, or the city is the map, and you then believe this. Like at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, where it’s suggested you’re in a real situation, but in fact it’s very representational – you’re displaced, as it were.”
p34 : “To me, virtuality is connected with interactivity – not interactivity in a “press the yes or no button” kind of way, though. Until a few years ago, the feeling of the virtual was so representational that you could only relate to it as a sort of grid. I think this has changed now. Today, virtuality means interactivity in the sense that if you engage, the virtuality changes. And, perhaps more importantly, as you do that, you change as well, because you’ve taken it upon yourself to engage, to interact. The double perspective is acknowledged by the virtual space. The important thing is that virtuality should have an impact on you, just as you should have an impact on it. As a result, it contains a certain unpredictability.”
p41 : “Well, I think my medium is people … And a robot is only interesting because you know something about people. ... I think the weather has some great advantages over the car, such as its mundaneness … The weather, in all its shades, is really about tactility … It has these really physical aspects, but it’s also physical on an intellectual level. When you think about the cosmological potential of weather, it becomes almost physical. And yet, the weather also holds unbelievably profound questions: what is time? What is unpredictability? What is chaos? What is the turbulence of our atmosphere and universe? In other words, the weather also incites some very large, existential questions.”
p76 : the Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam
p80 : the Iceland National Concert and Conference Centre
p86 : Louis Vuitton store in Paris – Your loss of senses, 2005
p93 : “We are on the reverse side of Iceland. South behind us, north in front. The wind, as you can hear, is blowing from the north-northeast. We are not only on the rear stretch of Iceland, we are also behind the rest of the group. The ten other travelers are about four hours in front of us in two jeeps, keeping each other company. Having lost them, we are now on our own. We were delayed because we had to put our map-reader, Alain Robbe-Grillet, on a small rescue plane. I think they are flying somewhere beyond us, over the glacier. The air there is more dense because it is cooler, and the airplane can smoothly fly lower, so it is currently surfing the surface of the glacier down to Eiðar. This is also where we are heading.”
p96 : “The cupola was just to give [the car] that dimension that it absolutely did not possess, named the unexpected; it’s the car’s unpredictably reality. ... The car accommodates whatever kind of trip you want to have: we can bring a small kitchen if we want to have a chef-and-cuisine sort of trip, or we can just stock the usual astronaut food, which we did on this journey – much to our disadvantage, perhaps. We can really change it into anything. If we go fast enough it will start to fly – levitate, I call it. And it even sails if needed; hopefully this will not be the case. We also had a nice sound system put in recently. Maybe we should throw this song on. I think it suits the car.”
p113 : “But the thing about the Alps and their location in the center of Europe is that they’ve almost become another theme park. The mountains have been industrialized or colonized into something no longer about spatial questions, but about mediated relationships. ... There are no images or reports to compare [this vista in Iceland] to inside your head, nothing to calibrate it against. ... Of course, everything is fundamentally mediated insofar as we carry and project ideas from one knowledge set onto others, but that’s a discussion for another time.”
p120 : Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
p131 : “The idea is to establish an interdisciplinary school that focuses on spatial issues. It will do so primarily from the perspective of art and artists, but it should also have a group of architects and perhaps several scientists working on, for instance, psychophysical issues … the school is not about producing artists in the traditional sense, but about introducing a vocabulary through which artworks can become much more integrated into society, social structures, and scientific and architectural discourses.”
p136 : The afterimage experiment (30 min film), Zeiss Planetarium, Berlin, 2006. (Can’t find much about this, but this mentions it, and is quite interesting in itself)
p169 : Robert Irwin – also, Michael Asher – also.
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