Interface 08: Amber Krishan – Final Project_Brief description

My project would work towards describing/developing a technology solution in order to support the fast changing business requirements as the world shifts from an institutionalized to a collaborative model.

In the past 20 years technologies such as computers, audio & video devices have become drastically cheaper and available to a very large consumer population. With the fast spreading connectivity and accelerating data transfer speeds, the power of knowledge generation and dissemination has come to all. This inversion in  information economics has led to a worldwide change in the way we do business.

Through study & analysis, i intend to gain an understanding of how this imminent change would affect our lives. The findings of the study would be translated into a hypothetical work scenario of Mr. John Smith. ‘A day in the life of John’ would provide clues as to how and where technology could intervene and support this new lifestyle.

Adopting the most pressing need i would work towards developing a design document detailing a product/application which would address the issue. If time permits, i would like to develop a small exemplar demonstrating the design. Alternatively, it could take the form of a short film where an actor could play the role of John.

Interface 08: Amber Krishan – Reaction to Reading -Cultural Probes

A very interesting reading! Great technique for data gathering. I am sure to discuss this with some of my friends within the field of physocology and see how this can be developed into common practice. The right way to gather information has always been a big question. We always try the approach which seems least obtrusive. This approach seems very interesting and can be adapted to different contexts.

I found this reading very relevant and had fun reading it!

Interface 08: Amber Krishan – Reaction to Reading -Interventionists

Trespassing  Relevance

I don’t feel that the role of political art is diminished with the spread of rampant commercialization of our sensorial space. The context has changed and poses new challenges, it us upto the artist to embrace the latest changes and incorporate them cleverly within their work. Art has its own arena and it would be hard for commercial information to compete with it.

I find that though art can be exremely effective in describing political situations and transitions, It also holds onto particular symbolism that the artist might find relevant. It is always the artist’s perspective of what the situation might be and not the actual. We might look at a peice and derive different meanings out of it but it is not the same as looking at world events and deriving meaning from there. Political art thus enforces this devide between the actual and the percieved. It is often exagerated as well, to highlight something out of context or establish a very different context than the actual.

Interface 08: Amber Krishan – Automatic Writing 2

Spatial Interfaces

It has been incredibly intriguing for me to look at space in the light of my recent studies of information design. When I started studying the lobby at the 2W, 13th street, The New School , I drew a plan view of the space to understand the flow of people. Beyond just the occupancy levels across different time periods I came to see the space as a system. The space posed a series of tasks that an occupant was required to complete to move from point A to point B. For example – Open the door, move through turnstiles, make a decision to move right or left, walk across the open space, stand in line, enter the elevator.  It seemed that the space strongly defined the  occupant’s life and that he/she had little or no control over it.
Looking at the various tasks the overlapping within the space, I started thinking about if that was a best way of doing things. Can the task be made smaller? Can the occupant determine which direction is best for him? Is the current design a compromise between various task that need to be done here? Why cant the space conform to the occupant’s needs and morph to their particular needs.
Going back to my previous studies into digital spaces, I feel that occupants perceive their space through a combination of senses. Sound , eyesight , smell, taste etc help occupants to define their immediate space. If we could exploit and define space via stimulation of these sense in different ways , we could by far increase the flexibility of a space system. Building concrete wall , a floor and a ceiling was one way of doing the same but it does not offer the flexibility which would contextualize the space to the occupant.
Another angle to looking at the space in the form of a system would be to compare it with other task based systems. For example- online websites and software’s.  They are similar to spatial systems, as they require the user to perform certain tasks to achieve a goal.
Websites of now, expect people to perform tasks while sitting through a dedicated session. As our knowledge contribution model move from an institutionalized one to an open source model, we realize that humans don’t contribute the best ideas through dedicated , deductive development sessions. We may get the best ideas while we are in the washroom, cooking our food or walking the street. The question now is, how does the environment around us, serve to capture open source contribution of this type?
I believe that this calls for an integration of spatial systems with the knowledge generation and dissemination systems.  The digital spaces of the future would allow us to contribute as we pass through space and time. They would dynamically evolve to the best possible form in order to allow us to perform our tasks.
This would be the future of our contribution model  through dynamic spatial interfaces…

Interface08 – Instruction Set for Stangers – User Scenarios

Scenario 1
User -  David is a 1st year student at the Design & Technology program
Goal –  He has 3 hours to class and wants to finish his homework
Location -  Parsons, 2W, 13th street lobby
Time Period -  Tuesday, Noon

David is looking for a comfortable spot to sit, relax and open his laptop. He walks into the lobby and decides to occupy the circular seating in the farthest corner as he does not want to get disturbed. He puts down his bag, opens his laptop and plugs in his ear plugs. He listens to music while working on his assignment. After working for an hour he gets tired and wants to take a break. He sees an intriguing exhibit right in front of the elevators. He finds that the exhibits invites him to leave a comment. He leaves a comment and then talks with others within the space trying to figure out what the exhibit is about.

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Scenario 2
User -  Susan Chang is a 2nd year student at the Design & Technology program
Goal –  She is getting late for the next class and wants to get into the elevator in a hurry
Location -  Parsons, 2W, 13th street lobby
Time Period -  Thursday, 15:00

Susan has just come out of a class and managed to grab some food before rushing to the next class. She juggles her bag and laptop in one hand while eating food from the other. She has no time to lose, as her class is about to start. She rushes into the lobby and looks around for the elevator with the least amount of people standing in front of it. She decides to stand in line for the elevators in front of the circular seating. The line is not so long but the elevator is taking so much time to come down. She feels stressed and wishes for something that would amuse her. She sees an exhibit next to where she stands. The exhibit invites her to leave a message. She picks up a post-it and writes a message about the exhibit.

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Scenario 3
User -  John is a 2nd year student , Sarah is a faculty at Parsons
Goal –  John is trying to get a perspective from Sarah on something that has been troubling him
Location -  Parsons, 2W, 13th street lobby
Time Period -  Friday, 16:00

John is going to graduate in May and is very concerned about his job prospects after graduation. He reads daily about the economy plummeting and his concerns are elevated. While walking into lobby he meets Sarah, who is waiting in line for the elevator. He strikes up a conversation with her and asks her about her views. Sarah tries to alleviate his worries. John feels better and wants to share his views with others. Sarah also feels that there should be a way for people to discuss future employment and other relevant issues. They find an exhibit inviting them to post their views about the wall street dilmna. They both leave post-it notes for others to read.

Interface 08: Amber Krishan – Reaction to Reading -Derive

Theory of Derive

The intent of understanding the phsycographics of a city is indeed very relevant to urban design and architecture. To my experience this is something not often incorporated as part of the architectural design processes with most firms. The way this was undertaken by the Situationists seemed ill concieved and did not take in mind a lot of the pyscological factors that might be intertwined with such a study. I appreciate the time at which this conceptual study was initiated and wished that this was developed into a something more substantial to be incorporate into common day architectural practice.

Interface 08: Amber Krishan – Instruction Set For Strangers

Links to the Assignment

Stage1:Analysis & Studies

Stage2:User Scenarios

Stage3:Intial Concepts

Stage4:Prototype

Interface 08: Amber Krishan – Reaction to Reading 8

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (Saw it on Youtube)

An interesting documentary of the study of public spaces within New York. Formulation of understanding and dissolution of presumptions to discover the true meaning of space and how to instill appropriate human behavior. Quite relevant to the current assignment.

Interface 08: Amber Krishan – Reaction to Reading 7

An Atlas of Radical Cartography

I found this reading extremely interesting. A lot of the various examples within the peice were in accordance with my world view and quite empathetically resonated my feelings. I find it facinating that borders and territorial definition evolves through time as socio-political changes gradually but surely alter the fabric of human relations. Challenging common assumptions about orientation and demarkation, this reading makes me wonder upon the immutability of current global territories.The peice by Ashley Hunt was interesting dues to its view upon capitalism and the extract from ‘Perdido Street Station’, used to illustrate it. I also liked the ‘US oil fix’ peice as the environmental discourse around the world is very unbalanced and seems more US centric. I feel that the capitalist interest vested into the energy markets have a lot to do with the current global perspective on energy and the direction for the solution which is evolving out of this.

Interface 08: Amber Krishan – Self Portrait Postmortem

Strengths
The project worked well towards collectively describing me across the eyes of people I know and poeticizing it as an object of beauty and interactivity.

Weaknesses
There are a lot of aspects of my portrait that might not be covered by the current design but the scalability of the design will allow this to be encompassed in the future.

Design process
As i began working towards the project it was hard for me to decipher a approach towards the project. I have never indulged in retrospection and it did not come naturally to me. I was able to create a model to analyze me as a person but it was a challenge to determine how users would interact or contribute to it.

Related projects
The two projects that I find related to my work are the Linkedin and Facebook site. I feel both sites strive towards describing the user either professionally or personally.  Users have the ability to define who they are while others can provide testimonials or feedback which also describe them. Select people can view these consolidated profiles and gain an understanding about the individual. The issue with both the designs is that the information is presented in a far too complex a fashion. It is not easy for people viewing your page to determine who you are and what people think about you at one glance. This is something that I have strived to build into my project. As a next step to the design I would strive to present the collected data in many views. One view could be categorizing the comments based on the user type.

Open questions
The open questions are still more focused towards developing the design further and entering the testing phase. Observations and conclusions would be direved once a working prototype is achieved.

Relevance to exhibition
The project would not make a good exhibition piece as it was designed to be a more personal tool.