Postcards from the Networked City :: Interaction Design in a Post IT Age.

Postcards from the Networked City :: Interaction Design in a Post IT Age.

Michael SmythCentre for Interaction DesignEdinburgh Napier University, UK@michael_smyth

Wednesday, 26 June 13

Why do we send postcards?


How does a city portray itself?


Trainspotting (1996)


Is Instagram the new postcard?


We live in a world where everything seems possible and as a consequence have lost the sense of wonder.

Branko Lukic, NonObject, MIT Press (2011)


Where do these moments of design inspiration come from?


One method favoured by Interaction Designers is ethnography.

Observation that aims to provide insight into work, culture and behavioural practices.


A tension between the pressure of solution-focused design practice and ethnography’s concern with meanings and culture.


Critical Design acts as a catalyst or provocation for thought (Anthony Dunne, 1999).


Critical Design challenges our assumptions and preconceptions about the role that products and services play in everyday life.


Street Art (Tom Welsh, 2009).


Video as a way of understanding the design space.

Layers of meaning.


UN Habitat report on populations moving to cities - just

over 50% of the world's population now live in cities.


In Europe the figure is over 70% Europe is a dense continent and the major lived experience of people is an urban one.


Europe is the region with the highest Internet penetration

rate in the world 75%, followed by the Americas

61%.

In 2011, more than 70% of European households had access to the Internet at home.


But this is an average - The regional differences in Internet access within the EU were large, from

26% of some areas of Bulgaria, to 95% or more in areas of the Netherlands.


The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.

William Gibson, The Economist, 2003


The city is a mesh of heterogenous networks. Not just official governmental, institutional and commercial levels but also as a mesh of hybrid human networks.


In 2011 there were 741 million mobile phone

subscriptions in Europe. That's 1.2 SIM cards per person.

The average age of first phone ownership is 7 years old.


The vision of Ubicomp is one of seamless interfaces, connecting into invisible, distributed, pervasive and ubiquitous computing


Interactions create data, often personal data relating to individuals, and if our interactions are "seamless" this raises serious questions around the visibility of what happens to that data. Issues of trust, privacy, ownership and control.


Cities are complex systems at both the physical and digital levels


Smart Cities projects tend to take a Big Picture view of systems, considering technology from an infrastructural perspective - the bird's eye view.


Urban Interaction Design addresses the intersection of people with the data rich city


Walking Path to Avoid CCTV in New York (2001)


http://66.93.183.118:8080/isee/s1?zm=0&id=168%0Ahttp://66.93.183.118:8080/isee/s1?zm=0&id=168




Yellow Arrow Project (2004)


a cartography of the intimate & the everyday


Derive App :: Cachucho (2012)


Dead Drops :: Aram Bartholl (2010)


Trash|Track :: MIT Lab (2009)


Tidy Street, Brighton (2011)


Ingress :: Niantic Labs (2012)


AR game that encourages players to input data about physical monuments.


Preckam Most :: Crossing the Bridge, Interaction Design Workshop, Magdalena Festival, Slovenia (2009).


An intervention that sought to slow down people’s journeys, to view the mundane and familiar in fresh ways.


Crossing the bridge became a different experience.


The act of taking photographs altered perspectives on everyday routines.


digitalAntique :: Split Interactions, Croatia (2011).


Exploring the connections between past and present.


Articulating the values of the present and getting people to reflect on them.


The universality of values.


The UrbanIxD project particularly concerns the Research of, and Design for, the point of contact between people and urban technologies.

We are building a network of researchers working on urban technologies from the human perspective.

We have partners in UK, Italy, Denmark, Croatia


The UrbanIxD project is working towards the production of a research manifesto of future research directions.


We are running a Summer School in Split, Croatia in August, 2013.


Active engaged citizens are knitting together their own smart cities.


www.michael-smyth.co.ukwww.urbanixd.eu

@michael_smyth


http://www.michael-smyth.co.uk

http://www.michael-smyth.co.uk

http://www.complexpleasure.wordpress.com

http://www.complexpleasure.wordpress.com

Postcards from the Networked City :: Interaction Design in a Post IT Age.

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