(not devices)
Designing for People
Kwame, Fjord...
In these slides I may not have credited a couple of pictures... apologies. Also, I am not present to
whisper in your year the thoughts behind them, so it’s fine to feel lost...

Sahara Post: Mobile installation, Mauritania, 2003
Metallic balloons where desert dwellers can attach messages to. The desert moves the anchored
balloons as though these were in an ocean.

Fjord Project

Fjord Project

Fire...
Fire...
Fire...
Fire...
Fire...

“Yes, I was at that fire, it was lacking wood...”
with mobile phones each one of us has a fire,
and we take it everywhere

Ibrahim Adrian
Shepherd. Goes to the Geek. Has a myspace
market on sundays. page where he has
Everyone knows him 1200 friends.
as “Ibrahim the son of Jerks off 3 times a
the goat herder who day, and has 6 real
looks like a bull”. friends.

History of the web... mention Cluentrain...
First web equates to first wave of SN:
News groups, Message boards...
people gathered around specific
topics.
just like gathering around fires, or going to the pub...

Oh Shit, we’re connected. Let’s go
crazy!!!!!!!!!!!! But let’s do it sitting down...

“Hey, somebody connected all
these people and now they are
going crazy. What can we do?”
“Well, we can start by telling them
they are connected.”
First consolidated SNSs

Adrian joins Friendster and Orkut and
Hi5... and makes two new real friends...

How is Ibrahim doing?
Ibrahim is on a boat to

...with his mobile social network

2nd wave of SNS:
You are reminded that you can
make Friends through your
Friends. Ads become more
selective.
3rd wave of SNS:
Introduction of tools and
intelligence to make the
‘connected experience more
meaningful’
media type and service cross-pollination, updates, tools
difference between romanic churches and gothic churches

Adrian is growing and consolidating his network.
Some of his mySpace friends become part of is
phone’s address book. migration is vital
Ibrahim meets people on the ‘street’ and they
become part of his phone’s address book. migration is vital

The real mobile SN is here:
It cannot be imagined. It’s real...
For both Adrian and Ibrahim

Adrian gets lucky a few times (learns how to
spot the single amongst his friends) and learns
how to master his SN. He eventually discovers
linkedIN and gets a job...

It’s only natural that Mobile Social Networks
become a direct translation of existing online
SNs. After all they’ve worked for Adrian,
there’s a business logic in place...
...not good enough though.

Rewind <<

Print: great to take along, but no sound...
Adrian, Ibrahim
Radio: great, and you can move about, and there
Ibrahim, Radio
are tribes... but no pictures.
TV: magic, but you have to consume it sitting
Adrian, Ibrahim
down. It demands all your attention.
Networked Computer: you can talk and lose
Adrian
yourself in the web... but you must do it sitting
down.
Cell-phone: you can talk and text everywhere and
Adrian and Ibrahim
it wakes you up in the morning.
Networked Mobile Computer: you can talk and lose yourself...
Adrian
you can watch TV and listen to radio, control your bathtub,
check in at the airport, flirt on the move, make home movies,
listen to and share music, play games, customise ringtones,
vibrate, send messages, ask for help, take pictures, manage
your contacts, know where you are...

Productivity Tools
}
Creativity tools Problem — most come from the PC
Discovery tools
Social Tools
Manage my social network (address book)
Communicate with the elements in my social network (text, voice)
Go online and connect with my PC native SNs

What is important in mobility? (Well even with mobile networked computers, apparently the same old usual)
Talk Text Talk Text Talk Text
Business man
Music Games Music Games Music Games
Day 1 Day 2 Day 10
Talk Text Talk Text Text
Talk
Teen
Music Games Music Games Music Games
Day 1 Day 2 Day 10

The question no one asked:
Do you want a phone you can take with you
everywhere?
No one asked me. Still here it is and it changed my world.
The question now is:
Do you want a computer you can take with
you everywhere?
How is it going to change my world?

I go outside
We can start to think like Adrian or like Ibrahim
Rely on web based social networks
The suckers want us to sit down...
Rely on bodies
which are inherently mobile

Killer app for Adrian:
crossing web and mobile data
There is a great probability that Jessica
had sex with John last night.
James just shared two pictures he took
with his MC. He probably thinks he is a
good photographer.
Annie is within physical reach of you. This
your chance to mate.
I want my mobile to make
sense of my data/world
position me

Now if we start to think more like Ibrahim
Well, everything will start to be
more emotional. Why?
think bodies.
the 1000 we cross everyday
the ones that make us laugh

A little bit of my story

Faceted ID > creating a profile > performing
talk about Danah’s work

reducing digital complexity may also reduce... humanity.

When you meet someone
( the getting laid context )
intro initial framework (2h) over 100h Family
225 words per minute 27000 words
How can my mobile help?

Physical social intercourse... Goffman. I travelled the world for some years...
AR studies — Kwame

Physical social intercourse... Goffman
Decision making at critical points: interaction between choice and constraint.

Ergonomics, Anthropometrics
AR studies — Kwame

Behavioural patterns
AR studies — Kwame

Pulse in/of the crowd
AR studies — Kwame

AR studies — Kwame

AR studies — Kwame

OS level
AR studies — Kwame

AR studies — Kwame

Buds, 2002
Kwame’s Application

Zhu Ming 1995

Bods, 2003

“Spontaneous digital articulated
networks: wireless augmented networks
in free random identity interchange bays.”
Kwame ‘s research

these guys have an augmented ID, I wish I had had one

Ibrahim rolls into town
Wow! Look at
all these fires...
Ibrahim thinks to himself: shit everyone’s got a fire...

We’ve spun a web above us, around us. It’s part of the city, it is the city.
Peter Witt, 1950
Normal spider web Clockwise from top left: spider on lsd, spider on
mescaline, spider on caffeine, spider on hash

Whole collectivities move Communication codes Communication used to
together, so that have to be standardized be limited to the rather
intragroup communication and messages simplified rare occasions when
can be maintained [touch] in a way to be compatible populations are densely
with conditions of aggregated at specific
movement and/or wide locations.
and variable spatial
dispersion.
text by Hans Geser

Digital living begins with physical living. This entails a shift in the roadmap... otherwise we will
be porting MySpace and Facebook-like apps for phones and that’s that...

Adrian went on to do this... piece of s***t!

Ibrahim is driving a cab now
the car is mobile and very sociable

Rear Units
Head Units
Media Storage +
GPS
On Board Computer
Stereo
Stereo +
Portable devices brought in by the occupants

Behaviour > Mobility and Stability
Check mail Satellite music
Work, most of my day in front of a computer On the move, where am I?
Synchronize my music Watch TV Call to order
What is truly important and always present
Space of interaction is vast and unpredictable
We move between heterogeneous environments. Some of which are controlled by
us, others not. [Habitat.]
We have routines that anchor our lives

Ibrahim has a new routine
Shopping
pub pub
centre
friend’s place
work
home
gym
pub
hotel
hospital
When out on the street we have a purpose and it’s very difficult if not impossible
to divert people from their purposes. Our lives are about routine behaviour and to
do lists are not very flexible. On the move we have lines of flight to which we
commit and from which we seldom move away from.

People are not numbers
No reason why the Address book should not be an IM

Gang member suspect gunned down by the
police who then proceeded to smash his phone
and retrieve the sim card in order to identify his
contacts.

Fancy UIs...
UI studies — Kwame

Fish Eye Lens to navigate content, specially at structures
UI studies — Kwame

Widgets?
UI studies — Kwame

Wallpaper becomes screensaver
Space is fluid
UI studies — Kwame

UI studies — Kwame

Nourished by a service layer
UI studies — Kwame

Dealing with Lists...
UI studies — Kwame

Horizontal movement suddenly makes more sense
UI studies — Kwame

Driving towards some conclusions

A mix of embedded functionalities & external IP-based services
Lagged,
asynchronous
Time proximity needs
PTT MMS SMS
MMS SMS
PTT
video Call voice
Video-call Voice Windows Live
Instant,
synchronous
Live Face & voice Voice Rich content Text
other than voice
Nature of our exchanges

Widgets: Artefacts, easy to shape, to carry. Functional. Telling.
Digital services will be exist at the same UI level than
embedded phone functionality.

5 new computing paradigm drivers

The disappearing computer
The computing experience is becoming more fragmented,
as such tasks are being polarised by the many devices
we use. In all this, casual computing is taking its place
in increasingly mobile lifestyles.

[Connecting] People
We used to call Places, then we called numbers and names next we
will be connecting with people.
We will do so because people are starting to acquire more digital
resolution (given by all the services they use) — intelligent digital
traces.

Visual DPN
Remember that the human being is very visual, and
processes visual information superbly.

UI as a Service
The UI will be screen independent.
Context will be rendered continuously, positioning the user at
all times in the experience.
Vertical lists... they will still exist but only as a way to
represent information.
image by J. Heer

Search centric
Think terabytes, users will need immediate access to
content.
image by J. Heer

Thank you
kwame@mekwa.com