Anastasia’s World

Recently, on a late-night empty train, I met computer scientist Vijay Saraswat. We only spoke for a few minutes, but a few days later I got an email from him on the subject of Programmable Matter. It appears that the paradigms of computing that ‘we the people’ are finally getting comfortable with are morphing, once again. How are today’s UI designers to keep pace with the Matter Programmers… will we be left in the dust?!?!

Following some links Vijay provided I arrived at this overview paper on the subject. It is written by Seth Copen Goldstein (Carnegie Mellon University), Jason D. Campbell (Intel Research Pittsburgh) and Todd C. Mowry (Intel Research Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University). Here are a few excerpted quotes:

“We are investigating ways to reproduce moving physical 3d objects.”

“Our long-term goal is to use such ensembles to achieve synthetic reality, an environment that, unlike virtual reality and augmented reality, allows for the physical realization of all computer-generated objects.”

“Realizing this vision requires new ways of thinking about massive numbers of cooperating millimeter-scale units. Most importantly, it demands simplifying and redesigning the software and hardware used in each catom to reduce complexity and manufacturing cost and increase robustness and reliability. For example, each catom must work cooperatively with others in the ensemble to move, communicate, and obtain power.”

When I start thinking about this I am nearly overwhelmed by the implications it will have on all aspects of life as we know and experience it.

Earlier this year at CeBIT teams from the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Architecture and Software Technology presented a brain-controlled device to enable people to communicate through their thoughts. It seems the technology is still in a ponderous state as it takes 5-10 minutes for a person hooked into the system to write a simple sentence. However for people who are unable to verbally (or physically) communicate this could be a god-send.

From what I can understand thoughts are ‘gathered’ through electrical signals emitted from a person’s scalp. They are then run though a peice of software that begins to synthesize a pattern language. The software has built-in artificial intelligence that enables it to continually refine the patterns relative to the thoughts of the individual.

An article in the Mail & Guardian Online suggests that “Brain-computer interfaces could also spread to the entertainment industry, creating a whole new class of video games. The could also be integrated into car safety systems by braking the vehicle in response to a driver’s thoughts.”

This article, The Physics of Friendship says that “By comparing people to mobile particles randomly bouncing off each other, scientists have developed a new model for social networks. The model fits with empirical data to naturally reproduce the community structure, clustering and evolution of general acquaintances and even sexual contacts.”

I just love this kind of cross-over

I am completely enamoured with RFID. There are so many possible and beautiful uses for it. It is propelling creativity in areas far afield from supply chain management. Here are a couple of interesting links people have sent me and/or I have stumbled upon that discuss applications both current and being developed:
– RFID where will it go next – Article about what Philips is doing with RFID. My favorite thing is the “Momento” orb!!!
–From Vatican to World Cup,’smart labels’ on the march – Article mentions lots of interesting places RFID tags are being used, mostly for tracking and protecting goods.

This paper on Mixed Reality Experiences in Oakland Cemetary was first reported by MIT Tech Review to be a RFID and virtual reality project in which viewers walked around a cemetary and had augumented reality experiences related to the gravestones they encountered. It seems this was a case of erroneous reporting as the Tech Review has apologized for misleading journalism and pulled the article. It turns out that the project was a combination of GPS and virtual reality. Nice thought however… I read the original article (see copy here) and have been thinking how cool it was for the past year!!!

RFID, as with all interesting technologies, faces the challenge of expression through user interfaces. Standard web tools accessed through browsers will be cool for montoring applications, but my guess is that RFID will eventually blend susinctly with the mobile world. Or with my virtual reality enabled sun glasses!

A great article in MIT’s Technology Review newsletter, The Impact of Emerging Technologies: Pennies for Web Jobs – Technology Review, discusses Amazon’s “Mechanical Turk”, a system designed to auction complex computing tasks off to human workers. The author, Sam Williams, sees this as “the latest in a string of experiments dealing with the complementary nature of machine and human intelligence.” He sites Flickr and del.icio.us as other examples.

While the implications of services like this are incredible for the global workforce (e.g. transcends all borders, sociological as well as geographical, and provides a medium for judging talent in a wide recruiting net) there is something eerie about computers employing people.

It will be interesting to see what kind of repetitive stress syndromes might result from this kind of menial task performance? ; )

PopTech 2005 just finished and as usual I am full to brimming with inspiration! The conference gets better and better each year, and this year set the bar with a significant focus on appropriate technology. Additionally Sun and the UN co-jointly sponsored 10 young activists from all over Africa to attend the conference. They spoke at a panel discussion the day after the conference… It was fascinating to hear their perspective on what the topics of PT might mean for their lives and concerns. A few of my favorite presenters (and their projects) were the following:

Neil Gershenfeld — Neil’s fablabs are the hippest thing, everyone ought to have one. They are a group of fairly low tech machines configured in such as way as to enable micro-manufacturing. Neil is putting these in a variety of environments, the results being amazing innovation… people creating (literally) the tools to answer their own problems.

Bob Hanner — Bob is advocating (and is working on a way to actually do this) DNA mapping for all the world’s creatures. There are an arsenal of reasons why this is important. Nature is suffering her own natural (human) disasters, moment after moment… yet we are so uninformed, can see only such a tiny slice of the picture, that we will have no idea what we missed until it is long gone.

Bunker Roy — Bunker’s Barefoot College is creating a quiet revolution that is having a profound impact not only locally but is providing a beautiful successful model for development… from within.

Cameron Sinclair — Co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, Cameron challenges to “design like you give a damn.” It is about time designers and artists were called to task… enough of the cult of the individual!

The conference portal is available at http://attendee.poptech.org. Through it you can access audio transcripts, see comments on the sessions, access bloggers who reported on the event, etc.

I have recently been in discussions with a friend and business associate who is a Product and Service manager at a major global bank. His focus is on delivering customer support services. I was asking him about the service design and evaluation methodologies he sees utilized in his area. Here are a few quick extractions from our exchange:

His Comment:
“I think the service design process differs from industry to industry, institution to institution. You may recall the Six Sigma program we were following here for some time (and which companies like GE follow srictly). I think that’s an example of a very rigorous process with quality as its main end-goal.”

My Thought:
Hmmmm. I have been involved with software application design projects that were using Six Sigma methodologies and was not overly impressed with the applicability of the methodology to the needs and issues of software. I am curious to know how useful service designers (whomever these may be) are finding it?

WHO is designing services anyway?

His Comment:
“Two primary ways are used to evaluate service quality:
1) Measuring quality from the perspective of the client — Done primarily though client surveys, where one seeks client input on specific aspects of the service model/experience, as well as overall/general impressions. Companies like Greenwich Associates, JD Power, etc would be a good start (for further info in this area)
2) Measuring quality from the perspective of financial impact (e.g. cost of poop quality) — This a bit tougher, and in our business (which is relationship-based, as opposed to consumer-oriented, say, building a car or selling bottles of juice) it is difficult to measure meaningfully, since there are so many other factors that weigh into a customer’s decision to awared/recind business. I can’t recall the name(s) of the companies involved in this, but a few years ago I found some material by just Googling “Cost of Poor Quality”)”

My Thoughts:
Isn’t that beautiful: “poop quality”?!?!?!? No wonder big established corporations don’t deliver usable products and services. There is so much to say about this approach that I will leave it ’til my next entry. (Just gets me foaming at the mouth to think about it!)

On the part of customer feedback I think of the considerable amount of time/money spent on designing data gathering mechanisms, soliciting feedback, managing the process, and finally reporting on it. In my experience the business soliciting the feedback usually lumps so many disparate things together in these projects that it is often difficult to design (and/or make modifications to existing designs) from the results.

I wonder which came first: Soliciting customer feedback for service evaluation or user-centered design principles?

Excellent article on the differences between traditional business and design organizations: Creativity that Goes Deep by Roger L. Martin, Dean of Rotman School of Management.

Martin outlines many of the challenges I (as a designer) have encountered working with corportate America: We work differently, are motivated differently, and ultimately we think differently. The article implies that product design and development processes can fundamentally only improve through ‘embedding’ the model of design organizations into traditional business. He does not mention the disincentivizing impact of organizational silos on projects requiring cross-silo teamwork (I have personally never worked on one that doesn’t), but otherwise a brilliant contribution to discussion on the process of product development.

The concept of usability has traditionally been applied to tool objects: The general idea is that things, whether they be chairs, gloves, or software, should work well. Techniques to analyse usability and improve it have correspondingly been developed to address the characteristics of ‘things’ and the issues related to using them.

The growing field of software usability (within the concept of software I am including anything that runs on a computer, has users, and allows them to do something) has introduced ‘process’, and the user’s experience of process, as a characteristic that should be evaluated for its effectiveness. The extent of a piece of software’s usability is in its ability to allow users to successfully locate, initiate, and complete a task: And task completion is not only an assemblage of the nuts and bolts of ui widgets and design patterns, but most importantly, it is a process. A major element in the analysis of software usability is evaluation of the design of its user processes.

Services, as differentiated from Products (’objects’ to be used), are experiences. From the ‘user’/consumer perspective there is a goal or task that motivates them to aquire and/or consume the service, and they expect to complete their task/goal through the process of experiencing the service.

Process design is inherent in the building and delivery of a service, however the rigorous demands of usability that have emerged from user-centered product design, do not appear to be commonly applied to the design and/or evalutation of services. While user feedback and taping of conversations is a common quality evaluation method that is ’shared’ with software usability practices, it seems that services design could benefit from the stringent user-centered ‘use case’ development processes utilized in software design. Utilization of use cases and exception modelling would help service designers (often not actually customer experience specialists but business or IT managers) create process flows that directly address user needs and are able to be designed/developed in an interative approach.

In an online discussion on why business organizational silos exist, Tracy Emerick (http://www.taurusmarketing.com/) had the following interesting comments to make:

“The ’silos’ in an organization have developed over time since WWII. After the war business schools supported the idea of a business being structured the same as the military command structure. In that structure there was no thought of the customer in the rank and file. Customers were, and often still are, considered the “enemy” who makes demands and hates the products/services. Business schools organized education around the military model, so organizations continued in the same pattern. I just read a couple of days ago that some MBA programs are being re-strucutred to have a more holistic approach, still inside out however.”

Tech transfers from military to society are commonplace and fairly well known, however the impact of military evolution on other aspects of society is not as clear. This is clearly yet another of the many ‘design’ areas where the long-term limitations and impacts of the design were not clearly evident at the early implementation… It surprises me how (still) many people are vested in the silos: Probably just easier on the brain to conceptualize?