Interface (about Smart Cities and User Experience)
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
4 likes•1,161 views
When we talk about new technologies, it is often about their practical applications. But what are the underlying urban ideals concealed in technologies? What if we think about Cities as we do about any other interface? See "notes" tab on the right to check the text related to each slide :)
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to Interface (about Smart Cities and User Experience)
Similar to Interface (about Smart Cities and User Experience) (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Interface (about Smart Cities and User Experience)
- 1. 1 Interface“The place at which independent and often unrelated systems meet and act on or communicate each other” David Contreras (davidcontrerasm@gmail.com)
- 2. 2 “The computer will permeate every aspect of our life”
- 3. 3 “The computer is permeating every aspect of our life”
- 5. 5 “The City as interface”
- 6. 6 -Bill Gates “Thanks to the magic of software, our lives will be soon more convenient, more pleasant, more efficient and more agreeable.”
- 7. 7 Idealised City (The Simpsons: Bart sells his soul)
- 8. 8 …but it also changes the society
- 12. 12 -No longer participants of the street life
- 13. 13 Buzz Aldrin -Apollo 11 moonwalker
- 14. 14 -Smart citizen kit for local urban monitoring
- 15. 15
- 16. 16 Libertarian City as a market Republican Balance? Communitarian Common identity
- 17. 17 Not clear cut categories
- 18. 18 -Cedric Price, 1966 “Technology is the answer” (But what was the question?) Part II
- 19. 19 From life between buildings to life between systems
- 20. 20 Then and now
- 21. 21 iBeacon
- 23. 23 “Citymapper: Saving a life every 3 minutes”
- 24. 24 Ethnography & Culture in Design
- 25. 25
- 26. 26 Urban innovation centre: Connected cyclists
- 29. 29 Draw a Map of London (in 2 minutes)
- 30. 30 London tube map 2009
- 31. 31 London tube map 2015
- 35. 35 Mental models
- 37. 37 User Testing Surveys 300 iterations!
- 39. 39 The ´walker´ Addressing Directional information Planner map Finder map Street finder
- 41. 41 Resources: Urban IxD manifesto: http://urbanixd.eu/documents-publications/ IxDA London meetup: http://www.meetup.com/IxDA-London/ Urban innovation centre: http://www.urbaninnovationcentre.org.uk Legible London: https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/boroughs/legible-london UX and the city: https://vimeo.com/86268742 Smart Citizen kit: https://smartcitizen.me London Datastore: http://data.london.gov.uk
Editor's Notes
- 1. We may think on interfaces when we are in front of a computer, in front of a mobile phone, a tablet, kiosk…
- 2. But, as we saw in Donald Norman´s book, the computer will permeate every aspect of our life.
- 3. But, this was written almost 20 years ago, so we may say is permeating…
- 4. From cars to fridges, watches, …
- 5. …and cities. (Very good book, by the way, most of this text is based on it).
- 6. Right now hundreds of companies are creating the city of the future. A city full of sensors and communication networks monitoring from traffic circulation to air pollution, and using the collected data to make improvements without any human intervention.
- 7. But for those who don´t believe in magic, it is good to remember that, when we talk about new technologies, we often talk just about their practical application. Technology is presented as a convenient solution to real or supposed problems and it promises to make our lives better, our cities will also become safer, more sustainable and more efficient. In short, technology is an almost inescapable magical power that will improve our urban society.
- 8. …but it also CHANGES that society.
- 9. So the key question is, how technologies are changing us? In general terms this debate is currently dominated by two scenarios: the smart city and the social city, both of which have their supporters and opponents.
- 10. The smart city embodies the Bill Gates scenario: the city is full of sensors, with software and networks that enable optimal traffic circulation and energy use. The mobile phone is used to personalise the urban experience, for example through software that recommends restaurants or shops that fits the user´s profile. It sounds good.
- 11. BUT, this scenario has its critics. American architecture critic Paul Goldberger says that the very media and communication technologies that make life for individual consumers so much easier are a threat to the continued existence of urban society as a whole.
- 12. Will city dwellers still enter into relationships with their physical surroundings? Will they participate in community life or will they create like cocoons transforming the city into an extension of their private domains? Goldberger claims that people who walk down the street using their mobile phones are no longer participating in street life: they are there in body but not in spirit. And it is this very attitude that poses a threat to how the city functions as a democratic community. As he says “(…) the street is the ultimate public space and walking along it is the defining urban experience. It is all of us - different people who lead different lives”- coming together in the urban mixing chamber. But what if half of them are elsewhere, there in body but not in any other way?
- 13. Even worse. Some people say there is a lack of real innovations. Instead, they worry, we are creating trivial toys, without doing something that makes a difference in people’s lives.
- 14. Not everybody is so pessimistic. Others see the rise of these new technologies as a way to give city dwellers more control over urban life, reinforcing the relationships within local communities.
- 15. It is important not to become fixated on these two scenarios: Smart City / Social City. Good/Bad. The Force/Dark side. What matter are the underlying urban ideals they embody. How the city as a community should work. There may be three scenarios where these technologies might drive us:
- 16. The first one is based on the ideal of the city as a market, where people live their individual lives in freedom. It is a place where city dwellers have no reciprocal responsibilities. In this vision political and cultural aspects of city life fade into the background or are considered private matters. The second one is the ideal of the communitarian city, which is based on the ideal of a harmonious local community in which all city dwellers share more or less the same way of life. in this vision the emphasis is on the common identity of the collective and not on the individual. nowadays the idea of the communitarian city is mainly found in nostalgic retrospectives filled with a village-like sense of community. The last one is the republican city. Here, the city also provides the freedom to choose between different ways of life, but at the same time city dwellers share responsibility for the city as a whole. The city dweller is first and foremost a citizen and may not completely withdraw from urban society.
- 17. But again these three models are not clear-cut categories. They may overlap and are interesting to start the debate about how are we using the technology and where it is driven us as society. To what extent can the three urban ideals be traced in our cities today? And, how urban media fit in with these developments?
- 18. The problem last couple of years has been that Smart City projects tend to take a big picture view of systems, considering technology from a infrastructural point of view. But this is not how we experience the city. And at the end we want cities where people want to live. That´s why Interaction design or a User Centred design process are so important to shape future Cities, because we experience them in first person.
- 19. That´s how we start thinking in terms of UIxD. And we might say: but hasn't that always been the core concern of urban planners? Sure. However, 'the making of the city' is no longer just their concern. And no longer their methodologies, expertise, and theories are enough to address the issues of the 21st century city. That's why increasingly we see designers of all sorts, IT specialists, urban anthropologists, philosophers, HCI researchers, artists and sociologists teaming up in coalitions that up to a few years ago were unthinkable.
- 20. Because cities have changed in this way…
- 21. …but in this way too.
- 22. …or this way.
- 23. And in this way. Because we may think on Citymapper, for example, as an extension of our city mental model. So, the interesting question is: How could we as UX Designers help on creating solutions for cites?
- 24. Easy! Just using our same skill set on a different environment. In this book, for example, 16 students do a 14 weeks study of different boroughs in London, proposing improvements and creating prototypes.
- 25. Almost every skill or tool they use in the book has been used for almost every UX Designer in the past: research, surveys, data analysis, sketching, prototyping, storytelling, film-making…
- 26. Another example: here they are not just creating solutions for smart cities, but trying to imagine solutions for future cities, they are trying to provoke thoughts, and they use IxD, prototyping, and storytelling.
- 27. Review project: Connected streets (http://www.connectedstreets.org/connected-cyclists-speculative-prototyping/)
- 28. The last example is “Legible London”. Legible London is a way finding project designed to provide better information throughout the Capital for people who want to walk. A study conducted on behalf of TfL found that the present multitude of pedestrian sign systems in central London are ineffective and often confusing , and that there was a consequent over-reliance on the Tube map to help people navigate above ground. This project has been designed to be in synch with the way we think and act when we´re moving on foot from one place to another, encouraging people to walk where they can. Unlike the logical grid on NY, London has no structured delineation. Even worse: before this project, there were 32 separate way finding systems for pedestrians in central London, and their designs varied in colour, shape, typeface, materials and branding. At the heart of the legible London approach to pedestrian information is the idea of ´mental mapping´. Any successful way finding system needs to support people in building their mental maps. The way our brain mentally map areas means that when we encounter a new area, we start with specific arrival and destination points, which form our entry into the way finding system (´nodes´). From there we find out routes between these points. We build knowledge of the area surrounding the nodes (´locality´) and, gradually, clusters of localities (´neighbourhoods´). (If this is not progressive disclosure I don´t know what it is). There is a lot of documents on the internet explaining this project, but for those who don´t want to read them, you can watch a video called “UX and the city”, exploring the same ideas and problems (https://vimeo.com/86268742).
- 29. But, before continuing with this project, I want you to draw a map of London.
- 30. So, what is the problem with this tube map?
- 31. The river. During the workshops and usability testing rounds, they found that the river was the most important element to create a mental model of London.
- 32. We were talking about progressive disclosure, and about how the brain creates mental models: From the big picture to more specific areas. They call this stones skimming across the pond.
- 33. But that is just one way of using the city. There are more…
- 34. So here we can apply all our knowledge about persona creation, user journeys, workflows, even customer experience mapping.
- 35. By defining known areas in terms of 5 minutes walk, journeys between areas seem more easily walkable (in this case Chinatown…).
- 36. …so they created a hierarchy of information that gradually and logically sub-divides areas into smaller and smaller chunks.
- 37. …applying agile, UCD, and so…
- 38. And bearing in mind legibility, using of upper and lower case, details about accessibility, colour and contrast, 3D buildings for people who struggle reading maps, including people with learning disabilities… changing the north depending on the position of the signal…
- 39. The anatomy of the artefact.