Emerging ambient devices give users a unique way of giving information without having to be in front of a screen. This kind of devices use contextual environment as the front-end. Interaction between device and user is minimal and cognitive efforts to understand information falls dramatically.
The following image is just an example: Ambient Umbrella «tells you» when it´s going to rain by glowing a soft light in the handle:
To me, the richness of this kind of products lies in how they´re designed to give information without paying attention to them. We don´t need to stop and start to understand the inputs we are getting from these devices. And this is really important nowadays: As NYT says «Since the 1990s, we’ve accepted multitasking without question. Virtually all of us spend part or most of our day either rapidly switching from one task to another or juggling two or more things at the same time«.
The challenge for Environmental Interaction Design is obvious: You´re not designing something to be showed on a screen, you´re designing something that will be running contextually on a handle, hanging on a fridge or wherever and above all, with a low level of user´s attention, always in a hurry.
During the next 2 weeks I´ll be travelling to Lisbon to work on a big HCI project in partnership with Quotidiam, a consulting firm created by an ex-coleague of IconMedialab Portugal, Luis Quental.
It will be very interesting to see how things work on a small multicultural team working for a very big client. I hope to have some free time to visit old friends and manage to see people attending SHiFT (an event starting on oct. 15th).
The first and only orbital launch of the Soviet Shuttle Buran spacecraft occurred on 15 November 1988. Buran was also the name of the Space Program, created as an attempt to response to the U.S. Space Shuttle program.
The Buran spacecraft (Russian: Буран, «Snowstorm»), was designed following exactly the sames lines as the American Space Shuttle.
But not only the design of the Soviet spacecraft was the same, it would even use the same operational resources, being transported on the back of one of the biggest airplanes so far produced: The Antonov An-225 Mriya aircraft (as Americans did using the huge Boeing 747, the «Jumbo Jet»).
This is an image of the former Buran:
And this is another one of the Endeavour, one of the orbiters of the NASA´s Space Shuttle…
Due to lack of funds, after the first flight, the Soviet project was suspended. There were several attempts to maintain the space project, but it was finally cancelled in 1993 by former President, Mr. Boris Yeltsin.
Till now, there haven´t been relevant complaints from the Americans about the Soviet replica. Nowadays, the NASA’s Space Shuttle is running using different orbiters (Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour or TBD) as if nothing had happened.
This huge attempt to copy an existing design reminded me of some projects I worked for as an Interaction Designer, where it was put on the table the risk of being copied by others. Maybe we cannot compare a space program with a humble project related to interface design. But some ideas came to my mind and I found interesting to share them here:
Copying Design is not a bad attitude. Every designer get references out there for inspiration (are we copying when we use a radio-button, or a drop-down box?);
You´re not a bad designer if you «copy» and idea. Good designers «scan» the idea in their minds and try to translate it onto the interface problem in a different way. That´s maybe the key to improve what already exits. Designers do benchmarking, of course;
From my experience, people who bother in copying exactly what they see without expending any extra second to improve the experience are wasting their time. Every single interface suits only on one single space, there are lot of reasons for this (business, technology, users, proceedures, etc…). Probably, what it works «here» won´t work «there» unless you adapt it properly;
«Full Copiers» are normally involved on projects with lack of resources (not only money related, but also creative related);
Be proud of yourself when you see an exact mirror of your interface. That means that yours works, that your interface is somehow state of the art design and serves as a reference;
This situation should inspire you, instead of wasting your time worrying about why people has this attitude, use this feeling to keep on innovating. This will maintain you separate from the rest of your competence.
As I already said before, these thoughts are inspired on my own experience. I suppose that there might be people who don´t agree with my position. I would be glad to hear from them too.
OT: I simply love to see the launch of these shuttles. The one below is the launch of the STS-115 Space Shuttle Atlantis, on 27th August 2006, at the Kennedy Space Center (Youtube Video, 2:13min). Maybe you might use it for your own inspiration:
It is one of the most used signs in Information Technologies nowadays. We use it while seding an email, programming (PERL, PHP…) or in our twits.
But this single character was used for the first time by Mr. Francesco Lapi – an Italian merchant – in 1536, in a letter sent from Seville to Rome. During those days, the @ sing was used to represent an anphora, a measure of capacity based on jars.
According to Giorgio Stabile, professor of the history of science at La Sapienza University, «The loop around the ‘a’ is typical of that merchant script» and the evolution was more or less like this:
The sign, only arrived to English typewriter keyboards in the early 20th century and «it was selected as a rarely used symbol to separate user names from domain addresses by the American internet engineer Ray Tomlinson«. This happened in 1971.
Prof. Stabile says: «No symbol is born of chance. This one has represented the entire history of navigation on the oceans and has now come to typify travel in cyberspace«.
La primera vez que ví el esquema que ilustra este post fue en la ceremonia de apertura del CHI2005, en Portland, OR. Esa mañana de abril, el recientemente fallecido Randy Pausch se dirigía hacia una multitud de inquietas mentes, ávidas por conocer más sobre computación, tecnología y HCI.
El esquema es obra del polifacético Rich Gold, artista, compositor, diseñador, inventor, ponente y escritor, que dejó su rastro en compañías como Sega, Mattel y Xerox PARC (más concretamente en el RED, Research in Experimental Documents´ Lab). Y trata de explicar la esencia de cada una de estas ramas y cómo se relacionan unas con otras.
Interpretando el modelo de Rich en vertical, Arte y Diseño «moverían mentes», mientras que Ciencia e Ingeniería «moverían moléculas». Horizontalmente, Arte y Ciencia serían «universales», constituidas por grupos específicos que generan patrones. Diseño e Ingeniería serían «específicas», destinadas a satisfacer a «usuarios» y «clientes». Según el modelo, Arte y Ciencia tendrían más en común que Diseño y Ciencia. Rich también se preocupa de definir las fronteras horizontales (a las que denomina Diseño e Ingeniería Especulativos), pero olvida las verticales (y aún no consigo asignarle un etiqueta adecuada. Igual ni existe…).
Curiosamente, estos cuatro elementos no eran ni más ni menos que los cuatro «sombreros» que Rich vistió a lo largo de su vida. En todos ellos además se manifiesta una variable común: La creatividad, la necesidad continua de hacer cosas, de innovar. De acuerdo con él, esta necesidad está en el corazón del mundo occidental, inexistente en otras culturas. Copiar cosas que ya existen es incluso delito, hay que estar siempre innovando. Para Rich, además, la creatividad no es simplemente hacer algo nuevo, sino «hacer algo nuevo que cree una nueva categoría, un nuevo género o un nuevo tipo de cosa».
Hats
Profundizando un poco más sobre el tema y extrapolándolo a lo que más se habla en esta casa, en el mundo del HCI también portamos esos cuatro sombreros. Nuestro fin último es crear, innovar, romper el hielo ayudándonos de estos cuatro componentes: Arte, Ciencia, Diseño e Ingeniería. Maeda le dio una pequeña vuelta de tuerca al modelo: Arte/expresar, Ciencia/explorar, Diseño/comunicar, Ingeniería/inventar… ¿Al final no jugamos con estas cuatro variables?
Seguramente, el pasado profesional de Rich es mucho más rico que el de muchos de nosotros, pues no nos hemos dedicado a tantas cosas en una misma vida, pero me alegra saber que al menos nos dedicamos a una profesión donde uno se puede permitir el lujo de portar estos sombreros con dignidad.
Rich nunca consiguió publicar en vida su único libro, donde recogió parte de su pensamiento: «The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff«, pero finalmente vio la luz en 2007, publicado por el MIT Press.
A fecha de hoy ni siquiera tiene una humilde referencia en la Wikipedia.
Existe una fabulosa reseña del libro realizada por gente del equipo de UX de SAP, donde se han utilizado algunas referencias para escribir este post.
In Memoriam: Randy Paush (1960-2008), Rich Gold (1950-2003).
Today is my last day at the company I´ve been working for 4 years as a Usability manager: idealista.com.
I just can say thank you. During this time I´ve learned a lot about how to create and manage an international team and my vision about Interaction design has improved considerably.
My soul was asking for a big change and somehow I felt I couldn´t say no. The next challenge? Still on the air… But ready to face fresh new stuff. While this puzzle finds his form, I think it´s better of travelling a little bit.
If you want to share some ideas or projects with me just drop me an email at:
juan at seisdeagosto.com (until mid-setember I won´t be online again).
