the memory space - exploring future used of web2.0 and mobile internet though design interventions
DESCRIPTION
Presentation for COST 298 Action Conference, Copenhagen May 2009 on research done in Edinburgh on linking online and physical spaces, tags, tagging and the tagscape, and the memory space, specifically applied to 'The Conference'.TRANSCRIPT
The Memory Space – exploring future uses of
Web2.0 and mobile internet though Design
interventions
Memory Space - pic
Conference
Three trends in socio-technical practices
1. The changing use and design of public spaces for a wide range of meetings and social encounters
2. Trends in online sociality – with the emergence of social network systems
3. Use of personal ICTs (pICTS) such as advanced mobile phones connected to computer systems.
A Research Journey
• Penny Travlou: Cultural geographer specializing youth and green space
• Richard Coyne: Professor of architecture, digital design and culture, sound designer
• Mark Wright: Developer of new media tools for artists and designers
• James Stewart: STS researcher specialising in users and business of ICTs
• Henrik Ekeus: Musician and sound designer - the programmer
STS, Design, Geography Framework
• Co-creation and co-determination by actors in innovation network (users, designers, managers, government, non-users)
• Role of ‘designer’ in world of participatory media
• Critical re-evaluation of place and its use and control
• New tools for artists and designers
We blur boundaries of
Design and ResearchUsers and Designers
Real and VirtualFormal and Informal media
Catalysts
Conceptual: BrandTechnical: mobile image
matching
(both thrown out eventually)
From Brand…• Initial project brief – Branded Meeting Places –
design for meaningful social encounter in public places
• Explore the concept of Brand – design, performance, appropriation and expropriation by consumers
• Brand is co-created.• Brands and branded products and places are
resources for identity building and everyday activities.
Technological catalyst
• Image matching system - “unlocks information” on a match.• Used with low quality images• Access though a Mobile gateway• Commercially developed as a marketing tool e.g.
snap2win™ : enhance print media campaigns
• Experimentally developed though game• Cheap way of providing location information
Research By Design
• Design as an active, inventive research strategy compensating for the static ethnographic approach
• Technology and conceptual toolkits• Design interventions involving ‘users as
designers’ or ‘designer-users’. • Not using user-centred design, but allowing
designers to design for themselves• Challenging for Social Scientists.
Interventions• The Intervention is a Dynamite method – mix up
ideas, designers, ‘users’, tools, light touch paper and watch for the rocks to fall down
• The method is then to pick over the rocks– look for interesting and unexpected– See how the rock broke– Talk to the rock breakers afterwards– (Not the everyday, challenge practices)
• ‘Long term’ student projects• Our own short experiments• 2 day Charrettes with multidiscipinary groups and
developers
3 ‘research by design’ projects - 3 avenues of exploration
• Invisible Art -– the visual appropriation of branded space– Expression of ownership and subversion of brandscape
• PhoneTag– Street game ‘Tag/Capture the flag’ with ‘brands’– Brands and brandscapes as objects of play– Strengthening of brand via ludic appropriation
• Comera– Login to branded places and signal social networking systems– exploration of the merging of online and physical branded spaces, fluid movement
of relationships between two domains (mySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook etc)
– New online ‘built’ environments
Unexpected research direction
• Link physical places to new online places e.g. Facebook (Branded Document), Second Life
• Facebook and Twitter good tool for easy experiments with group interactions (2007)
• (Virtual Presence and microblogging)
Virtual Reality, Real Virtuality
The melding of online spaces and networks with ‘physical’ spaces and networks of people.
Practically linked by various electronic gatewaysActually linked by everyday practice and
increasing normalisation Virtual is both the online real and the electronic
imaginaryHow could we explore the future possibilites and
limits of these phemomena.
User built, highly designer environments but somehow rather unsatisfying, and weak use of ‘Brand’ concept
Exploration on Facebook use and other ‘Web2.0’, in various design and interviewed activities…
Methods e.g. Forced use, deliberate subversion
Linking the ‘virtual’ and the real
Tag - sign, brand, logo, link, classifier, badge, mark, stamp, touch, seal, signifier, instruction, command, call to action, identifier, ticket, rule etc etc
Intervention: 2 Day Research by design workshop on ‘the tag’Development of the ‘Vocal Thumbs’ app.
Web2.0, folksonomies and tagging
• Web2.0 – user labelling of information• ‘User created’, searchable , mashable, webs of
meaning.• Appropriation process – we make it ours by
tagging• How do we translate, and integrate these
practices into the ‘physical’ world• Challenges to authority, of interpretation, to our
conception of space and place.
Online space: realtime tracking and laying down of memory trails
Experiment: Public place-based trails through other people’s memories
Virtual places and Memory Spaces
Memory and Place• Memory as social practice cf RAM
– The practices of ‘doing’ memory– What is remembered– Who remembers– The rituals of memory acts– Artefacts of memory
• Memory and Place– Place as an Aid to Memory– Place as the situation of memory making– Place linked to memory acts– Places made by memory acts
Memory Spaces
21st Century Memory Spaces
Gossip and the online branded meeting place
Problem: How to explore relationship of place and the ‘memory space’
• Need a situation where place, social networking, knowledge development can come together, and we can find ‘users’ to participate.
• How does it work, how might it work, limits of usability, privacy, information overload, intrusiveness, usefulness,
Placemaking by Placema®king
Tagging and Connecting toolkit
• Tagging with location information (e.g. image, name, gps, sound)
• Tagging places with images, voice, sounds, video, text
• Sending various types of messages to maps• Leaving and retrieving virtual and real tags• Linking social encounters, ideas, conversations
to places and times and social networks
The Conference– More and more conferences– Many uses of the conference e.g. community building,
knowledge exchange, negotiation– Seldom singular events – occur in series– Lead up and fade away– Distributed in space and time– Information intensive– Relationship intensive– Informal, interstitial just as important as the formal and planned– Relatively poor use of new ICTs: programme, static website,
conference pack, proceedings• Conference attendees and promoters starting to use SNS,
Twitter etc.
Conference Memory Space• Planning
– What to go to, familiarise with place, who else is going, who to meet, avoid etc
• At the event– Navigate city, conference venue programme, social
life. Have conversations, make friends, collect business cards, give papers, discuss papers, promise collaborations, arrange dinner, deal with power dynamics, isolation, I information overload
• Follow up– Remember ideas, new colleagues, send papers, good
times, share photos regrets etc
Meetings and Conferences
Brief: “The Conference”Explore the organisation, experiences,
relationships and products of conferences and workshops
Imagine the ‘future conference’Use any means necessary.
Location-based mobile tools available
• 20 academics/industry researchers invited to provide diversity of age, disciplines, gender, character
• Brainstorming, evidence gathering day with catalysts• Design Brief – tool to cope with and improve the
experience of large conferences in strange cities BY RECORDING THE INFORMAL AND INTERSTITAL ACTIVITIES
• Developers worked over night• Next day testing and reflecting on it’s use.
Features• Personal and collective notes recorded server
with location, name, time• Need to develop practices of recording,
microblogging etc• Strange to pick up messages from the air• Emerging map of use of space, • Possibility to capture “The Rumble”,” the gossip”• Rich resource, but how to use?
Future
• Looking at the pieces• Engage with technical change
– Mobile phones rapidly evolving – iphone, location, internet terminal etc
– SNS and microblogging becoming normalised, but still in period of intense social appropriation
– We must be prepared to be imaginative, not follow scripts of business
• Study of emerging memory practices