E-studio Weekly Reflections
10/17
project 2 reflection
During this project of pop-up gallery for an artist, I faced several major issues along the way that made me question my original approach to design. I used to believe that the most valuable thing of a designer is his/her idea, which is still true in most cases, but in reality an even more important quality than the idea is whether the idea is able to support the goal it intends to achieve or not. Even though I might come up with a really interesting idea, if the idea does not support client’s need or I don’t know how to realize it, the design still fails its ultimate mission. Compared to the last project when we mainly focusing on creating interesting ideas, this projects requires more throughout and in depth thinking about the client, the feasibility etc. I was mainly struggled with two areas: creating a meaningful theme throughout the whole exhibition and figuring out the mechanism behind technology in the exhibition using Littlebits.
My very original moodboard was developed based on my own interpretation of the artist after I briefly went through the artist’s work on his website. I initially intended to use my design to emphasize the humor and surreal elements in his work, so I designed the whole exhibition into a theater-like space to justify these qualities. However, as I tried to further the design and articulate my design, I felt that my explanation became powerless since it is hard to relate to the intention of the artist. Therefore, I went online and watched more videos of my artist’s interviews to get a deep understanding of the artist creation rationale. After I watched his interviews, I realized that even though surrealness and humor are prominent in the artist’s works, the main driving force behind them is that the artist wants to use these two techniques to bring up audience’s awareness of the over-use of technology. Therefore, I shifted the focus of the exhibition to emphasize the technological aspect and encourage reflection, while putting the emphasis on surrealness as secondary so that my interpretation would not over-power the artist and maximize audience’s learning experience.
After I settled down with my idea I faced another problem in terms of prototyping the interation. First of all, just like my interpretation of the artist should not replace artist’s real intention, the interaction that I designed for the environment should stay at the backstage and help emphasize but not interfering audience’s experience of the artworks. Second, LittleBits seems to be an easy prototyping tool but once I started to make a more complex use of it by connecting it with other prototyping tool such as IFTTT or Mesh. Only after I started the making process I realized the amount of consideration in order to get the tools work together. After I talked to Matt, I realized that the interaction can not be limited to the tools that were given but can extend to other interesting materials and physical/technological technology. It greatly broadened my search scope of what type of interaction I can use in the exhibition.
9/28
Q: How is the role of an architect and an environment designer different? Be specific when talking about projects, skillsets, tools, approaches, etc.
A: Although both make designs for space, architects deal with a relatively fixed environment and consider about user experience in a very brief level. Surely within a strong emphasis on functionality, architecture, however, also pays a lot of attention to buildings’ aesthetic value. Based on my understanding, oftentimes the artistic decisions are solely dependent on the decisions of designers and clients, users are rarely able to join the conversation of how the architecture should be constructed. The work that architects produced is a statement of the architect, thus architects can be considered as artists to some extent. On the other hand, environment design is more directly related to users’ experience in the space, so it tends to be more user-oriented and thus the design process involves more user research and user testing and designers cannot replace the role of users in the conversation because they cannot think about their design as objectively as users do. Less of making a statement, environment design tends to stay in the background and influence users’ perception and thus directing their specific behaviors. In terms of skillsets and tools, architects need a solid drawing, modeling skills and a basic understanding of engineering and material; environment designers, however, get the opportunity to explore more methods in different areas to craft a holistic experience, such as lighting, technology, graphics, scenic etc.
Q: What other types of environments are becoming hybrid? Give at least one specific example and note whether or not you think the hybridization of the environment improves the user experience.
A: Closely related to the hybridization of digital environment and physical environment, I think another commonly-observed hybridization takes place between the entertainment(virtual) world and the daily(real) world. As predicted in the novel The Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley, technology nowadays is bringing the fantasy world closer and closer to our life. From the invention of 3D movies to the popolar AR game Pokemon GO to the rise of immersive theater, designers and developers are trying their best to persuade the audience that the fantasy worlds that they create are real.
On one hand, the disintegration of boundary enhances users’ experience because it “breaks the forth wall” and expands the ways we sense the virtual world. In the case of immersive theater, audiences are now allowed to not only experience the plays through visuals but also through scents and auditory and feelings. On the other hand, the danger of losing the boundary is that as the entertainment world becoming part of the real world, it is going to be hard for the users to tell the real world at thus lose track of what they actually need to do. For example, the game Pokemon GO used to be accused of distracting users from real life and thus causing real-life safety issues.
09/18
Project Reflection — Enriching the Narrative Experience
As the name of this project “Enriching the Narrative Experience” shows, the project is about designing an experience, which can be also interpreted as telling a story. I was motivated because the story we were trying to tell is very relatable to me as a current student, and because we were not completely limited to the existing technology and was able to imagine the near future. Thus, the project focuses less on the making aspect of designing the experience but more on the ideating aspect. During the process, several observations came up as I evaluating my idea which I think are also applicable to the whole environmental design in general.
The greatest struggle during the process was that how to balance the digital environment and physical environment. Right now we are living in a transition phase from physical environment to digital environment. Since there are pros and cons for the use of both digital and physical elements, the appropriate amount of digital presence in the physical space remains unclear and pretty much relies on the decision of designers. The very starting point of my idea of using the red chairs as touch points to enhance the user experience was to allow the users to relax and fully immerse themselves in the physical space, so in my design, I was intended to only have minimal digital presence in the whole self-guided tour and only use it as a tool to reinforce the physical experience and to better “enjoy the present”. However, as I tried to make the digital interactions recede into the background, I was reminded that it might cause the boundary between digital and physical world to be too vague to distinguish and cause uncomfortableness. For example, if the “play” button is not there to remind users the threshold, users then lose the control over when they want to start and stop the audio. On the other hand, if I put down the audio as text on the phone screen for the users to read if they want to, it might constantly distract users’ focus on the physical surrounding which should have been emphasized. There will be more and more cases in environmental design in the future when we designers have to ask ourselves “when should the digital element enter and exit the experience?” and “how much the digital interactions are needed?”. There is probably no real answer for the questions because the contexts vary, but I think it is valuable to use these two questions to examine if the features in design help narrate a believable story the designer tries to convey.
This project also made me reconsider the definition of “environmental design”. The “environment” that we worked on in this project encompasses two main elements — digital environment and physical environment. However, I found that except foe these two elements, social environment also takes an important part in the whole environment that we are trying to design, which refers to the social interaction between persons and the circumstance under which social interactions take place. Both physical and digital environment relies on and in return benefit the social interaction. While we were getting information from the admission office about their expectation on campus tour, creating the feeling of community was one of the greatest points that they try to deliver to the audience. Therefore, how to use digital and physical space to show the visitors the social interactions among students or improve the social interactions between the tour guide and the visitors became one of the focuses in our design. To address this issue, everyone in our class mentioned some form of social interactions in his/her design. Some chose to connect the student tour guide with the visitors through pairing and messages, and some others chose to use technology like AR to show visitors the CMU community. It is inevitable that when designing the experience, the social environment has to be considered. If including social environment in the ‘environmental design” spectrum, I now see environmental design more as “experience design”, since only all these three environments together can create a meaningful experience, and experience is what we ultimately want to achieve when designing environment.
09/02
Q: As the prevalence of digital media in our physical environments increases daily, what is the role and/or responsibility of designers in shaping our environments?
A really important phenomenon we should notice before answering the question is that as technology develops more and more areas are included “designers” (whether they are qualified or not), which to some extent suggests that the role of designers has been broader and more diverse than they used to be. Nowadays qualified designers should be equipped with multi-facet knowledge, regardless of which area they work on, and should be able to balance and mediate the possible conflicts between each facets, so that their designs are useful, enjoyable and memorable. Therefore, I would consider the main role of designers in general is to balance, between the new and old, between function and aesthetics and between fantasy and reality etc.
The same applies to the environment designers when they are now facing an ever-changing world because of the digital influence. Designers first need to be fully aware of the unstoppable mergence of digital and physical world and welcome it with an open mind. Designers also need to identify or even create the blurry boundaries between the two worlds which could provide opportunities for design to intervene. The reason for design to intervene the mergence is that it could soften the transition and introduce non-intrusive ways for digital world to influence the physical one, making it user-friendly whether through improving visual effect or functionality.