After 2 days, here are the picture of the work in progress for these projects.
We will not focused too much onto them here as they have less speculative design potential than the others.

SkypePuppet – controlling remotely an arm coming out from the screen
Here are some images of our first idea.

Omnidice
Abstract: The project proposes an omniscient access to 6 peripheral vies of one conference room or appartment room. You can switch between views on an mobile phone app by moving a cube (using augmented reality).
Issues: not really a critical design project, except if used in the home, we can see the issue of surveillance, again, like often.
These issues are connected to my topic of the feeling of absence/presence, but not directly, therefore we did not spend to much time on it during the workshop session, we will come back to it later.

Work in progress
Omnidice – cubical remote control to access various telepresence webcam in a room

Taking 6 videos from 6 different angles (bottom, top, left, right, face, back) in order to navigate them by controlling the cube remote control.

Mounting the rushes

Looking for a visual aesthetic (for the app logo and the cube design)

First working prototype we produced

Second version of the prototype (aesthetic)

 

Next step here

We did keep the physical traces of the brainstorming sessions but no pictures – at the time when I write this – unfortunately.
We mainly listed problematic situations we encountered while using telepresence devices (from a simple phone to skype).
We structured the ideas in around 10 ideas, we finally kept 06 or 07 projects, among them 2 or 3 could become critical design projects.

3 where R&D projects
SkypePuppet – controlling remotely an arm coming out from the screen
Omnidice – cubical telecomand to control various telepresence webcam in a room
Reskype – simple R&D on skype
3 had the potential to become critical design projects
Photo Steal – steal pictures from the mobile-phone camera of a close friend
TimeFrame – delayed skype to resynchronise your day time when living in two far countries

Bonus picture from the Pantheon on my way from Ensad, after work

It is not bout being critical, it does not happen like magic, it is about finding a situation (e.g. societal issue) that you want to address. Enabling the team to start designing strongly relied on setting a “strange” design brief where the situation to “comment/critique” is already embedded.

It became really easier when we began to list real user situations (like personas) + their problems and needs.