The Designers Accord - Design At The Edge

Valerie Casey, Fastcompany/Designers Accordchunked notes and quotes "I'm going to talk about where I think design is going..." [singlepic id=628] "there is no working business model here." "the story we tell of design is so completely out of wack with business."

"Process problems" "The myth of designers as magicians" Related to Jason Severs of frog noting that "Design is still thought of by some companies as the dark arts." (See my synth'd notes on frog's talk about Ideas to Action .)

"the biggest looser effect." "we are in love with the major transformation effect. we want [that before and after pictured], we don't want to see increments"

"Firms like Makinzie are successful because they're a virtual team, not a consultant."

[singlepic id=629] "Connect with the world, not just the creative community." "Design the business and the service, not just the form." "Use the distributed effect of network to sclae innovation." "Change happens fast and it starts small." [singlepic id=627]http://www.designersaccord.org/ "We need to rethink authroship in a radical way." "People want to get recognized [ for what they create]/ There are no new ideas."

"The design industry is sort of collapsing upon itself." "Whover is going to be authoring the next [iteration] of that, can do it now."

IMO Design is not the dark arts, but sometimes designers shroud what we do in smoke for effect, it goes along with the God complex. Maybe the magician complex is the step before a the ego is iterated into the status where one suffes from the God complex. Maybe there is mystery because to a degree, we don't know what we do. There is always talk about if we should classify what we do as a discipline, and how to define the roles and titles of "Interaction Design(er)" and "Service Design(er)."

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This lecture is part of Bruce Nussbaum's Design At the Edge lecture series.

Chinese Avant-Garde Art 前卫艺术

CHINESE ART STYLES:

Guohua 国画 - defined China's physical beauty as an appropriately patriotic subject for painting.

Scar Paintings - described the calamities and spiritual wounds caused by the Cultural Revolution.

Rustic Realism - depict ordinary citizens, particuarly herders, peasants, or minority people, the type of people encountered by the young artists during their years spent working in the countryside. with a "high degree of realism [and naturalism] and [featuring] extreme technical finesse." "Realism is acceptable to people in almost all ideological camps politically and socially"

Political Pop - One senses the artists' self-mockery, because they are unable to do anything about their own circumstances and environment.

Avant-Garde

AG characteristics -"involved occasional political dissidence" -"context of the conflict between the old and new traditions" -often "in a situation of suppression" -"it has no links with the official art of the Cultural Revolution and was developed in opposition to official styles." -"promoted creative freedom and individual human freedom." -"unconcerned with commercial trends, but instead sought critical recognition, first, within China and, now, abroad." Advents - (that allowed for the movement) -"partial 'retreat of the state.'"

ACTORS INVOLVED Star Group Show 星星美展 - (a group that produced a show was that avant-garde for Avant-Garde style). AG Groups of 85 and 86 functions: 1) "defensive" - strength in numbers concept - (protection after being highly critical - sort of like the revolutions in the M.E./N.A. - you can shut the show, but the party still continues.) "As an exhibition, it will be closed, but as art it will not be concluded." 2) individual value for the artists "provided individuals with opportunities to vent the instincts that would otherwise be suppressed." in a group setting identity is often merged or lost, here being part of the group is definition and provides a platform. 3) self funded exhibitions - group pooling of funds

TYPES OF CHINESE AG ART related to the question of humanism

-rationalist painting "expressed their ideas in a cold, severe tone, so as to create a new, tightly controlled structure in which emotions play little role." -"Current of Life" school "addresses the question of the nature of life in order to explore the value of humanity." "painters express their opinions about the nature of life by means of venting their own individual emotions or expressing their own life situations." -performance art - "expressed individual moods of oppression"

CONCLUSION "The Chinese avant-garde is a movement that seeks to attack and destroy the traditional order in the art world, with the ultimate goal of attaining artistic freedom. It "strived for cosmopolitan values linked neither to the dominant official style nor to the new markets its advocates seek."

"To a great degree, the avant-garde art movement was not about art; it concerned cultural attitudes and concepts that were bigger than the forms of art that contained them."

THOUGHTS Like most art, I find that the most valuable part is art's effect on culture and the societal changes that can come from that. The links between advents in art and politics can be plotted out with connections of varying degrees of influence between them.

APPLICATION Initial Question How to apply this to current urban status quo?

"All five of these artists wish to transcend the level of psychological and personal feelings to make more universal statements. They have the potential for being more dangerous to the old artistic culture in China than the more openly critical artists because they seek to create a viable alternative to the old art. The new artistic styles they create, if successful, may replace the styles of the status quo."

Applied Arts and Culture Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argue that "mass culture" is constantly created by the "culture industry" like publishing houses, film studios, and the record industry. What is the connection between mass culture and what Xu Bing calls "applied arts"? What is the appropriate connection? The industrialization of culture caused "artistic excellence to be displaced" and evaluated on new artificial grounds like "sales figures as a measure of worth." (wikipedia) For instance "a novel, for example, was judged meritorious solely on whether it was a best-seller"

Currently, views, clicks and unique visits are some metrics in the digital realm. Those are the metrics for false systems of evaluation and profit that Umair Haque dubs "fake costs." So not only are many of the metrics false, but the actual "value creating system" is false in this "zombieconomy."

What are the effective systems and what are new domains and metrics for evaluation (or judgement)? Exploration of systems that create value and that culture culture.

OTHER "practice is the only measure of truth." Deng Xiaoping "truth is no more than validated practical reality caused Chinese who were disillusioned by the Cultural Revolution to shift their values to pragmatism and individualism."

img "One example is Zhang Qun and Meng Luding's Adam and Eve's Rev- elation in the New Age" but what is the apple?

quotes via: Andrews, Julia F. and Gao, Minglu. “The Avant-garde’s Challenge to Official Art”, ibid. pp. 221-278. wikipedia: Avant-Garde http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avant-Garde Mix: Umair Haque. "Why Busines is Brain-Dead and how to Wake Up" http://www.managementexchange.com/blog/why-business-brain-dead-and-how-wake

IxDA Panel-Oke

[singlepic id=614][singlepic id=618] IxDA EVENT INFORMATION Yesterday IxDA held an experimental evening of panel-oke, a form of participatory panel that takes a fresh look at the traditional panel structure of questioner, panel, and audience.

Unlike traditional discussion panels, panel-oke audience members become part of the panel itself as soon as they ask a question. The person who is asking the question can specify either the type of designers they want to answer the question, the specific domain knowledge the question requires, or specific people they want to answer the question. Once a question and the type of panel participants required have been defined, a panel forms to answer that particular question. The panel dissolves after the question has been debated/answered, and the whole process repeats again.

Using this format, the distinction between audience and participants fades away and the panel process becomes an engaging participatory event. Panel-ok combines the structure of a discussion panel with the flexibility and openness of karaoke.

[singlepic id=620] [singlepic id=621] [singlepic id=622] [singlepic id=623] [singlepic id=624] [singlepic id=625] [singlepic id=615] [singlepic id=619] ABOUT IAN SWINSON Ian Swinson (@iswinson) is a design director, cyclist, pattern librarian, and typophile. Currently Senior Manager of Platform and Analytics User Experience at Salesforce.com, Ian has been designing user interfaces and experiences for over 10 years. He is also the inventor of Postcard Patterns, an agile UI pattern creation process that makes pattern libraries more manageable and readable (http://www.slideshare.net/iswinson/ixda09-postcard-patterns).

ABOUT ANDREA MIGNOLO Andrea Mignolo (@pnts) is a interaction, interface, and visual designer with an interest in urban spaces and telepresence. She is a local leader for the New York chapter of the Interaction Design Association, Creative Director at Nabewise.com, and Senior Designer at Eastmedia. [singlepic id=617]Thank you Pivotal Labs! [singlepic id=618]Go TechStars [nggallery id=52] event information via: http://www.ixda.org/local/event/29589 Sign up to participate in events and discussions. Follow IxDA on Twitter @IxDA_NYC

Capital, Incubators and Accelerators for Ventures

If you want to raise funding for a tech venture in New York City, you might want to consider the following organizations. This is a list in the works. If you know of any more, please feel free to add them as a comment!Venture Capital Funds Lerer Ventures   "a seed stage venture capital fund." www.lererventures.com

Incubators and Accelerators Rose Tech Incubator    "an early stage investment fund, incubator, and all-around support infrastructure dedicated to finding, nurturing and launching the next generation of world class ventures." http://www.rose.vc/

TechStars   "the #1 startup accelerator in the world," featuring funding, mentorship and connections. http://www.techstars.org/

New York Angels http://www.newyorkangels.com/

Additional Outside of New York:

Greylock Partners   http://www.greylock.com/

Greylock Discovery Fund   "microfund" that "is a seed investment program that helps very early stage companies raise small amounts of money in a short amount of time " http://www.greylock.com/discovery/discovery/

Observations on VC

PremiseThere are issues with the venture-capital industry and therefore issues for entrepreneurs. The number of VC firms is decreasing, but does that mean entrepreneurs will too? In 2009, "The number of active venture-capital firms fell 13% to 882 from 1,019 in 2007, according to the NVCA." (WSJ)

Dot-com Bubble Flawed Model During the dot-com era, a start up would be funded by VC, the VC could push it to an IPO where the limited partners (VC firm) could exit the deal cleanly with much more than they invested. Some start ups pissed away cash and when their business went under, it was the share holders (public and private that suffered). The VC firm got away with profit.  But that hurt that specific VC firm and the industry. It's less likely that an investment bank is going to help broker a sale or IPO for a VC if their last fund failed once it hit the public market.

The there's been a decrease in IPOs since the 2008 recession, but that is not the only reason why.

"While venture-capital funds sank $29.7 billion into start-ups in 2008, they produced just $24.9 billion from IPOs and the sale of start-up firms last year, according to VentureSource, a research firm owned by News Corp." (WSJ) Many start-ups were not able to raise more in an IPO than they initially got in VC.

(Image via FastCo) 75% of start-ups only make up -4% of the total VC industry returns.

Current State of VC Depending on who you are how much "a lot" is to you, you may feel like you have better access to "a lot" of funding because there are more angels or incubators that supply seed funding, offering smaller amounts.

Another scenario entrepreneurs might notice is that since there are less VCs, those VCs must naturally be more selective, but they offer higher rounds of funding. Since most tech ideas need less infrastructure (and therefore less cash) to launch as a business, those VC's look to offering higher rounds of funding to ideas that are already implemented. There are less VC firms, less capital being managed and less funds raised, but I did not find the average size of current funds being raised.

Future of VC What is the future for VC? David Aronoff, a parter at Flybridge Capital believes "The number of VC's must shrink."(FastCo) Fast Company notes "by some estimates the 1500 firms today will be just 500 within 5 to 7 years." (FastCo) So the future may be smaller rounds. Smaller rounds for more viable ideas that earn the principal back to the limited partners plus profit sounds gravy. I think the key to getting there is prototyping and iterating. Then number of VC firms is decreasing, but they won't disappear, they'll change.

I've been meaning to post a list of incubators that provide support via a blend of physical working space, server space and funding in New York City. It's coming up hot in the next post.

Sources: WSJ, Venture Capitalists Head for the Door, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124416376153487535.html

Fast Company, Venture Capital - Under Siege? http://www.fastcompany.com/1627652/venture-capital-under-siege

Insightful but not quoted: eFinancial News, Venture capital firms slash staff numbers http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2011-01-10/vc-firms-slash-staff

New York City - Global Service Jam

I just put up the New York City Service Jam site.

The premise is Stuff is getting more expensive, and that can be a good thing, given how unsustainable owning stuff tends to be.

Services are increasingly the way to go. But up till now managers have been in control of services, and we all experience the result – clunky, annoying, embarrassing, slow, or over-designed and inauthentically slick.

It’s time for designers to use their expertise at understanding how people like to live and work to make services that generate real value, that create new kinds of business, new kinds of government and new kinds of community.

Service Design faculty and from Parsons, with a little help from their professional practice friends, are going to be leading this weekend.

Take a look at http://bit.ly/nycservicejam

Join in by emailing Cameron Tonkinwise at tonkinwc@newschool.edu

Ideas to Action - frog design's methods + automobile casestudy

Topic: frog design: design process & research methodsSpeakers: Turi McKinley & Jason Severs [singlepic id=612] [singlepic id=606]

Inspiration from Jason's Past "just start anywhere" - quoting bruce mau "stop thinking, you don't actually know anything." Bruce Mau's Massive Change project www.massivechange.com

relation to is fine arts process to frogs collaboration design process but notes the difference of application. "In school, we called it commercial art"

[singlepic id=611 w=640 h=480 float=]"the world you take for granted is being aggressively designed for you."

Catalysts and Methods "Your way of being in the world, that's your way for …creative catalysts."

Situational Artefacts conversational stimuli -developing new software for stock traders -asking traders questions wasn't getting rich information, so they associated their time of day with artefacts [singlepic id=604 w=640] [singlepic id=603 w=640]

Serendipitous Collection never throw anything away

1/1 ratio we spend a year about thinking about things that you think about for one minute

Process Influence OODA Loop

Memory draw the remotes from memory how do these old models fit with these new models

Design Process [singlepic id=608 w=640 h=480 float=] [singlepic id=605 w=640 h=480 float=]"It's this split, it's this moment of schizophrenia."* Analysis + Intuition - insight overlay (ven diagram)

CASE STUDY car in the future Goals: -Under stand the effects of the internet and conectivity in the car. -Design a user experience to help us bring drivers into the era of the connected car

Research Approach -contextual interviews -3 weeks, 5 locations, 46 people. -Japan, Italy, New York, San Francisco, London orchestrating how interviews go, over the minute if the client joins the field research, don't let them scare the interviewees

Research Tools rules of engagement - how should clients behave? notes - a framework with notes - featuring focal points an almost tangible UI -Building and ideating a real dash gave people cut outs and allowed them to build their own UI diary studies - keep your users' stories central to your work, show it to your clients

"Everything becomes amplified when you're out doing research, or at least it should. And, everything has meaning." -Jason

Trends Keys are [changing and] disappearing. You start to see mobile phones taking over that space.

Generate Insight analytical thinking and intuitive leaps

Design Principles drivers line of sight, single control display, visual voice, glance and touch, meidated access, detailed assitnacee, distirbuting labor, connections are  individual

Sometimes a design is too simplistic. Ex: "Too simplistic that a person forgot how to open their gass cap. Just press and it pops out, like a cabinet."  Similar to this lady locking herself in her car http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbX_I_lrmIc

User Proposals [singlepic id=609 w=320 h= float=]User proposal in the US [singlepic id=610 w=320 h= float=]User proposal in Japan - very slim design for a passive engagment Driving is already a "low-bandwidth activity," allowing the driver to be able to intermittently do other things while driving (Norman). There seems to be a trend for driving to become a lower-bandwidth activity for the user, with an increase in high-bandwidth for ambient information in the car. But Jason mentioned that they were reminded from user interviews that "Driving for pleasure" is still an important design parameter.

CLOSING Design is still thought of by some companies as the dark arts. so clients often don't question your findings from the filed altho you do work with your client's understanding of that.

The issue comes in when taking the idea to production because then you meet harsher constraints, financial, material etc

Coming in as the outside agency to the client's own specialty or design department ex: the automobile's radio designers. they may have 10 people that focus on one radio button. "that creates a friction."

It was good to see that a process is very detailed. Not only frog's design process process, but also the process they describe (in research), and the processes they invision as future experiences.

Thanks to Jason, Turi and frog design for the good presentation. *Note on that moment of schizophrenia - is supported by Teddy Cruz' comment “Designers are schizo by nature," when he spoke on Project Atlantis at Parsons. [nggallery id=50]

Source: Donald J Norman. Interaction Design for Automobile Interiors http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/interaction_des.html

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Bios and about via Parsons' original event info: Turi McKinley is a Principal Designer whose primary role at frog has been to create clear, compelling interactive experiences and strategic visions for frog clients, and to lead in the design research practice in the NY studio. Her broad experience spans design research, interaction design and strategy for clients such as Colgate-Palmolive, LG, Educational Testing Service (ETS), Humana, and Qualcomm. Prior to joining frog, she led design programs at MIT for clients including the University of Cambridge, the MIT Media Lab, and the MIT Entrepreneurship Center; developed social media software for emerging Eastern European markets; and worked on documentary films in Tibet, Nepal, India, rural China and Appalachia. She has degrees in Cultural Anthropology and Design.

Jason Severs is a Principal Designer who has helped to make frog an influential force in human-centered design. As a leader in the Design Research practice, he is responsible for promoting a systems-wide perspective on every project he engages, ensuring that the needs of users, businesses, manufacturers, suppliers, environment – and the rest of the value chain – are explored, understood, and considered as a part of the entire design process.

Before joining frog, Jason worked with Bruce Mau at the Institute without Boundaries on the project Massive Change and at Columbia University's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning developing courseware and distance learning applications.

frog design is a global innovation firm working with the world’s leading companies, helping them create and bring to market meaningful products, services, and experiences. frog's multidisciplinary process reveals valuable consumer and market insights and inspires lasting, humanizing solutions.

Date: Friday, February 25, 6p Location: Theresa Lang Center, 55 W. 13th Street, 2nd floor sponsored by D+M for Department Seminar 2: Design in Everyday Life

additional: themes emotional touchpoints personal connection to design -it doesn't really matter if you have personal connection to the things you are doing.

Automobile Interaction

I was impressed by my little brother kludging his mobile to his dashboard. We had the GSP nav running as well as Pandora.[singlepic id=596]

While cruising to DIA, all of a sudden the car asks, "Do you want to preform a systems check? To cancel, press 'OK'." In an androgynous version of HAL, the voice sort of freaked me out. My little brother said "No, I just took it in last week." My response was, "Why is the car talking? And why does the car have an "OK" button? This is not ok."

I thought Don Norman would be displeased.

[singlepic id=597] It turns out the "Ok" button is also the play, pause, and tune button as well as the volume toggle. It just happens to be one of the furthest buttons from the driver.

Pyramid (inverse pyramid of accuracy on top) "The automobile industry is copying all the worst features of the computer industry, ignoring all the advances in user-interface design" (Norman)

But as you try to create meaningful experience, the content is more more subjective, the ability to be effective is based off of different criteria. The auto industry is trying to design personal experiences, without first properly addressing usable, obstacle-free interactions. Ironically the interruption asking if we would like to perform a safety inspection could in fact be putting someone at risk of crashing. Norman notes "the real irritations of modern communication are those of human attention." So why is the car emulating a human voice and interrupting you while you drive at 85mph? Shouldn't there be a threshold - 45+ don't ask any questions. Or if there is snow on the road, don't ask any questions. Like mom had "let's play the quiet game," while trying to concentrate on driving. Or shouldn't there just be a feedback loop so the warning system registers that a systems check was already preformed?

There are many regulations when designing for automobiles, so the threat isn't so much that the notification was dangerous, the threat is that it the notification was pointless. In this case, the safety inspection was already completed. So the audio warning was dismissed. If the safety inspection was not completed, the audio warning would be dismissed, but there would be no note left behind reminding the driver of the necessary safety inspection.

Designing meaningful experiences requires an increased emphasis on research before production and as well as heavy user testing. [singlepic id=595 ]As the pyramid narrows at the top, it is easier to encounter a higher degree of dissatisfaction as a design is harder to match with peoples' expectations. There is a bigger question than how to refine the interface of a car. Why is there a new car model every year? That question popped into my mind a few years back. It's often a new shell with out much newer functionality. Pre-Cold War cars are kept well running in Cuba, and probably with a lot better milage than your 2006 model.

You can see it on the consumer level. Why are there so many marginally different models? It permeates onto its brand image level with the discontinuation of some brands. After the recession, auto companies saw they couldn't keep pushing superficially new models of every year in a redundant brand architecture.

On a systematic level, the nation's capital has a beltway that looks like a parking lot. New York has the best public transportation systems in the United States, but it is one of the worst in the world.*

The federally subsidized rail system from the nation's capital to the financial city is horrible. We have problems in the form of single buttons as well as the major veins of these systems.

Norman closes his piece on IxD for Autos with "Design specifications for the appropriate way to design, given the attentional demands and safety considerations for the driver. Ah yes, but this will have to wait. Work in progress."

We should get working.

*I'm not measuring how effective a transportation system is by the sheer number of people it moves. Donald Norman, Interaction Design for Automobile Interiors http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/interaction_des.html

Service Design: More Than The Sum of Its Parts Recap

Today after flying in from Boulder, Dr. Andy Polaine gave an inspiring presentation on Service Design.He opened with the idea that all Service Design tools have been re-appropriated from other disciplines, but a Service Designer's end goals are different. He notes we are "moving from the joys of having things to the joys of having experiences." [singlepic id=588]

Dr. Polaine quotes Tibor Kalman with the question, "Do you want to die with the most toys, or do you want to die with the best life and experiences?"

Here's Matthew Hodgson's video about information architecture to show how different disciplines can use similar tools.

What are experiences and can we design them? "Cinematographers will tell you they can design experiences.At least they design the structures that we have expereinces through." "We can research experiences and context."

Not only can we research context, but we can design some of the context and we can change some of those things.

Service Design shouldn't just be broken into back stage and front stage, as like Don Norman says the back stage to one person is the front stage to the other.

Dr. Polain asks "What if we rethink that front stage back stage set up and instead have the users at the center, taking a role, interacting with eachother with some type of 'mediative interaction going on.'" He leads onto Virtuous Networks and how we are "shifting from products to services and to a people centered approach."

One concept that he places importance on is "arrows" or what I call "paths." The paths between the touchpoints. Sometimes you can flow through a service or ecology of services seamlessly and you may not even know it. A metaphor is like gaps in a sidewalk, you flow over it but don't notice it is there. (I guess that you can also flow over seams). That is the negative space of services. If there is a pothole or if the sidewalk is uneven, you will notice it is there. "When stuff breaks, that's when the arrows become visible." There is the phrase "you only notice bad design," which is why folded toilet paper is not the best example of Service Design.

Not only do you want to make some of the design unseen, but you may even want to tone down the design that is noticed. [singlepic id=591]

"It's easy to focus on the tangibles." "We tend to fetishize artifacts because it's easy, they're things we grasp on to." "There are plenty experiences where the artifacts seem to be right but the service ecology is [horrible]," like mobile phones. "Sometimes its worth downgrading a touch point so that" people can flow through it easier. The transition between touchpoints causes "a jolt in expectations." Like with many types of design, Service Design and the experience "it's about consistency, not just high level [execution] of anything." That is something I never thought of.

Dr. Polaine mentions Blueprint+, which I saw Roman Aebersold present on last year. My question about Blueprint+ and behavior research is how else can we plot emotion other than binary up or down, excited versus feared. An axis of solely excited or feared makes sense to a degree, but I would like to be able to plot multiple dimensions with additional values to cover a better picture of people's behavior over time. You can be excited and fearful at the same time.

The next steps for developing the Blueprint+ is to be able to "zoom in and out at different resolutions," providing very granular insight, but also being able to just show the major scenes. That will be amazing as a technical tool, it can work at different levels, to the second defining which small touchpoint is encountered, but also simplified to show the macro events when using it as a deliverable.

He's also writing a book withs Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason of live|work.

Check it out here: http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/service-design/ Of all the Service Design books out or coming out, I expect this one to be really good.

[singlepic id=592] [singlepic id=593] [singlepic id=594] [singlepic id=589]The level we must reach. [singlepic id=590]Reminders to avoid the god complex.

Interaction 11 Photo Highlights

[singlepic id=544]Peter March[singlepic id=545] [singlepic id=546]Jackson Carson [singlepic id=548]John Yuda [singlepic id=550]Carl Aviani [singlepic id=551] Erik Hersman [singlepic id=552] [singlepic id=554] Eduardo Ortiz and Andrea Mignolo [singlepic id=556] Erik Dahl [singlepic id=557] Derek Chan [singlepic id=558] David Farkas [singlepic id=559] Alan Cooper [singlepic id= 560] Ruqian Zhou [singlepic id=564] [singlepic id=566] [singlepic id=568] Christopher Rider [singlepic id=569] [singlepic id=571] Freddy Ferrao [singlepic id=574] James Mulholland [singlepic id=576] [singlepic id=579] Sketch notes by Jason Mesut [singlepic id=580] [singlepic id=582] Brenda Laurel's presentation [singlepic id=585] [singlepic id=586] Jon Kolko

[nggallery id=46] I heard via Twitter that presentations should be up in about a week.