Inspiring Design Research Through Documentary Film

As and Interaction Designer/User Researcher with a background in documentary filmmaking, I found this paper by Raijmakers, Gaver and Bishay on Design Documentaries fascinating and rich in learning. Their research shows how we, designers, “can take inspiration and use techniques from documentary film in pursuing user research:”

Documentary filmmaking has a long history of portraying everyday life in ways that leave the erratic, elusive fabric of the everyday intact. This may be valuable as interaction design currently embraces issues of engagement, expression and aesthetics. We discuss key documentary formats, and suggest that a purely observational approach may not be most valuable for design research. Three design documentaries are discussed to show how different documentary approaches can be used in practice to inform the early stages of design. We suggest that, for design research in HCI, film can be much more than a note-taking tool; we can use it as a means to explore, understand and present the everyday, and benefit from film’s capabilities to preserve ambiguities and paradoxes instead of resolving them into univocal conclusions.

Before presenting three different case studies, the paper reviews the different documentary films approaches that may inform the use of film in user research, specifically “the documentary as dialectic” form, as opposed to the approach that solely relies on neutral observation (fly-on-the-wall). The authors identifies four categories, 1) observation, 2 ) intervention, 3 )compilation and 4) performance, and underlines how they can inform design research in HCI.

• From Observation To Intervention In Cinéma Vérité: Jean Rouch And Edgar Morin’s Chronique d’Un Été. From the 1950s, the ethnographer Jean Rouch used film in his research, but he moved away from the accepted use of film as a note-taking tool to develop a new field of anthropological cinema.
• Intervention Through Re-enactment: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook Of The North. Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin did not invent role-playing in documentary. It was in fact common practice in documentary right from the beginning.
• Compilation: Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911
  Another approach to fashioning a documentary is to construct a compilation film. Weiner describes the production process of such a film as “radical scavenging”, meaning “revisiting existing footage to construct out of it an alternative and maybe even directly oppositional narrative from that which it inherently possesses”.
• Self-Performance: Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me
  A very personal way of making a documentary is to make it about yourself. The classic documentary follows the formulation ‘I speak about them to you’, but these films use the formula ‘I speak about me to you’. The format is often called video-diary, or video-letter, reflecting its popularity since the video camera became available to the general public.

Case Studies:

For a project concerning medical monitoring equipment for people to use at home after hospital treatment for heart problems, Philips Medical Systems, conducted some 30 interviews with heart patients in their homes in the San Diego area of the US. They created three personas, “Fred”, “Kent” and “Debra”, based on their analysis of the materials they collected.

[...]

Unfortunately, the team found that the posters did a good job in conveying information but were not effective at offering inspiration to the team.

[...]

According to the design team, the combination of text about the personas and (mostly stock) photography did not really present believable people with credible everyday life. Thus we tried to use documentary film to present the persona material through the everyday life of actual heart patients. In constructing the films, explored the approaches and techniques described above: compilation, observation, intervention and performance. We present the films as case studies of the use of documentary approaches and techniques in design research.

Compilation Film: Fred
It created a dialectic between the authentic, found materials that give the viewer relatively unmediated access to the world of heart patients, and the video segments which comment on that world from the perspective of the researcher.
Observation And Intervention Film: Kent.
David, the protagonist in Kent, selected events from his own everyday life to be filmed as observed situations in response to the minimal script written by the design researchers; the perspective of the researcher became a probe eliciting the reality of the hear patient.
Performance Fim: Debra.
In this film, Debra, one real person, Joan, answers a “letter” from a personal based on interviews with nine US heart patients. The exchange creates a dialectic in semi-fictional narrative, and the reality of hear patient.

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Cultural Probes

Photo Credit: William Gaver © 2001

I am currently in the midst of an extensive user research study using the Cultural Probes technique. This approach was first introduced by Bill Gaver on a EU funded research project when he was at RCA. As Sanders states:

Cultural probes are designed to provoke inspirational responses from end-users in order to provide inspiration for the members of the design team. The probes include well-designed artifacts featuring “evocative images” and “oblique wording” so that the end-users immerse themselves in interpreting the probes and filling them out. The probes are typically sent to the end-users or left behind following a face-to-face visit. The end-users can then take the time to complete the probes on their own before sending them back to the design research team. Probes are usually well-designed in order to look like a gift. Gaver et al. are adamant that the use of the probes be restricted to “Inspiration, not information”.

Mattelmäki in her article “Applying probes-from inspirational notes to collaborative insights” defines four categories of probes:

• Inspirational, “to empower the the designer’s imagination in combinatgion with the needs of future users.”
• Informational, “in which the approach is applied to information gathering instead of inspiration probing.”
• Technological, instead of being self-documenting kits, the probes are technological applications.
• Empathy, whereby the main interest is in gathering versatile, experimental and subjective user data with an open brief for concept design. This the area, Mattelmäki is herself researching.

This technique does not seem to have caught on in the United-States, where most of the design research (grown out of market research and human factors practices) tends to focus on the gathering of informational data. A contrario, research, in Europe, tends to focus on practices which can elicit inspirational data (Sanders).

Sanders further states that the “methods of human-centered design research are converging on the fuzzy front end of the design development process, as illustrated by this graphic below:

Credit: Sanders © 2005

Research that informs the design development process has shown itself to be effective in the Design for Consuming Space with its emphasis on the “product”. The Design for Consuming Space is reaching its useful limits, as can be seen in the rampant consumerism that has resulted from the reliance on extrapolative thinking.

Research that inspires the design development process has been useful in the newer Design for Experiencing Space. This type of research helps designers to develop empathy for the people they serve through design by revealing their emotions. Research that inspires the design development process shows us that experience can be more meaningful than product.

Photo Credit: Sanders © 2005

Sanders continues by arguing that:

Information and inspiration, are needed in the emerging design spaces for adapting and co-creating. Both design research perspectives will be essential for meeting the opportunities and challenges the future holds. We need to understand the full range of experiences people have in order to meet their needs today and their dreams for the future. The distinction between research and design blurs in the emerging design spaces. The tools and methods must be capable both of informing and inspiring.

Faced with these new challenges, and the need to grasp the broad range of people experiences, it is essential that we adapt our methods and come up with innovative research tools. Saunders defines the “experience domain” as a subjective trajectory that encompasses both our memories rooted in our past and our dreams which live in our imagination. According to her “experiencing is the point where memory and imagination meet.”

Photo Credit: Sanders © 2005

So that we can understand this full “experience domain,” we cannot solely rely on “what people say,” but rather we must also explore what “people do” and what they “make” (Sanders):

When all three perspectives (what people do, what they say, and what they make) are explored simultaneously, we are able to understand the experience domains of the people we are serving through design.

It is the what people make tools that are providing the vista to the new design spaces of adaptation and co-creation. To make the tools, we draw from an infinite set of visual and verbal components. The simplicity and ambiguity of the components is crucial. We put the design language components together into toolkits that people can use to express their memories, dreams, ideas, fears, needs, etc

Personal Content Experience: Managing Digital Life in the Mobile Age

A book by Juha Lehikoinen, Ilkka Salminen, Antti Aaltonen, Pertti Huuskonen

This book, written by Nokia researchers, takes a personal approach to mobile content management.

Aspects and issues covered:
-> software architecture
-> end-user needs on mobile personal content
-> personal content characteristics
-> context-awareness
-> content management software architecture
-> metadata formats
-> user interface design guidelines.

Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design

Via USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review:

When one of world’s best-known usability experts, Jakob Nielsen, conducts eyetracking research to test what his usability work has shown, the results generate some beneficial tips for online editors. This is what happened in late 2005, when Nielsen and Tara Pernice Coyne, the Nielsen/Norman Group’s director of research, conducted an eyetracking test with 255 people in New York City.

With a little more than half of the participants (63 percent) ages 30 to 49, the test generated results applicable to the target audience for most news sites. Additionally, 20 percent were 18-29 and 16 percent were 50-64. Fifty-eight percent were female, 42 percent were male. Every test subject was given 50 tasks to complete. Sessions with each test subject lasted about one to two hours.

Coyne (who we interviewed for this column) stresses that crucial to understanding the testing results is an awareness of the user’s motivation or goal behind each task. Some of the testing scenarios included asking the user to “read the news” or “read/learn”, making a number these results particularly helpful to journalists. She said eyetracking is valuable in these cases because it indicates not only where our users look, but where key usability problems exist.

“[With eyetracking] we can see that a user may navigate the page of an interface that houses the info she wants,” she said, “but if the text is poorly presented, or the navigation is cluttered, or there are too many superfluous images so she cannot easily find what she needs. This is a lost opportunity.”

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Designing Change

How venture philanthropy fund Acumen uses design thinking to help solve real-world problems .

Billing itself as a nonprofit venture capital firm, the Acumen Fund uses the principles of design to solve the problems of the poor. Just as the Procter & Gambles (PG ) and Motorolas (MOT ) of the corporate world conduct extensive ethnographic research on consumers, Acumen finances companies that create from the bottom up. Instead of shoppers at a Los Angeles mall, however, it begins with people in villages like those in Thathia. “Start with the individuals,” says founder Jacqueline Novogratz. “Build systems from their perspective. Really pay attention, and then see if they can scale.”

Under Novogratz’s leadership, the New York-based fund manages $20 million in investments in companies that fall within three portfolios: health, water, and housing. It’s not a lot of money compared with any of the traditional venture funds in Silicon Valley. But Acumen’s goal is not to launch initial public offerings. Rather, Novogratz and her team are building prototypes for new business models that measure returns in social benefits as well as monetary rewards.

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GE Goes Back to School for Innovation

Jeff Immelt told employees to “Go Big,” so GE’s health-care unit went to design school students for out-of-the-box ideas.

An ultrasound scanner influenced by traditional African craft, wraps around the mother’s belly making the examination experience more comfortable for the mother and easier for the midwife to operate. Vahe Alaverdian, Art Center College of Design ©2006

[GE's] health-care division has long been a technology innovator. But it has historically tried to differentiate its products by getting better and faster readings from its instruments—”feeds and speeds” as Lou Lenzi, the general manager of global design at GE Healthcare, puts it. So turning to art school students for ideas is a significant departure.

Good for Patients and Profits

But to compete now, the company believes that it has to offer more than just better technology. GE wants to make medical tests easier on both the patients and the operators of the equipment, which means focusing on the human side of the equation, from ergonomics to emotions. How, for instance, could a traditionally monstrous CAT scan machine be designed to seem less ominous to patients already distressed by their medical condition? How could a machine be easier for the technician to use?

In addition to the primary human-centered goals, such design improvements should translate into more accurate readings and a leg up on rival manufacturers. “All of our competitors have similar technology,” admits Lawrence Murphy, the health-care unit’s chief designer. “We’re looking beyond the hardware. We’re looking at the patient’s journey.”

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Indie Films Come to Handsets

The new frontier for up-and-coming moviemakers is how to adapt their storytelling to all those tiny screens

You might think a hip guy like Cory McAbee, a Brooklyn-based artist, musician, and independent filmmaker with a preference for all-black outfits, would scoff at the idea of his work appearing on a screen about the size of a belt buckle.In fact, McAbee is among a small but growing group of directors who are embracing mobile phone screens as a promising new venue. “I’m a huge fan of short films—I like making them,” says McAbee, who was in Barcelona in February to attend the 3GSM mobile phone industry trade fair. “It’s tough to get a feature distributed because of the limited number of big screens. But there are millions of little screens.”

A lot of them these days are in India, the world’s fastest-growing mobile phone market. That’s why Bollywood director Sanjay Gupta was also in Barcelona, pacing in front of a hilltop palace and admiring the view of the city below. “As a filmmaker, I need as many outlets as I can find for my stories,” Gupta said. As he sees it, mobile is the “fourth screen,” after movie theaters, TV, and computers.

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One Laptop per Child

Negroponte’s One Laptop per Child has arrived.

The so-called $100 laptop that’s being designed for school children in developing nations is known for its bright green and white plastic shell, its power-generating hand crank, and for Nicholas Negroponte, the technology futurist who dreamed it up and who tirelessly promotes it everywhere from Bangkok to Brasilia. What has not received much attention is the graphical user interface—the software that will be the face of the machine for the millions of children who will own it. In fact, the user interface, called Sugar, may turn out to be one of the more innovative aspects of a project that has already made breakthroughs in mesh networking and battery charging since Negroponte unveiled the concept two years ago.

Child-centric

It’s the first complete rethinking of the computer user interface in more than 30 years. “We’re building something that’s right for the audience,” says Chris Blizzard, the engineering project leader for Sugar. “We don’t just take what’s already there and say it’s good enough. You can do better.”

The XO technology team focused on developing an inexpensive computer—with a little luck, as low as $100 per machine. But the most important design consideration is that it would be used by underprivileged kids in developing nations. To that end, it has a child-size keyboard and a durable plastic shell and it runs on very little power. Kids will charge their batteries with either a hand crank or a yo-yo-like device they operate with their feet.

“You Just Do It Right”

While XO has been greeted warmly by many, some technologists criticize Negroponte and his colleagues for not testing out their new ideas on underprivileged school children earlier in the process. And that goes for the user interface as well. Jakob Nielsen, a user interface designer and principal in the consulting firm Nielsen Norman Group, falls into the critical group. While familiar with the design of Sugar, Nielsen’s criticisms focus on the process. It’s only in the coming weeks that they’ll begin to get feedback from kids. “It’s always dangerous to release any product without the safeguard of user testing,” says Nielsen. “But it’s outright reckless in a case like this.”

But XO developers defend their approach, which grew out of a core philosophy of the MIT Media Lab known as “demo or die.” Researchers are encouraged to build new things, critique them, and then make improvements—rather than doing a lot of concept-testing up front. They’re backed up by John Maeda, a user-interface design guru from the Media Lab who has been watching the XO development process from its beginnings. “They’re using the Steve Jobs method,” he says, referring to Apple’s famous chief executive and design whiz. “You don’t use focus groups. You just do it right.”

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Nathan Shedroff on Experience Design

Through Experientia blog:

Steve Portigal interviews Nathan Shedroff to talk about the experience and design of experience design.

“Shedroff’s definition gets things started: “Experience design is an approach to design, and you can use that approach in pretty much any discipline—graphic design or industrial design or interaction design, or retail design. It says the dimensions of experience are wider than what those disciplines normally take into account. And if you think wider—through time, multiple senses and other dimensions—then you can create a more meaningful experience.

5 levels of significance

1. Function (”Does this do what I want it to do?”)
2. Price (”There are lots of cars out there to get me from point A to point B”)
3. Emotion (”That’s where lifestyle is engaged. How does this make me feel?”)
4. Identity or Value (”This is subconscious: “Would I be caught dead with this?; am I a Nike fan, or an Adidas fan?”)
5. Meaning (Not “Is this me?”, but “Does this fit my reality?” “Does this even fit inside the world as I perceive it?”)

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Technology and Mediating Intimacy

On technology, intimacy, and emotion:

Mediating intimacy: designing technologies to support strong-tie relationships
Frank Vetere, Martin R. Gibbs, Jesper Kjeldskov, Steve Howard, Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller, Sonja Pedell, Karen Mecoles, Marcus Bunyan. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems CHI ‘05
Abstract

Intimacy is a crucial element of domestic life, and many interactive technologies designed for other purposes have been appropriated for use within intimate relationships. However, there is a deficit in current understandings of how technologies are used within intimate relationships, and how to design technologies to support intimate acts. In this paper we report on work that has addressed these deficits. We used cultural probes and contextual interviews and other ethnographically informed techniques to investigate how interactive technologies are used within intimate relationships. From this empirical work we generated a thematic understanding of intimacy and the use of interactional technologies to support intimate acts. We used this understanding to inform the design of intimate technologies. A selection of our design concepts is also presented.

Exercept: Peripheral Awareness

There is a growing interest in technologies that support relationship with intimate others. For instance Gaver proposes provocative ideas for connecting people in close relationships. He describes thechnologies that provide a feeling of presence of remote lovers through peripheral awareness. Examples of awareness technologies are: a feather in a plastic cone that floats when the distant partner picks up a picture frame of the couple; a light “orb” that glows in New York when a family member walks into their Lodon apartment; and two sets of cylinders that roll and rotate in unison as they are manipulated by sperated partners. Through a critical analysis and review of awareness technologies, Gaver identifies thre typical cahracteristics: (i) the designs often makes use of evocative materials (such as feathers and scents); (ii) mappings are more likely to make use of literary rather then didactic metaphors (e.g. rolling cylinders taht evolve into tactile languages); and (iii) objects have a unique physicality (e.g. a real feature is more poetic thatn one simulated on a screen).

Conclusion

As Gaver points out communication of emotion is often not in the device output, but in the dynamics of sue. Similarly the innovations presented in this paper are not specifically conceptual innovations, but innovations of use.

Read full paper

Further reading on topic:

Bell, G., Brooke, T., Churchill, E. & Paulos, E. Intimate Ubiquitous Computing. Proc. UbiComp Workshop (2003), 3–6.
Bill Gaver, Provocative Awareness, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, v.11 n.3, p.475-493, 2002