Yellow Chair Stories a social design intervention by Anab Jain
A design intervention at the threshold of private/public and electronic/physical space
Project by Anab Jain Interaction Design, Royal College of Art, London www.anab.in Š 2005
Contents Prologue Wanted: “Neighbours” My ‘itunes’ neighbour Wanted: “A password...” Making connections Social ubiquity?
page 2 page 3 page 5 page 7 page 9 page 10
My service Advertising my service Yellow chair ‘users’ Access my drop box After 4 evenings... My observations
page 13 page 15 page 18 page 31 page 41 page 42
What if... The nomadic chair Local Wi-Fi delivery service Wi-Fi as Utility
page 44 page 45 page 48 page 55
Epilogue
page 59
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“Alright...so whats this yellow chair all about???� A curious passerby who uses my service
Prologue This book documents a ‘live’ service design experiment, which I conducted outside my house at 43 Sinclair Road between the 5th and 9th May 2005. It illustrates how a ‘grass roots’ design approach can re-invent spaces for conversations, at the threshold of the public and the private, the physical and the electronic. It also shows how the meaning of personal space and identity changes when geographical and virtual spaces merge.
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Wanted: Neighbours This project was inspired by feedback from earlier research investigating people’s sense of belonging. As part of this research, five participants were given a card with “Wanted:_____” written on it and asked to write what they ‘wanted’ for their neighbourhood. They were asked to display their card at a relevant site. One participant wanted “neighbours!”. Looking at this message I realised that after living in Sinclair Road for a year, I still did not know my own neighbours.
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My ‘itunes’ neighbour At this point, the only potential neighbour I knew was the “user” who often shared music with me through my open wireless internet connection and my iTunes program. I tried to initiate ‘iTunes conversations’ with this person through my shared playlists, but got no response, despite their being inside my electronic space.
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Wanted: A password... Another participant placed his card outside his neighbour’s house. It read “Wanted: the password for a 4Mbps wireless network”.
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Social Ubiquity? “As everything is our societies becomes mediatised by networks, by media, by communications in general, can we still speak of community? Or are we heading towards communities of absence?” Jean Baudrillard ‘Yellow Chair Stories’ explores how technology can become a tool, a medium and an interface to re-create ‘communities of presence’.
Making connections One participant had wanted neighbours, whilst another wanted the password for a wireless network. Meanwhile, I had an open, wireless network and did not know my neighbours. I was also trying to initiate ‘iTunes conversations’ with my electronic neighbour through my wireless network. What connections can be made between these desires?
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My service “My Wi-Fi network is open for neighbours and passers-by. Free access from the yellow chair.” By placing a sign with this message outside my flat, along with a yellow chair, I extended the boundaries of my home to encompass those of my wireless network.
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Advertising my service A small advertising campaign brought the project alive. I produced stickers for street furniture and sent neighbours in surrounding ats personal invitations to use my service.
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Yellow Chair ‘Users’ The sign attracted the attention of my neighbours and several passersby. Over the course of four evenings, I received interesting responses from those who used my service. The following pages present comments from the “yellow chair users”.
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“I don’t need to feel guilty about stealing your network anymore. “Its free and open!”
First ‘User’: Neighbour, Flat 1, 43 Sinclair Road
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“Living in the basement flat cuts me off completely from the rest of the people in the building... “Now I have a reason to sit outside my own house...”
Second ‘User’: Neighbour, Flat 3, 40 Sinclair Road
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“Its nice to sit in the fresh air and check my mails... “Sharing the same electronic space does not necessarily encourage faceto-face conversations...”
Third ‘User’: Neighbour, Flat 9, 41 Sinclair Road
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“What inspired me to sit here was that here somebody is trying to create a neighbourhood from a very bottomup approach... “By placing the chair outside, you are creating an interface between your house and your neighbour’s.”
Fourth ‘User’: A curious passerby
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“Why are you doing this? “Maybe you should put a cable instead of all this wireless stuff... “You know these waves, like radars in a ship, and even mobile phones...they can cause cancer...”
a passerby’s comments...
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“Is this your very public computer? Do you mind if I go through your stuff? “Even as I do this, I wonder if this is actually quite dangerous...for you to let other people enter your network? “You are making yourself vulnerable.”
Fifth ‘User’: Neighbour, Flat 7, 33 Sinclair Road
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still from the ďŹ lm
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Access my drop box As an addition to the service, people sitting on the chair could access the shared folder on my computer. Each day, new and enticing offers were advertised. These attracted more people. I began to curate the content on my shared folder. It almost became a daily broadcast for neighbours and passersby.
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“Just want to pick up some music on my way to work... “Maybe I could also put some offers in your drop box...”
Sixth ‘User’: Neighbour, Flat 2, 43 Sinclair Road
still from the ďŹ lm
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“Offering tea and coffee is brilliant... people would love that... “You could also have other offers: A free phone call or free parking space... “Wonder why people dont want to come out of their houses...personally I love to chat!”
Seventh ‘User’: Neighbour, Flat 8, 39 Sinclair Road
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still from the ďŹ lm
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“Recipe for the best chicken tikka masala seemed too tempting...I had to stop by... “How do you curate the content on your public folder everyday?”
a curious passerby
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“You could put an offer about us...we are very good at networking computers...if anyone in the neighbourhood might need a hand...”
“Alright...so whats this yellow chair all about???”
“Look...he is running away with my laptop!!!”
Two boys who are interested in putting up offers in my shared folder.
A neighbour’s friend who has come to visit him.
I scream while filming as he runs off with my laptop....!
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“This is so cool... an organic blog in the nieghbourhood...”
“This is very valuable information...”
‘Its a great idea...you can offer my parking space to people while I am at work...”
A passerby who comes back after his music recording at 12 in the night to use the service.
A passerby who reads the offer for 7th May 2005
Neighbour living at 42 Sinclair Road.
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After 4 evenings... 113 people looked at the sign with slight curiosity... 57 people asked me what I was doing... 26 people wanted to sit on the yellow chair, but had no time... 12 people sat on the yellow chair.
My observations Designing a service as an ongoing, live experience, without any presumptions about people’s behaviours and expectations, was a challenge. At the start of the experience I was frustrated and ready to give up. Many people in the neighbourhood and passers-by were cynical and unfriendly. I was jokingly told by one neighbour, that because of this activity, the real estate prices of the building would crash, as no one would want to live near such crazy neighbours. However, as people began to sit on the chair and engage in conversations, the situation began to change. Over the next few days I became identified as ‘the girl with the yellow chair’. People passing by would stop to ask how I was getting on and I began to enjoy the experience. Immediate feedback from people gave me the opportunity and flexibility to constantly improvise. The idea of placing ‘offers’ attracted more people and I realised how the design of a service can grow and develop in a short span of time. Importantly, I got to know my neighbours, and met some of the people who had been ‘stealing’ my network. The service enabled people in my own flat to meet each other for the first time. Both the sign and the chair defined a ‘real world blog space’ – a territory for conversation between neighbours. Some neighbours complained about bad parking, wrong disposal of rubbish, street noise and junk mail. People were also curious about the offers or the daily broadcasts and were keen to place their own offers in my shared folder. By designing this experience, I have actively questioned the idea of ‘open networks’ being largely virtual, often impersonal and dangerous if not secured with passwords.
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After a few days, I closed the service and put a password on my network. Excessive ‘misuse’ and heavy downloads had slowed down our network immensely. However, I still wanted visitors. So I have started advertising the password of my network in more ambiguous ways.
What if... If Wi-Fi were my medium, and the blurring of electronic and geographical spaces were my subject, what surprising possibilities that might emerge? This section sketches out future design scenarios ...
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The nomadic chair Could the entire street become my home? As I travel with my chair to the end of the street, accessing my network at different places along the way, how would I be invade other private, physical spaces? Would I be viewed as someone trying to grab other electronic spaces?
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Local Wi-Fi delivery service Since I could stretch the limits of my network to the physical boundaries of my neighbourhood, I could start delivering Wi-Fi as a service. Walking through physical and electronic spaces with my Wi-Fi delivery service, I could distribute ‘wireless stories’, whether they were bits of conversations or a few tunes. I would use my own wireless network to become a ‘neighbourhood messenger”. Would this allow me to snoop, eavesdrop, become a voyeur, even a companion for the lonely?
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Travelling Wi-Fi delivery service
Travelling Wi-Fi delivery service
Travelling Wi-Fi delivery service
Travelling Wi-Fi delivery service
On Sinclair Road, at a spot where all electronic and physical spaces merge, is the physical neighbourhood “Wi-Fi community space”.
In this neighbourhood “Wi-Fi community space�, exist shared folders and drop boxes for neighbours and passers-by.
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Wi-Fi as a utility What if Wi-Fi was a utility in every home like electricity? I imagine two scenarios for the not-so-distant-future, where this wireless technology errodes the physicality of the home.
In the ďŹ rst illustration, spaces of excessive use, misuse, and controlled use are indicated through corrosion of the walls. In the second illustration I imagine how the physical interface of Wi-Fi in a home might look. Wi-Fi alarms in every home indicate an electronic invasion. Shared folders on the walls of homes become the meeting points of physical and electronic spaces.
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Edgy corners of ‘Wi-Fi misuse’ in a home Year: 2010
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The physical interface of Wi-Fi in a home Year: 2010
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Epilogue “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.� Mark Weiser, The Computer for the 21st Century This design intervention has explored how wireless technologies could become interfaces to recreate transient, informal space for hybrid conversations.
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My service attempted to rediscover and invent informal meeting spaces for our evolving Wi-Fi landscape. Like the banyan tree and the tea stalls in India, such meeting spaces could potentially create oral histories, and reconnect the individual to this evolving environment of the physical and the electronic.
Yellow Chair Stories a social design intervention by Anab Jain www.anab.in Š 2005