Nina Mehta – Page 15

For people who make things for people

Post author By nina
Post date March 14, 2011

A great post from thingist with an articulate reminder that we are all in this together. When we lose sight of what we’re doing, the people we make things for often suffer the most–and isn’t that contrary to the whole point to begin with? Helping each other out rather than ripping a new one every here or there can’t hurt.

My fellow nerds, geeks, hackers, designers, makers, builders, and DIYers, there is something very very wrong with out culture right now. We’re jackasses to one another.
…
Except nobody told me that I sucked at skateboarding, or that my form was terrible, or that I should give up on it. In fact quite the opposite. One day at the skatepark I was sitting off to the side just watching everybody else and kindof wishing that I wasn’t there. One of my best friends, Steve, came up to me to ask what I was doing.

“You’re not going to learn anything by just staring at that thing. If I ever catch you sitting on this bench again, you’re not invited to the skatepark anymore.”

However, there is also a place for tough love and an honest, constructive critqiue.

[full post at thingist]
[photo via lollyman]

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You cannot design an experience

Post author By nina
Post date March 3, 2011
4 Comments on You cannot design an experience

Experiences belong to the people having them. Designers do not own the experience. Designers are not god and designers cannot design an experience someone else is going to have. The experience belongs to the person (or people). There inlies the ownership.

I have been looking at a lot of portfolios, business cards, blog posts, tweets and job descriptions. “I design experiences” is a phrase that really bugs me. With all the tooting and fan faring about ‘user centered design’ and putting people first, it is awfully bold for a designer, developer or manager to claim they will decide and thereby design what kind of experience someone else will have. How can we possibly define their emotions, their thoughts, their environment, their fears, their childhood memories, their little delights? Have we lost all sense of humbleness and humility?

However, experience is a very important element to consider, if not an essential part of a design framework, philosophy or value. The experience people have using a product or service is what I care about. Well, let’s also not forget all the people whom our work effects that are not necessarily users. I bet that is something ringtone designers think a lot about, the non-users. Anyone notice how the chimes and bells have gotten more office friendly? The dude in the cubicle next to you is a non-user but certainly effected by that ringtone. But, I digress. Perhaps we can design for an experience. The difference is humble intent.

Human behavior never ceases to surprise me. People will always use tools and services in a way we may not expect. We’re humans, we appropriate. And if we do indeed appropriate, how can anyone other than you ultimately decide what experience you will have?

Disputes encouraged. Photo [flickr_lulalola]

Design Music

(Fiona) Apples to Apples on the new iPad 2 Case

Post author By nina
Post date March 2, 2011
1 Comment on (Fiona) Apples to Apples on the new iPad 2 Case

Apple generally does a superb job choosing songs for their ads that charge our emotions. There’s an interesting story about that cute tune in the new magnetic iPad 2 case video. It was written by Fiona Apple, of all people, and titled Extraordinary Machine, of all names.

Six years after Fiona Apple wrote the album, in 2008, happy as a clam–or as happy as Fiona Apple could be– it was shot down and sent back to the drawing board. Many tracks were reproduced and rumored to be against her creative will. They were produced and arguably overproduced, before going to market. The original album ‘accidentally’ leaked to music-internet junkies across the web while American Eagle and many radio stations played the shinier, more sellable album in stores.

What does this have to do with the iPad? Not much really, but it’s an interesting back story on on a sour Apple and an Extraordinary Machine.

Designing for interests, beliefs and values: how traditional demographics no longer drive the future of media

Post author By nina
Post date February 20, 2011

There is an upside to having your taste (and clicks) monitored by advertisers, Johanna Blakey of University of Southern California says. It’s being respected, not presumed. Old media looked at age, gender and income to guess what you would like. You are not your demographic. You are your values, interests, beliefs and so much more. That is how you connect with people and new tools–social media–let you do the connecting with people on your own terms.

We use these tools to connect beyond gender, age and income. Now digital tools see who we are, what we like and what we want to do.

Blakely shows that women, by far, outnumber men in use and time spent on the social media space. If women control social media and social media is overtaking traditional media, will women overtake traditional media? If so, then are we going to start seeing more women in media? and more chick flicks? No! She predicts more women working in these fields will mean more interest and value driven media. No more ‘lame’ movies. Better content and smarter targeting, not for women, not for men but for all people. We cannot say whether or not women will ‘take over’ the media, but Blakely makes a good guess that they will drive the future of the industry.

Is there a future where I watch the Super Bowl and not see one car commercial unless I’m shopping for a car, which I discussed last year: http://nina.keystreams.com/2010/what-if-ads-werent-such-a-bad-thing/

Entertainment influences our beliefs, our work, our play and values. Designers, developers and managers must consider, explore and practice this. At a newspaper, we call our users ‘readers’ and in radio they are ‘listeners’ and on tv they are ‘viewers’ which were all valid titles because the communication and content went one way. But as soon as these people could interact with content, they came ‘users’ which is a shred more respectful than reader because it at least empowers them with the ability to use and interact.

Meaning, implication and tone get tied up in our language. ‘Users’ is a firstwave HCI term from the 80s, at least, that dehumanizes the people we are talking about. The word came about when ‘interaction designers’ were concerned with usability, efficiency and — well — use. As we consider the values, beliefs, ideas and interests of the people who use the things we design, our language needs to change too. What should we call these people? I don’t know yet. But thinking and talking about as more than users or humans, but as people will likely change the way we work.

Design HCId

Let’s not confuse ‘user-centered’ and ‘user-led’

Post author By nina
Post date February 15, 2011
3 Comments on Let’s not confuse ‘user-centered’ and ‘user-led’

Some designers all in a huff about a post written on fast company arguing against user-led innovation. It’s flying through my Twitter stream and just came into my inbox via my dear friend and Poynter colleague Jose Kusunoki. He sent it out to our Poynter list-serve asking what we thought about the following quote.

The Apple and IKEA way
Take Apple. One evening, well into the night, we asked some of our friends on the Apple design team about their view of user-centric design. Their answer? “It’s all bullshit and hot air created to sell consulting projects and to give insecure managers a false sense of security. At Apple, we don’t waste our time asking users, we build our brand through creating great products we believe people will love.”

Below is my critique on the commentary folks are making about the post, rather than the post itself. In short, all I’m trying to say is, calm down.

I think a lot of things about this. It’s passing like wild-fire through my twitter stream right now. First of all, not every company is, can be and should be like Apple.

Building brand and product are certainly related but are not the same thing. In this post,it seems the two words are being used interchangeably. The writer here also is confusing user-centered and user-led. Attention to brand, identity, marketing, product, design, motion, function and many other elements are crucial. They live together in an ecology. But they are not all the same thing.

User-led design puts a product in front of some people, they give feedback and you redesign based on their feedback. Crudely, you could say it disregards the judgement of the designer.

User-centered, however, in my opinion, designs for the need, pain points, problems, pleasures and other elements per required by the user, and many other factors. This method considers feedback from users. But feedback, research and findings are one element of many qualitative and quantitative data points that inform the design. Along with, yes, judgement from the creators of the product or service (designers, developers, managers, etc).

One is designed for users. One is designed by users. I advocate for the first, this post and possibly Apple seems to be arguing against the second.

We’re not god. We’ll never know how people are going to understand, interpret or use the things we design. Did anyone know newspapers would make awesome hats in the rain? No. But turns out, they do.

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The Revolution was not tweeted: Tunisians in action

Post author By nina
Post date January 30, 2011

Twitter did not go to Tunisia and tell people to revolt. Last September I asked about power in the information age. Who has it? And what is it? If we can get access to nearly all common and not-so-common knowledge, instantly, is knowledge power? Indulge with me for a moment, and let’s say no, knowledge is no longer power. Then is our network the power?

Someone who is connected to a listening audience, who is connected to a listening audience, who is connected to a listening audience is quite powerful. That has always been powerful, but now nearly anyone with a tether to the digital world can be any of those someones. And they have the potential to be quite powerful figures. Save of course that these “powerful figures” are not always recognized as such because they flow in and out of the role as a leader if you consider Ben Schniederman’s theories about consumers and producers online.

The revolution was not tweeted. The revolutionaries in Tunisia were just on Twitter. They spread their ideas fast which got them up, out and in the way faster. Twitter just made it easier for the People to say, “Listen to us, now.”

Matthew Igram via GigaOm writes

But is anyone really arguing that Twitter and Facebook caused the revolutions in Tunisia or Egypt, or even the earlier public uprisings in Moldova or Iran for that matter? Maybe cyber-utopians somewhere are doing this, but I haven’t seen or heard of any. The argument I have tried to make is simply that they and other social media tools can be incredibly powerful, both for spreading the word — which can give moral or emotional support to others in a country, as well as generating external support — as well as for organizational purposes, thanks to the power of the network. As Jared Cohen of Google Ideas put it, social media may not be a cause, but it can be a powerful “accelerant.”

Did Twitter or Facebook cause the Tunisian revolt? No. But they did spread the news, and many Tunisian revolutionaries gave them a lot of credit for helping with the process. Did Twitter cause the revolts in Egypt? No. But they did help activists such as WikiLeaks supporter Jacob Appelbaum (known on Twitter as @ioerror) and others as they organized the dialup and satellite phone connections that created an ad-hoc Internet after Egypt turned the real one off — which, of course, it did in large part to try and prevent demonstrators from using Internet-based tools to foment unrest. As Cory Doctorow noted in his review of Evgeny Morozov’s book, even if Twitter and Facebook are just used to replace the process of stapling pieces of paper to telephone poles and sending out hundreds of emails, they are still a huge benefit to social activism of all kinds.

In October, Gladwell said the revolution would not be tweeted. He said our thousands of weak ties won’t make change happen. Soon after, I questioned the power of (Facebook’s) algorithm that aims to reduce information overload and weed out irrelevant content. Doing this, however, there’s no way to protect yourself from over tweeting. The conversation is always streaming and always linear. So then, if you tweet often are you more likely to get ignored or at least get some views.

It depends if you’re a loud, verbose person at a loud party or a quiet person, at a quiet party, saying one, striking thing every so often. The problem here is that everyone is at a different party. Then why, if everyone is at a different party, did the demonstrators catch word so fast?

It’s the two-step flow, 2.0. The beautiful flow of information that embraces the idea of human agency to share knowledge and information. But now, unlike ever before, anyone has the potential to have the power the mass media once had.

We can’t help but keep asking if participating in social media is activism. Does changing a Facebook Status or Twitter profile picture make a difference? Some argue it brings awareness to an issue. But it’s passive activism, it’s enough to get points for “caring” about an issue for a fleeting trend.

Why then is a riot, a protest or a lunch counter sit in considered considered activism, when it too, is also just spreading awareness about an issue? Because it causes disruption. The actions do not ask the community to stop what they are doing and pay attention, they require it. It gets in the way, it upsets people and it makes people talk about the problem.

No. The revolution will not be tweeted. No the revolution was not tweeted. But yes, our new tools inspired conversation that empowered people to put the problem in the way. Whether or not that is Good is another question.

The revolution happened on the streets.

Design Travel

So, I went to Africa

All was quiet on the digital front. I spent 33 days in Botswana and South Africa detached from email and completely disconnected from Facebook and Twitter. Try it.

People I know who go to Afrika seem to consistently have “life changing, inspiring, indescribable” experiences. I did too, which is a little boring for you, the reader. I went with dear friend, Sam who is preparing her PhD Thesis in HCI. I like to say she’s studying the ways we, try to develop Afrika with Western technology culture, thereby screwing up. I was visiting my lifelong friend Peter (below) who is living in Gaborone, Botswana and doing research, I suppose, for my thesis.

We did not go to Afrika to ride in wooden boats and see animals. We did not go to “fix the aids problem” and we did not exit through the gift shop.

We did what what we do when we go anywhere. We hopped the velvet ropes and went to Afrika to meet people. We walked the pace of their life as best we could and learned about humanity, exploration and ourselves.

Kind new friends granted us Setswana names. Sam’s name, Botho, loosely means humanness, with respect, dignity and kindess. My non-traditional hair, colour and features gave me the name Bontle: beautiful.

I’ve been to India more times than I can count. It’s hot, noisy, crowded and not very safe, kind of like all the places we went in Botswana and South Africa. When I go to India, I cannot wake up and think, “I’d like to walk East today and maybe, possibly visit this part of the city,” knowing full well I’ll get distracted, make two friends along the way and discover something I could not have even known existed. I can’t go on that walk when staying with my grandparents. But there is nowhere else in the universe I can hear the stories they have to tell.

But Sam and I did that wanderlust traveling. One day we even wandered our way all the way to the top of Kgale Hill.

We wandered our way into a drum circle. Moving by and with music is the only way I know how to listen. I started playing music before I could write a sentence, as one should. Without an exchange a single word, I hopped into a drum circle ont he street with my new friends. They taught me their beats, their rhythms, their language, without a word: and we jammed.

Sometimes, we rode in the back of a pickup truck. Why? Because that’s how we got around the village. Ask me know long we knew the people driving the truck. 2 minutes. Ask me if we actually knew them. We didn’t. Ask me if we were hitchhiking. We weren’t. Because if we were, my friends would probably get fired from their job–not that there was any other option.

But us two Londoners at heart, flew through our city and indulged in Wagamama that otherwise only seemed to exist in dreams. We stopped in Heathrow, in the city where I spent so many days of my life, wandering around, looking for something more and finding it. It was city that taught me how to do it on my own, and there I was back again.

I’ll tell you this, though. The Batswana people can cook but it’s near impossible to get an invitation over for dinner–unless you make the right friends. If someone can teach me to make chicken, squash or collard greens like this, please leave a comment.

And Zac was with us. He was here from Uganda. And needless to say, like us, he made a new friend everywhere he went.

Sam and I did take some time apart. We both jumped, well, tumbled, or fell, really, out of an airplane 10,000 feet above the Earth at the Southern most tip of Africa. It took me 7 pages of free writing to begin processing the rest of my life after that moment.

I’m back home now, zero feet away from the Earth. Driving my car instead of taking the combi.

I’m back home now, where the white people are not people donning a “white face” parade costume.

I’m back home now, where I am not ordering ostrich, kudu, springbok or crocodile to eat.

I’m back home now, very far from a huge body of water.

I am back home now, where the roads are roads and the roads are clean.

But, I love where I live. And I might not ever eat a leg of chicken and dance at the same time again. But, I’ll have done it.

We are grateful for all the real friendships we made and opportunities to experience a Southern Afrikan lifestyle as best we could. This is 2% how I spent one of the most enlightening months of my life.

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Natural Language Processing

Post author By nina
Post date December 7, 2010

I’ve been thinking a lot about how natural lanuage processing can be used (better) in news. How could we use social data and NLP to personalize and individualize news content to answer the question “so what?”

A nice example from The Times:
When the Software Is the Sportswriter

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How do you get the news?

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Thanks for your help! This survey is to inform design media research I am doing at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Capstone Design HCId Journalism

The Social Journalist

Broadcasting stories to social media has led to the emergence of social journalism.

Social Journalism (definition in progress)
Social Journalism is the practice of broadcasting a news story with commentary to a social network. The social journalist practices writing, editing, judgement, authority, attention to audience .

Argument
The social journalist does not necessary practice news gathering and fact checking like a news journalist does. This person scrutinizes text and through their horizons, interpretation and the context of their lifeworld, they comment on the content in the context of ‘convention, reception and interpretation’ in a social way, as Barnard says in his book Visual Culture.

Commentary
I’m in the process of brainstorming for a paper I am writing. In my research, I have found that people who share and comment on news stories to their social networks and news journalists have many things in common. This paper will argue for the emergence of the social journalist and will explore how sharing UI on news sites have enabled this emergence. This paper will also acknowledge the differences between news journalist and social journalist. Social media and its integration with news media, for the first time ever, has empowered the lay person for to be not only a consumer, but also to produce content and easily broadcast to mass communities.