Humor as a Design Strategy or: How we stop knowing what we know and started loving a hot dog drone.
tl;dr: Designing humorous prototypes reveals our assumptions about technology
[In the beginning there was Chindogu]
Asha: When I started working with Joselyn last year, she introduced me to a bunch of materials, but I think her favorite was the book on Chindogu: The Unuseless Japanese Inventions by Kenji Kawakami. I remember reading these for fun when I was a lot younger, but hadn’t heard about the philosophy behind Chindogu before.
Joselyn: I am ALL about Chindogu — big fan of the inventions and huge fan of the philosophy. The designer, Kenji Kawakami, is well-known for his “art of the unuseless idea” and he makes bizarre and hilarious high-fidelity prototypes of products that fall just short of being practical. It’s hard for me to pick personal favorites, but if I had to, I’d recommend the Duster Slippers for Cats, the Camera Umbrella and the Noodle Eater’s Hair Guard (below)
Asha: I feel a personal connection to this woman trying to protect her hair from noodle splashage (going with it). But I think I’m also drawn to how Chindogu inventions are just one degree short of being something that could go to market. They’re just a little too specific, perhaps?
Joselyn: Exactly, there’s just something slightly off, but also there’s humor in that specificity of what the inventions are addressing! Part of what I also love about the Chindogu inventions is how they instigate funny conversations with friends. They facilitate this awesome, shared humorous exchange, and often when I introduce these inventions, people start to come up with their own funny alternatives.
[Generating laughs]
Asha: What started as a casual conversation about Chindogu snowballed into a fully fledged brainstorm (perhaps this is because humorous engagements like telling jokes or doing improv can make engineers and product designers more creative and able to produce better products). The Chindogu examples helped us expand our own lens of what technology could be, fueling us further than we realized.
Joselyn: I recently counted the number of humorous tech and interaction ideas we came up with in one hour and it’s close to 100, in a variety of categories from autonomous vehicles, drones and robotics to OS interactions, apps, Email interfaces, and on and on. Teamwork makes the dream work! 🙌
Asha: I’m obviously biased, but I think some of them are hilarious, and could go to market right now *coughs while saying Pupper Bot*:
- The water bottle that spits water at you if you’re not drinking enough
- The autonomous vehicle that curses and exhibits general road rage so you don’t have to
- The hovering drone that dangles hot dogs to entertain your dog while you’re at work
Joselyn: I’m cracking UP thinking about the hot dog drone being developed by Oscar Meyer in an attempt to get into the tech sector (Kraft Heinz, call me!). It’s hard to pick favorites, but I really liked:
- The sassy gesture-based interaction with RFID tags through press-on nails (see below)
- The BFF robot that gives you piggy back rides everywhere
- The Maps app add-on that gives you alternative route options like “most goats”, “cutest dogs”, “best smells” etc.
Asha: We’re actually building that last one, which I’m very excited about. It also represents something we learned by doing this humor tech and interaction generation project — that including humor in the design process surfaces unexamined assumptions about the technology.
[When you assume…]
Joselyn: Since Asha and I are in the human-computer interaction field, it’s imperative to be aware of the possibilities of technology. Tech futurist, designer, philosopher Jaron Lanier talks about the limitations of being “locked in”, which is the phenomenon of tech designers perpetuating the design and applications of technology that’s been passed down to them. For example, he questions why standard computer interfaces still use the filing system icon and interaction metaphor when there are infinite options for storing data on a computer.
Asha: What if files were stored automatically by context, date? Or what if images were stored by location taken, or information presented in the images, or even by color? What then, Joselyn??
Joselyn: MIND 👏BLOWN 👏 Growing up using a standard operating system, I was a total sheep! I never questioned the filing metaphor, just as before we did the humor-tech generation exercise, I hadn’t thought about many alternative applications of current technologies: e.g. drones being used for domestic duties, like entertaining your dog, or dusting, or painting your nails!
Asha: I wonder if the first way a technology is introduced to you remains particularly sticky in your mind, which would be especially limiting for technology designers who are supposed to be pushing the boundaries of the imaginable. Popular science fiction could also contribute to a constrained vision of the affordances of technologies in the future (another future post).
Joselyn: Reflecting on it now, there were two main things our humor technology brainstorm taught us:
Humor prototypes revealed alternative uses and applications of technologies we’ve considered limited to particular kinds of engagement. For example, a Maps app could fulfill emotional needs (find cute puppies on my route) in addition to a strictly functional one (navigate me from A to B as quickly as possible)
Because humor violates our expectations, we had to explicitly acknowledge our expectations, which is incredibly useful in the design process. This process helped us see many of the associations about the uses, aesthetics and interactions with technologies present and near-future. For example, we realized we think of drones as sleek, high-tech, and a bit creepy. But it doesn’t have to be that way! (Seriously, hot. dog. drone).
Asha: Once I realized how to violate expectations for humor, I started mapping out my assumptions of a technology and then would write violations in an adjacent bubble. I highly recommend trying it yourself, you might be surprised by your own associations.
[In the mood to conclude]
Joselyn: We’re generally interested in learning more about humor and play and designing and researching strategies for incorporating those elements in the user experience and interactions with technology. I have a hunch that when done appropriately, the results could be phenomenal and increase our quality of life across many axes.
Asha: While we’re a long way off from digital assistants that leave you in stitches, I think our research in this space is already producing interesting implications. Joselyn and I realized we have such limited expectations of technology — join us in demanding more!
Bits and Giggles is a design research series featuring conversations between Carnegie Mellon University Human-Computer Interaction researchers Asha Toulmin and Joselyn McDonald.
