While digging through some literature and immersing myself in my thesis project topic, I started questioning why I am approaching this particular topic, and more generally, what are most people’s motivations for designing. I was remembering back to the one the first days of Dick Buchanan’s seminar course and how we went around the large table asking us “why are you here?” What is the deep motivation for even choosing to spend time learning about and practicing design. Is it to make the world a better place? Browsing through some of these books at the library, it seems like that’s what a lot of people want to do. From politics to urban planning to philosophy, people are pushing themselves in an area for some reason or another.

These reasons are the principles that guide the types of design projects and the decisions we make within them. Am I here because I want to make “cool stuff” or is it because there are better job prospects with a master’s degree or is it because I truly want to make the world a better place. I’m aiming towards the last one and I’m trying my best, but it’s not always easy.

This brings me to the question of when not to design. If we are truly trying to make the world a better place, there might be times that we tackle a project that ends up a dead end. Maybe there is nothing to invent and people will go about their natural way of doing things and there is nothing you can do to change it. A bit cynical perhaps and it’s probably not the best attitude have. It might come down to the initial approach to the design problem itself. There’s tons of writing and discussion about how problem framing is critical, which might be one way the dead-ends are avoided.

But I wonder, especially when the starting point is a new technology or ability, how many times have there been situations where designers should have just admitted that there is nothing they can do and move on. Or is there always something that can be done, even if it is small. Is there a mobile application hiding in every human issue? A service that people can always attach to and use on a regular basis? With pressure from clients and even within academia to produce results, it’s probably rare. If there is a paper on a project like that, I’d love to read it.

Being three weeks into school, things are a little hectic, but I ended up choosing the two classes I wanted to stick with for the semester:

Making Furniture Interactive
Although it wasn’t a class I even knew about until classes started, this class is essentially about physical computing and embedding electronics into physical objects. This is pretty closely related to things I’m interested in, with regards to the boundaries of physical and digital contexts. It’s nice to actually work on making something that has multiple facets of production (physical, electronic, and computational), but that also makes it difficult. Most of the time success means getting something simply to function rather than making something meaningful. We have been posting the work we do on this blog.

Graduate Typography
After getting a bunch of mixed reviews from people who took the class, I figured I should take it anyway since I want to have a good foundation for visually communication ideas. I’m surprised at how useful it has been so far. I’ve always thought of my problem with typography being a matter of choosing the right font, and the approach that Kristen Hughes takes already has helped me in understanding how to start using type. I’m slowly getting used to the subjective aspects and freedom that is created through constraints.

Thesis Project
I’m glad to say that I feel somewhat confident about what I’m doing with the project. I’ve started with a somewhat formed vision of what is important with my topic and why I want to do it. I’m working on Ad-Hoc assistance and how people can share resources between each other, possibly using mobile devices. I’m going to interview people who are involved in volunteer groups to get a sense of their attitudes and thoughts, and also approach the east end food co-op as a user group that collaborates through helping. I’m hoping the research will help in creating a system to make it easy for regular people to participate in everyday assistance. I think it’s great for me because it puts me outside of my comfort zone and is something I don’t know very much about. The only worry is time.

Thesis Paper
This one’s a little tough. Every week I feel like I’m formulating something worthwhile just to be thrown into doubt and anxiety following our thesis meetings. I feel lost a lot of the time and unsure if what I am writing about and why it’s worth my time and energy. Somewhat like our Seminar II papers last year. Right now I’m looking at how people assign meaning to space resulting in places. It all relates to pervasive technology and something about perception and flow. I’m hoping I can clarify this for myself as soon as possible.

If anything, I’m coming across tons of questions that be thesis topics in themselves. Here’s to hoping that things start coming together, and quickly.

It was hard to write that, but it’s true. It was a very interesting summer and I feel like I learned a lot. It’s weird not to have to be somewhere every morning. I guess I’m starting the transition from working to schooling. I planned to do all my reading over the past three months and have a clear framing of what I wanted to work on for my thesis paper and project. That didn’t really work out, so I’m back to square one re-thinking everything. It’s hard for me to focus down onto one particular situation to spend time on, so I will probably need to start drawing some boundaries. Right now I have some very broad topics for my project, which I will be whittling down into one proper proposal within the next week:

Spontaneity and fluid interactions: One thing that mobile and ubiquitous technology can potentially allow for is interactions that are happen naturally. This could mean products that are simply low-attention or products that let people do what they wish. A simple example is the camera phone. Whereas before people had to intentionally bring a camera somewhere, now things like citizen journalism have emerged where people only have to be at the right place at the right time. The challenge here might be finding a specific context or group of people to design for. So maybe its for journalists, for public events, for the environment, for education. Essentially I would want to find out how people already do spontaneous and fluid things and how a product could be designed that takes advantage of those needs.

Social cooperation: We already have lots of situations where we are in the same physical setting with others and we are cooperating. It would probably look at a type of people: construction workers, restaurant workers, bands, offices, groups of friends, people traveling together, etc… understand how they work and communicate and how a product could serve them. This could also look at people who are strangers and who cooperate. Reminds me a bit of Fred’s goPlay project. That said, it could be related to gaming a bit.

Representation of digital media: I’ve always been interested in how the representation of different media changes and how people interact with it and value it changes as well. Do we as people just adapt to new forms or is there something inherent in older representation that should be preserved? I think it’s fascinating because it’s something that is constantly changing and has an effect on how we interact with each other and society. I would probably focus on one type, like photographs or music. The only “drawback” is that we have kind of dealt with media in two previous projects already, so I might just want to try something else.

Privacy and notifications: With the potential for all kinds of recording of data in the future as well as stuff that is being recorded right now, what are people comfortable with? In terms of privacy… is it something people will just get over and accept that they are already being tracked and traced? Do we have a responsibility as designers to let people know what information is being collected about them regarding the products they use?

In terms of notifications… with all this information, how do we let people know about things? What’s the proper way to let people know something. How much control do you give people over notifications? How are the notifications manifested or visualized? Especially related to relevant contextual information. How do you find out what people care about and what they are willing to be bothered about? Ie, how do you design for those things? An incoming call is a notification. Today we represent that using obnoxious ringtones. A text message is a buzz. How are you notified if your friends is near? How are you notified if your bank account is low. Again, I feel like I need to focus on a specific context of people or situation.

While these are only a few of tons of other topics, I feel like they are the most relevant and have been on my mind. So I hope I can do something interesting with one of them.

Documentation and Process
The other thing I’ve been doing is setting up some system of documentation for my thesis. I was looking at google docs, which is nice, but maybe not as straightforward as a wiki. So I’m using pbwiki for now. The 10mb limit is kind of troublesome, so if I have time I might go through the hassle of installing my own wiki on this server. Otherwise, I’m leaving it open to anyone. I’m a fan of having a transparent process, especially in school.

It’s a little scary relying on an online service, but it might be more trustworthy than my janky laptop that is slowly dieing. Hopefully I’ll post worthwhile consolidations of my notes every so often.

Classes
Another anxiety inducing issue is choosing the two classes to go along with thesis project and paper next year. There are so many good classes to take, but I don’t want to jeopardize my thesis by getting in over my head. I think I might be set on taking Graduate Typography since I find myself always wanting to improve my visual design skills. For the second class it’s a toss up between Jodi Forlizzi’s Advanced Interaction, Shelley Evenson’s Designing for Service, or Osman Khan’s Circuit Bending. They all seem fascinating, so it’s going to be a hard decision.