Download it here!

Now, onto the final video…

“People don’t want more messages; they want more interactions. There’s no perfect memo where you can press send and get connected, or Facebook group you can join to be committed.”

Maeda has scaled back his blogging. He accepts that the big Samsung screens he installed as a way to bring students together digitally, by allowing them to post new work, notices of events, and messages, never caught on.

(source)

The first part is by John Maeda himself, and the second part is by Linda Tischler, the article’s author. This quote is quite interesting in the context of the development of my project, and partly refutes my early theory that big and bold projections would not work at the SAT. As for the people wanting ”more interactions” bit, I think Mr. Maeda is spot on. But as much as more interactions is probably in most cases a good thing and that it’d probably be relevant in the SAT’s context, more interactions is not my priority—transparency in them is.

Further, if all goes according to the SAT’s plan, they should have a full-time person in charge of welcoming and ticketing sitting at the building’s entrance. What better interactions than with a fellow human being?

Reference

Tischler, Linda (2011). John Maeda Mulls RISD’s Backlash Against His Cyber-Style Leadership. Fast Company’s Co.Design website. Last accessed 27 April 2011. (screenshot)

We started off by discussing how my presentation went. Basically, he liked my concept, thinks it’s ‘strong’ (his words), sees full of potential applications for such a concept, and he’s really happy that I’m finally inspired/up and running.

Report

We talked a bit about the report we have to write to document our process, method and much more. A (pretty much) final version is due to hand in on 5 May, in digital form. I’ve already some stuff written (maybe 25%). The good thing is, after seeing what I did have written, Kent thought it was more than 25%. Anyway.

Since I have more or less only written introductory stuff and described my research methods (I haven’t started writing about the ideation phase and what came after), he suggested two approaches that I could take to write the balance of my report.

1. Write about my entire process, in a more chronological fashion. Write about the entire journey (the ups and downs, struggles, epic wins, etc.) in a honest way.
2. Simply tell the story of the SATOSCOPES.

I’m considering a hybrid. If I do #1, it’ll be a boring, romantic (in a bad way)—melancholic even—take on my project. If I do #2, I fear that the external evaluators will find that I had not process whatsoever, that I just came up with my concept because I had to. So I’m thinking 25-35% #1, 65-75% #2. Something like that.

Artistic considerations

Kent mentioned that I should think of and suggest more ‘artistic’ uses of the SATOSCOPES. (Right now they are perceived more on the utilitarian side of things—something that makes me happy.)

It would definitely be a swell thing, but to be honest, it’s fairly low on my priority list at the moment. I did start thinking about some potential applications though:

• The SAT’s walls, floors, ceilings could all be a gigantic canvas, and people could place their mobile devices anywhere and see content contents similar to the more curated content on the SATOSCOPES, only at their own perils.
• Have some GIF-art installations on the SATOSCOPES…

We also talked about more ‘original’ forms of input, both in the manner in which you input stuff, and the stuff itself. There could be a SAT lingo, smile/frown detectors, gesture detectors, etc.

Download the presentation (in French) [PDF, 5.0 Mb]

Today, I presented to a little committee of people form the SAT essentially the same presentation I gave a couple of days ago to my examiners and classmates. The presentation went quite well and I received some good feedback. Below is some of it.

• The screens might be too small.
• I’ve only shown written content—might be interesting to bring back some of the infographics/pictograms I’ve used in my datavis exercise.
• The SAT’s website would be a formidable generator of ‘automatic’ data: number of people visiting it, countries they visit from, what that look at most, etc…
• The extreme simplicity and restrained functionality was appreciated
• The SATOSCOPES would communicate the spirit of the building—the good the bad and the ugly, the interesting and the uninteresting. An honest portrait, basically.
• It was mentioned that the SATOSCOPES/building should recognize their viewer, know who they are, like, etc. in other to offer them custom content. Otherwise, they become merely screens.
• They loved the datavis ‘mural’ I did, for some reason. They could see such a visualization as their intranet interface to manage/push/update content onto the SATOSCOPES. They’d also see a big screen of such a thing in the main entrance, because it gives a global snapshot of the SAT, whereas the SATOSCOPES give a granular (and segmented) glimpse of the SAT. (Personally, such a visualization makes me think in many ways of IDEO’s Tube visualizer.)

The most exciting point, though, is that they want to make it for real!

They would like to start prototyping a bare bones web interface so that people could start contributing content. They, basically would want to see if it would interest people, if people would use it and how. I think that’s a great way to approach it before making any other significant investment. I would recommend that they’d have a way to visualize the content they input in the early stages however. From experience, you need to see some result if you’re asked to input stuff on your own will. Also, in the case that it does work (e.g. people like and use the system) since the whole system is bound to work via web servers/services, the coding will most likely be fully reusable.

Thanks to Luc Courchesne for the photos.

As I hinted towards in my final presentation rehearsal post, for various reasons, I didn’t get much feedback at all from the material that I’ve presented on Monday. So here are some (additional) things that are (or might be) missing. (I did write a little list at the very bottom of my final presentation rehearsal post.)

Even though it might not fit into the project’s main video, I’d like to film a scene where the viewer would spend a ‘day in the life’ of a SATOSCOPE, from morning till evening. This, in order to see how content evolves through a single day, depending on the ongoing activities happening at the SAT, as well as the moods of people and the different types of data they could generate. Also, what would be most interesting is showing how:

• One person looking at SATOSCOPES
• Two or more people looking at SATOSCOPES
• A person pushing content onto a specific SATOSCOPE
• Getting a feel for screen refresh rates
• Show a conversation between two SATOSCOPES
• Show how a person could have a conversation/relationship (!) with a SATOSCOPE
• Seeing somebody displace/rearrange SATOSCOPES
• etc…

Feedback from Benjamín

• Different situations: what happens to the other SATOSCOPE(S) when you add another SATOSCOPE in its close vicinity.
• Showing the film/scenario from the perspective of only one user profile (casual visitor, SAT member, SAT employee, system admin). [Perhaps bring back the personas I did to explain other scenarios? Perhaps make 4 films, one for each persona + scenario combo?]
• Look up the use of colour in road signage—permananent content has dark(er) background + white type whereas temporary content has bright(er) backgrounds + black type. [Like I did already, would reinforce my concept.]
• [Show more SATOSCOPES that wouldn’t be located close to ‘normal’ signage.]
• Maybe there should be continuous narratives between SATOSCOPES in a same room/hallway. Maybe there should be a common narrative between normal signage and SATOSCOPES that are beside one another.
• The ‘conversational building’ thing, à la London Tower bridge’s Twitter feed, is an interesting idea but wholly unresolved.

Alongside each other: wayshowing and wayfinding layers

The wayfinding layer, otherwise known as normal, not-necessarily-networked signage, is depicted with white type on a black background. The wayshowing layer, therwise known as SATOSCOPES, is depicted with black type on a white background.

Functions and dimensions

Some potential contents are shown. The two leftmost SATOSCOPES show a potential micro-interaction they could have with each other (both related to the MUTEK employee roster).

Sketch of a potential user map

As I say, it’s a sketch. It definitely needs to be thought out more carefully and thoroughly. For instance, where do the MUTEK folk fit in there?

SATOSCOPES, by priority

I guess people, the #1 priority, is missing. They’re implied more or less everywhere in there.

Some generic framework I’ll probably end up not using

Reference

Greenfield, Adam (2009). The elements of networked urbanism. Speedbird weblog. Last accessed on 29 March 2011. (screenshot)

Download the presentation [EN] [PDF, 5.0 Mb] / / / Téléchargez la présentation [FR] [PDF, 5.0 Mb]

Today we had to do a rehearsal of our final presentation (which will happen on 15–16 May). A checking-in of sort to see if our projects are on or way off track. My presentation went fairly well—I was super tired and I’m sure I sounded confused, but hopefully not (too) confusing. Since I’m back in Montréal to work at/with the SAT, I had to do the presentation via Skype. Sadly, I was the last one of the class to present so I didn’t get to see any of the work that my classmates did. Another sad thing is that I barely got any feedback—people had to leave. Oh well.

Regardless, in my opinion, the product design aspect of the project is fairly straightforward since it’s not its main focus. Otherwise, I mainly need to come up with a (much) better scenario.

Thankfully, I feel like the ideas are all mostly there. A video sketch I did can be seen here.

Rough schedule till the final presentation

18–22 April

• Revise scenario
• Do at least one other video sketch before shooting the final movie
• Presentation + ‘content brainstorm’ with SAT and MUTEK employees (this Wednesday)
• Work on admin interface functionalities/info architecture

25–29 April

• Work on physical props for video
• Video pre-production
• Work on admin interface look and feel

2–6 May

• Shoot final video
• Start post-production

9–13 May

• Finalize post-production
• Start presentation

Writing the project report will be interspersed within all these weeks.

Here’s my first attempt at sketching the scenario I created the other day in video form. It’s deeply flawed: it’s a big patchwork, the initial scenes are incomplete, there’s no post-production… but still, I’m happy with that first attempt. I’d rather not lose time making hi-res sketches until my scenario is more solid.

Some additional notes:

• The video evokes a distant/general look at the SAT, which I think is essential, but does so perhaps a bit too much
• We don’t ‘get’ the desired up-close-and-personal feel with the SATOSCOPES
• We don’t ‘get’ the object very much either—true that they were pieces of foamcore with green squares on them, but stil…
• The ending is sloppy
• I’m a terrible actor

Ceramics and wood. I like the warmness of these materials use by the talented folks up at House Industries. I could see such materials making a lot of sense for the SAT’s ‘normal’ signage, as the space’s materials are pretty cold as of now (concrete, aluminium, glass, etc.).

(image source)

Sorry about the blurry photos… Hopefully one can still read my lousy handwriting and decipher something from my even lousier sketches!

I also did a few quick sketches to experiment with format, typeface and type size yesterday. The smaller format of the two, which was roughly 100 × 100 mm and that had type set at 24/26 pt in all caps, seemed to be the most appropriate in terms of functionality (has to be discreet and semi-public) and visual appeal.

Almost every signage project starts with the client, often an architect, often requesting an all-uppercase solution, as if capital letters are somehow studier of safer! The reality is that lowercase letters are essential for text readability because they produce more distinctive word shapes, which is especially important in signage, where environmental factors come into play. (…)

What wayfinding designers ignore at their own peril is considering the breadth of a type family. A single sans serif may be useful for a handsome sign prototype for which you can cherry-pick the copy, but it doesn’t anticipate a later need to introduce secondary text or distinguish one type of sign from another. A signage program (…) requires even more typographic versatility, as do less glamourous signs like elevator indicators, which designers tend to ignore.

(p. 79)

— Jonathan Hoefler, in The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places

This makes me considerably (!) reconsider my use of an all-caps typeface—I didn’t use it for it to be ‘sturdier’, but to be able to set it (near) solid. But I think Mr. Hoefler had a really good point here. I’ll definitely consider it in my choice of typeface(s) and the way I set it. And concerning the unglamourousness, well a lot the content that’s going to be displayed might be useful, but a lot of it might be very mundane, too.

Reference

Gibson, David (2009). The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places. New York, NY, USA: Princeton Architectural Press.