crunchy, crispy pop metaphysics

This is the first time we have instructed students to use stop motion, so the project was partly an experiment in itself. In addition we wanted to find out more about the potentials and challenges of using stop motion for prototyping navimation.

Digital video for user-centred co-design is an emerging field of design, gaining increasing interest in both industry and academia. It merges the traditions of design ethnography, participatory design, interaction analysis, scenario-based design, and usability studies into an integrated approach, which values the designer’s capacity to study and change the world creatively.

A significant challenge in interaction design practice is to express, shape and communicate the behavior of an intended design. Time-based media such as video can be a good choice for that purpose. This compendium presents a number of approaches to video as an expressive medium for interaction design.

There are good reasons why science fiction ideas percolate through culture like background radiation, instead of being baldly trotted out front and center. Archigram’s sci-fi flavored architecture-fiction was never commercially practical, it wasn’t meant to be, but it was usefully provocative: while pretending to be all zap-pow, pop-art and spacey, Archigram was chopping the future’s wood and hauling its water. That’s why their battlesuit ideas have survived for forty years.

Computing power is an integrated part of our physical environment, and since our physical environment is three-dimensional, the virtual studio technology, with its unique potential for visualizing digital 3D objects and environments along with physical objects, offers an obvious path to pursue in order to envision future usage scenarios in the domain of pervasive computing. We label the work method virtual video prototyping, which grew out of a number of information systems design techniques along with approaches to visualization in the field of architecture and set design. We present a collection of virtual video prototyping cases and use them as the platform for a discussion, which pinpoint advantages and disadvantages of working with virtual video prototyping as a tool for communication, experimentation and reflection in the design process. Based on more than ten cases we have made the observations that virtual video prototypes 1) are a powerful medium of communication in development teams and for communication with industry partners and potential investors, 2) support both testing and generating ideas 3) are particular suited for addressing spatial issues and new ways of interacting. In addition practical use of virtual video prototypes has indicated the need to take into account some critical issues including a) production resources, b) hand-on experience, and c) the seductive power of virtual video prototypes.

The architecture of science fiction has profoundly changed urban design. When building cities of the future, our best guides may be places like comic book megalopolises Mega-City-1 or Transmet.

The new directions that I am looking at revolve around the idea of simulation. My last post looked at how construction and fabrication technologies are used to simulate the elements of building construction and use. In entertainment design the elements of space are a means to a different end – the simulation of experience. As a result (and thank goodness!) people are at the centre of the action.

The technique has clearly some disadvantages – it is for example hard to make subtle movements and deal with details and many elements at the same time. However, it seems especially suited for 3D motion sketching, since this often requires a lot of time and skills to do on a computer.

Thesis 25: Everyware has already staked a claim on our visual imaginary, which in turn exerts a surprising influence on the development of technology.

The idea of using an existing character to fill out the design thinking exercises may not produce better design, but it may produce more effective design communication.

In the context of design, the conceptual model as genotype rather than prototype could allow it to function more abstractly by deflecting attention from an aesthetics of construction to an aesthetics of use.

It’s interesting to see how most of these notions have by now been implemented, either by Apple itself or by various other hard and software providers.

Why didn’t Philips’ Visions of the Future turn into winning products?

Some people (they are wrong) say design is about solving problems. Obviously designers do solve problems, but then so do dentists. Design is about cultural invention.

Sometimes the filmmakers—the science fiction writers—imagine stuff before the engineers do, and there is a feedback loop between fiction and science that seems to be influencing each other,

Design seeks out ways to jump over its own conceptual walls-scenarios, user observation, brainstorming, rapid prototyping, critical design, speculative design. There is even “experience design,” which is surely the most imperial, most gaseous, most spectral form of design yet invented.

Simon’s “critical artefact” methodology is based on the idea that provocative design concepts can stimulate people to debate their needs and desires in a more open way, allowing the designer to identify new concepts.

The term critical design was popularised in Anthony Dunne’s book Hertzian Tales. In it Dunne introduces the idea of product design and electronic objects fusing into critical design where the object functions as critique. Critical design has since been adopted as an umbrella term for any type of design practice which suggests that design offers possibilities beyond solving design problems.

[We start by] mapping assumptions within and outside of an organisation about the future, and animate these ideas as tangible evidence of the future. Both negative and aspirational futures are embodied as designed touch-points. We focus as much on the effects of possible designs as the design of the service itself.

Unlike traditional design, Critical Design is focussing on the communication of an idea rather the development of a product or service. Therefore any constraints that a designer might find in developing a product or service, such as budget, limited materials, time, physics, difficult clients, are for a Critical Designer only constraints in terms of the presentation of the idea. In a way, Critical design seems to need to set itself free of the constraints, and focus only on a thematic constraint so that it is able to be truly critical.

Critical design, popularized by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, uses designed artifacts as an embodied critique or commentary on consumer culture. Both the designed artifact (and subsequent use) and the process of designing such an artifact causes reflection on existing values, mores, and practices in a culture.

By exploring the relationship between the scientific community and the entertainment industry in the construction of fictional films, this paper investigates the impact that fictional representations, created with the assistance of scientists, have on the construction of scientific knowledge and the public understanding of science.

The Science & Entertainment Exchange is a program of the National Academy of Sciences that provides entertainment industry professionals with access to top scientists and engineers to help bring the reality of cutting-edge science to creative and engaging storylines.

I would say some representations of science can significantly impact public understanding,” for better and for worse, Kirby says. He views 2000’s Mission to Mars as “harmful,” perpetuating a bogus idea in the public mind because the film depicted as real the geological feature known as the Face on Mars, which actually is an optical illusion.

Because of the great persuasive power that film can thus impart to relatively few scientists, it is important to understand the role of fictional films in science communication and scientific practice. The battleground over scientific ideas is not limited to scientific meetings and publications, or even to traditional popularizing realms such as documentaries and news articles. Any time a scientist discusses, or portrays, scientific information, he or she is engaged in an act of persuasion.

*On the other hand, maybe this is the way that “design fiction” is destined to look. My feeling is that good “design fiction” ought to be like good “critical design,” it ought to be subtle and taut and aimed at provoking some cognitive dissonance. But maybe that’s a niche effort doomed to blow right over most people’s heads. Scifi is pop culture. Most design guys I know, who are into science fiction, like big, glossy, popular, sci-fi movies and television shows. They’re not mulling over JG Ballard’s architectural thinking on their way to the Dunne and Raby exhibit.

New digital design tools have given birth to something new, potentially wonderful, often silly, and dare I say even “green”: the transition from the “experience of the artifact” to the “consumption of the idea of the artifact.