Design for the Inevitable: Building Life Event Sensitivity into Products.
Given at Interaction20 in Milan, Italy
Session Summary
Life is messy and it is time product experiences become more sensitive to this fact. Most tend to focus on serving needs related to only the scenarios that commonly, and most directly, relate to the promised value of the service. Death, and other life events, are often considered edge cases that exist outside of this 'common core'. The problem with this perspective is that it labels life events as ‘if’ scenarios. Death is not a case of ‘if’, but when. Even in spaces where death is more likely to be encountered, such as healthcare, the role the product and service should play in it is often unclear, leaving it to be addressed in an ad hoc, reactive manner. We can do better.
Death is an inevitable part of people’s lives. As such, our products inevitably need to deal with it, whether they were intended to or not. Companies like Google and Facebook have recognized the importance of providing appropriate support mechanisms for people to prepare for and manage scenarios surrounding death. At Collective Health, we also believe this to be a worthwhile effort. We are taking the complexity out of healthcare by making it effortless for people to understand, navigate and access their health benefits. Our aim is to make this true regardless of whether they are on a journey towards health or navigating the loss of a life.
Over the past year, our design, engineering, product and care support teams have joined forces to ensure our product experiences remain sensitive to the emotional, logistical and social complexities of death. We are blending technology, data, and human-centered design practices to build mechanisms to prevent unintended moments of product insensitivity and help people prepare for, and navigate, end of life situations. In this talk, we’ll share methods for executing this and insights we’ve gained in our effort to be more proactive, compassionate and helpful to individuals, and their families, who are meeting one of life’s most inevitable moments.
Final Destination: Creating a Better Afterlife for Our Digital Treasures
Given at IxDA 2017 in New York City
Session Summary
Products have a perspective problem. Their views of typical user journeys are too narrow and fail to account for one of our most basic human qualities - mortality.
Many services, like Facebook and Instagram, generate rich personal content that people increasingly view as invaluable records of their life experiences. When someone dies, these services provide, at best, profile deactivation or memorial options. While this supports access control or profile removal it leaves us with little ability to collect, preserve and pass on these valuable heirlooms to our relatives in any meaningful way. Instead, we are left with significant parts of our personal heritage floating in a digital purgatory, just out of reach to those who treasure it most.
Highly personal and social products have an obligation to address their users’ needs before and beyond death. “Final Destination: Creating a better afterlife for our digital treasures” will present the social and business benefits, along with some practical considerations, of supporting needs within this most universal of human contexts.
Products have a perspective problem. Their view of a user’s journey is too narrow and fails to account for one of the most basic human qualities of their customers – mortality.
Many digital services that generate personal content and data provide, at best, deactivation and/or memorialization options. This approach addresses profile access control or removal but neglects needs surrounding content collection, preservation and inheritance. People increasingly view their digital content as valuable heirlooms, serving as rich records of their life’s experiences to be shared beyond their lifetime. In reality, friends and family of deceased customers are left with little or no options to retrieve these heirlooms in any meaningful way. The result is large amounts of rich, personal and emotionally significant content left to float in a digital purgatory, just out of reach to those who treasure it most.
Products that sit within highly personal and social spaces have an obligation to their customer community to address these needs. This session will present a framework and set of guiding principles for supporting this underserved, yet important, phase of a product’s user experience.
Client IxDA Conference 2014 - San Francisco, CA
Role Workshop Designer, Coordinator + Moderator
Students 40 / Mixed disciplines / All levels
Teaching Assistants Daniel Nacamuli, Tim Meador, Chris MacDonald, Flavio Carvalho, Garrett Grosko, Joanne Ong.
Materials Workshop Team Briefs
_____________________________________________________________________
On February 10th, Method hosted a workshop for the IxDA15 Conference at our San Francisco studio. As part of the core team who designed and developed HENRI, a tool for prototyping non-verbal languages for objects, I led the effort on designing a workshop for the tools use for the IxDA15 Conference. Our goal was to create a workshop that breaks the boundaries of traditional conference and to test the tool's ability to expand the attendees thinking beyond typical workplace processes when designing for non-screen based products.
The Workshop
The workshop goal was to provide students with a framework for rethinking how we design communication for non-screen based, yet interactive objects. Six teams of six students each were assigned an everyday object and given 3 (often humorous) scenarios in which the object found itself. The team's objective was to first create a personality (or brand) for the object, then use that as a grounding basis in which to design the type of response and expression it would display in each scenario. Using HENRI as their tool, team members prototyped expressions using light, color, pulsation patterns, brightness/dimness and sound. As they created each expression, teams could play them back using the desktop interface (which is connected to the HENRI box) to asses whether they communicated the intended message and emotion. Each team was responsible for presenting their concepts in the form of an infomercial highlighting how the object communicated with its user.
Outcome
The workshop successfully saw teams work together in a very short amount of time; most participants had never thought of infusing personas into an object. They began to think from a unique perspective where the product needs to communicate more information to a person than just on, off or idle. What if it was angry, sad, or excited? Henri allows those concepts to be tested real-time, and enhance the overall capabilities of both the designer and the product. It helped people literally think outside of the box, and be productive while playing.
About the tool (HENRI)
HENRI was a speculative project initiated by the Method design team to create a tool that would allow for real-time prototyping of languages for objects. We approached the design with an understanding that the focus should fall on the results rather than on the form factor. Henri needed to be a well designed, non-distracting form that would encourage collaboration, play and rapid experimentation. It is a device that, in concept and practice, allows you to visually express an idea so that designers and design teams can experience it together. Designers no longer have to rely on ideas in abstract terms. Henri shortens the loop between having the idea, experiencing the idea, sharing and reflecting on the idea. This quicker feedback loop allows for much more iteration.
Client UX Strategies Summit 2015 - San Francisco, CA
Role Workshop Designer & Moderator
Students 18 / UX Designers & Product Managers / All levels
Materials Workshop Guide
_____________________________________________________________________
In September 2015, I was invited to give a workshop on rapid ideation techniques for UX professionals for exploring design challenges from multiple angles. The UX Strategies Summit focuses on implementing UX strategies within a business context.
The Workshop
This workshop provided hands on demonstration of how to create situations - or creative frameworks - in which to guide consideration and discussion around a given design challenge. Creative frameworks encourage teams to see things from new and sometimes unexpected perspectives helping release organizations from personal bias by exploring a problem from particular perspectives.
Students were divided into 5 groups and opened with a provocation in which the day's efforts would focus: How might we use technology and leverage communities to better serve those who've lost a loved one? Over the course of the 4 hour workshop, attendees were guided through six different types of creative frameworks for exploring the historical landscape of the challenge, identify personal bias, understand audience needs, define hypothesis, and ideate solutions for particular needs.
Course Objectives
• Understand the necessary components for providing a creative framework.
• Learn several techniques for moderating rapid ideation sessions for both individuals and within groups.
• Learn ways of getting your team out of creative 'sleepwalking'.
Outcome
Student engagement was strong and feedback was positive. Post conference surveys rated the workshop a 4 out 5.
School California College of the Arts
Level Graduate Studio
Disciplines All
Program Graduate Design
Building Narratives was a graduate level interdisciplinary studio course I co-taught with Alexis Petty in 2012. Its focus was to investigate the role artists and designers could play in ressurecting the long forgotten narratives embedded within abandoned spaces. The course was offered as an elective of the Graduate Design program at CCA, was open to all majors and part of the ENGAGE at CCA program.
Resulting projects included performative dance, poetry, typographic murals, sound installations and participatory 'happenings'.
Course description
In Esparto, CA is a historic train station which sits in disrepair, its history and role within the community has faded into the background. The station was part of the Vaca Valley and Clear Lake railroad and transported passengers, as well as agricultural goods. The line connected towns throughout the Valley until 1957 when the last train left the Esparto station. In 2011, the station was purchased and is poised for redevelopment starting in 2012.
As a starting point in the rehabilitation of this space this course poses the question: What role, beyond aesthetic applications, can artists and designers serve in the resurrection of rural spaces and the long forgotten narratives embedded within them?
Students will conduct a series of ethnographic type interviews with Esparto residents, representatives of the Capay Valley farming community and other community stakeholders to gain understanding of their relationship with the station and their visions for its revitalization. Aggregating their research, students will design and implement a considered, site-specific installation in order to, as a class, provide a series of moves on-site that will begin a conversation towards larger community awareness for the train station’s development plans.
More information: http://mnemictrain.com/
School California College of the Arts
Level Undergraduate
Disciplines All
Program Diversity Studies / Community Arts
_______________________________________________________________
This course was a partnership with the CCA Research and Planning Departments, and Facilities Dept. and PG&E’s Pacific Energy Center. Students were responsible for designing a site-specific map, data visualization or other graphic narrative that sought to accomplish one or more of the following:
• Exposes hidden energy narratives: We all use energy every day but do we know where it comes from? How is it produced (where it comes from), distributed (how it got here) and used (how is it translated into human action) within a particular space?
• Increases awareness of the social, economic, environmental and/or cultural implications of energy production, delivery and usage.
• Alters/Debunks perception of energy as an intangible infinite commodity with the goal of challenging people’s passive attitudes towards energy usage.
The final project was installed in various site-specific locations on the CCA SF campus and presented to representatives of CCA Research and Planning Departments and PG&E’s Pacific Energy Center.
