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THE ART OF LOVING BY ERICH FROMM

- recommend for Designers

Although the title may sound like a gimmicky-self-help book, and it is a very helpful book, I promise you The Art of Loving is actually about everything; about reframing one's relationship to world around them through a specific view of human social psychology. Written in 1956 by a then fifty-six-year-old Erich Fromm, it explains why we love, how we love, and how we can love all aspects of our live's more honestly. Fromm emigrated to the United States in 1934, where he held a private practice and taught at Columbia, Yale, and New York University. His fields of expertise crossed disciplines as he is sited as a skilled social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist.

I am encouraging that Designers read this book because it posses an approach to mindfulness which succinctly incorporates creative practice. For a long time I have struggled intellectually to rationalize the relationship of love and work in my life, and this book is the best framework I have found so far to bring them together. It has helped me to see the links between my deep passion for creativity, why I am obsessed with the history of art and design, the joy I get from collaborating with others, and why I need my lovers and closest friends to have creative minds. I hope it can do the same for you.

The Art of Loving begins with a hypothesis; that loving is an art, and therefore it requires both knowledge and effort just like any art. He gives examples of art being everything from Music to, Medicine, to Engineering; as you might imagine, I would add Design to that list as well. He continues to state that just like any of these art forms, with the act of loving one must master the theory of the subject, and then the mastery of the subject through diligent practice. All forms of love - brotherly, motherly, neighborly, erotic, etc. - he explains, come from “the awareness of human separation” and that since we see ourselves as individual beings and “the deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of aloneness.” I will not ruin the unfolding of his logic for you, but he does go on say that being creative is also an act of love itself:

“In any kind of creative work the creating person unites himself with his material which represents the world outside himself."

In closing, I think it is important for Designers to read The Art of Loving because it reminds us to be mindful of what and how we are designing as it is an act of loving the world itself. I would love to hear how this book resonates with other creatives so please reach out. murray[at]cca.edu

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SPATIAL PARADIGM SHIFTS — FROM EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY TO AR/MR/VR

Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 331 BC. Soon after it became the link between Greece and the rich Nile valley, and the intellectual and cultural center of the ancient world. Within a century it grew from a small ancient Egyptian town into the largest city on the planet and housed one of the seven wonders of the world, the Bibliotheca Alexandria. In a series of organizational moves, millions of people moved into the ever expanding city and surrounding city-states supporting the transfer of exponential amounts of human knowledge.

For this grand reorganization Alexander and his Roman constituents were measuring land to claim and tax, planning densely packed cities, and cutting detailed stones in order to construct monuments and feats of civil engineering. Materials, space, and people needed to be negotiated like never before, and there needed to be grounding and universal principles to unify shared ways of thinking. It is no surprise then that it was at this time that rhetoric and universal principles of mathematics appeared in Alexandria.Marcus du Sautoy, Professor for Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, says that it was precisely because of the new concepts of space — cities and city states under the rule of an expansive empire — that Rhetoric and complex mathematics flourished at this time and place.

Rhetoric gave people in power the ability to use language to persuade and tell compelling stories in order to channel the effort of the masses. And in the realm of mathematics, Euclid’s Elements — a mathematical and geometric treatise consisting of 13 books written with strong rhetorical logic — emerged. While mathematics were being used for several centuries prior, they were not yet the analytic and deductive tool proving universal truths as we see in Euclid’s Elements. As you can see in the image below, Euclid’s Elements includes the descriptions of 3 dimensional shapes as well as planar. In fact the mathematical logic unfolds as a story to eventually explain the basis of complex geometry.

The text eventually became the canonical teaching tool for math for over two thousand years that followed. It was one of the first books on mathematics to be printed in 1482, soon after the printing press was invented, and comes only second to the bible in terms of editions published. Both Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein have famously stated that the text was so captivating to them as very young boys that it compelled them to go into mathematics in the first place. Euclid’s Elements took millions of minds from a place of unknowing, to a place of captivation and deep interest in the mechanics of the world.

SPACE IS EXPANDING — AND IT CAN CHANGE OUR BRAINS

Why do Euclid’s Elements matter now? Because I think it is a clear example of the how new concepts of space, technology and storytelling can converge and influence shifts in our cognitive abilities. Because I think there is potential for similar sea-changing transformations to occur in our collective understanding with the emergence of virtual and augmented reality platforms. As in Alexander the Great’s time, we are in need of a new way to organize and take in the world around us. We now live in a world where the digital is becoming a significant part of our lives and we need new ways to embody it; we need new ways to digest technology and have it become a part of our lives in tangible and immediate ways.

I believe that is why virtual and augmented realities are so exciting and have been such relentless concepts. With them, we can be inside technology in more full sensory capacities; we can naturally utilize data in the spaces around us in real time; we can start to live in the future we have been envisioning for decades. I keep coming back to two quotes:

“Textiles are the first house of the body, then physical space is the second house, and there’s a way in which these virtual spaces we inhabit are a new — a new piece of architecture for our lives.” - Ann Hamilton

“Embodied Interaction is interaction with computer systems that occupy our world, a world of physical and social reality, and that exploit this fact in how they interact with us.” - Paul Dourish, Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction

Both quotes elegantly reflect the presence of computing as a new dimension of reality that either creates a new space or occupies the spaces we already inhabit. That is to say, it is not just me who feels the digital is reaching out into our spatial interactions. How will it change our collective understanding of the world however, is something that is a little more elusive, but I will give it a go based on some recent experiences.

1. OUTER SPACE IN OUR SPACES

A few weeks ago I landed on Pluto. The barren alien geology was familiar in that it was rocky, but the formations and structures of the ice and rock were new. I had expected the planet to be more blue, but apparently it only appears blue from far away because the nitrogen rich atmosphere gives off a blue tint when light passes through it. Here on the ground all I see is red and cream tones. I can see the sun from far off. I continue out past Pluto into the large expanse of space. Looking back, seeing the sun so so far away. I feel the distance from earth.

My journey was made possible by a few things coming together: NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, the New York Times, and virtual reality. On July 14th 2015, New Horizons passed the dwarf planet and documented it in precise detail as it went past, and then the New York Times built a virtual reality experience around it called Seeking Pluto’s Frigid Heart. These forces of technology and storytelling came together to make me experience what it would feel like to leave Earth. It also gave me information about a planet I had previously very little understanding of, which is now grounded in what it feels like to be there.

In 2018 the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is scheduled to launch. JWST’s capabilities will enable a broad range of investigations across the fields of astronomy and cosmology, with a goal to basically understand the formation of our universe. The images and data that will be transmitted from this telescope will reveal unimaginable things, and VR technology and storytelling will only be getting better in the meantime. This convergence of technology, data, and story will once again make powerful knowledge deeply understandable to the masses. Having such ingrained knowledge of the universe will make our own existence even more profound, or perhaps just spur the growing interest and understanding of deep space travel. Either way, outer space will be coming into our spaces.

2. PERFORMANCE ART IN OUR SPACES

“Music has changed the way people see the world. Learning to play a musical instrument even alters the structure of the brain, from subcortical circuits that encode sound patterns to neural fibers that connect the two cerebral hemispheres and patterns of gray matter density in certain regions of the cerebral cortex. Music is powerful in its impact on human feeling and on the interpretation of events. It is extraordinarily complex in the neural circuits it employs, appearing to elicit emotion in at least six different brain mechanisms.”

- Dr. Edward O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth

I would add to Dr. Wilson’s point, that dance is directly related to the historical significance music as a “transformative technology.” It could even be said that dance is an instrument, and that the history of music going back to its origins can not be removed from dance. Therefore I believe that both dance and music have had a profound impact on how individual humans experience the world, by connecting us through space and time to minds far distant from our own, and also those directly around us in the moment.

This complex emotional experience that can differ from our ordinary day-to-day emotions, and which can provide a powerful source of connectedness, is only becoming more interesting with efforts coming from the Google Cultural Institute. In December of 2015, the institute made 360-degree videos a part of an innovative assemblage of performing arts groups. Now anyone can open the website (or visit YouTube) and experience a sold-out world-class dance performance on their cell phone. The audience is now comprised of billions and the seats are great.

The frame of the performance is also enlarged. As Jessica Billhart, Google’s resident VR filmmaker, stated at this year’s Google i/O, with VR we may have lost the frame, but we have gained a world. While she is speaking of film, the same can be said for a performance on stage. Viewers of a dance performance can now walk through the dancers, look backstage to see what is coming, and have different experiences every time. Benjamin Millepied, the director of the Paris Opera Ballet, who has been working with Google in their efforts, has speculated that now would be the time, “to think about creating work specifically for the technology.” In short, VR and 360 video technology will further explore push one of our oldest transformative technologies; music and dance.

3. EQUALITY IN OUR SPACES

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to participate in a ‘Holographic Hackathon’ in San Francisco sponsored and supported by Microsoft’s HoloLens team, Upload VR Collective, SFVR, Unity, and Autodesk. The hackathon was to last 48 hours and since very few people have developed for the HoloLens, there was around- the-clock support. I came with the intent to work on my Unity and IxD skills, gain more experience working with developers, and play with this new mixed reality device that was hard to come by.

There were about 90 people in attendance and 20 were pitching ideas for the others to work on. I quickly found a group of three other individuals — Suzanne Leibrick, Alex Sink, and Priyank Jain — who wanted to translate speech into sign language. I had previously done some research into voice interactions and thought I might be most useful on the team. We quickly got to work and over the weekend were able to build a working prototype to both translate and teach American Sign Language.

Combined with the advances in voice recognition software (Cortana in this case) and 3D engines and software (Unity and Maya in this case), we were able to augment an environment for people to begin to communicate as equals where there was a divide before. Considering that 5 percent of the world’s population is deaf, this is very compelling. Of course there is a lot of work for us to do; conduct actual user testing, build out more robust ASL libraries, streamline the UX, etc. but the potential is there. There will undoubtedly be countless other ways that this technology will enable a dramatic shift in conversations and deep human connections between more people in our spaces.

IN CLOSING

Soon we will no longer consider augmented and virtual as alternate realities, but as instruments that shape our realities. Just as mathematics, rhetoric, books, music, dance, and all forms of language have done — although we don’t usually think of them as technologies — augmented and virtual reality will bring our comprehension to new places. It will expand our spaces and relationships to each other and the world around us. It will have profound and long lasting effects across all areas of life. The stories we will be able to tell each ourselves will change how we experience everything; no matter what physical space we are in.

Special thanks to Narian Jashanmal and Mike Podwal for review. Email me at murray [at] cca.edu. For image credits visit Medium post.

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AUTOMATIC FEEDBACK SYSTEM DIAGRAM

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REAL : MY FIRST INTERACTIVE FICTION GAME

For an assignment in my ‘IxD Story’ course we were asked to design an interactive fiction (IF) game based in a dystopian future. The future I chose to explore come from two converging ideas: the rise of VR and the abuse of AI’s being created from our social media data to create AI’s that resemble our dead loved ones. I had recently been to the 2016 CHI Conference where such a concept was being explored and I was inspired to take it a bit further.

PLAY “REAL”

What was interesting was how spatial the project was, but also how such exercises would be applicable to voice interaction prototypes. I therefore experiment with a lot of “conversation” in my game. Play it and let me know what you think.

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EMPATHY POP-UP BOOK: AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

We live in an increasingly global world where people of many colors, cultures and backgrounds find themselves living together and needed to collaborate. But we also live in a world where we develop stereotypes about others based on media and culture.

For this project in a class called ‘Story’ for IxD, we identified a stereotype we believe is commonly held, and found people to interview about it. I compiled the interviews and research I have been doing with Marcus Books, the oldest black bookstore in the nations, and turned them into a pop-up book around the contradictions in African American literature.

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HOLO HEAR: HOLOGRAPHIC APP I MADE WITH SOME AWESOME PEOPLE AT THE HOLOLENS HACKATHON OVER THE WEEKEND

HoloHear is a project that came out of the SF holographic hackathon - 2016 June 17 to19 - sponsored and supported by Microsoft’s HoloLens team, Upload VR Collective, SFVR, Unity, and Autodesk. Team: myself + Suzanne Leibrick + Alex Sink + Priyank Jain

In 48 hours we created an application that turns spoken language into american sign language. It was an amazing experience and even more amazing to think that we can now create environments with mixed reality where more people can communicate as equals. Very excited to keep working on this project.

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NETWORK SYSTEMS: BASIC INFORMATION STRUCUTRES

My family tree + life and death sequence mapping/

Prototype 1: From the mapping exercise, I realized family photos could potentially merge with a family tree in order to create deeper connections to the photos and the people in them. Considering facial recognition and tagging of information such as place and time, an application such as this is highly feasible.

Prototype 2: When combining birth and death dates over time with family photos, a different dynamic can be more clearly seen - when members living together in time and when they are not. 

My social web + basic information mapping/

Prototype 3: My social network with a basic navigation table.

Prototype 4: My social network mapped in relation to time and geography.

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NETWORK SYSTEMS: TELEGRAM

Structures + Rationale

For my final network structure of a simple telegraph system for my MDes class of 16 individuals, I decided upon a hexagonal web. This model allows for multiple possible routes when transmitting a message from a “sender” to a “receiver” due to the many possible links each node has to choose from. This would be the most important feature in our class sue to our many divergent schedules which would keep us from always being at our telegrams.

This structure is also adaptable to change if additional nodes were added. Protocol allows for a minimum of two connections when a node is added, with a maximum six at any given time - keeping things simple, yet allowing for some complexity.

Protocol + Story

Each of the 16 students in our class is issued a telegram and a seating chart at their individual desks. The desks are dispersed throughout the school so that individuals can not be seen by the others when they are at their desk.

While they are at their assigned desks for many hours during the day, there are times that they might not be there. I took this as the main design criteria for my structure and protocol.

1. Sender refers to the structure chart to identify message a Receiver.

2. Sender identifies possible nodes to pass message onto, and send a “is anyone there?” signal.

2. If the Receiver is in, they send a “I am here and ready to hear a message” signal. If not, the Sender tries the other nodes they are connected to try to make contact.

3. The Sender proceeds to then transmit “final destination” / “how many characters are in the following message” / “message content” / “original sender” / “end of message” signals.

4. The Receiver`will reply with either a “got it” or “please send again, perhaps slower” signal.

5. If the Receiver is not the final destination, they consult their seating chart and proceed completes protocol 1 - 6 until the message reaches its final destination.

+ If the final Receiver is not available, the Sender must try again three more times in 10 minute intervals. If there is not response after 3 attempts, a message is sent back to the original Sender with a “message not completed” signal.

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CODE SYSTEMS / VISUAL TELEGRAPH

Lauren Argo and I teamed up to create a visual telegraph. In this design, the metal sounder also holds a pen to add the redundancy of markings in addition to the tapping sounds. On a different circuit, receipt paper is run at a constant rate perpendicular to the metal. 

The mental model: When the sender (information source) wants to send a message to some one, they must first encode a message, turn on the paper's motor, then transmit the message. The pulses of current move along the wires and activate the electromagnet when the loop is closed, the metal sounder is pulled to the magnet, which also pulls down the pen. The pen marks the paper, and the message can then be decoded.

The code: Arranges so that the most common used letters have the shortest markings.

Process: Before solidifying the design, we build everything out of tape and foam core to create a proof of concept.

Fun fact: Samuel Morse’s original telegraph also utilized visual markings to create redundancy to the sounder.

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BASIC APPLICATION MODEL: PAINT PROGRAM

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COUNTING SYSTEMS: BASE 2

In Order/

Animated

Inverse Logic/

Animated

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NEW SPATIAL THINKING — WEEKS 2–6

Photo by the lovely filmaker Chadi Younes

“Power is spatial.” — Zaid Hassan

I know. It is a vague and cryptic opening quote. Apologies. But those are my favorite kind. The kind that leave a faint resonance in your mind, and perhaps propel you into going deeper and hearing me out. Allowing me to connect with you using these strings of words and other information I am giving form to. Creating a starting point for me to structure my thoughts around and distil some meaning from all the experiences I have lived over the past few weeks. Creating a new space from them to live.

Over the past few weeks I moved apartments from SOMA to the Mission, attended a workshop for a class under the name of Social Labs lead by Zaid Hassan, went to Burning Man for a few days, gave out some grants with the Seattle Design Foundation, and did all the other MDes IxD stuff. I list these events not to gain praise or pity, or convey how busy I have been in an effort to explain why I have not posted here weekly as intended, but to share a theme I that has surfaced.

As the title suggests, I am thinking about space in new contexts while here in graduate school. What has emerged first is its relationship to power. When I was practicing as an architect, power dynamics of space were not often, if ever, discussed in my offices. Although we were creating physical boundaries to distinguish who could enter, who could not, battling with city officials to push the limitations of what could legally be built in the city, and determining which activities could easily take place in our built forms — we never sited power as an influence. To our own work, or the work that would eventually happen in the spaces we created.

In interaction design however — which is concerned primality with the behavioral influences of design — space has different considerations and potentials. It has the added layer of systems and digital webs supporting and framing it. I also has a process that places humans at the center, which is leading toward a very transformative influence on the practice itself. Again, from Zaid —

“How might the design practice evolve in an ever more complex world?”

How might the practice of design be applied to turmoil around us? Design, Design Thinking, or whatever you want to call it, is a practice of first understanding human needs through research, uncovering and understanding an ecosystem, and then prototyping multiple solutions — sometimes using technologies that did not exist a few years ago — in an effort to propose distinct new solutions that come from a more nuanced understanding of a particular scenario. This is good news for pervasive and systemic problems. Ones that are emergent and are so obviously in need of alternative solutions. Ones that affect all of us, but seem too monumental to approach.

What Zaid is teaching us in our Social Lab is that there is a bit more that can be added to the design process. To help us approach the most multifarious and intimidating of problems. Zaid himself has been working with his company Reos Partners, for fifteen years in many different countries on many challenges, ranging from public health care, to climate change, to finance; malnutrition in India, the Sustainable Food Lab, Climate Change Action Network, democracy in South Africa, and the list goes on. To my surprise, he says that to effectively design in such complexity, one must first consider space. That sometimes you need to go to a different place to work if you want different results. If you want to bring in a diverse range of stakeholders together and have all of them feel comfortable enough to contribute toward a truly collaborative solution. A solution that involves the ones who are limited by the current reality and the ones who have the capacity to support it through broader networks and knowledge. Hence the “lab” part; which is just another way of saying “space”.

“Some environments squelch new ideas; some environments seem to breed them effortlessly.” — Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From

* Disclaimer: I promise this is the only Burning Man reference I will make in my blog this year.

Once I began to internalize this idea, I saw it everywhere. Most obviously at Burning Man. After class one Thursday, I drove all night with a few lovely people and was welcomed by the sunrise and about 70,000 people in a wide open desert where they had created a new world while I had been busy at school. A world where people give generously and build crazy elaborate art cars to remind participants how things like laughter, fun, and wonder, are actually a very important part of the human experience.

In this alternative reality. In this blank slate. There are some particular points of information to structure things spatially and align values — the rest is wide open. Literally. Emergence is accounted for. Everyone experiments, everyone is a stakeholder, and everyone has skin in the game because it is such a monumental effort to fucking get there, stay hydrated, stay clean, and not get lost in a dust storm. Power is shifted because at the gates you are told “you must be both radically self-reliant and radically accepting if you want to enter.” You must also consider that it is a gift economy. What happens from there is a convergence of open minded people who have been thinking all year about what gifts to bestow on friends and strangers alike. So you have things as elaborate as dance-party-shower-foam-domes, or as simple as a nice gentleman who brings his cooler out to a far-off art installation and gives out cool water there.

Now. The important question is: if we can create such an incredible city in a desert where there is nothing, can we translate similar radical transformations to the real world where we have so much capacity to work with? In environments where we can truly be inclusive because it is where everyone actually lives? The answer simply has to be YES. Obviously. But the spaces we work in must support true co-creation. Our desks, in an office, miles away from the people you aim to serve, is likely not that container.

Personally, I am beginning to see the potential of the power-shifting via space shifting concept developing much more through my work the Seattle Design Foundation. Where we are attempting to take design ideas out of institutions and corporations and give them life through project grants and building new relationships. It would be incredible if we had a space, or a series of spaces, to further support this work. I will also be able to experiment with space potentials in our Social Lab, which will continue throughout the year with the oversight of Zaid and will focus on the Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco. What will be done there will be determined on what we uncover. But no matter what we do, I will certainly be aware of where we do it.

I welcome and encourage any feedback. murray [at] cca.edu

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DEFINITIONS: AFFORDANCE

“A relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent (person, animal, computer, etc.) that determines how the object could possibly be used.”

Since affordance is a relationship, it can vary depending on the agent. Cats for example, determine the capability to nap and get cozy in just about anything. In addition - as the diagram highlights - cats also don’t use rocks, so the affordance they see in them differs from yours and mine.

When developing technology, this mercurial definition is important to keep in mind, as an object’s signifiers mean different things to different agents. 

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PROJECT 1 - PHYSICAL CUBE

Prompt: Starting with a cube, design and interactive object that you think best invites a user to perform the following activities. The cube should invite someone to: rub it, turn it, move it, grab it.

PLAY WITH MEEEEEEE!

An object that clearly invites rubbing, turning, movement, and grabbing – those all sound like play words to me. I therefore decided to create an interactive object that incorporated welcoming imagery, but also use the 3 dimensionality of the cube to lead the participant around it. Texture and depth signifies further discoverability to the playmate.

Professor:  Kristian Simsarian

Class:  IxDGR-610: IxD 1 FoundationsFall 2015

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WEEK 1 — ORIENTATION

“We cannot transform the behavior of systems unless we transform the quality of attention that people apply to their actions within those systems, both individually and collectively.” — Leading From the Emerging Future

The word is complex. Or at least, it can certainly be experienced that way. In the past, many times I have taken this observation as fact. I will begin thinking about a particular far off situation or crisis, become overwhelmed, and then proceed to watch a movie, do some yoga, or something to calm my pulsating heart. Today (now yesterday) for example, I had the intention tostart my day distilling CCA orientation week, but here it is 5:30 pm and I am just getting started. In the past few days I have read stacks of challenging material, met dozens of new people, seen a plethora of new things — my little brain is filtering and compartmentalizing and connecting. It felt hard. So I had brunch. And then did a little thrifting.

This impulse to distract is one that I am confident we are all quite skilled at in one way or another. While we are amazingly sophisticated beings, we are also so simple and predictable. Our humanness binds us to self-perpetuated habits and cognitive constructs. So much so that we sometimes can not even see our way out of them. They can keep us from creating the world we truly want to live in.

I am becoming more aware of this however. It is part of becoming an interaction designer — to be mindful of personal habits in order to make a mental orientation shift. As the opening quote suggests, it starts with listening. Listening not just to the words that are being said, but observing your particular reactions to them. Are you listening to your friend and thinking at the same time: “this is where she goes into telling me how I should do something the ways she does it.” Or perhaps you are just waiting, anticipating, the right instant to chime in and share a tangential story? I am not saying these are terrible things, but they are small habits that can be better watched. We can take more responsibility for how information is entering into our bodies. In those micro moments that add up to the macro.

From there. Starting from a place where individual ‘attention quality’ is heightened, we can then better design for others. For everyone and everything. For people we never knew existed, and for natural and engineered environments we want to keep. We can be aware of when we are forming judgments based on our own personal biases, observe the world around us with more empathy, and in turn propose products and services that bring us closer to the world we want.

I don’t think we can get there with just better websites and apps either. Certainly we need them. They are essential in our time, and part of being an interaction designer. But we also need to be listening with our other senses. Where do things happen in space, how do they happen over time, how do they feel and sound. Environments communicate too. More articulated thoughts and observations on that to come.

Context: This past week school started with “Live Exchange”; a designer-focused communications class taught by Sharon Green. From the syllabus: “To engage wicked problems, we must work together to mindfully observe and actively listen to what is needed, effectively articulate shared values and vision, clearly provide feedback about progress, directly respond to differences and conflict, and authentically dialog in creating new realities.” With special guest appearance fromCharlie Sutton, who bestowed upon us presentation insights.

We also had our graduate orientation and met with the entire MDes cohort.Kristian Simsarian , the Chair of the department, introduced the mission of the program and asked us “what will be do with a seat at the table?”

Attended Gray Area Art + Technology Summer 2015 Creative Code Fellowship & Immersive Showcase.

Attended talk from Golden Krishna “The Best Interface is No Interface”

Road out to Vacaville, CA to see an art installation by Kristin Posehn.“A house made of air and distance and echoes” An architectural installation on an abandoned airfield. The sun set, the moon ascended, and we learned about Tule fog formation.

Reading:

Rosenberg, Marshall. Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Canavor, Natalie. Business Writing Today: A Practical Guide

Duarte, Nancy. Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences

Rath, Tom and Barry Conchie. Strengths Based Leadership

Au, Irene. “Mindfulness Practices for Better Design”

Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Scharmer, Otto anf Kaufer, Katrin. Leading From the Emerging Future

Insight: I took the “Strength Finder” test to find out my top strength is “Learner”. I cannot express how much of a relief that was to me. After all these years of getting so interested in so many things — and becoming very frustrated with myself many times in the process— I now get to think of it as a strength.

Image details:  “A house made of air and distance and echoes” An architectural installation on an abandoned airfield. by Kristin Posehn. Photo on left taken by Lisa Kleinsorge. Right is the full moon’s reflection.

I welcome and encourage any feedback. murray [at] cca.edu

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A PRESENTATION TO EXPLAIN TO MY MOM WHAT INTERACTION DESIGN IS, WHY I AM DOING IT, AND SOME THINGS I PLAN TO BE FOCUSING ON WHILE I AM AT SCHOOL.

I am going back to school (!). For an MDes in interaction design at CCA. Given my career history and what I want to do next, it just made sense for me to take a year and focus my efforts in a supportive and immersed environment. Explaining the decision to my family has been a little more complicated — so I made them a little presentation. Not just so they could fully understand what I am doing and therefore have meaningful discussions with me about it, but to clarify my intentions. For myself. I will be posting regularly on my insights and experiments, so setting a clear benchmark also seemed like a good idea.

1. WHAT IS INTERACTION DESIGN?

First of all, don’t worry that you don’t know what it is. The language is evolving, recent, and gets confused even in the most professional of settings. Second, here are some definitions from trustworthy sources:

“In design, human to computer interaction, and software development, interaction design, often abbreviated ixd, is defined as “the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services.” - Wikipedia

“Interaction Design (IxD) defines the structure and behavior of interactive systems. Interaction Designers strive to create meaningful relationships between people and the products and services that they use, from computers to mobile devices to appliances and beyond. Our practices are evolving with the world; join the conversation.” — IxDA

Gillian Crampton Smith defines Interaction Design as something that “shapes our everyday life through digital artifacts for work, play and entertainment.”

“Design is the optimization of a system for a set of effects. Interaction(Computer) is the manipulation of state-based systems for a set of implicit goals.Interaction design is the optimization of state-based systems towards a set of stakeholder effects that include implicit user goals.” — Chris Noessel

And here are a few examples to clarify those definitions:

DIGITAL PRODUCTS.

BlindMaps, which won the IxDA Award under ‘Empowering’ in 2015, is a tool for the blind and visually impaired. Their “ basic idea is to make the white cane a connected device which can act as an interface to the urban environment and to the user’s smartphone.” This product is a great example of how new technologies like smart phones and bluetooth-enabled haptic interfaces (touch sensors) can be integrated into existing tools to improve a long-standing problem. The designers researched the context of impaired vision within urban environments, and then designed digital products and systems that would enable new navigation tools. *Note: digital products can also be exclusively for a computer and/or mobile device— for example Spotify, Slack, orPinterest are all considered digital products.

DIGITAL ENVIRONMENTS.

‘Desire of Codes’, was an exhibition designed by Seiko Mikami. Although an art piece, it has a clear use and message — to have the visitor consider how human memory and surveillance are being affected by advances in technology… using current technologies. It is very meta. The “individual” visitor plays a double role of a subject of expression and observation. I like this example because, although on the intellectual spectrum, it highlights how digital environments could potentially be manipulated to produce negative ends. Just as the previous example however, the designer/artist researched the context of shifting memory and privacy, and utilized senors and digital projections to shape visitor behaviors within the environment.

DIGITAL SYSTEMS AND SERVICES.

Another 2015 IxD award winner, ‘Skype in the classroom’ is a free service for teachers that allows them to collaborate with each other, bring guest speakers to their classrooms, and take children on virtual field trips. It leveraged the technology of Skype, researched the needs of the classroom, and created a digital system and service to help teachers have a new level of access. It is another very positive example of how digital artifacts have the potential to expand the human experience of learning.

In brief, the profession of interaction design (IxD) is not only broad, but it is expanding. It will continue to do so as technology gives us new opportunities to redefine how we interact with everything in the world around us.

Interaction designers are therefore concerned with defining the form of products as they relate to behavior and use — anticipating how the use of new products will mediate human relationships and understanding, exploring the dialog between digital products, people, and contexts. They also need to be prepared to learn new domains quickly, be equip to conduct research, create prototypes, solve problems both analytically and creatively, and be able to visualize complex systems. As technology has the potential to change so much, it is also good if interaction designers have even a slight disposition for making the world a better place.

2. WHY AM I GOING BACK TO SCHOOL FOR INTERACTION DESIGN?

I have been practicing architecture and physical product design since 2005. I have a MS in architecture history and theory, and even started a non profitsupporting other emerging designers. One might think I would be done with school. But in the past few years, interaction design has become a part of several of my projects and I became inspired to see where it could take me next. When I moved out to San Francisco a few months ago, I didn’t know exactly what path I would take to get there, but I have taken the time to sort it out and here is some of the rationale:

I LOVE RESEARCH AND UNDERSTANDING WHY THINGS ARE MADE THE WAY THEY ARE.

I spent a year studying architecture history and theory at the University of Pennsylvania after architecture school because I wanted to understand where design forms came from — why particular aesthetic decisions were made at certain times. I feel a connection to the designers of the past and I learn immensely from them by researching how they thought through the design process themselves. Now I am looking to the future. To learn the tools that will help me define new ways of making in our current technology rich paradigm shift. I feel there is a disconnect between the architectural/spatial forms and emerging technologies. I feel a deep curiosity to explore that disconnect a little.

I LOVE LEARNING ABOUT NEW DOMAINS AND THEN MAKE THINGS OUT OF THEM.

I love to learn new things. Science, history, new methods of bringing materials together — all of it. Learning and then transforming that learning into actions and things. It is when I feel most connected to the world around me. It is why Kate Bailey and I bond over our Free Timeprojects. It allows us to approach new things that come up in our curious monkey minds, and give them form. Interaction design will put me into situations where I am required to learn new domains and trends continuously.

BECAUSE IT HAS THE POTENTIAL FOR IMPACT AND REAL WORLD PROBLEM SOLVING.

I started the Seattle Design Foundation because I believe design has the power to solve real problems. It was something I created to give back to my community in a way I could. With my co-founder Erin Gainey, we developed a system and are now fine tuning the processes, technologies, and services to help serve a dynamic creative community. I want more of this kind of work in my life and know that interaction design will help me do that. Not only to bring the foundation to a higher level, but research other problems and be better equip to solve them.

IT BUILDS ON EVERYTHING I HAVE DONE SO FAR IN MY CAREER TO MAKE SOMETHING EVEN GREATER.

The practice of architecture has taught me how to bring real things together to create beautiful environments for people — requiring the skill of vision, dialog, problem solving, three dimensional thinking, material understanding, complex systems management, and working with a diverse range of people. That will not change with this next step. What will change is that I will be learning how to shape and understand behavior. With architecture, spaces and problems are based on preexisting mental models of what should be there. With interaction design, I will be thinking about the future — how to shape new behaviors rather than set-up spaces for anticipated ones. But I will always be interested in spaces, which leads me to the next section…

3. WHAT AM I ACTUALLY GOING TO BE DOING AT SCHOOL?

Or more precisely, what can my Mom tell her friends I am doing? I gave her this one liner:

“Amber is learning how to meaningfully layer technology into spaces and things.”

But if she wants to elaborate — we will be covering all the bases of interaction design:

“CCA’s new Master of Interaction Design offers a master of design (MDes) that provides students with the combination of powerful design, experts in the field, and process skills that enable them to shape cutting-edge technologies and play key roles in the emerging design future.” — CCA

The program is also committed to setting us up to have a positive impact on society. In addition to the core classes which teach a variety of tools, theories and techniques that will facilitate the crafting of designed interactions — we will have classes that help us to become authentic leaders and approach complex real-world problems. A solid prospect.

As I come from architecture, I will be most interested to bring a heightened awareness of space to digital experiences, and in turn, find new ways for spaces to be heightened by digital interactions. Some areas I am most eager to explore are:

AUGMENTED, VIRTUAL, AND MIXED REALITY (AR / VR / MR).

I am interested in researching and prototyping ways AR/VE/MR can enhance and integrate technology into space in elegant ways. A lot of people say this is a VE really hard — possibly impossible — problem to approach because it mixes two realities at the same time. A lot of people think VR will not be able to move beyond the use cases of games and porn. In any case, I am excited to think more about what kinds of spaces could benefit from being virtual and what someone versed in real spaces could bring to the conversation.

PERSONAL SPACES PROJECTED.

I want to think much more about the recent trend of projecting personal and public spaces through social media products. Although at the surface products such as Snapchat, Meerkat, Instagram, and Beme might feel like ego driven platforms, I believe there is more there to discover.

MOVING AROUND IN SPACE.

Sensor technology is also a path of exploration. People’s behavior remains broad and distinct, but there are commonalities as well. What will happen to space, if space itself is anticipating a dialog through movement? Could it be thought of as an additional material?

I know it is a lot. And I am not saying that I will tackle it all — or perhaps I will tackle even more?! I just wanted to define some possible areas of exploration that align with my area of expertise. As for the actual topics and problem areas I am going to approach, that will need to be another post. You can be sure however that I will strive to be an interaction designer who brings together the spatial, physical and digital to form full and pleasing experiences, can approach complex problems to form elegant solutions, and writes and speaks on design topics with regularity.

If you are wondering how my Mom reacted, she said: “So you are going to be more like Elon Musk? I think he is one of our best people. We need more people like him.” She is a little biased, but I like how she is thinking.

Please feel free to reach out if you have insights, suggestions or questions for me: murray [at] cca.edu / You can also follow this publication on Medium to receive weekly email updates.

[mademakemaker-blog]

HOUSE PLANT

Last year Kate and I – aka our Free Time - spent a lot of time and energy researching and designing for House Plant - a hydroponic grow system.

We developed an actual unit, understood the science, compared different system in the market, and even prototyped an app to teach people how to grow. I was growing lemons, marijuana (with a license), herbs, tomatoes, and jalapenos – all in my studio apartment. 

Our goal is to create a system that looks like a piece of furniture, or art piece, but functions with such ease that it becomes integrated into home rituals. We are currently taking a step back and are in the process of narrowing the project and looking for a manufacturer. I realized these images need a place to be seen however, since who knows how long the next steps will come!