19. Design Problems
• How can we make engage
audience members and give
them appropriate background?
• How do we create an
immersive experience for a
diverse audience?
20. • How can technology customize
performance?
• What interactions are appropriate for
diverse groups?
• How can technology be incorporated
with minimal distraction?
Hello everyone
My name’s a Alina Goldman, and I’m a first year PhD student in the iSchool
[I want you to start off by thinking of your experience with school assemblies]
If you’re not familiar with them, or your school didn’t have them
Bascially what happens is that everyone from in your class stops working on classwork
And files into the auditorium
The assemblies themselves had different purposes…
Some were cultural, such as music appreciation, while others were educational
Overall, the experience they hoped to achieved must have been enough to stop 2 periods of class.
Now, this is what actually happened during assemblies
Rather than being an effective effective, students used the assemblies to talk or do homework for a class
In fact, assemblies were so bad…
Assemblies were so bad, that you would have kids like this that would rather watch grass grow than go to one
Now it sounds like a waste of time, but this kind of experience is common.
This is an example of poor experience design …because the presentation doesent immersive users, the content of the presentations gets lost
Bachelors degree in voice performance
Sang a lot of opera
Came umd to study business because music was a business
And ended up studying Consumer psychology, the experience consumer behavior
And then I came here, got my masters in HCI because I actually wanted to make things
Looking back, I realize I’d been studying difference ways of creating, influencing and understanding experience
Creating auditory experience through music
Creating visual experience though interaction design
And between those, understanding how people consume experience from a cultural perspective and how the brain processes experiences
Let me start by talking about a book that has profoundly influenced my way of thinking about experience
The book is called FLOW, and it introduces an optimal state of experience
By a man named mi-Kai-Chi Ze mi chai
{here it is if you’re ever wondered how to pronounce it)
If you don’t want to read the book, he’s got a great ted talk I would recommend
As a psychologist, Mr. Cheek-sent-mi-ha started interviewing world-renowned researchers, athletes, musicians about their work
All described a similar experience optimal moments of extreme focus on a task, where their goals are clear, they know exactly what to do next, they feel that their sense of time has been altered, and they feel disengagement from their body
Now the reason is occurs is that our brain only has a certain set of cognitive resources to devote to a task, and some of those resources are tasked with regulatory functions, like keeping track of time, but when Flow happens, all of the cognitive resources go toward the task, so the brain temporarily stops regulating the other functions, which is why people describe this feeling of detachment
fascinated by artists who would essentially get lost in their work.
Psychologists have found that one's mind can attend to only a certain amount of information at a time. According to Csikszentmihalyi's 1956 study, that number is about 126 bits of information per second. That may seem like a large number (and a lot of information), but simple daily tasks take quite a lot of information. Just having a conversation takes about 40 bits of information per second; that's 1/3 of one's capacity.[6] That is why when having a conversation one cannot focus as much attention on other things.
Now the way cheek-se-mi-hai explains this state is that is is caused when a task is challenging and the person has a skill level
If a task is easy and skill is high, people are often bored
And if the task is difficult but skill level is high, people are anxious
as I give this talk, I want you to think about how flow experience could benefit your own work.
What are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to get people to pay attention to? How are you trying to change their behavior?
, you consider different ways of designing a fuller or richer experience
How can my work become immersive?
Some experiences are more amenable to immersive experience - Kent’s video game lab, but I think every experience that’s designed should be immersive, or contribute to immersion by getting out of the way
- How do you create a design that encourages flow?
[video game vs. phone]
The great thing about “being in the zone” is that it not only makes tasks pleasure, but it yields optimal performance, and increases confidence self-esteem and happiness
Even when not specificially designing for an immersive experience, can be designing an experience that complements immersion
[video game vs. phone]
Why Performance?
Easy example – of immersive experiences
can be amazing or terrible (depends on actors and technology)
but there’s a problem of passive/active – audience is passive
Performance can give you a window into unfamilar experiences (e.g love/) that you wouldn’t otherwise have
Relatability (interested)
Background knowledge (understand)
Performance technology often explores new ways of presenting information interaction
however audience not
unique performance problem of having to give technology to a large group of people
alternatively, online performance create a completely new space to work with
more than entertainment
Immersion lose your sense of self
goal of performance is to do that
relatablility/background knowledge
distraction
background knowledge
Some questions have come out of this:
Relatable – make them interested
Background – have enough of a foundation to understand
How to make it cheap enough for a
as I give this talk, I want you to think about how flow experience could benefit your own work.
What are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to get people to pay attention to? How are you trying to change their behavior?
, you consider different ways of designing a fuller or richer experience
How can my work become immersive?
Some experiences are more amenable to immersive experience - Kent’s video game lab, but I think every experience that’s designed should be immersive, or contribute to immersion by getting out of the way
- How do you create a design that encourages flow?
[video game vs. phone]
Immersive designers often contextual work in a time based narrative and story space to achieve flow
Rather than creating a use case, which focus on low level steps, designers focus on synthesizing an emotional story that accompanies the interaction
Distinction from gamification, which is superficial
, you consider different ways of designing a fuller or richer experience
**more than just a user profile
Different design approaches have been used that facilitate narrative
Storycubes
Tactile tool for thinking through design by exploring relationships and narratives- build up multipe narratives with cube
Dynamic storyboarding
Cutting out shapes and making them into a story
Act out scenes
In addition to creating meaningful story, I’ve observed 2 design trends that I believe can improve experience design
The first designing multi-sensory or synesthetic experiences
As I mentioned earlier, our brains process limited amounts of information, so when there is too much information, we’re unable to process/understand all of it
However, each of our different senses processes information differently, so through different sensory channels we can actually process more information than through one channel
Now what we think of as our basic senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste) are credited to Aristotle. In fact, we have approximately 20 different senses, that include pressure, pain and thermoception (hot/cold)
----
So by designing technology that facilitates multisensory information, we could create an experience that allows people to process more information with less effort and enjoy a richer experience
For instance, in a show highlighting seasonal changes, audience members could touch a themoregulated plate that changed from cold to hot depending on the season.
Similarly, smell could be used as an integral part of performance
Oscar mayer bacon app
Have the cellphone with app
Secondly, facilitating active participation
Traditional performance art either treats audience members as a passive users or rincorporates audience participation in limited quantities
Call and response in baptist church
Boolean theater where the audience often doesn’t know that they’re an audience
And improv comedy
Whose line is it anyway is particularly known example of improv that uses audience feedback to construct an experience
But could this experience become even more meaningful with technology? one project I worked on for Jon Frohleigh’s class was to trigger a sound that performers made as they walked around the stage that the audience could manipulate through their cellphones. The idea was that performers would react to these sounds as input – if the audience made their footsteps sound like godzilla, then they would create a scene around that. Rather than stopping the experience for audience feedback, audience members could give feedback dynamically
You could do a similar thing with something like a murder mystery play
Pick audience members and random to vote on elements of the play that would slightly alter the story
A great example of multisensory desing in the MoMA rain room that allowed museum goers to walk through a downpour without actually getting wet – by using motion sensor cameras to track movement of and turn water on and off
In this installation, there is specific narrative
But the installation adds sensory dimensions that makes it realistic, ties into past experience, and audience participation that makes it playful and unique
Even more engaging is Sleep no more, a play loosely based on Macbeth. Instead of a stage, a 5 story warehouse was converted in a set resembling a 1930’s style hotel. Rather than watching the show from afar, audience members put on masks and follow performers throughout the building or explore the space itself. The experience is a pinnacle of narrative, multisensory, and active participation, and people often go multiple times because every experience in unique.
Now technology wasn’t a central figure in show until until the opera of the future group at media lab partnered with this play to try to understand how the experience might be extended for audience members at home,
… which introduced a new question of how audience members might interact with performance when they’re not physically present.
Considering audience-mediated performance
think of HCI as sort of an interactive performance between man and machine
going back to design principles - persuasive design -customization getting feedback etc. Fogg can improve experience
how can we use wearables to improve performance experience?
Online education narrative
In fact, my thesis was on trying to make the experience more enjoyable
