CPH127

Mark Hurst has asked me to talk about this exciting conference coming up on September 1st in Copenhagen called GelConference which stands for “Good experience Live” and will explore good experience in all its form: business, art, society, technology, and life. I’m sure some of the pilots here would have great things to say or should definitely attend. : ) live blogging!!!

Matteo Penzo and Leandro Agro’ put together a conference called Interaction Frontiers that will take place in Milan on the 16th of June 2006.

The focus of the conference is on future and emotion-based user experiences, both for the screen and through products.

“The adventure of Interaction Frontiers started by raising issues about user experience. This year it will take a step into the future of user experience, with presentations on avatars that enrich the windows of traditional GUIs, digital products with input devices and sensors that can collect information about users’ emotions, and user experiences that leave the screen and move around on wheels and robot legs.”

At the Università Milano-Bicocca, see the conference’s website for more details. If i go ill live blog it

Mark just linked me to a great site about experience economy and design processes. It’s a MUST resource for the many of us, really great and with some thoughtful links an resources too.

I just read an article there about experience economy and creating sense/meaning. It refers to the development of an innovation or an experience concept which involves a process of thinking, doing and reflecting. It states that both parties can certainly work together in this process, and they will book more success through their collaboration than either one could do individually.

Important in this regard are four building blocks that the article find in the work of Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004). They speak of the DART principle:

1. Dialogue
Dialogue means interactivity, being engaged with each other and listening to eachother. Both parties (supplier and customer) intend to accomplish something. It also means that attention is given to the interests of both parties. This requires both a location in which the dialogue can take place and a number of rules with which both parties must comply in order to be able to hold a useful dialogue. The principle of ‘learning by sharing’ holds here: the company learns through the dialogue with the customer and vice versa.

2. Access
The traditional focus

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I’m a heavy Flickr user and have over a few iteration re-discovered the possibilities in sharing photos. It’s amazing how easy it is to use, connect and share networks of interest.

Since New Year I’ve been working on a major innovation project for one of the truly market leaders in the food ingredients industry. As part of the project I’m considering using Flickr as an Anthropological tool, but I’m nor aware of the constraints or great possibilities, but can see a huge potential in using it..

Do you have any experience in doing so? Wanna share? How should I design this? Is it valid?

By the way – I see that Cheskin claims they invented Digital ethnography as a methodology. Did they really?

Since I left my position at the Danish Design Centre I’ve been working with userdriven innovationprocesses at ReD Associates in Copenhagen.

As part of their process in using mapping latent user needs I’ve been studying several articles about context mapping as part of field research work.

I do of course know of the task, but I’m not an Anthropologist, neither have I studied ethnographic’s.

If you work with these processes please share what you do, how you do it.

During the weekend I’ve been reading several articles on the topic

, and as mentioned before F.Sleeswijk Visser et al. have done a really good job in explaining the different stages and phases.

I’ve done a drawing on how F.Sleeswijk sees the different phases where you can see the involvement from different stakeholders.

Does it cover what you experience in your daily work?

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In recent years, various methods and techniques have emerged for mapping the contexts of people’s interaction with products. Designers and researchers use these techniques to gain deeper insight into the needs and dreams of prospective users of new products. As most of these techniques are still under development, there is a lack of practical knowledge about how such studies can be conducted.

Putting these techniques in practice relies on experienced researchers and a good deal
of common sense. Most publications tell you the why behind the generative techniques,
but rarely report practical knowledge about actually conducting studies. Froukje Sleesswijk Visser, Pieter Jan Stappers, Remko Van Lugt and Elizabeth B.-N Sanders has done a great article where they summarize the different theories, despite the few cases I think we could use all the insights possible.

Sanders has put it this way:

So, how do you work with the mapping of experiences? How do you work with gathering an description of latent needs?

I am right now at the NEXT conference in Copenhagen and on stage is Sefan Andrén, senior designer at NikeLab in the US.

He is here to talk about how technology affects clothing. I will be live-blogging, but my battery is low so expect a more detailed description of his presentation later. If you have any questions, shoot them to me in the comments.

Technorati: next2005

Hans Henrik had written earlier asking, in his post, whether branding = experience design was valid or not. I came across this PDF presentation titled "Creating Engaging Brand Experiences at the Cutting-Edge of Culture, Creativity and Technology" by the Brand Experience Lab, and it articulates very clearly the need for Experience Design with respect to creating and maintaing a brand. Andrew Zolli is mentioned on their Board of Advisors and I like these words from their website,

We work exclusively with clients who:

• Understand the economic value of creating compelling, authentic and relevant brand experiences as a key component of their marketing program.
• Explore the most cutting edge, appropriately applicable tools and technologies that help better create these experiences

They also have a blog called The Experience Economist.

Although not a new topic the principles of design are often taken for granted as being largely aesthetic considerations. This is particularly so for people like myself who are from a 2D background.

It is important however to recognise how such principles extend beyond the visual organisation of design elements into the realm of experience design.

In 1997 NC State University, The Center for Universal Design, developed a set of Universal Design principles compiled by advocates of universal design, [listed in alphabetical
order: Bettye Rose Connell, Mike Jones, Ron Mace, Jim Mueller, Abir
Mullick, Elaine Ostroff, Jon Sanford, Ed Steinfeld, Molly Story, and
Gregg Vanderheiden.]

The seven principles are listed as:

principle one: equitable use
principle two: flexibilty in use
principle three: simple and intuitive
principle four: perceptible information
principle five: tolerance for error
principle six: low physical effort
principle seven: size and space for approach and use

A recent posting at the lovely site UIGarden provides more detail. It’s a great site and I think you will enjoy browsing this and other articles.