LIFT08// Designing a Tool for Feeds, Flows and Behaviour

lee bryant and a team from headshift in the uk led a morning workshop at LIFT08 this week, which has been a fantastic adventure thus far. headshift develops social software platforms for enterprises, and the nature of the workshop touched upon the state of the technosphere, existing platforms and tools, etc, as well as the socio/psychology of decision making processes and how they can be translated to encourage more holistic models of cognition, developing and making decisions.

the workshop was good in terms of covering the relevant bits to make the conversation happen, but lacked consistency in the style and direction of presentation as different members of the headshift team spoke about different ideas with little in the ay to link the parts into a cohesive whole. that being said, the workshop was great for stimulating conversations and the groups were alot of fun.  notes below…

recognition-primed decision model

• situation analysis
• pattern recognition
• idea generation
• solution selection
• simulation generation
• action implementation

our decision making process is socialized to varying degrees and levels of awareness, and one of the implications of social software tools is to reconfigure that process, making it less linear, providing different options at different stages, etc, etc.
affective trends: persistence, engagement, relevance, context

our group’s task was to design the feature list for this new magical tool that would help manage and negotiate online behaviour. part of the issue with this is that it won’t be one tool in particular, but rather a series of tools that are inter-operable and contextual. our discussion identified the needs that the tool/series of tools would require…

• resilience and agility (context-specific and personalizable)
• facilitate community formation and knowledge exchange through adaptive interfaces, microformats, open platforms, translation between datasets/input modes/identities.
• semantic connectivity and communications via UGC, metadata, widget development, and tailoring of the platform to represent technique, self-awareness and responsive (able to shift tacit data into explicit)
• transparencies and privacies
• filtering of data to enable and facilitate action
• having a process that changes and adapts to your use.

LIFT08 Workshop// UbiComp: Visions, Failures and New Interaction Rituals

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it. Mark Weiser

in Geneva this week, at LIFT08. Wednesday was a wonderful day of wksps, the afternoon with Nicolas Nova, Julian Bleecker and Fabien Girardin talking about ubicomp.

conversation started with an overview of ubiquitous computing – technologies, trends, applications, capabilities, the vision of which included required elements such as:

• dissemination and deployment of sensors
• developments in information processing
• wireless capabilities in everyday objects, environments, etc
• enabling technologies – RFID, ipu6, tags, etc
• sensors monitoring position, temperature, pressure, etc
• increased communication and networking abilities between these elements

some frameworks for analysis

• failures can (often) result from the disconnect between over-engineered, intended social practices and the fundamental (pre-existing) social practices and needs.
• many products are designed to fail through overplanning – how does one reverse the trend? failures include technological breakdown, practicesbecome more complex with the tool intended to simplify them, technoptimism, etc…
• chicken and egg situation:: failures <<<<<>>>>> reasons for failures.

in terms of the activities, there were two that looped into each other. first, describe a technology that has failed, and indicate why – write it on a post-it and stick it on the wall at the front. (ie: gns/gps failures = inaccurate maps, misunderstanding of traffic contexts, etc)

from this, we divvyed up into groups, which was sort of like herding pleasantly rabid cats as there were 70+ people in the workshop, most groups were at least 10 ppl, and we chose a postit and discussed what the failures were, the chalenges and opportunities, and possibilities for improvement in the future. it worked well – and i felt pretty lucky to meet some really smart and amazing people. vicenzo pallotta has some wonderful notes on our group’s thoughts. he writes:

We also recognized that eBook readers technology might be more mature today and have a greater impact. Notable examples are the Amazon’s e-book reader and the Sony’s Portable Reader System, which are both under $400. This is due essentially to the following factors:

1. Huge availability of (relatively cheap) digital content
2. Better battery life
3. Larger (flash) Memories
4. Better screens (e.g. ePaper)
5. Multimedia capabilities
6. Social networks integration
7. Better acceptance and widespread digital culture
8. Standard (and relatively interoperable) formats
9. Previews available in online bookshops

the workshop was interesting and stimulating, especially by framing the issues through failures – in looking at and imagining the worst possible thing, it creates an awesome space to ask questions and solve problems. +++