Design for This Century Critical Design Proposal Jiyeon Kang
The massive gathering and analyzing of data in real time is allowing us to mark the humanity biggest challenges. In my design manifesto, I wrote about some design issues which are derived from the impact of Big Data, Data Visualization, Internet of Things and Biochip and my statement of belief that the data should be used for human in a way of keeping our humanity. From my design manifesto, I intuitively raised some new questions. “How data can be used for enhancing the humanity?” “What if everyone crowd sourced personal information?” “If algorithms know all, how much should humans help be needed?” “which aspects of our current society are degrading the humanity?” So, for my further thoughts with critical thinking, I’ve thought about the specific way to enlarge this discussion and visualize the concept while introducing some critical issues of the modern society that are produced by evolving technologies. Thus, I would suggest a design proposals as a direction to improve our humanity related to my previous design topics, Data Visualization and Internet of Things.
From Current Issues of the Society to Design Proposal Problem 1 - Fragmented Relationships Firstly, In our modern society, the way of communication has been extremely changed as the cyber world evolves and most businesses seek efficiency. Although the development of Information Technology benefits our lives and expands the realm of communication, but also these changes cause dysfunction to our modern life, degrading our humanity. In the digital age, relationship have become fragmented. In online communication, we communicate with other people without any physical contact as well as we no longer require actual spaces to keep in touch with people. This induces social indifference by reducing face to face relationships. I think this matter is in a similar vein to a cultural theorist, Paul Virilio’s idea of “Picnolepsy,” which is a kind of amnesia – the absence of attitude and temporary cessation as a result of fragmented imageries caused by our high-speed society. Moreover, those cyber and virtual space affect negatively to young children as they grows in this age of media technology. There is an example that shows how evolving technology raises monsters in society. Written by Ray Bradbury and published in 1950, “The Veldt” is a science fiction story about how the life that made out of technology have negative impact on child development when they grow up. The Hadley family lives in an automated house called "The Happylife Home," equipped with machines that do everything for them from cooking meals, to clothing them, to rocking them to sleep. The two children, Peter and Wendy become fascinated with the "nursery," a virtual reality room that connects with the children telepathically to reproduce any place they imagine.
However, these cause serious problems such as their children ignoring their existence. George and Lydia realize that something has gone wrong, and ask a psychologist for advice, but it is too late to escape from the tragic death. When the children grow up, they end up killing their parents because the they don’t need parents anymore. Also, this situation shows that the children have already imagined a way of killing their parents by playing simulation games. This is not the fictional story anymore, the automated home technologies in the story reminded me of “Songdo Smart City” in my country, South Korea.
Home automation system of a smart home in Songdo Also, Evolving simulated reality or virtual reality are enabling to bring these kinds of science fiction stories to reality. In brain-computer interface simulations, each participant enters from outside, directly connecting their brain to the simulation computer. The computer transmits sensory data to the participant, reads and responds to their desires and actions in return; in this manner they interact with the simulated world and receive feedback from it. The participant may be induced by any number of possible means to forget, temporarily or otherwise, that they are inside a virtual realm. While inside the simulation, the participant's consciousness is represented by an avatar, which can look very different from the participant's actual appearance. It is true that there are many benefits from the evolving IoT technologies, but the story of “Veldt” predicts how technology can also cause abnormal mental states, degrading humanity especially for young children who are growing up. This ethical problems are actually occurring in our current society as well. I have also read articles about parents being killed by their own children. The BBC News reported that in 2007, Daniel, a ten-year-old boy, killed his mother because his parent didn’t allow him to play the video game Halo 3. Mark, who is Daniel’s father, took the video game away from him, and put a lockbox. One month later, Daniel opened the lockbox, and took a game with his father’s 9mm handgun. Before game shot his parent, he said, “Would you guys close your eyes? I have a surprise for you.” While there are many benefits of modern technology, violent content on the internet is easily seen by children which interrupt logical thinking. Also, children have difficulty distinguishing between right and wrong. Their parents should better manage their children and keep them under control such as making the rules and allowing them to follow it in order to prevent disaster. Regarding these facts that technology can easily mislead young children and degrade the
humanity in their early developmental ages. This shows the IoT technologies should be utilized for enhancing humanity, not degrading the human nature. In our current society, designer’s role is extending and designers should consider the context as well. For creating well-designed contexts, we need to consider human behavior patterns, cultural aspects. So, we designers should think about the way of designing the user experience that creates a harmonious living system and meaningful relationships between family members by considering a new type of families and new forms of lifestyles in our current society.
Proposal 1 - IoT Home Environment that Creates Meaningful Interaction In contrast to the extremely dreadful case of automated home in “The Veldt,” I have imagined an automated home environment managed by internet of things that creates peaceful coexistence and meaningful interaction between parents and their children. It is no doubt that an automated home environment and everyday data already enabling us to provide a healthier life for our children. Based on the fact that connected things can track data in real time in everyday life, I imagined the automated water intake calculation system that is connected to a button on the fridge. To establish children’s drinking water habit, I designed this system that a child push the button to document the time whenever they drink water. Ultimately, their parents can monitor and check their children’s water consumption per day and their habit formation progress in real time. The most important part is to give children a compliment and a reward when they accomplish the amount of water intake that they promised with their parents in advance. This process will concrete a trust between parents and their kids. Because dual income households are rising today, this scenario is necessary for the new type of family and my design proposal is promising future of lifestyle in the age of Internet of Things. Even if their parents don’t usually not stay at home due to go to work, they can check their children’s water intake condition or other dietary habits at a glance after they come back home. This simple UX system allow children to follow the process easily with a joyful experience.
Demo Video: ​ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7FwAEJsRaQ So, in this sketch that a child and her parent push the button together, shows a possibility to create meaningful interaction between parents and children through the user experience of the hyper-connected smart home appliances. Also, to create a playful experience for children and to give them a reward during the habit formation process, I created a toy machine that is also connected to the push button. By using this toy machine that is targeted young children, kids can easily interact
with the automated home environment while they play with the toy machine. I think this can be a future smart toy for Kids that is connected to Internet of Things system at home. User Scenario
Demo Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHJUcU58Iow Problem 2 - Impersonal Communication Secondly, because of the busy mechanism of our acceleration society, impersonal communication occurs everyday when we pay for the product at the register or we meet someone in business situation. The increase of these kinds of interpersonal relationships produce a certain senses of emptiness in individuals’ mind and make people seek more of interpersonal relationships like romantic love to be recognized one’s individuality in one to one relationship. For example, in fast food restaurants or large convenience store like CVS, cashiers at the counter routinely do a same behavior repeatedly to customers without having personalities as individuals. In these kinds of circumstances, we are totally indifferent to other people because people today want to conduct their business without unnecessary relationships. I think those increasing social situation and social indifference dehumanize people. Even, these kinds of communication evoke the sense of being a cyborg. The clerks seem it will be better to be replaced. As technologies evolve, mechanism and machineries can replace human’s role and individuals are becoming interchangeable and can be substituted. We must be aware of every person is a unique individual with individualized requirements based on factors that include personal tastes and inclinations, natural shapes and sizes, blood types, metabolic rates and genetic background.
CVS Pharmacy, New York
Proposal 2 - Possible Future of Adaptive Design or System Along with the growing fad of Human Computer Interaction, we are slowly beginning to see an increase in the usage of adaptive systems in the field of technology. It can be described as an interactive system that changes or adapts to a changing environment, in this case that environment entails a user’s preferences and behavior. According to many research projects, by 2018, user interfaces will evolve to understand more about user intent. Recently, it is possible to predict people’s intentions, tastes and behaviors based on the gathered data from each individual’s everyday life. So, human computer interaction system based on user’s bio signal is exponentially increasing to enhance user’s cognitive improvement and provide services that are suited to each circumstances and contexts. Hence, many researchers are developing the user oriented interface that provides reactive services to users by utilizing computer vision, facial expression tracking, voice signal processing and artificial intelligence technology. However, It is yet to difficult to provide perfect adaptive web environment because a most of current interface system perform fixed tasks in each given condition and users usually adapt themselves to the interface system environment. Accordingly, recent researchers are trying to grasp intention of users and provide the adaptive services to them in the field of human computer interaction or human machine interaction. Adaptive systems take computing to a new level as the computer begins to make guesses about what you need and changes itself accordingly. The technology is already in place in Internet, smartphones, and other devices. The future is going to get even more dependent on adaptive systems. In fact, we will see a growing dependence on adaptive systems to enhance UX. GPS navigational systems, search suggestions in Google, touchscreen keypads that guesses the next word you may want to type, autocorrect changing a misspelled word or a word that is out of context in a sentence are all examples of adaptive system. Adaptive design is going to be very important in the near future within 10-15 years, not that it already isn’t. It integrates sophisticated and obvious features in an unobtrusive way, so that the end product or service has an easy-to-use user interface. The idea is to improve UX by making technology as unobtrusive as possible. Adaptive systems integrate behavior targeting or personalization which
means a websites and landing pages are specifically designed for a target audience and as they use it, changes are made so that it adapts to their segmented needs. In these senses, I want to suggest an adaptive user interface that is automatically react to people’s emotions, health conditions and preferences. Especially, It can be adaptive for the desktop start screen. Based on the information that is collected, the user interface can show us the possible prediction of our health condition and also can suggest lifestyle and activities by connecting the collected data each other. As a designer, I think the gathered data should be displayed in a more creative way. Thus, the data-mining process is also important to analyze and combine the data.
As I argued in advance, the user interface in the future need to be personalized and flexible in terms of displaying information. I imagine an adaptive desktop interface that is connected to lots of physical computing sensors so that it enables dynamic insertion, customization of content or suggesting content depending on what the user is using. This interface will also integrate several devices from everyday life with the help of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and enable smart communication amongst them. While the existing similar start screen interface such as Window 8 just shows the current condition of the computer, daily schedules or static data, my design proposal suggests a system that connects to each data in a more flexible way. So, it can suggest user to do certain activities depending on the integrated information such as the user’s health condition and the weather condition. Also, users can check the social media services at a glance in this collected dashboard. The user can then control one device with the help of another. The present and the future will depend heavily on adaptive systems and adaptive technologies which will help us to construct a world that is quite different from what it looks like today. Though the world will change in essence, it may not look very
different from what it does today. Adaptive design and adaptive system will continue to change our worlds subtly, unobtrusively but surely. To sum up, I would like to bring about an argument about “data for humanity” suggested by Frankfurt Big Data Lab. “We want to bring people from different disciplines and professions together, who share the motivation of using Data for the Common Good and for Human Wellbeing, in order to ensure that data serves humanity.” Bibliography
Bradbury, Ray, and Gary Kelley. The Veldt . Mankato, MN: Creative Education, 1987. "Data for Humanity." Frankfurt Big Data Lab. July 06, 2015. Accessed December 20, 2015. http://www.bigdata.unifrankfurt.de/dataforhumanity/. "Go #InsideInnovation at Cisco IoE Innovation Center Songdo." InsideInnovation at Cisco IoE Innovation. Accessed December 20, 2015. http://newsroom.cisco.com/videocontent?type=webcontent&articleId=1648454. Sobecki, Janusz. "Interface Model in Adaptive Webbased System." Internet Technologies, Applications and Societal Impact , 2002, 93104. doi:10.1007/9780387356167_8. Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. "What Is Impersonal Communication? Definition and Meaning." BusinessDictionary.com. Accessed December 20, 2015. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/impersonalcommunication.html#ixzz3udp5hULW.