Design

Launching last Friday and running over the next seven weeks, Digital Eskimo will feature in Object Gallery’s exciting new STATE. RESPOND exhibition.

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Penny Hagen and Michelle Gilmore* are presenting excerpts from a recent article they wrote for Johnny Holland at UX Australia this week on the effectiveness and value that ‘User Stories’ bring to the design process. It’s a method we’ve borrowed from the agile development world and combined with our human centred design methods to create an effective way to document services (such as websites) which helps ensure that the people using them and their needs remain at the centre of the process.

From the article:

Collaborative design methods play a key role in aligning team members towards a shared and strategic project vision. In this article we describe how user stories stimulate and facilitate discussion and decision making with clients in the development of a User Experience Strategy. In our context (the development of online projects) the User Experience Strategy becomes an ‘in principle agreement’ on the shape of the project (what), its purpose (why), and provides potential implementation strategies (how). It takes into account all perspectives (e.g business, technical, marketing, brand) but privileges the intended user experience.

Read the full article on Johnny Holland

* Penny worked with Digital Eskimo from 2006 through to 2009, Michelle from 2007-2009.

Related Links

• UX Australia
• Penny’s website

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We couldn’t help but notice the above poster, which was provocatively posted at our local café, The Wall recently.

An anonymous individual had obviously become annoyed at the growing awareness in the design community of its wider responsibility in the world and the exciting discussions that are now taking place regarding the power of design to help mankind in its hour of need. We’ve responded to the poster with our own asking people to visit this blog and begin a conversation (we’re also interested in hosting a round-table discussion in our studio, btw – more on that later).

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We attended a lively and interesting Australian Graphic Design Association (AGDA) talk featuring lawyer Chris Finn of Finn Roache last night.

The talk touched on that ugly elephant in the design studio, free/spec pitching in the context of the global recession – loosely defined as the act of doing significant free work (strategy, ideation or actual design) to win a tender or proposal process. It was refreshing to hear outright condemnation of this terrible business practice from the floor, although Chris’ legal “solution” worried me.

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Last week was the 20th anniversary for the Ozchi conference, the leading forum for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in Australia and New Zealand.

I had the pleasure of presenting a paper co-authored with John MacFarlane, a producer at Digital Eskimo, Reflections on the role of Seeding in Social Design (pdf). In it we discuss the way in which social technologies, dependent on participation for success, bring into focus the dynamic and critical relationship between design and use. In social technologies the user literally determines the design, we (designers) only provide the platform. This is an interesting landscape for designers as our role starts to extend beyond constructing and making, to taking responsibility for facilitating and enabling participation. Designing and implementing social technologies successfully means also developing strategies for engagement.

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 … the convergence of social action and technology
Last week I had the pleasure of giving a keynote at the Making Links conference in Melbourne. A big thanks to the organisers and the great attendees who all represent organisations and activists doing excellent work for social change. My presentation, ‘Reaching out or Moving closer: connecting with your community’, focused on participation and engagement (See it here on slideshare). In particular ways that people can approach social technologies to initiate and foster relationships with their community.  I focused on how we can use these tools to develop an ecology appropriate to our stakeholders motivations and interests, rather than focusing on the one stop shop idea of traditional websites.

This way of thinking can often be a challenge for organisations who are uncomfortable about giving up the control of their brand or message. However relinquishing control of those things (to some degree and in new ways) are inevitably part of embracing social technologies, and working more collaboratively with our stakeholders and ‘users’. As Aradhana Goel from IDEO puts it, we should be thinking about enhancing our brand through participation (pdf).

For those that were interested in some of the other sources that I quoted around using social media and social change,  I have uploaded the presentation to slideshare and added some links.  Thanks to all for the great feedback.

Whilst at the conference I had the pleasure of seeing a number of  great projects, some of the highlights included the Freedom Centre who have been using msn and other private forms of online communication work support young people on gender and sexuality issues.  Info Exchange  do a wide range of work making ICT available to organisations and indivuals (including setting up free access via satellite in East Timor). Reps from Mission Australia, Barnadoes, Youth of the Streets and the Vodafone Foundation presented their fantastic work ‘Young People Connected’ giving street kids and disadvantaged youths mobile phones, the presentation of which brought more than a tear to the eye. Awesome work thanks guys.
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Last week I attended Sustainable Innovation at the Base of the Pyramid conference in Helsinki on the ways in which innovation and business can help the billions of people who are living in poverty. The model is known as the the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) approach which relies on entrepreneurial activity to create value and ultimately well-being through product and service (co)creation and provision instead of the old development aid or charity models.

The stand out speaker for me was Simona Rocchi, Director of Sustainable Design at Philips who described the ethos and methods behind the design of the Chulha smokeless stove, co-created in India with local communities and NGOs. It was inspiring to see design (and in particular a similar approach to design that we practice at Digital Eskimo) given centre stage of a conference on sustainable solutions (design rarely rates a mention in my experience).

The award winning stove exemplifies the potential of co-designing in context with all stakeholders and also represents an innovative model of IP ownership (Philips is sharing it with the community) as well as the many benefits that can flow to corporations that participate in society in this way.

View Simona’s presentation.

When I talk of design i’m usually referring to more than just graphic design … more

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Above is a fantastic piece of political art created by a friend of ours. It’s brilliant – I think it’s strength is in its simplicity of message, and the way in which it still manages to summarise so much of what’s wrong with the Olympics themselves as a force for change in the world as well as the Chinese Government and it’s use of extreme force at Tienanmen in particular but since and before of course.

One of the events that forged Digital Eskimo into being was the Sydney Olympics. I’d just returned from a few years working and living in London and the sheer hypocrisy of the PR and media supported spin regarding Australia as a reconciled and fair country was staggering (especially given the severe lurch to the right under the Howard Government of the proceeding years). Practically no dissent was getting into the mainstream and so we were inspired to create a satirical spoof site of the Sydney 2000 site, we dubbed Shame 2000.

We received a bit of press and attention (including from the IOC’s legal attack dogs – a cheeky exchange is archived on the site for those interested) and all this resulted in a serious amount of traffic and i think some good exposure to the issues that were not being discussed, or as we put it the “Events that Matter.”

Not much seems to have changed as Chairman Rudd and others remain silent on the big issues as the spectacle unfolds. What better way to say to China and the world, if you play our game we don’t mind what happens off the field?

UPDATE: Another nice piece of artwork on the topic .. Do-It-Yourself Tienanmen Square Memorial Kit from artists Wei Lai and my wonderful friend Deborah Kelly.
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We are happy to see a definite theme emerging this year as design, technology and sustainability gets picked up (finally) as part of the bigger picture across the board. Digital Eskimo has quite a few opportunities lined up already to share and engage in our design and sustainability conversations (and hopefully actions).

First up is the greening of CHI 2008 where I have been invited to be part of the panel Beyond the hype: Sustainability & HCI in April. The growing interest in sustainability at CHI, and as part of conferencing in general is exciting, and I hope to participate in this one remotely and save some air miles.

Closer to home …

May brings us the Pervasive Persuasive Technology and Environmental Sustainability Workshop at Pervasive 2008 here in Sydney 19-22 May. Duncan and myself both hope to attend this local one. Our submission, “Understanding Motivation and Enabling Action Towards Change” focused on how Considered Design enables us to both understand what motivates people make change, as well as design technology to support that.

We will be spending the air miles (offset of course) to attend Ezio Manzini’s (a true leader in the field) Changing the Change conference in Torino, later in year. The conference focuses on the role and potential of design research in the transition towards sustainability – we hope this marks a major step in the re-defining of designers as facilitators of significant, positive change.

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Some of our clients need to source images for their websites and communications activities, but don’t have the budget to spend on commercial stock image libraries. Thankfully, there are a number of resources on the web that provide good quality imagery for next to nothing.

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