90s product designers realized this and some (understandably) revolted against their business-as-usual. they started questioning their field why they should continue designing things that people don’t need as opposed to re-orientating themselves towards designing things that people don’t have enough of.

lack of thinking

what exactly it is that people lack… is of course down to individual interpretation: designer-auteurs’ answers will vary from ‘fun’ to ’soul’ to ’self-reflection’ to ‘play’ to ‘knowledge’ to ‘political engagement’ to ‘personal luxury’ to _anything else_ to be thought of.

key here is the term ‘thought’: as a result of overproduction, new products ['thoughtful objects'] did emerge that now have embedded into their designs a thinking about _whatever_ it is that people do lack (at least in the minds of their creators).

in the hands and minds of people

what do these objects actually do, when placed in the hands an minds of people? – they can be pretty cool: in best cases, thoughtful objects have made me ‘get’ a point immediately (direct to the nerves communication); they have facilitated not one but multiple ways of thinking about a concept; and they have encapsulated that thinking in one ’solid’ (visual/thingly) memory.

some key benefits/qualities seem to be their:

a) accessibility: they use a familiar product design vocabulary but with a ‘twist’ to conventional functionality which makes it easy to deduce the object’s intention/thinking from the absent normal function (thought function rather than utility function)

b) freestyle thinking: they stimulate to think around them in freestyle, not in a linear manner (clouds of thought rather than trains of thoughts)

c) visual memory: they and any attached thoughts are much easier to remember than purely abstract concepts and conversations (visual memory rather than abstract memory)

d) aesthetics: they play in a new space between sculpture, product and interaction, ingeniously mashing up and ‘copy-pasting’ across these three disciplines without formally adding too much own invention/craft (new and familiar rather than new and unknown aesthetics)

when it all goes downhill

there is a pitfall, however: once it had been understood by the design community that an object doesn’t have to work but in the mind, it became very easy to a) design pretty objects for rubbish thoughts (ie tons of copycats and followers) and b) lose one’s path as a designer and think of oneself as an artist.

pretty objects for rubbish thoughts may serve as nice feuilleton illustrations accompanying articles in which writers develop their own, hopefully more original thoughts. not too good a professional perspective. as for artist-designers, the luxury of being able to design objects that do not open a can has backfired even more, as their work might either be musealized instantly (bad pun: in a use-less state) or be bought by a select few as a new kind of vanity desk/vanity furniture.

mannerism vs mass market

in the v&a exhibition ‘telling tales’, there stands a big massive mannerist wardrobe, designed by tord boontje.

apparently it features 600 hand painted emerald leaves (i forgot how many hours it took the specialist to make them), and it is said to not work very well as a wardrobe. its story might be about [enter speculation here]: materials? woods? oh who cares… i think that if anything, this design tells a story about the era of thoughtful objects as an innovation in product design coming to an end. here’s a swansong…

i like the idea of designing objects that follow a thought, not a function. in fact, i think any thing to think with is awesome, material or immaterial, and i’d like to have some more of them, please – but in the mass market and, somehow, for everyone. it’s time to get bored of pretty naff things.

ps oh, and the world is still too full of products but most of them suck! my grandma never found a can opener in her last twenty years that she could use with her arthritic hands. and as to can openers, how crazy a product idea that must have been before it was ‘there’, invented to prove its case…

“the ongoing moment” – this fabulous book by geoff dyer has taught me a big needed lesson on slowing down. it – officially – is a book about photography, but to me calling it a visual meditation is closer to the mark. dyer proves that photographs need to be given a chance to be looked at twice: each one might turn out to be a perfect little world on its own, full of association and storytelling, in another slower, (meta/concentrated) reality.

in other words, at any time it might be full worth to pay the time it costs to look and dive into what’s there, in front of our eyes, rather than letting it pass in a faster, (real/distracted) reality – but making the call on which one it’ll be is the hard bit.

slow down to perception

slow food etc, we’ve been there, but the whole discussion can be taken to a whole new next level when we transpose it from a (physical) consumption to a (mental) perception context. how could we be in control speeding up and down our own visual perception / contemplation mechanisms? – i’d like to train myself a bit better, i’d like to become more fluent in my visual thinking.

constant partial attention

driven by the desire to not miss anything, we feel compelled to always have ‘half an eye’ out there for something else. this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however some times the scanning and skimming mechanisms do take over, and it takes a conscious effort to change gears, to change direction, to find the way out of this semi-automatic surface scanning in order to dive into the ‘depth’ of a textual or a visual world.

interfaces for half an eye

what are interface mechanisms that can help explore (digital) content in both breadth and depth? current design explorations seem to hint at a better combination and integration of zooming and scrolling such as seen for example in microsoft’s seadragon or other maps like browsing paradigms (ok, that was soo 2 years ago, but what’s next?) … however, these mechanisms are somewhat limited as they do not help making decisions at a very top level – people who access maps do usually know where they want to start, and the actual experience is about the seduction of ‘falling down’ into the richness of content that lies in the depth ahead somewhere.

so how to design for top-level blink of an eye decisions? presented with a ’streaming ton’ of information, what are the signals and signposts in (digital) content itself that can help people make decisions which routes to take alongside an x, y and z-axis of an ‘information engagement’ space? (x,y,z-axis, ie 3d space, is probably not the right metaphor and working model here in the first place; i think that understanding information happens in one at the same time deep and shapeless space… but that’s just me and how it feels to me).

detail at distance

what are the rules behind non-digital artefacts that successfully manage to ‘turn my attention round’ to them? rule nr1 (there is only 1 so far… but i am searching for more): they do give me enough info and resolution on both detail and distance level at a first glance. i start to move them ‘around in my head’ immediately, and i turn my attention towards them a tiny tick later (most people probably know that feeling when they have turned over a page too quickly and then having to flip it back because there’s something that needs to be ‘looked’ at). this seamless/simultaneous resolution across detail and distance… it doesn’t exist in digital at all.

detail design and preserving detail traces in a digital context: i came across this same photo of a whale being butchered in the guardian’s online- and offline editions. in the online edition, i barely noticed the photo (to be fair i think i had forgotten it before i’d even seen it if that is somehow possible). in the offline edition i couldn’t take my eyes off it – the image was too well resolved, i could see the fine fur (do you call it fur??) of the whale, and i could see the men butchering it, standing ON THE WHALE’S BODY in puddles of whale blood, splashing around in their yellow wellies… i can think of no way of reusing the same content (here: the photo) to convey the same meaning in both offline and online – a simple ‘enlarge photo’ function preempts itself as we are looking to design for instant encounters.

attention content

we have accepted different editorial- and production needs for offline/online textual content long ago, but how to appropriate that insight for visual offline/online content?

ps i love the fact that the wikipedia entry on continuous partial attention starts off with a quote about finding the fish (ok, a whale is a mammal…. but still):

“[CPA] usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data, picking out the relevant details, and moving on to the next stream. You’re paying attention, but only partially. That lets you cast a wider net, but it also runs the risk of keeping you from really studying the fish.”

i want to be able to take pictures, fairly, as i please and with respect, wherever i go – especially in inspirational/educational environments such as art galleries and museums. i’ve been reading up on this mission impossible and have been entangled in a whole web of arguments why this might be too much of a dream to come true.

copyright cover

there’s the bad-bad-artists against the good-good museums stance, aka copyright issues: firstly, museums do not generally hold any copyrights for the artworks they physically own or exhibit. secondly, museums ~might~ be held responsible by the copyright holders ie artists to protect their copyright within their four museal walls. thirdly, museums will just switch off any threat of copyright infringement by default as anything else will be too hard to manage. (i haven’t found any signs of a shared directive across museums on this copyright/protection issue so i do believe that interpretations and actions are mostly down to individual and institutional contracts and policies. omg, just imagine the operational mess that comes with every major exhibition…)

petty postcard money?

then there’s the museums-as-moneymakers conspiracy: museums would have a vital interest in not allowing photography of public domain artwork* from their collection as that would immediately affect postcard sales from their museum shop. really?? this seems a pretty stupid argument, i don’t think so. someone who’d like to have a sketchy mona lisa snapshot on their iPhone wouldn’t be in the market for a high-end mona lisa postcard reproduction in the first place. i would love to hear some museum employees’ voices on this one, i don’t think we’d be having much of a fight here…

people just play… with their own eyes

picking up on the word reproduction, there’s a slightly more esoteric conversation around reproduction and aura on flickr initiated by an actual museum containing rather interesting thoughts of actual people entitled “Why do people take pictures of works of art?” so why are people doing such crazy things? some just want to capture the moment. some just want to capture themselves. some do create unique photographs, portraing the whole gallery space rather than individual pieces of art (i just love the example of the photo series exploring reflections of art on gallery surfaces). some want to document a detail of an artwork that won’t be covered in any kind of professional reproduction (a repro, i’m pretty sure, will always aim to produce an ‘average’ visitor’s view on any artwork – which is the same as saying its product will always be a compromise on personal seeing, more apt to please someone who _has not actually seen_ the artwork rather than a person who has experienced it with their own eyes).

so… what about the quest to take pictures?

there’s no point in trying to convince museums and art galleries to change their policies long-term… camera phones will win. there’s some short-term gains to be made though by making today’s visitor experience less miserable. don’t make people feel bad about carrying a camera, don’t make them hide their tech like they had just gone shoplifting. be transparent and actively inform you visitors about your photo/copy policy and the reasons behind it. make sure people know which artist is ok with visual takeaways and which isn’t (as soon as artists get individually and visibly marked… they might change their attitude). allow your visitors to photograph without flash as much as they like and as long as they don’t go in full repro mode. if the artist/copyright holder doesn’t mind, do allow them to go into full repro mode. have museum guides offering to take pictures of visitors in front of artworks. sell better digital photos in your shop and allow people to send and share them. (where’s all your other digital products, in the first place?). last but not least, make sure your guides know whom and what they are supposed to protect.

ps i read in a quote the other day where a school girl was told to cease and desist sketching in front of a classic painting… much to learn from that mal-behaviour.

i’ve learned quite a lot about our instinct to smile from 2d/character design. full-on posters of grinning disney figures always make us smile back, but how does this instinct work in a functional design context (and by functional i mean, electronically enhanced and interactive)? when did i last smile back at a piece of grinning technology?

doesn’t happen often with (perceived) multi function products. i don’t say good morning to my nokia, and i don’t accept it’s oddities or failures with some form of character recognition and/or sympathy for the poor thing. (ok, if i had an iphone. but no, don’t think so either).

could happen rather often with (perceived) single function products. i can imagine an alarm clock that i say good morning to as well as good night, and i would know exactly when to slap it and when to leave it alone in case of a malfunction. (no, i don’t have a million tamagotchis at home, and i don’t intend to get a tama-farm started soon).

the less perceived functionality, the more room for bonding, dialogue and character design in digital devices?