Plot | strategic design & innovation agents

Stamen mapping

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Love Pittsburgh through the lens of Stamens watercolour maps. There are some great things going on around here in projects, future projects. We are going to be here for a third year, with new kinds of opportunities. Nick will be heading the MITD work, and Gill will be setting up a design led incubator.

But for now, our senior group managed to step outside of comfortable design spaces and share proposals for future city services, such as homes on the river that follow you, new ways of creating action about change, what car free looks like, and workspaces as terrariums.

Three weeks to go, and these ideas will find a final shape. The pace ramps up, things get made, and I can't wait to see where it ends up.

Tools for modern Living

Had the recent pleasure of working with Jennie Winhall, Ceri Wilmott from Participle, and Ré Dubhthaigh from Radarstation to co-design tools for their Life programme with the superb front-line team they have there in Swindon.

Here's the deal - they've pilotted this programme with families in crisis, the kinds of families the Daily Mail likes to write off, and they work in such a direct and dedicated way that they help the families to make their own changes in their life. These changes and the skills they develop are long lasting, and have a great influence on their lives.

They've got some interesting statistics coming out of the work they do:

+ In 2008, on one family, a minimum of £183,080 was spent by services on engagement, monitoring, reporting and delivery of services, and those costs were expected to continue;

+ In 2009, more than £200,000 was saved based on changes already occurring in the same family after 12 weeks of being on the LIFE programme. These savings would build over time as the family disengage from numerous enforcement actions and other consequences of their previous behaviour;

+ The LIFE programme cost is £10,000 per annum per family based on 2 teams working with 38 families. 

So, I've been helping them to codify some of the work, and with Ré co-create tools that they can use and share on the open source platform they are developing. Some work to help with relationships, others help people to create visions of lives beyond their current thinking. Others focus on planning and making things happen, or strengths people don't know they have already. They are aimed to be lightweight and techniques rather than rigid tools, so that they are animated by the expertise of the Life team workers.

This compliments the work done by Headshift on the Lifeboard - the self-reporting tool, developed to help the team and families document progress in a range of forms, which is being pilotted this summer.

It's a truly brilliant programme, based on some simple principles of helping people create their own change, rather than some of the more dubious experiemnets in design creating behaviour change, of some faux 'nudging' of people to make something happen. Their authentic take on keeping this family-led is refreshing, and addictive in its honesty. What I really enjoy is the lack of judgement on these families, and the close attention to what they say they need (and what they don't say).

A parallel re-designing of service for people is in the article by Dennis Litky on College Unbound.

What great projects! Now that's using design.

Busy, busy times

We've been finishing off our book, which seems to be the vortex of all energy and attention.

Light relief, inspiration for the future and back brain thinking support has come from things like Reboot Britain last week and Media Futures the week before.

What a fabulous time we're in. Business may be horrible for us all, but there's some space being made for stunning thinking!

Have a look at Howard Rheingold's wonderful digital literacies piece from the Reboot event, here is link to the videos. Got to meet the superb River Simple guy too. Stunning!

The New External

Duncan of Jordanstone have asked me to be the External Examiner for the MDes course. I'm thrilled to be a part of it. It's great to be asked, and a fascinating role which is making me think long and hard about design education again. On an initial visit to see students and projects, it's heartwarming to see such a fine mix of people making great inroads into taking design into social and more challenging places.

Here's how they reveal the course structure via a map on the floor. Just a small example of how they have a thoughtful dialogue between staff and students there. Making the workings visual. One of our passions, too.

Next visit, the final projects.

Playing in the Sandbox

We've joined in with BDH on a proposal for the Media Sandbox run by Watershed Bristol, South West Screens, the RDA and ished. It's been fun going to the briefing, and putting our ideas on the table for a change... We find out on the 21st if we've got through. We're looking at an idea called Happy Towns.

More here. It aims to:

Bringing together leading technology, artistic and media talent, Media Sandbox is a new commissioning scheme to support South West companies/organisations to research emerging possibilities in digital media.

These are from the briefing day. Great stuff. It's interesting how these initiatives have different flavours. Different to the Innovation Labs at the BBC. All making things happen.

Plotting Digital Territories

We're reviewing what we've been working on over the past 3 years, and one particular role is being brought in as experts for particular topics, projects and initiatives. We seem to be asked to do a lot of this. Many companies and also design groups. And it's a pleasure, too.

(We enjoy more bringing the expertise out of people, but that's another story)

Here's one we did a while ago – we were invited in on an EU project looking at D1gital Territ0ries - Towards the protection of public and private space in a digital and Ambient Intelligence environment. This was an interdisciplinary group looking at future needs with ambient intelligence. Here's a link to the Digital Territories report (556.5K).

The publication is basically the product of reseach conducted during the last 2 years by our group in the Information Society unit (formerly known as Infomation & Communication Technologies unit) in IPTS, DG JRC. The objective was to develop a framework, in order to provide a more systematic view on the blurring boundaries of public and private digital space, and thus to assist towards addressing the current and emerging concerns regarding privacy, security and identity of people’s online activities; and while appropriately protecting privacy and personal data in the digital world, this framework envisages to promote freedom of expression in the on-line world and enhance the collaboration and communication in the public digital space.

And here's a link to download our response piece, if you're interested - a scrapbook on Digital Territories to think with.

Enjoy!

The Prototype...

Building on  this idea of failing faster, here is what we at Plot believe to be the third of the three core concepts of design thinking — the prototype.

One of the best introductory papers to prototyping was written some time ago by Stephanie Houde and Charlie Hill when they were both working with Apple's Human Interface Group; and it deserves to be more widely known. This is one of those seminal papers that critically informed Plot's way of seeing, thinking, and doing. It provides both a strong rationale for, and outlines the practical constraints around, the prototyping approach. In it they ask a simple question — What do prototypes prototype?

In answer, they describe the different dimensions of design issues that a prototype can address. And even though some of the references to prototyping tools may seem dated (Hypercard anyone?), the issues remain salient and clear for anyone using prototypes as a means to communicate with and through.

Touching Oslo and AHO

Just got back from the Near field workshop gracefully organised by Timo Arnall, Julian Bleeker and Nicolas Nova.

In beautiful Oslo.

A great bunch of people to play with and two days, plus some great students (Einar, Andrea, Castilnano and Jørn Knudsen) with fine prototyping skills, meant we could work rapidly and fluidly - such a luxury! An interesting insight into how interaction designers, engineers and storytellers can work together, and some lovely work was pulled out of the hat in the two days.

A ground level method for assisting blind people travelling through transport systems.

A beer to beer network idea that looked just like a Fischli and Weiss piece. And more.

On the subject of Fischli and Weiss, about how to work better and this is one of my favourite things ever, and is one of the few examples of rules we have in the Plot office. "Do one thing at a time" is the one that speaks to me the most.

Back to the workshop, another group had big ideas about making dating easier, lighter and less scary through icon tags.

And our group's piece on a wand for grumpy old men.

Its such a good format for getting out of your own mindset, getting the benefits of meeting and working out things with new people, and finding the differences are indeed strengths. When I get weary of conferences where posturing is the method, it's a very refreshing format.

And we got to see the Touch table in action and were treated to some Ben Cerveny stimulus!

Gill - all fired up and inspired!

Now showing at the Forum

The recent announcement of RFID tags now down to 5 US cents promises more activity. Hopefully it starts moving in the directions Bruce Sterling (who was here in London fleetingly last week) challenged us with in his intense book Shaping Things , reviewed here .

From the higher education technology review point of view, Rob Van Kranenburg (and others) recent report for the JISC echoes concerns of ensuring trust is built into these systems, and sees the prototype explorations by library services as a good start. You can find the report here.

I've just finished putting the final touches to a proposal in the form of a film — that is, its a film that sets out a proposal for a project on what RFID-enabled service futures could be and should be. Note that gap between could and should. Thats the difference between raw technology and quality design. It's called Everyday Intelligence — and explores 'intimate media' — built on top of RFID enabled service infrastructures. Great insights from Tamara and Chris at live|work , Richard from Prospect, Matt from firsthand., Alex McKie (and her Three Wishes ), Richard Oliver, plus the Radarstation guys Ré and Toke who've just been making and playing with RFID objects for the BBC Future of New Media exhibition this month. They've all spilled out wonderfully diverse and articulate perceptions and reflections.

The reason for making this is not to indulge in an RFID tech-fest, or indeed a 'real user' study; but to get together some evidence about designing interactions with intimate media. The upshot? They need sensitive handling, with new forms of etiquette that we don't yet have, but that are very much within reach. Three themes come up, which I'll explore another time - intimacy, empathy and agency.

It's showing at the RFID networking forum on Thursday 25th May, followed by what I hope is a passionate discussion!

Sorry - no elephants in here

We teamed up with the great London Design Festival to run a full scale seminar and methods workshop on user-centred design of RFID applications, and sadly had to cancel it with too few participants to run it.

Ah well, so it goes. We are learning lessons from trying things out in the open. Perhaps we've got to re-think through what and how it is we stage these things. There's much to explore here, beyond simplistic automation.

We are very keen to talk with people who have the task on their shoulders of bringing RFID applications into the world, and who would prefer it to be one that all of the users of the technology can find delight in.

best, Plot