The Memory Space – exploring future uses of

Web2.0 and mobile internet though Design

interventions

Memory Space - pic

Conference

Three trends in socio-technical practices

1. The changing use and design of public spaces for a wide range of meetings and social encounters

2. Trends in online sociality – with the emergence of social network systems

3. Use of personal ICTs (pICTS) such as advanced mobile phones connected to computer systems.

A Research Journey

• Penny Travlou: Cultural geographer specializing youth and green space

• Richard Coyne: Professor of architecture, digital design and culture, sound designer

• Mark Wright: Developer of new media tools for artists and designers

• James Stewart: STS researcher specialising in users and business of ICTs

• Henrik Ekeus: Musician and sound designer - the programmer

STS, Design, Geography Framework

• Co-creation and co-determination by actors in innovation network (users, designers, managers, government, non-users)

• Role of ‘designer’ in world of participatory media

• Critical re-evaluation of place and its use and control

• New tools for artists and designers

We blur boundaries of

Design and ResearchUsers and Designers

Real and VirtualFormal and Informal media

Catalysts

Conceptual: BrandTechnical: mobile image

matching

(both thrown out eventually)

From Brand…• Initial project brief – Branded Meeting Places –

design for meaningful social encounter in public places

• Explore the concept of Brand – design, performance, appropriation and expropriation by consumers

• Brand is co-created.• Brands and branded products and places are

resources for identity building and everyday activities.

Technological catalyst

• Image matching system - “unlocks information” on a match.• Used with low quality images• Access though a Mobile gateway• Commercially developed as a marketing tool e.g.

snap2win™ : enhance print media campaigns

• Experimentally developed though game• Cheap way of providing location information

Research By Design

• Design as an active, inventive research strategy compensating for the static ethnographic approach

• Technology and conceptual toolkits• Design interventions involving ‘users as

designers’ or ‘designer-users’. • Not using user-centred design, but allowing

designers to design for themselves• Challenging for Social Scientists.

Interventions• The Intervention is a Dynamite method – mix up

ideas, designers, ‘users’, tools, light touch paper and watch for the rocks to fall down

• The method is then to pick over the rocks– look for interesting and unexpected– See how the rock broke– Talk to the rock breakers afterwards– (Not the everyday, challenge practices)

• ‘Long term’ student projects• Our own short experiments• 2 day Charrettes with multidiscipinary groups and

developers

3 ‘research by design’ projects - 3 avenues of exploration

• Invisible Art -– the visual appropriation of branded space– Expression of ownership and subversion of brandscape

• PhoneTag– Street game ‘Tag/Capture the flag’ with ‘brands’– Brands and brandscapes as objects of play– Strengthening of brand via ludic appropriation

• Comera– Login to branded places and signal social networking systems– exploration of the merging of online and physical branded spaces, fluid movement

of relationships between two domains (mySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook etc)

– New online ‘built’ environments

Unexpected research direction

• Link physical places to new online places e.g. Facebook (Branded Document), Second Life

• Facebook and Twitter good tool for easy experiments with group interactions (2007)

• (Virtual Presence and microblogging)

Virtual Reality, Real Virtuality

The melding of online spaces and networks with ‘physical’ spaces and networks of people.

Practically linked by various electronic gatewaysActually linked by everyday practice and

increasing normalisation Virtual is both the online real and the electronic

imaginaryHow could we explore the future possibilites and

limits of these phemomena.

User built, highly designer environments but somehow rather unsatisfying, and weak use of ‘Brand’ concept

Exploration on Facebook use and other ‘Web2.0’, in various design and interviewed activities…

Methods e.g. Forced use, deliberate subversion

Linking the ‘virtual’ and the real

Tag - sign, brand, logo, link, classifier, badge, mark, stamp, touch, seal, signifier, instruction, command, call to action, identifier, ticket, rule etc etc

Intervention: 2 Day Research by design workshop on ‘the tag’Development of the ‘Vocal Thumbs’ app.

Web2.0, folksonomies and tagging

• Web2.0 – user labelling of information• ‘User created’, searchable , mashable, webs of

meaning.• Appropriation process – we make it ours by

tagging• How do we translate, and integrate these

practices into the ‘physical’ world• Challenges to authority, of interpretation, to our

conception of space and place.

Online space: realtime tracking and laying down of memory trails

Experiment: Public place-based trails through other people’s memories

Virtual places and Memory Spaces

Memory and Place• Memory as social practice cf RAM

– The practices of ‘doing’ memory– What is remembered– Who remembers– The rituals of memory acts– Artefacts of memory

• Memory and Place– Place as an Aid to Memory– Place as the situation of memory making– Place linked to memory acts– Places made by memory acts

Memory Spaces

21st Century Memory Spaces

Gossip and the online branded meeting place

Problem: How to explore relationship of place and the ‘memory space’

• Need a situation where place, social networking, knowledge development can come together, and we can find ‘users’ to participate.

• How does it work, how might it work, limits of usability, privacy, information overload, intrusiveness, usefulness,

Placemaking by Placema®king

Tagging and Connecting toolkit

• Tagging with location information (e.g. image, name, gps, sound)

• Tagging places with images, voice, sounds, video, text

• Sending various types of messages to maps• Leaving and retrieving virtual and real tags• Linking social encounters, ideas, conversations

to places and times and social networks

The Conference– More and more conferences– Many uses of the conference e.g. community building,

knowledge exchange, negotiation– Seldom singular events – occur in series– Lead up and fade away– Distributed in space and time– Information intensive– Relationship intensive– Informal, interstitial just as important as the formal and planned– Relatively poor use of new ICTs: programme, static website,

conference pack, proceedings• Conference attendees and promoters starting to use SNS,

Twitter etc.

Conference Memory Space• Planning

– What to go to, familiarise with place, who else is going, who to meet, avoid etc

• At the event– Navigate city, conference venue programme, social

life. Have conversations, make friends, collect business cards, give papers, discuss papers, promise collaborations, arrange dinner, deal with power dynamics, isolation, I information overload

• Follow up– Remember ideas, new colleagues, send papers, good

times, share photos regrets etc

Meetings and Conferences

Brief: “The Conference”Explore the organisation, experiences,

relationships and products of conferences and workshops

Imagine the ‘future conference’Use any means necessary.

Location-based mobile tools available

• 20 academics/industry researchers invited to provide diversity of age, disciplines, gender, character

• Brainstorming, evidence gathering day with catalysts• Design Brief – tool to cope with and improve the

experience of large conferences in strange cities BY RECORDING THE INFORMAL AND INTERSTITAL ACTIVITIES

• Developers worked over night• Next day testing and reflecting on it’s use.

Features• Personal and collective notes recorded server

with location, name, time• Need to develop practices of recording,

microblogging etc• Strange to pick up messages from the air• Emerging map of use of space, • Possibility to capture “The Rumble”,” the gossip”• Rich resource, but how to use?

Future

• Looking at the pieces• Engage with technical change

– Mobile phones rapidly evolving – iphone, location, internet terminal etc

– SNS and microblogging becoming normalised, but still in period of intense social appropriation

– We must be prepared to be imaginative, not follow scripts of business

• Study of emerging memory practices