Interaction Design

Technology refers to the scientific knowledge for practical purposes. Today, technology is often used to describe any electronic tools, however, it also includes any tools that we've developed in order to change our environment. A pen, for example, is in fact a technology. Short Summary of the History of Technology Technology was initially characterised by the human's need of surviving, hunting and gathering food. In the Stone Age, our ancestors made stone tools that helped them to fulfil these needs. Once we learnt the skill of forging iron, we started to replace stone tools with ones out of this newly discovered, stronger material. The Ancient Age (3000BC to 610 AD) was dominated by Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Mayans, Byzantines and Mesopotamians. They were one of the first to introduce technologies such as the wheel, paper and toilets. During the Medieval Period (610 to 1760 AD) gunpowder lead to the development of new warfare tools such as cannons. There was also a m...

User Experience (UX) = User + Interaction User Experience can be defined as the overall experience users have when they are interacting with something. It focuses on the user's emotions and looks into creating technologies that solve human's problems. UX Design consist of the cycle of Research, Design, Prototyping, Testing and Measurement With this process we can create designs that are useful, usable and desirable. Usability is a part of UX Design, however, if something works, that doesn't mean that it provides a good experience. In fact, UX catches our attention mores when it's bad. Simultaneously, a beatiful design does not mean it's intuitive. UI = the things the user will actually interact with and see UX = the overall experience Users can impact the design and create the experience themselves. No matter what you design people will often find an appropriation of misuse. Misuse has several meanings: "to use something in the wrong way or for t...

Design Process Methods Throughout the entire module we worked closely with the methods that we learnt during our theory modules. The ethnographic processes, such as interviews and culture probes, helped us a lot in learning how locals and internationals feel towards isolation and loneliness. The collected information influenced many aspects of our projects, as for example the culture probes, which inspired our visual compositions. Learning by doing has been an essential part of this module and has helped us in exploring and practising certain Interaction Design methods. There are, however, so many more processes which we still have yet to learn. In addition, we also learnt that one shouldn’t be afraid of taking a step back during the process. Experiencing trial and errors is essential to any design process.

Three screens, each displaying two different videos, were distributed along the main hallway in the 4th floor - the floor where all design departments are located. We wanted locals to recognise familiar faces - a sense of "familiar strangers" - and be curious about exploring their stories. In addition, each screen included one foreign language that is not commonly used within the ZHdK - such as English or German are. With this decision we hoped to catch the curiosity of passersby.   We decided to not include the interviewees' names in our videos as we felt that these experiences, although personal, can happen to any international. It also supported our goal of "familiar strangers" where locals might be inclined to actually approach these faces and to start a conversation with them. This actually happened throughout the morning of our exhibition - both Emma and Ju had been approached by locals who inquired about their stories. For each screen we placed a d...

Fixing the flow  After receiving some inputs from Nicole the day before about the subtitling we returned to our video files: previously we had synched the translation to exactly when the international spoke. But as people talk more quickly than they can actually read, we realised that the subtitles were running too fast. Therefore, we readjusted and, if necessary, shortened the translations so that viewers had more time to actually read and take in what is being said. In addition to the subtitles we decided to use typography to give some context and a frame around the stories. Before each video, a strong quote related to isolation and loneliness is shown to break up the different stories. At the end of each video we displayed some general facts about the international program in the ZHdK - such as the total of internationals and percentage of women (as our interview consisted only of female internationals). This also allowed the videos to be recognised throughout the univers...

For over a week now we had been producing our videos and been working on our project without having received any feedback or inputs. We felt a bit uncertain in some areas and were looking forward to the presentation in the afternoon - in the past, the inputs we had received from our mentors and co-students had helped us in figuring out where we had to improve on. We received some great feedback when it came to the exhibition. Up until now, we had planned on using one screen, on which the stories would be shown with a dramaturgy. We had previously looked into using several screens within a room (see chapter Getting back on Track ) but had initially decided against them. Now, however, we also presented the idea of placing the screens in public spaces, instead of in an exhibit room, allowing more people to walk past and come across the international's stories. During the presentation we understood that placing one screen in a public space was the right decision to make, however, ...

Cybernetics and Machines Cybernetics means the science of communication and automatic control systems in both machines and living things (- Google) It's the notion of adapting to things. The term cybernetics originates from the Greek word "kubernetes" and means "to steer". Paul Pangaro, one of the leading figures in cybernetics, describes cybernetics as a process that includes a loop of sensing where the route is compared with its goal and then corrected if needed. Without this cycle no system can work.  "... as we steer a ship we want to make it to a goal. ... this loop of acting, sensing and comparing the goal ... is fundamental." Loop: A system has a goal and is always connected to the cycle of sensing, comparing and acting. For this a goal is always necessary too. There are two different feedback systems: positive or negative. Positive feedback systems include additive looping. As for an example: sound picked up from a micropho...

Underestimation  With roughly a total of 30mins of video to translate and subtitle we had a lot of work paved out for us. After working on this task on Friday and over the Weekend there were still some videos that had not yet been finished.  We had clearly underestimated the task of translating and subtitling - besides the fact that the transcriptions and translations were very time consuming, we've been struggling with technical problems. Premiere Pro, the programme with which we were editing our videos, has compatibility problems when it comes down to newer and later versions. My Premiere Pro version is higher than the versions in the ZHdK editing rooms. This actually prevented us from being able to use certain files on different computers - and meant that it had to all be done on the same computer. As we had not been aware of this problem in advance, we all used the template on our own version. However, only on Tuesday morning did we found out that our videos, althou...

After having set on our colour correction and the layout of the video it was time to produce each individual videos. While Dominik had the task to render the videos - he was the only one who had the right colour correction tool on his computer - Randy and I discussed the flow of our overall video. What dramaturgy did we want to portray? How can we bring our message the most effectively across? We analysed all transcripts videos and came to some agreements, however, we felt like we could not proceed with this step due to the fact that we were missing Olga's translation. We had a total of four different stories from her. Although we had received a short summary of each story on the day of the interview we still weren't sure how she phrased her story and whether there were still some information missing. Luckily I managed to organise to meet up with Olga in the afternoon to work on the translations. After lunch I met up with Olga and we sat down together to translate her video...

As all of our interviewees were talking in their native language we needed subtitles so that locals and other internationals could understand the stories. Randy and I started to transcribe the German and English videos, while Dominik and Ju translated the Hungarian and South Korean videos. Olga's videos that are in Russian could not be worked on as no one could speak Russian and Olga was not available on this day. Once having transcribed all of our videos, could we start analysing the content we had collected. Strong and important phrases we highlighted which helped us to have an overview of which parts of a story was essential for our goal. In the afternoon we set ourselves to color grading and creating a layout for the subtitles. We were able to organise one of the big televisions from the Interaction Design lab which allowed us to test out our videos on the big screen. This also helped us with our color-grading as the television screen showed a different strength of black...

Due to our lighting and camera preparations of the day before we were able to produce our interview materials at a fast pace. While Dominik and Randy began interviewing our first candidate, Ju, I went out around the Design Departments of the ZHdK to gather as many internationals as possible. We had only been able to set a concrete time  in the afternoon with Adri, who we had interviewed previously, and had therefore a whole day to fill. By asking friends to introduce me to internationals within their department I quickly was able to meet new people I had never come across before - this included Emma from the United States and Olga from Russia. By the end of the day, we had gathered a total of 6 internationals who we could interview - all of different nationalities. This supported our intentions of showing the diversity within the Toni Areal and included people originally from South Korea, India, the United States, Hungary, Germany and Russia. While collecting great stories from i...

Tuesday was a day of preparations and trials. As our main tool for raising awareness is film, we wanted to ensure that our audio-visual materials had a good quality, especially once being shown from a bigger screen (40 inch). Surroundings We started off asking ourselves what surroundings we wanted to place our interviewees in. Was creating a sense of (visual) isolation the right atmosphere to place them in? Or should we use a more homely and friendlier background - as if you were actually having a conversation with these people? Interestingly enough we found our answer in our Culture Probes . One of the strongest visual illustrations of social isolation were of an individual in a completely black surrounding - the person was utterly alone. Based on this strong image we decided to place our international interviewees within a black surrounding, thus returning to the visual presentation of social isolation. Lighting But placing a person in a room with a completely black bac...

Experience through Exhibition With a better understanding of what we wanted to do, we started to look into the realisation of our storytelling-driven concept. We felt that an exhibition could be a more experience-related way to raise awareness which lead us to discuss the layout and relationship of the screens inside an exhibition room. We discussed about using a linear or symphonic style of visualisation. Did we need only one screen where one linear story runs runs through all individual stories? Or were several screen needed, one for each international that was telling their story parallel or in correlation to each other? We decided to go for a symphonic setup for the stories as we wanted to portray the internationals as individuals who were nevertheless a part of a community that shared one voice - that of feeling isolated by the locals. From afar their stories would be heard as a chant, an inaudible chatter, which would force the viewers into taking their time to focus on an ...

"Design Fiction is the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change"  - Bruce Sterling, Wired Magazine, 2013 Design Fiction can be defined as a part of speculative design which also is embedded into Critical Design. These departments can also overlap. Design Fiction heavily relies on the "What if?" questions. It also often reflect on the present and how we want to live in the future. Diegetic Prototypes are the most used tools for illustrating Design Fiction. They help to provoke debates and discussions. There is a constant cycle between science fiction (→ design fiction) and research . While science fiction may inspire researches to explore a new field of knowledge, the findings of a research paper offer new materials for science fiction.

Research Labs (labs short for laboratory → lat: laborare = to work) have the purpose of advancing the knowledge of mankind. There are two main research environments: Academic Research Labs are pushed by universities and colleges. These labs don't work for an agenda and mainly conduct their research for the expansion of human knowledge. Industrial Research Labs are pushed by companies. Their goal is to enhance the company's own development so that they can prevail in the global market. Today, however, other research environment besides the two are become more and more popular. More often are community based research areas founded. Examples include hacking spaces, makers spaces, etc. Are mores specifically: Genspace in Brooklyn, USA, or FabLab in Zurich, Switzerland.  Research can also be conducted from home and not in external locations. Every object with which we've surrounded us, has a history of research behind it. This highlights the importance of resear...

Humans have communicated with stories for many thousand years and have learnt to understand and use different types such as visual, oral, written or sensorial (smell, touch, taste etc) storytellings. Naturally, these types can intertwine to enhance the communication. We humans use storytelling for education, sharing ideas or experiences, understanding situations or for illustrating problems. Today, storytelling has become even more important as it supports the creation of relatable situations that lead to empathy , a core step of design thinking and process. It is in addition also used for other purposes - for opening debates, exploring new concepts, analysing projects or promoting products. Adapt to Target Group Advertisement and marketing companies often resort to storytelling to promote their products. By doing so they have to adopt their story to their target audience - not every target group relates to the same story. Humour for example is not in every nation the same. Ther...

A Question of Visualisation We got together on Tuesday morning to settle on a definite visualisation of our intentions. With our mentor's inputs and the results form Friday's experience prototype in mind we thought of looking into other methods for the final result. Was an object-based visualisation a solution? Could storytelling enhance an object? We looked into using projections that could animate an objects surface or structure, similarly seen at iArt's Interactive Book or Pipilotti Rist's exhibition at the Zurich Kunstmuseum in 2016. Through such methods we saw a possibility of visualising the stories and experiences in a more visual and maybe interactive way. One of Pipilotti Rist's exhibits at Zurich Kunsthaus in 2016 Or could a visual abstraction illustrate social isolation through language-barriers of internationals? We had a visual picture of ripples instantly being subdued by bigger waves - was this a form of showing that internationals drown u...

With our goal of creating empathy by raising awareness of social isolation for internationals we felt that simulating a similar experience for locals was the right direction to go in. So how could we create such an experience? Presenting in a foreign language We thought of building an experience prototype inside of our presentation. Keeping our intentions secret from our entire class, we hoped to achieve the maximum effect. Instead of presenting in English, we surprised our class with a presentation in South Korean. Dominik, Randy and I all learnt a phrase in South Korea for our introduction but then left it to Ju to take over and present in her native language. The Experience Prototype only lasted for one minute, but instantly had its effects on our audience. The feedback we received were mixed. Some did not at all enjoy the forceful effect our experience prototype had - they had not willingly decided to expose themselves to this foreign language and therefore felt frustrated...

Using Cultural Probes With our defined goal of creating empathy towards internationals by raising awareness of loneliness in a foreign surrounding, we returned to the public to investigate what loneliness, or to be more exact, social isolation, means to others. For this we decided to use a light version of Cultural Probes , a research method that we had just recently looked into during the methods module. We distributed cards throughout the ZHdK with a question on the front side, asking various people to answer by drawing or writing of their experiences and opinions. For the Cultural Probe we wanted to ask an open question that allowed our target people to answer as freely as possible, hoping that this will lead to a more diverse collection of results. Through the Cultural Probes we gather over 30 different impressions in a short amount of time. These results varied and gave a good insight to the understanding of social isolation. After evaluating all cards, we selected a h...

The future of design development lies in participation with the users . Designers shall no longer consider the user as a passive participant whose sole purpose it to be studied at. No longer shall a researcher serve as a translator between designers and users. This structure, originally known as classical design , only leads to a major loss of insights and information instead of achieving the best design results with all participants in mind. Today there's a move towards a participatory design process where users, researchers and designers alike are all on the same level which allows them to create the concept together as one. One of these participatory methods is called Co-Design. Co-Design: Participatory Design & Co-Creation Co-Design is made up from Participatory Design, Co-Creation and Open Design Process . While using this method, all participants are on equal grounds and are actively working on solving the problem as a unified team. This allows the creation ...