IIT Institute of Design - IDX597.004 Special Topic: Theories of UCD
Of Blobemes and Blurbemes–The Future of Experience Research and the Internet of Everything
John Cain, TJ McLeish, Peter Binggeser, Laura Mast
Twenty years ago, the business world began a shift akin to the industrial or the informational revolutions: a shift that placed users and their experiences at the center of the value chain, as the driver for innovation. As with any successful technology or process, the market has eventually turned “user-centered” into table stakes—a required, but no longer differentiating approach. On the horizon is another shift. Whether you call this new landscape “sensor-driven” (McKinsey), “smart systems” (The Economist), or The Internet of Things doesn’t matter so much as its implications for design and innovation:
1. Sensor technology has things talking. Everyday consumer products; homes, offices, and retail spaces; civil infrastructure, and even the natural environment—all have the capacity to communicate. To deliver huge volumes of real-time data at a level of detail never before possible. Data that can be used alone, or correlated with other quantitative or qualitative sources, to deliver a powerful new kind of intelligence that fuels creativity.
2. The world-as-information-system will give us new ways to measure and assess the effectiveness of design and innovation itself. Across two semester-long classes, this course explores both theory and practice within this new frontier.
Observing Team Meetings at ID
To understand how communication impacts team meetings at ID, the team explored the dynamic patterns of conversation during these meetings, as well as body position and movement in the meeting space.
They developed a platform for observing meetings using a 3D scanner (Kinect), microphones, a video camera, and surveys. The outcome of their work seen in the following video included a tool for visualizing meeting participants, their level of activity, and real-time communication patterns across the team.
Student Team
Aaron Otani and Wei Sun
Circles of Communication
We live in a world where we're always connected, always communicating, always on. No one is forcing us to email, tweet, like, text, chat—but with a universal expectation that we're ever reachable, we're required to mediate the potential of “always on.”
Sometimes, managing this can be really stressful; we try and limit the flood of information to what matters most (where what matters most is in constant flux). Other times, we let the flood wash over us; we let the important in with the mundane—and when it's our choice to do so, it feels good.
Our investigation looks specifically at the in-between moments of life to explore the ways in which we mediate the truly important information from the mundane important information—in an effort to better understand technology's role in helping us manage our experience of connectedness.
Student Team
Katie Kowaloff & Keta Patel
