D E S I G N in New Information Environments
T R E N D S Carsi Tong
Content within Argonauts Futurecast Big Data, Open Source, and Social Media
Trend Essays
Comparative Case Study Group Prototype Design Method Essay Reflection
ARGONAUTS Futurecast Essay Year 2015—February 25 12:00 pm It is the year 2015. Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has resigned from his company to spend more time with his children after his wife Priscilla threatens to divorce him, and nothing has been the same ever since. Facebook has abandoned its data mining venture, and as a result, is losing too much money to sustain itself. Along comes Argonauts, an open source social network database that stores information about people’s social quirks and interests in extreme detail. Users volunteer their information through a data chip that became mandatorily implanted into their arms in 2014, after the North Koreans attempted to brainwash United States citizens into defecting to North Korea. This data chip, called the BPV Chip, or Brain Preservation Vaccination Chip, also records detailed brain data for each individual in which it is implanted.
Argonauts develops a niche following after years of collecting and storing the data given to them by members. Although open source in information generation, Argonauts has erred on the side of caution and keeps essential code private. This fuzzy technology attracts people who enjoy a sense of mystery and adventure in their lives.
4 Argonauts—Futurecast Essay
Year 2050—Wednesday, March 9 12:30 pm Johnothomew and Thor, good friends throughout high school and college, have lunch together at the Raleigh Sandwich Shop in North Carolina. They know each others’ habits so well that they are sometimes mistaken for each other. It is as if they are having a conversation with themselves. “Hey, Thor. Wouldn’t it be great if Argonauts allowed us to hang out with interesting people, ever?” “Like time travel?” “Yes, but...”
Johnothomew and Thor decide to utilize the archival database to program realities of people from the past who voluntarily recorded their lives into the database. Thor has been wanting to make his musical ensemble possible, but has not found a cellist that has gotten along with him for more than a few sessions. Using the fuzzy technology that original creators of Argonauts developed in 2015, they search for a cellist from the past. The creators created this fuzzy technology with the intention of allowing people to learn more about each other through hanging out and having conversations. This restriction in technology allows for the entire system to work as a social network.
Argonauts—Futurecast Essay 5
The information sourced from the Argonauts life information database allows Johnothomew and Thor to create personas of people’s past selves.
Year 2020–April 8 1:00 pm “Yo!” shouts the screen.
Year 2050–April 6 1:00pm Both Johnothomew and Thor jump in surprise. A twentysomething-year-old in 20s apparel appears on their screen. Johnothomew regains his composure enough to talk to the woman. “Hi? What year is it?”
Year 2020—April 8 1:01 pm “It’s 2020. How’s it going? I’m Gertrude.” Gertrude is a twenty-five year old social media guru who happens to be one of the first members of Argonauts. She loves to cook and learn new languages, as well as play her cello. Other details about her life are unknown to Johnothomew and Thor, but the Argonauts database is aware of more detailed aspects of
6 Argonauts—Futurecast Essay
her life. They become mutual friends and learn about each other in a similar fashion that long distance friends do.
Year 2050—Saturday, April 16 3:40 pm “Hey, Gertrude. We’re going to be ready to jam in ten minutes. Thor is getting his sax.” Johnothomew, a twenty four year statistician, is getting ready to hang out with his two friends through Argonauts. He sits at his drum set, talking into a microphone implanted into the wall behind him.
Year 2020—Saturday, March 21 3:40 pm “Okay, I’ll be ready by then.” Gertrude says to Johnothomew.
Year 2050—Saturday, April 16 3:50 pm “Ready for action!” Thor waves to Johnothomew and Gertrude, signaling his readiness. He shares the sheet music with the rest of the ensemble through Argonauts share function. They jam and record their session. Johnothomew, Thor, and Gertrude all have a great time playing and continue playing as a musical ensemble for several hundred hours.
Argonauts—Futurecast Essay 7
Months go by. Gertrude introduces John and Thor to Dave, an expert at the triangle instrument. Dave teaches John and Thor, as well as Gertrude how to play the triangle before they jam together with the new instrument. They all have a great time together as Argonauts friends. Johnothomew and Thor keep up with Gertrude through Argonauts, having conversations with each other between hangouts. However, John gets a new job and moves San Diego, California. This makes it difficult for John and Thor to hang out together, and this realization leads to an Argonauts road trip involving Johnothomew, Thor, and Gertrude.
Year 2050—Saturday, August 6 Johnothomew, Thor, and Gertrude arrive in San Diego during their last leg of the road trip. They are here to send Johnothomew off. Gertrude, in her persona nature, leaves Johnothomew with a gift—something she would have done in 2015. By leaving this gift of a shoehorn, she fulfills her persona life and disappears back into the depths of fuzzy Argonauts technology database. Thor helps Johnothomew move into his new apartment in San Diego and bids him farewell.
8 Argonauts—Futurecast Essay
Year 2050–Tuesday, August 9 Johnothomew begins his new job at a digital technology company. At lunch, he meets his new co-workers. Barth, a thirty year old programmer, engages in a conversation with him and they soon become good friends. They have lunch together most everyday and one day, Johnothomew decides to give Argonauts archival database another spin. He introduces Barth to the program, and they put the Argonauts fuzzy search in motion once again…
Argonauts—Futurecast Essay 9
DESIGN & TRENDS Big Data In a world with increasing amounts of information, people are hitting information overload. Only when the vast amount of data sets are handled and patterns emerge does this big data become useful and interesting. By making connections and clustering information, data can be mapped to understand complex concepts or find emerging trends. Finding the outliers in a data set of normality and analyzing their causes often tells more about a group of figures than simply recognizing averages. Utilizing these patterns, connections, and trends has allowed for more rational decision making and a different set of storytelling tools.
Big Data is the application of computers to explore new avenues of information that create connections in order to reveal a meaningful story. In Shawn Achor’s TED talk about happiness, he tells a story about data being used by scientists and psychologists to get published. He emphasizes the importance of outliers, and how social scientists interpret data to diagnose their patients. He states how the absence of disease is not the way to determine health, and that the most effective way to utilize big data is
10 Big Data—Trend Essay
asking the right questions. Interpreting big data has more to do with detecting the patterns and outliers of a large, complex set in order to solve a problem or understand an issue better. Large sets of data have been around for a long time, such as the US Census, but interpreting this information has oftentimes been a struggle. Big Data gained traction in 2008 when the Computing Community Consortium, a leading group of computer scientist researchers, published an influential paper on big data computing.
In design, the data is interpreted and utilized to tell an interesting visual story. This is seen in the work of David McCandless, a data journalist and information designer. He refers to data as “the new soil� and utilizes large numbers and units to talk about issues. He connects, for example in the Billion Dollar-O-Gram, several large figures of dollars used to pay for specific motives with the largest figure, the US war on Afghanistan. The war trumps the rest of the figures McCandless has given, overshadowing them through the visualization of a big box the size of all of the other boxes studied(representing billions of dollars to scale) combined.
Big Data—Trend Essay 11
Big Data is utilized by designers in order to tell convincing, credible narratives. In Achor’s case, he makes fun of data in order to convince the reader that his data is credible and entertains the idea that not all data is correct, but can still tell a convincing story. The utilization of big data through the Computing Community Consortium allowed for professionals to realize its usefulness in storytelling. McCandless took a large amount of data and effectively told a visual story of government spending in a lighthearted fashion, filtering into only the most important information in order to tell his narrative. The important thing about big data is not the data itself, but how computer applications interpret this data in order to find trends and clustering information. Big data is only going to get exponentially bigger, and handling big data is paramount to connect others to stories that otherwise would not be told.
12 Big Data—Trend Essay
Open Source A collaborative group of people who share, use, and build on each others’ work through transparent methods allow for exponential growth within their community. This is an idea referring to open source, a philosophy that stemmed from software developers who coined the term “open source” after Netscape, a major web browser at the time, announced it would be releasing its source code to the public. The concept, however, was used long before Netscape. Early adopters include Linus Torvalds, who developed Linux, an open source operating system. Through transparency and sharing of ideas, exponential growth can be seen within open source projects. Several people that came up with the term “open source” went on to become key advocates of open source. Linus Torvalds was an early advocate of the term and is one of the most influential people of the internet. In 1991, Torvalds purchased a computer using the operating system Minix and shortly after decided there were improvements to be made. So he started working on a free operating system and asked people for feedback via the internet on what they thought of the Minix operating system, which is the foundation of Linux operating system. Major companies such as Google now use the OS to build upon and create new projects. Torvalds is also responsible for the GitHub software that allows anyone to edit an open source software project such as Linux. In other words, GitHub is essentially a code management system.
Open Source—Trend Essay 13
However, the one drawback of GitHub is that its interface is difficult for most non-programmers. Tom Preston-Werner and Chris Wanstrath changed this with GitHub, a weekend project that eventually became a major source code repository website that makes coding easier and stays true to its open source roots. GitHub hosts the code with the agreement that it will share the code openly with anyone who wants or will build upon it. It has even grown to include open source material that is not related to coding, such as book translations and real DNA data. It has become a source for sharing, as well as a social network for coders. Red Hat, a software company with an open source business model, also uses Linux to develop both proprietary licensed software and open source software. The company sponsors the Fedora Project, an open source community geared toward collaboration and innovation.
The size and influence of the company can be felt in Raleigh, North Carolina, the city of its headquarters. The city’s collaborative approach to government is reflective of Red Hat’s open source model. Ultimately, open source promotes public access created by a community of collaborative contributors. By keeping information transparent and readily sharing ideas, information can be utilized by several users in projects that promote the collective whole. The open source connection is a network of people working to create a better world.
14 Open Source—Trend Essay
Social Media Social media is an ever increasing form of communication between people through networks of user-generated content. With the advent of the internet, sharing stories to larger audiences has become more popular and more people have become connected. Social media is now a major source of news and information on a much larger, more accessible scale than talking to friends “in real life�. There are many hypotheses of where social media is going, including allowing people who connect with others in this form to achieve immortality through memories that will be released after their death. There has been speculation as to how much of an impact social media has had on protests in different countries, however, one thing is sure. Social media connects people in a way that humanity has never connected before through the utilization of the internet. This has become an opportunity for designers to share stories to a greater number of people than they would be able to in their everyday lives. The first social network came about in 1973 in a record store on a shared computer owned by a computer scientist Lee Felsenstein. People would come by the store and type a message on the computer. Called Community Memory, it took years to build up momentum and build more computers to cover a substantial network. Another network began by a Doctor Larry Brilliant, who worked for World Health Organization and Stewart Brand, creator of hippie bible The Whole Earth Catalog, meeting. The Well, a virtual gathering place, was born and people around San Francisco would meet others online and later hold parties for their newly found friends. This saw the merging of real and
Social Media—Trend Essay 15
virtual worlds, with people creating relationships with others in their community in a way they otherwise could not. Later, in the 1980s, the Bulletin Board System (BBS) movement in Great Britain allowed millions to communicate with each other. The mass communication that allows social media to thrive would not have been possible without a computer. Social media’s role in the digital world has allowed people to share profound stories to large groups of people–oftentimes with friends of friends. These weak social ties benefit people in a way close friends and families cannot.
Oftentimes in blogs, people are able to share feelings they have toward life, ambitions and dreams, and opinions they otherwise wouldn’t share with people close to them with many mutual social connections.
16 Social Media—Trend Essay
By indirectly telling their stories, they feel more brave talking about touchy subjects that they would not normally mention face-to-face, or they talk about events in real time that cannot otherwise be shared. One example was during the 2005 Pacific Ocean Tsunami, when witnesses who experienced the event, video recorded, photographed, and wrote about it. These people subsequently posted this media on their blogs and Facebook pages, sharing their experience with millions of people via the internet. This web of stories connects people in a way that could not have been done without internet. In this way, social media has become a source of news and information to large audiences. Social media has become a way for people to acquaint with each other in a way that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to, allowing for conversations that would not be able to happen on a more localized, “real life” scale. These conversations build friendships, however, are real and ultimately allow more people, with similar or different interests, to connect with each other from any place in the world.
Social Media—Trend Essay 17
Comparative Case Study Technological advances on the web have motivated a move toward machine-dominated work in order to solve more complex problems in society. Computers now help people find content from people and programs made by people. These advances allow for smarter searches informed by big data and can be shared to a wider audience with the help of open source. They are supported by a more connected world through social media. Big data, open source, and social media are sources of social collective information that achieve common goals together.
The problem with big data has never been that there has been too little data; in fact, oftentimes, there is too much data. Sometimes, big data may even be overwhelming if too much information is presented. The key to effectively utilizing big data is through proper management, giving just enough information or making relevant connections. Big data has been used to sell commercial items, managed through databases, and utilized through refined searches. Amazon, NC State Library’s database search, and Google Gmail’s email search are examples of big data being managed to collect relevant information.
18 Comparative Case Study
An observation of a user trying to buy more Random Access Memory (RAM) for her computer on Amazon, an online shopping experience, led to the realization that the site was storing data of her searches and attempting to sell more commercial items through the big data set of her search history. The deductions from Amazon’s data mining, however, were ineffective, and annoyed the user at most. They utilized the user’s search history to try to sell her more items, but these were simply more items the user had to sift through in order to attempt to buy what she really wanted. Also, the amount of quantitative data given to the user was overwhelming and unnecessary to her search for RAM. She ended up dissatisfied with the multiple searches she made, even as she tried to filter through the vast amounts of information. However, she found the large number of positive user reviews comforting, and that would have contributed to her purchase of RAM on Amazon.
Comparative Case Study 19
Social media utilizes big data to collect information about behavioral habits. This is used to sell material objects, such as the social media site Svpply, which allows users to gather “Collections� of items they want into groups that other users can view, follow, and clone for themselves. The objects collected are categorized by their origins, price range, and type of material, among other things. This information is used to find more objects that users may find interesting. A fascinating phenomenon about social media is that social media itself promotes socialization between social medias. For example, Svpply openly promotes using other social media sites, such as Twitter, to talk about Svpply. Youtube also promotes this practice by allowing users to share videos to Twitter and other social media sites, going as far as creating a templated message for the user. Open source also uses social aspects to achieve goals.
20 Comparative Case Study
An observation of a Youtube user found similar results in the overwhelming amount of data presented. The large number of recommendations was quite ineffective; it seemed like everything was a recommendation. There were so many recommendations that these suggestions become less effective in getting a the user to click them. There were social aspects to watching a video, such as being able to “Like” or comment, which contributed to the site’s social media nature. Statistics were available for each video, which encompasses the big data trend. Like Svpply, Youtube promoted using other social media platforms as an outlet to sharing their videos. Upon “liking” a video, a “Share” option showed up, allowing for social media mingling that is common between the mainstream platforms. After logging into Twitter through the provided link on Youtube, it was found that Youtube had conveniently pre-written an efficient tweet for the user. The user added a hashtag in order for the tweet to be searched through the presented keyword, along with a Twitter handle. After the tweet was posted, the user logged off of the social media website and later regretted posting the tweet. The most successful examples of open source have social aspects for the sake of productivity, encouragement of participation, and promotion of work in niche groups. The democratic building aspect allows for more people to contribute to a greater cause and learn from the work of others. Quirky, MIT Open Courseware, and GitHub are used to find similarities in applied
Comparative Case Study 21
open source examples between three very different applications. Each application uses open source in a social way in order to achieve a common goal. The success is dependent upon a niche group of participants and contributions backing a collective of information that was created by many individuals. This builds a social community among a cluster of people. By creating a niche, users feel more comfortable in their community and are more at ease with sharing information. Open source platforms have similar social communities as social media, and also tend to link back to mainstream social media platforms. An observation of a Quirky user showed a sense of excitement toward the idea of having different users contribute in order to create one end product. The introduction video on the homepage of the site, as well as the initial navigation of the site entertained and excited the user, encouraging him to contribute. He signs up as a Quirky user through the social media platform, Facebook. His attempt to watch an evaluation process video failed, which discouraged his participation role in the website. He decides to submit an idea, but then finds out that the idea would cost him $10, an amount which he doesn’t want to commit to putting into the idea. However, upon looking at upcoming products that will be available through the website, he is once again excited about Quirky’s role as an open source platform.
22 Comparative Case Study
Trends do not stay isolated from one another, but instead tend to intermingle and interact with each other. Big data, open source, and social media’s applications to real-life platforms clearly show this intermingling that allow these platforms to effectively utilize gathered data for social contexts. This intermingling allows for the people to interact with the connection of data points, which reveal larger and more complex viewpoints. The utilization of this gathered data allows for people to find what they want faster and more effectively, but only if just enough information is given. Social media is now an integral part of many people’s lives, as they keep up with their friends’ lives, ideas, and wants.
Comparative Case Study 23
GROUP PROTOTYPE Design Method Essay
Group prototype is a method that involves a mass collaboration between peers, and lasts for a set amount of time. This method combines the feedback cycle with prototyping and allows a large number of people to work on parts of a single prototype at the same time. In this way, the prototype (and in turn, the project) belongs to everyone and everyone’s input is considered important. No one leader will determine the output of the project. Group prototyping can be used after mapping out a system and brainstorming ideas. It can be used in place of prototyping and getting feedback. This method combines the feedback loop with prototyping, saving a lot of time and increasing efficiency. Through a mass public-level collaboration that would allow people to become participants as commenters and prototypers. Also, the feedback loop would effectively be intertwined within the group prototype, and participants of the project can receive feedback from their peers almost simultaneously. A designer can use this method when attempting to solve a large scale problem and there is a time constraint that makes it difficult for the designer to implement an effective solution without the help of several collaborators. The designer would serve the role of a director, being as he or she has invested the most time in the project. Group prototypers will be able to work on different aspects of a prototype, but not the entirety of a prototype. Through social media, commenters will have access
24 Group Prototype—Design Method Essay
to the project and be able to easily give feedback with little effort. Social media will also play a role in promoting the project to people in a designer’s social circle as related to his or her Because of its collaborative quality, the project would be open source and enlist the help of others in exchange for helping participants with their projects. A large group of people would be needed to implement it through open source channels using social media to publicize the project and big data to search for similar projects of interest. A sense of collaborative spirit and willingness to help others finish their projects will be needed in order for group prototyping to be effective. First, a designer implements group prototype through an open source access channel. Others looking for a project search through a database containing similar topics and ideas of interest, or the database automatically gives collaborators suggestions, in connection to the designer’s social circle. The collaborators are then able to comment and/or prototype and receive comments from other viewers. Group prototypers will be able to comment and manipulate the prototype, while commenters will be able to state their opinions as the prototypers are working or after they have finished their aspect of the prototype. Participants may ask the designer questions for feedback and guidance. The designer can set a time limit at the beginning of the project in order for deadline motivated collaborators to reach a conclusion to their group prototyping efforts.
Group Prototype—Design Method Essay 25
Project gives feedback to
Prototyper
(set number, multiple)
also functions as a
Director
(one, designer)
Problems one may run into include the time limit, given the prototypers are not being paid monetarily, but instead with the social promise of help with their projects. Also, the designer may want more power in this process but will have to mostly guide the prototypers and commenters during this part of the design process. Group prototyping will force the designer to relinquish control and allow the group participants to make choices that will affect the future of the project. A group prototyper limit will also need to be implemented in order for the
26 Group Prototype—Design Method Essay
(unlimited number, multiple)
communicates with, adds onto feedback
guides
project to progress.
Commenter
I decided to take New Information Environments when I became interested in design research and writing while completing the GD Triad Curriculum (Studio, Typography, and Imaging for three consecutive semesters) but found that my classes were solely studiobased and would remain studio-based for the remainder of my time as an undergraduate student at NC State. I went into the class having a little knowledge about the emerging design trends but no formal research on any of them. Through design research shared through social media platform Twitter, I have learned a lot about trends during the semester. Additionally, I feel my writing skills have improved through practice, peer feedback, and revision. Learning about new information environments through collaborative research has allowed for a richer understanding of the trends. I invested the most time in learning about social media, open source, and big data trends, all of which cross disciplines and can be applied to several aspects of the contemporary person’s life. I connected these three trends as they can often be associated together. I found them to have the most impact to the everyday person. Social media is so common now that it can be found infiltrating news organizations through things such as hashtags. It is not uncommon for a reputable news agency such as the New York Times to reference tweets in time sensitive and serious hard news stories. Big data emerged through the need to manage the vast amounts of data that is being produced, not only by humans, but also by computers. It will persist in design as more information is produced everyday and designers try to manage it. Open source is an interesting avenue for sharing information, and the fact that it is possible to make a profit even with this system will allow for it to be a lasting trend.
Reflection 27
New Information Environments—GD573 Spring 2013 Under the instruction of Amber Howard Carsi Tong