Ideas to Action - frog design's methods + automobile casestudy

Topic: frog design: design process & research methodsSpeakers: Turi McKinley & Jason Severs [singlepic id=612] [singlepic id=606]

Inspiration from Jason's Past "just start anywhere" - quoting bruce mau "stop thinking, you don't actually know anything." Bruce Mau's Massive Change project www.massivechange.com

relation to is fine arts process to frogs collaboration design process but notes the difference of application. "In school, we called it commercial art"

[singlepic id=611 w=640 h=480 float=]"the world you take for granted is being aggressively designed for you."

Catalysts and Methods "Your way of being in the world, that's your way for …creative catalysts."

Situational Artefacts conversational stimuli -developing new software for stock traders -asking traders questions wasn't getting rich information, so they associated their time of day with artefacts [singlepic id=604 w=640] [singlepic id=603 w=640]

Serendipitous Collection never throw anything away

1/1 ratio we spend a year about thinking about things that you think about for one minute

Process Influence OODA Loop

Memory draw the remotes from memory how do these old models fit with these new models

Design Process [singlepic id=608 w=640 h=480 float=] [singlepic id=605 w=640 h=480 float=]"It's this split, it's this moment of schizophrenia."* Analysis + Intuition - insight overlay (ven diagram)

CASE STUDY car in the future Goals: -Under stand the effects of the internet and conectivity in the car. -Design a user experience to help us bring drivers into the era of the connected car

Research Approach -contextual interviews -3 weeks, 5 locations, 46 people. -Japan, Italy, New York, San Francisco, London orchestrating how interviews go, over the minute if the client joins the field research, don't let them scare the interviewees

Research Tools rules of engagement - how should clients behave? notes - a framework with notes - featuring focal points an almost tangible UI -Building and ideating a real dash gave people cut outs and allowed them to build their own UI diary studies - keep your users' stories central to your work, show it to your clients

"Everything becomes amplified when you're out doing research, or at least it should. And, everything has meaning." -Jason

Trends Keys are [changing and] disappearing. You start to see mobile phones taking over that space.

Generate Insight analytical thinking and intuitive leaps

Design Principles drivers line of sight, single control display, visual voice, glance and touch, meidated access, detailed assitnacee, distirbuting labor, connections are  individual

Sometimes a design is too simplistic. Ex: "Too simplistic that a person forgot how to open their gass cap. Just press and it pops out, like a cabinet."  Similar to this lady locking herself in her car http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbX_I_lrmIc

User Proposals [singlepic id=609 w=320 h= float=]User proposal in the US [singlepic id=610 w=320 h= float=]User proposal in Japan - very slim design for a passive engagment Driving is already a "low-bandwidth activity," allowing the driver to be able to intermittently do other things while driving (Norman). There seems to be a trend for driving to become a lower-bandwidth activity for the user, with an increase in high-bandwidth for ambient information in the car. But Jason mentioned that they were reminded from user interviews that "Driving for pleasure" is still an important design parameter.

CLOSING Design is still thought of by some companies as the dark arts. so clients often don't question your findings from the filed altho you do work with your client's understanding of that.

The issue comes in when taking the idea to production because then you meet harsher constraints, financial, material etc

Coming in as the outside agency to the client's own specialty or design department ex: the automobile's radio designers. they may have 10 people that focus on one radio button. "that creates a friction."

It was good to see that a process is very detailed. Not only frog's design process process, but also the process they describe (in research), and the processes they invision as future experiences.

Thanks to Jason, Turi and frog design for the good presentation. *Note on that moment of schizophrenia - is supported by Teddy Cruz' comment “Designers are schizo by nature," when he spoke on Project Atlantis at Parsons. [nggallery id=50]

Source: Donald J Norman. Interaction Design for Automobile Interiors http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/interaction_des.html

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Bios and about via Parsons' original event info: Turi McKinley is a Principal Designer whose primary role at frog has been to create clear, compelling interactive experiences and strategic visions for frog clients, and to lead in the design research practice in the NY studio. Her broad experience spans design research, interaction design and strategy for clients such as Colgate-Palmolive, LG, Educational Testing Service (ETS), Humana, and Qualcomm. Prior to joining frog, she led design programs at MIT for clients including the University of Cambridge, the MIT Media Lab, and the MIT Entrepreneurship Center; developed social media software for emerging Eastern European markets; and worked on documentary films in Tibet, Nepal, India, rural China and Appalachia. She has degrees in Cultural Anthropology and Design.

Jason Severs is a Principal Designer who has helped to make frog an influential force in human-centered design. As a leader in the Design Research practice, he is responsible for promoting a systems-wide perspective on every project he engages, ensuring that the needs of users, businesses, manufacturers, suppliers, environment – and the rest of the value chain – are explored, understood, and considered as a part of the entire design process.

Before joining frog, Jason worked with Bruce Mau at the Institute without Boundaries on the project Massive Change and at Columbia University's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning developing courseware and distance learning applications.

frog design is a global innovation firm working with the world’s leading companies, helping them create and bring to market meaningful products, services, and experiences. frog's multidisciplinary process reveals valuable consumer and market insights and inspires lasting, humanizing solutions.

Date: Friday, February 25, 6p Location: Theresa Lang Center, 55 W. 13th Street, 2nd floor sponsored by D+M for Department Seminar 2: Design in Everyday Life

additional: themes emotional touchpoints personal connection to design -it doesn't really matter if you have personal connection to the things you are doing.

Automobile Interaction

I was impressed by my little brother kludging his mobile to his dashboard. We had the GSP nav running as well as Pandora.[singlepic id=596]

While cruising to DIA, all of a sudden the car asks, "Do you want to preform a systems check? To cancel, press 'OK'." In an androgynous version of HAL, the voice sort of freaked me out. My little brother said "No, I just took it in last week." My response was, "Why is the car talking? And why does the car have an "OK" button? This is not ok."

I thought Don Norman would be displeased.

[singlepic id=597] It turns out the "Ok" button is also the play, pause, and tune button as well as the volume toggle. It just happens to be one of the furthest buttons from the driver.

Pyramid (inverse pyramid of accuracy on top) "The automobile industry is copying all the worst features of the computer industry, ignoring all the advances in user-interface design" (Norman)

But as you try to create meaningful experience, the content is more more subjective, the ability to be effective is based off of different criteria. The auto industry is trying to design personal experiences, without first properly addressing usable, obstacle-free interactions. Ironically the interruption asking if we would like to perform a safety inspection could in fact be putting someone at risk of crashing. Norman notes "the real irritations of modern communication are those of human attention." So why is the car emulating a human voice and interrupting you while you drive at 85mph? Shouldn't there be a threshold - 45+ don't ask any questions. Or if there is snow on the road, don't ask any questions. Like mom had "let's play the quiet game," while trying to concentrate on driving. Or shouldn't there just be a feedback loop so the warning system registers that a systems check was already preformed?

There are many regulations when designing for automobiles, so the threat isn't so much that the notification was dangerous, the threat is that it the notification was pointless. In this case, the safety inspection was already completed. So the audio warning was dismissed. If the safety inspection was not completed, the audio warning would be dismissed, but there would be no note left behind reminding the driver of the necessary safety inspection.

Designing meaningful experiences requires an increased emphasis on research before production and as well as heavy user testing. [singlepic id=595 ]As the pyramid narrows at the top, it is easier to encounter a higher degree of dissatisfaction as a design is harder to match with peoples' expectations. There is a bigger question than how to refine the interface of a car. Why is there a new car model every year? That question popped into my mind a few years back. It's often a new shell with out much newer functionality. Pre-Cold War cars are kept well running in Cuba, and probably with a lot better milage than your 2006 model.

You can see it on the consumer level. Why are there so many marginally different models? It permeates onto its brand image level with the discontinuation of some brands. After the recession, auto companies saw they couldn't keep pushing superficially new models of every year in a redundant brand architecture.

On a systematic level, the nation's capital has a beltway that looks like a parking lot. New York has the best public transportation systems in the United States, but it is one of the worst in the world.*

The federally subsidized rail system from the nation's capital to the financial city is horrible. We have problems in the form of single buttons as well as the major veins of these systems.

Norman closes his piece on IxD for Autos with "Design specifications for the appropriate way to design, given the attentional demands and safety considerations for the driver. Ah yes, but this will have to wait. Work in progress."

We should get working.

*I'm not measuring how effective a transportation system is by the sheer number of people it moves. Donald Norman, Interaction Design for Automobile Interiors http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/interaction_des.html