Yesterday a friend sent me an interesting link (thanks Drew), and today Erik Stolterman posted it to the HCI listserve as an example “worth reflection and critiqueâ€:
http://www.infinityart.ro/
I think this site is a great artifact to apply the critical approaches I have been learning in class. Using a phenomenological lens, my first thought is that this is an extreme case of intentionally designing breakdown into an interaction, something that Dave Royer posted about a while back. When navigating most websites, a user is typically engaged in an information seeking activity, clicking on links to reveal text that they are interested in. This activity is part of the horizons most users bring to bear on a website. The expected response when clicking on a link is taken for granted or ready-to-hand. The Infinity Art site affords this activity with typical-looking links, but then suddenly disrupts it, obliterating the screen with unexpected video images. The ‘flow’ of the interaction is interrupted and the website itself, even the user’s computer screen becomes present-to-hand.
Why would the site’s designers do this? They are an interactive design agency and presumably the purpose of this site is to express their professional identity. By introducing breakdown and making the site become so radically present-to-hand, the user is caused to reflect on who the creators of the site are and what their intentions are (as I am presently doing). Furthermore, because the disruptive images are so unexpected, the user is likely to interpret that these designers have an inclination for creating novel, unconventional interactive designs. Finally, because the experience is so novel, users are likely to share the link and post and discuss with others, thus generating a lot of publicity.
I am curious to see what other interpretations and critiques others have.
The car company Fiat is releasing a new model that comes with a built-in eco-driving information system. The principle is very similar to our CHI 2007 project, Celerometer: help drivers improve efficiency by changing their driving style. Here is a description from Fiat’s website of how the system works:
EcoDrive collects all necessary data relating to vehicle efficiency and, through Blue&Me’s USB gate, transmits it into a normal USB key. The driver plugs this into a PC. The “EcoDrive†system presents the driver with detailed environmental performance of the car including the CO2 emission level for each trip. It analyses the driver’s style and then provides tips and recommendations on how to modify style to achieve CO2 reductions – and save money on fuel.
EcoDrive will encourage the driver to set himself challenges – CO2 reduction targets for specific journeys or over a set period of time. And in a community site will encourage all drivers to come together and pool their savings – working towards much bigger collective targets and showing that a lot of small contributions join to have a massive impact.
Like our CHI project, EcoDrive allows the user to set challenges and compare their progress with others. This social influence could be a powerful feature. A key difference of our project is that it offers real-time feedback displayed on the windshield during the act of driving. EcoDrive appears to be completely asynchronous, with feedback displayed on the home computer. However, given that Microsoft recently applied to patent a windshield head-up display, I wouldn’t be surprised if we do see a real-time eco-driving HUD hit the market in the near future.
The annual Bioneers conference, from San Rafael, CA, is “a gathering of scientific and social innovators who have demonstrated visionary and practical models for restoring the Earth and communities”. The event features powerful speakers representing diverse approaches to sustainability.
Lucky for Bloomington residents, this weekend’s conference plenaries are being broadcast live via satellite to IU (click here for details). I stopped in today and checked out a provocative talk by Jay Hartmann, CEO of PAX scientific. PAX is an industrial design firm that uses patterns found in nature to improve industrial products. As Hartmann explained, millions of years of evolution have resulted in forms and systems that are unparalleled by human technology in their elegance and efficiency. PAX studies these ‘optimized geometries’ and applies them to design cleaner, more efficient and benign industrial products. For example the natural spirals have been used to create better fans with a variety of applications.
This overall approach to industrial design is known as Biomimicry and has been written about by Janine Benyus (see more here). Of course the strategy of using natural models as a means to design sustainably is not new. Permaculture design is based on this approach applied to food production, landscaping, and land-use. In the context of architecture, Christopher Alexander advocated for structure preserving transformations in his book Nature of Order. And most recently, Alexander’s work has inspired Eli Blevis to include the principle of “using natural models and reflection” in his manifesto for Sustainable Interaction design.
Hartmann’s talk suggests that this approach is gaining traction in the industrial world, which can only have positive implications for sustainability.