http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article4802.asp
Which came first, the Interaction or the Design?, Source: Interaction-Design.org, 18 June 2008
Submitted by Mads Soegaard, by Jonas Lowgren
Interaction Design” refers to the shaping of interactive products and services with a specific focus on their use. Broadly speaking, there are two main senses of the concept, coming out of different intellectual traditions but increasingly converging in practice and research.
I went to a workshop last week titled ‘HOW TO INVENT! Pink Diggers, Rude Signs and Driving on the Wrong Side’, given by Professor Tom Barker from the London Royal College of Art (RCA). The blurb form the workshop flyer:
As companies increasingly compete in giant global markets, innovation and design is gaining greater value than ever before. The role of the designer has become pivotal not just to a company’s success, but also in terms of social responsibility, ethics and sustainability. Good design gives competitive advantage and builds brand value. However, the process of designing truly innovative products that succeed has always been a difficult and risky task. How can the designer respond to these new challenges? Why is experimental design and research so important in all of this? What is the contemporary role of design academia?
Tom described how products and design ideas go through a “constant path of evolution” and a highly productive way of working involves “colloborative non-disciplinary” partnerships. In his presentation Tom showed a table that outlined the incubation of future design ideas for marketable products which he called “bottom draw technology”:
5 years - Products that are available now but are generally expensive and not working well.
10 years - Held in the research and development departments of commercial companies.
15 years - University research
He stressed that design briefs need to be “stretched and tested into something else.” The term “experimental design” was used to describe design that is informed by a “creative, artistic process”. The results of these experiments are recorded and reviewed with the idea of working out how they may be used.
In regards to University research he is reluctant to get caught up in pure consultancy work that does not allow for costs to have “time to think.” The paperwork can overwhelm the research. An ideal industry link allows for “process; research and innovation”.
“Project Migration” involves re-packaging research projects to test industry interest.
In the presentation of RCA student work I was intrigued by the way video was used to document design projects - Tom talked about the need for designers to understand how to use narrative in this documentation. A lot of animation, maps, sketches and illustrations where used by students to explain the design process.
References:
At the Prof Tom Barker workshop I learnt about the XMedia Lab from one of the participants, who had their project put through the XMedia Lab think tank.
The about from the website:
X|Media|Lab is the internationally acclaimed digital media event: a unique meeting place designed to help people get their own ideas to market through creative development, business matching, and access to world-class networks of digital media professionals.
Technorati Tags: digtial media, new media
All this got me thinking about a design where categories are tags becoming a simple tag cloud like in the archives section.
The tags on the left and right become clip titles instead loosing a level. Categories are wiped. Categories in this interface are like making a batch or set in Flickr. The user selects content instead using the tag cloud directly.
I have got most of the clips into the ‘Glasshouse Birdman’ prototype and are now starting to look at how the categories and tags work in terms of how I would like the user to engage with the themes that have emerged in the content. I realised that clips could be kept in separate categories by controlling cross-overs with tag names, but sometimes a clip has something to offer in other categories. For example, giving a clip a tag name that features strongly in another category brings all those clips from that category across with it into the original category that has been selected. Often from my perspective this makes the theme to random if this is not the desired effect. One way around this within this interface design is to post the same clip twice with the same title but in a different category and with a different tag name.
category = birdman; tag = animal lover; clip title = big brown snake
category = feeding; tag = aviary; clip title = big brown snake
This means clips can be repeated to appear elsewhere while still having some control over themes. In a hidden kind of way clips that seemed more important that others could be repeated to appear in a number of places. Repetition becomes a feature of the narrative structure.
I did some research on this korsakow application awhile back and wanted to note the link. There is certain flexibility like creating rule scenes. From the abput page:
They are interactive - the viewer has influence on the film. They are rule-based - the author decides on the rules scenes relate to each other, he does not create a fixed order. They are generative - the order of the scenes is calculated while the viewer looks at a Korsakow-project. Korsakow-projects can only be viewed on a computer. They are delivered via internet-streaming, DVD-Rom or CD-Rom.
These are some notes from a lecture I gave recently in Integrated Media (2007) on Tom Sherman’s article ‘vernacular video’. I used this quote as a starting point for discussion:
Video in 2007 is not the exclusive medium of technicians or specialists or journalists or artists–it is the peoples’ medium. The potential of video as a decentralized communications tool for the masses has been realized, and the twenty-first century will be remembered as the video age. Surveillance and counter-surveillance aside, video is the vernacular form of the era–it is the common and everyday way that people communicate. Video is the way people place themselves at events and describe what happened. (locate) (situate) In existential terms (your own meaning), video has become everyperson’s POV (point of view). It is an instrument for framing existence and identity.
How does this affect video content? Sherman proposes a list of characteristics that will emerge as part of what he has called this ‘vernacular video’ form. His objective in pointing out these characteristics, I suggest is not necessarily to endorse them, in fact he possibly does not look on many of them favourably. Instead the idea is to draw attention to them with the objective to encourage practitioners to explore in his words “elegant” appropriations of these characteristics. Sherman suggests that under the current mode of ubiquity, where video production and distribution is accessible to anyone with a camera, computer and Internet access, ‘vernacular video’ will take on a number of distinctive characteristics. In the following notes I have added in my own interpretations, examples and ideas that come to mind in response to these characteristics that Sherman proposes.
Video works are already and will become inevitably “shorter” which also means all sorts of durations in between the TVC and longer form television. The documentary form may be packed down into 3,5,7 minutes for example. These durations will be about producing content for platforms like YouTube, ipods and mobiles. The skill will be the ability to work in different ways within shorter time frames, along with accommodating the characteristics of varying platforms, delivery speeds and screen sizes.
“Canned music”: Sherman argues that the branding attributes of advertising will play a key role where the aim is to tap into getting messages across that are memorable and powerful. A big part of successful moving-image advertising is about simplifying the message and using repetition. A soap for example has a consistent theme tune and opening and closing credits, all part of branding and creating identity awareness around the content. The popular vlog Chasing Windmills title sequence is an example.
“Recombinant” video aesthetics Recombinant here is the re-use of video through sampling and remixing. I like Bernard Schutze’s article titled ‘Ideas in the Mix: the heap’ and his argument that we function in a remix culture, he writes
Mix, mix again, remix: copyleft, cut ‘n’ paste, digital jumble, cross-fade, dub, tweak the knob, drop the needle, spin, merge, morph, bootleg, pirate, plagiarize, enrich, sample, break down, reassemble, multiply input source, merge output, decompose, recompose, erase borders, remix again.
Sherman points out that a recombinant approach relies heavily on repetition and he refers again to chorus lines in pop music as an example of this repetitive approach. In a more refined form, I can’t help but think of electronic music loops. Early Steve Reich tunes come to mind.
“Real-time on the fly voice-overs”: These are narration tracks that are done spontaneously a bit like a blog post, written as you think it and experience it, you post it. These narration tracks are possibly more self-reflexive rather than necessarily being story driven or even informative. They are recorded and added in a number of varying styles that suit that moment in time. These styles are exploratory and experimental, even poetic.
“On-screen text”: Like written languages that are being developed around SMS, email and chat rooms. Sherman proposes that the text applied to ‘vernacular video’ through a spontaneous approach and configured immediately within the video software being used morphs into a type of text-based video language that contains a fair degree of noise and idiosyncratic grammar.
“Crude animation”: Animation either independent or mixed in with real-life video content he argues will be influenced by amateur type aesthetics. Sherman states that “Crude is cool, opposed to slick.” Adrian Miles in a recent integrated media lecture (2007) listed these attributes as part of what he named ‘dirty media’:
dirty; messy; noisy; other; amateur; prosumer; general; post-industrial; minor; debate
…as opposed to traditional media:
clean; tidy; quiet; same; professional; freelance; restricted; industrial; major; sedentary
(Adrian Miles’ Video Vortex/argos softvideo presentation recorded on video)
“Slow-mo-Acceleration”: Sherman simply states that these techniques will be over-used. I know that problem, I have to take a snack break to stop myself pushing the speed effect button and rendering. Working with the everyday in videodefunct pedestrian recently was an interesting experiment in avoiding the effects palette.
This also ties in with his discussion on “digital effects”. It is so easy to rely on an effect as a “fix all” as Sherman points out and to create a sense of dislocation, a dream like induced state that has connotations of what he calls “dirty surrealism”. A recent example of a more sophisticated approach towards speeds and effects is this work by Peter Horvath in the work TRIPTYCH: MOTION STILLNESS RESISTANCE (2006) (Peter Horvath’s Video Vortex/argos presentation recorded on video)
“Travelogues” will dictate as a genre Sherman suggests. This characteristic creeps into Keith Deverell’s Australian travels as fragmented looped clips in pedestrian. Speaking of blogged travel I am on the email list for the German online documentary maker Florian Thalhofer who is travelling across the States recording people’s stories in the 1000 stories project on a BMW motorbike.
Finally, the genres will collide and mix Sherman argues into what he calls “mediated horror”. Some content that comes to mind is some local video installations that where done by a Melbourne arts collective. They appropriated and curated terrorist head chopping and throat cutting online video as part of very didactic approach towards politicising the terrorist debate.
The challenge Sherman puts out there in this article as mentioned earlier is for practitioners to be able to engage with these aesthetics with some degree of finesse that makes their work exemplary amongst a video overload of user-generated content. Video content that as was stated in a recent presentation review by Michael Stevenson on the Masters of Media blog, provides an alternative to the YouTube piano-playing-cat video.
Reference:
Tom Sherman, ‘Video Vernacular’, www.nettime.org, Nettime mailing list archives,
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0701/msg00080.html,
January, 2007 (accessed October, 2007)
An audiovisual work the artist Adriene Jenik refers to as “speculative distributed cinema”. Part of the description from the web site promoting the work:
SPECFLIC 2.0 portrays characters in a future library in simultaneous story-layers that provoke the audience to consider the future of reading, writing, the book object and storytelling.
The main story frame represents a near-future 2030 world in which audio-visual media dominate, even as written communication and reading retain important, though narrow functions. The factorial explosion of information and information flows has catalyzed new forms of categorization of material and the next generation of students and scholars is developing within this constantly reconfigure-able info-sphere.
Paul and Rachel’s latest project ‘The Present History’. A reflection of Sean Cubitt’s connection between digital photography and the processes used in printing in his ‘Genalogies of Light’ talk at CCP. An explaination of the project from the ‘The Present History’ website.
The Present History is a grand attempt to create a book which is beautiful, sad and hopeful. It combines contemporary digital culture with the traditional craft asthetic of book binding and finishing. It looks at our past with respect for our achievements and yet grief for some of the the actions that led us here. Together we have also let ourselves imagine what the future might hold in this life and the next.
We also discussed the approach that I had taken in applying Rosenberg’s ‘poetic model’ onto my own research practice. He used the example of a table being designed for use in a cafe to explain the parts of the ‘reservoir’. My understanding of our conversation is the order of the parts look like this from the bottom up.
the project
(the fit)
the programme
the triggers
From the article:
The project - “…what it is, who it is for…how it works etc.” (p.9)
The programme - “…the conceptual and creative base…which contextualises socio-cultural debates and environmental concerns.” (p.9)
In conversation the ‘programme’ is the discourse around the design - for example the social theory around the design of the table, the cafe as a social environment etc. His argument in the article is that traditionally the designer moves from the project to the programme. His model reverses that process. ‘The triggers’ used to invigorate the conceptualsing in the programme may cross varying disciplines and points of interest, as a means to explore possibilities beyond the restraints of the pragmatic questions and answers surrounding the project objectives. Why? Returning to the article Rosenberg states: “The poetic reaches for the un-configured and the unusual expression of thought.” (p.7) In choosing the three triggers, he mentioned, for example, two of them may have a tentative connection with the theorising in the programme, the third may be totally left of centre, have a completely nebulous connection. Overall, the aim is to maintain a “tension” in the process and critically evaluate a position that maintains a connection with the main objective, while at the same time is flirting with as he described in the discussion the “un-knowing”.
In my own project, the three triggers are influenced by Sean Cubitt’s post, Sean Cubitt, ‘a note on content’. In hindsight, the conceptual choices I made for these nodes where not dis-connected or radically separated enough from the project question. The key project question in the context of an experimental practice would be to generate alternative modes of articulating and disseminating online video content. The next step was testing a trigger as part of as Rosenberg states: “definition, de-definition, re-definition”. (p. 10) After testing trigger 3, “new modes of network”, I then jumped straight into using that experience/process to re-define the overall research rationale, rather than waiting to test the other triggers. In my mind this is jumping back to making things linear and safe in line with a traditional research approach. Then, I presumed that the other trigger tests would be separate from test 1.0 but as TR pointed out why not fold those into the first test as extensions of that test - an idea I like. Now, on reflection I see what has happened the trigger 3., is to close to my original research rationale, hence the move to re-define the overall research. If it had been more removed this may not have occurred - all in the balance between as Rosenberg discusses, “grounding” and “open water”.
Where to now? Well as we discussed the model is a model that is open for interpretation and how it is used. The main aim here is to invigorate alternative approaches towards online audiovisual media. Having experienced the process, I aim to take a playful stance with that line - swimming (with the sharks) but not drowning.
References:
Terence Rosenberg, ‘The Reservoir: Towards a Poetic Model of Research in Design’, Working papers in Art and Design, Vol 1, The foundations of practice-based research, http://www.herts.ac.uk/artdes1/research/papers/wpades/vol1/rosenberg2.html
p 7. (accessed April, 2006)
Sean Cubitt, ‘a note on content’, fibreculture mailing list, 17 September 2005
http://fibreculture.org/myspinach/fibreculture/2005-September/004673.html (accessed September, 2005)