Magic (Hurt feelings & Forgiveness) - With speaker notes

Presenting: Magic (Hurt feelings & forgiveness) UXLX May 2011 E: hello@olishaw.com T: @olishaw W olishaw.com 1Today I will be talking about Magic...

THE FOLLOWING PRESENTATION CONTAINS SOME PHILOSOPHY AND THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS SOME PHILOSOPHY AND MADE UP WORDS BUT DONT LET THAT PUT YOU OFF, IT’S GROUNDED IN A YEAR OF BUT DONT LET THAT PUT YOU OFF, IT’S GROUNDED IN A YEAR OF RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC PAPERS RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC PAPERS F&I FUN AND INSPIRATION MAGIC, DELIGHT, WONDER, AMAZEMENT, EMOTION RELATIONSHIPS, DESIRE, LOVE, ANGER, FRUSTRATION,TECHNOLOGY, BROKEN 2There will be some philosophy, concepts and some, well quite a few, made up words.But don’t let that put you oﬀ, this is all grounded in a year of research, conversaAons and reading too many PhD thesis.This talk is about inspiraAon and sparking discussion, also fair warning -‐ prepare for a data upload.

Charles Chaplin - Modern Times 1939 3 We live in modern Ames... Urban populaAons conAnually grow, with more and more people drawn into the metropolitan environment. We can travel to more places, faster, cheaper and more frequently then ever before.

4 The exponenAal advancement and growth rate of technology is matched only by it’s conAnually falling costs. Our aJtudes towards technology has dramaAcally shiKed, we are really in an age of disposable technology.

Minority Report (2002) Johnny Chung Lee (2007) 5We move from science ﬁcAon to science fact.

Kinect for Xbox 360 (2010) Image: ffffound.com 6...and (beyond) onto the consumer market at a phenomenally fast rate.

7 So, its liPle surprise as to why there is such a resurgence in popular culture of the supernatural; like vampires, werewolves and ghosts and why magic is sAll very much alive in living consciousnesses. I want to take a closer look at magic and how it is linked with the technology we use and design for. Focusing more on the experience of using this technology, how it has evolved, the culture that surrounds it and how this in turn changes our expectaAons and percepAons.

Part Creative / Part Anthropologist / Part Strategic Developer Animator Art director Head of UX Experience Planner Design researcher Service designer Strategist 8 Before we begin with this story, as is customary, a liPle bit about who I am; I’m not really a specialist anymore, I have a varied background and had a range of job Atles -‐ my work now is part creaAve, part anthropologist and part strategic. Over the years I have found that its important to keep a good balance of thinking and making. What interests me most is the ever changing culture around us, how technology is seamlessly integraAng with our lives and becoming more and more essenAal to our everyday living.

What is magic? 9 To begin a story about Magic, I think it is important to ﬁrst be clear on what I mean when I say magic. The term magic has become some what of a muddied term, there are diﬀerent types of magic including:

10The purely ﬁcAonal like the LOTR & Harry PoPer.

Excalibur (1981) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) 11The mythical like Excalibar & Holy Grail.

siegfried and roy, david blaine, david copperfield 12 And Illusions from the Vegas shows with David Copperﬁeld to the street magic of David Blaine and alike. But the magic I’m going to to talk about is a diﬀerent type of magic altogether.

Pythagoras (570 BC - 495 BC) Image: wikipedia 13 Lets start by going into some history… Pythagoras a Greek philosopher, mathemaAcian and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism.

“There are no miracles: there is only ignorance.” 14He is quoted as saying... ...which could be interpreted as there is no magic, only ignorance.

Paracelsus (1493-1541) Image: Wikipedia 15 Moving forwards in Ame... Paracelsus was a Swiss polymath (simply put: a person who does a range of diﬀering things) “physician and surgeon, philosopher and theologist, metallurgist and alchemist, magician and scienAst, travelling medicine man and father of the science of pharmacology, of the early 16th Century.“ He explored and experimented in a lost of diﬀerent areas but also had an interesAng view on magic, which in the 16th century wasn’t an uncommon topic.

“magic meant the use of natural forces which were not yet completely understood.” 16 To Paracelsus...

Science Religion Magic 17 Looking back there are references to magic daAng back to between the 1st & 6th centuries BC. Here is a nice anecdote: “sorcery was taken ca. 1300 from Old French sorcerie, which is from Vulgar LaAn *sorAarius, from sors "fate", apparently meaning "one who inﬂuences fate”.” Whichever early global culture you look at there was a cultural and societal balance or understanding between Magic, Religion and Science. Each had their mys<cal strengths and each were as baﬄing yet as unchallengable as the next.

Technology? Science Religion Magic 18 Despite there being no formal link between science and technology; Science being about theore<cal and abstract inves<ga<ons and explora<ons in to nature. And Technology about prac<cal applica<ons and devices for human use. However, when looking through the frame of Magic, Religion and Science, technology tends to reside closest to science.

Middle Ages Science Magic Technology Space Race Science Magic Technology Present Science Magic Technology 19 Way back when, technology was seen as magical, then over Ame as science became more recognised in the mainstream consciousness technology was seen as scienAﬁc advancements. We’re now seeing in more and more digital devices /products today is a shiF in understanding or percep<on from science to magic...

Image: ffffound.com 20 It would be hard to do any talk which touches on technology and magic without menAoning the Arthur C. Clark quote, which so concisely links the understanding of technology with the raAonal of it as being something magical: “Any suﬃciently advanced technology, is indisAnguishable from magic” What is key about this statement is that it is about understanding. A users understanding of technology an as a result their comprehension of it. While they may understand what it can do they dont necessarily need to comprehend how it works, as a result its ‘explained away’ as being something which is magical.

21 Automagical Is a good example of this. It is commonly used to describe complex things that happen without knowledge of the mechanics that make it happen…

Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone (2001) 22 For example, in the ﬁrst Harry PoPer ﬁlm he arrives at Hogwarts School of Magic and it is Ame to be assigned his ‘house’. In which a sorAng hat is placed on his head to decide his fate. The hat reads his mind to decide which house they should live in at the school. Taking into account his personality, interests, previous and current life and so on. It automagically gives a decisive decision without showing or explaining any of the factors which were involved. While we dont have a magical sorAng hat or arguably the need for it to decide where we would be best placed to live (although that might actually be quite helpful in our growing urbanised future). What we do have a host of things that do quite similar things for us:

23The iTunes genius playlist.Or Google’s “Sort by Magic” opAon in its RSS reader.

Devices apps services 24 From now on I’m going to consolidate all manner of magical technology be it: a product, a service, an app, a device or gadget, all under the same label -‐ Magitek, for simplicity when talking about magical technology. What I’ve no<ced and come to realise about the rela<onship between magic and technology is that Magitek generally falls into 3 main categories.

Explicitly magical 25 The Explicitly magical. Are devices or services which claim to be magical and for the most part they deliver on their magical promise.

Images: ffffound.com 26Unlike the x-‐ray glasses of my childhood, or the Windows installer ‘wizard’.

27Apple however is quite predominant in the area of calling products magic and delivering on it:Like the Magic mouse or the the Magic Trackpad.

+ Magic Mouse MagicPrefs 28 Which can be further enhanced with an app called MagicPrefs which expands the funcAonality of these magic devices, giving you double magic!

HTC MAgic ANgry birds magic (On nokia) 29 Other technology producers are geJng in on the explicit magic area, such as the mobile phone HTC Magic. Angry Birds Magic -‐ NFC

Implicitly magical 30 Then there is the Implicitly magical. Which are devices that don’t explicitly call themselves or claim to be magical, but do feel magical or could be perceived as magical devices.

Image: ffffound.com 31 For me an obvious one is mobile phones. These are mysAcal liPle boxes of magic, which year on year seem to grow in what they can do. Its actually hard to call them mobile phones now when they can do so much more then just make phone calls. How long will it be before Apple rename the iPhone to something more ﬁJng (or will they keep on calling it a phone so as not to confuse mainstream consumers?).

> Then Now Chris heathcote - Urbicomp & the new new media 32 In a recent talk by Chris Heathcote he shared a great list of ‘then and now’ funcAons mobile phones can perform. Fig1. From Then / Fig. 2 To Now

> Then Now 33 Another example of this is the Nintendo Wii controller, in years past when playing an early version of Super Mario we always physically leant over when trying to get Mario to jump a large gap. Now you can really help the game characters move with physical interacAon, moving your arms and not just your thumbs. Makes me wonder what the modern equivalent of playsta<on thumb will be…

Unrecognised as magical 34 And ﬁnally there is the Unrecognised as magical. Theses are the things which we don’t give a second thought to as we use them. But things in this category perform great or at the very least amazing feats. Much like talking to another person in another country anywhere else in the world, on a mobile, instantaneously. We take this simple act for granted on a daily basis, yet when you think about it it is prePy amazing.

35 Just like every Christmas through the power of Skype, opening a magical portal to family members across the country or globe. For example my family here in England share a few hours on Christmas day with extended family in the Philippines opening presents, sharing stories, seeing faces and new members of the clan. Enhanced by the fact that at least on one side there is a huge plasma screen, opening up the portal doors to another <me and place even wider.

‘Winning cat’ from ffffound.com 36And a much more recent advancement is the ablity to use Wi-‐ﬁ on a moving vehicle. Having a laptop with no visible wire, whilst on a fast moving train, traveling to another part of the country and being able to surf for cute lol-‐kiNen pictures from Japan!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tERhJsmWwKo 37Beyond these magical categories what in essence are the secret (magical) ingredients?What qualiAes does Magitek require to shape the technology to be perceived as magical?

38 Naoto Fukasawa the former of head of IDEO Tokyo but probably bePer known for his design work on Muji products where he was on their advisory board... Has a a nice principle which I feel applies to Magitek...

design dissolving in behavior - Naoto Fukasawa 39 He talks about his design principal ‘Design dissolving in behaviour’, which I parAcularly like the concept of as he goes on to describe it as an object without thought

40 Take games consoles, From the early Ataris through to the Super nintendo to the Wii and now with Xbox Kinetc the interacAons of controlling a game are ever dissolving into the behaviour and acAons of playing a game. Surely this means they are becoming more magical?

“People shouldn’t really have to think about an object when they are using it. Not having to think about it makes the relationship between a person and an object run more smoothly.” - Naoto Fukasawa 41 The more I think about what makes technology magical the more I think it has lot to do with not having to think about how to use it. Or a further extension of this is not needing to know how it does what it does.

What are the principles of Magitek? 42 What are the rules, the common elements, the guiding principals of magitek?

1. It seduces through mystique & power 43 It is desirable and alluring, it aPracts you and makes you want to explore it (pic shows 3D TV)

2. It creates wonderment Image: Helen Papagiannis — The Amazing Cinemagician 44 Helen Papagiannis’s talk ﬁrst introduced me to the word wonderment and her work (pictured) creates that Magitek experience. Wonderment is a key principal of Magitek, once someone has been drawn in and seduced, wonderment is the reward for their inves<ga<on. She said: “When cinema was ﬁrst new it was driven by spectacle and wonderment at the technology, it was a ‘cinema of aPracAons’. With the technology being the source of fascinaAon rather than the stories presented.”

3. It can be used without thought 45This principal comes directly from Mr. Fukasawa.Have you ever seen a toddler playing with and iPhone or iPad?This principal is about ins<nct, intui<on and eﬀortlessness.

4. It hides the complexities of its mechanics Image: Timo Arnall @ nearfield.org 46 Its not important how it works, we just need it to work and the less we have to think about it, the more magical it could be. This image is visualising the RFID that surrounds an Oyster card (a card for the pre-‐payment to access the London Underground).

5. It goes beyond obvious needs & expectations flickr.com/photos/russelldavies 47 This principal is is much more than Magitek being just a novelty... having the ability to surprise and delight more than once. These images are of a candy / sweet holder which has a slide show projector in -‐ a great novelty, but once the sugary snack is gone the novelty fades. While this principal is not necessarily essen<al, for me this should be a mandatory principle for all Magitek.

6. It leads into something deeper... 48 Now the last principle is one of the most important ones, because even the most amazing thing in the world can’t sustain that engagement ‘high’ without changing over Ame.

49Magitek is about delight, wonderment and a joyful mysteriousness… But how can it go deeper towards something like love and have a stronger relaAonship with us?This is where we get into emo<onal design.

Emotional Design By Donald Norman 50 There is a lot of overlap with emoAonal design, in fact the last two principles of Magitek where ‘borrowed’ from this list in Dr. Norman’s book.

Emotional Design 51 This is a vast topic and interests of keeping (roughly) to Ame for this presentaAon I’m going to only lightly touch on it. It is an area I have spent a great deal of Ame researching and thinking about, so if you want to chat about it over a drink later come and ﬁnd me.

Emotions Emotions towards from Magitek Magitek 52 What I will say, is that from a suﬃciently high level there are two direc<ons we can look at emo<ons from: Our emoAons towards objects in this case Magitek. And emoAons that can come from Magitek.

Emotions Emotions towards from Magitek Magitek 53 This side of it is a well documented are of design, what interests me most about emoAonal design is when we consider it in human terms, like the interpersonal relaAonship between us and objects, and the diﬀerent ways we love people -‐ how this can be applied to digital and connected things.

54 While researching this topic I came across the term Objectphiles, these are people who have a deep inAmate (not always sexual) relaAonship with inanimate objects.

Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer Sandy K 55First up is a lady who fell in love with the Berlin wall and married it in June of ’79 taking ‘his’ name.Second is Sandy K whos in love with the Twin towers.Fascina<ng, but not quite what was looking for…

56Objectphiles aside, I ﬁnd it interesAng to consider our relaAonship with the object in human terms. Which leads me to Anthropomorphism.

“The attribution of humanmotivations, beliefs and feelingsto animals and inanimate things.The more behaviour somethingexhibits, the more we are apt todo this” 57

“we have these things in our pockets that cry, and we have to pick them up and soothe them back to sleep, and then we have to feed them every night by plugging them into the wall, right? And at no other time in history have we had these really strange non human devices that we take care of as if they are real.” - Amber Case, Cyborg Anthropology 58 Amber Case (of Cyborg Anthropology) does a good job of arAculaAng our relaAonship with mobile phones in human and emoAonal terms here.

o2: Tarifmonsters by Joshua Ben Longo 59 O2 did an interesAng ad campaign in Germany called Tarifmonster, which did a nice job of bringing this to life...

Emotions Emotions towards from Magitek Magitek 60 Which brings me on to the other direcAon, emo<ons that can come from Magitek

61 Thinking ahead to the near future, what about when we embrue technology with personali<es and emo<ons? Something which I have been thinking and talking a lot about over the last few years and had numerous conversaAons with Ben Bashford about. He did a great arAculaAon of what this could mean and coined this (EmoAComp) very ﬁJng term. Amongst other things he talks about the potenAal dangers we face by creaAng objects with personality, as we already have enough aPenAon grabbing media around us.

Possible system personas: - The frugal cash machine - The angry drinks vending machine - The slothful laptop - The timid vibrator - The overexcited mobile phone 62 The idea of a systems persona is an intriguing one... Imagine a frugal cashpoint who want to help you keep your money rather then spend it... You: I would like £40 pounds Cashpoint: No, I think I’ll only give you £20, you need to save more for the end of the month You: WTF? EmoAcomp aside, we are already having some very real experiences around our relaAonship with technology, how we perceive and interact with technology and our emoAons that grow and develop towards it.

Emotions, Love & Relationships 63 Our bond and relaAonships with technology is important, for the near future when technology has its own personality and communicates with us and expresses its own feelings. To the way our relaAonships are and our aPachments to technology around today. Emo<onal design is vitally important for when this wonderful and magical technology goes wrong...

‘Tweety’ - Eats, get’s exited and pukes 64This is my cat, when she eats and then gets over exited she throws up. But its easily forgiven because of the emoAonal relaAonship with her.

Can we have a similar relationship to something technological? 65 How about forgiving a washing machine because it leaks? Or an iPhone because it drops a call?

When technology goes wrong 66 The stronger our emoAonal connecAon, the easier it will be for us to for give technologys liPle indiscreAons and its bigger failures.

67 We are already exposed to numerous technological failures in our daily lives

Image: Sami Niemelä flickr.com/photos/sami 68 InformaAon boards at transport hubs.

69 A menu on the exterior of a restaurant

Image: Timo Arnall flickr.com/photos/timo 70 Lack of connecAvity.

72 Its not always just the soKware that can go wrong.

73 A liK is the last place you want to see a blue screen of death.

The Unhappy Path 74 Welcome to The ‘unhappy path’, as you are all probably familiar with, this is the term used to describe the failure routes when designing experiences.

3 Common types of error: - User errors - Connection / No data errors - Technical bugs / errors 75 Speak to most developers and they will tell you that there are 3 common types of failures that can occur: An error on the users part. And error in the infrastructure leading to no data or connecAon. And a technical error or bug.

How do you get off the unhappy path? 76Thinking like a user for a moment...How do you get oﬀ the unhappy path?

77 This is were we can learn from an amazing 80s cartoon.

Ulysses 31 78 There is an episode of Ulysses 31 called the eternal punishment. Ulysses encounters Sisyphus, a king condemned to ﬁll a crater with boulders for all eternity. Ulysses comes to the planet and ﬁnds out that the planet is reconsAtuAng the metal boulders and then rolling them back to him. There is no end to the boulders coming down the hill to him, he is in an eternal cycle, hence the name ‘The Eternal Punishment’.

Diagnosis & Misdiagnosis 79 Before you can get oﬀ the unhappy path, you need to know where your are on it, what is wrong. The most common problem with designing a help system is the accurate diagnosis of the problem, what part of the system has gone wrong, how can we overcome this problem? If you get this wrong you can fall in to an eternal cycle trying to repair a part of the system which may not be at fault.

Emotions affecting our ability to rationally solve problems 80 And this is where we see our emoAons coming back into play. As we aPempt to repair or overcome a failure we can become frustrated, angry and even have rage towards the failed piece of technology. All of which hinder our ability to approach the problem raAonally and ulAmately can prevent us from ﬁxing the problem. This is something there has been a lot of research into, a lot of papers wriPen and too much to summarise in this short space of Ame.

Magiteks Achilles’ heel 81 Magiteks greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, which is: our understanding of it. Its magical because we don’t know how it does what it does, but this also means we have liPle hope of know what is wrong with it when it fails.

82 Sami Niemelä from Nordkapp who does a lot of service design in the urban environment amongst other things, has coined the term BrokenComp. In which he talks about the potenAal problems with urban compuAng and the potenAal broken future ahead of us...

New opportunities for problems: - (Digital) Eco-systems - Ubiquitous computing & services - Urban computing & services - Magitek 83 Its not just urban compuAng we need to be aware of, there are a raK of new areas where problems can occur... You have downloaded a track in iTunes, transferred it to your iPod, but when you go to play it, it wont play -‐ is the problem with the original download, the transfer, the DRM of the track on the iPod, the iPods hard wear, or the iPods soKware, the operaAng system or the iTunes app? How badly could these fail and how will we know how to ﬁx it?

84 Seamlessness is something the Ubicomp has been looking into for someAme now...

‘Beautiful Seams’ - Mark Weiser 85 Mark Weiser spoke about the concept of not just designing invisible systems, but systems with beauAful seams.

“Designing for seamlessness or seamfulness does not inevitably mean that a technology is always visible or always invisible. Instead one should focus on making a technology visible when necessary and then to disappear when not needed anymore” - Oskar Wenneling, Seamful Design – The Other Way Around 86 We dont always need or want seams but we do need them to be visible when appropriate, like when its breaking...

Kano model Excitement Very satis ed Excitement needs Delighted delight when present but no dissatisfaction when not Performance Performance needs yield a proportional satisfaction for an investment in execution quality Executed Executed very poorly or not well at all Basic Satisfying basic needs merely minimises dissatisfaction. Absence or poor execution leads to greater dissatisfaction. Very dissatis ed Disgusted Image: Jason Mesut 87 To begin to wrap this talk I’ll bring in the KANO chart, there are 2 interesAng things about the KANO chart...

Kano model Very satis ed Delighted Excitement Performance Executed Executed very poorly or not well at all Basic Very dissatis ed Disgusted Image: Jason Mesut 88 1. OverAme what starts out as excitement evolves into general performance needs and then into basic hygiene... Whats magical today is taken for granted tomorrow. And the second is to do with the verAcal axis, moving from delight to disgust...

Image: Tom Bland 89 And 2, well its like: One moment it’s like being a child at Disney world, you get to meet your hero Micky Mouse, its a dream come true, you receive a hug and everything is just magical. (Thanks to Tom Bland for illustraGng these for me tombland.net)

Image: Tom Bland 90 And the next moment, your get an ice cream and while eaAng it you pass an alley between the building and see Micky with his head oﬀ and a man inside smoking a cigarePe... How quickly we can move from delight to disgust... (Thanks to Tom Bland for illustraGng these for me tombland.net)

We should be designing things which: - Delight, engage but most of all deserve attention- Can be liked, but should be loved- Gracefully degrade, and have beautiful seams- Are appropriate, polite and earn our forgiveness 91So to ﬁnish with a collecAon of principle to approach designing Magitek things by:-‐ Delight, engage but most of all deserve aNen<on.-‐ Can be liked, but should be loved.-‐ Gracefully degrade, and have beau<ful seams.-‐ Are appropriate, polite and earn our forgiveness.

THANK YOU… www.olishaw.com / @olishaw 92Thank you!By the way, who remembers the Nintendo PowerGlove, as featured in the ﬁlm Wizard? I’ll leave you with the advert for it...hPp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93iDhnBcMGoOlishaw.com@olishaw

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