TimeFrame – delayed skype to resynchronise your day time when living in two far countries. Narrative image that shows the project in use – has to be completed by another visual/diagram that explains the concept Interface of the frame that is in – You can notice the choice we made to show the both videos: the delayed one and the real-time one. This choice will have to be tuned after having conducted first “audience-tests”. Our design choices aim at producing an uncanny enough feeling to engage the audience in a reflective process.

Interface of the frame that is in Montreal – To be noticed, these are first tries produced during the workshop session. They will be redesigned, avoiding the “skype-like” aesthetic. Indeed, users would not stare at the frame all the time if it was always on.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP9Gk8ild1o&w=853&h=480]
Photo shoot we made to prepare a video on the project (+ and extract of the video) – coming later The project that had the most potential is Time Frame. We think this because the societal issues it highlights are complexly mixed between desire and repulsion.

TimeFrame is a delayed skype that resynchronises your day time when living in two far countries

Abstract: what if you could wake up and go to bed together again. It has been 6 month that your lover lives in an other country and despite skype and the mobile phone efficiency you will never have this opportunity – except using Time Frame. It is a simple delayed skype-like video that resynchronises your day time. This “augmented photo frame” only has to be set once – enter your close one I.P. and it will set the video time-delay for you.
Issues: illusion of presence. Real need VS fake solution; living together VS unable to talk

First user reactions: (from our tester that leaves in Montreal)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQOyZmGe3Zs&w=640&h=480]

Here is the final document we made during the workshop to communicate the project – more work to be done soon

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.

Here is the final shoot we made for the workshop – waiting for more work to be done soon on the interface, and the communication of the project.
We decided to change the name from Photo-steal to photostill as it stresses less the problematic of privacy (which is already enough present) – we tried to make it not too much uncanny.

Abstract: The project proposes an intimate access to one close friend / lover. You can view what your friend sees, or at least a glimpse of the environment he’s involving into.
Issues: the project mainly highlight the issue of privacy VS mutual confidence; but also voyeurism, surveillance, etc.
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.

TimeFrame – delayed skype to resynchronise your day time when living in two far countries.

Abstract: what if you could wake up and go to bed together again. It has been 6 month that your lover lives in an other country and despite skype and the mobile phone efficiency you will never have this opportunity – except using Time Frame. It is a simple delayed skype-like video that resynchronises your day time. This “augmented photo frame” only has to be set once – enter your close one I.P. and it will set the video time-delay for you.
Issues: illusion of presence. Real need VS fake solution; living together VS unable to talk

Work in progress

Looking for code solutions to delay video streaming – we did finally not focus on the working prototype part of the project for the moment. It will come later.

Looking for design shapes for the TimeFrame product – we started from many possibilities but decided that a simple photo frame would seems more familiar. It is important as the product service can create repulsion, we had to balance the “uncanny” effect.

Testing different visual rendering for the video – we had to choose how would the video look like in the frame. We finally decided to keep the most familiar aesthetic for the product. But this could change after our first “audience-tests” (my appellation for first tests of showing the project to an audience, like a “user-test” with an audience).

Designing the service, deciding how the delay work.
Is the camera always running? Is there many frames in one house? Can the user control the delay (to cancel it)? These are a selection among the questions we asked ourselves. We made our choices according to the criteria we proposed in our paper(1). This criteria were proposed to the team later in the design process because it was too much to think about from the beginning. We therefore focused on our aim: engaging the audience into a reflective state.

(Top left) A technical diagram for ourselves to understand the delay to introduce on each frames
(Bottom left) A proposition of diagram to make the concept more legible.
(Bottom) Beginning of some user scenarios + references we evoked

(1) Mollon, M., & Gentes, A. (2014). The Rhetoric of Design for Debate: triggering conversation with an “uncanny enough” artefact (pp. 1–13). Presented at the Proceedings of the Design Research Society International Consortium (DRS), Umeå, Sweden.

Some circular shape tests for the design of the frame – rapidly abandoned.

Different shape researches, technical diagram for making it, etc. (Middle right) Working on a special clock to indicate two different times. (To right) Questioning the size of the frame/screen, we were evoking the big mirrors were people place pictures between the frame and the mirror.

Working on the digital interface to make it legible (visual affordances) + some written catch phrase (in french), inspirations for future user scenarios.

As choices had to be precisely tuned sometimes, and as debates sparked in the team on different design choices to be made, we decided to write down the brief of our project. User need, use scenarios, values to communicate (synchronisation, living together again…), etc.

 

Next step here

We finally focus on three projects that have the potential to become speculative designs. Here is the work in progress summary for Photo Steal – steal pictures from the mobile-phone camera of a close friend.

Abstract: The project proposes an intimate access to one close friend / lover. You can view what your friend sees, or at least a glimpse of the environment he’s involving into.
Issues: the project mainly highlight the issue of privacy VS mutual confidence; but also voyeurism, surveillance, etc.
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
The team split in two for:
– making a working prototype on a mobile phone
– designing a specific object

The prototype on the mobile is an hack on a android: when you send an email with a specific object to a specific email address you receive a picture taken from the phone wherever it is. The pictures taken are often not pointing at anything, of are taken in a trousers pocket. However, after a couple of days of use the phone owner began to set mini-staging for his phone to take intentional situations from time to time (hi working, a flower, etc.)

The aesthetic of these small pictures where quite touching, intimate, etc. but the mobile phone did not correspond to the feeling we wanted to communicate with the project. We began brainstorming on the different objects we could designs to accomplish this function. That is when I proposed the notion of uncanny (see slides) as a design principle or as a constraint to respect in order to stimulate people attention. The aim is to being the audience into a reflective state on our problematics.

Here is the different propositions we made (left to right) a kind of ipad lens (bottom); a neck lace/medaillon; a little private locked note-book, a round shape mirror; a mobile sculpture; a pensieve (water mirror dream catcher). The aim was to choose the one that could stimulate people interest and reaction [Edit: I realise later that these implicit criteria were the one from my paper: probability, legibility and uncanny (familiarity/unfamiliarity)].

 

 

Next step here

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.