by David Pereira
Recently mobilized
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Sketch this out
My stencil is alive at graffletopia. Download
This stencil contains reusable shapes and elements for sketching wireframes or wireframing sketches whatever you prefer. This was done after realising that the sketch tools out there where quite closed in the elements they have and also its quite difficult to share your sketches digitally. You probably know what I am talking about. Enjoy
Life on screen in high detail
Just noticed this improvement in Flickr video. better watched fullscreen. Sharp.
An exhibition to travel with
A couple of weeks ago while trying to find something for the weekend I came across Antony’s exhibition, yes from the Anthony and the Jonhsons at the Isis gallery:
“Antony’s artworks open up dream landscapes: often fragmentary in appearance, these images map his dreams and liminal states; polymorphic realms give way to indicated spirits; pen marks and scratches conjure archetypes and invite conscious and unconscious visions to emerge.”
All inviting so far. Next thing to do find the gallery opening times. After not being able to get that information from the site a call will clear the situation. After that I discovered that the Gallery was closed on Sundays. Due to the uncertainty of my location my interlocutor kindly ask me if I wanted the pictures of the exhibition to be sent to my phone. I was amazed and perplexed. Not having the opportunity to go to the exhibition having the pictures in the mobile phone will be definitively a way of seeing the exhibition in miniatures. So I said no.
Bioteams - turning Audiences into communities
Back from the use8 conference on the new frontiers of social media I was curious about Ken Thompson research into turning virtual business teams to work in a more effective way based on group patterns learned from nature - bioteams.
The problems that lead to this research also found in the bioteams manifesto encompass: a) technology adoption issues b) lack of effective communication approaches c) reliance on old traditional work methods d) absence of strong team motivation e) effective cooperative workflows.
The fundamental question that seems to support this research is the recognition on what teams are, between the mechanical approach where teams are predictable and controllable behaving “more like clocks or engines that are assigned to specific tasks and assignments” and “the open recognition of the dynamic and living nature of the team itself as a separate entity from that of its individual members”. As Thomson argues the “Interpretation of the team as a whole, living entity, allows a more insightful interpretation of the most efficient courses of team action.”
Digital Money
Money as a social and cultural driver is more and more a relevant subject this days.
About this matter an interesting workshop is going to happen in University of California, Irvine September 18 and 19, 2008 on the subject Everyday digital money:
Rather than replacing cash and coin, or arriving at one new general-purpose form of money, these changes in ICTs and multiple agendas for innovation in money are accelerating its pluralization. Quasi-moneys and para-currencies operate alongside bank-based electronic moneys as well as telecommunications-based currencies that may have only a tenuous or indirect link to state-issued legal tender. These multiple currencies commingle in people’s wallets, restructuring people’s experience of money as well as their everyday practices of budgeting and accounting.
Not that money is an interesting subject but the experience of earning, using and loosing money without seeing it is the existing reality. In Japan paying a burguer with a mobile phone is already in use: “Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo is teaming up with McDonalds to offer electronic payments and special promotions for mobile users.” Several behaviors will emerge from the use of the mobile to pay for goods. Plastic money is in this sense substituted by a form of personal connection to friends, family, acquaintances and the rest of the world in the daily coordination. And this in fact will produce change.
Debate visualization
You, Me, & The Other Guy (ReConstitution 2008) from Sosolimited on Vimeo.
OpenFrameworks
made with openFrameworks from openFrameworks on Vimeo.
Low-fidelity prototyping
Prototyping is at the core of Interaction Design practice from ideation to the final product. Even though prototypes can be a long way from the intended look and feel they are relevant to the design process for many different reasons. They provide means to learn from the problem, weigh solutions, gather information, evaluate designs, originate feedback and engage the team, clients and stakeholders during the product development life cycle.
In the beginning of a project prototypes are useful to bring together the exploration of concepts with the definition of the system’s behavior. Working with low fidelity prototypes at this stage is a way of empathically understanding a user’s experience of a specific system; in terms of service design it means prototyping the touchpoints so to understand the user journey (or customer experience, if you prefer) and provide a tangible view on what is going to happen. In the case of starting production design it means prototyping existing ideas and designs, test, gather feedback and improve.
Low fidelity prototypes are relevant at the beginning of a project when many ideas or directions need to be tested and discussed. For the team this is an opportunity to experiment with ideas by making them tangible and for the client to have a clear understanding of what the product is going to be right from the early stages.
Prototypes are as much about the solution as they are about the problem. Prototyping a possible solution reflects one’s existent knowledge of the problem. As prototypes start to be tested the problem unfolds and the team becomes more informed about what to think about and the brief to design to. In this learning by doing practice - creating, testing and modifying - prototypes are a resourceful way to gather requirements and inform the next design iteration.
At another level, prototyping is a useful way of working around a user’s mental model and the mental model implicit in the designs. Don Norman elaborates on mental models in the “Design of Everyday Things” as a way to understand how users develop an idea of how a given system works, by what it affords to, what are the patterns of use, what is the outcome of actions, where to go next while doing a specific task.
Alternatively, sketching is also a common approach but in terms of defining the user experience different outcomes will arise in the design process from using sketches or low fidelity prototypes. Bill Buxton refers to this, saying: sketches present questions, prototypes provide answers; sketches suggest, prototypes describe; sketches explore, prototypes refine; sketches propose, prototypes test; sketches provoke, a prototype resolves.
also posted here
designarama
designarama, originally uploaded by dpereira.
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