Lame and Obvious Multimedia Art or Novel Ecommerce Prototype?

I have mixed feelings about posting this video, and WordPress won’t let me paste the object/embed code–not sure what’s up with that, so here’s a link instead:

http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/ifc/2008/01/23/sundance_newfrontier/index.html

It is supposedly a work of “multimedia art” (in the words of the usually hip Salon.com), shown at the usually hip Sundance, which shows how virtual sweatshop workers can design jean styles in Second Life and then print them into clothes in real life. This is disappointing as “art,” because I expect art to push conceptual limits, to stretch my thinking, and not merely to play catch-up to concepts that are passé to anyone who isn’t a complete noob in virtual worlds.

But it is not as disappointing as experimental e-commerce. Set aside the facile pedantry about sweatshops, and instead imagine these machines not as “virtual sweatshops” but rather as self-service clothing design and purchase portals: now the consumer gets to style and construct, in a social virtual space, the pants that they buy. This design carries on the logic of those build-a-bear stores into virtual reality, and it is reasonable to speculate that the engagement offered by those build-a-bear stores just might translate into everyday RL fashion shopping.

File this under “right idea, but for the wrong reason.”

fictional interaction design

…anew genre I hadn’t thought about.

via

http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/fictional_computer_interface_design_8346.asp

Management and Innovation

I mentioned this blog in class, where people are questioning whether/how innovation can be managed: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5821.html

Attention Economy of Memes

We discussed meme’s in class earlier this week in relation to complex systems and HCI. As we mentioned, meme’s are a unit of cultural propagation similar to gene’s for the propagation of DNA. The Internet is responsible for dramatically increased rates of memetic cultural proliferation. However, the rate of memetic proliferation on the Internet has led to the discussion of a (sort of) new phenomena, the attention economy.First coined by the one and only Herbert Simon in 1971.

“…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” 

Recently the notion of an attention economy has entered popular interaction design discourse. Specifically, the attention economy has gained a foothold in terms of customer retention on e-commerce sites. Keeping customers involved on a site with relevant information that enables purchasing decisions is a taxing enterprise. The most common solution is to use some sort of recommendation system, but we’re starting to see the limits of those systems as the complexity of e-commerce systems increase. Another concern of the attention economy, especially as it pertains to e-commerce, is the use of potentially private browsing behaviors for corporate gain. Essentially, what right does Amazon have to use my browsing behavior to improve the effectiveness of their recommendation system to increase their future profits? Sure, I might get a better recommendation too, but you can see the gray area.Now to go back to memes. Are meme’s subject to the attention economy? Will meme’s hit a “wall” like recommendation systems? Will the proliferation of meme’s expand so fast and so far that they we lose our ability to focus on any of them or are meme’s impervious to the effects of the attention economy? Or will those meme’s simply be replaced with others that do grab our attention?One last thought for the road.Recommendation systems are an attempt to control attention by providing helpful and relevant information. What systems do we have (or might we have) to control memetic propagation online? We’ve seen plenty of examples in previous posts about how designers embed values into designers (intentional and not) so how are we embedding memes in our designs?

Ripe for a Post Sructural Field Day

from: http://www.strategy-business.com/li/leadingideas/li00051

 What companies need, therefore, is a new approach to demand creation that actually enables — make that forces — a company to be what it says it is. To borrow the phrase architect Jon Jerde made famous, that discipline is placemaking. Places are what provide the primary means for companies to demonstrate exactly what they are for both current and potential customers. Companies that embrace placemaking understand a fundamental dictum for contending with authenticity: The experience is the marketing. In other words, the best way to generate demand for any offering — whether a commodity, good, service, other experience, or even a transformation — is for potential (and current) customers to experience that offering in a place so engaging that they can’t help but pay attention, and then pay up as a result by buying that offering. Stop saying what your offerings are through advertising, and start creating places — permanent or temporary, physical or virtual, fee-based or free — where people can experience what those offerings, as well as your enterprise, actually are

Ugh.  Pine and Gilmore are famous for their concept/book “The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage”  - which posits, essentially, the death of the age of products and services and the rise of the age of elaborately staged customer experiences that suck in consumers and entice them to pay for those experiences.   Gee, i wonder why business gets a bad rep?

It seems that Pine and Gilmore have made a (seemingly positive) shift to suggest that businesses, instead of advertising their staged experiences on trumped up billboard images that make the performance look better than it is, instead put the players themselves out on the sidewalk so that the customer can see a part of the actual performance, and thereby make an informed and authentic decision as to whether or not they want to pay for the full performance.  This is a method, of course, that has been used for a long time in software - in the form of a time-limited trial period  In other fields this is sometimes called “tryvertising.”

The loving post structuralist critique, however, would point out the fact that Pine and Gilmore seem to be missing a key implication of their own concept (and a valuable one) - that customers in “places” construct the conception of what “the enterprise actually is” - rather than just hear it from the company.  And the loving post structuralist recommendation would then extend Pine and Gilmore’s idea to say that the smart enterprise will build “places” that allow the customers to express who the enterprise “is” - to explicitly involve them in the process that already occurs - rather than to continue to pretend that it doesn’t.

This of course is a key point for us to consider in a class on Interaction Culture.  Our current culture of Interaction has enabled long-range, hyper-fast, persistent interactions through various connected digital technologies.   From a post structuralist standpoint, we could say that identities are constructed for and with more people simultaneously, which means that a business, a person, or a software product has even less control (if they ever did at all) over who they “are.”

RIAA Shenanigans

Another brick in the “we sue you long time” file sharing wall…

One to One Interactive Videos

Since Jeremi Karnell was here on Tuesday, i thought you’d all get a kick out of the videos they’ve produced for the upcoming MITX awards ceremony:

http://www.otoinsights.com/2007/11/if-your-agency-.html

Balancing Values & Usability

“The landscape as well as the city are both highly structured, and our existence is furnished with many different kinds of devices and technological systems.  These are what instruct people in contemporary societies ‘how to live.’”

-De Vries

There is a wealth of design and social science literature that suggests that the artifacts we use shape our thinking and living.   That means that even benign things like computer interfaces, navigational structures, and information architecture have embedded values that inform us how to live and how to think.   The problem is that, what is usable is sometimes at opposition to what we value.  Here is a quick example:

 

Example 1: Amazon Country Selection

On Amazon.com’s shipping menu, you have to have to specify what country you want your purchase shipped to.  Currently the drop down menu looks like this:

The U.S. is on the top of the list, with the rest of the countries below it in alphabetical order.   This arrangement has implicit values relating to world power structures, global business, and which customers Amazon values. On the other hand, if the majority of Amazon.com’s current customers are from the U.S., perhaps this arrangement was done in the name of usability.    A more egalitarian arrangement would have all countries listed in alphabetical order, but this will slow down registration for Amazon.com’s U.S. customer base.

 

Example 2: CNN’s Top Navigation

Above is a screenshot of the top menu on CNN.com.  How the information is categorized and what is in this top menu is full of values.  Beyond that, just the order of the topics in the top menu has implicit values.   Taking in to account research that people look at websites from left to right, and the left is more important, CNN is implicitly suggesting that Entertainment news is more valuable then Health or Living news.  Using the same general content, I may re-arrange the menu to look like this.

As you can see, I rearranged the menu to put more emphasis on health and living, and less on entertainment.  Although this may make the interface less usable, I made this change because I believe a society should value news on medical breakthroughs and life education more than news on Britney Spears’ most recent break up.   But who am I to tell people what they should value? 

 

Usable Artifacts Are Not Value Free

So, should designers push their values on to people? The truth of the matter is, right or wrong, as designers we already do this with every artifact we create.  Even if we create a product that fits exactly what the users ask for, we are still embedding a value, a value that re-affirms that status quo.    Designers have to realize this, and take responsibility for the values embedded in their products.  The phrase ‘I am just giving people what they want’ does not absolve responsibility.

 

Why Values & Usability Don’t Always Match

Ideally there would never be a conflict between giving people what they want and giving them the ‘right’ thing.  But unfortunately, there often is a conflict.  Here are a few reasons why:

• Ideal World vs. Real World:  The ideal world and the real world are often two very different places.  (Amazon shipping country example)  In the ideal world all people from all countries would have equal purchasing power and it would make sense for Amazon to list all countries in alphabetical order.   In the real world, citizens from certain countries have much more purchasing power than those from others.    Should the design reflect the world as it is or the world as we you want it to be?

• Ideal Self vs. Real Self:  The ideal me reads tons of interesting literature and volunteers at the homeless shelter.  The real me is fascinated with Britney Spears and loves to watch The Real World.

• Business Values:  The values of the business don’t always align with the values of the people.  (CNN Menu Example)  Prominently featuring the travel section may be in CNNs best interest because they generate more revenue from ads within that section, but people who read CNN may not care about travel.

• Different People: Different people have different values. 

 

Approaches To Balancing Usability & Values

Balancing values and usability is a complex issue that I am only beginning to understand.  At this point I am just throwing around ideas, but it seems as if there are a few ways to approach this balance. 

• Design for the User:  Card sorting, user research, and testing tell the designer what to do and how to design.   This seems to be the dominant view in the HCI community.   

• Customization:  Customization takes some of the everyday values vs. usability decisions off of the designer and allows designers to believe they are creating value-free designs.   Google homepage is a good example.  Customization has its own set of values, like individualism, autonomy, and others.

• Design for the Ideal:  Design for the ideal world or the ideal self.  This may lead to some serious usability/usefulness problems and your design may never be used.  This is also problematic because people’s ideal worlds and selves can be drastically different from each other.

 
My main criticism is of these approaches is that ideas like usability, user-centered, and customization allow designers to believe they are not responsible for, and don’t need to reflect on, the values they embed in the design.  By following user-centered procedures, and giving people what they want, designers believe they absolve themselves from responsibility for the values embedded in the artifacts.  I see this as problematic.

In the end, I really have no idea how to approach this balance.  So what do you all think?  How should designers balance values (personal, business, societal, ect.) with usability?  Do designers reflect on the values they embed?  Is blindly creating what the user wants its own value?  Why is this a good (or bad) value?  How does our free market economy play in to all this?

Bill Buxton interview

You may have already seen this, but the summary of the interview is nice…  note the emphasis on sketching.  This of course reiterates what we read by Buxton earlier. (the full audio interview is also available via link on page)

http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/05/31/a-conversation-with-bill-buxton-about-design-thinking/

Fully Automated Politics

Building on a topic Christian brought up earlier in his blog, I’d like to share an amusing experience of computer-age politics that I had today. Earlier, I got an email from an environmental group, called the National Resources Defense Council. In it, it accused Toyota of violating its own “green” image, because it is lobbying Congress against a bill that would raise fuel efficiency to 35 mpg by 2020. Entitled, “Has Toyota no shame?” the message asks the reader to send a note to Toyota.

When you click the link, you get a form with a letter already filled out explaining “your” position (obviously, it’s the NRDC’s position, but you are able to edit it if you like). Click another button and whoosh! your letter explaining your position on fuel economy policy is off to the President of Toyota.

Well, dear reader, I sent the letter, because I personally do believe the auto companies are holding themselves to too low a standard when it comes to fuel efficiency, and it is a matter of international security (among other things). Of course, I knew full well that my robo-letter would go straight to someone’s recycle bin and would never be read by any human being, let alone the President of Toyota.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, 5 minutes later I received a robo-response from Toyota, justifying its opposition to the fuel efficiency bill in Congress, declaring its support for an alternate bill, and then bragging about its achievements in the area of global warming and fuel efficiency. In short, Toyota had a rapid automated response ready for me, which (successfully) blunted the NRDC’s attack (which did not disclose that Toyota was supporting an alternate, albeit weaker, bill).

The whole exchange made me realize that in all this flurry of messages, I was the only human engaged, that the messages were neither about the NRDC nor Toyota, but about me. Automation has induced me to interact in a complex policy dialogue between a special interest group (the NRDC) and major company (Toyota). I’m not sure what to make of this (is this a good thing?), except to say that it is a different experience than the usual to- and fro- of 30 second political attack ads on TV, because I participated in it. I spoke, even if it was not with my own voice, and I was heard, if only by a text recognition program, and I was responded to, even if only by a canned script.

I’m positing the actual letters in the comments, if you are curious to see them.