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FACULDADE DE ARQUITECTURA
UNIVERSIDADE TCNICA DE LISBOA
PR-PROPOSTA DE DOUTORAMENTO
reflection for the digitally born web 2.0. In the end, will it affect our products,
buildings and environments?
I. INTRO
A. WHAT?
INTRODUCTION AND THEME PRESENTATION
As we all might have noticed, everyone is talking about social networks: The ones
who know about the matter, the ones who use it and, last but not the least, the ones
who know someone who uses it.
The truth is that the social networking phenomenon over the internet is a fruit of a
different way of facing the web. The insiders call it Web 2.0 and we take the risk of
assuming the jargon. It is a new generation of information treatment, one step
ahead from the simple metaphor of the physical world which it has been before.
Another parallel issue as to do with interaction. Everyone seems to know what
interaction is! Everyone as an opinion about the matter and thats very good.
Interaction as to do with everything. Everything seems to be a medium through which
we get to everything or everyone.
Designers are talking a lot about interaction design, user-centred design and user
experiences.
Prototyping still means the same today but it is becoming more important and
meaningful. The tools through which a designer can test a product and/or service in
his public, and monitorize that test, are becoming more accessible to him from one
day to the other.
The design community is motivated to be present in this dematerialization of
computation process.
Assuming a two world scenario (tangible vs digital) in a technical sense (we might
come to assume it in a global sense but, besides not being necessary by now, it is
conceptually risky), we can say that there is tangible type of interaction.
Tangible interaction has to do with the way we interact with physical objects and
through which we also interact with each other.
Our purposed theme has to do with the above described main issues: Bringing Web
2.0 social networks an Media to tangibility.
That takes us to the exploration of social networking and the possibility of bringing
web 2.0 exclusive possibilities to the physical world, enriching our daily tangible
existence. It as to do with work, collaboration and professional networking as well as
leisure and cultural networking, friendship and other basic social structures.
It also has to do with architecture, environments and new products conception.
B WHILLING TO
Motivation principles.
One of our main motivations to engage in this PhD research process as to do with the
firm understanding that the designer should be a key part of the computational
development process in all fronts from interaction experiences to 3d product
development being integrated in whole of the process.
It is our firm belief (personal but also defended by some of the authors in some of
our previous readings) that there are really humanistic, socially correct and solid
foundation principles in web 2.0 generation: We are really getting close to each other
in a communicative way. In the opposite way information excess grabs everyone to a
chair impeding ones to actually and physically be with each other.
We probably can assume two types of motivation for engaging this PhD theme:
The first one as to do with the sense of believing in the skills of the designer as a
professional of the intuition, of a very serious and technical intuition that enables
him not to figure out Whats next but to conceptualize and test as many scenarios
and possible visions of the future as possible. That led me to observe the spread out
phenomenon of social networking, collaboration and media in the internet as a good
opportunity to explore the above described personal definition of the social mission of
design:
Why cant we bring this positive values to our physical world, to our old-fashioned
tangible social relations?
Increasingly we find ourselves designing for complex interaction that integrate hardware
and software, spaces and services. A design project today is likely to involve connected
products such as mobile digital devices, or systems of llinked design elements, such as
those comprising a train journey or a remote banking transaction
(Suri 2003)
The other motivation is technical and it has to do with the fantastic world of the new
prototyping tools that designers can now easily bring to their workshop, studio or
atelier. Most physical computing tools are based on microcontrolers with which we
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Our bibliography will include the reference authors of this field of study and the ones
that dedicated themselves to the study of the phenomenon over the internet.
This literary studies will pursue a more ethical approach seeking for a proper notion
and framework of the above mentioned improvements.
At the moment we can say that social networking is a solid phenomenon. What we
are not sure about the real implications and impact for future generations. We also
think design might have a word to say by not assuming any of the status quo and
critically experimenting other approaches.
The Idea of ubiquitous computing is to move away from the desktop toward multiple devices. Rather than
thinking about using a computer, you do think about using a room, a world, or a whole environment of
computers. You move from simple one-to-one interactions toward more implicit interaction (Moggridge
2007)
graphical user interface (GUI) popularized by Apple was wildly successful, widely copied
and is now the standart interface of almost all personal computers. Thanks to this
interface people from all walks of life use computers.
Now we need to make computers for the rest of you We need computers that respond
to the rest of your body and the rest of your world. GUI technology allows you to drag and
drop, but it wont notice if you twist and shout. Its made it easy to open a folder and start
a program, but wed like a computer to be able to open a door or start a car. Personal
computers are evolved in an Office environment in which you sit your butt, moving only
your fingers, entering and receiving information censored by your conscious mind. That
is not your whole life, and probably not even the best part. We need to think about
computers that sense more of your body, serve you in more places and convey physical
expression in addiction to information.
(Sullivan & Igoe 2004)
Computers left the exclusive and restrict computer science territory and became
friendly with everyone that wanted and could.
Now we might be assisting to a re-materialization of computation through already
referred Ubiquitous Computing. It is nothing new, but it is a persisting and never
solved question. It is a concept that began in the mind of visionaries like Mark
Weiser: The question Weiser was asking was, How can we make computers become invisible? How
can we interact with environments rather than interacting with computers, where the computers now
become a medium through which we interact? (Moggridge 2007)
We will seek this by applying it to the way we socially interact today, questioning how
Ubiquitous Computing can change that.
(Buxton 2007) understands design as crucial but yet neglected part of the process.
He2, as many others like (Lawson & Dorst 2009) identify the fuzzy definition for the
word design as a major problem for the effective public agreement and recognition of
Designs importance in processes and decision taking in organizations and
multidisciplinary projects.
(Buxton 2007)3 brings sketching to discussion in a broad sense and as the most
distinctive designers speciality. That broad sense goes from the actual act of drawing
sketches to 3d or physical computer prototyping to baking cakes or folding paper. He
also emphasizes the value of the divergent and speculative capacity of thinking and
communicating trough sketching.
(Lawson & Dorst 2009) abandon design and present a multifaceted scope of able to
define skins. With a less provocative speech they define designer as trained to
seeing in multiple ways or seeing as () Designers are used to performing this little
dance around a problem, taking stabs from different sides. This may sound chaotic
but if done well it allows one to build up an integrated image of design itself, and
hope to end up with an integrated image of design.
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Seeking for a more synthetic way of framing our proposal and the pertinence of this
kind of work as design knowledge we found DRM definition sufficiently pragmatic
and broad to assume it as fundamental for the construction of our design theories:
Many definitions of design exist, very much depending on the culture and background
of the author. When we speak in this book about design, we refer to those activities that
actually generate and develop a product from a need, product idea or technology to full
documentation needed to realise the product and to fulfil the perceived needs of the
user and other stakeholders. The perceived need my be social (e.g., transportation
means) as much as economic (e.g., manufacturing systems for mass production) The
impulse to start such process can come from: the market, (); internal needs of product
development enterprises, (); and from other sources ().
The design process can be undertaken by individuals, industry, or a community ().The
solution resulting from these practices can be both engineering and non-engineering
nature, and may be physical (), virtual () or a combination of both . In these sense
the term product (), signifies a much broader concept than conjured up by its
commonly perceived image ()
(Blessing & Chakrabarti 2009)
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This means that we have to learn how a computer converts the changes in energy given
off by our bodies, in the form of heat, light, sound, and so forth, into changing electronic
signals that it can read interpret. We learn about the sensors that do this, and about very
simple computers, called microcontrollers, that read sensors and convert their output
into data. Finally, we learn how microcontrollers communicate with other computers.
Physical computing takes a hands-on approach, which means that you spend a lot of
time building circuits, soldering, writing programs, building structures to hold sensors
and controls, and figuring out how best to make all of these things relate to a person's
expression.
(Igoe 2008)
Physical computing also takes us to two important definitions. First prototype it self
easily defined as a representation of a final artefact before his existence (Moggridge
2007). The same author also takes us to what might come to define our testing ideas
and concepts methods, base on physical computing, which is experience
prototyping. It adds experimental use to prototyping accompanied by proper
observation methods.
5. The Internet | The World Wide Web | Web 2.0
There are real and permanent social dilemmas, which can only be optimized for, never
completely solved. The human social repertoire includes many such optimizations which
social tools can amplify
(Shirky 2009)
Groups of people are complex, in ways what make those groups hard to form and hard
to sustain; much of the shape of traditional institutions is a response to those difficulties.
New social tools relieve some of those burdens, allowing for new kinds of group-forming,
like using simple sharing to anchor the creation of new groups
(Shirky 2009)
Contextualizing the web 2.0 social networking and media phenomenon leads us to
a necessary pre-conceptualization. We found in (Moggridge 2007) who, as already
mentioned above, interviewed Terry Winograd and from whom resulted the article
The Internet or the Web?. It introduces the theme by pointing two main differences
between the two:
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Even though it might be technically considered jargon Web 2.0 is a clear and well
defined concept:
"Web 2.0" refers to web development and web design that facilitates interactive
information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design[1] and collaboration on the
World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted
services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs,
mashups and folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or
to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are
limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them.
The term is closely associated with Tim O'Reilly because of the O'Reilly Media Web 2.0
conference in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it
does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but rather to cumulative
changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web. Whether Web 2.0
is qualitatively different from prior web technologies has been challenged by World Wide
Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee who called the term a "piece of jargon.
(Wikipedia n.d.)
Phenomenons of huge success like the social networking and the social media are
also unavoidable design issues.
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The collaborative idea of the construction of concepts and sharing of knowledge and
the given chance of altering ourselves social relationships with a couple of mouse
clics are obviously changing the world:
Organized collaboration can produce results beyond the achievements of ad hoc
cooperation. Just look at any of hundreds of open source projects (...). The peer
producers who create stuff gain credit, status, reputation, enjoyment, satisfaction, and
experience. (...) the tools of online collaboration support the communal style of
production that shuns the capitalistic investitors and keeps ownership in the hands of
the workers, and to some extent those of the consuming masses.
(Kelly 2009)
Of course all this themes have their own social, economic and psychological impact.
We will focus our attention and research efforts in the social impact and sketch,
prototype and if pertinent implement products and experiences that we hope will be
a real contribution to design knowledge.
Our main research questions rely on the combination of the themes described
above.
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D. WHAT IF IT IS POSSIBLE?
Research Questions
Research question 1:
-
Can design of tangible social interaction experiences bring Web 2.0 social networking
and media to the physical world?
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E. IF WE DO IT
Research aims
Based upon two already referred basic assumptions:
1.
2.
We aim to:
Generate debate: designers shouldnt be technology preachers nor the opposite.
They have the ethical mission of questioning intervening through their projects.
Leave a solid framework of analysis of the theme but most of all a good set of
recommendations in the form of god and successfully accomplished and produced
projects.
Last but not the least,
to get to have the chance of saying that besides contributing to knowledge we came
up with strategies to reinforce fruition of the good old tangible relationships.
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B. PREVIOUS RESEARCH
There are many interactive design user experiences we can study and adapt further
on (as referred before). Assuming our main field of study as the combination of both
social networking and tangible interaction studies there were few findings in our
previous literary research.
In a more late sense, but also conscious of the social impact of tangible interaction
we find Hiroshi Ishii, professor of the Tangible Media Group at MIT Media
Laboratory. His team seeks to change the painted bits of GUIs to tangible bits
by giving physical form to digital information (Moggridge 2007).
Ishii is also responsible for clearly defining TUI (tangible user interface) that, as
already shown before, opposes to the graphic digital form of interface that we know
(GUI). One of the definitions of TUI has to do with its own conceptual weaknesses
assumed by Ishi when mentioning the necessity of intangible representation in
tangible interfaces and the necessity of multiple forms of control of the information,
especially multiplex control in his interview for Moggridge (2007).
TUIs will augment the real physical world by coupling digital information to everyday
physical objects and enviroments. (Ishii & Ullmer 1997).
The same authors identified, back 1997, three key concepts on they pursuit of
making digital information tangible:
1) Interactive Surfaces: Transformation of each surface within architectural space
(e.g., walls, desktops, ceilings, doors, windows) into an active interface between the
physical and virtual worlds;
2) Coupling of Bits and Atoms: Seamless coupling of everyday graspable objects
(e.g., cards, books, models) with the digital information that pertains to them; and
3) Ambient Media: Use of ambient media such as sound, light, airflow, and water
movement for background interfaces with cyberspace at the periphery of human
perception.
(Ishii & Ullmer 1997)
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Well study them as the mean to get to and not to do an exclusive research about it.
Our specifical search for tangible social interacion led us in the first place to a project
which was a true revelation for our path towards the purposed research questions:
(Jennings 2005) has a clear theorethical framework leading towards Constructed
Narratives A Tangible Social Interface which seeks pure socialization through a
collaborative ludic task. The experience was programmed for enviroments where the
the necesssary proximity bettwen people is not usual to occur. So, it became more
simpler to identify social interaction when proximity and socialization were
accomplished and verified.
Most of the other examples found are not directly linked to social interaction as a
project or research aim. Anyway they can be assumed as precious case-studies
cause most of them are embbebed in the public sphere witch represents a large
percentage of our physical space.
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7. FINAL REPORTS
8. The Literary Review and the Reports Analysis will have the ANSWER FOR
RESEARCH QUESTIONS.
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PROVISIONAL CALENDER
2009
OCT
NOV
2010
DEC
JAN
FEB
MAR APR
MAI
JUN
JUL
2011
AGO
SET
OCT
NOV
DEC
JAN
FEB
MAR APR
MAI
JUN
JUL
WRITTING PROCESS
LITERARY REVIEW
SOCIAL NETWORKING EMPIRIC ANALYSIS
SOCIAL NETWORKS GRID
TECNHNICAL PREPARATION
CONCEPTS
SKETCHING +
PROTOTYPING
CONSTRAINTS
LABORATORY
TESTING
+
OBSERVATION
REPORTING
EXPERTS REVIEW
USERS REVIEW
FINAL CONCLUSIONS
AGO
SET
AI
(Igoe 2007)
(Banzi 2008)
(Wensveen et al. 2000)
(Ehn et al. 2004)(Candy 2006)
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METHODOLOGY DIAGRAM
INTERACTION DESIGN
WEB 2.O
TANGIBLE
INTERACTION
SOCIAL MEDIA
&NETWORKING
LITERARY REVIEW
SOCIAL NETWORKING EMPIRIC ANALYSIS
SOCIAL NETWORKS GRID
CONCEPTS
DESIGN PROBES
CONSTRAINTS
M COLLABORATIVE NETWORK
WIKIMUSEUM
FEELINGS BOOKMARKING CLOTHES
MY FARM
SOCIAL INTERACTION POETHIC GAME
TESTING
+
OBSERVATION
REPORT 1
VIDEO
DIRECT OBSERVATION
DESCRIPTIONS
EXPERTS REVIEW
USERS REVIEW
FINAL REPORTS
ANSWERS
SKETCHING +
PROTOTYPING
REFERENCES
Banzi, M., 2008. Getting Started with Arduino Ill., Make Books.
Blessing, L.T. & Chakrabarti, A., 2009. DRM, a Design Research Methodology 1st
ed., Springer.
Buxton, B., 2007. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the
Right Design, Morgan Kaufmann.
Candy, L., 2006. Practice Based Research: A Guide, Sydney: University of
Technology.
Ehn, P. et al. eds., 2004. DESIGN [X] RESEARCH: essays on Interaction Design
as knowledge construction, Malm: Malm University Press.
IDII, 2006. Iteraction Design Institute Ivrea - General View - Tomorrow's Servives.
Available at: http://interactionivrea.org/en/projects/overview/index.asp
[Accessed August 30, 2009].
Igoe, T., 2007. Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical
Objects illustrated edition., Make Books.
Igoe, T., 2008. Phys Comp Notes: The FAQs of Physical Computing. Available at:
http://tigoe.net/pcomp/blog/archives/notes/000169.shtml [Accessed July
29, 2009].
Ishii, H. & Ullmer, B., 1997. Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between
People, Bits and Atoms. Available at:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.46.4416
[Accessed September 8, 2009].
Jennings, P., 2005. Constructed narratives a tangible social interface. In
Proceedings of the 5th conference on Creativity \& cognition. London,
United Kingdom: ACM, pp. 263-266. Available at:
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1056268#abstract [Accessed
September 3, 2009].
Kelly, K., 2009. The New Socialism. Wire Magazine, 17(06), 116-121.
Lawson, B. & Dorst, K., 2009. Design Expertise, Architectural Press.
Mattelmaki, T., 2006. Design Probes. Taideteollinen korkeakoulu.
Moggridge, B., 2007. Designing Interactions 1st ed., The MIT Press.
Shirky, C., 2009. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without
Organizations Reprint., Penguin (Non-Classics).
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