iDMAa 2009

This session is being simul-cast on Second Life.

Adam Brown (AB) – Michigan State – intermedia artist; human-computer interaction

Patrick Lichty (PL) – Columbia College, Chicago

Adam Nash (AN) – RMIT University, Australia – works in a variety of virtual worlds

John Filwalk (JF) – Ball State

AB – working in “hybrid ways.”  Trying to link arts with science and technology

• started getting interested in Wilhelm Reich
• built a system of autonomous unit that simulates the lifeforce (like chi or the force or bion [?])
• you walk into this field of dangling nodes (they kind of look like GameCube controllers) and they react to your presence.
• started getting interested in gesture and how it conveys emotional states
• how to make machines imitate consciousness.
• “is it alive?” is too big of a question, so he asked “what are the characteristics of being alive?”

JF – fiddling with Second Life (SL)…

• has created a sort of virtual instrument in SL.  you play the instrument in SL and it plays an instrument in the physical world.
• linking the virtual and the physical
• “participatory art”
• later tonight, people will be able to play the virtual instrument and it will play on the bell tower here on campus
• has created an immersive art installation – looks through Flickr and can display pictures, it then puts it on an array.  very cool.  allowing one to interfacing with different types of info.
• working on a similar piece for YouTube

PL – social relations and how we relate to/with technology

• recreated Warhol’s factory in SL – andyrembrandt.com
• many doing performance in SL; Patrick thought this was odd because performance centers on the body and SL removes the body
• recreated the Last Supper; called it the Second Supper
• in a gallery, has what looks like bar codes – “quick-response codes” – representations of avatars
• looks at these “bar codes” through his mobile device (with the proper software), it pulls up a portrait of the avatar that the QR-code represents
• PL compares this to a locket; a sense of intimacy while we are increasingly inter-mediating our interpersonal relationships

AN – Adam is cutting in and out as he tries to speak.

• Autoscopia – exploring the idea of portraits in the digital age
• you make a search query, and in SL, a virtual sculpture is created based on the search results
• a corresponding webpage is also created
• “one way of looking at the Internet is as an alchemy machine that turns bullshit into truth” – haha, I very much like this.  Screw turning lead into gold; turning fiction into fact is the new alchemy

Q&A

AB’s robots seemed to be “alive” or at least he says so.  How did he figure that out?  He says think about movies and cognitive psychology that humans want to think that something is alive. ”Willful suspension” of reality. He doesn’t claim to create life, but rather to simulate it.

Final thoughts….   The biggest thing that keeps coming up is “Sorry for the clunkiness of the interface.”  I think if virtual worlds, like SL, are going to make major inroads into everyday life, the interface needs to be greatly improved.  Gets back to the wet-nap interface from Tom Kelley’s presentation.

Tom Kelley of IDEO; “help build cultures of innovation” within various industries.

Got started a little late….

8:48 – “Blurring the line between design and innovation”

three things to think about…

• people (desirable)
• business (viable)
• technical (feasible)

Technical factors are not enough (look at Japan with their Betamax and mini-discs; lots of great tech that no one adopted).

The people factor is often overlooked.  IDEO increased Kraft Food’s sales by $700,000 per week by tweaking the human factor; not the trucks or the nodes.

8:52 – Two problems with innovation – it’s important but not urgent.  This is a problem, because there are so many things that are important and urgent.  So then you put it off till tomorrow, and all of the sudden, someone has taken your idea.

8:55 – Other problem is “the Red Queen effect.”  Based on “Alice in the Looking Glass.”  Alice pals around with the Red Queen, who always in a bad mood.  After making no progress on their journey, Alice asks why they’re not moving.  The Red Queen says, “to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”  Innovation moves very fast and you have to outpace your competitors.

8:59 – If you’re on top and you’re the only one in your game, you get lazy.  Your competitors sneak up on you.  Example Tom gives is tire manufacturing in Akron, OH (which used to manufacture 100% of the tires in the US).  The big tire companies had essentially no competition; then comes France with radial tires.  They ignored the “Red Queen” effect.  The whole tire industry folded in Akron because they slowed their pace of innovation.

9:03 – Looking at the “value” of two brands: Samsung and Sony.  Sony was on top of the world in 2000; they got cocky, got lazy, and Samsung made its move.  Samsung started changing its practices (innovating) by listening to their younger workers.  Since 2004, Samsung has been on top of Sony.

9:06 – And Sony did not stop innovating… ever.  They’re a great company, but they slowed down their innovation, which is all their competitors needed.

9:09 – “innovation made personal” … The ten faces of innovation…

1. The Anthropologist
2. The Experimenter
3. The Cross-Pollinator (getting outside your world)
4. The Hurdler (realizes there will be obstacles, but doesn’t slow down)
5. The Collaborator
6. The Director (searches the world for the best talent and turns them into stars, not themselves)
7. The Experience Architect
8. The Set Designer
9. The Caregiver
10. The Storyteller (data can’t speak for itself but stories make lasting impressions)

1-3 are learning roles. 4-6 are the organizing roles.  7-10 are building roles.

9:19 – Tom’s favorite is the Anthropologist.  Tom’s worked with engineers, and he’s worked with anthropologists.  Anthropologists would do something like watch kids fish at a river, and come back to the main office and tell everyone about fishing.  The “single biggest source of innovation at IDEO” because they go out into the field, identify problems, and can figure out a way to fix it.

“The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

Vuja de – opposite of deja vu – you’re in the same place that you’ve always been, but you see something new.  ”I’m not sure who it is that discovered water, but I’m sure it wasn’t a fish.”  In other words, you get immersed in your environment and don’t see the obvious.

9:34 – Ultimately all innovations get copied.

An example about cake…

• Commodity – eggs, flour, sugar, etc.
• Product – Betty Crocker pre-made mix
• Service – cake is already made at the Bakery
• Experience – Chuck E. Cheese birthday party

This is about understanding others better than they understand themselves.  People will be happy to pay more if you deliver a service or, even better, an experience.

Find something that is important to you and design something that “sings.”  In 2000, Westin Hotels came up with the idea of the Heavenly Bed.  As soon as they introduced, not only did their overall market-share increase, but the amount they can charge per room also increased.  And 5 years later, numerous hotels copied the idea.

“Aspiring to the ‘wet-nap interface’” – the instructions for a wet-nap are “tear open and use.”  This is Tom’s goal for all products he designs.  IDEO took the idea of the defibrillator, and made it simple enough for anyone to use in any emergency situation.  And his 6-year old daughter was able to use it properly after giving it the “wet-nap interface.”

Final thoughts… this was an AWESOME presentation.  Very entertaining.  Very informative.  Being a usability nerd, I very much enjoyed his closing idea of the “wet-nap” interface.  Too many interfaces (Tom’s example is alarm clocks, I generally think of websites and software) are clunky and impossible to figure out.  I wish more people would take Tom’s advice on the usability factor.