Accidents and Failures as Fertile Creative Ground for the Near Future

2 ingredients in this talk: failed robots and french tarts

Accidents and Failures as Fertile Creative Ground for the Near Future nicolas nova Torino, Oct. 20, 2010

Outline 1. Accidents and malfunctions are hot topics 2. A typology of failures 3. Design and accidents 4. How to benefit from failures (in my practice)

EPIC FAIL GUY

A typology of failures

Technical accidents

Technical accidents: flawed sensors

Technical accidents: wrong results

Technical accidents: messages

Technical accidents: weird messages

Technical accidents: frustration

Technologies and frustration “The applications in which the frustrating experiences happened most frequently were web browsing, e-mail, and word processing. (...) The time lost due to frustrating experiences ranged from 47-53% of time spent on a computer depending on the location and study method.” “Determining Causes and Severity of End-User Frustration” by Ceaparu, Lazar, Bessiere, Robinson & Shneiderman (2002)

Intentional accident

Intentional accident: punch/hit/ kick

Intentional accident: but...

Non-intentional accident

Typology of failures -> design Annoying robot Kick vending Role of Automatic machine door technology Punching your computer because it’s not responsive iPhone dropped in toilet Non-intentional User’s involvement Intentional

Design: minimize failures + avoid accidents Role of technology Non-intentional User’s involvement Intentional

Anatomy of a failure: automatic doors

Failure in action: automatic devices distinguish automatic from non-automatic invisible or illegible “locus of control”: floor? door side? too quickly/too slowly open when you don’t want it too weather-dependent calibration!? different “door” conventions

automatic doors: wrong mental model

solution to build a mental model

users unaware of sensors position and wrong calibration

“15 minutes”: who decides this anyway?

individual-blame bias (e. rogers)

Accidents and failure as design material

1. Foresight: from here to there future of robots = look at how people treat switches and vending machines!

Love, hate and a hospital robot: http://cli.gs/T7VH6e ‘The fact that the robot couldn't tell if it was a good time to interrupt and announce its presence was a big problem for some people, as one member of the nursing staff described: "I called it nasty names and told it, 'Would you shut the hell up? Can't you see I'm on the phone? If you say "TUG has arrived" one more time I'm going to kick you in your camera.' " Some staff members actually did lash out and kick TUG in frustration, more admitted to considering it.’

2. The user experience of broken artifacts

2. What minimal features should be implemented?

3. Seamful design: friction can be part of the solution Project with Simpliquity (Fabien Girardin and Pierre Dillenbourg)

3. Seamful design: use the limits Project with Céline Le Marc

4. Anti-probe Provoke failures and observe people’s behavior

Case 1: errors in a location- based games

"I did not move physically, but I saw me moving on the map!" “I saw that Ben moved on the screen but I know he did not".

Case 1: provoke failure as a way to understand users’ mental models

"Determining the limits of pain during robot- human impacts this way will allow the design of robot motions that cannot exceed these limits" http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827826.700- robot-arm-punches-human-to-obey-asimovs-rules.html

Case 2: wrong calibration on the Wii

Case 2: provoke failure as a tactic to change the user experience

Conclusion ➡ We need to go beyond “failure is cool and funny” ➡ Different kinds of failures/accidents/malfunctions ➡ They often result from the incompatibilities between the way things are designed and the way people actually perceive, think, and act ➡ Failures and accident as a design tactic ➡ We collect design patterns, use cases, we should also collect “failure cases” as inspirational data

“the Tarte Tatin was first created by accident at the Hotel Tatin in Lamotte- Beuvron, France in 1898. The hotel was run by two sisters, Stéphanie and Caroline Tatin. Conflicting stories concerning the tart's origin: - One of the sister was overworked one day. She started to make a traditional apple pie but left the apples cooking in butter and sugar for too long. Smelling the burning, she tried to rescue the dish by putting the pastry base on top of the pan of apples, quickly finishing the cooking by putting th whole pan in the oven. After turning out the upside down tart, she was surprised to find how much the hotel guests appreciated the dessert. - An alternative version: one of the sister baked a caramelised apple tart upside-down by mistake” The Wikipedia

grazie! nicolas@liftlab.com @nicolasnova

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Accidents and Failures as Fertile Creative Ground for the Near Future

by nicolas nova on Oct 22, 2010

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