Current TV is a cable and sattelite channel backed by environmentalist Al Gore that shows short user-submitted shows and segments in what it called ‘viewer created content’.

Yahoo! has been granted the rights to exclusive Current TV content for its video portal, and in return some of the best user submissions to Yahoo! may make it onto the terrestrial Current TV channel.

Current TV have previously made a little-known deal with Google to release Google Current, which was a similar concept though hosted on the Current TV site and servers (what they got from the relationship with the search giant is unclear, other than splashing the companies name throughout the videos).

Back at Yahoo! there are now four channels of Current content (these names are going to get confusing very quickly) – Yahoo! Current Action, Yahoo! Current Buzz, Yahoo! Current Driver and Yahoo! Current Traveler.

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The garments, which are intended for demonstration purposes only, demonstrate how electronics can be incorporated into fabrics and garments in order to express the emotions and personality of the wearer.

The intricate wearable prototypes include ‘Bubelle’, a dress surrounded by a delicate ‘bubble’ illuminated by patterns that changed dependent on skin contact- and ‘Frison’, a body suit that reacts to being blown on by igniting a private constellation of tiny LEDs.

These garments were developed as part of the SKIN research project, which challenges the notion that our lives are automatically better because they are more digital. It looks at more ‘analog’ phenomena like emotional sensing and explores technologies that are ’sensitive’ rather than ‘intelligent’.

SKIN belongs to the ongoing, far-future research program Design Probe carried out at Philips Design. The aim of this program is to identify emerging trends and likely societal shifts and then carry out ‘probes’ that explore whether there is potential for Philips in some of the more promising areas.

According to Clive van Heerden, Senior Director of design-led innovation at Philips Design, the SKIN probe has a much wider context than just garments. “As our media becomes progressively more virtual, it is quite possible in long term future that we will no longer have objects like DVD players, or music contained on disks, or books that are actually printed. An opportunity is therefore emerging for us to completely rethink our interaction with products and content.”

- Read press release
- View images

UPDATE via Reuters:
German fashion designer Anke Loh launched a new collection, “Dressing Light,” in which each garment incorporates Philips’ new photonic fabric — which has arrays of light-emitting diodes that can display text, graphics and animation.

Read Reuters article

(via we-make-money-not-art)

“Three experience prototypes – each targeting a different type of person or persona – illustrate how a family of solutions can be adapted to support many different lifestyles.”

“Lifestyle Home exemplifies how different electronic devices can be adapted to allow people to select, tailor and enjoy their digital media and connected experiences in the way they desire, and fitting with their own situation.”

“The prototypes focus on the three key user experiences of easy personalization, intuitive use and content flow, and center on a television navigation screen. The television-based ‘lifestyle home menu’ acts as a personalised window onto local, online and broadcast content and services.”

“The starting point for Lifestyle Home was a clear focus on user experiences. We involved participants throughout the design process, helping develop solutions that are better attuned to people’s needs and abilities and that make sense in their everyday lives.”

- Read press release
- Visit dedicated website
- Download brochure (pdf, 1.64 mb, 32 pages)

The research won a 2006 gold Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA) from the Industrial Designers Society of America.

“Lenovo asked us to help them define product opportunities for their consumer divisions in desktop, notebook, and cellular so they could better compete on meaning and value. We needed to create an approach that captured the soul of the Chinese consumer and inspired Lenovo’s design teams. We needed to create new research tools to find out which design elements have meaning and value for specific groups of Chinese consumers. We provided Lenovo with a 36-month strategic product plan for each of its three consumer technology platforms. Because we were building a strategy, our design research had to create targets for idea generation and concept refinement.”

“To create product experiences that connect with China’s consumers, the team needed to understand three cultures: China, users, and products. To build these connections, the team developed an approach called “Search for the Soul,” which integrates immersive experience (live-the-life), rapid ethnography, and method acting to uncover latent needs and wants.” [...]

Based on the research, the team identified “the aspirations, behaviors, and needs of distinct clusters [of users]. These clusters became known as ‘technology tribes’. The five technology tribes identified were: Social Butterflies, Relationship Builders, Upward Maximizers, Deep Immersers, and Conspicuous Collectors. Each of these groups has vastly different needs, ranging from the need to connect to a broad social network (Social Butterflies) to the desire to seek escape through fantasy and immersion (Deep Immersers).”

These profiles drove concept generation, allowed for “a clear understanding of who Lenovo’s target consumers ought to be (four primary tech tribes: Social Butterflies, Relationship Builders, Upward Maximizers, and Deep Immersers) and laid the groundwork to create product-line strategies for Lenovo’s desktop, notebook, and cellular platforms.

In conclusion:

“The definition of rich, psychographic tribes gave Lenovo’s senior management and marketing teams a common language and a common vision of the future. Our research gave them a defined segment map (based on behavior, attitudes, and values) to guide the development of appropriate products for target consumers. Future product lines are now organized around the needs of specific “tech tribes.” Our research gave Lenovo an understanding of Western approaches to creativity and markets. Within months of the completion of this project in 2005, Lenovo cemented its commitment to high-value design by acquiring IBM’s PC (ThinkPad) business unit.”

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To better define the vision and the concept of the lab, the academy has invited some authorities in the field for a one day conference on Friday 29 September. Nathan Shedroff will deliver the keynote address. Other speakers include:

• Fiona Raby – Royal College of Art, London, UK
• François Jegou – Solutioning Design & Domus Academy
• Ralf Beuker -Zollverein Essen Heritage, Germany
• Wim Dries – Deputy Mayor of Urban Planning, City of Genk, Belgium
• Jan-Christoph Zoels – Experientia & ex-Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy
• Jan Kriekels – Jaga Radiator Factory, Belgium
• Nik Baerten – Pantopicon, Belgium
• Jan Boelen – Z33 Limburg, Belgium
• Jef Gabriëls – Mayor, City of Genk, Belgium

Experientia partner Mark Vanderbeeken myself will moderate one of the sessions. The project is guided by academy director Henk Heuts, project manager Jan Louis De Bruyn and programme manager Virginia Tassinari. Virginia, who only last year moved to Belgium from Italy, coordinates the content development of the lab and is one of the driving forces behind its visioning.

The event, which will be held in English, is open to an interested public, so if you are near that area, do register on their website.

The Experience Design Lab and the C-Mine project in general are endeavours close to our heart, since they are sited in an area Mark grew up in, embody a social and engaged vision of design, and are driven by a dynamic group of young people.

The article takes as an example Game Designer, an educational software program currently under development that introduces junior high school kids to the craft of video-game design.

“Part of a three-year research and development project backed by a $1.2 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the program’s loftier goals are to help equip students with a foundation of technical, artistic, cognitive, and linguistic skills—which some educational researchers argue are neglected by current standardized test-based curricula.”

“The educational aspect of the design is being overseen and tested by the University of Wisconsin’s Games and Professional Practice Simulations Group (GAPPS). Leading the GAPPS group is Jim Gee, a sociolinguist and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison whose several books include the pleasingly provocative What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Gee is an engaging thinker and avid gamer who discovered video games in his early fifties.”

“In the appendix to What Video Games Have to Teach Us, Gee lists 36 learning principles that he believes are built into video games. His argument is not that video games are good teachers, but that playing good video games is often good learning. [...] Play, according to Gee, requires a four-step process of probing, hypothesizing, reprobing, and then rejecting or accepting the hypothesis—the very foundation of the scientific method. [...] Gee [also] rgues that video-game players naturally form “affinity groups” for sharing goals, endeavors, and practices, often across cultural and ethnic divides.”

Interestingly, the article then continues discussing whether more established design disciplines learn something from game design.

“Games are played for no other reason than for the experience of playing them—unlike a software application, in which the experience or enjoyment of the user is a by-product. If the experience of the interface is not pleasing, players will walk away. By contrast, the interfaces of many cell phones, software applications, digital cameras, microwave ovens, cars, and even wayfinding systems are maddening to use. In some situations—famously the VCR—the interface has been bad for so long that we expect operation to be frustrating and difficult. “

“A good game interface will not bombard the user with information at the outset or rely on a complex instruction manual; it will teach the user everything he or she needs to know on a need-to-know basis. This convention is so entrenched, in fact, that gamers trust the system and never read the manuals. Figuring out how it works, whether it’s boosting your cyborg hero’s bomb-disposal skills or downloading a cheat code that makes her invisible to flying aliens, is part of the game. “A game’s system itself generates meaning, and the way it changes over time begins to modify your understanding of that system,” Salen [a game designer and the director of the graduate Design and Technology Program at Parsons School of Design in New York] says. “It’s a basic principle that can apply to all kinds of design.”

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As a city-based innovation resource the Living Lab can take advantage of the pools of creative talent, the affluence of socio-cultural diversity, and the unpredictability of inventiveness and imagination in the urban setting.

Users, including professional users, play significant roles by identifying needs and formulating demands, thereby shaping emerging applications through processes of participatory design. To remain effective, a Living Lab must encourage and promote close interactions between the producers and users of technology.

Living Labs promote entrepreneurship and inventiveness, creating new ventures in business and society. Through European networking, local challenges become global markets. For cities, public institutions and innovative firms Living Labs are a strategic tool to gain competitive advantages. For example, Living Labs companies have become preferred partners in relation to global firms in prototyping, testing and launching advanced community services and business solutions.

Whilst Living Labs generally focus on mobile technologies and applications, they serve as a much wider catalyst for growth in such sectors as health, media and food.

Living Labs Europe

From the outset, each Living Lab agrees to be a node in a European network and share information and experiences. To create critical mass and combine resources, cross-border projects can easily be launched with other Living Labs. The most relevant Living Lab experiences are quickly exchanged across the European network, as showcases of innovation and opportunities for learning, strategic collaboration and marketing. The user perspectives must remain the basis for all Living Lab activities.

For small and medium-sized enterprises, the network of Living Labs opens many new doors to a European marketplace with more than 400 million end-users. Innovative solutions, prototyped in one Living Lab, can easily be tested and marketed across regional and national borders. As a continental network, Living Labs Europe forms a unique marketplace with critical mass, bringing together user-groups in some of Europe’s most inventive city areas.

For European cities, the Living Lab is an instrument to construct internationally competitive advantages, attract inward investments and manage the city brand. Through Public-Private Partnerships cities promote innovative services to their citizens, visitors and enterprises. Through Living Labs Europe, even small communities have successfully pioneered innovative mobile solutions that inspire the European marketplace, gaining growth and international visibility.

By design, Living Labs already constitute a pan-European collaboration scheme as well as a marketplace for open solutions. A number of Living Labs have signed cooperation agreements to sharing experiences launch pan-European projects. More are to come.

Currently, Living Labs initiatives have been taken by groups of stakeholders in cities like Almere (NL), Barcelona (ES), Boras (SE), Budapest (HU), Copenhagen (DK), Hamburg (D), Helsinki (FIN), London (UK), Mataró (ES), Sant Cugat (ES), Sophia-Antipolis (FR), Stuttgart (D), Tallinn ( EST), Torino (IT), Västervik (SE).

According to Living Labs Europe plans and recent expectations, at least 20 fully-fledged Living Labs should be in operation in a scheme of collaboration across the continent by 2007.

- Living Labs Europe website
- Living Labs Europe blog
- Living Labs Europe brochure (pdf, 467 kb, 8 pages)

Well, think again, says Bruno Giussani in his blog Lunch over IP. He found some interesting stats in a recent Fortune article which says that some 87% of the 100-million-plus users claimed by the site are 18 or older, and 52% are 35 or older.

IDEA stands for Information: Design, Experience, Access and is a conference on designing complex information spaces of all kinds.

The IDEA 2006 conference, which takes place on 23 and 24 October at the Seattle Public Library, addresses issues of design for an always-on, always-connected world. Where “cyberspace” is a meaningless term because the online and offline worlds cannot be made distinct. Where physical spaces are so complex that detailed wayfinding is necessary to navigate them. Where work processes have become so involved, and so digitized, that we need new processes to manage those processes.

This conference brings together a diverse set of designers, creators, and researchers who are addressing these challenges head on. Speakers from a variety of backgrounds — including museum design, information visualization, librarians, environmental design, user research, engineering, interaction design, and product strategy — will discuss designing complex information spaces in the physical and virtual worlds.

The final programme features these speakers: Bruce Sterling; Linda Stone; Jake Barton (from Local Projects); Dave Cronin (from Cooper); David Guiney (from the National Park Service); Deborah Jacobs (the City Librarian for Seattle); Ed Vielmetti; Alison Sant; Ian White (from Urban Mapping); Mike Migurski (from Stamen); Fernanda Viegas (from IBM Research); Robert Kalin (from Etsy); Dan Hill (from the BBC); and Paul Gould (from MAYA Design).

The interview by PodTech founder John Furrier is not very much in depth, but I post it here for the record.

Go to interview

Calling the book “one of the best books yet about contemporary design”, he starts off his review as follows:

“Dan Saffer has crafted the most accessible and instructive book I’ve read about interaction design – and more. Dan deals handily with interaction design, which he characterizes in a Venn diagram as a subset of experience design. There are issues regarding experience design that discussions of interaction design inherently can’t reach, as I’ll discuss later; but having set out primarily to explain interaction design, Dan’s done a superb job. Indicatively, the book is co-published by the AIGA in recognition of the “revolutionary transformation” for “ordinary people to influence and design their own experiences.” Dan’s exposition of design thinking is as important as is his fine job of explaining the how-tos of interaction design.”

Read review

See also this review by Leo Frishberg on UX matters

“The challenge for fashion in the 21st century is to cease being a spectator sport for ordinary folk who view the red carpet as a runway – and to re-engage the public.”

She then goes on to describe a new interactive and participative fashion culture, exemplified by Project Runway, the brainchild of the movie moguls Harvey and Bob Weinstein. “The television show, now in its third season, aims to inform its audience and rate its participants, who, instead of performing daring-do stunts or offering up a song, found themselves last week in Paris trying to create a couture gown in two days.”

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“It is a model for library service that encourages constant and purposeful change, inviting user participation in the creation of both the physical and the virtual services they want, supported by consistently evaluating services. It also attempts to reach new users and better serve current ones through improved customer-driven offerings. Each component by itself is a step toward better serving our users; however, it is through the combined implementation of all of these that we can reach Library 2.0.”

“While not required, technology can help libraries create a customer-driven, 2.0 environment. Web 2.0 technologies have played a significant role in our ability to keep up with the changing needs of library users. Technological advances in the past several years have enabled libraries to create new services that before were not possible, such as virtual reference, personalized OPAC interfaces, or downloadable media that library customers can use in the comfort of their own homes. This increase in available technologies gives libraries the ability to offer improved, customer-driven service opportunities.”

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But where can you study it?

The short answer is that you can’t really study experience design. To my knowledge there is only one small programme of experience design at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

An alternative is to go to a design school with a strong user-centred and experience design focus such as the one at Stanford or at IIT, both in the US.

One can also study interaction design, a field that does not always have the same user focus as experience design, and there are programmes now in many countries, including Australia (University of Melbourne, University of Queensland), Canada (Simon Fraser University), Denmark (Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design), Ireland (University of Limerick), Japan (Keio University, University of Tokyo), Sweden (Chalmers, Malmo, Umea), UK (City University London, Middlesex University, RCA, University of Dundee), and the USA (Art Center College of Design, Carnegie Mellon, Indiana University, ITP, Parsons, Savannah College of Art and Design, University of Baltimore, University of Maryland).
[This is just a provisional list - see here, here and here for more discussion on interaction design education]

Other related fields are communication design, HCI and information design, or you can join a programme in what in Europe is sometimes called “new media” or “multimedia”.

Amsterdam also host the European Centre for the Experience Economy.

Bob Jacobson, the entrepreneur and visionary thinker behind the Total Experience weblog, just raised the issue in an email he sent to a selected group of people including Bill Moggridge, John Thackara, Donald Norman and some 26 others, where he underlines the need for an Experience Design Institute, as a place of study and research, as a site of serious reflection and discourse. I think his call is most appropriate and timely (if not overdue), and as per usual with Bob, well thought through. Why have I received 625 email newsgroup messages in the last four months mentioning “experience design” and there is only one study programme explicitly dealing with this?

The challenge is out there. Who is taking it on?

UPDATE: 12 September 2006

Apparently, some institutions are taking on the challenge and preparing experience design programmes or labs. Interestingly, they are not in the U.S. The Utrecht School of Arts (The Netherlands) is in the planning phases of a new bachelor course called Ambient Experience Design. Also the Belgian Media & Design Academy is setting up an Experience Design Lab (disclosure: I am working with them helping them in this process). I hear some interesting things coming out of Portugal, but I am still inquiring to find out more. The most developed for now seems to be the “design para a experiência” initiative of the Nomads center at the University of San Paolo, under the leadership of Marcelo Tramontano.

Mobile tracking firm M:Metrics has determined from data collected in the three-month period that ended in July that ringtones — by far the most popular form of mobile content — are bought by only about 10 percent of the total user base. In addition, 2 percent have bought games, 3.5 percent subscribed to a ringtone service or downloaded a wallpaper image, 0.4 percent watched paid video and 0.2 percent downloaded a full song. Overall, about 28 million, or 15 percent, of the 190 million U.S. wireless subscribers, have downloaded some type of multimedia content.

“People are throwing a lot of things at the wall to see what will stick as opposed to taking a step back and asking themselves what’s the best way to consume content from an end-user perspective,” says DP Venkatesh, CEO of mPortal, a mobile services application provider. “There seems to be an overemphasis on making more content available rather than relevant content.”

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The backdrop is Prato, a small Italian city of 180,000 with 25,000 Chinese workers and 2,000 Chinese entrepreneurs, who own a quarter of the city’s textile businesses.

I repost it on Putting People First not because it has much to do with user-centred design, but because it is economic innovation happening in my backyard. And while these Chinese create growth and employment, they are not embraced by Italians but viewed with fear.

“The city has become the scene of a clash between two cultures: the young, dynamic Chinese, who are willing to take risks and unafraid of being taken advantage of to further their own goals, and the Italians, who allow themselves to be intimidated and worry that Prato could soon spin out of control unless the Chinese and their companies are forcibly legalized. Prato is now a setting for globalization’s next step. The first was when China took away Europe’s jobs, and in the second they are now conquering the cities of the old continent.”

In fact, this is not just an Italian story. It is all about globalisation and how Europe reacts to it.

How to get a population, which is ageing more every year, to focus on this new Europe, and how to stop them fighting the battles of the past?

All those working on innovation in Europe, should be aware that entrepreneurship comes from a radical cultural mindset, which the Chinese seem to have, and many Europeans not anymore.

However — from what I can see here in Italy — there is a young generation of political leaders, who are working hard and quietly behind the scenes to create a new vision for the future. The policies and strategies may be communicated by politicians who are over 60, but the hard work is often done by those under 40. It is happening here in Italy in the office of prime minister Romano Prodi, where a dynamic think tank under the leadership of the up and coming Enrico Letta is developing visions for the future of Italy. The same is happening in the regions and the cities: young people are starting to drive the ideas. These are people who have travelled the world, speak languages, and are extremely well-read and well-informed. They are also highly committed, working long hours because of a vision they believe in. I have worked with some of them and support them wherever I can. In the end, I am confident about Italy because of these young people.

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The action plan aims at removing financial, economic and institutional barriers to the development of environmentally friendy technologies. The Commission sees it as a bridge between the EU’s sustainable development strategy and the Lisbon agenda, when the EU famously set itself the goal of becoming “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world” by 2010.

Interestingly enough, one of the senior people behind ETAP is Jakub Wejchert, a visionary and innovation-focused civil servant who used to be in charge of the EU’s Disappearing Computer project, an initiative to see how information technology can be diffused into everyday objects and settings, and how this can lead to new ways of supporting and enhancing people’s lives that go above and beyond what is possible with the computer today. Wejchert was also involved with Design for Future Needs, a research project that discovered how design methods can help policy makers look into the future to meet people’s needs.

The project website reveals a strong technology focus, but given Wejchert’s background I am curious to see how it will incorporate more people-centred and user-driven approaches to innovation.

ThinkCycle seeks to create a culture of open-source design innovation, with ongoing collaboration among individuals, communities and organizations around the world. It provides a shared online space for designers, engineers, domain experts and stakeholders to discuss, exchange and construct ideas towards sustainable design solutions in critical problem domains.

Topics covered include health, education, energy, environment, community, global action and sustainable living.

(via Nik Baerten at Pantopicon)

The school is being touted as unlike any in the world, with not only a high-tech building — students have digital lockers and teachers use interactive “smart boards” — but also a learning process modeled on Microsoft’s management techniques.

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Microsoft has gone out of its way to create openness and transparency on how it went about planning and designing the school. The company created a special website, a virtual tour and a dedicated weblog.

Even when consumers are aware of what they want and are willing to reveal it, their wants are likely to be conditioned by what is available. And when the product or service available is basically unsatisfying to them, they are unlikely to reveal startling new desires or concepts. At best, the typical ways in which consumers are involved in product design-focus groups, surveys and questionnaires-tend to elicit mostly information about what they do not want, rather than startling new insights about what they really want or need. This is due in part to the fact that people often attempt to provide answers that they think the inquirer wants, rather than probe for their own preferences.

So the search continues, and product developers continue to seek ways to help consumers (1) become more aware of what they need or want, and (2) reveal these wants as accurately as possible. One such way, developed by Russell L. Ackoff, is a process called Consumer Idealised Design.

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