MeansToNoEnd

Means To No End (Design as a Tool for Meaningful User Experience)

Contents

Prologue, p. 5

No Matter (A Wider View On The State Of Matters In The World), p. 13

Who Follows What? (Picturing The Evolution Of Design And Function), p. 23

Don’t Take It At Face Value (What Added Value Can Physical Experience Have?), p. 43

You Can Never Go Into the Same River Twice (Learning From Physical ‘Usual’ Experience), p. 57

Most Of What We Learn, We Learn Indirectly (Introducing Play As A Learning Experience Tactic), p. 67

No Pain No Gain / No Guts No Glory (Taking The Idea To The Extreme Test-Case), p. 83

Epilogue: At Your Own Risk (I Think Therefore I Am, I Am Therefore I Do), p. 99

Bibliography, p. 103

Prologue

Prologue

I started studying design with the will to make a difference. Charmed by the excuse and chance to make instant contact with people and their intimate needs, curious by the fact people could touch my creations, take them home, incorporate them in their daily life and surroundings, excited that they take on an independent life beyond my control.

Designers are at a crossroads today. Debate on the scarcity of materials and critique on consumerism raises questions about the validity of creating new objects and the role of the designer in the design process. Recent developments within the design world are blurring the boarders between art and design, questioning the position of designers within the creative industry. What role should designers take confronting the social, moral and material questions of the present and the near future?

I chose to focus on the user experience as grounds to explore a new potential role of designers and objects. When we talk about a ‘user experience’, we think mostly of electronic and computer based systems. Terms as effective, ease and utility come to mind. ISO 9241-210 defines user experience as ‘a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service’. It usually entails the relationship between man and machine and strongly relates to usability engineering.

Though design today is not synonymous with the term ‘meaningful’, the idea that a user experience can

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Prologue

Fig 1. Lawrence W

be meaningful suggests a new context for the term. It implies a reflective and emotional interaction, an interaction that gives a significant role to the user in an extended design process. A meaningful user experience also brings to question the role of the designer in the creative process and the relationship between designer and user, all of which haven’t been the center of the design discourse for a while.

This paper suggests an alternative route designers could follow, a route that puts a physical, memorable, meaningful user experience at the core of its creation. Objects which are open ended, that leave space for the user to fill up with his own identity, emotions, values and action scenario, space for imagination, for exploration, for surprise; design that respects the users right to ‘make up their own mind’, and an object that is more than just an object.

Fig 1. Lawrence Weiner

Prologue

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Experiment - pick up a random object in your immediate surroundings. Think how this object can benefit you or others. Can it be of any use other than the specific one its intended of performing? How many people can it serve at the same time or over its life span? For how long? What are its limits?

Give it to someone else as a present, proposing an extension of its limits. You may make minor physical adjustments, but the main ‘leap’ should be in your point of view. Have your friend make a documentation of his tryout and send it back to you for re-evaluation.

Alternative - find the oldest object you posses and the newest one you have acquired. How do they reflect you or the times in which they came from in history and in your own personal biography? Which one of them represents you more truly? Which elements would you take from each of them that make them unique, effective, desirable, successful objects? Try to mash all of those qualities together and create a new object that tells the ‘whole story’, that is even maybe ‘fully you’?

No Matter (A Wider View On The State Of Matters In The World)

WE’RE WITNESSING WHAT AMOUNTS TO NO LESS THAN A MASS EXODUS TO VIRTUAL WORLDS AND ONLINE GAME ENVIRONMENTS —ECONOMIST EDWARD CASRRONOVA

WE’RE WITNESSING WHAT AMOUNTS TO NO LESS THAN A MASS EXODUS TO VIRTUAL WORLDS AND ONLINE GAME ENVIRONMENTS —ECONOMIST EDWARD CASRRONOVA

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We are living in a virtualized world. With less and less physical input and output, loosing textures (everything is smooth); color (everything is white or pastel) and loosing the joy of the journey of first hand discovery (everything has a manual or warnings of misuse).

Tools used to be an extension of our body, a way to expand and surpass our physical limitations in order to widen our ability to express our wills, desires and aspirations. In today’s digital virtual world, as the gap between action and consequence is growing bigger, it’s getting harder to be physically and emotionally involved in our actions.

Dan Halutz, an Israeli pilot, when asked ‘what do you feel when you drop a bomb over Gaza from your F-16’, answered ‘a slight tingling of the wing’. The most popular game of the last few years is a facebook farming game in which players tend to a virtual plantation spending time and money cultivating a virtual farm over the course of months. In ‘second life’ people live whole lives within a virtual world. Brutal violence in movies, role playing games and arcades have become a common sight. The virtual world allows us freedom to explore things forbidden in the real one but at the same time distances us from a fully sensitive (i.e. involving all our senses) and emotional thus moral involvement in our actions and their consequences.

Today’s objects grow in complexity. Digitalizing has brought the mechanisms around us to a miniature level

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and their construction to a complex operation of many different skillful professionals.

Fig 2.’Second life’ users and their avatars.

It is growingly harder to make sense of the operating systems that surround us, and so our contact and interaction with many of our everyday user experiences is alienated.

While we cope less and less with the physical reality, we grow in need of emotional, intellectual and physical stimulation. We are constantly confronted with over-whelming amounts of visual stimulus. The advertisional promises all around us seem to leave us with the bitter taste of the physical reality hardly delivering fulfill-ment. What you get at home following an advertisement or a TV commercial will never live up to its fantasy.

In a virtual world where property is de-materializing, ownership is questionable. While consumers are looking for a sense of authenticity, identity and unusuality and confronted with an economy of fake real (like the movie industry) and real fake (like Disneyland), ‘experience’ is gaining value as an individual, unique and emotional commodity.

The importance of experience in future economy is mentioned as early as 1970 in Alvin Toffler’s prominent book ‘Future Shock’. Toffler indicates the future

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economy as an ‘alternative to communism & capitalism’ is to be based on issues ‘beyond terms of scarcity of resources’ in times where ‘spiritual satisfaction will be highly regarded and ownership will become obsolete’, Where high living standards will create a whole new set of needs in order to reach ‘psychological satisfaction’. In 1993 German sociologist Schulze describes the future society as the ‘experience society’.

The experience economy is discussed by B. Joseph pine & James H. Gilmore (1999) as the next phase to which the world economy is progressing towards, following the agrarian economy, the industrial economy and the recent service economy. The experience economy focuses on rendering memorable experiences for customers. These experiences will become the added value of future products and businesses. Advanced experience businesses can begin charging for the value of the ‘transformation’ that an experience offers. The experience economy theory has influenced fields beyond business including tourism, architecture, nursing and others; it has yet to be adopted by the design field. The main focus of the design experience today is on the shopping experience and on the product appealing to the costumer before he even experienced its function. Implementing the experience economy principles while shifting the focus of the experience to the user, creates a challenge for the designer, retailer and user but one that might also hold a new promise.


Experiment - find a nice blog you like online, one of those blogs that people tell about every move in their daily life. Find someone that you can relate to, one that makes it all sound funny, with your kind of insight. Take one of those experiences he/she are writing about and try to re-live it yourself. Go to the same place (or a similar one in your surrounding), do the same things and follow it ‘to the letter’. At the end of the day, write about your experience with your own insights and personal touch. If you want you can send your own version back to the blogger you ‘borrowed it’ from.

Who Follows What? (Picturing The Evolution Of Design And Function)

DESIGN IS A DREADFUL FORM OF EXPRESSION —PHILLIPPE STARCK

DESIGN IS A DREADFUL FORM OF EXPRESSION —PHILLIPPE STARCK

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Recent years have put designers in the important intersection between economy, culture, industry and the arts. As the world is more dynamic than ever, there is an increasing call for a creative visionary look towards the future. Design, which has been mirroring society’s shifts and developments in the objects that surround us, is also experiencing a shift in the role designers plays in today’s economics and culture and their position between industry, retail and users.

The role of the designer originated from generations of skillful craftsmen that were the heart and soul of the world of objects for centuries. The craftsman was a ‘one man operation’ that controlled the whole process from idea through the making and till the intimate relationship with the user.

The industrial revolution and the introduction of capitalism brought about a drastic shift in the role of the designer. Designers drifted away from the making process which was handed to ‘simple workers’ and machines. Along with the increase of professional roles within the industrial organization, the distance between user and designer grew bigger and the designers’ loyalty shifted with it from a loyalty to the user to being under the wings and responsibility of owners, managers, marketers and speculates. The user became a blurry face in the crowd.

The standardization and mass production of ‘consumer goods’ led also to the fact that users and their everyday

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objects grew apart. Users were urged to replace objects rather then get ‘attached’ to them. The argument of ‘progress’ had the power to make objects appealing and soon after obsolete. The designer has become the manifestor of progress an ambassador of ‘the new’.

The admiration of the new industrial power, Combined with a need for a high production rate and low material costs had given birth to the famous principle of ‘form follows function’, (attributed to the American architect Louise Sullivan in 1896) and the less known principle of ‘ornament is crime’. The function of an object became its main esthetic feature, engineering achievements were exposed and marveled and objects were assessed through their efficiency and the ‘service’ they provide to mankind. Parallel to many modernist social ideologies that promised a utopian horizon, designers had also put solving problems and answering the needs of the masses in the middle of the design debate. But since designers were mainly busy with ‘form giving’ and while the marketing business had gained power within the industrial system, many design ideas were forwarded as a marketing tool with fouls pretense of functional value, a position which since has become prominent. For example, the ‘streamline’ design originated in the automobile industry with the assumption that it would create faster cars with high fuel efficiency and though proven wrong (or not significantly right) kept it as a marketing strategy and has since even been adapted to some home appliances


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designs. Design has been ‘behind the scenes’ for long. Modernity has made designers a ‘small screw’ in the huge industrial machine. The introduction Electricity base appliances followed by digitalization had driven the designer further away from the objects functional core and made him in charge of the ‘packaging’ alone, thus a marketing tool for customer esthetic appeal value.

The last decades have introduced a new range of options for designers, mainly through the new idea of ‘conceptual design’. ‘Conceptual design’ would be considered by many as just the first stage of the design process, the stage that starts with an idea and ends with a prototype. Designers search for means to detach themselves from their de-meaning position, the wish for means of self expression and alternatives to the industrial production created a variety of new venues designers could follow, venues that freed them from many previous constrains. Low cost tools and machinery has allowed designers to bring industrial production methods to their studios and become makers again. Conceptual design has allowed questioning of functionality. Suddenly objects could be ‘concepts’ and didn’t have to commit themselves to any need or use except those of the designer himself. Though conceptual design was never well defined it prompted a dichotomy in the way designers treat functionality and a division within the design profession. It’s hard to pinpoint the birth of the conceptual designer, however Ron Arad founding ‘one off ’ design studio (1981) could


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offer a starting point. Arad returned to the traditional position of the designer by self-making limited editions of unique sculptural furniture. Arad’s and other conceptual designer’s success to connect with a high end exclusive market previously only surrounding the art world had sprung a new type of designer. ‘Conceptual design’ has brought the designer from the ‘back row’ to the front of the stage. Emphasizing a ‘personal touch’ and personality, he became a star. ‘Conceptual design’ has given designers the freedom to create from a personal fascination with no functional constrains. Competing with the art market, conceptual design has adopted many characteristics of art. Design pieces are presented in galleries and museums instead of on the shelf in a shop, design objects have become a status symbol and a cultural icon to be put on a pedestal rather than being used in everyday life. As such it focuses on visual stimulation. A function can remain a suggestion.

Fig 3. Philippe Stark

Following the design trend, design has become a collector’s item. As such, though the noted history of design is quite short, many formal functional design pieces have quickly become an expensive ‘conceptual’ item that remains an esthetic and historic symbol of its time or of its role in design history.

A different theme within the conceptual design range that ‘makes use’ of a ‘functional suggestion’ is ‘design


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interaction’. ‘Design interaction’ is a tool to visualize research, it explores imaginary scenarios of the future, visualizing a conceptual fictional function, in order to make research ‘feel real’ and to create the illusion of a more plausible future for engineers to follow and spectators to envision and debate on.

Design interaction has also given designers the privilege to explore their own imagination without being bounded to ‘real life’ and create their own science fictional fantasy. Free to explore shapes, functional visions and hope for future developments.

As it’s focused on the designer, sometimes conceptual designers expose the making process and make it visible in the objects esthetics. The making of an object could even become the main subject of interest (a memory of an action).

Relying on its exclusiveness, conceptual design remains hidden from the eye and homes of most of the public. In order to raise its prestige it had become intellectualized. Products have become objects that need to be ‘figured out’ and understood rather than put to use. Objects that used to be self explanatory and defined by their use and relation to the human body or environment remain


Fig 4. Revital Cohen, Life Support, a proposal to use animals bred commercially as companions and providers of external organ replacement.

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Fig 5. Running Mould, Studio Glithero, from the exhibition ‘Design by Performance,’ at Z33 Hasselt.

enigmatic. An internal discourse within the design world had began, some conceptual designs comment on other design works and as such demand prior knowledge to truly understand. Much like the modern art, conceptual design alienates a large part of society.

While conceptual designers have set themselves apart from the industrial world, ‘classic’ industrial design has remained anonymous and aimed at the masses. The designer plays a minor role in the whole process, mainly fulfilling the needs of engineers and following marketers and trend forecasters. Some conceptual designs have been copied by the industry and modified to a low quality, cheap version of themselves and at the same time some conceptual designers have been ‘adopted’ by the product industry to create high end designs and as a celebrity marketing tool.

The relationship between the industry and its customers is complicated. Though designers are not held accountable for any product, there is a basic suspicious doubt that marks the designer along with other marketing tools as means for possible deception. Different strategies that use design to convince costumers to consume more items only reinforce this feeling of mistrust. Relying on the value of the ‘new’

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and making use of the culture of trends, objects are designed and redesigned to assume a sense of change and progress. In the car industry many new models offer the same engineering with just a new ‘cover’ design. Trying to offer a ‘value for money’ incentive, the idea of multifunction or ‘functional kits’ give costumers the feeling of a bargain while in many of the cases not offering any true functional gain or even leaving it cumbersome. Another marketing tactic is applying objects to the most minor assumed functional needs like various ‘gadgets’ or the narrowest niches invented by the industry and supported by the media. The same mistrust follows many so-called ‘bottom up’ subcultures that have been quickly adopted by the industry, customized, standardized and offered back to the public. A good example for that is the DIY culture which started as a folk movement and gained popularity through grassroots means. DIY was quickly adopted as an alternative which gives the user the illusion of participating in the creation process and created a whole submarket of its own.

Fig 6. Wenger Giant Swiss Army Knife with box (643.39 euro)

Though design has evolved to become a wider platform for research and conceptual debate, it mainly remains on the surface and is leaving design falling behind the art world or falling victim to the supply and demand of the mass economy market. Most important of all, little


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attempts have been made to reengage the relationship between designer and user and between user and object. Designer Dieter Rams wrote in his ‘ten principles for good design’: ‘Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it’, and also ‘good design is honest; it does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept’. But how can we, within a sea objects, avoid deceiving the user but at the same time keep the magical mystery that tempts the user to approach, what can be a new appealing value.

Today’s designers are mainly focusing their creative efforts on the moment of shopping and the act of buying. What if at least some of that effort to surprise, to fascinate and to charm would be invested in the unfolding relationship between a user and an object that starts once they both arrive home? Could the curiosity, flair and wonder that are part of the shopping experience keep on challenging the user for longer?

Instead of challengers, designers play the role of ‘numbners’. Making sure users avoid ‘human error’, unexpected, risky, and possibly negative considered experiences. Everything is user friendly, easy, catchy and pleasing. Instead of being ambassadors of first hand experiences, The design industry indulges second hand experiences through the virtual world, and consumer goods which give users the comfort of make belief experiences like tourist souvenirs and movie merchandize.

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Maybe there can be a different path. A path which involves the ideas, research and the cultural comment of conceptual design with the tangible, mundane, ‘hand on’ values of industrial design. Maybe seeing approaching the user experience as an individual , unique, creative event, during which the user not only experiences a true meaningful experience of his own but also a chance to share and become an active partner in an idea, a perspective, an option, an offer, a playground and a debate with the designer and other users.

Experiment - make a survey amongst your friends and family; ask them (and yourself) what are the five items they would like to have the most? What were the ones they used to want 10 years ago and can they imagine the ones they would want to have 10 years from now? Ask them to try and be as specific as they can (about the future objects) and maybe also illustrate them visually. You can also go on to 20 years, 30 years and so on. Keep the illustration in a safe place to view them again in due time.

Alternative - choose the 10 most important objects you have in your life at the moment, if you had to choose 10 items before your whole material life goes in flames which ones would you choose? Try to figure out which needs they address. Then choose one by one which would you take off the list till you reach the last one and have a full list of prioritized objects. What does this list say about the next object you are going to buy?

Don’t Take It At Face Value (What Added Value Can Physical Experience Have?)

WE KNOW THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING BUT THE VALUE OF NOTHING —OSCAR WILDE

WE KNOW THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING BUT THE VALUE OF NOTHING —OSCAR WILDE

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The disillusioning collapse of the modernist optimism, coinciding with the two world wars, triggered new changes. While the technological progress was still ‘full steam ahead’ the sense of value had been in a confusing stand still. After the horrors of the war Industry was no longer be looked upon as the deliverer of a utopian idea of progress for all. In turn it has changed its focus to become a means of individual expression and personal freedom. The capitalist economy had created a material world of abundance. The industries main goal was to increase sales and create ‘economical growth’ and consumption had been excused as an expression of free choice and addressing personal needs.

A gap started to grow between objects, the values they could stand for and the needs they could address. A capitalist race could not rely anymore on the functional value of objects to deliver a value. The variety of products and the competition between companies had shifted the question from why to buy something to which one to buy. With the help of the rising mass media and the growth of companies into multi product producing corporations, values of objects and functions turned into corporate values and trademark symbols.The needs objects were meant to address had changed dramatically, from direct functional value, to the promise of fulfilling emotional needs. Moreover, the shopping experience itself took on a life of its own. Part of the strategy also includes creating a vague message that

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implies values but does not commit to any clear statement. Shoes no longer promise comfort, rather a whole range of Nike products under the title ‘Just Do It’ can imply spontaneity, activeness, freedom etc. As a by-product these aggressive campaigns had altered the core values themselves to become a commodity and made the inter-pretation and use of them free to use for any promise of financial gain. A good example would be spiritual guides that make their own definitions of happiness, fulfillment and self-confidence and try to convince users to follow their path of spiritual salvation (or at least buy the book).

Fig 7. Adbusters: an anti-consumerism movement that targets advertising and uses it to confront corporate massages.

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Following our reliance and confidence in science and technology and our growing distance from compre-hending it, companies are able to promise the fulfillment of tangible values as a stepping stone towards higher values. Youth can be gained by anti aging cream, beauty by diet shakes or manhood by penis enlargement pills. Some of these have actually managed to seam their way into our society’s fabric and become what they presume to offer, embedding themselves into our culture. Tourist souvenirs become a memory, an apple computer as a sign for creativeness etc.

The main claim of the industry is giving consumers the ability to practice their freedom of choice. However the postmodern consumerism has created a confused, passive, detached user. A user with limited means of understanding and taking responsibility for his/hers own consumption choices. Furthermore, while relying on vague but prominent promise of fulfillment by products, consumers are bound to end up disappointed. In a postmodern society choice was no longer an easy matter. The world’s increasing interconnectivity and the evolvement of countless voices and variants trying to influence our state of mind through the media makes establishing a ‘world view’ (if you are not a conspiracy freak), making up our own mind and making true decisions a true challenge. We are mostly left giving up before even trying.

The environmental movement however, has made a few important breakthroughs that challenge the state of


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value within the hegemony of the consumer society. Criticizing the basic idea of consumption and basing it on a scientific global crisis the environmental movement achieved the starting point of bringing the ‘why to buy’ question back to the table. The environmental movement managed to make the act of buying a moral, responsible and conscious choice.

The environmental movement had soon triggered many other side effects. Creating alternatives in buying (environmentally conscious), making (self making, local markets), new esthetics (materials, rough) and on the functional value of objects (energy saving, self powering). It has also influenced the way designers see their role and responsibility. Though some might claim that many of the movements’ values are exploited by the commercial industry, there is no doubt that it had given a fresh point of view and opened a debate that crosses almost all discourses. Though profit is made within the movement and from it, it has never been its main driving force.

Since we cannot (and maybe should not) return to the old promises of objects, perhaps we should create objects that question values, arise a debate and challenge our views. Through objects that practice choice and hand over some of the responsibility for the user exper-ience back to the user, new perspective can be gained on the world mirrored by the objects that surround him. At the same time, the user can join the designer in an open debate about those same ideas and values and

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instead of mistrust and alienation, build a new bridge that can give objects back some of their lost value.

Fig 7.5 The Story Store, Designers create various objects to be concealed within a box. The only means of communication between product & customer being a short story.

Focusing on the user experience is inviting to question, it doesn’t and can’t offer any answers and cannot determine any outcome of a personal experience which happens in the users own territory and his own mind. Design can only stimulate users to reflect on the actions and lives. Through that reflection the values of individuality and freedom of choice can reclaim a new reliable, authentic validity, the same values claimed before by the consumers market and abused to commercial purposes.

A meaningful experience is one which involves choice, which challenges our beliefs, views and habits. The contexts of time and place should be taken into account, after all objects are not only extension of our body; they are also extensions of our minds, our ideas, symbols and believes. The way we use our objects as well as the way we act and react in the world reflects as much on our thoughts, feelings and the way we experience our surrounding as it reflects on others. Such an experience should Offer an open source of giving meaning to actions - our own. Re-introducing design as a medium

for stimulating physical exploration of meaning is also allowing objects to become a source of inspiration. Meaningful user experience will demand from the user an effort not common nowadays, thus its important one feels it worthwhile.

Experiment - Think of a habit of yours. Something you do every day, something you no longer pay any attention to, that you do on neutral mode. Try to think how come this habit has stayed with you for long? What is its place in your life? What can be the added value or symbolic meaning of your actions and how do they reflect on your way of life? Create a ceremony around your routine action. You can add ceremonial attributes to your action such as music, a group act, or ceremonial artifacts. You may alter your action to better fit your views and believes (or the other way around).

You Can Never Go Into the Same River Twice (Learning From Physical ‘Usual’ Experience)

WHAT I HEAR, I FORGET; WHAT I SEE, I REMEMBER; WHAT I DO, I UNDERSTAND —OLD CHINESE PROVERB

WHAT I HEAR, I FORGET; WHAT I SEE, I REMEMBER; WHAT I DO, I UNDERSTAND —OLD CHINESE PROVERB

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We tend to think that the physical is inferior, that true meaning is a theoretical notion, a virtual one. That the way from an idea to reality, from a concept to manifestation or from a thought to an object goes only in one direction. Actually, we can learn and discover from and to the physical world and design can be a medium of valuable exchange between the two worlds.

When we are young, we use our senses to explore our physical surroundings. We learn our abilities and limi-tations through pushing the boundaries and uncovering new possibilities. Through playing and interacting with objects, people and our own body, we both build a foundation on which we can create new things as well as envision the potential hidden within what surrounds us.

Our interaction with the physical environment around us is an important learning tool. John Dewey developed the theory and practice of ‘experiential education’, starting as a critique on the education system that ‘is too concerned with delivering knowledge and not enough with understanding students’. Experiential education is mainly focused on the active involvement of students in real experience, radical democracy and the creation of praxis among learners. Those, he believed, met the goals of education which he defined as ‘obtaining the freedom of thought’. Certain parameters have to be met in order to reach a quality experience which entails continuity, interaction and reflection. Experiential education makes use of tools like games, simulations, role play and stories. Experiential learning also respects


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the abilities of the ‘learner’ and blurs the distinction between the roles of teacher and student.

Many of the experiential education core principals are incorporated in the way design is taught. Learning through action, exploring your own creativity and reflecting on your process are key factors in a designer’s professional development. As Aristotle said ‘for the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them’. In the relationship between designer and user most of those important attributes are absent. We do not expect much from the user when we create a product, not allowing room for error. We don’t take risks, we try not to surprise. It envisions a passive user that holds no initiative or pro-activeness. Most objects

Fig 8. Tinkering school – founded by Gever Tulley in order to pr ovide kids from the

today are accompanied by a manual which coincides with traditional methods of teaching. Manuals are focused on teaching users the possibilities and limitations of the object; they don’t teach any skill and have no bearing on the user’s possibilities and potential as a human being. Manuals leave the least ‘room for error’ as possible. In today’s objects there is little to no place for intuition or discovery. The user is objectified in the same way as the product is.

Fig 8. The Tinkering school was founded by Gever Tulley in order to provide kids from the age of 8 to 17 the possibility of ‘learning how to build stuff by fooling around’.


Experiment - Choose a random skill you posses, a small one yet an appealing one. Choose three friends with whom you are used to different means of contact (pen pal, golf buddies...) try to explore different means to pass on your skill.

Alternative - Choose a random skill you have no clue about. Keep it simple yet still interesting. Try to find three people to teach you this wonderful skill. Observe your learning process.

Feel free to combine both experiments in any way you see fit.

Most Of What We Learn, We Learn Indirectly(Introducing Play As A Learning Experience Tactic)

EARLY TO RISE AND EARLY TO BED MAKES A MALE HEALTHY AND WEALTHY AND DEAD —JAMES THURBER

EARLY TO RISE AND EARLY TO BED MAKES A MALE HEALTHY AND WEALTHY AND DEAD —JAMES THURBER

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Newton came up with the law of gravity by observing an apple falling off a tree, Archimedes found his ‘eureka’ while bathing in a tub. In today’s society we are so consumed by our everyday routine and our casual actions that we fail to explore our curiosity, to reflect on our actions. We don’t take the time to indulge our creativeness, to play around.

Playing is left for children while adults are expected to follow the rules of society and fit in. Playing is an activity where rules can be bent (some actions that are allowed in play are outlawed within the social world outside), while the ‘magical circle’ of play allows for experimentation and acting without consideration of outcome. Play is intrinsically motivated. When we play we can ‘rehearse’ life events with no fear of consequences. Play allows an experience to be more than just fun.

Our reliance on the objects around us to shape our world view was nicely phrased by Abraham Maslow in 1966 ‘”It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” we tend to see the objects around us as closed systems that come to serve a specific purpose and that’s why our user experience of them is limited and unnoticed. The evolution of the term affordance can shed some light on the development of our understanding of objects and our goals while designing them.

The term affordance has evolved along the years. It was introduced in 1977 by James J. Gibson in his article ‘the


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theory of affordance’ as being a quality of an object that describes ‘all action possibilities of an object’. When it was later popularized in the fields of HCI and interaction design by Donald A. Norman its meaning refined to become ‘all perceived action possibilities’ which made the concept depend not only on the physical capabilities of the actor but also their goals, plans, values beliefs and past experiences. Norman’s 1988 definition makes the concept of affordance relational, rather than subjective or intrinsic and as such (he thought) it was more pertinent to practical design problems from a human-factors approach. Norman’s adaptation of the concept has seen a further shift of meaning referring to a property of an objects ‘action possibilities being easily discovered’. The evolution of the concept of affordance shows where the design approach is today and what do designers and customers alike learn to expect from the objects that surround them; Instead of opening options for interpretation and exploring, affordance has become a term that limits the view of a designer to the obvious.

In a world of abundance we specify for each object a very distinct objective. We expect that objective to be ‘loud and clear’. In the past (much as today in poor parts of the world or places like prison where means are scarce) a wider potential of simple objects was explored and thus a more imaginative and playful point of view of the world of nature and objects was practiced. For example, the difference between a Desert fork and


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a stick that can be used as a fork, a cooking aid and fishing rode at the same time.

Using play as a design strategy allows us to open a whole new and exciting set of possibilities that design could offer designers and users alike. The functional core of design can be open to interpretations, take on different meanings and allows us to rely not only on the traditional use of objects. When play is the goal, a chair doesn’t have to remain ‘just a chair’ and a difference between one chair and another one can be dramatic (in more than one way). Moreover, two similar chairs put in the hands of two different users in different contexts can tell a totally different story.

Design can be a great platform to connect between life and play, bringing together function and fiction, relating to ‘real life’ but at the same time standing consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life and paving the way to a physical transformational meaningful learning experience. The combination between the mundane nature of design in our daily surrounding and the special festive nature of play has the power to create special moments of reflection.

Next page - Fig 9. User Friendly/ a fallding chair, A chair you need to ‘get to know’ better before you can comfortably sit on, Saron Paz

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Fig 10. A ‘kludg’ submitted via thereifixedit.com

Victor turner, the anthropologist, calls play ‘liminal’ or ‘liminoid’, meaning that it occupies a threshold between reality and unreality. The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeter-minacy. Ones sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition when normal limits to thought, self-understanding and behavior are more relaxed – a situation which can lead to new perspectives. When practiced in a group, during the liminal stage, normally accepted differences between participants, such as social class, are often de-emphasized or ignored. A social structure of communities forms: one based on common humanity and equality rather than recognized hierarchy. Examples of liminal states can in rituals (such as marriage and maturity rituals), in times (twilight), in identity (teenagers, immigrants) and places (borders, crossroads).

Diverting from a minimal practical user experience to one which is different, challenging and embraces an open ended and playful approach. Design that sees the user as an active participant could be a starting point for creating a new platform for design creation, a platform on which design can take a new role in the world today. Using an experience as a focal point of the design process can on the one hand respect the individuality


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of the use (as an experience is something very personal and unique) but at the same time make the design a meeting point of a social event of discussion, debate or social interaction (as we like to share our experiences and reflect on them with others).

Fig 11. imaginary product warnings Next page - Fig 12. An extra experiment from 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) Tulley, G. & Spiegler, J. (2009)

Experiment - Meet a child not older than 5 years old. Take with you 5 items from your house and let him choose 5 items of his choice to bring along. Together you are going to make a play reenacting his parents’ daily routine (either of them). You can try to reenact his or join him. Use the object your choice.

No Pain No Gain / No Guts No Glory (Taking The Idea To The Extreme Test-Case)

MAY NOT WORK IN ALL SITUATIONS —BEAR MACE PRODUCT WARNING

MAY NOT WORK IN ALL SITUATIONS —BEAR MACE PRODUCT WARNING

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No Pain No Gain / No Guts No Glory (Taking The Idea To The Extreme Test-Case)

The DARE project was created as a test case for imple-menting the idea of a ‘meaningful user experience’, a test case that takes an extreme experience, one that takes the biggest leap away from our common perception of the role of design and the ‘designed’ objects around us. An experience that might involve pain, fear and discomfort, and make this user’s experience into a mean-ingful experience.

During history, powerful and risky experiences were the basis of important transitions in life and major identity building processes like maturity ceremonies, religious practice and social initiation. These were also considered as part of the path to spiritual salvation. The biggest myths were built on a hero overcoming great obstacles learning from the journey and ending up back where he started but as a different person. Distressed situations have also been an important foundation in the creative process. Many artists from all disciplines have created their best work driven by distress and hardship.

Today we put a lot of effort to avoid, ignore and eliminate any source of discomfort in our daily life. ‘Risk society’ is a term that emerged during the 1990’s to describe a manner in which modern society organizes in response to risk. The term is closely associated with several key writers on modernity, in particular Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck. According to sociologist Anthony Giddens risk society is ‘A society increasingly preoccupied with the future’ (and also with safety). This preoccupation generates the notion of risk’. Modern

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Fig 13. A Masochists Teapot, Jacques Carelman, Catalogue d’objets introuvables

society according to Giddens ‘is a society which unlike any preceding culture lives in the future rather than in the past’. Giddens and Beck argue that whilst humans have always been subjected to a level of risk – such as natural disaster – these have usually been perceived as produced by non-human forces. Modern societies, however, are exposed to risks such as pollution, newly discovered illnesses, crime that are the result of the modernization process itself. Giddens defines these two types of risks as external risks and manufactured risks. manufactured risks are the product of human activity, authors Giddens and Beck argue that it is possible for societies to assess the level of risk that is being produced or that is about to be produced.

This sort of reflexive introspection can, in turn, alter the planned activities themselves. The ‘risk society’ theory has been frequently criticized as being also a source of pathological avoidance that on the one hand takes a lot of effort and on the other hand also prevents us from exploring our full potential.

There are other examples of people who see in pain and fear a force that could help us heal our bodies and souls. Some have taken their life experiences and successes in confronting hardship as an inspiration for others to look in a different way at difficulties and challenges as an

No Pain No Gain / No Guts No Glory (Taking The Idea to The Extreme Test-Case)

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empowering source of strength and discovery channel into the deep ends of the human nature.

Avi Grinberg developed the ‘Grinberg Method’ which uses fear and pain as a source of empowerment in order to cure physical and mental problems. Grinberg believes that many of our illnesses and distresses lie in trying to avoid or ignore pain and fear we have encountered in our life and that those same forces can be used to empower ourselves and change for the better.

From his personal experience of the death camps of WW2 Viktor Frankl drew the outlines of his Logo-therapy theory which had been also a big part of what helped him survive the Holocaust and further develop and reinforce his theories soon after. Logo-therapy was founded on the belief that striving to find a meaning to one’s life is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans. The following list of tenets represents the basic principles of logo-therapy:

- Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones. - Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life. - We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering.

Frankl warns against ‘...affluence, hedonism and materialism...’ in the search for meaning. And outlines


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three different ways through which we can discover meaning in life: 1. by doing a deed 2. by experiencing a value 3. by suffering.

Not much of the traditional relics of confronting fear, pain and other discomforts have remained. Much of the spiritual, symbolic and the ritualistic nature of those practices have been replaced by thrills and entertainment driven experiences. We can find pain in the tattoo and piercing culture, risk in casinos and extreme sports and fear in horror movies, magic shows and other thrilling attractions in theme parks and joy rides. The fine line between fun and non-fun has been explored for generations.

DARE is a platform that will allow people to explore our attraction and inhibitions. Within a fair ground environment visitors are invited to try ‘at their own risk’ and give in to different devices. Whether its jumping from a high platform, getting locked in a confined space or enduring a painful act of devotion, all of the offered experiences are there to trigger an emotional response and be followed by conscious reflection. Though the setting is not of products it can be considered a ‘behind the looking glass’ version of ‘window shopping’. Following the try-out section is a take-a-way shop that offers objects that can be taken home to further explore behind closed doors. A visitors log will record visitors impression and short after thoughts.

Next page - Fig 14. The Thrill Laboratory, specializing in creation of tailored emotional experiences

Experiment - take a clip and try to close it on different parts of your body for as long as you can. Discover new sensations, find out which parts hurt the most and which you just think are more sensitive than others. Go as far as you can. You can use a friend if you find self-inflicting too challenging.

Epilogue: At Your Own Risk

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in the introduction to his book ‘change by design’ Tim Brown (CEO and president of IDEO) writes: ‘the innovative breakthroughs of the past have become the routine procedures of today… what we need are new choices—new products that balance the needs of individuals and of society as a whole; new ideas that tackle the global challenges of health, poverty, and education; new strategies that result in differences that matter and a sense of purpose that engages everyone affected by them’.

In a world of abundance, driven by an overwhelming supply made to encourage a synthetic demand, each designer should question any new object that comes under his hands and wonder—is it really worth the trouble? Does anybody really need this? Designers should regain a sense of purpose; reclaim a place in society as visionaries, as leaders, as doers.

In this paper I tried to offer a choice of a path that sends designers and users alike to unfamiliar territory. A chance for both to explore their place, identity and relationship through questioning our obvious surroundings. Through a playful, insightful setting and with the help of open ended, playful objects we can trigger a thought, a discussion, a doubt, an idea.

Using the user experience as a platform, we can harness one of our biggest assets, our own undeniable uniqueness to spring new points of view, different perspectives and manifest a plentiful of abilities, views

Epilogue: At Your Own Risk (I Think Therefore I Am, I Am Therefore I Do)

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and identities. We can renew the honest, intimate and mutual relationship between designer and user. Through direct physical interaction we can reconnect with our material surroundings as well as with our senses and sensitiveness. Through meaningful experiences we can give new value to the objects that surround us and maybe open new options for designers to create them.


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Children of Our Age Wislava Shimborska

We are children of our age, it’s a political age.

All day long, all through the night, all affairs—yours, ours, theirs—are political affairs.

Whether you like it or not, your genes have a political past, your skin, a political cast, your eyes, a political slant.

Whatever you say reverberates, whatever you don’t say speaks for itself. So either way you’re talking politics.

Even when you take to the woods, you’re taking political steps on political grounds.

Apolitical poems are also political, and above us shines a moon no longer purely lunar.

To be or not to be, that is the question. And though it troubles the digestion it’s a question, as always, of politics.

To acquire a political meaning you don’t even have to be human.

Raw material will do, or protein feed, or crude oil, or a conference table whose shape was quarreled over for months;

Should we arbitrate life and death at a round table or a square one?

Meanwhile, people perished, animals died, houses burned, and the fields ran wild just as in times immemorial and less political.


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Bibliography

Bing, A. (1989) Peace Studies as Experiential Education, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 504, p. 48-60.

Brown, T. (2009) Change by Design, New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Carelman (1969) Catalogue d’objets introuvables, Jerusalem: Center Print (Hebrew addition).

Frankel, E. V. (1946) Mans Search For Meaning, New York: Washington Square Press.

Grinberg, A. (1994) Fear, Pain and Other Friends, Israel: Astrolog Publishers (in Hebrew).

Koon, J. & Powell, A. (2003) Wearing of this Garment does not enable you to Fly, New York: Free Press.

Neil, J. (2005) John Dewey, the Modern Father of Experimental Education ( HYPERLINK “http://wilderdom.com/”http://wilderdom.com/experientialExperientialDewey.html).

Norman, D. A. (1988) The Design of Every-Day Things, New York: MIT Press Edition.

Pine B. J. & Gilmore, J. H. (1999) The Experience Economy, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Sutton-Smith, B. (2001) The Ambiguity of Play, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Toffler, A. (1970) Future Shock, Israel: Am-Oved (Hebrew Edition).

Tulley, G. & Spiegler, J. (2009) 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), Montara: Tinkering Unlimited.

Turner V. W. & Bruner E. M. (1986) The Anthropology of Experience, Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Visit also:

http://sarohm-dare.blogspot.com http://sarohm-misuse.blogspot.com

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