Karen Cham

1. Designing Change;
NeuroMedia As A Metanoic Practice
Professor Karen Cham FRSA
Academic Lead Connected Futures
University of Brighton
UK

2. Design as Constructed Value
As a creative artist and design practitioner, I have
only ever been concerned with theory as a
reflection on practice.
A British Art School design education, the same
one that made Jonny Ive what he is today,
teaches semiotics as a way to create meaning,
not only to deconstruct and apprehend it.
Successful industrial design practice is thus the
creation of a productised experience of meaning;
one that is inhabited and made real in circulation
as cultural capital; Jonny in particular seems to
have done rather well out of this.

3. Transmitting Constructed Value
A designerly commitment to truth to materials also
means I have come to understand any medium as a
technology, and a commitment to the relationship
between form and content causes me a concurrent
fascination with the mode of transmission as part of this
materiality.
My research has thus always been into the process
whereby constructed images, such as those seen in
product, advertising and film, become real; the
relationship between ‘the sign and the signified, the
simulation and the social, the model and the real’ (Cham
2011); or the affordances of the designed image.
I’m a semiotician.

4. Deconstructing & Re-constucting Value
As I lived and worked through the transition from electronic to digital media, my research evolved to
focus upon closing the semantic gap between users and machines via novel methods in human
factors. I’m now therefore a computational semiotician.
Stemming from Lakoff and Johnsons master work, and using post-structuralism, semiotics and
complexity theory, in 2006 I designed a computational ontology to teach a machine to construct or
deconstruct the metaphor of Italianicity using Roland Barthes deconstruction of the Panzani Pasta ad.

5. Visual Language - As a Virus ?
In 2009 I started using
Brain Computer
Interfaces (BCI) to
generate insights into
end user responses to
content.

6. Co-Evolving Transmission EcoSystem Values
I have since combined Deleuzes notion of
culture with the algorithmic approach
manifest in parametric design to develop a
set frameworks, methodologies and tools
that I call ‘rhizometric design’; for designing
meaningful, quantifiable and algorithmic user
experiences and desirable behavioural
outcomes.

7. Rhizometric Value Architecture

8. Value As a Synchronic Instance of Ideology

9. Locating & Quantifying Value
Using eye tracking, facial recognition,
galvanic skin response, heart rate
monitoring and EEG to measure pre-
cognitive engagement
I can quantify affordances, locate and
isolate values and nudge transformation,
individually and collectively

10. Using Value to Nudge Behaviour
I have delivered quantifiable branded multi-
platform user experiences; isolated libraries of
branded product semantics for mass customisation
tools and lead effective digital transformation of
cultural legacies by building and migrating value
chains.
I have re-appropriated brand value mechanics as an
intervention in addiction and designed and built
systems that monitor mental health or engineer
critical thinking.

11. Value is Pre-Cognitive
I have worked on measuring
emotional engagement in
gameplay to discover a
correlation between peaks and
troughs in attention span and
a games Metacritic score

12. Telepathic User Interface (TUI)
Through reverse engineering, I have explored the agency of perceptual,
semantic and aesthetic cues for navigating content using BCI Interfaces;
that is, interaction with digital content by thought

13. NeuroMedia (Cham, 2011)
In 2011, I published my proposal for defining
NeuroMedia; designed media content that
has been either informed by, created with or
developed for, any type of Brain Computer
Interface (BCI).
NeuroMedia content thus incorporates,
either in its production, distribution or
consumption, biometric data sourced from
the subconscious mind of users.

14. Data Driven Cognitive UX ; Metanoic Design ?
I am now developing Cognitive UX design patterns
to assist in isolating ‘nudge mechanics', 'neuro-
navigation' & 'neuro-transformation' paradigms to
guide valuable & ethical singularities in IoT,
robotics & immersive environments
We will require such as 5G accelerates the need
for personalised, locative, value driven DevOps
systems in ubiquitous and pervasive
environments.

15. Professor Karen Cham FRSA
Academic Lead
Connected Futures
University of Brighton
UK
k.cham@brighton.ac.uk