1:
The Joint Tube Cycle
Abstract
The Joint Tube Cycle is an interaction design project
from the IT University in Copenhagen. The Joint Tube
Cycle is a musical platform that encourages visitors at
Christiania not to throw their joint tubes in the
environment, since they receive new value. Through a
research study at Christiania, we found that joint tubes
are a huge garbage problem and that the reason is due
to the non
-
valuable nature it posses. Through the
research we discovered that visitors is
the crux of the
problem, and that they would throw out the joint tubes
if it was a fun action. Music seemed to be a good way
to reach this fun factor, as several interviewees named
it as an interesting feature as well as music being a
central part of the C
hristianian cultural life. With The
Joint Tube Cycle, you use joint tubes as tool to make
music, by touching the surface on the platform. By
touching the surface, you make a single sound. The
sound can be changed by tapping the joint tubes
against each oth
er, which causes a different sound.
With The Joint Tube Cycle you can record your music,
and get the recording with you back home. By throwing
out the joint tubes, you get an URL code for exactly
your melody, which you can listen to back home. This
paper r
eports the research on Christiania and the
design of The Joint Tube Cycle.
Keywords
Tangible, Audio, Joint tubes, Christiania, IxD,
Recycling, Garbage, Creating music, Increased value
General Terms
Tangible, Audio, Joint tube, Christiania, IxD, Recycling,
Garbage, Creating music, Increased value
Introduction
As MSc students following the course of IxD at ITU, we
were faced with the subject field of Danish cultural area
of Christiania.
We planned our design research based on a
phenomenological notion of
knowledge and thereby
conducted observations and contextual inquiries with a
2
problem solving idea at hand. Our design research was
to funnel us through the iterative process, where the
given constraints (no screen, no mouse, no T9/QWERTY
keyboard, no web
site or app, no phone/tablet
-
like
touch) worked as the constraining frame of the design
space.
Generally we saw a clear discrepancy between the
environmental discourse laid out by Christiania, and the
real
-
world situations. Yes, there were litter, and it d
id
stand out.
Through constant crit
-
sessions and back'n forth
processes, we narrowed our theme down on a repeated
pattern in our collected data: plastic joint tubes as sold
with the greenery. They were a clear irritation to the
janitors of Christiania and
to the residents. As for the
users, they had no clear relation to these pieces of
plastic, thereby rendering them without value.
Our main design principal was clear: How could we as
students of interactions design embed some kind of
value to these elements
.
Methodology and synthesis of the design
process
Our design process went through several highly
iterative constructions, which we are naming phases.
As put by Buxton (2007, p. 138) our general design
process were funnelled through phases of ideation
towards prototyping and usability. Our path through
the design funnel was mainly fuelled by ideation
methods (e.g. brainwriting (Saffer, 2010) etc.),
sketching and data analysis.
Our discovery phases were mainly constituted by the
process of gathering data
in relation to our design
space. The iterative nature of the overall project
afforded multiple discovery phases, which, through the
collected findings, helped us through the generating
phases of invention and realization. We settled on a
phenomenological
notion of knowledge, which dictated
our research method and empirical analysis.
The synthesis of our design processes therefore highly
relied on data condensation and extrapolation of
meaning. By this we argue that, the large amount of
data collected
through our processes slowly but surely
were converted to information and transformed into
specific and usable knowledge. This condensation and
transformation were done according to data clustering.
This resulted in stages of discovering patterns in our
da
ta.
These patterns were put to the test in our invention
phases, were we mainly used sketching as a method of
generating ideas, which relied on the discovered
patterns. As argued by Goldschmidt and Buxton the
process of sketching doesn’t merely produce a s
ketch.
”Sketches are a byproduct of sketching. They are a part
of what both enables and results from the sketching
process. But there is more to the activity of sketching
2:
Explore Mooore
–
Designing a navigating wristband
Abstract
In this paper we
describe how foreign tourists can be
guided through Christiania with the help of a vibrating
wristband. The design is made on a basis of qualitative
empirical research and developed through sketching,
prototyping and user testing. In our study we find that
the wristband could be used as a good way to guide
tourists around Christiania. We finish by lining up
different fields that could be interesting to continue
working with in further studies.
Keywords
Interaction Design, Lilypad, navigation, Christiania,
v
ibration motor, user
-
testing
General Terms
User driven design, iterations, design process
Introduction
The Freetown Christiania is a 40 years old community
in the centre of Copenhagen. It was originally an old
military area, but was occupied by inhabitants
of
Copenhagen in 1971. It has since become a popular
tourist attraction, a place of alternative thinking,
diversity, art and music. With 500.000 tourists visiting
every year, Christiania is among the top 5 tourist
attractions in Denmark [5]. Christiania’s
popularity,
2
among tourists, comes from its alternative organization
and values, which differs to what you see in other
European cities. That is why many tourists come to
Christiania, to experience something different.
Design focus and problem space
The
reasoning that led to our focus was based on
tendencies we retrieved from our data. In our empirical
data we found that many tourists come to Christiania
open
-
minded and with positive expectations, but these
expectations are only vaguely defined. The
tourists
have heard of and want to experience Christiania as a
free and creative community, with a different structure,
founded on freedom and creativity. Through our
empirical data we saw that tourists wanted to
experience Christiania, but did not know ho
w. This
resulted in most of them only going down Green Light
District, maybe down to the lake, but definitely no
further than that. We found that one of the reasons for
this is that they feel like they are on unknown territory
where they are not sure what
rules are present and
how to navigate and they do not want to disturb or
intrude the residents.
Talking to tourists, we experienced that they had a
hard time explaining what they had seen and what they
thought of the place. This led us to question whether
the interaction between tourists and Christiania is really
well functioning.
We believe that a visit to Christiania that only includes
looking at Green Light District lets the tourists down.
We heard in several interviews that the tourists wants
to experie
nce the feeling of freedom, but we argue that
this is not done by only taking a stroll down Green Light
District.
These two dilemmas became our design foundation:
!
Tourists who come to Christiania with a wish to
explore the community, but fail in doing
so, due to
a lack of understanding of how to navigate at
Christiania.
!
Make tourists’ experience of Christiania more
tangible and easier to take with them as a memory,
they can share.
In the following paper we will take you through our
design process but
first we will explain our suggestion
for a design solution to solve the problem raised above.
The methods and our data
The first time we went to Christiania to collect data, our
focus was on observing where and what would make a
good design area. It was a
rather unstructured and
casual fieldwork session, where most of all we focused
on getting into the right state of mind.
We talked to a resident who told us that many visitors
do not understand that Christiania is governed by rules
as well as freedom. He ex
plained that not
understanding the basic principle of Christiania, the rule
of freedom with responsibility
1
, makes the tourists an
annoyance to the residents. He emphasized that
showing the tourists the diversity of Christiania, for
example by going on a g
uided tour, helped to eliminate
this annoyance.
1
Having the freedom to do as you please, but still taking
responsibility for your own actions. http://democracyhandbook.
org/wiki/index.php?title=Freedom_with_Responsibili
ty
1
Interaction Design Report
–
Fællesskabet
Lin Schmidt
IT University, Copenhagen
Rued Langgaards Vej 7
2300 Copenhagen S
+45 30202262
limm@itu.dk
Sanne Rahbæk
IT University, Copenhagen
Rued Langgaards Vej 7
2300 Copenhagen S
+45 28900096
srah@itu.dk
Cecilie Bøggild
IT University,
Copenhagen
Rued Langgaards Vej 7
2300 Copenhagen S
+45 61711292
ckru@itu.dk
ABSTRACT
This report is a description and reflection over our
interaction design project about the Free Town
Christiania. Through interviews and the use of probes
we conducted data
about life at Christiania. Founded
on our findings the analysis presents four themes of
which two, play and fellowship, has become the
underlying values for our final concept “Fællesskabet”
meaning “The Social Closet”. The purpose of the closet
was, in a
playful manner, to bring people from outside
Christiania into the fellowship feeling that
characterizes the Free Town. This way everyone could
contribute to the Christianian community by interacting
with the closet.
Keywords
Interaction design, design proc
ess, design reflection,
tangible design,
INTRODUCTION
As novices at interaction design we had a great
challenge ahead of us at the beginning of the project.
None of us have been involved in design oriented
work, and therefore the weekly slide at the lectur
es,
that summarized the process and described our current
status, was a great help. The strict division of the
different phases helped us to focus at one thing at a
time instead of concerning ourselves with the final
concept from the beginning. As you will
find in the
report we have experienced ups and downs in the
design process. Both bitter and sweet has contributed to
our understanding of what interaction design is and the
importance of the phases in a design process.
Throughout the report we will reflec
t on the process,
what we learned and what we could do better.
PRESENTATION OF THE CONCEPT
How It Works
“Fællesskabet” or “The Social Closet” is our attempt to
make the ubiquitous feeling of fellowship that
characterizes Christiania tangible to everyone.
The
concept is a physical, oversized closet placed at
Christiania, in which people can enter and share
whatever is on their minds. Inside the closet is a phone
with a “mood measurer” attached to it. There is also a
writing saying “what you say is what you
are”. The
person inside the closet first indicates his or her mood
and then picks up the phone. A voice will ask: “what is
on your mind” and depending on what mood is
indicated this initial question will vary. The message
that the person shares with the cl
oset will be recorded.
After having hung up, the phone rings and depending
on the indicated mood the person in the closet will
receive an answer from another person who visited the
closet earlier. This way people get to share thoughts
and feelings and in r
eturn receive what another person
has found important to share. Every hour the closet
announces what has been said to the audience around
it. The more people that are gathered around it the
louder it will speak.
The Idea Behind
Our idea builds upon some of
the values we discovered
during the research phase, and the closet thus
represents fellowship, sharing, and play
–
in the sense
of playing along with something unknown. The
concept aims to strengthen the feeling of fellowship at
Christiania and to bring
people from outside into
Christiania to experience these values and to contribute
to the open fellowship by sharing their thoughts with
the closet. This way anyone can be a part of the
community
-
feeling at Christiania, which may show that
Christiania is mo
re than just Pusher Street and
eliminate some of the prejudices.
2
DATA COLLECTION
Get your hands dirty!
When we were first presented to Christiania as the
research field we had limited knowledge about the
place, and many of our thoughts were influenced by
prejudices from the media. We were aware of the fact
that our prejudices could result in overlooking potential
issues or problems that perhaps contained value to us
as interaction designers. Thus it was important in the
initial phase of data collection to
lay aside these
prejudices and approach the project with openness.
Though being open was difficult and we all had to
overcome our inhibitions and shyness, the results of
addressing random people soon paid off.
Initial target group
After a chat with a
local lady who told us about the
youth club of Christiania, our attention was drawn to
young people aged 12
-
18 as a target group. We found
this group particular interesting because young people
perhaps would be more open to new technologies and
initiatives
concerning Christiania, compared to the
older generations who might be restrained by their
ideology and fundamental values from the time of
Christiania’s foundation. Because of the early choice of
target group we could focus our questions more than if
we
had created the questions for a more general
audience. Retrospectively choosing the target group
before having explored the field more in detail may
have limited us from potential insights and problems,
because we only interviewed the young generations.
Me
thods
The next step in our process was to interview young
people to get an insight into their everyday lives at
Christiania. There, however, did not seem to be any
young people at the club. One of the staffs told us that
it quite frequently happened that s
omeone came to the
club to ask the young people questions, and that they
therefore might not be interested in talking to us. In
order to engage the young people in our research we
were forced to be creative in our data collection, and
consequently we decid
ed to make probes.
Probes
To get an understanding of the local culture and to
discover unexpected knowledge about life at
Christiania (Gaver et al.: 1999) we developed two
probes: “The Question Frog” (Figure 1) and “The
Question Egg” (Figure 2). During an
interview with a
17
-
years old girl and a focus group interview with four
young girls aged 10
-
11, we used the probes
–
both
times with great success. As described by Hutchinson
et al. (2003) the probes helped us turn the
conversations with the interviewees
in unknown
directions and in return get useful data that we would
not have
found
otherwise.
Figure 1. QuestionFrog
Figure 2. Question Eggs
Despite the success of our probes we found that they
could not be used in every situation. The context had to
be take
n into account. This became evident to us when
we first tried to test the probes at Christiania. We went
to the skater ramp at Wonderland looking for young
people to interview through use of probes. After a talk
with some tough skater guys we realized that
it would
be too awkward to pull out the probes because the
context did not encourage this kind of dialog. Though
we had an informative talk with the guys, we clearly
sensed that they were not suitable for the ‘childish’
probes. On the other hand we receiv
ed credit when we
tried out the probes on the young girls at an after
school club called “The Raisin”. The girls were excited
to try the different probes and kept saying “it’s my
turn!” and “I wanna try that one!”. Another limit to the
probes was that they
had to be assisted and explained
before they were useful. We left some probes and
3
instructions of how to use them at the youth club in
hope of that when the young people showed up they
would find them interesting to play with and fill them
in. But when
we returned a few days later they had not
been touched.
From this we have learned that the kind of probes we
created only worked when we assisted people to use
them. But when assisted and used in the right context,
they were a great tool to make the data c
ollection phase
open and filled with surprises to discover unexpected
data.
DATA ANALYSIS
After we collected the necessary data we used Saffer
(2010, chap. 5) and some of the methods we practiced
in class to make sense of it all. First we wrote all the
fra
gmented quotes, feelings and details that we noticed
down on post
-
its and put them on the wall. By making
the data physical we were able to combine the different
pieces in themes and clusters that were somehow
related. From the organization of data four
overall
themes emerged; play, fellowship, safety and music.
Though the four themes could be seen separately, many
elements overlapped several of the themes. Statements
like “
We do not say no to anyone, we help people or let
them be”
and
“Everyone says hi t
o everyone”
combines fellowship and safety, and “
You have to be a
bit crazy to live at Christiania
” at the same time
indicates a playful nature and a shared spirit among the
Christianian inhabitants.
From the themes we tried to derive potential problems
that could have significance to Christiania and we
came up with a number of problems like “
Pusher Street
should be cleared
”, “
The lake is polluted
” and “
There
is too much dog poo
”. All considerable problems that
should be solved by the local authority or t
he
government, but as interaction designers we felt
inadequate. Therefore we decided to view our findings
in a different perspective and look at them as
opportunities instead of problems. This matter will be
discussed later in the report.
As Saffer suggest
s (2010, 95) it would have improved
the analysis phase to have a permanent space to
conduct the entire analysis. In our case we worked on
the analysis in steps cut off by lectures or that we had
to move working location. This way our post
-
its and
white
board notes had to be taken down or erased a
number of times, and every time we had to start over
again to find the red thread. Furthermore we took a lot
of pictures of drawings and theme connections to
remember them when we had to leave the group room,
bu
t when the findings and data got stuck in passive
pictures we tended to lose the overview.
Designing Without a Problem
During our process we have experienced that it is not
an easy task to create a design that supports positive
patterns. Our approach has
been not to focus on a
problem but to increase positive behavior. The
feedback we got from our presentation proved to us,
that our peers had a hard time understanding the
purpose of our design. What kind of problem were we
solving? In some people’s eyes th
e closet seemed
superficial while others found the idea unique. A few
people seemed to feel that our process and reflections
were much better than our design solution.
What we have come to realize now is that we actually
were relating to an issue or a prob
lem. We had,
however, not made this clear to ourselves. In some way
it had become background knowledge. But naturally
people were not able to read this from our faces. Our
intentions with the closet have been to create awareness
about Christiania’s spirit;
the warmth, courtesy,
creativity and craziness we experienced during our
collecting of data. The good things were already there,
just waiting to be shed light on, to show that
Christiania can be associated with other things than
Pusher Street,
criminality, drugs and unstable lives.
Some friends of the children we talked to at Christiania
were not allowed to go there without grownups
watching them. Statements like “
everyone says hi to
everyone
” and “
we do not say no to anyone, we help
them or let
them be
” gave us the idea that the
fellowship could be transformed into something
physical. With a bottom
-
up approach where people
who interacted with the closet gave meaning to it, our
idea was to show people from both outside and inside
Christiania the
values of fellowship. Our own
understanding of Christiania changed as we came to
know the field better. Our idea with the design was
therefore to give others an insight into what the Free
Town also offers.
Our design deals with the problem of people from
o
utside who only see the negative aspects of
Christiania. The closet is designed to shed light on the
positive values that also exist; fellowship and
acceptance of different, offbeat characters. Apart from
the tough environment there is warmth and caring
pe
ople. For that reason we designed the closet with two
goals in mind: People should want to use the closet so
it had to appear intriguing and also people should want
to listen. Our testing of the prototype proved that
people did have an interest in what
others had shared.
However it should be stressed that if we initially had
4
realized that our opportunity also was a problem it
would have eased our working process.
Figure 3. The Social Closet
IDEA GENERATION
Get Creative Now!
Through the phase of idea ge
neration we learned the
important lesson that good ideas do not fall from the
sky. In our attempt to get the ideas coming we tried out
different brainstorming techniques like using post
-
its,
making provocations, sketching and writing scenarios.
(Saffer:
2010, chap. 6) The problem, however, seemed
to be that we were too focused on coming up with
something realistic and ideal. For that reason we never
really got into a flow. Two days earlier we had come
up with the concept of the closet. This was in a
situa
tion, where we were ahead of time and relaxed. By
playing with a few objects and imagining that their
functionalities were something completely different we
found ourselves in a space of creativity and play. At
that time we did not have to come up with
anything.
No deadline was pushing us. Our minds were free to
wonder and there were no limitations or restriction.
The acknowledgement we have now is that we could
have benefitted from some kind of warm
-
up before
starting. This is in order to better let go
of shyness and
self
-
consciousness.
“Have all the people in the room talk about their best
(or worst) experience at a museum (…) the point of the
warm
-
up is to get brains, hands and mouths engaged
before starting to generate ideas
” (Saffer: 2010, 118).
We r
ecognize that during the idea generation we paid
much attention to how to be creative in the right way.
At this stage we recognize that there is no right way of
generating ideas. Getting the body into play means a
lot. We have found that creativity is not
only realised in
the head and brain. The role of the body must not be
underestimated. Creativity can be danced, singed,
played et cetera. "
Any thinking has the whole body
participating
."
1
It hereby means that the body is a
powerful tool for transforming
our mental state. To
move on in the idea generation process we decided to
change environment and go to Christiania. This helped
1
http://www.trans4mind.com/counterpoint/index
-
healthfitness/
weiss.shtml
a lot and we were forced to once again observe our
problem space. As Saffer writes “
An idea will come to
you when you are not in a brainstorming session
”
(2010, 126). This was what happened. Already on our
bike ride we felt a mental relief. Two hours later we
had four concept ideas. They were far from cut
-
anddried
design solutions, but none the less we had moved
out of our stalemate and discovered the drive we had
lost for a while. It should however be stressed that none
of our work has been a waist. Changing environment
was just the key to get the process
moving.
To optimize the idea generation process we could have
used the brainstorming techniques in an environment
where we did not have our computers, bags and
overcoat. An insight we have gained is that a way to
cope with tension in the room and self
-
cons
ciousness is
by drawing attention to movement, general talk etc.
Any sportsman will need a warm up to perform his
maximum. The game is no different in the context of
idea generation. Practice makes perfect.
We do not claim to have found a solution to how
idea
generation will necessarily work. But in future cases
we will pay attention to the involvement of the body
and the affordances of the physical environment.
IMPORTANCE OF FEEDBACK
The feedback we have had from teachers, peer students
and people at
Christiania has been crucial for the
direction of the project. Through the whole project we
have strived for exceeding our own opinions and
perceptions and therefore have made a point of taking
the feedback into account. We will now with examples
outline h
ow it has benefitted and had an impact on the
process.
After advice from one of our teachers and TA's we
decided to change our focus by searching for
opportunities rather than problems which led the
project in a quite different direction. This had a great
impact on the creative process that had been stuck in
desperate search of a problem.
The choice of the final concept was also influenced by
feedback. After having presented four concept
-
ideas
the majority of the audience chose Fællesskabet as
their favorit
e concept. They explained their choice with
statements like “
Has potential for behavior and
connecting togetherness
” and “
Encaptures a lot of
what Christiania is and your focal points
”. When
presenting the four concepts we did not have a favorite.
This made it easy for us to actually
listen
to the
feedback and not just hold on to our own positions.
While reading and hearing the responses it became
clear to us that the concept possessed qualities that the
others did not. We especially found that the
closet's
properties of randomness and sharing something
personal were in the spirit of Christiania. From the
feedback we also had some suggestions to how we
5
could work on improving the concept. Questions like
“
How can Fællesskabet include more people?
” a
nd
“
How would you avoid “nastiness”?
” made us rethink
and develop the concept.
On basis of the feedback we began the work of the
prototype. We especially had focus on how we could
prevent abuse of the closet. Because of a speaker
announcing what people
have said in the closet we
wanted to motivate a decent discourse. We did not
want to use censorship nor lead the thoughts of the
entering people on to something specific. Neither did
we want to make a list of rules to be hung up in the
closet
–
because 'ru
les are to be broken'. We decided to
hang up a little sign saying “What you say is what you
are” to make people think twice before saying
something bad about others. This childlike saying was
meant to 'remind' people
not
to act like kids and at the
same ti
me we thought it underpinned the childlike
feature of the closet.
We then went to Christiania to test the prototype. This
was very useful because we thought we had designed
the prototype very simple so it was easy to figure out
how to use it. However we
found that people had
problems finding out what to do without us explaining
them and therefore we realized that we needed to
redesign the interior to make it even more simple. But
more importantly testing the prototype revealed that
people really liked the
concept and wanted
Fællesskabet at Christiania. One of the consulted even
suggested that we should set up more than just one
closet. This feedback meant a lot because we had been
worried about how people would react on our concept
when it did not solve a
problem like design solutions
usually do.
All things considered it was a good and instructive
experience that gave us a lot of feedback to our concept
even though we only had a low
-
fidelity prototype to
show.
When we tested the concept we focused on the fi
rst
part of the interaction where the user makes a recording
and gets a reply in return. We did not test the 'last' part
where the closet tells what has been said
–
we only
explained it. Because of that the responses we got
mostly concerned the first part.
This was a mistake
because the feedback from the following presentation
of the concept showed that our peer students were
concerned that the 'speaking
-
out
-
loud' part could be
seen as a source of irritation for the people at
Christiania. In general the
feedback we had from the
presentation was very critical. People had problems
understanding our concept. This was of course very
important feedback because it showed that our video
was not capable of communicating our concept
properly. But at the same time
it was not the feedback
we hoped for. By that we do not mean that we only
hoped for positive feedback but rather that we expected
that people had understood the concept and judged it
on this basis
-
whether their responses would be
positive or critical. Ou
r lack of ability to communicate
the concept hindered us in getting relevant and
constructive feedback about the actual concept. Instead
we learned how important it is to be able to
communicate ideas properly if you want relevant
feedback.
One of the other
instructive things we learned from this
project was the importance of testing. We have realized
that what we sometimes perceived as obvious was not
at all for an outside party. Like Saffer says: ”...you
seldom get it right the first time” (2010, 184) whic
h
makes it necessary to do testing
–
and often several
times during the process. Even though we had read
about the importance of this before doing the test it was
an eye
-
opener to experience people misunderstand the
'simple' design of the closet.
UNDERSTANDING OF INTERACTION DESIGN
Some of the important feedback we got from the major
crit session concerned our understanding of
'interaction'. This has inspired us to write a separate
section about the development of our understanding of
the term
because we find this acknowledgement very
important now we are actually studying 'interaction
design'.
The feedback we got was that our understanding was
marked by a 'push
-
a
-
botton' understanding. To exceed
this understanding our teacher and TA proposed us
to
let the tone of voice determine what kind of reply the
user would get. This challenged and developed our
previous understanding of the term. Not that it was
totally new to us, but we suddenly related to it in a
different way. We then considered how to
integrate
interactivity at a more unconscious level as opposed to
the 'push
-
a
-
button' interaction where the user from the
start is conscious about that a certain action will cause
a reaction. We also thought about how to integrate
interaction into the tota
l use of the closet and make the
closet sensitive to more of the user’s actions. In other
words we tried to integrate the interaction with the
closet more fluently.
Despite a wider understanding that provided us with a
greater insight we still had difficul
ties with integrating
this acknowledgement in our concept.
We had tried to react on the feedback from our teacher
and TA about for instance letting the mood influence
the interaction with the closet. Therefore as mentioned
we designed the mood measurer
with which you could
indicate your mood and this would have an impact on
the reply you would get. At the time we thought the
mood measurer was a good idea but in retrospective we
have realized that it is still build on a kind of 'push
-
abutton'
understandin
g. This influenced that we were not
totally satisfied with the design when we presented it in
the end of the course. We did not feel the concept fully
6
possessed our new and more varied understanding of
interaction.
Because of our problems with using this
new
understanding and implementing it in our concept our
attention was drawn to theory about how to design for
interaction. Jonas Löwgren (2002) defines and explains
some use qualities that you can take into account when
designing. The use qualities shoul
d be used in
preparation to create 'conditions for good use'.
According to Löwgren
”Interaction design is about
creating conditions for good use of digital designs”
(2002, 1). He problematizes that there is no clear
definition of 'conditions of good use' w
hy he sees the
use qualities as possible guidelines in the designing
process.
Löwgren mentions 18 different use qualities.
To clarify
which of these that are most rewarding for us to focus
on we are now going to explain our approach to
interaction design
in this project. For this purpose we
will also draw on Saffer (2010) who presents three
major school’s view on interaction design:
the
Technology
-
Centered, the Behaviorist and the Social
Interaction Design View.
(2010, 5)
The way we have related to interac
tion design in this
project is best described by the social interaction
design view
.
In accordance with this view we have
focused on how we could facilitate communication
between people at Christiania. We have not focused
much on the technologies used. The
se are only seen as
means to
facillitate
the communication.
Our approach can also partly be described by the
behaviorist view because we have focused on
”...how
products behave and provide feedback based on what
people engaged with them are doing.”
(Saffer:
2010, 5).
We have worked on how people's different actions
could interact with the closet
–
or in other words how
people's actions can create different feedback.
With this in mind we will return to the use qualities of
Löwgren. We are now going to outline
which qualities
the closet already possesses and which we could work
on to integrate or enhance in the future.
Surprise
◦
The closet contains the quality of surprise
because:
▪
you do not know what is going to
happen when you enter the closet for
the
first time.
▪
Even though you have tried the
closet before and know the concept
you will never know what reply you
get in return.
Anticipation
◦
In extension to the quality above the
closet creates expectations. You enter the
closet with an expectation o
f something is
going to happen, but you do not know
what. Löwgren refers to Makasi Fujihata
who defines interactivity as
”...a
stimulation of the power of imagination.
”
(2002, 4) People try to predict what will
happen a few milliseconds ahead. This he
says
create a bridge between the past and
the future. We think this aspect is
contained in the concept because:
▪
You do not know what will happen
in the future and therefore try to
predict it.
▪
The concept links the present with
past and the future. What you
say
will provoke a reply from the past
–
and be played out loud in the future.
Social actability
◦
”The extent to which a digital design
empowers you to act is called (social)
actability”.
(Löwgren: 2002, 9). We
consider it an action of speech when
people share something with the closet.
Therefore we believe the closet posses the
quality of social actability.
Playability
◦
'Play' was one of the themes the concept
arose from why we also consider the
concept to possess the quality
'playability'. Howe
ver we think we might
work on how to integrate this quality even
more in concept and make it more
evident.
Saffer says that:
”Interaction design is by its nature
contextual...”
(2010, 4). By outlining the specific use
qualities we should focus on, accordin
g to the specific
context of the concept, we hope to ease the process of
developing the concept and design.
IF WE HAD MORE TIME...
Since we tested our concept at Christiania a lot of new
interactive elements were added, as mentioned, and the
visual design
of the closet changed. It was on the basis
of our observations at Christiania that we came to
realize that it was perhaps a good idea to match people
in the telephone with someone in more or less the same
mood. The aspect of randomness is something we stil
l
7
feel should not be neglected with thought to what kind
of place Christiania is. In the field, however, we
experienced that it made sense to match messages that
had some of the same qualities. With the knowledge
we have today we would have designed the
mood
measurer somewhat different. Our wish was never to
encourage people to be mad with a category of this
name. With further thoughts to this the category “mad“
could instead have been “thoughtful” or “critical”. Our
belief was that the closet could be a
spokesman for
general thoughts and feelings.
If we had had more time it would have been obvious
and useful to test our new prototype. This could still be
a low
-
fidelity prototype that would have given us an
insight into what aspects of the closet that work
ed and
which could be improved. “
Testing is also the time
when any wrong conclusions reached during design
research can be corrected
” (Saffer, 2010: 183).
Especially we are curious to know what people’s
feelings are about listening to what the closet says
-
meaning when it shares recorded messages a loud.
A man that lived at Christiania, who we explained the
concept to was very positive towards the concept and
encouraged us to have a mirror under the statement
“
what you say is what you are
”. More thought on
the
concept from our target group at Christiania would
with certainty have brought a lot of crucial insights to
the final concept.
From another angle we would have liked to go into
depth with where the closet should be placed. Our test
at Christiania
exactly showed that the messages people
gave varied from where they were located. Around the
lake people came off as more thoughtful and
philosophical. They were not in a rush to go anywhere.
At Christiania’s entry area on the other hand people
were in a d
ifferent state of mind. They were on their
way to something or someone.
More time could also have been beneficial in our idea
generating phase. We have realized that during the
process we have constantly been able to look back and
see that something could
have been done differently
and better. None the less we feel that this is a part of
the learning process. Rome was not built in a day and
neither was the closet. If our time limit was different
we would have liked to pay more attention to scenarios
and mak
ing a more in depth storyboard for our video.
This would have given us a more concrete feeling of
the concept. At the same time we might have
forestalled some of the misinterpretations our peers got
from the video. For example we illustrated in the video
t
hat an angry lady received a positive response from
another, while the idea never was that someone would
scold in the closet. This was unfortunately what we
came to show, because we were too focused on
particular effects that we wanted to show in the video
.
In that sense we acted disloyal to the concept. More
time to go in depth with a storyboard might have
prevented this inadvertent mistake.
CONCLUSION
Throughout the design process our reflections have
been improved by the fact that we were forced to take
one step of the design process at a time. By 'forced' we
refer to the instructions given by the teachers each
week, to work with a specific task of the process. But
we were also 'forced' to follow this planned process
because the time limits were so tight
that we were not
able to work ahead. This is our first interaction design
project and the steps in the process have been unknown
and new to us. Normally you cannot restrict your mind
to only think of something you have been told
-
but our
lack of experienc
e made it easy to only pay attention to
that particular place in the design process we were at.
This working procedure has been instructive and
challenging because the expectations at the different
stages forced us to overcome potential inhibitions and
res
traints. We also learned a lot from each stage in the
process. We are now going to outline the most
important learnings.
Stay Open Minded
It is difficult to design for an unknown problem or
target group. Therefore it can be beneficial to focus on
a target
group, as we did when we chose young people.
This way the research can dig deeper with the
possibility of finding something hidden and interesting.
But unless there is a certain rationale for the choice of
focus we find it important to stay open for
findings that
might point in other directions than the starting point.
Always Ask
It is important to challenge your pre
-
understanding.
You might have an idea about what people think and
feel but our experiences show that you cannot predict
people’s reactio
ns. Several times we were surprised by
the insights we got through our research. In
continuation of this we also learned the importance of
doing user
-
tests. What was obvious to us was not
necessarily obvious to an outside party. Feedback in
general is nece
ssary to refine a concept and it is crucial
that you communicate your concept properly to get
useful and constructive feedback.
Learning Through Experimenting
This project has made us realise that there is no
particular way to reach the finishing line and
there is
not a
right
way to research, brainstorm, sketch or
analyse. Our experimental approach through the use of
probes proved successful in two ways: by being fun for
the respondents and to give rise to unexpected insights.
8
We also learned the importan
ce of assessing each
research situation with a situational sensitivity. It is not
always the right solution to stick to the plan. Our
experience with research at Wonderland skate ramp
showed a big difference between planning what to do
and actually doing
it. In the situation we deemed it
inappropriate to use the probes as planned and instead
changed our research to be an observation of the field.
During the stage of idea generation we also tried a
wide range of methods to be inspired to create original
ide
as. We played with toys as an experimental and
creative method to generate new ideas. Through this
method we formed the idea used in the final concept.
Essentially we have realized the importance of keeping
an open mind and mustering the courage to walk th
e
path of uncertainty.
The Complexity of Interaction Design
As we moved forward in the process our understanding
of interaction design changed and developed. We
realized there is more to interaction design than just to
'push a button'. To fulfil the potent
ial of interaction
design we needed to observe the user's interaction with
the product as a whole and to take into account both the
conscious and unconscious interaction.
With this in mind we feel our concept could be
improved with some final adjustments a
nd we
especially feel that this deeper understanding could
have been useful in the process of generating ideas.
LITERATURE
--
‐
Gaver, B., Dunne, T., Pacenti, E.
(1999)
Design: Cultural Probes
.
In
interactions
6:1, p. 21
-
29.
--
‐
Hutchinson, H. et al. (2003)
Technology
probes: inspiring design for and with families
.
In
Proc. of CHI’03
, p. 17
-
24.
--
‐
Löwgren, J. (2002)
The use qualities of
digital designs
--
‐
Saffer, D. (2010)
Designing for interaction
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