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Interactivity in three modules

Introduction

To begin with, I will mostly reflect on the papers we read during the course, and at the same time with the theme we worked on. The idea of style was represented in stages. mostly related to its historical development. For example, in a way style, development has some unexpected turning points, one of them is when Napoleon was trying to make every armour fit to the soldier.

Some design can affect the behaviour of the user, and create changes. This brings us to ethical questions and boundaries of design objects. The article suggests looking at the design object as an independent property. It is inevitable for objects to affect the world. This understanding relates to the overall definition of interface and style. Whether the object is built for an individual directly or indirectly it affects lives. An example given in the article mentions cars. Cars are designed for humans, so their inner design and extern design both can be understood as an interface, but what’s interesting that the way car overall affects our life - is what is a general understanding of the interface of the car.

Interesting remarks on human interfaces and software interfaces, where software interfaces are predictable and calculated whereas humans change their behaviour all the time - or as mentioned in the article, we humans are shapeshifters.When talking about boundaries of interfaces, and limiting their access on human lives, only started to play a role in industrial design and onwards. Today we can see that control over what interface can access and how in our lives is becoming the concern of international dimension. And results are legislations, such as European law of the right of access and control of users personal data.

Reflection on - Maeng et al - Interaction-Driven Design. Design is undeniably the best when it is user-centred. Design is also driven by technology. The way we can evaluate the design and consider it good if it brings the memories of the experience. Nonetheless, design can be driven simply by the interaction. The interaction for humans is natural only if it’s related to other humans. Then we can argue if the interaction with computers (interfaces) can be natural. If not then we have to ask another question - if we have to learn new behaviour and new interactions.

If the design is driven by interaction then in the consideration we have to take interaction that this interface requires. In what context is used, and how can help us get what we want. Is it information, is it entertainment etc. Overall, we can conclude that design depends on combinations of factors. User, drive, technology-driven, idea-driven design and so on. Depending on the approach we can then argue how good is our design. On behalf of interaction, we can assume that design that incorporates movements that are known (or memorable to the user)

Reflection on Lenz et al - Aesthetics Of Interaction: In-text Aesthetics of Interactions is mentioned that Technology is constantly changing, and this fact means that new doors are open for a new way of designing. With news possibilities there is variety this that has to be taken into consideration and aesthetics are one them. Quality of the product certainly can not be only determined by their look, but recently aesthetics are considered part of the quality made product. Nevertheless, the way the product looks likes drastically increases the way we interact with the product.

The text suggests that the design has to be appropriate to the surrounding. quote’’ (a situation, timing, environment, social setting’’ Even there were attempts to invoke positive feelings. But, these attempts were left out, after the experiences were found unnatural and superficial.

When designing there has been used some psychological tricks so stays. Designs were based on humans needs, 7 of them to be specific. competence, relatedness, popularity, stimulation, meaning, security, autonomy. Within the motor aspect - timing and reaction time was taken into consideration. Overall this text has analyzed 19 approaches in which way they could improve interaction. Some findings are that some of the basic needs could be stimulated to create higher-quality interactions. Faster, more engaged, or simply better interaction.

What I learned so far. As our teacher Clint has said at this point we were not supposed to think of the user so much rather to focus on the idea mainly.The idea about what would our design do, and the idea we have for our design. Where to be implemented, for instance.The most importantly we should list out as many ideas as possible and simply try to apply ideation and thinkering process. Some ideas so far were face was detected by cameras depending on the distance.

Within this research, some data also indicates that - in designed interactivity - stimulation is overly represented- And some other aspects underrepresented, like needs and meaning for instance. So indicating that design could go towards the more balanced approach where all seven needs have a fair share in interaction design - would be an approach works exploring.

So aesthetic interaction and the future of interaction design lies in the realisation of the importance of good interaction design in our lives.

On faceless interactions - within the area of human-computer interaction there is a need for a better understanding of interfaces. By exploring the interfaces we end up developing and spheres of faceless interactions. The idea of interfaces has been developed throughout the times. It underwent a variety of styles and some of them are “thought” style. This style design is characterized by the narrowness since they are led only by one thought process. There were no analytical or critical approaches before design. When talking about interfaces, in the early days the interface would revolve around the question ‘why’ and 'how’, but later one the question 'where’

Within the thought style, there are various approaches, and some of them see interfaces, as boundary limited interface, a surface where matching object touch, where control is the source of design, and where expression is the reason of design. Few more reasons could be added, it basically all depends on the thought process of a designer. This is what the Janlert and Stolterman in Faceless Interaction mention nonetheless. This text covers and explores the basics concepts of interaction design. There is a need for better understanding of the term interface and surface. And this is because Interaction Designer designs interface nonetheless. Over time the way interface was understood changed, and it keeps changing. It attaches to style. The style that is the current trend.

The idea of style was represented in stages. mostly related to its historical development. For example, in a way style, development has some unexpected turning points, one of them is when Napoleon was trying to make every armour fit to the soldier. But, furthermore making armour look alike.

The article gives very interesting remark on human interfaces and software interfaces, where software interfaces are predictable and calculated whereas humans change their behaviour all the time - or as mentioned in the article, we humans are shapeshifters.

When talking about boundaries of interfaces, and limiting their access on human lives, only started to play a role in industrial design and onwards. Today we can see that control over what interface can access and how in our lives is becoming the concern of international dimension. And results are legislations, such as European law of the right of access and control of users personal data.

Depending on the size of the machine and required functionalities the interface adjusts and expands. But, also this is when the interface plays a major role in representing abilities of the machine to a human eye. This is actually when expressing as a designer starts to matter more than usual. Intentions, emotions, and overall meaning bear importance in the last-mentioned stye of interfaces within thought style. And this is when designing becomes a challenge, and when design gets limitations due to the presence of a variety of cultures where the same things have different meanings.

Alongside this mentioned constrained in the text Faceless interactions we have introduced another form of limitations. And that is space. An interface can not sometimes squeeze the necessities required by the market - constant interface size changes are the fitness of this claim. On the other hand, sometimes just the ambition of designer can require an increase in the size of the interface, so it is not only market requirements os fashion trends. Sometimes trends can work against the development of the interface optimally. But, it is preferable to look at this as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Because at the end what user needs the most is what matters.

Do to a contradiction to a market needs and current trends, and technological abilities, sometimes designing and the interface can come to point of contradictions. Some of them are related to pure functionalities - let’s be honest non-functional interface has very little benefits to anyone. Some malfunctions can be related to automatisation of the performance and other do to important fine-tuning functions. In the end, what might seem as dysfunctional in the first prototype can lead to new discoveries. And, it can even contribute to the development of new technologies.

Some of the complications and malfucntionalities of Interfaces is basically when interfaces have to do simply too much.Interfaces understood as the surface is a good representation. Because that what essentially is. But none-the-less there is no generally accepted definition of Interface.But as the interaction is leaning towards less and less thought-full interference and towards an automatised reaction to human motorists. The idea of the interface as the surface is changing. Even tho we know that faceless interactions and interfaces go way beyond of some sort of surface still this idea of faceless is understood as something new.

So when we compare interface interaction with faceless interactions. We come to the conclusion of a variety of differences, to a free expressiveness and the lack of clarity to navigation to clear indicated commands etc. The notion of trying to interact to some faceless interfaces can be regarded as behavioural clustering, in the strong will to navigate we mimic and command too much. The relationship with interfaces becomes ambiguous.

Although, all this complexity is maybe creating a new expression or even better new styles. The combinations of interfaces and combined interactions. Especially contextual, where interfaces can have limited/ contextual functionality. This way we can easily avoid behavioural clutter.This news tyles can be precise and on point. As suggested in the text, there could be three potential orientations in the development of contextual interfaces. One is regarded as for humans, one for things, and another environment.

This expansion would enrich already a complex and long history of the development of interfaces and human-computer interactions.

module one - week one - we have set up code and started planing for module one. First two days I missed due to illness but my group member Habib introduced me into what I have missed. I quickly caught up and started working with Habib’s suggestions of using emotions to change colours on the screen.

I liked his initial idea - but Habib was not satisfied and decided to keep exploring with the code. Here we exchanged some thoughts with other colleagues and how they see the task and how they plan to apply their creativity.

My initial thoughts were to make the screen recognize the person and changes the colours. In comparison to recognizing the object and marking the entirely different colour. This seemed like a complex way to a very interesting interaction. But, my colleague Habib didn’t find idea complex enough - so we kept exploring.

expanding the idea - it seemed easy at first, but on second glance not so easy task. We have started to sketch to expand our idea. We also hoped to sketch might gives some sort of direction.

We wanted to settle on one of the ideas that the code would react when a second person appears on your screen. This is only on the occasions when we want to protect our privacy. But, we sort of kept being open to new changes if they occur.

If we are trying to establish a specific user goal (in which case this would be privacy) it seems that this is an interesting feature. This definitely one of the way the system can satisfy/protect the user.If we are talking about human-centred interactions then we are on the right track. At least this is how I and Habib felt, thus we continued to explore code with these design features.

explaining the code behind the design - I will try to explain the way the code works - and not to make my skills look more than they are. Based on the same idea of privacy the next code we developed together with the help of Clint and TA’s is when the camera recognises the person on canvas, we wanted to use the same code that would recognize the other person and would blank or change the colour of the screen. But then we came to an idea to increase interaction from the aspect of privacy to the improvement of the interaction overall.

To react to the presence of another person feature we substituted with the camera recognizing certain parts of the face or body.This way if we would, for example, decrease the distance of the certain part of our face the reaction could happen.For instance, if we put our ear closer to the screen the sound of whatever we are listening could increase.

So far, this is a possibility we are inspired by. But, honestly, it is hard to say how much we can do. I made this graf trying to portray to myself what is that we need to require from the system just to satisfy some user needs.Here below are some of the questions we asked yourself when working with this interactivity challenge:

1 - what are some intuitive skills we use that can be facilitated?

2 - would this interaction with interface seem too artificial?

3 - in which context we can use these interactions?

About first “show and tell” the feedback from colleagues. We received feedback that our interaction is overly direct and it won't give us the best results. For example, if we had accidentally someone passing by and we very focused while the screen goes blank it would cause distraction. So what I learned is that design process depends of the deisgners ability to expand potential ideas. In our own work is understood as a sort of attempt of expansion and not as an actual expansion. We did aim for higher results, but honestly, we didn’t manage In observation how our colleagues have worked and tried to articulate themself, we have concluded that they also have reached similar results. The most interesting part was to see the use of “designers way of thinking” to get ourself of the dead end.

module two

Desing of coping: - summary Depending on our situation, we choose to cope with the situation in a smooth way. We are surrounded by multiple devices and the way we interact with them depends on the situation, and condition we find ourself in, but also on the situation of the device. Device conditions. Having experienced the constructed device, it is not necessary to be deliberative.

Here we have our second prototype and it had bin contextually meta oriented. That’s why we have decided to go with further prototyping. The next prototypes have been out of any symbolic context. Unlike the very first prototype, it was very direct. But our goal is to make it social.The idea that the prototypes have to be social, it could refer that it has a purpose. But not necessarily already known purpose. Holistic aspect, with the diversity of texture. Nunsense of direction. Possibility of action over direction, meaning or context.

Coping, designing for coping is designing for a situation where the user gets carried away without design is deliberate. On the other side, Phenomenology is and this perspective on a design that our experience with the world is one embodied coping rather than deliberate experience.

Show and tell - In our prototype, the focus was on the sensation of different stimulants. The speed of servo changes, depending on the surface that is applied. The moment someone touches the surface, the sensation in itself is different. Then the movement of servos ads additional sensation. Two servo moves different speed, but also when one servo stops another one changes the speed which takes us out the previous sensation but gives us continuous stimulation.

So the event is continuous, and almost everyone has decided to ake their hand out as soon as the first movement happened. What is interesting is that people also conscious to even put their hands.

We wanted to apply a variety of textures, but not only textures also speed. If we would continue working with this, we would have to apply water and sound. The lightning in different colours. Group 1 had the intention to give a sensation of randomized movements of fingers placed in different strings. The movement had several variations. Group 2 had a typer simulator that would move while we type. It would move throughout different timing, directions while we type. It would indicate our typing speed and rhythm.

Group three had the intention to create a sensation when biking and directing direction. Group four had “dancer” on the hand. Aiming for abstract sensation on their hand. Which they seemingly achieved. Groups six went a little bit of the track, and they focused on the functionality so the result went into one-sided stimulants. Which was not the aim of the course.

So the rest of the groups have continued with a similar approach. But, they have ended up very different results.We felt unable to go forward with our current idea. We thought that a potential contribution to enhanced feelings was important. But after reflecting with teachers it seemed that is more important than the entire experience than a particular feeling about it.Removing some parts made it more united. We consider this to be an updated version.In comparison to our colleagues no one really explores notion of touch and texture so much as our group did. We glued the elements and tried to make them spin in opposite directions thinking this would add to the experience.

What did I learned. The idea initially came up from the balloon. We thought that balloons insides are so unexplored. And imaginations I had as a boy of living inside of a balloon was so engaging that I decided to bring it in in this design process. So learning in this design process was quite bumpy. Initially we started from abscure idea.Later on thinking of the criteria required we have developed it. Mostly, thinking in which we can add textures. What we kept in mind was the secrecy of inner space of balloons. We can let our imagination play with whats inside of the balloon, and if we place our hand inside, our thoughts could shape more realistically.

Once we started to work with texture. The entire concept of module two started to make sense. Together with our design installation. The surfaces would gives us feedback. And the secrecy our the balloon shaped installation would give feedforward.

After experimentation with a lot of different surfaces, we decided to go with one that is alike. Similar, but giving different feedback.

module three

In module three, the focus has been directed towards machine learning. Machine learning can be useful as a design material. Our aim on this module was to learn what are constrains in using machine learning as design material. Machine learning has been contextualised on bodily gestures, and overall in the general context of artificial intelligence. The way the machine learning is integrated. in this module we will attempt to build our own machine learning models. Based on data movement sensors, in particular, accelerometer and gyroscope

The process: Thinkering, ideating, implementing, experience/reflect. is it feasible to work with? what does it take with today’s technology? how difficult is it? what can we use it for? how should we understand machine learning also concerning a larger question about artificial intelligence?

Studies of dancers, moving from Experience to Interaction Design.Movement-Based interaction technologies are used in daily lives, and dance is part of daily life routines.In the current study, there has been conducted various studies on dancers and movement. The study was conducted in two versions, the first one was focusing on failing (as first-hand experience and outside understanding) and second was inventing and choreographing movement.The act of integrating, for design allowed an overview of all the perspective.

Dewey 1934 said that aesthetics of experience are a crucial component of all human experiences. In the study, three perspectives where examined.

First one being, the mover, of the observer as second, and third of the machine.

The paper furthermore gives an overview of materials used in research. Dewey (1934) and Richard Shusterman (2000) were holding the focus in enriching the quality of the human lives.

Their approach was very experimental, and they used the material, such as video, and interviewing the dancers. Then they made a written transcription. The recording made of dancers failing was analysed in various ways, for instance: The movement of the body was analysed in a way that body is changing relationally in time and spaceTo the techniques of the movements, there is a range of movements that were calculated and noted. The so-called image-based technique, where the image is a direct informed of the process: The main characteristic of the “failing” are 1. initiation fo the fall 2. controlling the descent 3. contacting the ground6

In study 2. Choreographing movement analysis can be expressed through the terms. Indirect in space, sustained in time, light in weight and bound inflow.In the second study, they used the kit of resources that would express the experiences. Images, the movement description. Cards, text, and also the music was used.After the performance, the movement is documented accompanied by the machine, which machine would afterwards interpret the movements.The dance was divided in Visual Movement Sequences - the performer movements are divided in sequences in series of postures. Afterwards shapes made by dancers are analysed and divided schemas. As Hutchinson said in 1977, the Spacial movements schemas were based on labanotation floor.Machine input was used to illustrate the machine inputs and detection of movements, but also to interpret them.Playing with everyday movements and gestures, We discussed the project overall, and ai we use for the module. Then we ideated the movements we want to analyse.We started recording some basic gestures, like circle and rectangle. We also decided to record more than just two gestures.

How does it feel to jump? (On the box) You can feel the purpose of the toes. We use them to drift our body fro the ground and to relocate on the box. Then we use toes to stabilize on the box. We will analyze the feeling from a mental perspective. It felt scary and unsafe - because the box feels less stable than the ground. We can even say that there a different adult and children. Children jump less concisely. That creates tension in muscles. In comparison to jumping off the box. There is a feeling of relaxation. We use force to jump, then we almost relax muscles expecting the ground. This is related to the fact that the ground/floor is more stable. Our muscles have already learned the “feeling” of stability on the floor. In conclusion, there is different muscles tension when jumping up on the box, and jumping off the box. It is related to our previous “muscle knowledge” of the ground and unknown muscle memory of the box.

Furthermore, bodily perspective.It is a way to fin collaboration between.If we can really talk about intelligence and ai, is it mimicking or being alike to human intelligence.Intelligence is not necessarily only human experience, but it is understood in the human perspective. The intelligence, therefore, stands in a referential relationship and not a causal relationship to the world.Machine learning is necessary because we want to make the world intelligible. This aim was not clear in the first wave of ai. When it comes to the aspect of the understanding design process within the one context for a few contexts for a better understanding then we have to think of the final design and product. Design context only makes sense if it’s meaningful as we said in the beginning and now we are debiting from the aspect of meaningful depending on which context we are looking at as observer some design

Quite meaningful whereas for a user the same design can be far from meaningful. If it’s hard to use it if it’s hard to bring it for purpose1

But then if and when it comes to machine learning then or purpose of improvement of some aspects of society and then our design practice in this quarter is what is extremely meaningful because we aimed for as many items as possible for better understanding of the movement in the context of machine learning. But on the contrary, there was no specific conclusion drawn upon our design experience as I said before, mainly because our design experience the world about understanding searching for certain prospects and not entirely in for development of design idea or necessarily overall improvement of social telematics.

In conclusion what is that I learned. There is a need for enormous analysis of every movement when designing for certain context. Understanding nuances of each movement. Performability of recording. Where on the body we can attach the sensors? Our process in this module was rather superficial due to a shortage of time. And, what we learned is that small differences in performing certain movement are present and we feel them, but machine would not necessarily recognize the difference.

Is it meaningful?

How can contextualisation, as understood by Loke and colleagues (2005, 2010) relate to the meaningfulness of design?

Introduction

To begin, it is important to define what actually contextualisation is. According to the variety of online dictionaries, contextualisation can be understood as use of language, signals, and other important aspects of interactions in certain situations. If it communicative situation, then what relevant is who is talking, what visual clues are given, the relationship of talkers, and where is all happening. Loke and colleagues in their paper predicates the importance of moving the body in interaction design by studying the movement of trained dances, in a specific context. In contrast, in my experience in the course of interactivity with the world of analysis of moving the body, the focus was on jumping as a non-trained movement and not contextualised. Furthermore, in this essay, I argue if the process in which way my team worked on the process of exploration, and try to come up with alternative ways of exploring.

The way Loke and colleagues refers to the experience of movements they frame it in the context of aesthetics. They speak of the aesthetics and their association with specific qualities qualities, such as meaningfulness in the action (Loke, L., & Robertson, T. 2010). Even though the activities are happening in a certain context still the meaningfulness of the event depends on how the action is being felt. In comparison, the examination of the movement that we observed in module three, didn’t involve a specific context and the entire exploration was based on the feelings of the jumper. This rise to another question. Can feelings, subjective as they are, be understood in design practices as certain context? It could be argued that many design practices are simply based on qualitative research, which in itself, is design practice. For Loke and Robertson it surely can, but only if the feelings are meaningful. They argue that it is exactly this meaningful engagement what brings design forwards, and it also brings forward society in general (Loke, L., & Robertson, T. 2010).. So, whether the context comes from emotion or not is irrelevant. A more relevant question is - ‘’is it meaningful’’

To understand the role of feelings, Loke and Robretson refer to kinaesthetics in context of Interaction design. And, their research has been anchored in dance and performance due to the fact that dance and performance have long traditions of embodied knowledge (Loke, L., & Robertson, T. 2010). It can be argued that choosing performance and dance were rather disadvantaged than an advantage to this research, precisely do to a familiarity of movements of tested persons. Thus their emotions were altered after years of exercising similar movements.

In relation to experiments done in course, we contextualised ourselves in an activity that does not involve trained or exercised move. Consequently, our movements, logically thinking, would result in the most real feelings. Of course, the realness and authenticity of feelings should be relevant, for a variety of all self-evident reasons. On the other hand, since we didn't use a clear context, such as dance studio, nor specifies identities of jumpers. It can be argued that our sampling was harder to comprehend. Simple as that, we gather information of the movements and that feeling that involved but we couldn’t know how to present it. Moreover, even when we did deliver, the information we had was not clear to the listeners.The strength of the approach where at least something is contextualised, the results are notably easier to comprehend. Clearly, contextualisation matters. Whether we lose in quality or gain in understanding, the design has to be contextualised and brought to the purpose. This is in relation to design practices that involves studying movement.

Another aspect this essay wants to debate about is, exploring contexts for the best design practice. As Loke and Robertson have presented in their paper, their design ideas were to enable designers to design quickly for dance and performance without the need to have years of dance experience. Thus collecting as much data as possible and from many angels was of extreme importance. The strength of such an approach is that gives you all relevant information from the most important angles. In comparison to our design practice, we have aimed to understand the movement rather than to learn something from it or possible to think of a certain design. Thus, our design practice wasn’t unfortunately long enough to gather information and start to design. Those who argued against these standpoints could say that our practice was lacking variety of approaches. That might be true, but there is a reason for that approach. We were using jumping on and off the box as two main angles. We were comparing them and contrasting but not coming towards any concrete findings. Maybe, the attempt to rely on emotions was a good attempt to expand observation of the movements, more expansions like this would maybe be a good idea.

Luke and Robertson have used three main approaches, first being, first-person experience or the experience of the mover, the second is the experience of the observer and third the machine perspective. There is a general logical conclusion that these three perspectives are broad and they could contain multiple layers which could, later on, be a resource of valuable information. This information could lead toward finding that could build up to a good design idea. And, as Loke and Robertson say ‘’the professional design ability is in the assessment of a good design idea’’ (Loke, L., & Robertson, T. 2010, p. 2.)

There is another argument that I wanted to mention in this essay is why it was not a good idea to give just simply another approach to the understanding of the movement of jumping. I would like to mention that simply representation of the moving body for a designer comes with a set of challenges. There is a clear reasoning for this approach, deliberate Luke and Robertson believed that to designing a dynamic, temporal, in motion activity together with feelings are not easily understood, contrary to traditional static forms of design.

When it comes to the understanding of the design within a certain context. Then we have to think about what are we trying to achieve with the final design. Design context only makes sense if it’s meaningful as we said in the beginning and now we are debiting from the aspect of meaningful depending on which context we choose to work in. If we are looking at design as observers, some feature of design might seem quite meaningful whereas for a user of the same design it can be far from meaningful. This is because the user has to see the purpose and practical usage alongside visuals.

Machine learning perspective can be also very abstract, therefore hard to understand. In our design exploration of the movement, the context was exploring for the sake of finding out more about jump itself.. Therefore, we can say that our design process was extremely meaningful. We aimed for as many repetitions as possible for a better understanding of the movement in the context of machine learning, and that is what we achieved. This, of course, can’t be said if the final aim was to come up with a good design idea.

In Loke and Robertson paper the representations of the movement come along with many challenges, therefore they have decided to work with trained dancers. By working with trained dancers, they could learn more themselves, and understand and utilize design interactions with technologies in a better way.. Their design would be used to trained new dancers and new practices that included a variety of movements including improvisation. They have a point in thinking like that, it was very important for them to acquire as many different movements as possible. Because, their aim was to facilitate further learning for newcomers. They claim that in one of those three studies the aim was to study the movement of failing. They did that in the way of conducting physical interviews. In the interviews dancers would demonstrate physical performance of fail, since they could just rely on one perspective. And the reason is simply because dance themselves don't know when they will fall (Loke, L., & Robertson, T. (2010).

Their argument is irrelevant to our explorations, In our experience we didn't demonstrate jumper we actually jumped we didn't acquire information from the interviews we just analyzed the movements, how we did it and how did it felt. Luke and Patterson have analyzed the movement of the body as a whole process where bodies changing rationally in space and time. each movement has been understood as distinct stage. However, in our experience we can say that we did what seemed the most logical. There were benefits for us for understanding every movement that we did in order to jump properly. It was important to understand why we lift hands before we jump on the box, and why we don't do that when we are jumping off the box. To a certain extent both Luke and Robetson, and me and my colleague were right. We were aiming to learn as much as possible about movement of jumping, and they needed as many perspectives of falling as possible.

The analysis of the collected video files and interviewing one another we have a find out differences off jumping on and off. In particular how we felt and why we felt that way. The analysis done by Loke and Colleagues had different perspective. For example. Video recordings were used to gain external perspectives. Interviews were used to gain the performers perspective and they use sensors for machine perspective.We can argue that they could have only used one perspective if their aim was to find out only one perspective.. But, the context that they have placed their entire design process led them to conduct this research this way.

In conclusion we can say that, for Loke and colleagues emerging set of methods and tools was important, in order to come up to the findings that they aimed for. Their aim was to find what does a mover imagine when he's moving what does the observer see and what is that in particular that machine recognizes. Everything was accountable from feelings and living experience. For observer prospective it was relevant to frame the movement in the range that was understandable objectively to a viewer, but at the same time understood by a mover, and at the same time machine could also recognize it (Loke, L., Larssen, A. T., & Robertson, T. 2005).

Lastly but not the least important is that a newcomer dancers could be able to understand and learned from these findings quicker than the traditional way of teaching. Loke and colleagues said the day could have expanded the process to an even more contexts and approaches. Like, to a mechanical, social, or even cultural context, maybe even ecological. They claim and this is what we argue in this essay, that this, broad context approach, would enable designer to stand an endless number of domains (Loke, L., Larssen, A. T., & Robertson, T. 2005). Thus the question of context is essential to a design process.

Limitations of the endless number of contexts. It is the aim of good design to facilitate future learning for new users. A plurality of contexts in design can have major disadvantages, for example, movements with different meaning can be easily linked into multiple contexts, therefore easily misunderstood. Confusion certainly does not facilitate learning.

We can argue that in our design exploration, having a limited number of contexts was actually beneficial. Since our aim was to learn to induct about the possibility of movements and machine learning. So exploring the movements without the context, bur rather looping through numerous theories, was more beneficial than coming up with a final design idea in a certain context. When it comes to labanotation Luke, Larssen and Robertson divide labanotation in three parts, into ‘motif’ , ‘efforts-shape’ and ‘structural’ labanotation. In their research in 2005 (Loke, L., Larssen, A. T., & Robertson, T. 2005). their aim was to understand the usefulness of labanotation. We argued that what they lacked in their research was the complexity of movements. But, they purposely selected simple moves to understand, and it can be argued that this is where the research has undergone unreliability. The advantage of their study is that they contextualize the movement within the game interaction. So, even if the moment were relatively complex design ideas were easily understood thanks to adequate contextualisation.

‘’Is it meaningful’’? How can contextualisation, as understood by Loke and colleagues relate to the meaningfulness of a design? To answer our essay question. We have learned that's regardless we use complex or simple movements to explore if they are contextualized they can be easier to understand.Thus, aim that we failed to achieve in our exploration in this course is to expand our context of exploration further beyond simple learning. We believe that in this way we could have understood movements better. And, furthermore, the process of coming up with a design idea would be simpler. And lastly, the movements we were exploring could have been contextualised better thus more meaningful.

References

Loke, L., Larssen, A. T., & Robertson, T. (2005). Labanotation for design of movement-based interaction. In Proc. of the 2nd Australasian Conf. on Interactive Entertainment, pp. 113-120.

Loke, L., & Robertson, T. (2010). Studies of dancers: Moving from experience to interaction design. International Journal of Design 4(2), pp. 39-54.

#Interactivity design

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bahrrss-blog · 6 years ago

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Digital Prototyping - How do speculative approaches reveal qualities of digital prototyping practice, and what are these important qualities?

Speculative design is a complex process. It expands Digital prototyping practices towards imagination and exploration. Previously to starting a speculative project, it is important to learn extensively about the subject. Because to imagine and explore one has to be familiar with what is already known about the subject. During the course of Digitial Prototyping, I was working with the topic that was very well researched, this helped us understand the speculative idea my team was working with. Furthermore, this was a first speculative project I was involved, so having an abundance of information facilitated the work on the project. The supervisions also helped us to navigate through a lot of information and to narrow down to what's essential for the continuation of the project. Thus, having information and someone with a lot of knowledge about that information can help to create a quality speculative design.

How speculative design is relevant to prototyping experiences in general?

It can be argued that by introducing the goal of the certain design we can then possibly determinate the relevance of that particular design. But, as well as prototyping experience in general. In the exercised project in this Course, we were applying knowledge learned from, not only provided literature but also on our general knowledge. How we see and understand the social processes around us. I would argue that prototyping plays a relevant role in speculative design, in my experience, it actively shaped the thought process and thus affected the design project.

For instance, the design process that my group was undertaking in this course, was clearly divided into two major ideas. Where the first idea, was a bad attempt to speculate, and a rather good attempt to solve the problems. Prototyping did not contribute much. On the contrary, on the second interaction, when the ideas were considered quite speculative, prototyping, especially using digital tools (such as Adobe xd) made the project harder. This is due to the fact that the initial ideas needed to be transferred to visual aspects. Like, a video would visualise our thought clearly and helped us see what is missing in our speculation. Since we didn't do that, everything seemed as constrained and at some point, the idea of speculation seemed to lose its value. Conclusively, it is worth considering, in future speculative design practices, that the prototyping practices can be arguably big constraint to the speculative design process.

How do speculative approaches reveal qualities of digital prototyping practice, and what are these important qualities?

As stated before, the speculative design is a complex process, the nature of this design process is unpredictable. Prototyping practice in design process undertaken in the previous course resulted in clarifying speculative ideas. Also, it helped us to navigate further and come across with the best speculative idea possible. Being self-explanatory and truthful to a good design idea is what I argue could be understood as a major advantage of digital prototyping practice. Furthermore, there are other qualities of digital prototyping that speculative design can reveal depending on from which perspective we are looking at digital prototyping experience. If we looked at it from the perspective of humans needs, then we have to understand that people seek influence over their environments, and digital technology has traditionally extended possibilities to extend knowledge and control (Gaver & Martin, 2000). We can argue that digital prototyping can allow us to comprehend the world around us in a different and speculative manner. In a manner that is not obvious in the first look. Conclusively, we can state, that speculation pushes and brings new ideas, and with the help of digital prototyping, these ideas present them self to a broader audience.

Another example can be given from this course speculative design project. The project Swipe Dream, developed with my classmates, held in itself speculative understanding of the UN sustainable goal number 17. Partnership for goals. Swipe dream places serious manners such as development and many flows from developed to developing world, by using modern dating environment such as tinder. There is no-the less controversy in this project. But, it proves the point that speculative design allows (with use of digital prototyping) us to see important questions in another light, thus illuminating problematics, that otherwise would pass unnoticed. For example, if we portray something, something simple as water, in entirely unnatural setting ( where water is not usually present), like, a desert, or planet Mars, we experience and understand water differently. Furthermore, when the design is used to provoke, we are also asking users to comprehend unfamiliar things and ask themselves a question. Question what they would like to know an about presented thing. Through the projection of design scenarios, design fictions, and narratives of use, the designer as storyteller shifts focuses beyond efficient use, to embrace uncertainty, interpretation and meaning (Malpass, 2016).

It can be argued that speculative design holds immense importance for society. It pushes the boundaries from what we know already. It teaches us new perspectives on the items that are already around us. It gives purpose to things that might appear useless. Speculatively, digital prototyping qualities are the most important when used in storytelling through film and images. If we want a certain idea to be understood by masses, we use video, because is the medium that is easily understood by many. Furthermore, when we are prototyping in relation to the digital world if we position design as an effective medium with the intent to construct public and engage user audiences by questioning conditions in everyday life. We need a powerful perspective for the user to understand our points. We need to achieve this critical perspective of the user or observer. Here is when digital prototyping can show its power. We as a designer can affect the direction where our society is going. It is important to see the speculative design as a discursive practice, based on critical thinking and dialogue, which questions the practice of design than to try to select and eliminate this practice in any other way (Malpass, 2016).

Conclusively, we can argue that there are multiple design approaches when it comes to speculative design. But, due to a necessity for clarity and simplicity, to my knowledge, we can narrow down speculative approaches in at least three different variations. The first sees designers reflecting on and critically questioning design practice. In this course, it was a digital prototyping design practice. Also, the second approach is based on re-thinking the design discipline. For example, rethinking if the digital prototyping is the best approach to explain certain problematics, or would is politics the best place to express concern about climate change, and so on. When we are talking about politics, to my knowledge and from what literature supporting this paper is indicating, one of the approaches of speculative design could actually be related to the overall importance of this speculation and design for society. I can be concluded that speculative design can help us think alternatively. And, this can be done by engaging users, if we reflect, and explore.

On disadvantages, digital prototyping practice in many ways can be a limitation in the ability to explore possible futures. Digital media resembles with variety of colour and visual aspects, this variation sometimes can have different associations for different people and thus can be easily understood as two different things by a different group of people. For example, in my group working practice, our first iteration was understood as a problem-solving idea, by a small number of users, and as a speculative idea, by the other half of users. So, we can understand that the visual aspects of some digital prototyping have a different meaning, depending on the context of the presentation.

On the advantages of digital prototyping practice, we can conclude that digital prototyping can be a way of thinking and exploring. It is close to physical prototyping. But, definitely, the experience digital prototyping can create, could interfere with how we think of our future and how our society can continue towards the future. I argue that the benefits of digital prototyping are very beneficial and can interfere with how users understand our design, thus change their feedbacks. In conclusion, it can be stated that digital prototyping together with the speculative design is of big importance, it gives us a modern perspective of ourselves and of the context we found ourselves in. But also it has great power to influence users feedbacks.

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bahrrss-blog · 6 years ago

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Partnership for goals - #UN Sustainable goals #2030 - Independent Journal by Bahr - #MalmöUniversity 2019

Kick off - 30 April

As the suggested plan for this school project on the project kick-off, we have decided the group communication setting and dynamics. Also, what are our aspirations etc? It is interesting that some of us have not worked together this far into the programme, so we also took some time to meet a little bit better.

Next thing, we decided to look dipper into UN 2030 Sustainable goals and tried to choose on which one we are going to work. After an in-depth selection process we came up with a final choice, and that was the UN global goal number 17 - Partnership for the goals. This is a link to the UN webpage and the goals directly, check it out: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/globalpartnerships/

First supervision - 6 May

Today on the first supervision, we have tried to find some first problems that we encountered in this UN goal. There is a clear lack of transparency on how negotiations are held, when it comes to global negotiations, like huge corporations and states.

On the other hand, when it comes to local negotiations between private companies and local municipalities, There is also a lack of visible benefits for local communities. It seems, from what we have found that companies are the biggest benefits. We need to look into this furthermore.

Lastly, we can say that after doing little overviewed of some projects, citizens are not asked directly for bringing this decision. Our aim after this supervision is to choose the objective and unpack further.

Narrowing down objectives

As the image suggests, we have analysed furthermore 17th UN sustainable goal and carefully selected the most appealing segments of the selection and this is some of the suggested ideas, that I will share.

It is important to keep in mind that UN sustainable goal number 17 is divided into segments, which are 1.FINANCE, 2. TECHNOLOGY 3. TRADE 4. CAPACITY BUILDING, AND SYSTEMATIC ISSUES (is furthermore divided into 1. Policy and institutional coherence, 2. Multi-stakeholder partnerships 3.Data, monitoring and accountability)

We have narrowed down to focus on Technology and Multi-stakeholder partnerships. One of the first problems we have encountered was that we were focusing overly too much on results of partnerships than on partnerships and collaboration itself.

Partnership in Technology - has a role to enhance international cooperation on and access to science, technology and innovation. Also, enhance knowledge sharing on mutually agreed terms, including through improved coordination among existing mechanisms. And to promote the development, transfer, dissemination and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries on favourable terms.

This is some of our speculative ideas in Technology:

VOI / TIER / LIME - Speculative Design - Eco-friendly, rechargeable, a partnership between innovative companies and the municipality & used by the local community.

A cheap, eco-friendly, pre-paid account with an app, scan with a phone camera

Free from noise and pollution(emissions), sustainable transportation

Surplus: New ways of transportation

Driverless Metro-trains

Driverless busses - https://www.thelocal.se/20171227/stockholm-gets-scandinavias-first-driverless-buses-on-public-road

promotes the development of new, innovative technologies

Electric Scooter Board

Segway

Train by Dunne & Raby - speculative design

Sustainable cities

Envac - Self-emptying trash cans (gets sucked down into a tunnel): Less pollution as garbage trucks don’t drive around collecting the trash.

https://www.envacgroup.com/waste-collection-reimagined/

(Copenhagen)

Trash cans with compartments for cans, aimed at homeless that collect them. (Copenhagen)

Japanese toilets: Innovation, usefulness, timesaving. Sustainable (some toilets have a built in faucet where you wash your hands, the same water is stored for the next time you flush.

Ethnicity lenses - lenses that will be used by racist people who need to enter negotiations with third parties, regarding an issue that matter for society.

HEARings - earphones for negotiations, for important partnership meetings.

Negotiation:

Politicians negotiations with each other.

Always driven by the big, powerful companies and their benefit.

An idea for Negotiation: Big screens

And this is regarding Multi-stakeholder partnerships

Arab Film Festival: “Malmö Arab Film Festival, MAFF, works as an intercultural platform for diversity and tolerance. As one of the largest film festivals with the focus on Arab cinema, outside of the Arab world, we offer a meeting ground for the Nordic and Arab film industries. MAFF has an annual structure with events and festivals all over Sweden with special projects and programs.”

Ethnic festivals in Folkets Park

Sommarscen (brings artists and musicians within different fields to malmö)

Höj Din Röst

Within the section fo TECHNOLOGY, we want to unpack furthermore towards question like:

How is this partnership made? Between Scooter Company and Municipality?

How is civil society involved? Anybody asked us?

What are the actual benefits for the citizens of this partnership, beyond obvious of course?

And we would like to look at what are differences between similar scooter companies and their collaborations?

Under the section of Systematic issues section we have decided to focus on :

DATA MONITORING AND ACCOUNTABILITY:

With subquestion:

How individuals make personal collaboration with these companies? How do they feel when giving their personal data.

We are planning to look deeper accountability of these companies in their negotiation part, and how much citizens are even interested?

If there are any cases of misuse of data?

Does this affect accountability?

On behalf of the overall goal, we want to REMIND AND INFORM of possible issues of the on first glance genial ideas that fulfil UN sustainable goal 2030.

Next step in the proposed project plan is to begin to identify activities to be conducted. This is the list that I and Farbod came up today:

We are going to look into Municipality guidelines and specifics of how collaborations are made?

We are going to look at how GDPR works, what are the consequences, what are long term goals?

Does this GDPR helps or not?

What are the biggest consequences of miss-usage of this law?

Furthermore, the methodology that we think of implementing.

We will conduct interviews with people whoa re using Scooters.

We are going to look into Dunne and Raby - Speculative Desing and try to get inspired by their work. Hopefully, this will help us identify the next step in our research.

SUPERVISION 2

We got feedback that our objective is good and that it was a good idea to anchor it in one simple negotiation example. Mainly, due to the complexity of this UN Goal.

Now, we got feedback on how to find our exact problematic within this goal. We also don’t have to focus so much on interviewing individuals and users of these products. Nor, we have to look into the municipality and ask them all complicated questions. Rather we can look for clear and concrete cases where partnership and communication have been problematic.

These are an example that Clint gave to us, and that we will keep as guidelines.

You don't pay with money and minutes, you also pay with your private data. Don’t try to be reductionists. Complexity in negotiation is worth speculating. Negotiation, where people/citizens are not involved, is already problematic.

These are concrete problems that we want to focus on when researching. Focusing on finding specific data points, and examples. We want to focus on populism and trade negotiations and, nationalism. Polittitaons cant pushes it too far, because they are afraid that they won't be reelected.

Google examples of unsuccessful negotiations.

Google examples of positive negotiations, anchored in clear examples. Google in different countries. France, Romania, Bosnia, Iran, China, Sweden, or the USA.

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bahrrss-blog · 6 years ago

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DIGITAL PROTOTYPING Malmö University -2019

DE/RE CONSTRUCT - 1st of April

De/construct. Promoting our insight into the ongoing course, this task wants us to investigate and "deconstruct" an actual GUI, recognising configuration examples of the interface. Deconstruct phase is followed by reconstruction.

Beginning with the procedure of deconstruction, I started from researching the applications on my phone, seeking around to check whether there are applications with specific capacities that are confounding, hard to enrol naturally, or just inadequately planned. That being stated, telephone applications these days have experienced a lot of cycles and update that most apps are about flawless usefulness astute other than the occasional bugs. I unquestionably experienced serious difficulties finding an application that I had serious issues with. So I decided to avoid confusion this time and go for just any app, giving myself a hard task. That I chose to look at as a challenge rather than an unsolvable problem.

I settled with the application of Instagram. Instagram is a popular application. It is structured is founded on picture sharing. What makes this application emerge is the exceedingly adaptable showcase. You can change the look of your pictures and videos, comment, explore, share, and chat, privately and publicly. In a case of private chate, this feature, probably due to a secondary role for Instagram is very locate.

The fundamental issue I'm having as I utilise this application is that as the primary GUI is made for single communication/share and not to interact.

STUDYING THE STRUCTURE OF INSTAGRAM

I generally end up experiencing considerable difficulties finding and getting to the page where you can see private messages. The application makes it easy to glance through the communities and explore but could be troublesome when you might want to rapidly access chats your friends sent you.

As an extrovert and someone who likes to communicate, this seems overly complicated for times when talking to people anywhere in the world is free of charge. I attempt to deconstruct in detail Instagram and understand why they have placed direct messages in a place where is hard to find.

These are some of the Instagrams GUI. Here you can five different pages and choose between 5 different functionalities of Instagram. Each display has its purpose. To navigate, to explore, to follow, to add new media, and your own profile.

The main issue with the page I have is, the messaging part. Insofar it is available only on the main page. So not even on your profile, nor any other page of the applications. And, to make even stuff more dislikable for me, there is no even messaging part when the application is accessed from the browser, computer or phone.

The app makes it easy to navigate through all features, such as, follow, like, add a new photo, the main page, or your own profile. However, once you find yourself in any place except on the main page, you can’t see messages being delivered. And, this, in my opinion, can be troublesome, due to a pure fact that messaging is a huge part of social networking.

It is that much complicated that Instagram even made official guidelines on their ‘’how to’’ page. You can see their guidelines on the picture under.

REI found messaging one of, if not the main reason why I use social networks, especially Instagram, it is convenient, retro, and modern way of exploring and sharing, so obstacles like one presented above, strike accords, and that's why I am talking about it. Especially as a Student living abroad, and having friends and families all over the world. I would benefit from facilitated messaging options. I will deconstruct Instagram into details furthermore down in this post. So, stay here around and keep reading.

BREAKING IT DOWN

As you can see on the image, in the right upper corner messages are placed, and on the exact opposite side, down left corner is the home page. (the little house looking alike icon)

Furthermore, I will talk about the Instagram story, in the media presented below, you can notice circles and some of them has a red outline, and some not. The red outline is to show that there is a new story published to buy the user. Once you watched the story (the circle becomes grey and moves away from the top of your notifications)The way to watch someone's story is to just simply press (and hold to pause) on the top of the story. Stories usually can’t be longer than a few seconds, and a maximum number of stories is 100 per day. Each story disappears after 24 hours, with the possibility of being stored on the profile afterwards. It will be available (hidden on the profile, meaning only visible to the owner of that profile for next 12 months, and then it is lost forever)

You can see the stories from the main page, or you can access them also when visiting the page of the person or desired agency. Also, if you desire to share it outside of Instagram you choose from pressing and choosing the option for three dots in the right corner of the media.

In order to not be too subjective, I have asked some of my colleagues to look into this and give me their honest opinions. I also asked some of my friends who are not familiar with the school project, thinking this way I could avoid bias.

Below is a deconstruction of Instagram with annotations of patterns and functions.

RE/CONSTRUCT

If you look closely to provided re-constructed xd prototype. The icon for messages is located in the bottom grid. Inheritably the bottom grid is fixed on the GUI. Hence, to access the messages will be easy and quick. As explained in deconstruct part, the messages/share feature was placed in multiplied places. Giving the cluttered look and giving a feeling of confusion to users. This design patterns can be blamed on Instagram policies to keep their platform explorative and not based it on messaging. It can be argued that Facebook came to a similar problematics, which Facebook solved by creating separate app only for messaging, But this caused the decrease of usage of the main Facebook overall. However my improved design look is minimal, it would not cause major division between messaging and sharing content on Instagram. On the contrary, it would facilitate the usage of both features.

User testing

In user testing, the general feedback I got is can be summed in three words. ´´Oh, THANK GOD´´ what users meant to say was: someone else is also feeling the same way, Some of the users mentioned that they use Instagram as calling app, video calling app. Instagram has incorporated video and voice calling together with iOS and Android, so when someone is calling on Instagram, feels like you are getting regular phone calls. Furthermore, accessing to the deaths of this calls is a bit harder. Because of the issue mentioned previously. Thus having messaging (which is call and video call) feature display on the main GUI of Instagram on the bottom fixed grid, seemed as change worth changing.

vimeo

Analysis

When starting this project, I wanted to focus only on a rather overall redesign than touching only some visual design patterns. Like messaging feature. However, the visual design does have a big impact on user experience. For the above solutions, I wanted to show how small changes can make a big impact.

The patterns, as far for the control that Instagram induces, is hard to notice. Mainly because announcements are very well integrated, it is hard to distinguish them from real person posts. It is, however, a typical iOS application pattern. It is very well adjusted with adds.

Instagram has an integrated variety of shapes in its design. Rounded, and squared icons.

The font used on Instagram is: Roboto is used along with Freight on Android. The Instagram website uses Proxima Nova for all text with Neue Helvetica and iOS Freight Sans.

On Instagram, when uploading a photo the design pattern of carousels can be noticed. You can scroll between pictures to select as many as it is allowed to upload.

This is the noticeable design patterns, I was also when user testing attempting to found more of them, but I couldn’t notice. I would need to do an in-depth analysis to find more, or maybe with any new updates of design, the new pattern will appear. Sometimes also, when we are to dwell into deconstructing.

BEYOND THE NORM - 15th of April

Questions:

What is the speculative approach? What is the critical design? How to relate this to interaction design? Should we, as designers, ignore issues of the world? Should we, as citizens, be satisfied with the world we have?

How can a designer play a role in engaging with the world most critical issues?

Check out the video called Technological Dreams Series No. 1, Robots Dunne & Raby, 2007. It talks about interactive experiences. This video has no voice-over, explaining but clearly explain the power roles that we have over the objects.

https://vimeo.com/2611597

Critical design is rather about asking a question than finding solutions or looking for the problems.

Answers:

Rather than finding a solution to current life problems, Critical design offers a step into the future and gives us feedback about where should we go further. Critical design tests wander and explore with ideas in a rather than unconventional way. Their exploration can be understood as something between reality and impossible. There is an attempt of drawing distinction between affirmative design (design that reinforces the status quo) and Critical Design - design that rejects how things are now as being the only possibility, it provides a critique of the prevailing situation through designs that embody alternative social, cultural and technical, or economic value (Dunne and Raby 2001)

Manifesto of the Critical Design: Design as a medium, asks, questions, social fiction, parallel worlds, functional fictions etc.

Is it even needed? Do we need art in design? Positive critique is that is pushing boundaries that might result in positive changes. Negative critique is that this type of design is just trying to make some noize and that we don’t really don’t need this design.

What to be thoughtful about is that critical design creates a space for critique.

Thoughtful design is taking into perspective, projecting scenarios and establishing the use of emerging things. Discursive design is distinguishing design field, commercial, experimental, and discursive design. What is essential in design fiction is that the object fits into its surroundings.

Relation of these designs to #IXD

Prototypes are tenuous, material and experienceable. Prototyping is aligned in order for situations to be understood.

Issues with Critical Design, it is very hard to know you are on the right path. We don’t know if we are doing a good or bad job.

In a short conclusion: Critical Desing is here to provoke, to question, to change values, to challenge the status quo, do it with great care if you adopt the techniques of critical design.

Adobe XD tutorials

Learning XD in detail has its advantages. Basic functions sometimes are not enough, it is quite a time saving when you know where something is located. Most of the things we learned in the first Adobe tutorial, I have already been familiar with, but haven’t really used them so much. For example, doing animation with xd was valuable insights. We were wireframing the news app. We created load screens, and the screens were supposed to give feedback. And the feedback was load time. I find this very funny, in times when 5G networks are to be implemented.

We created only a few screens and made the animations. But, it is interesting how this animation would look like for enormous news apps, that contain thousands of information and it is updated literally every minute. I guess this information tells how important this trick was when designing an app.

If you look closely you can see that the small dots under the titles are not all the same for each screen. This, when using the app would give the impression of time passing.

Furthermore, learning about wireframing tools, was also valuable. The thing is not only learning is enough, but this skill also has to be practised and put to use. We used already made screens, in my opinion, it is a bit limiting the creativity of the designer, but on the other hand, the time-saving aspect has to be taken into consideration. It would take much longer to make these screens from scratch. Hereunder you can see some screen I made during the XD workshop.

ANALYTICS EXERCISE -23d April 2019

After an in-depth exploration of Google merchandise store, there are few design suggestions that I could recommend for googles improvement in sales. Right under you can see chars that are visualising backing up my argumentations.

If we look closely to these numbers under. There is an enormous differentiation between mobile users and desktop users. It is certain there today in mobile purchases are common and becoming the main way of using the internet, also purchases.

This makes sense in many ways because mobile phones are always in our pockets, and we reach for mobile more often then we do with our laptops. So, I am raising the question about this issue, since Google merchandise store, has more visits from their desktop site.

Overall desktop visits are around 51 000 visits, where on phone it is only around 16000 visits.

This data, made me go and look at the mobile site of the store, and here I have found several design changes that can be applied. This, in my opinion, would give the store market standard, and boost mobile visits. Let take a look at the mobile site (check the media under). There we can see a variety of information hidden, behind the same icon. There are cluttered and not even necessary because all of the information this icon contain can be placed within one icon, or simply displayed on its own. The number of items purchased can be placed on the basked. And the icon next to towards left can be eliminated, or unified with the same icon under.

In conclusion, the site is clean from announcements, which gives it a peaceful place to do your shopping. Adding these small changes would make a site mobile friendly and it would boost visits and purchases made through the phone.

Digital Prototyping - How do speculative approaches reveal qualities of digital prototyping practice, and what are these important qualities?

To begin with, I can mention that speculative design process requires definitely more than one iteration. In my opinion, there is a need for researching the topic of choice from different angels. To understand the complexity of the design opportunity. It is practically a necessity to deconstruct the science behind the design opportunity.

In this course, the topic was drowned from the perspective of the UN sustainable goals. The pros of having to work with information like this is that is a very well researched topic. Easily accessible information online, multiple sources. All of this facilitates the process of speculation.

On the other hand, I will argue that this limits the creative process. Which many would agree, is necessary for any good speculative design process.

However, since this was the first project of speculative design, having predefined filed of work, can be taken as beneficial, then disadvantageous

Furthermore, if we would attempt to answer the following question: How speculative design is relevant to prototyping experiences in general? We can argue that relevance depends on the design aim. In this project, there was a necessity to use previously acquired prototyping skills, but the context was directed towards, information, visualising or grabbing attention overall. To achieve this our prototyping practice needed the help us come up with this design. I would argue that it help to understand speculation in design, but not to the point where the speculation was entirely clear.

Conclusively, it is worth considering, in future speculative design practices. that the prototyping practices can be arguably big constraint to the speculative design process.

To relate just argued pros and cons of the mentioned topic to the question of this essay (How do speculative approaches reveal qualities of digital prototyping practice, and what are these important qualities?) I can say the digital prototyping has visual aspects as support. Meaning, the tools digital prototyping uses are dependent by the large scale on the visual aspect. Whether we use video or just images. Having said this, and taking into consideration the complexity of the speculative design. Digital prototyping can serve to clarify this complex nature of this form of design.

To wrap up this thought, I can say, the visual aspect is (if well made) self-explanatory, and overall easy to understand (compared to other expensive mediums) therefore, this characteristic of digital prototyping can serve as an advantage when used in speculative design.

However, there are other qualities of digital prototyping that speculative design can reveal. For instance, these qualities can be reviled depending on which angle we are observing digital prototyping. If we looked at it from the perspective of humans needs, then we have to understand that people seek influence over their environments, and digital technology has traditionally extended possibilities to extend knowledge and control (Gaver & Martin, 2000).

There are examples where just simple machine intelligence was used to arranged and to shape birds' behaviour, by approximating a target tune for birds singing. This allowed could allow the different birds to be trained to take different harmonic roles in an overall composition. Hence, digital prototyping can give a man much more than even imaginable at first glance. We can argue that digital prototyping practice could allow people to extend control to the very wildlife and navigate the future of (wilderness and of nature) simply uncontrollable. Another example can be given from this course speculative design project. The project Swipe Dream, developed with my classmates, held in itself speculative understanding of the UN sustainable goal number 17. Partnership for goals. Swipe dream places serious manners such as development and many flows from developed to developing world, by using modern dating environment such as tinder. There is no-the less controversy in this project. But, it proves the point that speculative design allows (with use of digital prototyping) us to see important questions in another light, thus illuminating problematics, that otherwise would pass unnoticed.

Furthermore, when the design is used to ends that are provocative, we are bridging and constructing things. We are also telling stories through objects, which become effectively conversation pieces in a very real and persuasive sense. Through the projection of design scenarios, design fictions, and narratives of use, the designer as storyteller shifts focuses beyond efficient use, to embrace uncertainty, interpretation and meaning (Malpass, 2016).

It can be argued that speculative design holds immense importance for society. It pushes the boundaries from what we know already. It teaches us new perspectives on the stuff that are already around us. It gives purpose to things that presumably are useless. I connect us with objects around us and allows us to create better futures. Speculatively, digital prototyping shines the most in my opinion when using storytelling through film and images. And when mediums for expression is mixed. Her plays important roles in the ambiguity,

Furthermore, when prototyping in relation to the digital world, if we position design as an effective medium with the intent to construct public and engage user audiences by questioning conditions in everyday life. We need a powerful perspective for the user to understand our points. We need to achieve this critical perspective of the user or observer.Here is when digital prototyping can show it’s powered. If done correctly and with huge dedication, we as a designer can affect the direction where our society is going.

Design can push furthermore from orthodox way of thinking. If we manage to encourage the user to interpret the object, we put the user in a role that opens up for exploration, reflection and engagement. And, is it even necessary to explain how important is for every individual to fully engage in explorations of their own lives.

Conclusively, we can argue that there are multiple design approaches when it comes to speculative design. Firstly the combinations of disciplines. Design can be related to art, architecture or even philosophy. But, due to a necessity for clarity and simplicity, to my knowledge, we can narrow down speculative approaches in at least three different ones. The first sees designers reflecting on and critically questioning design practice. In this course, it was a digital prototyping design practice. Also, the second approach is based on re-thinking the design discipline. For example, rethinking if the digital prototyping is the best approach to explain certain problematics, or would is politics the best place to express concern about climate change, and so on. When we are talking about politics, to my knowledge and from what literature supporting this paper is indicating, one of the approaches of speculative design could actually be related to the overall importance of this speculation and design for society. Nonetheless, it is important to see the speculative design more as a discursive practice, based on critical thinking and dialogue, which questions the practice of design than to try to select and eliminate this practice in any other way (Malpass, 2016).

On the other hand, digital prototyping practice in too many ways can be a limitation in the ability to explore possible futures. We are all explorer, and the medium we use matters. Different strategic approaches are both desirable and necessary to achieve the best results possible in the process of exploration.

Digital prototyping is a way of thinking and expressing. It is certainly no so different from physical prototyping. But none the less, the experience digital prototyping can create, might interfere with how we think of our future and how we as mankind will continue to go about our lives. Yes, I argue of the benefits of digital prototyping, but however good and beneficial this prototyping is, it will never bring better results than feedbacks that real users give us.

In conclusion, it can be stated that digital prototyping together with the speculative design is of big importance, it gives us a modern perspective of ourselves and of the context we found ourselves in.

Literature

Gaver, B., & Martin, H. (2000). Alternatives. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’00. https://doi.org/10.1145/332040.332433

Malpass, M. (2016). Critical Design Practice: Theoretical Perspectives and Methods of Engagement. The Design Journal. https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2016.1161943

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bahrrss-blog · 6 years ago

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Physical Prototyping #MalmöUniversity #2019

Introduction - 22 January 2019

This is a series of journaling for the course of Physical Prototyping purposes / the class is led by Johannes Nilsson)

I see prototyping as a fundamental idea utilised in a structured procedure fabricating a physical portrayal of your plan thought… and nothing more intricate than that. It's a convenient device to see your structure become animated, even as a low-devotion item made out of cardboard and paper. By making it three-dimensional, it's enabling yourself to really communicate with the subject.

I learned that prototyping with necessary materials such as paper, cardboard and video is long established in the field of interaction design. It’s also essential for designers to clearly understand how prototypes ‘work’ and their own motivations for prototyping. In this regard, design literature and critical reflections help to contextualise prototyping practice. And this is because we have introduced to Louis Valentine’s (Valentine, L. 2013) definition of Prototyping.

Early prototyping is basic as it holds vow to a solitary thought, prototyping by illustration, lo-fi, unnecessary models are typically used. Numerous assortments can be made, and it keeps the engineer "understanding the issue " instead of impulsively "dealing with the issue", finally, it prompts continuously innovative and quality structure. All things considered, the bits of learning Clint surrendered summed prototyping to be not a technique, be that as it may, a position or philosophy, it's doing structure, and not a phase, it's flimsy, material, and experienceable, ultimately, originators essentially model to fathom the condition, the substance, and the thought.

Clint gave more bits of information concerning Prototyping. Its progressively critical part turning around the portraying properties of prototyping: temperamental, material, and experienceable. That prototyping is used to appreciate a "condition", with an extent of procedures utilized, models hope to relate, understanding, and to recognize essentials and necessities, It's in like manner significant to keep an issue. The troubles for prototyping join it being unfit to verbalize understanding; it needs language, power, and reflexivity to do all things considered.

What have I realized?

Prototyping is extraordinarily appropriate in setup practice, and it beats the exacting significance of "prototyping" as an action. Going before this session prototyping was, for the most part, a method which I realized that engineers and originators experience as a creative strategy to impersonate thought in low-commitment without truly putting an over the top number of visualities.

Prototyping urges you to address potential issues of your last thing before truly making it. That being expressed, my doubts were tried as I fundamentally watched is at a basic and critical bit of an organized technique; anyway not the reason for its centrality.

What is the physical prototyping?

Last week's lecture presented the idea that prototyping is the most potent form of transition of your ideas. The change from blurry plan to clean and polished for our thought. My position as a student studying Interaction Design makes this an essential skill for me.

So, prototyping helps us communicate ideas clearly. Prototyping is basically a visual way of thinking. What I have learned is that the prototype can be tied in with comprehension if and how it is conceivable to accomplish something, addressing inquiries regarding the experience of utilising the framework or responding to questions concerning what job it satisfies in the client's life. It also relates, a lot to who the client is. We as a group have chosen to focus on clients who are having an active and dynamic lifestyle. This helped us a lot to think of what type of design could help out and improve their lives.

Arduino Introduction - 28 January-2019

What is Arduino?

We started with pre-made Arduino set. A set of tools that are made in Italy. Each piece of the toolset has multiple functions.

Arduino board designs use a variety of microprocessors and controllers. The boards are equipped with sets of digital and analogue input/output pins that may be interfaced to various expansion boards or breadboards and other circuits. Basically, Arduino is an: ‘’open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. It is possible to tell the board what to do. You can do so by sending a set of instructions to the microcontroller on the board, and this is done by using Arduino programming language, based on Wiring, and the Arduino Software IDE, based on Processing.’’

Arduino is the tool for quick and ‘’easy’’ prototyping. And, we as students in IXD, we had a chance to combine our knowledge of programming and create 3D physical prototypes! For the course of Physical Prototyping, we used Arduino Micro 5V MAU’s starter kit. David, the lecturer, introduced us to the web editor and the client which we needed to register and install.

With this button installed and functioning, we could proceed and work on so many potential projects. While installing the button and trying to make it work, I encountered several challenges, mostly the breadboard being confusing on its own, and where to plug each wire. With the assistant of a TA, I was able to figure out that the breadboard is made up of rows of metal clips, called terminal strips, and each piece is electrically connected. Which means if you stick a component to the board’s hole A1, it will be electrically connected to the holes B1-E1, but not A2 because that’s in a different column, and it won’t be compared to holes F1-J1 either, because they are separated by a gap.

After learning some of the basics, my group and I chose Run3 as our game to design a controller for. I found the game engaging and exciting and we all felt that it can make a nice collaborative experience with the right tools. The first thing I could think about when ideating was the natural motion of the character in the game, which was running, and the first thought was to design something that players can control with their feet. Also, the game affords the ability to control the direction by two people, as the players can walk on the walls and the ceiling, which gave us the idea of making different buttons that control right and left turns. Finally, we decided to add a “high-five interaction”, where the players have too high five each other to make the character jump. That adds the element of excitement and make players interact with each other as well as interaction with the game together.

The main challenge here is not being able to understand what to do under vocal command, after looking at diagrams provided on screen (as well as these learning cards that a researcher gave out while she was conducting research during class), I was able to understand the components better. Why is this button relevant? Buttons can represent the mouse-click motion as well as a key-press motion. So with this knowledge, we can build our own game-controller and use them to interact with and control a game of choice found online! The exercise for today was to form a group of three and create a multi-player collaborative, interactive computer game using only CARDBOARD. We are to create our own keyboard-based game-controller that utilises interactions such as tilting, balancing, shaking, squeezing, jumping, hugging, throwing and so on. The goal is to create something unique instead of simple buttons.

After brainstorming with members of my group Liam and one girl that I forgot to ask for a name, but she was from Product Design.

We wanted an interaction that involves the movement of our legs and feet, simulating the “running” motion. For example, we brainstormed multiplied ideas, but we settled with the one that is most challenging and yet not overly difficult to achieve in a short period of time.

Our final plan was to create two feet seesaws with a cardboard base and wooden boards that are more sturdy on top. Each board represents a leg so that two players can play together, then, since we needed four control buttons, we decided that when we lean forward on the board, we will come in contact with one button, and another when bending backwards. That makes four buttons with two seesaws. The building process of this game will be written on a separate journal entry, titled “ Run3“, read this entry if you’d like to see our end result.

Sound

In this lesson, I learned how to make sounds with my Arduino. First I made the Arduino play a 'musical' scale and then combined this with a photocell, to make a Theremin-like instrument that changes the pitch played as we wave our hand over the photocell.

Sound waves are vibrations in the air pressure. The speed of the vibrations (cycles per second or Hertz) is what makes the pitch of the sound. The higher the frequency of the vibration, the higher the pitch.

More details about Arduino worth remembering

We used the wires, and button for the breadboard. Connected them with different areas. The button is doing what two cables would do together. We used Eduintro, it pre-installed code on Arduino that allows us to do different activities on Arduino physical kit.

Once the kit is connected with all the buttons and wires, the next important step is to write the code for the actions that we want our Arduino to perform.

We have learned what is the serial library, this is used once we want to send full sentences back to the computer and look at them on screen. This is used mostly when we require more than just two functions, like on and off.

What we did next with the serial library, we initialised it and improved it, depending on the way we want it to perform. For example the Serial library - Serial.printIn("Pressed"); is used to perform the action if the button on our Arduino Breadboard is pressed.

Processing - 1 February 2019

A new programming language? why is that necessary?

As soon as David announced that we’d be learning Processing as a new language I fell bummed about having to learn another programming language alongside all the programming we’re doing already in the programming courses. This journal entry aims to reflect on the two days spent on exploring the Processing software, its language, as well as how it works with the Arduino. I also aim to find the answer to why Processing is important to learn as designers. Below is a video shared by the Processing foundation that introduces the newest version of Processing.

What did we do?

David began by introducing vaguely what Processing does and how it is useful. As designers, we use or learn to use Processing as it’s a flexible software sketchbook popularly used as a language of coding in the context of visual arts. According to David, Processing is “used to create animations, simple UIs, games, and proof of concept to many ideas.” Therefore, it’s crucial to learn it as a UX design student. More details on processing and why it’s relevant will be touched upon below.

PROCESSING

On day one, David showed us some projects and generative art in which designers, artists, or programmers have created using Processing, they were absolutely stunning and that really showed the program’s capabilities. David guided us through a series of coding examples on Processing, the processing language is a revised version of Java simplified for amateurs in programming. The examples included drawing a line, drawing our own initials, changing characteristics along the way, expressing colour, creating graphical primitives such as ellipses, drawing in layers, creating interactive programs, making items move, and so on. Other exercises include making a clock, making a bouncing ball animation, utilizing conditionals, adding images, animating images, etcetera. You can really do a lot with Processing and the graphics it’s capable of generating is endless some generative art!

Day two of Processing consists of a lecture about using Arduino with Processing followed up by a workshop taking up the latter part of the class to create a game/any interactive artefact set in a specific context that utilizes some sort of a timer, the timer is to be created with Processing and with the knowledge combined from using the Arduino with Processing, to create something fun and interactive. This project with the timer will be discussed in another journal entry that can be found here. In addition to it being a programming language for visualization, Processing is also an open source language and development tool for writing programs in other computers. It’s useful when you want those other computers to “talk” with an Arduino, for instance, to display or save some data collected by the Arduino (source). David guided us through basic examples of communication between Arduino and Processing. Why is this useful? This comes in handy for when you want to write both Arduino and Processing programs and have them talk to each other, it works best for communicating simple information.

A little more information regarding the software:

Processing is a programming language based on a simplified Java syntax, hiding all the ugliest aspects of “proper” Java and making it effortless to get started with code-based experiments with a minimum of code experience. It’s a non-threatening tool for amateurs, hiding the complexities of compilation etc. from users who don’t need to know about them.

For students and enthusiasts Processing allows them to create computational sketches without being intimidated by tedious Java syntax.

For professionals, Processing is a Java framework providing support for a wide range of creative code activities, from interactive tools to data visualization or sensor-driven applications (like the basic application we did). Accessed as a proper Java package hierarchy, Processing is a well-designed code API that makes basic tasks trivial and facilitates the introduction of advanced techniques by providing an extensible library framework.

Processing is extremely useful for many things to many people, all dependent on your perspective. It is a flexible sketchbook software and a language for learning how to code within the context of the visual arts, as I’ve mentioned above. It promotes software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within technology. Students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists use Processing for learning and prototyping. Therefore, as an Interaction Design major undergoing a Prototyping course, Processing is a useful tool that is crucial for growth as a designer.

Video prototyping - 4 February 2019

Netflix gesture:

Netflix Gesture was one of the assignments needed to be done in the prototyping course. we got prepared for the project by doing a small-scale video project, Netflix gesture, which was really fun to do. When I got my first laptop I use to spend days and weeks locked in my room and make re-edit videos from my favourite movies. I would make them in a way that that would look better in my eyes. Making videos is not as easy as it seems, and telling a story with vides can be very hard. Fortunately, I could slightly improve my skills in video-making after I and my classmate, Fariborz, produced a 1 min long video about how to interact with Netflix’s

Here is the linked version of our work. website.https://youtu.be/3zamNtGmu_I

Furthermore, video prototyping continues. This is my team.

We got introduced into an entirely new sphere of prototyping. Video prototyping. This type of prototyping use video to illustrate how users will interact with a new system. The goal is to refine a single system concept, making design choices that highlight and explore a particular design path.

Video prototypes are organised as scenarios that illustrate how people might interact with future technology in a realistic setting. Video prototypes build upon several design resources created in earlier design exercises. The use scenario acts as the foundation, telling a specific, realistic story about how real people would interact with it in a realistic setting.

Some video prototypes use a narrator or voice over, others use only title cards, and still, others rely on the actors in the video to explain what they are doing, either through natural dialogue or through a ‘talk aloud’ procedure. Interactive video prototypes offer a new variation. Here are some examples: Please take a look:

youtube

Video prototype for Smart Water Bottle - Malmö University

Group dynamics - 8 February 2019

In a group dynamics seminar, we talked about task-related processes and transactional processes. These activity related to common project and goal oriented interactions. They can per se be different from not goal-oriented interactions.

The main focus is to pile goals and distribute them properly according to the competences of the members of the team. This relates if we are in school, but, in a job, environment money changes social oriented interactions.

In the class, we were divided into groups, every group got a rule to discuss and reflect on. The rule we got was “the slacker”, a member that is loved by everyone even though he/she shows up late and doesn’t do the tasks assigned to them. I didn’t find the activity very useful, it felt like one of those activities that we have to do without seeing the benefits of doing them. Of course, the team process is very important when holding any project, but the exercise wasn’t very helpful in teaching us about team process or engaging us in team building activities. We have done a similar activity in methods 1 course, but it was a bit more useful then as we were doing it with our group members. Also, making the group contract wasn’t any better, it didn’t feel like any of us wanted to do it, but we had to force ourselves to. That can be beneficial as we don’t always work with things that we like, though I still don’t feel like the assignment helped me in learning about team process. I think that it would have been more useful if our groups got a small project to work on with a short time limit, and we reflect on our group work afterwards. Any type of activity that involves us working within a team under pressure and reflecting on the team process would have been more beneficial for us as learners.

Paper prototyping - 11 and 15 February 2019

Paper prototypes continue to be not only viable but also widely used. In this blog post, I’ll talk about when to use them, why they can help, and how to make one to suit our own needs.

This is the first image in our process of the sketching storyline. I always find it very exciting and fun to work with the materials and build what we have in mind. Suddenly, everything turns out to be different, the size of the prototype, its weight, the way it looks…etc.

When sketching it on the paper, it seems that everyone in the group has the same idea, but when we start making it, everything changes.

When we have and we communicate it verbally, it is very hard for the other person to visualise it, but when we sketch it, visualisation becomes a lot easier.

As you can see, we did involve every more important scenario.

Though, I found out that communicating an idea just by sketching can be deceiving, as every person will interpret the sketch differently.

What is interesting with working with your ideas visually, is that you get to see all constraints and all advantages. It gives a chance for your ideas to disregard themselves and leave you with a clear thought of one single good idea.

Reflecting on Physical prototyping - 18 and 23 April 2019

Increasingly, as designers of interactive systems (spaces, processes and products for people), we find ourselves stretching the limits of prototyping tools to explore and communicate what it will be like to interact with the things we design. "Prototypes" are representations of a design made before final artefacts exist. They are created to inform both the design process and design decisions. They range from sketches and different kind of models at various levels — "looks like," "behaves like," "works like" — to explore and communicate propositions about the design and its context. This text is what I was most fascinated, and what led me to work more in during this course. I am not sure where I read it, could be online or some of the book literature, but it is something I placed in my physical journal and now wrote it back here on my digital journal. So far this was my favourite course in this Programme. I feel like my knowledge of design and prototyping overall just drastically expanded.

And, just before I conclude I will tell a little bit more about the last lecture on Experience and prototyping using previous knowledge.

Why is Experience Important?

In the exercise today, we were split into three big groups, and we were given a design brief, with a very little time to make an experience prototype. This exercise was one of the most frustrating activities for me so far. The instructions were very clear, but working in very big groups, for a very little time is difficult. It took us a lot of time to decide what to do, it didn’t seem like everyone is involved or on board with the discussions. I think that we should have divided the work into small tasks within our groups, so every 2-3 people will work on a task, but even to agree to that will take some time for such a big group. I usually get frustrated when we work in big groups, where it can get chaotic with a lot of discussions. I mentioned early in the journal that when we have ideas in our head it is hard to communicate them, having 10 people talking about ideas will take years of endless discussions. Unless we split the work and make our ideas more real by sketching or prototyping, it will get very messy. I think that the exercise can be better if the supervisor makes it clear that for such big groups and short time, the group should divide the tasks within themselves.

Sumup:

During the course, we had the opportunity to take part in some lectures with different topics but most importantly about prototyping. Lectures held by Clint and he introduced the concept of prototyping by providing us with some fresh insights about physical prototyping.

We got familiar with the concept of prototyping via earning some knowledge about why, when and how we can prototype.

prototypes are often used in the final testing phase

to find new solutions

to find out whether or not the solutions are good enough

to find out how users will interact with a product

physical and tangible product instead of a nonphysical idea

not so expensive to fail

Two types of prototyping: low fidelity and High fidelity

Low fidelity: cheap and quick, general view of the product, fewer details than high fidelity, too basic, do not show the real finished product, do not interact in an advanced way

High fidelity: similar to finished prototype, more details, a designer can see how the users interact, hard to change an element in it

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