[-empyre-] march discussion - the prototype perspective

[adrian at cnmat.berkeley.edu]

"But I wonder if that is not natural
of design as a standardizing practice - i.e. the process of setting
parameters for /the other/ - and in the end every form of design that
is not intimate and personal would be directed towards a normalization
of uses. In that sense, the idea of an antiergonomy sounds very
intriguing. Would it consist in creating difficulties of use? Or of a
mode of use that depends on the ad-hoc production of ergonomy? Could
such object be shared with other people? "

I am using ergonomy and my recent insight that in fact  antiergonomy rules
to pierce the veil of objects imbued with charismatic authority (holy
water, iPhone, etc) and
expose the often contradictory value systems of the stakeholders.
You can see illustrations of my method (and some charismatic prototypes I
develop)
 in my Stanford HCI as talk 4 in this list of free videos:
http://myvideos.stanford.edu/player/slplayer.aspx?coll=4e71b33b-154f-452f-a2a4-4f2146149359&s=true

A quick illustration might help. Let's look at the french baguette. It has
a number of
features of value to the baker that are not ergonomic to the buyer. It is
made of white
bread and of less cost and nutritional value than whole wheat. It goes
stale fast so you have
to go back to the baker several times a day and it is too long to fit in
bags so it sticks out
advertising itself. At first glance we see two value system with some
mutually beneficial aspects and some antagonistic elements. It turns out
to be more subtle though. Baguettes used to
be expensive (and in fact deliberately shaped to evade a law controlling
bread prices) so
advertising them was a benefit to purchaser (as declaration of social
status) and to the
baker to attract more customers.
Notice that many of these value systems would not emerge when looking at
the baguette
functionally as an engineer might or nutritionally. This is a common
situation
and can be seen in its extreme form with holy water, the value of which
stems from
social agreement to its value established by ritual not by engineering in
the usual sense.
(for those of you suspicious of an overinterpretation of the baguette I
ask you take my word
that the analysis is grounded in a thorough analysis of the history, laws,
and public debate
surrounding its invention last century which I will eventually publish).
Connecting all this to prototypes I believe I have started to illuminate
an assertion of
Bill Buxton's that a sketch is fundamentally different from a prototype. A
sketch has more
ambiguity and fluidity and can be debated and altered without encumbrances
from
emergent values of a physical incarnation. Engagement with a prototype
invokes a deeper
commitment for users and invites judgements and assertions of values based
on experience not imagined experience. For many builders
of prototypes it is the unanticipated values and applications of the
object that are sought.
They are not therefor mere models for reproduction in an industrial
process but
probes to synthesize new traces of behavior.

"Could you please expand on
that idea, and how it relates to teaching people produce their own
prototypes?"

I have explicitly integrated the above ideas in my creative process. When
I build new music controllers I bring them to Maker Faire and set them up
for the 30000 visitors to play and observe how people play them. Recently
I have collected many new playing techniques of my 6foot long Guitar/Koto
hybrid this way watching as people grapple with adapting their existing
musical and non-musical gestures to this new instrument. This reflexively
shows me how my guitar/harp playing practice constraints my thinking of
what is possible.

Going one step further I show people how to build my fabric XY and
pressure pad (it takes 10 minutes to an hour) design
(http://www.adrianfreed.com/content/etextile-pressure-sensing-touch-pad).
Some 10 or so have been built so far to my knowledge (there is a viral
component to this that is hard to track). What is interesting is a shift
in commitment which you can see
in Diane Douglas's account of her application of the pads. Notice she
doesn't refer to me or
to the pads construction, they are just a component of the larger
instrument she is developing and learning to
play.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU8qN983sAk. I admit that this claim
is difficult to support but I claim anyway that if my name or a brand had
been associated with the pads (e.g. as with Buchla controllers), she would
not have described her instrument the same way and it wouldn't be hers for
her in the same way.
I view this as a success of the design and the process and an interesting
subterfuge of
the usual processes of rationalization of charismatic authority (a la
"Weber"). Such subterfuge
may be underlying many of the charismatic prototyping platforms, e.g.
processing, Arduino.