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magdalena alice nilges

MASTERS OF DESIGN

Empathizing with Ecology

12/17/2018

 
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How do we tell time with a tree? Is it the subtle changes of green to gold? Or the manifestation of buds that become flowers? It is these differences, some as small as the first cardinal of spring, or those that can hit us all at once when we notice the world shift from one season to next. These are perceptions of time in a subtle way, unhinged from the quantitative seconds we time our daily lives on. These, of course, were once the only way we told time, or at least long spans. Today though, it is both easy and terribly difficult to see the future. A future, which causes a generation not to “dream, it hopes; it hopes that we will survive, that there will be water for all, that we will be able to feed everyone, that we will not destroy ourselves”(Dunne & Raby, pg. 9)

As designers, we feel a certain amount of responsibility to be proponents of change. Through our practices that have now focused themselves on longevity, responsibility, and trust, we act as the surface level of information and technology in people’s lives be it through an app design or an IOT (Internet of Things) device or a magazine. Through critical design by those such as Victor Papanek in his book “Design For the Real World” we have had to acknowledge the harm designers can do to the environment through their consumeristic aims. Yet, it is still difficult to be deciders of these changes when our surroundings still place designers in the role of convincing users of purchasing. Our seasons don’t change with the leaves, they change with the new release of an iPhone.
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We, as purchasers, can allow ourselves these infatuations with novelty because our society has worked to hide these consequences of our purchasing actions. Yes, there have been shifts towards visualizations of our energy usage and devices like the Nest that aim at a reduction in energy waste. We also are shown pictures of the garbage patch in the Pacific ocean that represent the collective build-up of our unconscious wasteful disposal of plastics. Yet these display two extremes, one the representation of an individuals energy usage that is corrected for them, in some manner hiding their actions. The other is a representation of millions of tiny actions in a way that is overwhelming and difficult for anyone to fully conceive of due to the vastness of its scale. Together these present the dilemma we have with understanding our actions when we consume, how does one little action become magnified by a population? This concept, better known as the Tragedy of the Commons, is a social science term that an individual has the tendency to act in the desire of self-interest even when it is contrary to the common good of all users, which leads to strained resources.

There is also a misunderstanding in the way these resources function. When societies value one resource over another it undermines ideas of ecology. In response to this Arne Naess developed his philosophy of Deep Ecology which promotes the equal value of all resources regardless of their contribution to human society, as well as the radical reconstructing of society in light of these ideas. What ecology helps us to understand is that individuals are not quite really individuals at all, and it is important to remain humble and acceptive of our place in the ecology. Our dependence on it must be recognized when we have the ability to wipe out so many species and alter the geography of the world so greatly that now many scientists our referring to this geological age as the Anthropocene, as human activity is now the greatest influence of change on the planet.

Granted this is not a solution that can be fixed through design alone, but design is a form of communication. One that is often the manner in which we interact with technology.Therefore, it has the ability to facilitate agency for a user. Ethically then, we have to understand not just what is best for the user immediately, such as a sense of pleasure that can form into addictive habits with technology, but longevity. These theories of time and design come in to play in Carolyn F. Strauss and Alastair Fuad-Luke’s Slow Design Principles. One designer that fits this principle is Dutch Designer Simon Heijdens, who “believes that design should, like Nature, unleash a continuum of expressions over time”. In his work “Broken White” Heijdens creates ceramics that reveal patterns over time as they are used, developing more intricate patterns for cups that are favored. In this way, also revealing human activity and energy use rather than hiding it.

It is also important for designers to leverage social connections. It has been shown that social norms have a great weight on how we interact with our surroundings. We are more likely to recycle because of a sign that tells us everyone else is recycling, than one that aims at the “bad” person who didn’t recycle. Designers can leverage this social desire to help us become aware of the power of collective action. Especially when we become passive from the dismay of the damage to the planet. This disheartening can be alleviated through harnessing the emergence of social action.

This dismay and responsibility can also result in cognitive dissonance, the tension created when our beliefs are contradicted by new information. This issue is especially true for people who are skeptical about scientific research that challenges their way of life. Design can reframe this information, making tangible experiences of abstract information. It is, however, extremely important that design remains transparent, as it has the ability to disinform, especially when beauty is used as a signifier of truth. But if design does intend to move us towards positive behavior, it needs to be able to speculate a future that motivates the individual.

With all this in mind, I see three opportunity areas for design. First to create representations that make complex and invisible ecological systems less abstract and more comprehensible. Secondly, use both personal data as well as collective data in order to prompt reflection on one’s actions in the context of broader group impact. And lastly, design tools that leverage ritual, nostalgia, and other social connections to drive positive behavior change.



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Bibliography

Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. MIT, 2014.

Griskevicius, Vladas, Robert B. Cialdini, and Noah J. Goldstein. "Social norms: An underestimated and underemployed lever for managing climate change." In. 2008.

Næss, A., & Rothenberg, D. (2003). Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Selterman, Dylan. “Greed Vs. The Common Good.” National Geographic.

Stoknes, Per Espen. "Rethinking climate communications and the “psychological climate paradox”." Energy Research & Social Science 1 (2014): 161-170.



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Trusting a Paradox

11/24/2018

 
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In design trust is the active discussion. The user should be able to trust us, and they need to be aware they trust us since there has been a sense of lost trust in technology what with sneaky dealings with data. But all this desire to create trust, through transparency and empathy and all the other magical solutions that research through design will show us, it still appears to me as manipulative. What is more treacherous than building a trust that is formulated in the an aim of what is will give us (the producer) a better standing.

Take for instance, safety in construction. Over and over safety is listed as the number one priority for workers. There are training videos, seminars, lectures. But safety to one individual can be vastly difference from another. Safety can mean sacrificing one risk for another, say standing under a precarious object to escape heat stroke on a hot day. These specific situations seem to the moments of empathetic research design strives for. But when a company requires economic growth, is tied up in liabilities, and maintain a system, those individualistic reasonings become meaningless. Safety for the company over safety for the individual. 

Designing for trust, but who are we trusting? Trust is meaningless without partnership, equal risk, and control. Because trust is representative of a gifted release of control. I trust you, and therefore I give myself up to you with a perceived notion you'll give me back something worthy. 

Trust is a tool and it can be designed for, but to design for a lack of abuse for trust you need to design equity, balance and most importantly the opportunity to regain control. 

Human Impression

9/14/2018

 
"Their archaeological association provides an indication that these fossils have been collected by people for hundreds of thousands of years and, at times, attained a high degree of spiritual significance."
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Shepherds' crowns, fairy loaves and thunderstones: the mythology of fossil echinoids in England
Kenneth J. McNamara

Cave paintings, collecting rocks, etc. Human's have been shaping the world through their presence since prehistoric time. And through that creating history, leaving their mark through possessions. Perhaps that is an important part of consciousness, objects. Despite the many arguments for letting go of material objects, it seems to be innately tied into our personalities. And perhaps physical objects are too specific, it could be collecting mementos,  or collecting impressions (carved names in nature). 


These things exist because they a frozen moments, embodiments of memories that manifest in the alluring feeling of nostalgia. Art has always been this, and I doubt will ever not be, because it is successful in its attachment to individuals memories. Art that tries to be devoid of is a paradox because it instead allows the audience to devote all of their memories on to it. Or opposite ones like popular objects become meaningless only to be nostalgic down the road once people can remember them as a frozen moment they shared with only those who existed in it (the 90s kid experience). 


Has data become nostalgic? Can it? Would this give it more meaning or the wrong meanings? And would this allow us to bond in community of research?

Space for Perspective

8/27/2018

 
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Totems of perspective are in a manner tangible info-graphics there to allow us to understand the abstract, the past, or the future. 

Smartspeak

8/7/2018

 
 Alexa Be My Friend by UW

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There has recently been a lot of talk about how smart devices interact with people instantaneously, will Alexa respond to this child? Why or why not? Is there a women's voice? Do people like that, why or why not?

But are we taking the time to consider a more long term effect. It is not just important that Alexa respond to a child, and in reality it is questionable if that is important at all, but rather will Alexa teach a child how to interact better with a machine (designed for this child's understanding) than the humans around it. If having another sibling helps children interact better with other children (needs a reference) than does a possibly wealthier child with Alexa etc. or a lonelier child using Google Assistant (arguably more accessible) find themselves better suited for smart devices over other children? I suppose the real question is what happens when all nurturing comes from robotic devices, designed with the best intentions (accessibility to all), alienate our ability to interact with others. Does it do this? Or does it give us something to interact with rather than nothing? And perhaps this an argument for smartdevices to be as human as possible so that the skills developed with interacting with them can be passed on to other situations involving other humans. 

A personal example is how I speak differently with my mother, her grammar is different because she is bilingual. I take on some of these grammar differences because I am nurtured by that environment. I hear her way of speaking and I impersonate it, which is a typical way that `children learn. And although I don't believe this is unchangeable (for instance growing up with slurs used around you constantly and choosing to alter your language) it does work on a level which is subconscious. ​

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And I see similar things happen with Alexa, but to a greater (or quicker) extent because instead of pretending to understand me, Alexa reacts negatively (silent, or I'm sorry (which is not a neutral response)) to my phrasing. And so I have to try, and try again to participate with Alexa. What kind of implications does that have for children? Or adults? 

When we look at language, we can see how malleable it is, but often ruled by the majority (references towards Saussure). The language of robotics is based on quantifiable standards and lacks subjectivity (reference), which means there is one way of phrasing which works best despite an AI learning, because their learning is still decisive on what works best for them, not for us. Therefore this miscommunication will cause us to adjust our intelligence more than them, because we for now still adjust faster than a machine (reference). Maybe this is symbiotic in nature, requiring an AI to learn and us to learn, but it errs towards our need for them outweighing their need for us. A symbiosis that leaves us at a disadvantage. 

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” Orwell, 1984

Designing Pauses (or If You Really Want to Read it You'll Struggle)

8/5/2018

 
In John Cage's 4'33" the musical piece asked of the audience an appreciation for silence in music, and gave them time to acknowledge and analyze: "what's in a pause?" by elongating time.
In that silence what do you notice about context in listening to music, especially in a setting such as an auditorium that requires the active participation of listening. 
“Silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around,” John Cage

It seems to me that it isn't a change of mind, but rather silence is a change in time. In silence, the only way to understanding it is through time.

Robert Rauschenberg, who worked intimately with Cage, paralleled these ideas in his series of White Paintings. The audience in a museum are active viewers and in the context of a museum they are "forced" to view this whiteness, not as the space between paintings, but the painting itself. I feel it important to acknowledge that I do not believe whiteness is synonymous with silence, and that there is an argument to be made about why whiteness is the start of painting/drawing in the western world. But in a return to the White Painting, Rauschenberg is calling towards the acknowledgement of the context of viewing art, the light that affects the surface, and the dust, the shadows of other viewers. In that manner he is saying white isn't silence, or absence but rather a space to acknowledge subtleties. 
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"Silence, similarly, is relational rather than absolute" Susan Sontag
“The art of our time is noisy with appeals for silence. A coquettish, even cheerful nihilism. One recognizes the imperative of silence, but goes on speaking anyway. Discovering that one has nothing to say, one seeks a way to say that.” Aesthetic of Silence

And I have to point out that although these ideas are often met with mockery, they, these artists, acknowledge their own banality. But it is that acknowledgment they are intending to highlight in their own work. The audience must acknowledge themselves in the way they actively participate with art. And in this way they have built on Duchamp's Toilet's pointed critque of the museum as a decider of "what is art". One might argue that art is active viewership, the motivation of an audience, and that context can manifest this, but is not necessary. And pausing is in its own way an active experience. So mirrored in the inability to be completely silent for 5'44". It is not in our nature to be quiet. 



Turning to design,
a place that often works to destroy pauses, or to erase the dust, shadows, and light that appear in pauses, how might these ideas ripple into addictive design? Or design that intrudes into our daily pauses? When we discuss the needs of the user, are we prescribing activeness or "productivity" (an action I've come to greatly dislike). And if we are truly considering the needs rather than simply the wants, how are we considering the need to pause? Or is that too forceful.

Current studies are showing how truly detrimental a lack of eight hours of sleep can be. But places like the United States admire the lack of sleep (return to commentary on productivity). And phones, apps, conversations are designed(1) to prove our business. Our dedication to work. Is this serving the wants of the needs of the user? Trends often show themselves as unethical...
(Philosophy of Technology) 

Details, and subtlety, can be an encouragement for silence. They create active focus on nothingness.
The call for a paradigm  "Art, itself a form of mystification, endures a succession of crises of demystification; older artistic goals are assailed and, ostensibly, replaced; outworn maps of consciousness are redrawn." Susan Sontag (S.S.)
Instagram: "by silence, she(he) frees himself from servile bondage to the world, which appears as patron, client, consumer, antagonist, arbiter, and distorter of his work." S.S.

In my desire for a lack of servile bondage I have taken a break from instagram, however short lived it might be, so I can create without a distortion which in reality could be quite beneficial (productivity). 
"the gesture of silence in abdication from society is still “a highly social gesture." S.S.

"Modern art’s chronic habit of displeasing, provoking, or frustrating its audience can be regarded as a limited, vicarious participation in the ideal of silence which has been elevated as a major standard of “seriousness” in contemporary aesthetics." S.S.
"There is no neutral surface, no neutral discourse, no neutral theme, no neutral form. Something is neutral only with respect to something else — like an intention or an expectation." S.S
These two quotes begin to resonate with ideas of design research as a critical expression (speculative design). 

"If only because the artwork exists in a world furnished with many other things, the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce something dialectical: a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence." - Sontag

How might that work in interaction design? Is it turning off the phone. Is it destroying it with a baseball bat? Should the designer be handing you a the bat?

The theory of context...and how designers use silence for hierarchy and trickery.
Good and bad design? Moral and immoral? In a world altered by definitions by technology, how can morality of a thing be judged when that thing is creating new definitions of morality? Special Relativity, we are moving at faster speeds and therefore we must reevaluate the speed of things from our faster speed (convoluted). Designers, the ultimate hypocrites. 

"Art is a technique for focusing attention, for teaching skills of attention… Once the artist’s task seemed to be simply that of opening up new areas and objects of attention. That task is still acknowledged, but it has become problematic. The very faculty of attention has come into question, and been subjected to more rigorous standards…"  S.S.

Today's art (and deisgn) must be aggressive in order to elicit response thus solidifying is being as art. In a world full of art, "true" art must be louder, losing its chance to be silent. And loudness is best expressed through multiples. 

“The impulse to create begins… in a tunnel of silence,” 
How can people be creative, if we tell them silence isn't creative.

I remember being a young child, I think my creativity came in a battle towards boredom. My boredom, which in many ways was self-created from my displeasure with others and impatience, was filled with creation. I'm not sure if I have evidence that creativity needs boredom, but I think we would be wrong to assume it is only a negative.

Another fucking paradigm shift, this time of pain points. (Paradigms are a pain point for me)

"perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive."
Neruda


References:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/30/pablo-neruda-childhood-and-poetry/
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/05/27/lynne-tillman-john-cage/

1. the action of meaning


SAM

7/5/2018

 
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SAM (Seattle Art Museum)

Social Space

6/30/2018

 
"No apartment was meant to be better than any other"
Description of the Biljmermeer

In the theory of Design Research there is a definition of a process that proves the rigor in which designer achieve their insights. But this has obviously brought up arguments. "Is post-its really going to lead me to a ingenious idea, or did I have that idea all along because I have years of experience and a one hour waste of paper sticky's is just a visual representative to prove to these business people (men) that my knowledge has value?" Let me reword, is design research a visual symbol of value of creativity? 
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I might argue that what designers do is empathize with need, and that should be instinctual, not manufactured through grouping post its. Not to say it can't ever be useful, I think sometimes as creators the brain can work in such intuitive leaps that a visual representation of that thought process can help us to rationalize what can seem like irrational intuition. Most important in this "empathization" is putting one's mind in a state of struggle. When I look at examples of innovative design, I see how "these projects have grown out of a culture of scarcity" (99% Invisible talking about Chile's Elemental's solution to the housing crisis after the earthquake). It's not simply understanding someone's problems, it is the need to understand someone's limits. And I think in that manner, one can also understand the concept of time in a better manner. 

Time I see as a very crucial aspect of design, that is perhaps not pursued in-depth in design theory (that I have seen so far). The question of the life-time of a design, the death of a design (although this is now being tackled through sustainable design, one example being the UN's guidelines that countries planning to put objects in space must have a plan on how to retire them within 25 years due to the vast amount of space "junk"). Where I see "Half a House" succeeding over "Biljimermeer" is a sense of humility and a sense of time, and through that a manifestation of true user-participatory design in a manner that does not disregard either party's (designer versus user) necessity to the equation. It brings to mind the cliche quote "Give a man person a fish and they eat for a day, teach them how to fish and they can feed themselves for life"

A very opposite mindset to a business theory: destroy the fishes population by mass marketing and then make fish such a luxury that even those who know how to fish have no access to it.

References:

Half a House
Biljmermeer
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The Hero's Journey versus Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

5/19/2018

 
To be added to.


​I feel it important to say, I believe "opposites" are merely things that are the same that exhibit different traits based on time.
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These two archetypes of stories seem to reflect ideas of masculinity versus femininity, action versus creation, extroversion versus introversion. The Hero's Journey is an exploration of the world, with aspects almost a kin to manifest destiny. "Rid the world of evil" which throughout human explorative history seems to be a metaphor for turning the unknown into familiar (often through the extermination of anything non-familiar). But "falling down the rabbit hole" stories, which I use to name stories of characters, predominantly adolescent women, who unknowingly "fall" into another world, seems to be a metaphor of the exploration of oneself. An inward journey in contrast to outside journey. 

Deep Ecology & Shallow Economy

5/15/2018

 
"[Today's society] demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption...we need things consumed burnt up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate."  Victor Lebow

If pleasure sells (sex sells) then that pleasure is considered a form of consumption. Is it even possible to rewire that kind of addictive desire. And how much responsibility should we except for our masturbation? 
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