What I learned about ambiguity

August 30 10

I gave a short (10 minute) talk called A (very) short history of ambiguity at UX Australia last week. I think it went well. Building the presentation certainly helped me to explore some ideas I’ve been trying to work through in my phd around ambiguity and affinity. Heres’ the slides, with notes. I’ll try get the recording to make the slidecast.. but I expect that’ll take a while..

A (very) short history of ambiguity

I’d be very interested to hear from people working in this area, or for whom these ideas are interesting… these ideas form part of a PhD I’m currently undertaking. I’m getting ready to turn into the longish second last leg, where you work out wtf you’re really on about, and how you might communicate this coherently to someone who isn’t … well, you.

As I also mentioned before, I was happy to see that I could do it coherently in under 10 minutes :)

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Visualization as reification

August 6 10

I’m thinking of the presentation I’m giving in a week or so at
uxaustralia titled “A (very) short history of ambiguity”. Its related
to my PhD, and I need to be careful to hit the right tone as its not
an academic conference or audience.

One thread of the presentation will discuss Etienne Wenger’s take on
ambiguity, as described in his book Communities of Practice. Rather
than talk about that now (and send you all away to the other talks ;-)
I wanted to muse on another big concept in Wenger’s theory:
reification.

Wenger says that “in reification we project ourselves into the world,
and not having to recognize ourselves in those projections, we
attribute to our meanings an independent existence” (p58)

This sounds like a good description of what happens when designers use
sketching to visualize the relationships between elements of a design.
Ive been looking for ways to frame this lately, and I think
reification would be a good start. Particularly as it compliments the
other half of Wenger’s duality (reification, participation)

Note to self: examine projects in the phd through this frame… What
artifacts emerge as critical?

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Designing Discussion

July 28 10
Hi everyone,
Thanks for a great class last night. Here's the start of what i hope will be a reasonably steady stream of articles and postings that help expand your thoughts on design research.

Today, I'm linking to a blog from the Cooper Hewitt school, and a post where the students are critiquing some work by Dunne & Raby.

Check it out, and ask yourselves how you think this works as a review of literature, if that literature is design itself.

"According to Dunne + Raby, critical design is meant to stimulate discussion amongst designers and the public about the social, cultural and moral implications of technology. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have blindly accepted the machine as integral if not essential to our existence. But very few ever stop to consider the potential ramifications of such unyielding faith. We forget that mankind survived hundreds of years without the beloved iPhone."

Sent from my iPad

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week 1 – course outline, epistemology & your interests

July 22 10
This week we discussed research by asking ourselves "what is knowledge?"
Working in groups, we brainstormed ways of understanding different approaches to epistemology. Building models that helped communicate how we understand knowledge. This process is important to experience, because it demonstrates the multiplicity of voices that we have (even among 11 students). 

From these different opinions on knowledge, different theoretical perspectives are built, giving us different methodologies and eventually, tools to help us do our research. (we'll look more at this in weeks 3&4)
We then looked at some outcomes of research, books, projects, and reports.

I also presented the course outline, attached to this post

tasks for this week are to 

  1. read the Course Notes for Module 1, including:
  • Maxwell (2005, p. 46 -55) discusses the development of a topic through ‘concept maps’. A digitised version of this section is available through the library (http://digital.lib.rmit.edu.au/ereserve/notes09/grap1174/31259009190724.pdf) 
  • Undertake the concept map for your research topic . After you have synthesised and clarified the topic, discuss your key research question and three sub-questions in class and on the discussion board . Once others have stated their questions, try asking them questions, providing feedback and helping one another in clarifying and focusing the question more . 

    • Posted via email from Research Methods

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    A (very) short history of ambiguity

    July 19 10

    I’m presenting a 10 minute talk at UXAustralia next month.. Here’s the 100 word abstract, and a bit longer description:

    Designers constantly deal with the ill-defined to help people negotiate uncertain situations or artifacts, but how well do we understand our own ways of dealing with ambiguity? Using examples, I’ll discuss three approaches to ambiguity that can inform design, and how these approaches can affect peoples experience of products.

    This ties in with recent moves in my PhD, and builds on my thinking about artifacts and affinity.

    I’m thinking of presenting different approaches to ambiguity because it appears to be a largely unexamined foundation of design practice. How we approach ambiguity can have the largest effect on a design, because it frames the epistemological foundation of a design, or how a design understands and uses knowledge.

    The three approaches that I’m contemplating using describe an arc along a positivist – constructivist spectrum: from extreme empiricism (I’m thinking Herbert Simon etc) to phenomenological (Heidegger or Dreyfus), with the pragmatists (Dewey) in the middle.

    The key challenge will be to cover this ground in the allotted 10 minutes, and keep the predominately professional audience engaged. I think it’s totally possible, but will need to draw things back to real world examples constantly. In fact I’ll need to create some exemplary anchors early on to use throughout the presentation.

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    What is this purple icon in the top status bar of my iPhone?

    June 24 10

    Sent from my iPhone

    Posted via email from overlobe’s posterous

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    Back in the Theater: introducing subjects Part 1

    March 1 10

    Its great to see how other teachers introduce their projects.

    Today I’m adding a 20 minute section to a subject introduction seminar (post about my bit here), and it’s great to be back in the theater. Kyla’s intro is awesome.. using tinderbox to situate her subject this semester in the context of previous subjects, and what kind of skills you’ll both need and develop during the semester. It’s really encouraging as an example of the pedagogical ideas that the Media program began renewing a few years ago coming to fruition.

    This semester the subject is centered on the new roles of Social Media producer. Check out these three job descriptions …read more

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    Artifacts & Behavior: activating reciprocity

    February 25 10

    reciprocity nudgegot handed this today. It’s a loyalty card for a local café.

    Interesting thing about it is that they make it really easy for you to get your first “freebee”: by giving you 4 purchases on the card you only have to purchase 1 coffee to then experience the satisfaction of a free coffee.

    nice example of the law of reciprocity in action.

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    Affinity & Artifacts: linking the inside with its activator

    February 21 10

    I’m currently writing two papers. At this point, bits of these papers seem to resemble two chapters of my thesis. …read more

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    (Teaching) Models of Models

    February 20 10

    what makes a good interaction designer?

    Hugh Dubberly recently published an article called Models of Models where he introduces the concept of models and then breaks down the constituent parts so the reader can think about how to make and evaluate models for themselves. (hint – read the pdf, it communicates more richly than the post. the article also appears in Interactions Mag )

    I was looking at this while thinking a lot about my PhD and some curriculum review that IxDA is currently undertaking with BDW. The following thoughts particularly resonated:

    Passing models from one generation to the next is a responsibility of teachers and managers. Models are what students take away from school and what young people take away from early jobs. Models are what you remember after leaving.

    I recently spoke with Hugh about a wide arc of ideas and histories related to interaction design, cybernetics and education. The issue of literacy (of systemic or ecological thinking) came up repeatedly, and re-reading this article reminds me to write a little about it.

    If models are (as Alan Kay states) where “we do most of our work” (and I think they are) then why not teach modeling as well as models?

    Let me explain. It is my belief that education is obsessed with trends; what’s relevant now? who’s hot now? what extends the canon? etc. These invariably manifest in a model of some sort; frameworks, theories, templates and protocols can all be traced back to a model. These are important to pass on. Reinvention is silly, except when it can help us understand.

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