convivio lecture 6 – alan munro

alan munro – cognitive psych -> social psych -> sociology -> anthropology -> design
ethnography and interaction design
this relates to design for people vs. design by people – there is a difference between studying for the sake of cultural understanding and studying for the sake of design. i guess i question how much we can ever really understand from the inside. but really, i’m not questioning that there is a role for professional designers; i’m just suggesting that there is a much larger role for DIY design. and beyond that, that Looking at homebrew design can be a good way of learning about what people need.
ethnography as inspiration – an installation to remember a girl who died.
this kind of design is much more artistic, imho, but that’s the art/science discussion for another time.
i’m not paying good enough attention to this lecture.
he is talking about interesting things, but they are things like blogging and flickr, and i don’t need summaries of those things, and am having a hard time picking out his central themes.
i have been putting up my previous notes and trying to catch up with my blog, which i didn’t do yesterday, as i had intended to.
let me focus for a minute and see what hits me.

his slides are confusing. he is not reading from them, but they have cues that don’t make much sense until he talks about them, and so they don’t do much to help with understanding as you stare at them.
it might be easier if there weren’t so many topics on each slide. i’m having a hard time finding the common thread.

he’s talking about the ways that people represent and change their identity in virtual space, and the way that understanding this might change our vision of what computing is going to become.
“not where computers are doing our thinking for us, but where the command line is still used, to hack our surroundings, create mashups…”

shows a scenario of a smart ubiquitous system with a table that recommends wine and then serves as a workspace during lunch – “some of it’s ok, but a lot of it’s a bit daft.” :) i love the word ‘daft’.
i feel like we all have to go through this learning curve right now to think past technology as this sci-fi vision of replacing everything and learning how it can actually fit into our lives.

compares the scenarios of “oh! what is that shiny new device you are using?” to porn – it just gets to the action as soon as possible, sometimes in rather forced ways. “sorry, it’s a bit warm in here. let me just take off my shirt…” :)
dumb technology – an answering machine:
“did someone phone?”
“yeah, someone phoned.”
“who?”
“…”
how much do we really need it to tell us?
playing with the other side helps us figure out how to keep our demands simple.
instead of the system learning who we are and doing it for us, it can give us the information that we need to make sophisticated determinations ourselves?
a ticketing map that shows where seats are filled, and nothing more.  it is a good use of technology to give us an updated view, but it keeps it simple.  so what about a wine list that gives a scent? a media review that shows opinions in a variety of contexts?
this is the takeaway point of this lecture – how do we decide what information people need in each context, understanding that people and contexts both change? rather than making the system smart, how do we capitalize on the intelligence of the people and let them build what they need?
at least, that’s what i’m taking away. that’s very much in line with the vision i have of building flexible systems that let people design the details themselves.

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