The Imaginarium

Lomo - first date

2012-02-01T21:52:00.001Z

Flirting with Lomo

2012-01-27T08:22:00.000Z

It looks like this year will be defined by big projects looking at digital knowledge exchange tools and digital personalisation (Director of KE for a £5m centre on KE between arts and creative industries) (see here)

In response to this I think it's time to rediscover my analogue side. I realised that my trusty Lomo AC camera has been battered, fixed with Superglue and generally abused for 20 years now and it is time for it to go into retirement.

Cue a new AC Wide Lomo. This has some key advantages over my old AC, for one a light metering system that works, but also it's possible to change the format of the pictures from a blog friendly square, to a wide landscape, to an odd half-frame from juxtaposition of images. Also invested in a Lomokino, a cross between a limo am era and a super8 camera. Resilts posted soon but in the mean time some of my earlier Lomographs to wet your appetite.

All this is going to provide the perfect antidote to the clinical images we expect to capture with our new Canon SD. The cost? Well, just spent £90 on film, the rest we will just label 'worth it'.

A Christmas Easter Egg (formerly The Joy of Finger Puppets)

2011-12-23T04:02:00.000Z

For the most part I find the Muppets very much an acquired taste, but there is one exception. The Muppet Christmas Carol is a classic that trots out every year on UK TV. This is charming throughout, with Michael Caine a suitable crusty foil (but let’s try and forget the singing). The characters are pretty rounded, certainly as developed as the many other remakes and versions.My favourite part is something you probably don’t notice, even if you’re very familiar with the film. The reason for this post is to pass on this hidden gem. Look out for the scene where the two charitable fellows approach Scrooge. When Beaker and the Professor are thrown out, you can very clearly see Beaker giving what can only be described as 'the finger'. Thanks to Empire magazine for publishing this last year, now you all have the ultimate fall back present, the Muppet Christmas Carol meme.

Arguemented Reality

2011-12-16T10:00:00.000Z

I was at a workshop earlier this week starting the bid writing process for groups interested in participating in the Catalyst project. This is a £1.8 million project looking at citizen-led innovation in the Lancaster area . The workshop brought together a wide range of participants from local interest groups, city and county council and academics.

The process is ongoing but one group will receive funding for the first of 6 research sprints the project will fund with results of this first round in January but I could not resist pulling out this picture. I don`t want to know if this was accidental or intentional, I`m just enjoying the possibilities of a rhetoric based digital reality - Richard Buchanan will be most pleased.

Come on feel the noise..

2011-11-01T13:22:00.000Z

I was at a very interesting presentation as part of Dutch Design week recently at the Raadzaal Designhuis in Eindhoven. In particular there was a good (but slightly long) presentation given by Victor van der Chijs, Managing Director, Partner OMA a very large Dutch architectural firm. This was given in a very highly designed space with white painted wooden chairs (shown here). Unfortunately there were nailed together rather than screwed and as we know nailed together wood squeaks as it moves. This had an interesting side effect, as the talk proceeded and a certain amount of ‘numb-bum’ set in people started to move in their seats. Predictable the chairs started to make more and more noise until towards the end of the talk the noise was really getting intrusive. This was a nice natural feedback or governor for the presenter.

Following up on this one section of the presentation was in Dutch (with everything else in English), it really gave a different feel to the event, placing it directly in a specific national context rather than the more usual homogenous ‘euro-english’. For me it really helped distinguished the event from the norm, as well as making me feel appropriately guilty about my mono-lingual perspective.

Galácticos at rest

2011-11-01T11:20:00.000Z

At the start of the IASDR conference I found myself in heady company, here we have Prof. Nigel Cross (editor of Design Studies) Lin-Lin (editor of International Journal of Design) and Prof. Rahel Cooper (editor The Design Journal) and finally Dr. Kun-pyo Lee, Executive VP and Head of Corporate Design in LG. What was the conversation about…sorry sworn to secrecy

Designing as Validation in Design Research - no really that was the proposal

2011-11-01T11:06:00.003Z

Watched an interesting keynote at the IASDR conference today by Kristina Höök from the Mobile Life Centre, the presentation called Move that Body. Split into two components, the first was an exposition of the activates of Mobile Life. Hook presented a process that developed an idea of strong concepts, that these fit between the high concepts and lower level hands on activity. There were some interesting discussion of new forms of description of design research including the ACM Communications and Entertainment, where a short abstract and an explanatory film is now an acceptable form. This is something worth thinking about although it places the onus on a particular set of skills that may color the production of the explanation more so than writing.

The second component and one that is more contentious was the assertion that doing a design process a few times represented a validation of the ‘strong concept’. Hooks position is that this dose not need to involve users for validation to be complete. For me this is problematic, it would not be difficult to take a high concept, say experiential learning (Kolb) and develop a strong concept, say a principle of positive and negative physical feedback. This could be translated into a concept of ‘sharp physical toys for children’ which could in tern be developed in a series of design interventions without user engagement and validate the strong concept even though giving a toddler a sharp toy in real life is not a great idea.

This is a rather ridiculous example and seems to imply that the group are not good designers (and I`m sure the designers on the project are great). Its symptomatic of the dangers of creating a self validation ‘bubble’ project. There is a confusion of process for evaluation with criteria for evaluation, it assumes that undertaking a process automatically confers validity without acknowledging the need for criteria. As Nigel Cross raised in the Q&A the need for an external dimension to this evaluation and validation is a further, follow-on issue.

We will do good to you: Time to change, design for change?

2011-10-14T22:55:00.000+01:00

This week I`ve been working with the new HighWire intake of 2011, we always start the year with a residential fieldtrip to the lake district, specifically we spent 2 great days in Coniston. Talking (sometimes heatedly) about our position, heroes and being creative. One of the issues that came to the fore for me was the issue of design for social change. I`m a bit uncomfortable with this, and certainly there is a very great risk if you go down the route any distance that you end up appearing like a social imperialist. I`ve had some first had experience of this with ‘community groups’ aghast that everyday people still have and watch a television, “don’t they know how bad this is for them emotionally and to the environment” completely failing to represent the real community who watch X factor, or the Simpsons, or Newsnight.

One of my colleagues reject my concerns over this distilling it down to either being in Rousseau’s came (everyone starts out good and is corrupted) or John Locks position that we came into the world corrupted and its up to society to 1rectify this. I think this misses the point completely (and regular readers of this blog will know I`m deeply suspicious of binary oppositions). My position is that the crude categorization of people into good or bad is highly problematic but besides the point. If you believe in individual freedom as a foundation of participatory society what right have we got to dominate individuals and impose our views and values on them?

I think we should be helping people reach their full potential in terms of innovation (my particular passion) but also through how they want to live and relate to the world. We must offer viable alternatives but through the conceptual frames and perspectives established not but worth academics or polemic students but by the people really living in a given context. People have the right to misbehave without our disapproval.

Great clock that tweets

2011-10-14T22:51:00.000+01:00

Language and meaning is a fascinating, living thing, you may notice that the titles of these blog posts almost always have at least two meanings. Its interesting how words aquire new meaning and wider acceptance, for example we all know what a laser is, but in the 50s is was a rather clunky acronym for Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation. We are on the cusp of the change of meaning, or duplication of meaning around the word tweet, is it a bird sound or a social media micro-blog? This is the former, even though I`m sure there is some sort of Arduino or .NET Gadgeteer hack that has clocks micro-blogging. If any one is in the mood, an animal collar and that micro-blogs position could be cool, then you could have a cat that tweets.

Archigram Archive Free Here

2011-08-19T13:45:00.000+01:00

If you want to know more about Archigram, Westminster University have the full archive of their work freely available online here

Innovation in the Superstudio

2011-08-17T09:40:00.000+01:00

Recently I have been looking again at the radical design theorists from the 60s and 70s. This is part of a longer work I`m developing that reassess the counter-culture design history and its relationship to innovation. Its been refreshing to look at a time when there was an optimism, energy and dynamitic in design research. It makes me think its time for more exuberance and less gloom, lets put the horse hair shirt back in the wardrobe.

This has also made me think that we are due to enter a golden age of design research. Partly this might be because a collaboration I`m part of has just been awarded £4 million to look at personalisation and nomadism that absolutely echoes the concerns of groups such as Archigram. Also I have just made the connection between the radical group Superstudio, rejecting the need for architecture and the new monolithic (fittingly larger than the Pentagon) Apple campus centre.

The time feels right for bold moves, to shake off the past and futurist like swipe away old concerns, ideas, practices and perspectives. So look at Archigram, Superstudio, UFO, Archizoom and other groups. As one commentator noted ‘they were closer to the future than we are’.

Designing Knowledge Exchange Research

2011-06-16T08:39:00.001+01:00

As an interaction designer and researcher I have spent much of the last 4 years designing human to human interaction, processes, techniques and approaches. Recently my research assistant and I audited the tools we have developed together.

This was useful in itself (we had forgotten many of these approaches we tend to develop bespoke approaches for each new context) I am also starting to see relationships with other aspects of my work in particular a journal paper writed in collaboration with PhD student Natasha Carolan titled ‘Understanding Design Interventions in Democratic Innovation: a Toolkit Approach’, Natasha Carolan and Dr. Leon Cruickshank , Design Research Journal 2: 10 pp33-38 (see here for full text)

Here we propose toolkits as an extension of Bill Gavers now well established techniques of cultural probes. Cultural probes are fun or interesting ways of stakeholders gathering their own data for later research, this is often in the form of cameras, voice recorders and so on. In the paper we propose and present a piolet project that uses toolkits that allow stakeholders (citizens) to create an ‘open source’ electronic product but also through this give researchers (like us) data. We argue that this active creativity will offer a more natural, energetic engagement less dependent on good will than cultural probe approaches.

Now I`m thinking about the KE approaches we have developed and thinking about how these can be more explicitly engineered to gather research information in addition ot providing stimulating KE. Watch this space.

SCI-fi IKEA Manuals

2011-05-24T17:14:00.001+01:00

Si-fi theme for today continues, if you like this than more here

History of Sci-Fi

2011-05-24T13:56:00.001+01:00

Just came across this info graphic of the history of science fiction (high rez version here). If you can tick more than half of these you qualify for friend status, if you have read them all you get hero status.

Fetish Objects (not what you think Google)

2011-02-23T21:02:00.001Z

I love objects! I think anyone with a product design background finds it impossible not to be drawn to exquisite shapes, colours and combinations of function. For people like me, there really is poetry to a great object.

The plus side of this is every time I experience a good piece of design I really do feel a warm glow of pleasure. The down side is that it's impossible to just buy something.

New spatulas? There must be some amazing designs out there, probably by Eva.

It also means that sometimes the 'poetry' sings louder than the need. Now, I do own a felling axe that was well used in my previous house, but I still want one of the above, and only $420, but how can you out a price on art?

Visualisation, not (really) drawing

2010-12-15T14:17:00.002Z

Magritte is a hero of mine, he used drawing and painting as a mode of communication not as a celebration of the act of drawing or painting. These drawings were prompted by a really old, old school 'chalk and talk' presentation. It got me thinking about dinosaurs.

Selecting a typeface

2010-11-05T16:41:00.000Z

Android Doomed?

2010-10-23T21:28:00.000+01:00

I had a fascinating conversation with a prospective PhD student last week. Our discussion was around business and technology, the walled garden and the impact this can have for innovation (this is a repeating topic in this blog). My visitor made a fascinating observation that really placed Android into context for me. At the moment the user base is growing but on phones of similar capabilities and standards. The crunch will come as Android defuses horizontally (across phones with a wide variety of capabilities and horizontally through time as newer apps stop working on older phones. Without a strong mechanism of management of the process fragmentation will only increase along with dissatisfaction and ‘tribalism’ around specific phones – undermining the economies of scale that Open Source approaches depend on. Lets see how it goes over the next 18 months but I`m sticking with my iPhone.

2001: A Space Odyssey, foresight and insight

2010-10-19T08:00:00.002+01:00

After musing recently on the coolest U rated film I re-watched 2001 A Space Odyssey (a hands down winner incidentally) with my 11-year-old son. This was great as he was getting it for the first time. We talked about some of the well-known aspects of the film. How the floating pen was achieved pre-CG (it was stuck with double sided tape onto a large sheet of glass – incidentally first use of double sided tape on film). We also discussed the fact that although there was no Oscar award for make-up at the time but it was ironic that in same year as 2001 was realised Planet of the Apes was awarded a special horary Oscar, consensus seems to be the academy thought the apes were real rather than a French mime troupe.

All was going swimmingly until we started to talk about one of the smartest things Kubrick did in the film. By choosing to show video images in things like phone calls embedded into the environment (rather than showing monitors or screens) he helped make the film timeless. Looking back at it really does not look like a film from the 1960s. this is stark contrast to the sequel 2010 that looks very clunky now. Expanding on the theme I went onto talk about how in Imagination we like projection rather than large LCD screens for the same reason.

My sons reaction to the film not appearing dated ‘surely the title of the film dates it?', academic 0 : sprog 1

Brantwood Digital Creativity

2010-10-13T18:03:00.000+01:00

I recently spent a few days at Brantwood, with new students from HighWire, our Doctoral training centre. We had a fantastic and thought provoking time (more soon on this) but this post is about imaging and the cheap digital camera. As a confirmed Lomographer I have always been a little sniff about low-spec digital imaging, only really using it for family snaps.

For the Brantwood trip I had intended to take my very good (but huge) DSLR. Amongst the proformers, Pens, feathers, plasticise and string I forgot it - nuts! We travelled from our hotel to Brantwood by boat at around 8:30, with the most amazing calm water I was wishing I had something more interesting than an iPhone to take images with.

The results (sampled below) are interesting partly because the ‘picturesque’ images are actually OK(ish) but for me the revelation was the pictures of the boys reflected in the water. With the sun shining through the fog on the water this created pretty unusual images I don’t think I could have got just like this any other way, its made me rethink when I should bother to use the iPhone.

The final proto is there as a homage to Serendipity that should be welcomed in any creative endeavour.

Past it Post It

2010-10-08T22:31:00.000+01:00

I was recently at the Department of Business' innovation centre Future Focus (I'm running a workshop there in a few weeks). It's a very good facility with a suite of rooms with a range of configurations and technical capability. In talking to one of their facilitators, it's clear we have a different emphasis when it comes to feedback and interaction.

In Imagination we relish hands-on experience and emphasise the physical. In Future Focus they use computers to allow anonymous feedback and contributions, displayed on a central display, these can be categorised and discussed as a group. Post Its are seldom used.

I've written here in the past about the over-use of Post Its, but my immediate reaction to clusters of laptops in a room was "oh no, I don't think so".

Reflecting on this though (and in a cross-cutting conversation about what a 21st century Ruskin would be), I'm starting to think we may have slipped in to an 'arts and crafts' mode and that we should be more open to digital interaction in business engagement.

The challenge now is to make or find systems that are as direct and easy as writing a Post It ...

... Hmmm, I see an iPad in my future.

Sketchbook Perfection: The case for UAP (User Augmented Production)

2010-09-11T10:53:00.000+01:00

Like many creatives (see Flo Heiss), I have spent most of my life looking for the perfect sketchbook. This 25 year odyssey has taken me through perhaps 50 different types of book from A3 cartridge paper to a great B6 book with corner perforations and very fine, thin paper.

Some fell by the wayside immediately and either languish unused or are passed on; some now dont fit how I work, or only work for some of what I do.

I have stumbled across and old system (ATOMA loose leaf binders), and I think (for now) this is perfect, but there are good reasons to expect this to be, finally, THE ONE.

The main reason for this optimism is the flexibility of the system. The ATOMA system uses solid 'T' profile disks and 'T' shaped slots in the paper it takes. The result is something like a spiral bound book, but with the ability to take pages in and out in the middle of the book without having to unbind the whole book. In fact, this is trivial to do in a meeting.

This has significant advantages:

1) I can run pages easily through a printer, now I have drawing, storyboard, writing, ortographic projection and a multitude of other pages.

2) Changing the order allows me to use the page type I want right then.

The final advantage is that (for a modest investment), I have bought a punch that allows me to use any paper or paper size. BRILLIANT.

The serious part of this post (apart from stationary fetishists), is that true satisfaction has emerged from a shift from looking for the perfect product, to the exploitation of a system to allow people (me!), to construct my own sketchbooks that can easily evolve and react to my needs. As such this interactive platform is indicative of the future for design as a whole.

Hands on Experience

2010-09-11T10:52:00.000+01:00

I have a colleague who finds it amusing that I still do things like decorating or building a wall. I'm not sure exactly why, I suspect he does not see a place for dirty hands in the ivory tower (ironic for someone with a Rouseau like rose tinted view of the artisan and their relationship to their materials).

I think one does have a different relationship with the environment with direct physical interaction and this is one of the reasons I spent yesterday making a brick wall (thank goodness for mortar plasticiser!). Its an interesting debate but I think the romantic view that the medieval labour is an ideal to return to because of their spiritual link to their products and services is much better made by someone with dirty hands.

Highwire Heroes

2010-08-24T16:21:00.000+01:00

As HighWire, our doctoral training centre moves towards its first birthday, the first major crunch point is approaching the first cohort of students, as they make the transition from their MRes in Digital Innovation to PhD. There are only a few weeks left before submission of their Masters projects and - if you look towards the North of England - you will see the glow of 10 superheroes thinking and working furiously.

As we all hoped, it's been a high risk experience with tears, laughter, rows and radical change. The most exciting thing is that the journey is still only just beginning. Check out their more informal thoughts and progress here

Korea, and Teaching SADI

2010-08-24T16:09:00.000+01:00

I have recently returned from Korea, where I was an external validator for a new Masters course in Product design.

The course is interesting in that students spend the first semester in Cardiff then the final two semesters in SAD (Samsung Institute of Art and Design). The Samsung sponsored university has made a strategic alliance with UWIC, so clearly the focus is on applied work in contrast to the research led approach at ImaginationLancaster.

Another point of interest is the decision at SADI that all manufacture except the softest of soft modelling is completed using Rapid Protyping machinery.

This draws in to focus two important pedagogic debates:

1) 1) This removes students from a real experience of materials in use. Sometimes this is a moot point (e.g. in creating surface models), but institutions such as Loughborough and Brunel would argue a hands on knowledge of materials is essential (both educational theorists Shoen and Kolb support this thinking). The question is, are we as design educators widening the gap between thinking about products and real world experience?

2) It places an emphasis on cost. Students in SADI have paid up £1200 for one model to be fabricated (with £400 being the norm). These costs are (massively) more than claimed by the teaching team. The ‘buying a degree’ issue has always been around but the removal of hands on making has exacerbated this considerably as it also introduces a professional model maker / fabricator into the creative process as effectively a sub-contractor.

Finally I understand the teaching team at SADI were irritated by my questioning, well guys, welcome to the Socratic tradition! It’s hard to imagine good design(ers), who don’t have the ability to engage in (actually a pretty anodyne debate).

Philosophy and [insert random pop culture reference here]

2010-08-12T12:31:00.002+01:00

Physical bookshops (remember them?) are increasingly full of books drawing out the philosophical meaning or implications of various pop culture forms, from Twilight, to Watchmen, to Lost to Dr. Who.

On one level this is simply authors trying to squeeze money out a segment of society that you could cynically call pseudo- intellectual or perhaps more charitably call proto- intellectual. These are often of the teenage persuasion who feel they are deeper or more sensitive to the underlying ideas of subject matter. I refuse to look for a philosophy and hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy as this was written as a stream of consciousness in the seconds before the original radio programs were broadcast. Of course this is a well established area populated by the various Idiots / beginners / primers books and the field of ‘popular science’ in general. I`m not wholly against this, and would recommend Richard Feynman’s book QED about how Quantum Dynamics really works. As someone committed wherever possible to the core text rather than the second hand, interpretative or ‘symptomatic’ reflection of ideas I think ‘the philosophy of..’ phenomenon is a bit of a shame.

As a much stronger alternative I would offer Deleuze and Guattaris excellent ‘What is Philosophy’. On the surface this could be mistaken for a primer for philosophy, but its actually a subversive text, questioning the fundamental nature of philosophy and what it actually means to do philosophy rather than simply consume it.

For those not in the know, D&G have a complex relationship in terms of writing collaboratively but also with theory and philosophy, embracing it ‘as an enemy’ more explicitly in the book 1000 Plateau they want to explore philosophy and its development is a more problematic critique "What got me through that period was conceiving of  the history of philosophy as a kind of ass-fuck, or, what  amounts to the same thing, an immaculate conception. I imagined myself approaching an author from behind and  giving him a child that would indeed be his but would  nonetheless be monstrous”.

For me this is real philosophical action, not the bureaucratic ‘homage to thinkers or to the recuperation of radical ideas and art forms (like Watchmen) into a toothless and dead Frankenstein monsters of theory.

Instead, read (and subvert) 1000 Plateau and do some philosophy!

In a LOMO frame of mind

2010-06-30T11:31:00.000+01:00

Talking about photographic niches today coincided with me (finally) finding a place in Lancaster that will do cross processing (developing slide film with a colour print process). All this has reenergised my interest in Lomo, this is a russian camera that has a special uncoated, fast lens that works especially well with cross processing. The above is a shot direct from the camera in taken in New York. The unpredictability and serendipity of this type of image making is a great antidote to the clinical, instant gratification of digital photography. Go here of you want to know more

Meaning and Rapid Prototyping: Appendix

2010-06-29T09:03:00.000+01:00

Of course the ultimate expression of the translation of products to services could emerge within rapid manufacture. As product designs become digital files for distribution linked to local/home production.

If RM could include a built-in recycling element, products would really disappear as a discrete entity but would rather be transitory symptoms of a creative system with minimal emotional impact.

Meaning in Design: Desire Driven Sustainable Services

2010-06-22T21:54:00.001+01:00

The relationship of meaning and design has been high on my agenda recently. Partly this has been in reaction against “Design Driven Innovation”, where people such as Wylant, Utterback and Vegivetti, equate design’s contribution to manipulating meaning. For me this decreases design to a rather passive aesthetic/smartie position, trying to ‘style’ things to resonate with consumers (see my paper here reviewing the relationship between design and innovation in Design Issues for more on this).

On a separate front I have recently interviewed someone who was interested in giving electronic consumer goods more meaning (like heirlooms), to encourage consumers to keep them rather than bin them. There are some problems with this, after all heirlooms are treasured but largely left unused precisely because they are treasured, but also because they are functionally compromised, Perhaps crockery and cutlery are exceptions but electrical products are much more problematic. Know anyone who really uses that old Leica film camera, or that gramophone, or that old car for anything more than ceremonial use?

Beyond this though, there is a more fundamental sustainability issue not to go down the high (emotional), value route. The search for imbuing meaning in objects is fundamentally rooted in the deeply conventional product production mode.

Real change requires a mode shift to service. Take music for example, we have shifted from shelaque to vinyl to polycarbonate (all pretty grim environmentally), to electronic distribution and rather than replacing your Walkman (or stereo), music functionality is built into a larger system, so music dedicated hardware consumption is falling as it becomes part of a larger service system.

The fact is, I can upgrade to a significantly better product, maintain the emotional meaning the service has for me, but crucially, send my old phone for reuse and reconditioning to my supplier at no cost. Here we have an example of a service model based on high consumption and high innovation with decreasing emotional impact.

This seems much more feasible than trying to hold back technological progress by attempting to convince consumers inferior products are too meaningful to stop using.

2D/3D - History Repeating ?

2010-06-05T18:49:00.003+01:00

Really enjoying thinking about the implications of planning a means of manufacture in citizens’ hands. It’s been a while since I did any serious work in this area and technology has caught up sufficiently to make this a fruitful area of design research again. The FISCAR10 conference I just attended was a great, jumping off point.

One thing that struck me are the parallels between the recent history of graphic design (dtp (an acronym from history), web and web 2.0, bedroom web design agencies) and the current emergence of rapid manufacture capability, the lowering of technical barriers to entry and diffusion of technology.

If the parallels hold true we can expect a ‘gold-rush’ scenario and a rush of pseudo-professionals looking to make a fast buck, a reappraisal of the industrial design profession and, after a few painful years, new forms of both design process and new types of products and processes will emerge.

Last time (graphic) design was on the back foot with technology and technologists dominating the debate and while this debate was going on, there was a groundswell of activity. Design needs to be more proactive, visionary and dynamic this time.

The Buffoon, History and Truth: a Graphic Design Case Study

2010-05-29T15:48:00.004+01:00

The recent FISCAR 10 conference in Helsinki had many highlights, a productive collaboration, a widening of my theoretical horizons, amongst others. I will be documenting these as time and energy permit, but one thing moved me to write NOW!

The conference had many instances of activity theory scholars moving into design in a slightly naive way. This is amusing (sometimes), and understandable. What is not forgivable is for someone from the design profession to make fundamental mistakes about the field they are supposed to be expert in.

We are not talking trivia or contested knowledge here, but rather the fundamental structure of a discipline universally agreed.

The graphic designer in question (educated where?), stated and then defended his assertion that the post-modern movement started in the 1880s and that post-modernism sat between Modern Art (taking place before the 1880s) and movements like Fauvism, Cubism and so on that started after post-modernism.

I thought this was either a typo or he was being tricksy. In 'The Post-Modern Condition', Jean Francois Lyotard argues that before something is modern it must first be post-modern. This paradoxical statement is an interesting and active area of debate and engages with notions of authorship, originality and the shifting nature of meaning.

Unfortunately 'Graphic Design Boy', actually someone my age (old!), was not thinking at this (or any?), level.

The repudiation of argument for Postmodern Graphic Design in the 18880s is either very simple – read just one book or even Wikipedia on the history of GD – or more complicated.

Put simply, there were no ‘Graphic Designers’, before the 1940s. The title was created to make a pay grade above 'commercial artist' in the US advertising industry.

As far as Art is concerned, read Clement Greenberg, Robert Hughes or any other art historian’s works.

The conference paper was about how life is more difficult for graphic designers now compared to the past, perhaps the time would have been better spent getting a little bit of basic knowledge first.

From the Bottom Down

2010-05-28T10:57:00.004+01:00

It’s hard to predict where the interesting concepts and ideas are going to come from and serendipity always plays an important part. As the bedrock of Open Innovation (OI), it was nice that this happened at the recent ENGAGE conference on OI. Clinton Bantock was giving a passionate case for complexity theory and post-structuralist thinking in business engagement and its relationship to the university. This was great stuff coming from a business development officer.

During his presentation he misspoke and used the term 'bottom down'. I was intrigued by this idea and the possibility of 'top up', so I’m going to run with this allusion. To me it represents the expansion of possibilities. You have set parameters (top and bottom), and this takes you beyond these.

A response to my tweet during the conference suggested bottom down would be used for a project doomed from the start, but the sun is shining and I’m looking for more positive interpretations.

Interactive TV the Ptolemy Way?

2010-05-22T16:55:00.000+01:00

In our research lab we work quite a bit with the BBC. In a recent meeting, we were talking about how we could help them with a recurring innovation problem.

They often contract design agencies to develop ideas that address issues the implementation of new technology will throw up. The problem the BBC has is that often the suggested solutions are unworkable or inappropriate and rooted in old technology. In Imagination, we are going to run an event with 20 or so agencies to help with iTV development. But, it made me think that if there were one book everyone should read it would be

… hard to implement, but worth it if everyone could read …

Thomas Khun’s 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'.

This is not a very exciting title, but the ideas within this have a profound impact on design, science, engineering, Innovation and the way we think about thinking.

Kuhn argues that most ‘normal’ science uses agreed models and patterns and the evidence we collect is shaped to fit these models. Ptolemy is a key example of this with positively convoluted explanations being developed to place us at the centre of the universe. Kuhn goes on to argue that a time comes when the tension on a model is so great, it snaps, a revolution takes place and a new model gains ascendancy (Copernicus’s big moment reacting against Ptolemy).

This revolution represents a new paradigm. This is a very much overused and misused word, but if everyone understood the idea of understanding adapting or transcending models of use, it’s more likely iTV would get a move on a become a pleasurable experience.

Heaven

2010-05-21T07:22:00.001+01:00

This is in the Mill in SaltAire model village Could it be the worlds best art and design supplied shop?

Moo: Milking Sustainable Sustainability

2010-05-19T10:44:00.002+01:00

I’m fairly well-known in my research lab for being 'completely disinterested', in sustainability, slightly to the consternation of some of the people that I work with. Of course, (like most short statements like this), this has an element of posturing, but beneath this is a more strongly held position.

I think empowering the individual and that the collective power of individuals trumps any imposed structures, especially when imposed through evangelism (whether religious, environmental or political). All successful structures are built and maintained rom the ground up.

This places the onus on the citizen (us!), to do the right thing, but also for us as designers and creators to respond to citizens. So far, so woolly lefty (and also right wing free market).

The practical implication for design is that a guilt trip about the environment is not enough to change consumer behaviour. To succeed new products and services have to be better in their own right, separate from environmental considerations.

The new Sainsbury’s low packaging milk solution is a great example of this. You buy flexible polythene bags of milk and slot them in to a re-useable polycarbon jug. This is clever for 3 reasons …

1. The mechanism for ‘installing’ the bag is simple and spill-free (not an easy thing to achieve).

2. The jug provides a substantially more pleasurable pouring experience. It is easier to control (there is no ‘glugging’).

3. The packs of milk are freezer friendly, making it more convenient to stock up than go back and fore to the shops.

Perhaps I’m going green after all, but perhaps ‘green’ is realising that sack cloth and ashes is no substitute for good design.

Playful Void

2010-05-05T07:45:00.002+01:00

Play is not the same as gaming and not withstanding my previous post on the significance of (computer) gaming I’m most interested in a more diffused Ludic sensibility than challenge, reward profiles.

This has prompted me to start a new literary quest.

George Perec is an excellent example of playfulness in literature that most closely resembles the design sensibility of playful; experimentation in structure and content. Part of a larger Oulipo movement, Perec created huge palindromes, playful structure/content – See Life: A Users Manual for a really sophisticated novel ‘about/exploring’, the jigsaw.

This post was prompted by Perec’s 1969 novel A Void. This is a 200 page novel that does not use any words containing the letter ‘E’ (credit here to Gilbert Adair’s translation into English, retaining this pattern).

For many years the book has been out of print and 10 years ago I abandoned my search for a second hand copy. I was happy to see Vintage Books republished this in 2008. It’s funny and a good read, as well as being clever and playful.

PS. Perec’s next work “Les Reveuentes”, ‘used’ the ‘e’s left out of A Void. In this book ‘e’ is the only vowel used.

Game Playing

2010-05-05T07:40:00.001+01:00

I find the transcendental nature of game playing fascinating. The ease with which people can be transported out of their bodies, overriding time, meals, appointments, social interaction tells me that this must be a significant phenomenon. As someone half a step from OCD, I have to keep such things at arms length apart from the occasional 20 hour Civilisation session. The fact that books, music, art, films, so rarely grip us in this way is not necessarily a positive thing, but it is important.

Play School

2010-05-05T07:31:00.003+01:00

In addition to the normal turbulence and buffeting my most recent blog 'sabbatical' has seen me increasingly thinking about knowledge exchange and the role play can have in this. A few things prompted this.

I have established a new relationship with a game design studio set up inside Huddersfield University. Run by Damian De Luca and Ruth Taylor, these guys have some interesting ideas about how games and visualisation can contribute to research and we are actively pursuing collaborations on a number of fronts.

The second prompt is the work of a colleague of mine in Imagination. Valerie Carr is an interior designer and researcher and is working on knowledge exchange through designing games with healthcare professionals. She has a completely different and very interesting perspective on knowledge exchange, drawing on Organisational Development (OD) as opposed to my post-structuralist ‘meta’ interaction design. Big thanks to her for giving me a guide into this (superficially dull), area, by giving me some good stuff.

The final area that was pretty new to me was Eva Brandt’s work on play in participatory design processes. Even though I met Eva in Hong Kong fairly recently, I was not aware of this aspect of her work.

I’m enjoying learning more about play from these and other dimensions. It’s time to ease off the intellectually draining running of events with companies for a little bit (as much as I can), and get back to some more abstract, enriching (fertilizing?) research.

Fun Potential Motion

2010-02-08T21:43:00.002Z

Anyone who has read the really stupendously good and useful Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud will know he defines comics as a series of sequential images that are structured in an organised sequence. I certainly would not argue with him on this but I do think that there are images (like this suicide bunny image) that have so much suggested movement that we can not help but construct the sequence of images in our heads, making them for me, something close to a sequence, a ‘meta-comic’?

Apple, Particapatory Innovation and the Implications for Design

2010-02-08T21:35:00.002Z

The concepts of open innovation, crowd wisdom, mass creativity, mash up user-generated content…) lets call it participatory innovation (PI). This will infuriate more or less anyone engaged with innovation, as really these terms are too disparate to be legitimately combined into one category. Participatory Innovation ideas are increasingly gaining traction in society and in commentary around innovation. Indeed there is a healthy debate around innovation and society that was not nearly as active a few years ago.

There have been a few articles in the press recently contrasting participatory innovation with Apple. The argument is that Apple is a (shinny, easy to control) dinosaur breaking the rules of Silicon Valley and beyond in shunning any PI variants and remaining resolutely closed. I’m going to let others evangelise for apple (this time) but I think this apparent dichotomy has some interesting implications for the design profession (and professional innovators as a more general and helpful description).

I have been developing, researching and promoting PI for close to 15 years in one form or another, and for a long time my conclusions were telling me that ultimately design was destined to become a universal set of skills available to everyone (like English or History) with a very small professional constituency outside education. In many respects if you believe that emancipating people is a good thing this is an inescapable position.

While I still think this will happen I am new convinced that there will be a role for professional designers in the future beyond helping everyone to be as creative and productive as they can be. This realisation is grounded in the innovation literature that promotes participatory innovation (von Hippel, Chesbrough, Christiansen, Ledbetter…). Here and elsewhere there is ample evidence of specialists in a field untrained in design or innovation being intensely creative (as I think most of us are). Here we see examples of radical invention (e.g. Heart Lung machine, created by a team of surgeons or kite surfing by enthusiasts) and there are many examples of incremental innovation but in terms of radical or disruptive innovation the case for PI is weak.

I think the reasons for this are underexplored but fundamentally this comes down to the trial and error nature of creative invention and the advantage of situational awareness and experience for PI (e.g. fanatical downhill bikers coming up with mountain bikes). Innovation (rather than a brilliant inventive idea) is hard, especially as increasingly this is reliant on a system that includes intertwined hard, soft and really soft (human) components for success. The case for trial and error in idea generation is well made by neurologists of creativity like Goel and more accessible by writers such as Lawson and Dorst. The implications of this are that to become skilled at innovation takes practice, time and lots of mistakes.

PI tends to be a one off action, crucially taking advantage of the situational awareness and life experiences that professional innovators do not have. This makes serial innovation very difficult as moving to a new challenge often means relinquishing the advantage of deep personal experience.

This is where professional innovators have the advantage, they have many opportunities to learn how to innovate across challenges and contexts so that while they may be disadvantages in some contexts they also have an implicit advantage that their innovation abilities can be more easily developed. The same applies for conceptual leaps that mark disruptive innovation, the mental agility developed through the practice of making many conceptual leaps are more likely to be available for someone while being trained in innovation than someone developing more specialist skills (this is an argument for universal innovation training).

The overall result of this is that PI is growing quickly, providing a richer ecology of innovation and increasing the total sum of innovative activity through improved communication and opportunities. This will be marked by proportionately less design activity as we know it (but more activity in education) but there will still be a role for the excellent, ground breaking design. In this respect the activities of Apple, in developing excellent, highly refined products fits well into this model.

Addendum

My current research is looking to find a way to help everyone access this ‘excellence’ through the creation of processes and systems in a practical, non-hierarchal manner not restricted by supply and demand so perhaps we (designers) are doomed after all.

Tactile Fun

2010-01-28T17:33:00.001Z

It's nice to see it's not all work-work-work at Polaris House, the bastion of research funding in Swindon. Check out the positioning of the braille on the gents sign.

The Real Life of Knowledge Exchange and Design

2010-01-15T18:52:00.004Z

Building on the post below, it's worth understanding the practical benefits of this negotiated appreciation of the nature of meaning and knowledge and why this is especially pertinent to a design-led approach.

Anyone with a passing understanding of design will be familiar with the need to deal with emergent, unfocussed and fundamentally unsolvable problems on a day to day basis (see Wicket thinking).

This comfortableness of good designers with not being in control of processes, use, reaction to, or reading of the design of knowledge exchange activities where the actual knowledge transfer is very much uncertain a pretty comfortable thing to get to grips with.

This is not an academic analysis (although there is a paper I have written about this subject here), it's the result of the interaction of philosophy with working with over 50 companies in the past 12 months in a series of knowledge exchange events and activities.

The experience from there is that the skill is ... digital marketing agencies, to high-tech SMEs to new projects with the nuclear decommissioning industry that the skill is engendering a context and approach that facilitates the flow of information between parties. This can be hard information or softer things like perspectives/opinions.

This is much more powerful than trying to 'imprint' knowledge on people, also because you are 'flowing' with participants and releasing their potential, the process is more enjoyable for everyone.

Presenting the physical

2010-01-12T23:25:00.003Z

I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in a creative thinking event run for the large international electronics and maintanence company Premier Farrell recently.

The person organising the event adopted a more presentation heavy approach than is usual in these sorts of things (normally for instance I keep 'soaking-things-up' time to 10 minutes at a time maximum). The event went well with a very positive vibe and some interesting outcomes for further development.

One noteworthy connection grew around the presentation approach, the (vibrant) Global Head of Marketing remarked that she once worked in a company where one could only give a presentation if you used some sort of prop. This seems an excellent idea. From this and building on the post, see OHP Massterclass it got me thinking about the props I have used or seen used in presentations.

The list includes:

Paper hat (me to a group of SMEs last December)

Magic wand

2m inflatable ball (by virtuoso motion graphic designer Paul Nicholas, Bait, who started the presention inside the ball)

Flame thrower (the highly eccentric Prof. Heinz Woolf)

Live Gold fish (on an Overhead Projector)

'Lion feet' trainers

Blackboard

The advantages of a good prop are that they break into reality (and out of ppt hell), not just for the audience but also in grounding the presenter in a physical space and so thinking of the audience more. Think about the real world and particularly the physical context of the presentation, so - for a while at least - my lecture motto is going to be 'keeping it real'.

When to use comic sans

2010-01-12T23:21:00.002Z

Innovation, Knowledge Exchange and Design

2009-12-21T15:46:00.002Z

Over the past 2 years, I’ve devoted myself to understanding innovation and to an extent I think I’m just about getting there with a paper published in Design Issues (one of the top 2 design journals) reviewing the relationship between Innovation and Design, and through my IDEAS collaboration, am working with some of the top academics working in Innovation in the UK, particularly Prof. J Howells,Director Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (Manchester Business School).

The realisation I’ve come to is that fundamentally Innovation is too nebulous and general a thing to really grasp. There are deep-rooted academic traditions and perspectives for example to the OU and the University of Surrey from 60’s and 70’s and subsequent activity that make it difficult to have an impact in the area, but more, that it’s not possible to get grip on it as an entity it’s too polysemic. Building on this realisation the thing I’m most interested in, and I think is most significant to the broader innovation debate, is the process that enable innovation and fundamentally this means some aspect of knowledge exchange.

I’m always drawn to the fundamentals, the core texts, the paradigms that shape understanding and only then drawing these into design practice not just for grounding in the real world, but also to test and prompt new abstract theories understanding and further applications. An example of this approach is an engagement (tussle) with Michel de Certeau and his tactical/strategic differentiation (seeThe Practice of Everyday Life for more). I reacted against his rather gloomy assertion that engagement in non-hierarchical ways was inherentl limited to the fleeting tactical engagement with little prospect of progress or impact beyond a fleeting two fingers to authority. In the past I’ve proposed an approach that counter-strategies drawing on Situationist ideas of recuperation, arguing that this itself in itself can be turned to a positive approach, instead of recuperation (or strategic activity defusing radical thinking it can be subverted to make ideas and actions more impactful, engaging and significant.

The reason for this digression is an excellent seminar Jeremy (Howells) gave on Knowledge at a recent research retreat I helped organise for IDEAS. The underlying premise of his seminar was that knowledge cannot by its nature be transferred, so problamitising the whole concept of knowledge exchange or transfer. He argued that only information can be exchanged and it becomes knowledge in the recipient of the exchange. This has profound implications for the nature, fidelity and content of the knowledge that is ‘defused’ between members of any network of exchange.

Jeremy was drawing on economics, philosophy of knowledge and sociology but several members of IDEAS with backgrounds in business and entrepreneurship theory were diametrically opposed to this view that seems very comfertable to someone with my background. The exciting thing for me was the fact that this debate has to draw in notions of authorship and meaning that introduce a new dimension (and one I’m instamatly familiar with), into the debate about knowledge exchange. Things like de Certeau's concept of proprietary distributed meaning and the value of negotiated meaning and exchange in communities and emerging framework of knowledge or understanding exchange becomes very significant in developing understandings of knowledge exchange in the more generally (ab)used sence.

A Sound Investment

2009-12-21T07:55:00.006Z

If you are interested in really good quality audio you get a view of an exotic landscape where you can pay over £100 for 1 metre of cable (connecters extra), or £60k for a CD player. Like physics, at this stratospheric end of things verification becomes difficult and we go into the realms of philosophy (do you want your music warm or mellow?)

There are two interesting things to draw from this (beyond the peculiarity of niche groups).

1) It’s oddly pleasing to see that apart from a very small minority even within ‘hi fi ‘ country, CDs are where it’s at in terms of sound quality (who knew that my battered Bangles CD was still at the cutting edge?). Of course, debates around quality of mastering are lively, but both SCAD and vinyl are pretty much off off the radar.

2) If you want to explore the limits of an audio experience, a set of headphones and an Amp, get you there in a massively more affordable way than looking at speakers, perhaps 50 times as cheaply if you use a digital source rather than a CD drive as the input for headphones. It’s also refreshing to read in even the notoriously pedantic forums that any reasonable USB cable will do to connect your system – no exotic ‘mono-filament, low oxygen' mumbo jumbo here!

As a result, I’ve taken the leap into a world of audio that’s pretty startling in terms of clarity, of just hearing more detail and nuances in the sound. This is with my Denon AHD-7000s, still breaking in and using the not bad/great Apple Powerbook as a source. The next step is a good headphone amp with the ability to handle digital audio. Then I’ll really be in audio heaven, and even my Bangles will sound good.

If you are interested in really good quality audio you get aview of an exotic landscape where you can pay over £100 for 1 metre of cable (converters extra), or £60k for a CD player. Like physics at this stratospheric end of things verification becomes difficult and we go into the realms of philosophy (do you want your music warm or mellow?)There are two interesting things to draw from this (beyondthe peculiarity of niche groups).1) It’s oddly pleasing to see that apart from a very smallniche even within ‘hi fi ‘ country, CDs are where it’s at in terms of sound quality (who knew that my battered Bangles CD was still at the cutting edge). Of course, debates around quality of mastering are lively, but both SCAD andvinyl are really off the radar.2) If you want to explore choice to the limits of an audioexperience, a set of headphones and an Amp, get you there. Massively more affordable (perhaps 80 times as cheaply if you use a digital source rather than a CD drive as the input for headphones. It’s also refreshing to read in evenniche, highly pedantic forums that any reasonable USB cable will do to connect your system – no exotic ‘high-carbon, mono-filament, low oxygen mumbo jumbohere!As a result, I’ve taken the leap into a world of audiothat’s pretty startling in terms of clarity, of just hearing more detail and nuances in the sound. This is with my Denon AHD-7000s, still breaking in andusing the not bad/great Powerbook as a source.The next step is a good headphone amp, with the ability to handledigital audio. Then I’ll really be in audio heaven, and even my Bangles will sound good.

Stupid Direction pt. 2

2009-12-15T13:16:00.003Z

It was interesting to see how quickly ASDA supermarket (the UK part of Walmart) scanned the blogosphere (do people still say this?) to find my pretty light-weight post about shopping trolly access. Their long comment made sure that I tested their assertions that it was in fact me who was lacking, sadly the weight of evidence is against them.

Perhaps I`ll write something about the relative light levels in supermarkets next, is the dim light to save money, hide the produce of the customers (there is a cheap shot here to be had about misspelt tattoos if anyone is game).

True Blue (thinking) and the problem with 'green thinking'

2009-12-09T11:32:00.006Z

True Blue (thinking) is a response to our accumulating environmental problems championed by Kevin Roberts Worldwide CEO at Saatchi and Saatchi. It represents an approach strongly contrasting with Green Thinking/Desing with its connotations of denial, guilt and negativityabout stopping doing things we like and (for me... hessian underpants). True Blue presents a positive solution orientated pragmatic (read more here) approach that has links (also links with “Bright Green” approaches) and from Harvard The Awesomeness Manifesto, more about this here but this has 4 main pillars

Here are the four pillars of his Awesomeness Manifesto:

1. Ethical production: without an ethical component, awesomeness isn't possible. The buy low, sell high mentality is yesterday’s mantra.

2. Insanely great stuff: put creativity front and center and you’ll get an emotional reaction from anyone who sees it. Delight the customer.

3. Love: Apple creates products people love. Their employees love to show off how awesome

these products are and customers love shopping in Apple stores. Compare this with Best Buy.

4. Thick value: this is real, meaningful, and sustainable. Thick value, not thin value, actually makes people better off.

The emergence and promotion of True Blue is not unsurprising coming from Kevin, a recent grandfather realising that rampantcapitalism is causing problems. It’s attractive for me for more fundamental reasons.

For me this engages with a bigger picturte of human happieness and citizenship but side stepps the rather moralistic approach that stopped me buying (into) Adbusters and similer iviry tower evangalistices. Philosophically I have a problem with domination/subjugation relationships and so with evangelism. This is prevalent in eco-design thinking in education. I have even experienced lecturers openly relishing the chance to indoctrinate students to adopt their particular view over the course of 10 weeks to their best to impose their view on a cohort (at the expense of the development of students).

In this respect I think True Blue is more ethically responsible and sustainable in the long term than green or echo indoctrination.

Stupid Direction

2009-11-25T07:58:00.000Z

This is a snap from a local supermarket known for it's low lighting and low prices. It's
an intereting gambit but you have to wonder if somone taken in by this is going to have the necessary cordination to move a semi-sentient shopping trolly in the first place.

-- Post From My iPhone

Betamaxification

2009-09-26T19:52:00.002+01:00

I was reviewing a PhD proposal recently and was prompted to invent a new word, this is a (pretty) shameless attempt to get this into general circulation. The PhD was looking at impact in knowledge transfer when most accepted opinion is that transfer (from say universities to companies) is a rather old fashioned way of thinking about this sort of activity and could well become a millstone at the start of a 6 year project. It seemed to me that ‘Betamaxification’ or hitching your wagon to a falling star was a good way of describing this. Please use this liberally and if anyone has seen this in action let me know either here or by fax or post me something on a Jazz drive.

Sometimes there is no rational..

2009-09-09T08:28:00.002+01:00

Friction in Advertising

2009-09-02T08:25:00.006+01:00

If you are like me you have a morbid fascination with the adverting work. On the one hand it’s the engine of conspicuous consumption, shallowness and materialism that despite my protestations I really know is not sustainable and has to stop or at least change course*. Unfortunately far out weighing this is advertising as an engine for creativity, new ideas (and the appropriation of interesting ideas). Of course not all advertising is interesting, I used to place students to work on the yellow pages advert creation department – man was that a dull placement!

This link is an excellent source for interesting ads as it’s a collection of adverts that have for one reason or another been banned, its very up to date so you can find out why you can’t see the Oasis ‘Cactus’ ad anymore. The image above was a promotion for an advertising magazine that was banned after its run was complete, giving it another cycle of exposure.

* this is not universally the case, as you may know I have some loose connections to Saatchi and Saatchi, Kevin Roberts (worldwide CEO) was talking to me recently about their Blue concept (rather than green) for more go here

Sometimes it’s the simple things

2009-08-25T12:30:00.003+01:00

The internet is full of junk, charlatans and whining teenagers but its also a fantastic medium for distributing creative media that other wise would only receive the most limited audience. A good example of this is the animation by dustball at this link. I discovered this deceptively simple animation dig.com, my favourite peer review news site. The combination of percussion and rotoscoping and editing is both hypnotic and highly effective. As I know advertising agencies spend a lot of time scouring the internet for interesting things like this for campaigns expect to see this on a TV near you soon, lets just hope the original authors are credited and included in the process, all too often these things are simply ripped off.

Zebra-tastic

2009-08-20T08:51:00.003+01:00

As someone who spent a considerable amount of time trying to arrange a giraffe-drawn carriage for their wedding day, I think this picture represents real progress.

Fun in the Digital Economy

2009-07-28T09:00:00.005+01:00

Ever since I created a pair of ultra-customised trainers in on the now sadly defunct Customatix website (asymmetrical red and purple suede with giraffe skin soles and lynx penguines o0n the soles) I have been sold on the potentail of the web as a tool for individual choice. I`ve sort of been keeping an eye on this but been a bit destracted. A post on Donshades blog brought this back into focus, he posted here, about a new t shirt design he has created (above). If you like this you can buy it here, but you can also set up your own shop and easily upload images to be produced on a huge range of products, from t shirts, to baby grows to bags. It seems things have matured in this respect, watch this space for news on an Imaginarium shop.

Saw / Sore

2009-07-28T08:57:00.002+01:00

Giving (and taking) the Bird

2009-07-23T10:02:00.002+01:00

I`m not a fan of the idea of twitter, it seems too short and designed for inconsequential fleeting thoughts. Still I suppose fleeting thoughs are not necessary inconsequential, so I`m giving twitter a go. this is partly to see if my scepticism is well placed, partly because the head of my lab, who is normally very social-media averse is a twitter evangalist but mostly because I am going to be working on a project in the Autum mapping innovation in high-tech SMEs. One suggestion by an evcellent mobile phone developer I work with is to use twitter to map fleeting instances of inspiration and innovation.

This seems like a real reason top catch fleeting ideas rather than inane trivea - Steven Fry I don`t care if you have just bought a packet of biscits!

Horse-Peg

2009-07-22T11:31:00.004+01:00

I did this drawing a while ago but there is something that keeps drawing me back to it.

The power of the Macabre

2009-07-22T11:24:00.002+01:00

As a ‘practising’ surrealist, I have a great deal of affection for the macabre as a mechanism for challenging assumptions and breaking through conditioned responses that we all rely on but often pre-limit our approaches to problem solving. This observation was stimulated by a truly extraordinary website gallery entitled When Taxidermy Goes Wrong, featuring a range of experimental or highly incompetent, taxidermy. Related to this is the work of Chilean artist/ designer Sebastian Errazuriz and his duck lamp, see more of his work here.

As we get into the summer slow-down, I think shaking things up a bit is a good idea so expect to see some provocations here in the coming weeks.

The Maveric

2009-07-16T12:57:00.002+01:00

As an addendum to my post on Kevin Roberts (and an excuse to share one of my favourite images), the person introducing Kevin for his address to the graduating students was very nervous yesterday, as Kevin has the reputation for the unexpected in his presentations with one presentation while working for Pepsi involving the destruction (of a Coke machine by machine gun and another presentation including a live lion on stage. This is why I have included here my favourite image of the lion in a side car on a wall of death, I`m not sure if Lancaster University could cope with this but I`m keeping my fingers crossed for something as dramatic.

Creative Leadership and the Rise of the Citizen

2009-07-16T12:40:00.004+01:00

Today we made Kevin Roberts, World Wide CEO for Saatchi and Saatchi a Professor of Creative Leadership in Lancaster University. I`ve met Kevin a few times he was an industrial sponsor for a big research bid for us recently and spent a day with Imagination in the early days. As one would expect of someone in his position he is an interesting and charismatic guy. One thing that is a little less expected is his passion for blogging (not tweeting or other social media forms). His blog (here) is always stimulating but Kevin regards this an other blogs as a mechanism for connecting with people who are otherwise insulated (divorced) form Saatchi, he uses it as a dialogue tool to gauge the temperature outside advertising circles with a weekly report of the strands of comment being compiled by his staff, this forms part of a bullish (of course) view that times have never been better for the advertising industry in terms of engagement with real people, in a real way, crucially if creative professionals are willing to cede control into a shared context.

This idea of shared control (or even a relinquishment of creative control by designers) is very close to my heart but it has huge implications for society as a whole in addition to the design profession, broadly need a societal shift to a point where the new possibilities of the digital economy (e.g. free but illegal stuff) are met with a reciprocal responsibility in the majority of users and the emergence of the citizen rather than consumer or user.

New Contemporary Sustainability

2009-07-14T08:06:00.002+01:00

I sent a very pleasant evening at the Design Museum recently at the second birthday of the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) this is the funding agency developed by the government to lead technology and innovation research and development and as you would expect there was much stimulating conversation and an active flow of ideas. An added benefit to the evening was that we were able to look around the exhibitions I was drawn to the Super Contemporary exhibition about creative London. As one would expect there were some old favourites here, from Archigram, to Tom Dixon to Neville Brody but the delight in these things rests in new discoveries rather than seeing old friends in the flesh. I was knocked out by this whimsical rubbish bin.

This echoes with some of the conversations that I had with the TSB about sustainability, and the fact that a horse-hair shirt approach is doomed to failure and that its essential that human needs and desires be taken into account when thinking about environmental responsibility, that the aesthetic / irrational side of our natures can not be ignored. This is in contrast to some thinkers in this area, even colleagues, who seem to adopt a crusading, polemic position that is as likely to turn people away from thinking about sustainability as embracing it.

Smile

2009-07-06T07:53:00.002+01:00

Sculptural Sitting

2009-07-02T12:21:00.004+01:00

I`m a sucker for a nice piece of furniture, even if its only an occasional purchase after a windfall. I`m particularly enamored with pieces that are not subject to the terror of chocolate fingers from my 10 year old son, or light bleaching. I have a very nice red wool chair that jives me almost as much stress as pleasure. In light of this I was very keen to know more about this piece when looking for some kitchen stools for my new house. Its created by a small designer maker company called Philip Watts Design (www.philipwattsdesign.com), apart from the sculptural quality, I love the allusion to both Duchamps Readymades, vernacular Italian seating and Futurist notions of motion. Of course the devil is in the detail and it would be crazy to buy one of these without seeing the quality of the casting in the flesh but it could well be I`m adding to my collection and won`t have to worry too much about sticky fingers.

Back in the sadle

2009-06-24T12:39:00.000+01:00

It's been so long since my last post terminating this blog was a real possibility but with renewed vigour and some new technology I'm hoping to be more productive. I'm writing 4 bids for research funding at the moment so I need all the imagination I can generate more soon.

-- Post From My iPhone

GameJam@infoLab - Live.It!

2009-03-03T18:23:00.004Z

Recently I spent an enjoyable few days as one of the judged of a mobile design competition. Sponsored as part of an international program by nokia the GameJam@InfoLab event drew students from across disciplines to create concept designs for mobile phone games in 2 days of red bill fuelled mayhem, with a petch Kutcher style presentation at the end. The motivation for this was not only some really nice phones for the winners and runners up but also the opportunity to go into the next stage of the competition and a trip to San Francisco to present their ideas.

Game Jam was organised by Paul Coulton, one of the leading mobile developers in the UK and internationally, a Forum Nokia Champion and all round good egg. You can find out more about GameJam and some of the other experiments / mobile services that are coming out of this research group at www.mobileradicals.com, there is more about one of Paul’s highly innovative, fun services on the Nokia Forum site, this one talks about a service to create 3D images with an ordinary mobile camera phone

Getting back to GameJam it was so encouraging to see the energy of students and the creative suggestions, there was a real buzz around the event. The aim is to make this an annual event and to expand the scale in future, this deserves to really take off.

Incidentally, the image above shows the winning team being awarded their prizes, it also represents an addition ot my collection of photos in which I am comically obscured.

HighWire - Creating Innovative People for Radical Change

2009-02-18T09:32:00.008Z

I have been involved in an exciting new approach to research recently, culminating in a £4 million grant for the EPSRC to develop cross disciplinary research projects that cross between design, computing and management. As a result, Lancaster University’s new Doctoral Training Scheme, HighWire, has begun recruiting students.

HighWire will to create a new breed of PhD student though the development of a post-disciplinary approach to research that focuses on problems rather than conventional subject areas or disciplines) we are also placing innovation at the heart of its curriculum and ethos, something I’m a serial poster about here. The scheme will provide funding (bursary and enhanced stipend) for 50 PhD students over 5 years.

We are running a recruitment event in Lancaster on the 11th of March with another later in the year. More information on the scheme and the event are available on the HighWire website.

Sea Kittens

2009-02-03T09:25:00.002Z

I’ve been reading a lot about branding lately, its interesting to see the disjunction between the business-as-usual approach and new emerging approaches that realise that we really are in the process of moving into a new phase of citizen consumption. Something very much in the business as usual camp is PETAs (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) campaign to ‘re-brand’ fish as sea kittens in an attempt to make fishing and eating fish less attractive. Despite a nice web tool that allows you to make your own photo fit sea kitten there are a few problems. Firstly kittens yum yum! My son and I now enjoy sea kitten pie and sea kitten fingers), secondly such an earnest approach “hooking a sea kitten through the mouth and dragging her through the water is the same as hooking a kitten through the mouth and dragging her behind your car” is asking for a response. This came in the form of a spoof site shown here…with a steak advert attached.

The Perfect Woman

2009-01-26T17:28:00.003Z

There is a video on you tube and portal sites such as bore me and dig about a breakthrough in interactive robotics. The clip shows an interview with some scientists and a lifelike looking robot that is soon going to be on sale, you can see this here. This is clever because with the limited amount of time one screen this robot is reasonably convincing but not nearly as lifelike as Hiroshi Ishiguro`s Geminoid HI-1. Following links to the website the game is quickly up, as the online ordering system shows the robots start to move mechanically but gradually move into (fully clothed) pole dancing and eventually short circuiting in an explosion to reveal an advert for Nivia shaving foam and Philips razors. This sort of advertising is not new with people like Dare doing this sort of thing with Axe/Feather as far back as 2003 but its still interesting as a construct that appeals to base emotions and our curiosity, I’m also aware that I’m doing the work of the advertiser right now in propagating the site.

As advertising budgets contract it will be interesting to see if this sort of playful tangential word of mouth approach continues or if there will be a contraction to the hard sell or something new will emerge

Incidentally, be careful to go to www.perfect-woman.com if by mistake you go to www.ideal-woman.com you get a very different experience

Dare to be Different

2009-01-20T10:01:00.003Z

I spent some time recently working with Dare, a fantastically talented new media advertising agency, anyone who scans the Campaign awards results will know how highly regarded these guys are in the industry and in the wider commercial field. I was at Dare to help them look at their creative processes and how they intend to keep their innovative edge. This problem affects most companies but especially those in the creative sector. I started doing projects with Dare 8 years ago when they had 15 people and were the definition of a guerrilla-marketing agency with radically innovative projects being developed by the seat of their pants – with startlingly good results. Now they are over 200 people and its more difficult to be fleet of foot, when you have the footballer Kaka for 15 minutes for a shoot its hard to be footloose and fancy free.

A group of designers and technical experts came together, really to think about how to keep the gorillas spirit alive, and really preserve opportunities for serendipity with a larger structure. It was an interesting day, largely because there was such a flexibility of thinking and willingness to consider new ideas from the participants. It was also stimulating because there was a palpable sense of tipping point where innovation moves from an implicit, unacknowledged activity towards a appreciation that these things can be brought into the light, without crushing the life out of them.

This is symptomatic of wider debates in the design industry (with some notable dissention from people such as Rick Poynor in his article ‘Down with Innovation’). Some agencies use a very clearly articulated production process such as Prince2 while others are much more organic, one this is for sure though, these sorts of discussions are going to become more common and more important as the design industry matures.

Imagination: Doctoring the Future

2008-12-09T16:32:00.008Z

I write to the clink of Champaign glasses as we celebrate a significant success for ImaginationLancaster. We have been awarded (with Computing and our Management School) a bid for £5 million from the EPSRC to establish a Digital Economies Innovation Doctoral Training Centre. This is one of only five centers in the UK under the Digital Economies DTC call.

The funding will be used to pay for the fees and a stipend for 50 studentship over 5 years to undertake firstly a one year MRes then a PhD project across the fields of Design, Computer Technology and Management. We will be recruiting the cohort of students for September 2009 and eventually all the PhD students will be accommodated in the new Imagination building, expanded specifically for the purpose when we put in the bid.

As coordinator for PhDs in Imagination my administrative responsibilities are going up up up, but it’s a fantastic vote of confidence for the Imagination and Lancaster University, it also gives us the opportunity to make a real impact on design research in the UK and beyond. Anyone from the UK or EU interested in applying should go to the Imagination website here then contact Leon Cruickshank as PhD coordinator for more information.

Now where is my drink?

Passion for Panton

2008-12-04T09:13:00.006Z

An entry on the excellent blog of Kevin Roberts http://krconnect.blogspot.com/2008/12/have-seat.html about well designed (and indeed designer furniture) has prompted me to respond with my ideas for the perfect balance of design quality, practicality (we still have kids with chocolaty fingers in our house) and affordability. For me the best balance if the Panton stacking chair (above) its sublimely elegant, very comfortable and wipe clean. In addition, you can get a good original from a few hundred pounds. Make sure you do get an original; this is made from acrylic rather than polypropylene. For those not in the know this is the difference between the plastic used in good clear drinking glasses and the plastic used for washing up bowls.

Do go and check out the Villain chair Kevin talks about, it would be top of my list if funds were not an issue.

Past-It Post-Its?

2008-12-04T08:46:00.004Z

We use post-its all the time in Imagination, especially when working with commercial clients in visioning exercises where we need to capture everyone’s ideas very quickly and democratically - ones the ideas on the board it becomes anonymous, especially as we always use the same excellent Sharpie pens. The problem is that as these sorts of techniques are propagating thought the people we work with we are starting to find that because its so familiar our partners are thinking more about technique than ideas. Recently we spent a day with the guys as Mott McDonald and a primary care trust in Walsall. They wanted some help exploring the future of healthcare communication. It was a great day but we had to get over the fact that they were keen to talk to us about the power of hexagonal post-its (even though for us, they are a little too small to communicate a concept to a group). Its a symptom that is making us re-assess some of the techniques we use for this sort of activity. On one hand the barriers to engagement with post its are so low but I think increasingly we are going to be using actors, totems and tagging (of the physical but also meta-dater) approaches and give post-its a bit of a rest for a while.

A Legacy of Oliver Reed

2008-12-02T09:00:00.000Z

I cannot say I often think of Oliver Reed, although the famous (and posthumous) accusation of selling him ‘queer giraffes’ is something that lingers. This made a visit to a pub (emphatically not a bar) in Lancaster even more surprising. I came across this memorial to the hard drinking actor. It took me a few moments to work out what it was, obviously home made, clearly with a functional aspect, really it helps to see it in context (see below), it’s a head rest for those unstable enough to keep their shoes dry. I think it is in fantastically bad taste but equally just fantastic, a fitting tribute on many levels – hurrah for low culture.

Oliver Reed In context

2008-12-02T08:10:00.002Z

Irresistible

2008-11-25T07:20:00.003Z

High-Tempo Innovation

2008-11-14T09:28:00.005Z

Like an elastic band, I keep returning to issues around innovation. I am in the process of writing a large bid (with many other academics) about the Digital Economy and we want to talk about innovation without repeating the rather stale, well-trampled ground of open innovation, user focused bah blah blah… This is motivated not only for a desire to be distinctive but more importantly to get to grips with what we think is a new mode of innovation activity. We think that innovation is happening more quickly (and accelerating) in virtual/digital contexts and is increasingly outstripping innovation in physical contexts that are more limited by physical logistics and organisational inertia. This is creating a disjunction and further a void between digital and physical innovation that is set to widen in the future, perhaps a s a stimulus for physical innovation and so a coming together, perhaps the start of a major schism.

We are searching for a way to describe this discontinuity, and what we think is a new sort of innovation, not just in the rate of innovation but more aagh I want to say open / democratic / fluid / dynamic. As a placeholder, we are using kinetic innovation, for me this is interesting as it has connotations of energy, movement and (for me anyway) relates to a meta-movement of innovation itself rather than seeing innovation merely as an engine of change.

Having said this I’m also drawn to the term ‘high-tempo Innovation’. This reflects the fast and furious’ and not necessarily high quality, or considered or even productive innovation that characterises at least a significant portion of innovation in the ‘wild west’ of the digital realm.

The Power of the Surreal

2008-10-24T07:38:00.004+01:00

I have been a student of Surrealism for almost as long as I can remember; it is a source of annoyance that so often 'surreal' is used as a short hand for simply being odd, or unusual. Its often used as a mechanism for defusing or emasculating ideas and actions that people don’t know how to deal with (the situationists called this 'recuperation'). So with all this said its great to see a real piece of surrealism, this was created by a motion graphics designer animator called Cyriak Harris from Brighton, UK, go here to see his web site and see a range of work, of the reel below my favourite is the tambourine playing rhino.

OHP Masterclass

2008-10-22T08:17:00.005+01:00

I thought the OHP was pretty much a relic going the way of the bander copier but the power of this simple presentation device was highlighted by an excellent, highly charismatic presentation by Klara de Smedt talking about the design centre and Incubator De Winkelhaak in Antwerp.

This presentation was part of the IWDS - International Workshop on Design Support, a gathering of those interested in design policy, industry support and business development in design (described below). Carla created, in effect an animated rayogram describing how a part of Antwerp really was not a nice place to be (shown above) and how a new design incubator, shop and gallery was introduced to the area, she helped us visualise this transformation by sweeping away the detritus and replacing it with..a live goldfish (in a bowl of water of course), it was a wonderful contrast, she went on to talk about the growth of the her centre, feeding the fish and adding more fish. It was a refreshing living alternative to even well designed power point presentations, and even these are pretty thin on the ground. So next time you need to present some ideas, think about how you can introduce an element of innovation and lets try and lift the standard together.

Cool Design Management

2008-10-21T07:17:00.005+01:00

I'm not an expert in design management so it was looking forward to expanding my horizons while attending the resent DME (Design Management in Europe) Awards in Cardiff recently, I was drawn there through some research we are planning on design policy and its relationship to on the ground design practice. Around the award event, there were a series of associated talks and presentations including very stimulating presentations. These included Virgin Airways (bullish after a hard pre-ression slimming program and now looking to capture more market share), the Danish kitchenware manufacturer Eva (who consciously 'apply' design to already functional objects to challenge clients - odd but it works for them) and KTM, a motorbike company resurrected by solid product design values in the Seymour Powel tradition. KTM also had on of their X-Bow cars on display and in the flesh the styling and presence of the car is awesome.

The presentations for the DME were held in the excellent Millennium Centre Cardiff (above, with an exterior shot below). It is very hard to get an awards ceremony to run smoothly but this was faultless with a good use of video clips to bring the posters to life without interminable speeches. The organisers of the Cardiff event should be highly congratulated.

I am a convert to design management, its great to see design thinking (a subject close to my heart) becoming part of a board range of company’s cultures, not just the gloss on a rotten apple. The trick now is to get more designers and creative to take engaging with 'boring' business more seriously, the DM awards are a good step in making design management cool.

Land of My Fathers - Gets Its Act Together

2008-10-14T18:10:00.006+01:00

I don’t travel as much as I used to but in the past 3 weeks I’ve been back to Cardiff in South Wales twice and I must admit I’m impressed. Cardiff is a very old acquaintance and was really from a nirvana in my formative years it was a city that I had fallen out of love with. I hated the weak, sub-modernist architecture, the parochial attitude, the binge drinking culture and the patchy (at best) food. There has been a dramatic change in the city, this was started by the hosting of the Rugby world cup final in 1999, this lead to the replacement of the Cardiff Arms Park with a fabulous new stadium as the beating heart of the city, in parallel the docks were developed with the creation of the ‘armadillo’, the Millennium Centre Wales, I was in this building for the presentation of the DME (Design Management in Europe) awards and the setting both inside and out was breathtaking (matching the quality of the event and great party afterwards on the main stage of the opera house).

This docklands development has been joined by major revamp of the centre of Cardiff, gone is the scabby 60s low-rise arcade but thankfully, Spillers, the oldest record shop in the UK is retained, as is the original town hall. There are landmark buildings going up in the city including a dramatic new central library, this is accompanied by great new bars and restaurants, those (including myself) that scoffed café culture in Cardiff are having to reflect over an excellent cappuccino that some things do change for the better. The city is still regenerating, with thankfully most of the structural building completed but much finishing required but I’m looking forward to going back.

Design Thinking and the TSB

2008-10-10T15:24:00.009+01:00

I was talking to Ian Grey, the head of the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) yesterday about design thinking. For those not in the know, the TSB in its current form was set up around 12 months ago to promote innovation in science, technology and the wider economy. It has has a sufficiently large budget to fund around £1 million research every day. Ian was very supporting of the IDEAS at Daresbury collaboration I am part of but crucially is “a passionate believer in getting design thinking embedded in the while innovation process". This is especially interesting as the remit of the TSB includes the creative industries even though institutionally they are more used to dealing with nanotechnology than design practice. We spent some time talking about the swatch of design thinking technique we have developed in ImaginationLancaster.

This interesting because (finally) the idea that a set of conceptual tools developed by creatives and designers can be used by all sorts of people to release and facilitate their own creative potential. This has interesting implications for the design profession, with a ‘step back’ but not a disengagement from hands on creation a common result. I think this is vital if we are to make the most of the untapped creative potential in the general population without throwing ourselves open to valueless mush of poor, unprofessional design.

Aye Chiwawa!

2008-10-06T16:53:00.003+01:00

A little while ago, I posted extolling the virtues of the venacular and how this is exemplified in the sniffy reaction to a new film called Beverly Hills Chawawa (see trailer below). I am very pleased to say that this is now number one in the US box office and coming to the UK soon. Perhaps this is our version of the Busby Berkley musicals. I am enjoying the horrified comments about this film, I think I will go and see it twice!

Mobile Phone Aesthetics

2008-09-24T10:01:00.002+01:00

I have a hate/hate relationship with mobile phones. I find them unintuitive, ugly and dislike being interrupted and always on the grid. Having said this its useful to reach out to people. As a consequence of this I swing between wanting the latest and greatest bit of kit (iPhone or the like) with the hope that it will be so useful and well designed I will love it or using cast off phones and taking the hit in terms of accessibility and use.

I’ve found an interesting compromise that has stimulated some debate here in Imagination tower. The phone is a Motorola Motophone, it’s a basic rather than smart phone (so no camera), its thin, water and dust resistant and has a ‘e paper’ screen. This is not a liquid crystal display but a special ink that can flip from black to white; it only uses power when it changes the display rather than needing power all the time. The result is an odd looking, low-resolution screen but fantastic battery life.

Showing this to two professors of design in my corridor. The Professor of sustainability thought is was a great idea while the Professor of Design Policy (and a typographer) literally recoiled in horror at the visual effect and ‘old typeface’ the phone has to use. Me? As expected of a designer I take a contrary view to both positions. Perhaps because I am (ahem) in a deferent demographic group to my typographer colleague but I really enjoy the cleanness of the aesthetics and the type is honest, chunky and makes me think of handheld video games from my youth, and for £20 I love it.

We Think

2008-09-23T08:06:00.006+01:00

We Think is a book by Charles Leadbeater that is the epitome of new approaches to design and innovation in our information age. He argues that creativity widely distributed and illustrates this with examples of mass innovation are all around us. In a way that resonates with the more academic Eric von Hippel, he is calling for the recognition of innovation that is taking place outside the design studio, the R&D lab. and academia. We Think is especially interesting in that the book was placed online in an editable form as a wiki and over the course of a year, 257 people edited the text and in essence co-authored the book.

There is a degree of hype around this area but its clear that something important is happening, this is a film of Leadbeater putting forward his argument at the TED conference go here, this is an exceptional resource of interesting and thought provoking presentations. There are also a large number of interesting documents on his website here.

Thanks to Mark Perry of Brunel University for forwarding the Leadbeater link.

Compelling Creation

2008-08-20T08:27:00.003+01:00

I’m not sure why I find this image so fascinating, I saw it as a random piece image on the excellent (but eclectic) peer rated news site digg and could not resist taking a copy. There are a lot of things going on here, obviously there is a creationist agenda here and clearly the colouring book is aimed at young children. I’m slightly puzzled by the text as Barry Curtis my old PhD supervisor and mentor did some work on the design of dinosaurs - how they were a social construct reflecting current societal issues, and he told me that creationists believed there were two arks, with the dinosaurs in the second one).

The idea of riding a dinosaur is very appealing and takes me back to the age of 10 and devouring early 2000AD comics that had cowboys that travelled back in time to raise dinosaur cattle in the past.

Finally, graphically this is a compelling visual image, with real care and attention put into it but I especially like the chocolate milkshake stain.

Starck Choices

2008-08-19T15:54:00.004+01:00

Kevin Roberts blog is consistently interesting and provocative and always worth checking out. A recent posting about a new Philip Starck product has stirred me sufficiently to add some thoughts here, and unusually I think Kevin has missed the target. Starck was one my key formative influences as I was studying design with his exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London on of the highlights but looking back now the gloss seems to highlight rather than compensate for the problems in the designs. The new product is a personal wind turbine called ‘Democratic Ecology’ and is on sale for €400 with a claimed potential for generating 20-60% of household energy. What is not clear is there is a move against domestic power generation in urban settings as wind speeds often make any significant generation of electricity impossible, this coupled with an inefficient form factor and questions left hanging over the energy and material budget required to make the generator leave me feeling sceptical.

Stark continues to have a reputation for aesthetics over function (remember the unusable lemon squeezer or the TV case made from compressed cardboard?), seems to me this could have more to do with the high profile of sustainability at the moment than any real ‘green’ convictions.

So true

2008-08-15T08:12:00.002+01:00

Graffiti - still cool?

2008-08-07T15:57:00.001+01:00

I do not care! Graffiti has become a cliché as an easy way for those not part of a culture to lionize and inevitably piggy back any shreds of radical potential that may reflect from this risky activity. So without attempting to recuperate or identify with the motivations of the graffiti artist (and this term in itself is problematic) I’ll just post some images now and again because aesthetically they are dynamic, stimulating and part of the sort of accidental community processes I wish I was more involved with.

Imaginarium

2008-08-06T09:08:00.002+01:00

Funny how inspiration works, I would have bet a large mount of money that the title Imaginarium was something I originated as a combination of ImaginationLancaster the design research lab. I work in tempered by an over exposure to Futurama, in which one of the characterless was brought up in an ‘Orfanarium’. Two things have challenged this conviction, on is the discovery of a really nice design concept and shop in Spain called, you guessed it ' Imaginarium', I especially like the twin entrance to the shop, much like the IKEA entrance to their children’s areas but realized with more panache. The second point is the realization that many months ago I head about an upcoming film from Terry Gillian called ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’, suddenly I’m not so sure I’m original, still I’m in good company.

Seeing the Light

2008-08-05T13:18:00.002+01:00

In a recent trip to Barcelona, I spent a very stimulating morning at the Miro Foundation overlooking the city. This had been my first time back to this excellent showcase since the 90`s as a student, it lived up to my expectations with some really powerful work on display expanding well beyond my fuzzy recollections. A stand out addition to the permanent exhibition was the temporary set of instillations / art from Olafur Eliasson. This work consists of plays with mirrors, reflection, refraction and movement but the interesting thing for me was the preparation of the viewer for this experience. To give the viewer a ‘balanced’ color perception of the work uncolored buy other perceptions ideally everyone would look at a white space to reset color perceptions. This dose not sound practical but its exactly what this exhibition managed through the provision of a large play area of white logo, inviting people to make things using this (while I was there most of the forms were architectural although there was no direction on what we should be making). It was a great way to get people to interact with each other and the space while making the viewers more sensitive to the artworks to follow. Here is my construction (hopefully elegant) defiantly not robust.

Hanging by a thread?

2008-07-17T08:30:00.003+01:00

Attending 'Undisciplined' the bi-annual DRS (Design Research Society) conference, held this year in the Sheffield UK, its noticeable how few people there are here and the rather inward looking nature of the conference, with most of the same old faces (and I guess this is starting to include me now). The last conference was very eclectic in its acceptance policy (rumour has it that all papers were accepted) this time there was a shift towards rigour, with over 50% of papers being rejected. The big problem for me is that while I’m glad to be presenting its not clear how the people who did not get in to present will improve (worryingly there are almost no attendees who are not presenting). It seems crazy that there was no provision for notes, or posters to act as a stepping-stone to full papers.

The next conference in 2010 is set for Montreal, if this conference was make or break for the DRS, the Montréal conference needs to do some mending.

Monkey Buisness in the Digital Economy

2008-07-01T16:56:00.008+01:00

The Digital Economy is a big deal in academia in the UK, with two research councils each putting over £100 million into the area in the next few years. This has led to protracted, and somewhat frenetic bid writing and the tendency to start to see it as a somewhat hackneyed phrase, people are starting to use other phrases like 'knowledge society' to get away from it.

I witnessed an example of the digital economy in action a few days ago that really refreshed my perceptions of the powerfulness of the idea. As with many great things it started with a trip to the zoo. I was with the family at the excellent Blackpool Zoo, my wife Sarah took some nice photos and put one on her blog. Some one in the marketing department at the Zoo used Goggle alerts to track people who tag Blackpool Zoo. That person looked at the images online, and the blog, noticing that Sarah was a freelance writer on children’s issues and contacted her to mention that Blackpool has the only A-Zoo Nursery in the world.

Following this contact and on the same day Sarah successfully pitched an article to a leading UK magazine on Children’s Issues on the nursery.

This facilitation of serendipity, connectedness and rapid response exemplifies the potential of the digital economy to change the way we think about commence, communications and the important of individuals rather than companies in the coming years.

SanFran in the Bubble

2008-06-25T19:06:00.003+01:00

Lots I could say about this image, from Baudrillard,to Umberto Eco's Hyperreality, to the Matrix and its bastardisation of these but really I`m just enjoying the trashy souvenir my mate Martyn brought me back from a research trip across the states.

Relocating Innovation

2008-06-17T17:38:00.002+01:00

I have just taken part in an interesting workshop that formed part of the 'Relocating Innovation' project at Centre for Science Studies, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University

Facilitated by Lucy Suchman, Laura Watts and Endre Dányi this drew together a very diverse mix of academics from across Lancaster University who were interested in innovation. The relocating innovation project is interesting in its own right (and please follow the link to find out more) but another layer of interest came from the different perspectives the range of participants brought on innovation.

There was a minority of people looking directly at classical innovation studies in the business and management sense and for the most part most of these were in tension with its implicit aims that really continue the modernist aim of progress through new technology and the market. There was a much greater interest in relocating innovation away from (in my view unsustainable) view of the market as controller and incentives. In my own work on user generated content its becoming evident that the old currency models of incentive, activity and reward are becoming tempered with other incentives to innovate around reputation, ethics and other factors, understanding these motivations is a key aim for me.

There were also a number of people using innovation ion the same way that design or creativity is used as a short-hand for the ‘eureka’ moment. It was interesting to see innovation used in this way in otherwise very particular, specific lexicons particular to the specific disciplines.

Apart from this one of the most stimulating ideas (that is taking some time to assimilate properly) is the idea of combating global (hegemonistic) ideas that are not so constructive by localising them in a particular context, narrative, agenda and conversely in the freeing of local ideas to propagate and develop across time and space. More thinking required on my part on this.

This was an exceedingly interesting series of conversations and issues and hopefully these will continue in the future.

Innovation and Design Update

2008-06-17T16:31:00.000+01:00

Following on from the post below, I have been directed towards Utterbacks et al’s book Design Inspired Innovation, I am in the process of reading this and so far, it is making me very cross! It is rather loose in its language, for example ‘ Modular design is a pre-condition for so called mass customisation’ – what about rapid manufacture? In addition, it also lumps designers and design companies as being the same as ‘users’ in an argument that innovation is shifting towards users over time. This is a massive shift in conventional thinking and highly contentious (translation – wrong) presented in a completely unproblematic way. Having said this I am withholding judgment, I am only 30 pages in so watch this space.

Innovation vs. Design

2008-06-06T16:59:00.000+01:00

I have been reading and thinking (but not writing) a lot about innovation over the last two weeks. Specifically I have been thinking about the relationship between design and innovation. There are many people, even colleagues who talk about innovation without any relationship to design at all (literary examples of this include the 600 page Oxford Handbook of Innovation and the 500 page Diffusion of Innovation) in this world innovation is a function of business activity. There is another camp, mostly of designers, who see innovation as their home ground (and neither know or care about the other school of innovation studies). Tom Kellys The Art of Innovation and his 10 Faces of Innovation use the term interchangeable with creativity and treat it very much as a sub-category of design practice. This tension is exemplified (but not resolved by a recent paper in Design Studies by Ba1rry Wylant called Design Thinking and the Experience of Innovation. Here the two worlds are mixed without really bringing them together, the result is a rather curdled sludge.

Rick Poynor has just written an article in the International Design Magazine called Down with Innovation. Here he argues that designers have been so successful in promoting design that business has tried accepted this and is now trying to take it away from designers by calling it design thinking or innovation. He undermines this interesting position by going onto argue that the only really important thing is aesthetic sensibilities anyway and the measure for successful design is if it will be in a museum in the future (I think this was a side swipe at things like service design).

From my perspective there is a lot of guff written on both sides of this subject. There are many, many ‘airport’ books aimed at the executive looking for a quick fix. The two titles above are exceptions to this as is a great deal of the research in the book edited by Chesbrough, Vanhaverbeke and West called Open Innovation Researching a New Paradigm. (Warning Chesbrough started the Open Innovation thing off with a book called. you guessed it Open Innovation – this is pretty firmly in airport land, even if the kernel of the idea in there is proving to be very powerful).

Substantial research about innovation and design is not very well developed (or if it is I have not found it yet), partly this is because that designers are trained to weave their creative skills around them in a web of mystique, partly its because I don’t buy the idea that innovation is the same as creativity and the same as invention. The distinction I am aware of (and support – I think) is that invention is the Eureka moment; innovation (and design?) is the motion of that idea into a practical outcome. I am keeping at it but bringing these two worlds together is challenging to say the least.

Anti-Design, Populism, Academia and Beverly Hills

2008-05-09T10:41:00.000+01:00

I mention both anti-design and a desire to break down ivory towers in the wrapper for this blog. Something has prompted me to reflect of these aspirations and to share the benefits of this approach. Anti-design has its roots in radical Italian design in the 60s and 70s. These were groups with great names like Archizoom, Studio Alchymia and UFO. They wanted a reappraisal of the position and activities of the designer in society, ideas that resonate even more strongly today than in the 70s (the best source for finding out more about this general area is Andrea Branzi’s book the Hot House).

The philosophy underlying this was inspired by the understanding that we had to move to a more democratic society and that not only could design help with this but crucially design would itself be subject to these forces of change, that design was also part of the problem. There is a very interesting (and under researched) connection between this design specific thinking and the more general, radical politics of the late 60s through Ettore Sottsass’s Imaginist Bauhaus. These bodies of knowledge have deeply influenced me and lead to a conviction that the populace as a whole should be trusted and engaged with in an open, non-pejorative way, without condescension. This is not necessarily the usual mode of interaction for academia even (or in fact especially) for those involved in areas such as participative design.

My beliefs in the power of the populist have been justified by the video below, strip away any need for something good to be clever or deep and you will have 2 minutes of pure joy that if you have a pulse will get you dancing around and humming for the rest of the day.

Circuit Bending at Futuresonic

2008-05-07T12:20:00.000+01:00

As I mention below I recently spend some time at the excellent Futuresonic conference and festival in Manchester. In addition to Paul Coulton’s work, there was an exceptional display of circuit bending by Brian Duffy. As part of the collaborative Future of Sound, Brian talked to us about ‘coming out as a geek’ and a whistle-stop tour through his work, it was a sparkling presentation. For the uninitiated circuit bending, is the subversion of electronic circuits (often in children’s musical instruments) to make new instruments, sounds and performance. This process can include cross wiring the circuit board, stressing (e.g. twisting) circuits to change their properties, so changing sound to touching parts of the circuit to act as a human conductor. The video here show Brian manipulating an instrument by pressing touching a number of brass connectors on the outside of the instrument that are directly connected to the circuit inside. As the body of the performer is conducting a signal, effectively making it part of the circuit factors such as temperatures, mass, swat on the skin effect the performance.

I find this compelling and I think its because it involves the construction of a quite rigidly defined, logical structure that the human performer stretches and subverts, it also resonates strongly with the advantages of the physical / digital services described below. I was really disappointed I had to miss the full blown performance by Brian but the Future of Sound website is good place to start, I’m going to be calling back regularly to try and get the full experience.

Physical Mobile

2008-05-03T22:24:00.000+01:00

I recently spent an interesting day at the excellent Futuresonic urban festival of art, music and ideas. There were 2 real highlights. The first was a demonstration by Paul Coulton from Lancaster University. Paul is a mobile services wizard, and a Nokia champion (by their measure one of the top mobile developers in the world). The highlight of his presentation was a demonstration of a service that allows you to create 3d images with you mobile phone when posted on his web site. This presented the amusing scene of the audience in 3D glasses but also made a powerful case for us not disappearing into the virtual world completely. Whether it is 3D cardboard glasses, of Nintendo DS users wearing badges to advertise the network games they want top play to the ‘unplugged’ (physical) social networking that was a theme of the festival it seems clear that the future is in expanded physical communication, rather than the isolation of e mail, second life or Blogs…oops.