Sweet Dreams Are Made of This 2019
Interaction Design Theory Seminar 5th semester
Instructors:
Dr Joëlle Bitton
Martin Dusek
Course Outline:
12 sessions structured around the notions of engagement, positioning, research and ownership
Portfolio:
Session 01 — What is the Action?
This session was structured in three parts. At the beginning of this session we did a quick look at the syllabus & assignments. In the second part we did an initial discussion based on reflections from the last two years of studies. The first task was to pick something that had the biggest impact on ourself during this 2 years regarding to design. The second task was to present a contribution that you had made yourself for the class.
- From the last Design Theory Seminar:
The Robert Moses Long Island bridges are something that fascinated me the most, because these bridges were designed with the intention that buses couldn’t travel under them -> they were built low. Main intention was to seperate the poor people with the upper middle class. What I can infer from that is that design decisions are able to create big social effects. Either it’s negative or positiv. - One impact I made in the past 2 years was, that every ms — especially in video games on a competitive level — counts. We sometimes play in the atelier and I tried to explain to my colleges, that the input lag is an important factor. It can make the difference between winning and losing. At first they didn’t believe me and I started to modify my controller to get some advantages. After some game sessions they started to believe me and they have seen it in real time, that I’m actually faster than them. Nowadays we are modifying our controllers together. What I tried to show or contribute with this example was, that even the smallest and underestimating detail can have a big effect.
At the end of this session we watched some excerpts from two movies recalling the legacy of Act Up :
— How to Survive A Plague (David France, 2012)
— 120 BPM (Robin Campillo, 2013)
Session 02 — In Formation
Our assignment for this week was to print out a poster of a campaign that contributed to inspire, to bring awareness and to awake individuals and collectivity towards action and to present the core of the contribution.
I came across an awareness-campaign which is supposed to shake people awake about the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, because a world without antibiotics is getting closer and closer.
Overuse or misuse of antibiotics can cause bacteria to develop resistance to these drugs — making antibiotics less effective or even useless when you need them the most. As we know Antibiotics are lifesaving medications and this trend of overusing it is a serious risk for humanity. By 2050, there will be about 10 million people worldwide that will die from resistant organisms each year, which is more than the number of deaths caused by cancer.
The biggest problem is that for the pharma companies the business is no longer worth it. In other words — not that rentable anymore. The resistances develop too rapidly and the development of these drug are very cost and time intensive.
Action is needed at all levels — individuals, governments, major organizations — and by all nations. I can imagine that in the future there will be a strike against the pharmaceutical industry at the size of the current climate strike.
After the short presentations we were looking into the term intersectionality: The theory that the overlap of various social identities, as race, gender, sexuality, and class, contributes to the specific type of systemic oppression and discrimination experienced by an individual.
Session 03 — Positioning in writing
At the beginning of the class we presented our chosen Manifestos that were before 1920 and explained what it makes still relevant for our time.
The mutual influence of form and colour now becomes clear. A yellow triangle, a blue circle, a green square, or a green triangle, a yellow circle, a blue square — all these are different and have different spiritual values.
— Wassily Kandinsky
The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky wrote this manifesto shortly after completing the watercolour Untitled, often considered to be the first ever abstract painting and also responsible for revolutionizing the way people think about art.
He claimed that seeing any given combination of colour and form will cause a particular “inner resonance” in the viewer. As a teacher at the Bauhaus, he gave his students an assignment to instinctively match circle, square, triangle with red, yellow and blue. And most of them got it “right” in his view (yellow triangle, red square, blue circle).
He also believed artists could express their feelings with lines, shapes and color was mainly influenced by music and sound. In my point of view it’s still relevant because there exists Music Visualizers that reacts visually and in real time to music. This determination is also important for todays corporate design or logo production. Banks or security companies tend to use thick fonts and blue colors to radiate seriousness and security.
At the second part of this class we did three following writing exercises about following questions:
Who are you?
I’m the guy who hates being distracted by things (not humans) when I’m in the flow. Example: I’m using something (mostly a consumer product) and it doesn’t work at all the way I imagined it would. This kind of distractions makes me angry and I see them personally as time wasters.
What is your ambition as a designer?
My ambition as a designer is to create sustainable, efficient and enjoyable products or services where no one gets disadvantaged/discriminated. While every human kind is different the products/services should be attuned to the user. Where products or services are able to adapt to the specific user. I have made the observation that more and more such products are appearing on the market. One of them is the company nura where their headphones are capable to learn and adapt to your unique hearing. Smart products are adaptive to the environment, the task requirements and the user. Truly smart products would not only be able to sense changes in the environment and respond accordingly. but also be able to learn about the effectiveness of the response via feedback. I think that human factors will make an enormous contribution to the design of consumer products in the future.
Choose a topic in your interest and say something that only you have been thinking about?
A world without input lag where every action is executed directly without delay. Where humans feel more connected or linked to the input device — a device that doesn’t feel like a foreign body part but instead more like a part of the body. This is a topic that interests me very much and many people are not even aware of it. Last year (2018) I was inspired by the Benjamin Libet experiment.
Session 04/05/06/07 — Free Flow Retreat
The purpose of “Free Flow” is that mentors and students can spend time together in an alternative mode to the usual school environment. In a different environment and with different tools, we discussed together interests and issues ranging from the forthcoming thesis to life in general. The 2-day Free Flow seminar took place in the Atelierhäuser am Waldrand. The location was very inspiring and quite beautiful.
At the beginning we have presented our 3 brought along books. I was inspired by them, because the term “time” appeared in each of them. Time has always fascinated me because it describes the sequence of events. Either something happens fast or slow (not only physically but also by sensation).
On the first day we also took a walk through the forest and had the opportunity to discuss our first thoughts for the Bachelor Thesis. Thanks to the exchange I gained new impressions. After the walk we transferred the ideas to a paper and discussed them further.
As a result, the term input lag or latency reappeared. Since I like to play video games (when I find the time), this term came towards me for the first time. The lower it is, the more advantage I can gain over others. That’s why the peripheral manufacturers in the gaming sector are constantly developing better and newer technologies to keep latency as low as possible.
At a low level / Casual gamer are widely unaware of the phenomenon of input lag. I have made the experience and observation that when you tried to draw attention to it you were ridiculed with the argument that it doesn’t make such a big difference. After a longer period with the same game they started to notice the difference. This phenomenon fascinates me — as if the human body and mind would merge more and more together with the Input & Output Device and become one that recognizes every small difference as an imperfection/error.
Input lag:
Input lag is used to describe the delay between an input from the point of stimulation to action — for example, pressing a button and seeing the event after a millisecond.
Latency:
Also called reaction time or latency (time) in various contexts, is the time between an action or event and the occurrence of a reaction. The action can be hidden and only show itself through the reaction.
Through various discussions, I realized that a low latency time does not always have to be positive, but can also have a negative effect on the user experience.
For example, you would like to deposit cash into your account at the automatic deposit machine. If this were to happen immediately without delay, I am convinced that the test persons are highly likely to interpret it as inaccurate or even an error. You want to be sure that the machine works in the background and does the job correctly. Trust plays an essential role, especially when the medium money is involved. I find this assumption quite interesting and will look for further examples and analyze them in more detail.
In addition, the following questions arose:
— In which situations is the delay annoying?
— Where are we already used to it?
— Does a lower or higher latency generate stress?
— What about boredom in relation to delay? Will it disappear or rise?
On the second day we looked again at our sketches and notes and worked out our thoughts a little further. During the performance I gave the task to count 60sec in his mind without cheating and to say “now” at exactly 1min. Of about 15 people, only one was exact.
The result was however interesting, since everyone possessed an individual speed, the differences were acoustically evident by saying “now”. Also here, the exact accuracy counted and every ms more or less per second, would have falsified the result of the person or in the best case would have even compensated.
In individual writing I imagined a world in which the journey as we know it (on foot, bus, car, plane, ship) is completely omitted and instantly happens. I ask myself whether this has more advantages than disadvantages. My guess is that the absence of the trip the country or holidays abroad is no longer valued. The feeling to be in a special place would certainly suffer from it, because between A and B the “connection” would be missing, which defines the completeness of a journey and/or destination. The longer I have to fly somewhere in the world, the more I appreciate the destination because I consider it a special place that isn’t next door.
Goals until Session 08 — 11.11.2019
— making a detailed literature review of 8 essays (no web articles or entries) that helps me advancing my research and unpack the topic “latency”
— narrowing down the topic from big overview to 2–3 possible angles
— making one paragraph introduction in that sense to my literature review
— finding 8 related projects + making a matrix of them where I situate my own interest
Keywords:
— input lag
— latency
— reaction time
— Benjamin Libet
— response time
— efficiency
— user experience
— time
— delay
— milliseconds (ms)
— interference
Session 08 — Making Sense
After the Free Flow seminar I did some more research and found out that there was not much information about the term input lag and when I finally gathered something it was related to videogames and it was also too technical from my point of view.
Then I came up with the idea to focus more on the human senses in terms of delay and latency. I came directly to the term Chronoception / Time Perception, which refers to the subjective experience of time. I was so fascinated by it, that I watched several videos and also read literature about it.
We sometimes perceive time quickly and sometimes slowly. So I decided to focus more on the concept of deceleration and acceleration and develop it further.
Literature review
Time Experience Design
The concept of time has fascinated scientists, writers and philosophers for years. Our lives are framed by and hang on the perception of it. We are able to perceive the course of time, especially short durations such as with the help of devices like a a clock that we humans have created to measure time. Therefore, the concept of time may seem like a human construct, but it is also one that is reflected in the rhythms of nature and other creatures. Certain time intervals are definitely social constructs, such as the length of a year, a month, a week, measuring hours, minutes or seconds.
Numerous experiments have shown that humans have the ability to accurately measure the passage of time. One experiment I did at the Free Flow seminar was counting up to 30 seconds and shouting “now”. This showed that each participant had their own individual rhythm and perception of time. The clock of the mind is more elusive.
What is most fascinating about the perception of time is the phenomenon of distortion time (oddball effect), which depends on positive or negative situations or emotions. An example of distorted time is the perception that time slows down in a crisis (like a car accident) and they have the difficulty to remember the accident in detail. In a positive unexpected event, the opposite happens.
Personally, I am still fascinated by this topic and would like to analyze this phenomenon in relation to our upcoming technological era of the IoT 2020 in which our perceptual senses are getting more stimulated than ever before in our everyday lives (especially chronoception / time perception). My first question already raised: Will digitisation change our perception of time positively or negatively?
01_ Jakob Nielsen, J. N. (1993). 5. Usability Heuristics. In J. N. Jakob Nielsen (Ed.), Usability Engineering (pp. 135–136). 340 Pine Street, Sixth Floor, San Francisco,: Morgan Kaufmann.
At Chapter 5, three major time periods (determined by human perceptual abilities) are considered when optimizing application performance.
- 0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously.
- 1.0 second is about the limit for the user’s flow of thought to stay uninterrupted, even though the user will notice the delay.
- 10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user’s attention focused on the dialogue.
02_ Hammond, C. (2012). Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception. 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE: Canongate.
The core of this book is the idea that the experience of time is actively created by our minds. We experience time as flow, rather than stasis. Time is not only a construction of a society which dictates the pattern of our live, it’s also the way how we individually experience it.
03_ Seow, S. C. (2008). Designing and Engineering Time: The Psychology of Time Perception in Software. Rights and Contracts Department: Addison-Wesley.
Any interaction with a device can take seconds or even hours to respond to the user. How an interaction is designed to take a user’s time is a critical factor in the usability and overall perception of a product or service. A poorly designed solution can waste a user’s time. On the other hand, a well thought-out user solution can increase user satisfaction despite annoying delays. While time is objectively measured, it is subjectively experienced. The key to engineering subjective time is to engineer the factors that affect the experience of time.
04_ Eagleman, D. M. (2008). Human time perception and its illusions. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 18(2), 131–136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2008.06.002
This article raises the question of why the clock sometimes seems stopped, especially in negative experiences. The brain estimates the time based on the number of events/experiences in a specific period of time, which means it interprets a longer duration due to these factors, especially when it triggers positiv emotions.
05_ Knapp, J., & Zeratsky, J. (2018). Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day. New York: Crown Publishing Group.
A funny written book which showcases the crazy rush in our daily modern life. It’s about distilling focus across all our activities so that we can live a fuller life. I put the book on my review list because it is quite different from the others. Unfortunately, the book seems to me like you have to change life completely with the help of the advice just to “survive” a hectic society. Therefore, only the symptoms are tackled and not the actual problem in terms of time perception problems.
06_ Vasile, C. (2015). Time Perception, Cognitive Correlates, Age and Emotions. Procedia — Social and Behavioral Sciences, 187, 695–699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.03.129
The time perception is strongly related to the feeling of social exclusion and to the meaning of an individual’s life. When one’s life is full of positive emotions, than the subjective time duration is shorter in comparison to another person who feels negative emotions.
07_ Lee, H., & Whitley, E. A. (2002). Time and Information Technology: Temporal Impacts on Individuals, Organizations, and Society. The Information Society, 18(4), 235–240. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972240290075084
In its simplest form, a computer is a calculator that is considered to be the new clock that is strongly anchored in today’s society. Information technology affects all facets of today’s society. It can influence and change temporality, people’s perception of time, their measurement and the way time is organized.
08_ McLoughlin , A. M. (2012). The Time of Our Lives: An investigation into the effects of technological advances on temporal experience. (0441791). Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/40e0/56be77cac298cdf9ab6a1ca711f4f3916f4b.pdf
Our perception of time is closely linked to the environment, including the society in which we live, and subjective perception of time seems to be easily influenced by external factors, such as body temperature or stress, but also, thanks to technological progress, the flooding of our sensory organs. Since our perceptions are based both on ourselves and on the environment in which we find ourselves, individuals experience the passage
Project matrix
01_SLOWLY by Slowly Communications Ltd.
A slow paced messenger app. Letters take time to be delivered. The farther away the receiver lives, the longer it will take.
02_ No sense of time by TRWT
A VR projection mapping installation based on a personal interpretation of sense of time. In the normal stream of time the physical world moves forward. But time perception on his mental state oscillates back and forth. His particular memories shape his formless identities. It constructs and deconstructs his perception towards the world and reflects perceivable singularity to others.
03_ Time is a Sense by Alex Wang
Time is a Sense is an experience project / installation (physical interface) of one story in Einstein’s Dream written by Alan Lightman. Everyone has their own sense about time and they have their live in a different speed of life and have different view of the same world therefore the participants cranks the device in different speed and see the story in their own sense of time.
04_ T-Kit (T3 Regain a Sense for Time) by Colin Lüond & Fabrice Spahn
The T3 is one of the interactive objects of the T-Kit series. It helps in a playful way (Speculative Design) to never lose track of time again.
05_ The Time Machine by Dan Henriksson
The Time Machine is an individual’s clock which responds to a personal sense of time flow. Through interaction, the user creates his or her own elastic timeline, which will rush or drag in order to reflect the personal feeling of time flow. Instant visual feedback is given to reflect the sense of time elasticity.
06_ on time by Kanari Shirao
On Time is an audiovisual installation that plays with our perception of time and its unfolding. The second hands of 60 clocks turn at different tempis and follow variable rythmical patterns, while the clocks eventually synchronise perfectly every minute on the minute, always showing the exact time.
07_ The Decelerator Helmet by Lorenz Potthast
The Decelerator Helmet offers an experimental approach to an essential subject of our globalized, fast moving society. The technical reproducible senses are consigned to an apparatus which allows the user a perception of the world in slow motion. The float of time as apparently invariant constant is broken and subjected under the users control.
08_ TIME FLOW by Yohei Inokuchi
TIME FLOW is a clock that redefines the relationship between time and the individual. Measuring brain activity, the progression of time changes depending on mental activity, rendering time become elastic, nonhomogeneous and ambiguous.
Session 09 — Playful Research
Observation of a situation
Time Experience Design
Since it is a challenge to analyze and understand people without any interactions and only through observation how they perceive time, I tried to achieve on the basis of short experiments.
First, I had the idea to go to a stressful place (e.g. Zurich HB) and observe the people how often they look at their watches. It would also have been interesting to see how they change their gait after watching the clock, as the HB is a place where time is seen as a valuable and constant element. Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell whether the person was looking at the watch or not (it could also have been a message on their smartphone). Because of the hectic pace and attention for punctuality, the passers-by are not very happy to be stopped (own experience from another project).
While the exchange of experiences and opinions on the topic of time perception is essential, I was able to draw some interesting conclusions from three short experiments. The experiments I was imitating were mentioned in the review of my literature to the topic of time perception. I decided to experience these experiments live by myself in order to get a better impression. I also expected to discover phenomena that I would never be able to discover just by reading a literature.
The first task was to test their counting accuracy in seconds. From 6, 10, 14, 17 and 20 seconds on, the participants had to confirm this with a click on a button. It was fascinating to see that the first number (second 6) was hit quite accurately by all participants. From the second number (second 10) there were very small deviations and from the third number (second 14) it became inaccurate. One participant wanted to repeat the test and surprisingly could hit all 5 numbers very accurately. The concentration and the fading out of the environment played an important role. The participants found the exercise moderate to easy.
In the second test two different pictures (a pair of shoes and a sunflower) appeared at various intervals with the reason to make the prediction of the appearance more difficult. The sunflower appeared only once. The video length was 30 seconds. I changed this test slightly from the one I read because I wanted to see a difference. This turned out to be true, because the brain might not have had the possibility to determine an even rhythm. The participants felt the pair of shoes the longest at the moment of their appearance, although the sunflower appeared only once. Each image was visible for 1 second. Therefore equally long. The question of how long they estimate the duration of the video is on average 40 seconds.
In the last experiment, the test persons should look at a sunflower image in the video for 30 seconds without knowing whether something is happening or not. Strangely enough, despite the boring and undemanding task, the participants were able to better assess the past time. The average time was 35.4 seconds. So 4.6 seconds faster than in the previous experiment. My guess is that the brain concentrated on the environment in order to compensate the “understrain and boredom”.
I could learn a lot from the test and would do it differently next time. I noticed that it would need a neutral and quiet environment to eliminate any distraction and falsification of the result. However, I found one point of the last test interesting. Can an image motif also change the perception of time? Positive VS Negative motifs?
Session 10— How Far?
During the lesson we shared our ultimate dream in terms of bachelor thesis.
My dream:
Some of us know or have already experienced this phenomenon ourselves, where time passed quickly when we had fun and during boring sessions time lasts forever, because our perception of time is constantly distorted.
My dream is not only to track the current fixed time with a device (like a traditional clock, for example), but rather the own perception of time. Which lets you learn what causes time to slow down or speed up.
Also how technology is able to open up new senses and perceive more natural elements that surround us.
Session 11 — Own It
In this session, we discussed personal ownership and the possibility of releasing something with good intentions that might turn out to be a horror scenario. With earlier BA projects from Interaction Design, we have analyzed points of criticism.
- Where was the depth of the project too low?
- What was missing?
- How was the project understood?
In a discussion we reviewed the ownership of our own project, that you should put a lot of energy into the final project and stand 100% behind your project until the end. It is also important not only to research for your thesis but also to come across something for yourself that only you can show about.
Session 12 — Re-Positioning
Since the first session my topic shaped week to week. Fortunately, I remained loyal to the topic time and am motivated to dive deeper into it in 2020, with the combination of immersive virtual environments (IVEs).
Some questions I’m trying to investigate further:
- What if we could manipulate time?
- Can we simulate differing states and time courses in VR?
- If so, in which areas can this knowledge be used to enrich our lives?
- How could the knowledge gained be abused? For example, could it be used to profit greedy companies that cause harm to their users?
- What if VR would allow us to experience and test various future scenarios?
- For example, one might use VR to predict the future of the real world (time travel), learn from it and then implement changes accordingly in the real world.
- What would it do to us, for example, if we blanked out our monotonous everyday lives and did not dream our dream in our heads, but instead actively experienced it?
- Would it help us to better understand our own self-perception in a way that would not be possible in the real world?
