jamin.org

in progress

When people switch jobs, move to a new city, start school, or have a child, aspects of their identity change. For designers, this presents an opportunity to help people invent and discover who they would like to be in their new roles. But there is little evidence of design attempting to support this behavior. By looking at one of these groups (incoming college freshmen) I am developing a mobile application called MetaMe that allows students to project meta information about themselves in the physical environment and adjust that information to project and prototype aspects of their identity in order to get to a more desired self.

This work is in progress. It was submitted to CHI 2008 Work-in-Progress (declined) and has also been submitted to Design and Emotion 2008.

Advisors

• Shelley Evenson
• John Zimmerman

Process

Interviews were conducted in students’ rooms to see how they expressed their identity through their artifacts.

Research was documented on large boards to visualize the findings.

Me, taking notes during a participatory design session.

Participatory design session where participants were asked to visualize their social network.

Early sketch for a concept scenario.

Example concept scenarios.

Visualization of some of the survey results.

Visualizing the concepts against the main themes.

Prop used during a concept validation session where participants were asked to enact scenarios.

A participant enacting a scenario.

A representation of ambient information during a participatory design session.

“The System” of the MetaMe concept as understood by a design session participant.

Monday we had a meeting regarding choosing a thesis project and paper for the upcoming year. Over the course of the next month, it was suggested we start talking to faculty to see where there is a synergy in interests.

Currently, I have no clear thoughts about what I will do for my thesis. I did meet with John Zimmerman a couple weeks ago to get his advice. He believes choosing a complementary project and paper is better than doing separate theses, and also suggested thinking about what job I would like and think about how my thesis can lend itself to marketing myself to future employers.

While that makes good sense, I still feel like I’m exploring the possibilities of interaction design and haven’t come to a solid idea of what I want to do. It seems that rather than a particular area of interest, my interest lies in the various design challenges, the wicked problems. I feel like I could be successful in various areas.

Perhaps that’s the plight of being a generalist.

The alternative to being strategic with the theses is to do whatever I fancy while I still can. This is the advice Richard Buchanan gives.

I’m not sure which view I feel more strongly about. I like the Buchanan’s idea of doing something that’s more for me and not about getting a job. But I also think doing something that will help me get ahead is smart, too.

Even without clear theses ideas, I already have a general idea of which faculty members I would like to work with: John Zimmerman, Shelley Evenson, Jodi Forlizzi, and Richard Buchanan. I guess looking at that list, one could infer which way I’m leaning, as John, Shelley, and Jodi are also of the pragmatic persuasion.

Still, I need to talk to them. And I will likely talk to others, while I start figuring out what it is will do in my second year of grad school.

The GoCoffee team (Kip, Rachel, and I) presented our mobile interface this morning with great success, despite a snafu where the Flash demonstration did not play correctly in the middle of me speaking.

But we rolled with it. Kip, the other grad on the team, stepped up and asked if there were any questions up to that point while I figured out the problem (the presentation opened in Flash 7 instead of Flash 8). Within a minute, we were up and running.

We felt we did well and got a good response from our fellow sleep-deprived students. Kip and I talked to John Zimmerman after the class and got some good feedback from him as well. He complemented us for getting dressed up, and he didn’t seem to have a problem with us naming our persona Johannes Zummerman.

There were, of course, things we would have liked to have changed. For instance, the coffee cups are a bit hard to read.

Also, there were a lot of features that I would have liked to have added to the Flash demonstration that were not possible to flesh out.

When Does Design End?

The answer might be: the deadline for the deliverables. We worked through the night, finishing up around 6:30 a.m. I drove Kip home and got home myself just before 7:00. When I got in the shower it was dark. When I got out, the sun was up.

Today our deliverables were a discussion of our process that led to the mobile application and interface we created, and a Flash demonstration of our device within the stage of our scenario.

Next week will we turn over our process books in the form of a website, and the Flash Lite file that was developed so that we could view our interface on an actual mobile phone.

I am thinking of adding to the Flash before we turn it in along with our process books. So in my mind, while the presentation was today, it’s not done. And I will continue to make improvements while I have the opportunity.

When the website is complete, I’ll post it so you can check out our work. It should make for a decent portfolio piece.

I got my control redesign grade: 88.

It’s a decent grade, though I’m not that concerned about the grade. Since giving my presentation, John’s question, “Who wants gas without flame?” has bubbled to the surface of my brain now and again.

So it wasn’t a surprised when his feedback said the problem with my solution was in the framing of the problem. “Push the boundaries of what is—try to go to the root of the problem by exploring a larger problem.”

That’s the challenge and the excitement of interaction design, I’m learning. Our job is to invent things that don’t exist. Interaction design is different from industrial design and communication design because of the aspect of invention. That is our real value, says JZ.

He reminded us that our projects will become part of our portfolio. He stressed the importance of demonstrating the ability to invent as absolutely critical in getting a job as an interaction designer.

Mobile Project

Our second project is a group project. My group is designing a mobile phone interface to help people find a coffee shop. We chose this of four options. The other three were finding a movie theater, finding tourists venues, and finding a music event.

We are currently conducting user research to help develop personas and frame the problem. It is proving to be rather challenging.

JZ told us to take risks. I’m trying to keep the idea of invention in the back of my mind, and also the recurrent question, “What is the real problem?”

In the next few weeks we will develop wireframes and flow diagrams, and ultimately create a Flash Lite application that we will load onto a mobile phone to see how our idea executes.

In my previous post, I failed to mention the control I redesigned. I choose a knob on my gas stove.

Problems

• Turning the knob to Lite, which is also the highest gas setting, releases more gas than is necessary for pilot light to ignite gas.
• There is no indication of the lowest gas setting. Gas is often turned off attempting to set the flame at its lowest setting. Gas ranges turn off before reaching Off as a safety measure.
• It is difficult to determine the heat setting while cooking. User needs to bend over to see flame to judge current level. There is no indication of low, medium, which are commonly referred to settings in recipes.
• It can be difficult to know that a particular range is on if the flame is low or a pot is on the range.
• The arrow is not an indication of the setting.

Rendered Redesign

Demand the Right Solution

John seemed to like my redesign (hurray!). However, in what I’m learning to be typical John fashion, he asked, “Who wants gas but no flame?”

The answer, of course, is no one (we hope). So the real problem is not where Light is located but rather that there should not be a Light. If the intent of the user is to turn the range on, at any level, there should be a flame. On is on.

He said the redesign is good given the current function of the system, but made a point of saying that we need to make the engineers work for us, and not the other way. We must ask the engineers for the right solution.

I said I didn’t know we could do that for this assignment. “That’s our job,” he said.

You would think with a four-day weekend (I have no classes on Friday), I would have had time to complete my first project without losing sleep. Wrong.

The project was to redesign a singular control for John Zimmeran’s Introduction to Interaction and Visual Interface Design. We had to produce a 11×17 color poster mounted on a 23×17 black board. In addition, we had to provide a CD with the PDF of the poster, and we had to design the CD.

With the best intentions, I set out to complete the project by Sunday, which would leave me all of Monday to do other assignments and perhaps even relax a bit.

While I completed 90 percent of the project Sunday, what having another day available to me meant was that I had a whole other day to rethink everything!

I also underestimated the number of hours I would spend trying to get the CD label to print correctly. Hours. Dumb.

But hell, despite my Labor Day being full of labor, my project is complete. And though I’m not completely happy with the result, it’s complete.

And more importantly, I learned a whole bunch of stuff in the process. Or at the least, I did a bunch of things for the first time, like:

• Tackle an interaction design problem
• Design a 11×17 poster
• Buy black board (though I may have purchased the wrong kind)
• Use an X-Acto knife (another new purchase)
• Use Spray Mount
• Design a CD label
• Print a CD label (many, many times)

I’m sure the project would have went more smoothly had a done a few of those things before. But like I said, doing new stuff is fun, which is why I don’t mind that I won’t get much sleep tonight.

Speaking of which, class is at 8:30 a.m., when I predict a good grilling from the Zimmerman. Going home…

Have I really already completed two days of grad school? Have I really only completed two days of grad school?

Surely, it’s not Tuesday already. And surely, it’s not only Tuesday?

I am just beginning to understand how this is going to rock my world. My life as I knew it before, my life as it was last week, is gone. What mattered last week matter’s little now.

You may think I’m being melodramatic. I’m not.

Searching for a Clue

In contrast to my previous conversation with JZ when I said I didn’t know what I wanted to do after the program, and I couldn’t yet define interaction design, where JZ seemed a bit perturbed, Dick said “it’s good not to know things.”

I embrace this statement, because there is a lot I don’t know, and also because tonight, as a homework assignment that’s due tomorrow, a homework assignment I have not yet started, we have to find a product and identify three distinctive kinds of data about that product, and write a short paper.

But what is data?

Dick said data is “evidence that interaction has taken place.” However, this does not fit my definition and thus puts me in a strange place.

Further, he said, “Interaction is a relationship (W) between X in a process of Y toward a goal or a purpose of Z.”

W = data
X = things, people, environment (what)
Y = how it takes place (how)
Z = principal, value (why)

Despite having this formula, it’s not clear to me what data is. Data is a relationship? Data is evidence? I only have vague notions about how these are compatible? But I’m confident that before I go to sleep, there will be a paper, which I have produced, that offers my best guess.

It’s likely that my best guess will be blown out of the water tomorrow. I can’t wait.

Mastering Connections

The first thing Dick said was that our masters is a mastery in making connections. This can have many interpretations. I don’t know if it’s what he meant, but in the past two days, mastering connections has meant having a beer with my peers and talking about design, and feeling connected, finally, to an entire group of people who share the same intrigue and passion.

It’s a beautiful thing.