#all i can do is create the artefact and try to align and point its elements in a specific direction but what the audience does with it

[marciaillust]

trapped in amber

[joshbaxterbct]

Formative analysis

Emerging Practices

From reading the two given articles, I came to find that while they are quite different in nature, there are many parallels that can be drawn between the key ideas and themes within them. The first article I read was More Work for Mother (Cowan, R. S. 1983), where housework and its tools are used to describe the profound effect industrialisation of technology has had on society.

While we often think of our homes as a place of refuge away far from anything we would described to be industrialised. Our reliance on technology and the various tools we used day to day makes us very much entangled in the term Industrialisation. As the text describes:

“kitchens are as much a locus for industrialised work as factories and coal mines are, and washing machines and microwave ovens are as much a product of industrialisation as are automobiles and pocket calculators.”

The example is used that very few of us would be able to make our own bread from scratch, with success probably not. We have become reliant on a series of technological systems/tools to successfully complete the common task. With this said these tools limit our work. Tools are generally only good for one thing, we may be able to use them in different ways than ultimately intended however their purpose will ultimately always remain the same. In turn they also constrain the ways in which people behave. The writer uses a really good example of getting new cabinets in their family home and the effect this had on the family task of setting the table. The new Cabinets that house their plates was up much higher than their old cabinets. Their kids used to be able to set the table by themselves as they were able to freely reach the cabinet. However not they are much higher and the kids can no longer reach the cabinets themselves the assistance of an adult is required hence changing the entire dynamic of that task. Unless of course the addition of a new tool is used a stool. This is an interesting example of the profound effect a technological system can have on our work process and or the way we behave.

I find this particularly interesting when we then compare this example to the ones given in the second article Do artefacts have politics? (Winner, L. 1986). This text as the name suggest being about how technological artefacts carry political values along with them some intended while some unintended also in the context of industrialisation.

The example is used of a tomato harvesting machine that was developed by the University of California. A machine was developed that was able to harvest tomatoes on a single pass through a row. This of course replaced the initial system of hand picking. However while the machine was developed with the best intentions this had widespread social implications for California's rural sector, cutting jobs for thousands of workers. This is a prime example of the effect industrialisation can have on our work process. Just like the task of setting the table tools can have a profound effect on us that can differ from the tools intended purpose.

What these two articles highlight is that the social and political and historical values of a technology can not be ignored when thinking about and producing new technologies. All implications must be taken into consideration.

A given example of this was Facebook and the role it played in Brexit through targeted ad campaigns that manipulated users political views and ideologies. Facebook has always claimed that it uses a range of technologies to enhance users ad experiences. However this was an instance whereby the tool was used in a way that was unintended to create political bias. Of Course Facebook denies any such claims but it raises more questions than answers about the level of thought that has gone into new technologies and systems we find ourselves surrounded by today.

Facebooks role in Brexit -  and the threat to democracy | Carole Cadwalladr | TED 2019

We can help identify the questions we should be asking Amara's Law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run”. Take Google glass as a case study. A product that calls for a new way of seeing our relationship with our mobile computers, not hunched over a screen but meeting the world heads-up.

Why Google Glass? | Sergey Brin | TED 2013

Prior to the time of its launch there was a lot of hype generated about Google glass and it potential future applications. As one of the founders of Google Sergey Brin said this will change the way we interact with the world around us. No longer will we need to stare into featureless screens that draw us away from what is happening around us.

An interesting comment was made by Sergey when he articulated his experience of the product. He talked about how it made him realise how reliant he was on his mobile device. It had become a sort of safety net unto which he could escape from the present world. He talked about it being a significant change and an eye opener as to just how much his mobile device had been taking away from his life.

In part due to the fact that the mobile device has become a system of its own. Up until google glass and other emerging technologies such as the Apple watch. The technological system we call a phone has very much remained unchallenged. These emerging technologies challenge the conventions of what a mobile device can be and should be. Thinking back to Amara’s law is it possible that we are simply not ready for such a systematic change just yet?

The article Written by Google under a year before the Launch of Glass touches on a few interesting concepts not of glass but mobile devices in a broader sense. This said you can see the rational for creating glass aligning with much of what is talked about:

The Mobile Metamorphosis | Jess Greenwood | September 2011

A few statements that stuck with me from this article:

Phones no longer merely connect us to people; as their available features grow more complex, customisable, and personal, they connect us to ourselves.

............................................................................................

"We assume that the way things are now will be the way things are in the future, and the same is true of cell phones. As mobile technology continues to evolve, we have to keep asking how each additional functionality serves not only as utility, but has a human purpose."

- (Turkle, S. 2005)

What is said here very much is representative of Glass and it's vision. they had set out to create a product that creates more meaningful interactions for its users. They acknowledge that they role personal devices play within our lives now extends past a mere utility and has become more a part of us as humans. This in turn calls for a change in system that allows personal devices to make us more human than not.

There has been a recent movement towards creating applications and devices that promote this exact idea. In fact there is even a foundation started by Ex Google designer Tristan harris and Interface designer Aza Raskin, the Center For Humane Technology.

Center For Humane Technology

Their mission is to reverse human downgrading by inspiring a new race to the top and realigning technology with humanity*.* When we look at Google glass that the philosophy behind its design we can begin to see that it was designed with the best intentions, all the hype around it an idealised vision of what personal devices should be. Going back to what Ruth Schwartz Cowan said in her article about tools and industrialisation. The mobile device is very much a tool as it is a work process that we have become accustomed too. Disrupting this system creates discomfort and unease amongst those whom it affects. Just like the example Cowan used of setting the table for a family dinner. Changing this system changes the work process that is involved. Sergey said he notably realised how reliant he had become on his mobile device also acknowledging the difficulties proposed by this change of system. Many critics claimed that Google glass was a gimmick, flop a fail. That said with a range of reasons as to why, there is obviously a clear vision behind what google way trying to change here however it is very clear that the historical properties of what we know to be a personal mobile device was against them.

It is also interesting to see how they have dealt with the shortfall of the high held expectations this product had when it was originally released. Google has now released an enterprise edition of the product that focuses more on enhancing workflow in the workplace environment. Interestingly enough this is somewhat representative of the Amara's law, where the product was originally released with expectations it could not meet creating a shortfall, and only it now beginning to find it way in where it fits as a tool or technological system.

Google Glass Enterprise Edition

Google glass it raises a few points for us to consider and question when looking at the future of this kind of technology.

Is the way we currently use mobile/personal devices downgrading our lifestyles?

In terms of day to day personal devices are we ready for such an extreme systematic change?

Is there a need for some sort of middle ground or transitional technology to get people used such a systematic change?

Is there really a need for the system we know to be changed in its entirety?

Could we take the vision of Google Glass and apply it to current technology?

Should we rather be looking towards generating applications that promote the same values and challenge the way we use our devices, rather than change the device itself?

References:

Cowan, R. S. (1983). More work for mother: The ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave(Vol. 5131). New York: Basic Books.

Winner, L. (1986). Do Artifacts have Politics? From The Whale and the Reactor.

Cadwalladr, C. (April 2019). Facebooks role in Brexit - and the threat to democracy. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/carole_cadwalladr_facebook_s_role_in_brexit_and_the_threat_to_democracy?language=en

Wikipedia Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

Brinn, S. (Febuary2013). Why Google Glass?. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/sergey_brin_why_google_glass?language=en

Greenwood, J. (September 2011). The Mobile Metamorphosis [blog post]. retrieved from: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/the-mobile-metamorphosis/

Turkle, S. (2005). The second self: Computers and the human spirit. Mit Press.

Center for humane technology (n.d) Retrieved 19 July. Retrieved from: https://humanetech.com/

Glass. (n.d) Retrieved 19 July. Retrieved from: https://www.google.com/glass/start/

[ernestsdesign]

This week I will dive deeper with the introduction of these topics.

1000 true fans

establishing brand values

customer lifetime value

market research

ideal customer avatar- turning the pains to gains

The circle illustration that I created above is quite important, especially the money part and this is because if the product or service being delivered does not make money then the product or service cannot be justified as a business but instead is a hobby.

Kevin Kelly once stated that you "only need one thousand true fans" and this is very true, because although gaining new fans may be ecstatic keeping the first fans is what really matters as they have dedicated the most time to the company, they will promote the service or product if it continues delivering and keeping true to these fans, but also they will know the story and be most likely to keep re-visiting.

In Chris Anderson's book "The Long Tail", he describes how nowadays niche products can be sold online that would otherwise not be sold in stores or would be placed in locations that arent as popularly visited because the store would want to make the most sales possible, and by displaying the most popular items instead of newest ones they are able to maximise profits. This also means that physical space doesnt matter. Another advantage nowadays is the fact that companies can advertise their products through more sources including social media, email, newsletters, on websites amongst others.

Staying in touch with the fans in my opinion is very important, because it allows even big corporations to stay in touch with the people that follow them, it allows companies to see feedback and it turns the average user into a fan because they can see the effort being put in and because they know that they wont get automated replies, it keeps a good standing with them.

Everything we do as designers matters, and for this to happen everything should be a story because 1000 true fans is all it takes.

Making something that I love was an important part of this project because without passion, I would not be willing to make my best possible effort. I feel like approaching problems and trying to solve them is a key point that leads to the creation of content, because every user deserves to lead their life without unnecessary distractions such as long paragraphs doomed with no images or illustrations and the users deserve to quickly navigate to find the content they need.

Establishing brand values

By establishing my own values I was able to see how I want my current and future projects to progress, and this led me to see what truly matters to me and how I should approach problems.

My own values are; knowledge, community, achievement, ambition and friendships.

Even large companies have started showing their values to let their fans see what they are truly "about". For example, Offscreen magazine stated their values as "humanity empowers technology" and Squarespace stated they want to "empower individuals".

The main reason for these shifts is the rise of consumerism. Because of this, consumers are willing to spend more money and time onto brands which are friendly and have usable content.

Customer Lifetime Vaules

The values of a company and even people will change over time however identifying them will help in shaping the vision of the company's future. By looking after the customers a company already has instead of focusing on acquiring new ones, the users will stick with the company in the long-term as they can see how they are being rewarded.

The 80/20 rule shows us that 80% of the results come from 20% of the work and that is because by seeing how little time we have, we focus on doing more work in that time that we would if we had 80% of the time. This rule can be applied to companies too where 80% of sales come from 20% of clients showing the importance of focusing on the clients you already have instead of looking for new ones.

Market Research

The population of Northern Ireland is smaller than population of Islington (a borough in London). This shows us that even focusing on a country can be very short-minded and this is because with the internet our potential to make connections increases.

Desk research, published market research, Field research

Desk research: is composed of guides, others selling, going to google, using the internet, looking at price benchmarks

published: research already done, market intelligence, reports from sources such as Invest NI

field: in a shop looking for the good and bad in things such as the packaging, messaging and pricing, good & bad

The tiny details matter and thus I must identify customers to target my message towards them. To find my users, I can research Where are they, what do they read, where do they shop and other important questions that help me see how they will interact with my project.

I should look at the market and its benchmark, this means checking into how much others are selling similar projects for.

All about the story

If I were to push the price up, the most important this is having a story and this is because the people looking into my project will see the process I went through to make the project a reality. Having a story also lets the people see what is so special about the project, why it matters to me and why it should matter to everyone.

If someone is not willing to spend the money on the project, then more likely than not you are not the customer or target audience for the project. This is an important statement because when making projects people tend to downscale the price thinking no one would buy it, but that is because in most cases the person making the project is not the actual target market of the project as they want it to be successful.

The ideal customer avatar is important. The ideal customer avatar is what can be used to work out who exactly I want to sell to. It’s a way of getting a clear picture of the ideal customer, so that I can align the marketing and marketing messages to appeal to them.

Turning pains into gains: By looking at the customers' pains and issues with content, I can begin looking into how these issues will be downscaled and removed with the current project. For example, if someone cannot find specific content I will implement actions that allow the users to filter content through popular, rising and new so they get the content that most matters to them.

The customer and consumer can be different, for example a baby will not buy a product but the mother would which still means the baby should be a part of the customer avatar. User artefacts can be used and these will conclude of customer portraits, user persona's and empathy maps amongst others.

[holytheoristtastemaker]

1. Put community before ego

When working on a design system, a lot of the focus tends to be on the stuff it contains and the speed with which you can deliver it.

Practically, it’s often quicker to knuckle down and deliver it yourself. Reaching outside of the team means more opinions to negotiate and time spent teaching others about your conventions and processes.

But building a community is what differentiates a design system from a pattern library. You need people to participate by using it, contributing to it and advocating for it, and you need to foster a whole lot of goodwill to achieve that.

And that’s where service designers come in. They, ours in particular, possess an incredible natural instinct towards collaboration.

Eliciting cooperation from disparate groups of stakeholders is no mean feat, but it’s essential if you’re trying to engage a large organisation and get it to converge on a collection of patterns.

By valuing the whole over the individual, our service designer has empowered people to participate. She’s worked transparently, sharing and documenting her work to involve others, and in doing so has ensured its longevity. This doesn’t happen if you focus on individual ownership.

Prioritising collaboration even, sometimes, at the expensive of short term efficiency, makes a design system far more sustainable in the long run.

2. Favour action over deliberation

One of the government design principles is ‘Make things open, it makes things better’. The belief that by sharing work with others and receiving feedback improves its quality and reduces risks.

In practice, there is usually a good amount confidence-building that happens before something is shared in the open. You’ll mull over your idea first, make personal notes and sketches. You may discuss it with one or two team members, consider its merit, adjust it, then reconsider it.

This deliberation in the safety of a small group is a way of strengthening conviction before an idea or a piece of work is shared more widely, ensuring that the pitch is honed and challenges are expected and prepared for.

While there’s some value in that, working with our service designer has taught me that there’s infinitely more reward in having the courage to take action and make things open earlier.

She regularly turns to me at the end of a discussion and says “so what are we going to do?”. My natural instincts urge me to continue the discussion, but she’ll challenge me to make something happen.

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t daunting at first, this pressure to share my ideas in the open before they were fully developed. The idea that someone might spot a flaw I could have preempted is uncomfortable, but that’s ego talking.

Turning deliberation into an artefact, a pilot process or a blog creates a talking point. It exposes strengths and the weaknesses immediately, accelerates discussion and alignment, and takes you far more quickly from an idea to a good idea.

3. Be both a decision maker and a doer

It’s a popular belief that at some stage in your career you have to kiss goodbye to practice and step into a world of theory. That in order to progress, you start planning and stop participating.

But good service design requires a good deal of both. You have to pitch in and immerse yourself in the detail, and you have to know when to step away and take stock of the big picture.

When helping us to develop our contribution process, our service designer spent weeks interviewing both past and potential contributors, researching open source models and understanding the challenges and opportunities at play. She used this to develop an impressively intricate contribution journey map, and helped the team to translate these learnings into a well-oiled contribution model.

She helped us create documentation detailing the steps and expectations for contributors, the assurance process, and what our team would do to support these activities.

Her attention to detail impressed me, but what impressed me more was her ability to step away.

Despite all she’d invested in it, when the time came, she quietly relinquished control. She moved onto the next challenge, entrusting the team and community to continue this work.

And that’s what good service design is. It’s mucking in, not just understanding the detail but experiencing it. Immersing yourself in the minutiae, gaining empathy for users by getting the full picture, and then zooming out again. Attention to detail is important but transient. Attention to the service remains a constant.

4. Practice human-centred design, always

When people talk about design systems, they tend to focus on the platform, the features and the significance of technology choices.

But making a design system work is not about bells and whistles. Success lies in how well it’s adopted into an organisation’s culture, processes and infrastructure, and the key to all of that is people.

Thinking in a more human way has led us to ask bigger questions of our service. How could we involve more people? How do we win trust? Where can we do better?

From helping us provide the best possible support to users when they get stuck, to enabling the wider community to contribute, our service designer has driven us to maintain a constant and necessary focus on our users.

By challenging us to be more considerate, more inclusive and more accommodating to our users, she’s taken us from building a product to delivering a service that puts people at its heart.

The value of service design

The value of service design can be tricky to quantify. It’s not one thing, but a thousand little things. From a shared sense of purpose cultivated within a team or community, to the collection of incremental improvements that combine to transform user experiences.

For me personally, it would be hard to overstate the value of our service designer’s input and support in the time we’ve worked together. As well as a valued colleague, she’s become my friend, and I’ll continue to watch and learn from her after she’s moved.

So my one piece of advice to you is this: if you’re building a design system, be sure to include a service designer — you’re going to need one.

[survivingart]

IS THIS ART?

Countless figures throughout history have tried to explain this incredibly complex question: What is art? And more importantly, what isn’t art?

But still the institutions have no real answer, no common ground upon which they could define a normative of what defines art. Brut art is a problem, so are other outsider artists, and home schooled creatives that defy or just never become part of the institutional system. 

It’s the carpenters that put more than the usual love and attention to detail in building their “consumer objects”. It’s the iPhones and iPads and other designer products that always walk the thin line between art and function.

Then you have others that do not agree with the institutional idea that one needs to even be part of the system to be considered an artist. You only need to have ideas and communicate them with the world via your production.

And in the philosophy of aesthetics — the field that studies this question ontologically — there is even more confusion. A materialist philosopher that believes all reality is only material and no immaterial reality can ever exist, will tell you art is pure matter, pure reciprocity between the object and its perceiver.

But they might also say that art doesn’t even need spectators to exist — like the whole status of art is somehow imbued inside the object that it is representing. Almost comically, some believe art is a magical aura (but of course physical, never metaphysical or non-material) that lives in an object, a special part — almost like an extra organ of the body of that object — that pumps pure artistic energy through it and makes us instantly experience art, if we indeed are knowledgable and receptive enough to perceive it.

But it’s all a load of incoherent and over-theorised bull if you ask me.

For me, all of this began with Descartes, when he decided to divide reality into two connected but distinct realities: the material and immaterial world.

There are even jokes about how the common person in the street is always a cartesian — a follower of Descartes — even if they themselves don’t know it; all average people believe in a body and in a soul as two distinct entities.

Now, I won’t go into the fallacies of such beliefs too much as this is an art channel not a philosophy discussion, but just to give a bit of context, I’d like to present three interesting and extremely precise arguments for the contrary — that art is not an object, but an experience.

Because if art is an experience, we surely can come to understand that truly it is impossible to create a functional theory, a list of checkboxes that anything considered art has to tick to really become art, or even fine art.

The first is by Thomas Nagel, the author of the story titled What It Is Like To Be A Bat, who posed an interesting proposition: 

While humans can understand and imagine the behaviours of creatures, in this case a bat; merely being able to imagine how it would feel to be able to fly, navigate by sonar, hang upside down and eat insects, would never really be the same as a bat’s perspective. 

Nagel claims that even if we were able to gradually turn into bats (think Kafka, but more uplifting), our brains would not have been wired as a bat’s from birth; therefore, we would only be able to experience the life and behaviours of a bat, rather than their mindset.

To behave as something isn’t equal to being something, regardless of how much it looks, swims and quacks like a duck, the shocker is, it might just be a rubber ducky. 

And this goes for our language and communication problem too; I could paint a picture of an apple being picked by a woman somewhere in a forest. Some would see a nice lady picking apples, others would see the highly complex concept of Ancestral Sin. Same painting, same communication, immensely different results.

The next story, written by Frank Jackson is also about a woman who’s life is changed because of an apple — not because of eating it but merely by looking at it! Titled What Mary Didn’t Know, it describes a very curious lady who loved natural sciences — the field of colour theory especially. 

She knew everything there was to know about colours; their wavelengths, the numerous psychological effects colours have on us, the various types of receptors that are utilised in our bodies to see them … just about everything. But she had one issue. She had been educated about all of this in a black-and-white room.

Black-and-white books, TV screens, and furniture — for some weird reason even Mary herself is black-and-white, but it is a story and if it was OK for Little Red Riding Hood to be red, I guess Mary can be colourless too.

So Jackson argued: Even though Mary had all the same information about colours that we do, she had never really experienced them and was therefore missing one crucial piece of information; one important bit of quaila, as philosophers like to call these magical bits of subjective experience, namely actually seeing red.

Jackson proposed that when Mary stepped out of her room and saw a red, juicy apple, she not only saw colour for the first time, she in fact learned something new. Something that she couldn’t have learned through any text book or black-and-white YouTube video. 

She gained a new emotional and preceptorial experience — seeing red. (Remember all those people who told us that we can’t learn everything from books, well they were right in a way!)

And the last, and my personal favourite story curiously also evolves around red (philosophers love it for some reason). One of the greatest minds of the 21st century, John Searle wrote a wonderful tale about a talking room.

Titled The Chinese Room, this wonderful tale of speaking Asian walls stirred the lines of cognitive scientists when first presented in 1980. It describes a room, where one would input a piece of written-down information — be it a question, a statement or just a remark about the weather — and the room, after a period of time, would answer back. All in Chinese for some weird reason, probably because Searle himself said he’s awful at speaking Mandarin (The man speaks more than 6 languages fluently though!).

Well, the room wasn’t some magical artefact from a forgotten time, it was operated by one person. And the interesting fact was, that parson had no idea how to speak or write Mandarin. What he did have though was an assortment of instructions and guidelines on what to do and a giant library of cards with Chinese signs, decorating the walls of the room.

Whenever text was slid through the opening in the main wall, he would open the instruction books at the appropriate page depicting the combination of symbols (he was obviously really efficient at what he did and compensated generously for his job, probably owned a villa and a few Ferraris too).

After locating the right page in the manual, he would then find the appropriate cards on the shelves of the room, align them in the order depicted in the instructions and return the answer back though the slit in the wall. And the person on the outside would be absolutely amazed of how wonderful a computer this contraption was!

But the point of Searle’s work wasn’t to explain away computers by using miniature librarians living in our processors and memory units, he wanted to point out a simple yet profound truth about communication, computation and the mind. One that we have heard twice before, albeit in different iterations and with slightly different points.

Syntax (that is the assortment of signals; be it voice signals, written words or electric currents going to the processors of our computers) does not equal semantics (that is the name we give to meaning; the meaning of a word, a picture, a sign … anything that has some symbolical value to anyone).

The only true way to experience art is to, well, experience it. It’s impossible to not experience something if we wish to even try to comprehend it, let alone understand fully what it is about.

It’s like dreaming about something you have never experienced — I know, dreams almost never look like reality, but to be honest, our dreams don’t just appear as a beam of light from god or some bored alien on Mars that decided to give us a transcendental experience because we’re the chosen one to guide human kind into onto the next level of existence.

It’s all just pieced together by everything we experience during our waking days. Every bit of information was consciously or unconsciously experienced and internalised. It’s the same with art.

You need to be present, you are indeed the key to the question of: What art is? Without anyone to view the Mona Lisa, there is no art, just a peculiar object. 

Because to know what art is, we also need to know what art isn’t. 

But when does art stop to be? Or what if it never even become perceivable to us as art?

In the moment where there are no more men, no more women, and no more children.

And what happens to art then?

It is, like all that is created from an ego, bound to its creator. When he perishes, so does the essence of all his children, leaving behind a heap of empty material shells. But the intricate architectural dams of beavers, the beautiful patterns of various animals and the chirping and poems of all the beautifully performing singing birds. These don’t perish. 

Even if there is no man to hear the song, see the pattern and enjoy the complexity of animal life and their creations they still serve an immediate function. 

If there is a female Nightingale around, the song is heard, if there are beavers, they will enjoy and understand the dams and the tigers will comprehend their intricate skin patterns — each species forming its own personal language. 

And when they’re gone, so are all their features, all their creations.

And you know why? 

Because even if today the thought of a non-sociocentric universe is impossible for most, some things in the world actually weren’t made by us. Neither to amuse or to teach. And because of that, they can last quite a bit longer than our concept of art ever will.

Art is an experience, not an object. But it isn’t only a material experience — and no, I’m not saying it’s magic that makes us live and die, because the last time I checked nobody wrote Emet on my head and magically made me a real boy the way the golem becomes alive in Jewish folklore.

But the point to take home is, the more you know, the more you understand about the world around you, the more things will give you the same experience of art, of the sublime.

Because while surely not any object can produce the same power of artistic pleasure — for me it’s a mid-late Rothko painting, for you it might be a conceptual piece with hay and neon or a realistic portrait of Loui XV or just a nice handmade drawing of your child about how much they love you.

The object is only as important as our understanding of it. That’s why learning is paramount. To be a good artist, and even a good spectator we need to constantly expand our horizons. Because the day we stop learning is the day we create a canon in our life.

And as with every determinate belief that only so and so is an artist and the others are imposters, we inevitably become blind to the ineffable vastness of what art really is. 

Art is everything. But to the inexperienced and blind, it is less than nothing, because even nothing takes something form us, whereas a foreign object to a closed mind doesn’t even register. It is like it never even existed.

So to truly experience reality — at least a much of it as we possibly can — we need to stay humble, open and childlike in our awe towards the world. If nothing else, we owe it to either God or our parents or ourselves or just to the lovely abyss that the nihilists of us enjoy staring down.

We owe it to whatever makes us stand-up in the morning to give everything the world has to offer a chance. Maybe we will find a new thing we like, but it’s much more likely we’ll discover a previously completely hidden part of reality that was really just hiding in plain sight.

What is art then?

Everything for those of us that aren’t afraid to look.   

from Surviving Art http://bit.ly/2WJW4tG via IFTTT

[feramotiv]

It’s just X, not #UX or #CX

You may be considering making the leap from UX to CX design. In this article I’ll be unpacking what I see as the similarities, the differences and what needs to be in place for you to make a successful transition between these related disciplines.

The ease with which you will transition depends on a number of factors; your level of seniority and current expertise, your desire to exercise a newly acquired skill or to pick up another. In my case it was the latter. As UX lead in a fast paced delivery-focussed environment I did not have enough influence on the overall strategy and discovery phases – I missed being instrumental in project direction. When I saw an opportunity to join an innovation lab and change from modular systems thinking, to strategic design thinking, I leapt at the chance. My following observations stem from coming into the CX realm as a UXer. Your own journey may vary.

CX is a Road Trip

Let’s step back for a second and look at what distinguishes CX from UX. In practical terms, CX determines what combination of factors best serve a customer goal (strategically aligned with business goals), whereas UX is concerned with how those factors, both individually and in concert, work to facilitate the user actions that will achieve that goal. Let’s see if we can express it in a metaphor that might be easier to grasp: CX is a road trip.

The highway, the vehicle, the other road users, they are all part of CX. The steering wheel, the air con, the controls, and the dashboard data display – they are all part of UX. So, running out of fuel without realising the tank was running low in the middle of a highway is not bad CX. It’s bad UX. Not having a service station within a reasonable distance? That’s bad CX. UX is practical, measurable and atomic. CX is more longitudinal, aspirational and strategic. Lastly, in my own experience, CX has been predominantly about discovery and opportunity definition through qualitative research. UX has been about tools, prototypes and interfaces, testing and validation.

Its’ just X, not UX or CX

In less mature, or under-resourced environments, enforcing a distinction between CX and UX can be alienating and confusing to your non-design colleagues. Equally, in large, well resourced enterprises, that distinction can be enforced upon you. So where possible, I ditch both labels and just refer to myself as an Experience Designer.

At the end of the day our core strengths remain the same; empathy for people interacting with, and within a system, identifying their goals and helping them to achieve those goals. Both the CXer and the UXer create artefacts that describe our theories, we use personas of those interacting with the system and we employ storytelling to communicate our proposed solutions. However, that generalisation may not help recruiters, Human Resources or project managers to get the right resources in place on a project. In practical terms, you may well be an Experience Designer but with a specific skill set, the shorthand for that skill can be UX or CX.

How to Transition

The question you might want to ask yourself as a UXer is; how do you get legitimised as a CXer? One way is to try and get a secondment to a CX team (if it exists) within your current workplace. The CX Team are often crying out for concrete prototyping skills and the ability to realise the outputs of their ideation sessions and insights walls, a win-win situation.

If a CX function does not exist in your organisation but you observe that they are not looking at the wider customer experience, step up and get involved. There’s no use saying “that’s not my job” when you are the closest relation to the vital skills they are lacking. I’m sure you’ve seen that cliche movie scene where there’s a medical emergency in a remote location and there’s the “I’m not that kind of doctor” conversation. This is where the Veterinarian is eventually persuaded to go into the makeshift canvas tent and ends up saving the life of the injured party. Well, sometimes you have to be the Vet … sometimes you have to be the Vet (repeated for dramatic effect).

There are other ways to transition of course. How about jumping on a CX design course to top up your knowledge? Yet another way would be to do a self-directed CX exercise. If you have recently changed TV & Broadband suppliers for example, and encountered issues, document the pain points with your online and offline journey to getting it installed. Make suggestions on how it could be improved from a holistic experience point of view. Add your thinking and design output to your portfolio.

Silver Lining for UXers

The good news is that UXers can quickly get to up speed on CX as it is primarily a change of lexicon with some new adjacent methods to complement your existing suite of human centred design methodologies. This lexicon is crucial to master as it is specific to the political and financial landscape. CX is about aligning with an organisation’s goals to attract and retain customers through cost efficient service improvements. UX is about interpretation of interactions, time on task, measurable metrics that validate designs. The immediate, temporal metrics of UX are not so important to CX so get comfortable with the ambiguity. And good luck! AUGUST 2018 - LIAM KEOGH

[wlozza-blog]

Week 3

Journal Task 1

Group work:

How well is your group working?

Our group is working well. There are often good ideas that flow around the group and there is an understanding of each other and how we think differently about things. We also commonly challenge each other's viewpoints and overall get the best answer via discussing the options. There is collaboration.

Are you happy with your contribution to the group and what might you try to do more/less of with your group in the future?

As being the writer and not being present due to illness I have found my attendance to be an issue, however during the sessions I have been there I have enjoyed the time that has spent discussing task.

 Values:

If you are re-imagining the future world through your creative work, what values will underpin your creative practice?

I strongly believe a future of equality and fairness. I believe that trust and the human connection should be essential in any living environment.

 Do you feel you've identified these?

Yes I do

Are they enough to guide your work?

I believe that they will be a strong component of my work as they are what I believe in.   Ethics

Do you feel confident identifying ethical and unethical creative practices?

Yes to a point, this means that I am comfortable asking the questions but may need more time to clarify the best possible result and outcome.

Would you be able to undertake your own ethics investigation?

I believe I would be able to undertake my own ethical investigation but it would require more time to sort through the outcome of questions relating to the issue.

Journal Task 2

 Biehl describes Berlin techno through the example of the techno club Berghain, which has been labelled the best techno club in the world. It has evolved in response to social and political change within Berlin when the wall came down. Berghain is so much more than just music. It is an experience on many levels. This experience is enhanced by the atmosphere that is created within Berghain. One way in which the atmosphere is manipulated is through the entry criteria. Would be club goers queue for hours to get to the front of the queue. At this time a ‘bouncer’ decides if they can enter. There seem to be no set rules for entry and the disregard for celebrities is a shout out to a more equal society. A feeling of exclusivity makes patrons want to belong. A second way the atmosphere is manipulated is the architecture of the spaces within the club. It is a massively tall structure which has a mixture of small intimate spaces and large dance floors. Patrons ascend stairs to the dance floor and ascend even further to upper levels where no security or observation is in place. The feeling of anything goes is felt. No values or judgements – just unity, an atmosphere of connection. Another way the atmosphere is created is through the music beat. A Four to the floor beat means the rhythm is felt not just in the mind but through the feet. Dancers express themselves individually but also in a collective nature in a social activity. Techno music creates an atmosphere of connection amongst the dancers united as having ‘ Berlin spirit’. A fourth part of the atmosphere created is the way the Dj is connected to the dancers. The Dj's methods are used to enhance the experience and atmosphere. Dj’s are positioned amongst the people as opposed to above and away from the dancers. They read the crowd and try to create connections that give the new Berliner’s a “sonic identity”. The ‘bodily presence” of dancing to music is described as a way of knowing. Biehl says that “dance is an important medium of social and cultural practice ..which creates a collective memory” and creates an atmosphere of connection.

Journal Task 3

 Kedron Parker goes into detail about the atmosphere of the Terrace and why it prompted her to intervene.  Make note of how she considers atmosphere in her discussion about the

Terrace (first audio clip)

In this clip, Parker talks about how it was the poor atmosphere on the Terrace which prompted her to try to change it for the better. She describes how there was a disconnect on many layers between the Terrace and Lambton Quay. Concrete dominated, there was the little sun, no places to sit and pedestrians were not catered for with road crossings or seating. The atmosphere was unfriendly and inhospitable for pedestrians. Parker also describes that most people working on the Terrace are in what are concrete boxes really and that when they came out for lunch or walked to and from the Terrace the atmosphere was drab, uncomfortable and depressing. The spatial layout meant most people accessed the Terrace through stairways as pedestrians rather than in cars as it appears the developers who concreted over the stream envisaged. No thought was given to the pedestrian experience and because of this walking in this area was uncomfortable as it made her feel trapped in a cement canyon.

 Parkers aims and construction of the project (audio parts 2 and 3), Parker had a range of aims in the construction of her soundtrack. She was aware people were not choosing to hear her soundtrack so she needed to be sensitive to what the public would be exposed to. She felt a sense of responsibility to ensure people in the tunnel had a positive experience, that they were not exhausted or jarred by hearing the soundtrack. She didn’t want them to have a sensory overload, instead, the experience should add to their day. They should feel nourished and an increased sense of well being. They should feel safe emotionally. She aimed to have the soundtrack become an unconscious part of their landscape that they enjoyed every day which released endorphins related to a pleasant experience. Parker aimed to replicate the sounds of the water and life around the stream as it would have been prior to being cemented over. She wanted to have the bird sounds that would have been around the stream – both the NZ and Australian birds. She wanted to nurture those who walked through the tunnel with sounds of the stream and life around it.

Evaluation of the project

Parker evaluates her soundtrack in the tunnel by the response people have to it. She believes that people who know nothing of the natural history of the stream under the cement still enjoy a pleasant experience by walking through it. They place no significance on the sounds but still feel uplifted by the experience. On the other hand, people who do know about the stream and its place in the Terrace’s history appreciate the sound choices that were made and recognise that they were good choices to represent stream as it was. People can take whatever they want from the experience. Parker also evaluates the impact of her soundtrack by the way that it creates a unique memory of nature and how that experience is carried as a memory. She hopes that the memory of that connection with nature will influences decisions about design so that future spaces are designed with nature in mind. For Parker this would be a great success.

Journal Task 4

Take one of your collected artefacts from the city - something you want to change about Pōneke/Wellington - and describe what atmosphere you want to create when you change it. Discuss how it aligns with your values and any ethical considerations that are important to it (word guide 400-500 words). Artefact that I dislike about Wellington. The emergency sirens, particularly around the Cube. I would like to change the atmosphere that the emergency sirens create. The sound is intrusive and abusive which causes distress and is confronting. It invades into sleep and rest times, it is ever present with no predictability to its beginning or end – nerve-jarring 24hours a day. It doesn’t respect the lives of people living, not just working in the CBD. Wellington has a high proportion of its residents living in the CBD. The siren says it is more important than any individual in its path. It creates a sense of panic and is an insistent reminder that someone is in crisis somewhere. You are dragged into their crisis. While the idea of getting assistance to those in need as quickly as possible is important to me, (it might be me one day). The way the sirens fracture the air and assault the eardrums goes against the ethical principle of non-maleficence. Everybody suffers harm through the excessively loud siren. The auditory assault causes harm. The atmosphere created by the sirens is one of tension and anxiety. It stops people in their tracks and confusion ensues.I would like to change the atmosphere that is created when the sirens are sounding. People who live in the CBD in Wellington should feel safe in their homes. A siren sounding several blocks away at ground level shouldn’t be a stressful event in your 8th floor home. People in the direct path of the speeding ambulance or fire engine need to know to get out of the way maybe by flashing lights and a quieter siren that still delivers it crisis message but doesn't traumatise all the residents. My values and ethics align with the notion of city design that is comfortable for its residents. The inhabitants are respected as humans who have needs that should be respected. One of those needs is feeling safe in their homes and as they go about their daily routines. Also the ability to withdraw to private spaces that are not intruded upon by noise pollution. All of the Kaupapa Maori ethics principles are derived from a shared community perspective where individuals who make up the community have rights that need to be respected. I identify with these ethical principles. The Massey universal principles also make sense to me. Autonomy is denied when residents have no choice in how the sirens project into their lives. Undoubtedly someone is benefiting from the emergency services coming to them and that is important but it shouldn’t be at a cost to the community in general. An ethical approach would be to consult with the residents to find out what kind of warning systems would alert the appropriate people about the crisis but also protect residents from the noxious stimulation that comes from hearing a loud siren. Working together in a collaborative way to find a solution will create an atmosphere of cooperation, respect between groups. It isn’t easy to change the atmosphere where there is an emergency so removing warning systems may not be possible but the atmosphere could be altered so the emergency is centralised to a small space around the ambulance, fire engine or police that

alerts those immediately nearby but respects the sonic privacy of residents These values are important to me as they create a caring, safe respectful atmosphere.