Planning: The big why and more

## This project is relevant because…

With discussions around life-centred design and the threat that AI poses to our identity as humans, I think there is a need to take a step back and reassess where we want to be in the future. The industrial revolution has allowed us to achieve some great things but it's worthwhile to question what 'value' means to us moving forward from here. How much more time, effort and money can we save and what will we spend it on? I think 'time' is a key factor in interaction design and the approach of 'slow design' allows us to think more intentionally about what we're doing and why it matters. Not so much mindfulness as meaningfulness - of our individual experience, our behaviour and relationships with our surroundings.

I think this fits into the SDG of good health and well-being because it's very much about how we can bring about shift to a sustainable, mindful outlook.

It is important to me because I have hit a road bump which has made me reassess what matters. I also have many friends who are consciously stepping away from technology and the 'ambient awareness' it offers. I wasn't born into all the tech we have today but slowly acquired it through high school and college. I think that makes me curious about what a life of more conscious consumption would feel like.

## Related projects

- [Slow games](http://www.ishback.com/slowgames/index.html) by Ishac Bertran

- [Unread messages](https://matlo.me/unread-messages) by Matteo Loglio

- [Disrupting Clocks](http://eds.siat.sfu.ca/?eds_project=dear-alarm-clock) by Everyday Design Studio

- [Uninvited Guests](http://superflux.in/index.php/work/uninvited-guests/#) by Superflux

- [dealing with :(](http://iohanna.com/dealing-with) by Iohanna Nicenboim

## My explorations so far...

After defining my interest areas and looking for more examples fo work, I had a lot of good directions which were useless. This is because I did not have a strong angle of inquiry. It felt like just more serious Pinteresting.

Simone explained to me the importance of framing a belief or statement from which to explore a subject.

Yasaman brought up an interesting point about how to think about new interfaces– it needs to have a context and clear idea of what is being interfaced with before you can explore the tech.

I spoke to Alexander Silva Lopera from Neurons Inc. about the work they're doing in mental tracking which was interesting and slightly intimidating. The details of which seemed like a very large black box to me. So I gave up on that direction.

Bret Victor is one of the most notable interaction designers to think about how we need to exploit the human sense in our work. He has a number of small sketches that demonstrate the control that tangible, visual interfaces can provide us as humans. While reading and watching his stuff though, I did feel like the output would tend towards being either a tool for more intuitive self-expression? I found it hard to imagine many exciting possibilities.

Timo Arnall has some great work in the form of The Immaterials Project and the many experiments at BERG. It was in the space of informatics that I learnt about. It is a combination of computing and design to create more reflective outputs. It t

I read articles by Ralph Ammer and Vanessa Carpenter. They made me think about the role of technology and how we needed to think about what we want to achieve for our futures. The TED talk by Anab Jain from Superflux was also very provoking. Anab says "Creating concrete experiences can bridge the disconnect between today and tomorrow.” This statement made me want to contribute to that conversation on the future.

At the same time, I spoke to Annelie about the field of tangible data visualisation and how I could approach it as an interaction designer. She shared many sample projects with me and pointed out how research and designing the 'experience' is what can make it a unique interaction piece rather than an art piece.

I then discovered this paper on 'Slow Design and meaningful interactions'. It opened up to me a field that I immediately knew I wanted to explore. The element of time in interactions and the relationship we build with object and the relationship it forms over that time, even between many people is fascinating to me. I also introduced myself to the concept of Actor-Network Theory and the perspective it offers on objects as more than passive things but as subjects that participate in our lives and serve as artefacts of our culture. It made me question what our everyday objects of the future could be if we had a re-arrangement of values. What rituals do we follow today? What is the meaning we attach to certain objects and how is it formed? There were so many inter-connections forming in my mind that I decided to create a mind map. It aimed to visualise how I saw slow design connecting to time, life-centred design, future shaping and the physical objects. This was a turning point for me because suddenly all my earlier directions felt shallow...like they were output-oriented when what I was looking to uncover was a perspective like this.

In the book Metaphors We Live By, authors George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explain that our positive association with speed dates back to the dawn of humanity, when early man observed that healthy humans walked at a quicker pace than those who were not healthy. The rest, in our primitive lizard brains, is history. Fast is better than slow. But if there is a common thread to startup success stories, it is that focus is more important than speed.

I wanted to explore what I could gather from the local context of Copenhagen and Denmark. This sparked renewed interest in the Designmuseum exhibit I had visited on Danish and Japan furniture and design sensibilities. Danish design has some values that connect strongly to ideas of life-centred sustainability. They embrace modernism, everyday usability, simplicity and permanence with material knowledge, quality and a layer of reflection.

The keynote at Techfestival by Angela Ogantula on futures and work drew my attention to how much our work defines us and our purpose. Hence, the possibility of them making our jobs obsolete demands that we even relook at the concept of work and the satisfaction it brings us. What will we do with ourselves in this ideal future where everything is not just automated but intelligent and almost persona-like?

Speaking to Francesca

The big why is around the role that objects play in shaping our identity and around our role as consumers – consumers of quick communication, easy to access textual information, video content, food and objects of decoration.

The approach of my research can be structured around prototypes and co-creation. On a parallel track, draw inspiration from seemingly unrelated fields that relate to the philosophy of slow design.

Respondents:

- Geologist: How do rocks form into minerals over time ? Are there some interesting phenomenon that occur in certain cases?

- Slow food person: What are the benefits of slow food and what aspects of the lifestyle give one meaning?

- Yoga instructor: How does the practice of yoga influence one's perception of time and daily living?

- Furniture makers: How has the process of making by hand influence their way of seeing?

- Techie: How do they view this increased connectivity and speed thing? What do they do to disconnect?

## Design challenge (WIP)

##### Context:

Everyday life and spaces

##### Examples:

1. Street corner

2. living room

3. Kitchen

4. work desk

##### Nature:

Speculative, interactive

##### Goal:

1. Using time as a tool to build interactions that make people feel more in-control of what they consume

2. Opening up possibilities to imagine alternate interactions around technology that don't focus on efficiency

##### Provocations:

- How slow can you go?

- Slow vs Annoying

- The decay of dead computers

- Mindful data storage

- Snail mail

- Progressive image viewing