Internet Creatives Knowledge Day
This Friday Jeroen Visser organized the knowledge day for the mailing list of Dutch internet creatives in Delft. Various speakers from the creative internet disciplines presented on their work and ideas.
I met Jeroen at last year’s Reboot and I couldn’t miss this interesting and affordable event right in my backyard.
Design research in branding
André Weenink of design firm Booreiland was the first presenter and he presented his findings on research in design branding by applying generative techniques.
His research forced on getting insight into the user experience of customers of Sissy Boy and he did this by having a representative set of customers of the company create artefacts that they thought were Sissy Boy.
There are several techniques to do design research: question customers with interviews, questionnaires or other means, observe customers in construed or natural surroundings and deduce principles from their behaviour. André opted for a third technique to let his participants create their ideal vision and in doing so communicate with their experience.
The things that were generated were diaries, graphics, collages and other objects in workshops with the selected customers. From the stuff that was created principles and patterns were deduced by André which he then translated in a brand identity and a visual vocabulary that could be used by Sissy Boy in their future communications.
The advantages of these generative techniques are that they are fun, they allow for empathy with the user and co-creation with users and different departments of the company. The result is not a boring report which is thrown over the fence but a rich set of human created data.
Downsides are that it is an intensive process involving a lot of effort and creating a lot of material that needs to be synthesized. The reach is limited by the selection of the number of people, physical presence required for some steps and no use of online facilities.
One of the questions that André asked the audience was how to use online means within a process such as this. This discussion quickly strayed to various designers being very concerned by the integrity of their design process and the influence of the designer and the various departments in the company on the end product.
Generative techniques in interaction design
I think it is a more interesting question to ask how to use generative techniques in interaction design for the web. A lot of design for the web uses the first two techniques, question and observe, to gain insight into the requirements and wishes of their users. Users are observed and then interaction designers, web designers and developers fit what they have seen into the structures they are familiar with.
I haven’t heard of generative techniques being applied so much. Having users create their ideal vision of a website seem to me to be an opportunity to create websites which are better attuned to users’ wishes and open to free and fun interaction.
A generative technique for webdesign would be to ask users what they would like a website to do for them. So what kind of a web experience would users design if they could do it themselves? I think the results of such a workshop with prospective users could be very interesting and revealing. Especially because users are in no way constrained by technical feasability and only somewhat by pre-existing concepts.
Probably none of the resulting concepts could be created outright but the design synthesis of those user wishes would probably result in a website that is better attuned to users and more fun for them to use. Users increasingly want to make their own web experiences and at least have a say in them. Most websites currently are very boring and constrain themselves to what is easy to create in rails. I think this is a gap that should be bridged.
Flash and HTML, tips for a happy marriage
Bob Corporaal showed that since Flash8 the external interface and javascript bridge part enable reliable and direct communication between Flash and the DOM. He then proceeded to show how you can use communication with javascript to solve gross deficiencies in Flash.
I see how the techniques he demonstrated fix real problems but mostly these are problems not worth having. Flash is so ridiculously crippled that by using it you break pretty much everything: text selection, scolling, text resizing to name just a few extremely basic features which are missing in Flash. By talking to the DOM it is possible to fix these problems piecemeal but you can never be sure you’ve got every one of them. Most regular Flash developers don’t even bother with fixing the basic stuff let alone make an accessible and progressively enhanced version. To sum it up: things which are not easy to do in your platform are essentially absent.
Mark Wubben then showed an example of progressive enhancement using Flash and sIFR to display custom fonts on pages. Mark himself admits that it is a hack and should be used sparingly, but at least he takes care to have the Flash break as few things as possible. Web fonts are already working in current builds of Safari and Opera and display any font you like using native rendering. There is some discussion going on about font piracy but that is mostly academic.
IC Pixel Art
Arjan Westerdiep gave a presentation on how he creates pixelart. You can see some of his work on his site Drububu.
Curious was that he had written a C program to calculate the differences between subsequent frames of his animations to save on space so as not to use Quicktime. I am pretty sure that Quicktime with most current codecs already implements its own highly optimized version of differential image compression or motion compensated video encoding but this presentation was not really for asking about whys.
Why do people create?
Gert Hans Berghuis from internet firm Fabrique talked about the rationales for user generated content.
He listed a number of reasons to the question: Why do people generate content?
- because they need something
- because of curiosity
- to come to terms with emotions
- to come to terms with their surroundings
- to do good, to contribute
- for recognition
- to be part of a group or greater whole
- to show off knowledge/skills
- to reflect
- to make money
This is a pretty generic list of motivations which can be used to explain many actions including why people create works.
He also discussed intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. It is believed that adding an extrinsic motivation for something for which there was an intrinsic motivation, kills the intrinsic part. Some sites which rely on crowdsourcing have tried to incorporate some sort of revenue sharing to keep the users happy, but these systems both destroy intrinsic motivation and stimulate gaming the rules.
I think anybody creating content on a website should keep in mind that they are in fact sharecropping on somebody else’s land and they have hardly any standing if the owner of the lands decides to sell it or make broad sweeping changes. Sites usually try to make their users happy, but sometimes different motivations can take over. Users have the single recourse of taking their activities elsewhere, though currently it is the question if they can take their data with them.
That session was the last after which the event was concluded with drinks and dinner.
Kars http://leapfrog.nl
March 3rd, 2008Hi Alper. I’ve seen generative techniques used in early phases of web
design. These techniques don’t focus on the low level interfaces that
people would like to have, but on the high level experience they want.
One such exercise would be to have people design the physical box the
website would come in if it were sold in a store. The resulting boxes
would be interpreted by design researchers in order to synthesize what
the actual experience is that people want. [1]
I haven’t seen many examples of explicitly asking people about what
low level interfaces people would like. Personally, when it comes to
this aspect of generative design, I am more interested in facilitating
emergent structures and behaviours using the design of rule sets. This
in a nutshell was what my Playful IAs presentation was all about. I
think this is a powerful approach to generative, collaborative design
because people’s desires are deduced implicitly, in stead of
explicitly. [2]
In my experience, people have a hard time articulating what it is they
really need, particularly when they are not ‘experts’. They lack a
language. Were we to provide them with such a language however, things
would be different. Essentially this is what Alexander aimed to
provide in the domain of architecture with A Pattern Language.
Patterns in interaction design have so far been aimed at
practitioners, not novices. This needs to change. [3]
[1] http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/using-design-games
[2] http://leapfrog.nl/blog/archives/2007/09/25/playful-ias-slides-for-my-euro-ia-summit-2007-talk/
[3] http://www.patternlanguage.com/
alper http://www.alper.nl
March 3rd, 2008Thanks Kars, I’ll read up on the links you’ve provided.
Bob Corporaal http://reefscape.net
March 3rd, 2008Too bad I could not convince you of the usefullnes of the techniques I discussed. You are right that Flash has some limitations, then again so has HTML or any other technology for that matter.
As with any technology there are right and wrong applications and implementations. A good designer will try to find a balance in all that to best serve the needs of the user.
What I tried to show is that by using the communication between Flash & Javascript many limitations can be taken away and usability and accessibility can be enhanced. In most cases all it takes is just a few lines of code. And more and more designers/developers are doing this. In many cases people are not aware that this can be done and to do my small part in this education I did my talk on this subject.
As for the font piracy discussion being academic, it is most certainly not. Almost all commercial fonts have licenses restricting distribution and using these fonts with css3 is in violation of these licenses. Essentially you are placing a fully re-usable font to access for everybody. So this is of great concern to font foundries.
I hope this problem will be solved in the near future as the web could certainly use some better typography.
Andre http://www.booreiland.nl
March 3rd, 2008Hi Alper,
I guess I succeeded in getting my word across. Or at least to one person
However your question “So what kind of a web experience would users design if they could do it themselves?” is not an interesting one. I don’t think it is wise to let users (as opposite to designers) design their own product, website or, more general, an experience. They can tell about their current interactions and in which context this happens. They can even give some hints of their latent dreams.
So I agree with what Kars states. No user will ever tell you what experience he will use in the future. Most of the time people have no clue of their own experience world. And even if so, the truth lies in the future. At best users help by to provide some insights.
It is a matter of (design) intelligence and something as vision to bend insights into something meaningfull.
After all, it is the designer who designs and generally users are not particular talented designers.
alper http://www.alper.nl
March 4th, 2008@Bob: I don’t have a problem with websites that use progressive enhancement and Flash to provide a better experience. You have demonstrated that a lot is possible and you have probably made an impression on your audience.
The problem however is still there because of these reasons:
There are not some limitations in Flash, there are a great many. Many things are either broken or completely different. There need to be easy and well known ways to fix every one of them.
People contracting to have Flash sites built, usually care more about visual bells and whistles than having a usable site and budget accordingly.
Because of this many Flash developers lack the incentive and/or the knowledge to build a usable site.
Until this situation is amended, users will suffer.
And about font piracy: everybody can put a font on a public webserver, many will. Calling those people ‘pirates’ and/or suing them will not fix the problem.
If the font people are not as stupid as the music people, they will probably figure out a solution.
@Andre: I don’t think users should design their own experiences, of course there’s a job for designers.
But having users create their own desired experience and interactions, will probably give you a lot of insight in what they want and how they think about the situation.