Designing with culture in mind 2 · 2004-09-14 · Keywords: interaction design lifestyle,...

MSc Thesis in Interaction design

Designing With Culture in Mind

Magnus JohanssonGöteborg, Sweden 2003

Chalmers Department of Computing Science

REPORT NO. xxxx/xxxx

Designing With Culture in Mind

Magnus Johansson

Department Of Computing ScienceIT UNIVERSITY OF GÖTEBORG

GÖTEBORG UNIVERSITY AND CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Göteborg, Sweden 2003

Designing With Culture in MindMagnus Johansson

© Magnus Johansson, 2003.

Report no xxxx:xxISSN: 1651-4769Department of Computing ScienceIT University of GöteborgGöteborg University and Chalmers University of TechnologyP O Box 8718SE – 402 75 GöteborgSwedenTelephone + 46 (0)31-772 4895

Tryckeriet, Matematiskt centrumGöteborg, Sweden 2002

Designing With Culture in MindMagnus JohanssonDepartment of Computing ScienceIT University of GöteborgGöteborg University and Chalmers University of Technology

Abstract

The thesis explores the circumstances of designing in relation to the cultural context a design proposal will be put into. The focus has been to understand the cultural and socially communicative circumstances surrounding a design situation; to the fact that designed objects are carriers of symbolic meaning that will be experienced and interpreted in different ways by different individuals and groups. By bringing this knowledge into in the design process we are exposed to questions of cultural identity, social association and personal aesthetics, issues that (in my opinion) are rarely dealt with in traditional interaction design projects.

The first part of the thesis describes a theoretical framework, a suggestion for how we as designers can interpret and understand people’s need for self-expression through personal aesthetics and use of objects; through their artifacts and rituals. The framework is based on theories derived from cultural studies and cultural sociology.

In the second part of thesis takes the step form theory to practice, how I used the theoretical framework as actual stuff for design. The projects Sonic City and Sonic Modulator are shown as examples of design processes where the ambition has been to design with the cultural context in mind. In the case of Sonic Modulator the main goal was to create a physical interface that would be accepted into the electronica music scene, a subculture or cultural group with distinct preferences and tastes. Working Sonic City was more about using elements of lifestyle and contemporary culture to explore new possibilities for an existing design proposal, expanding the concept to find ways of usage that would be considered meaningful by users.

The report is written in English.

Keywords: interaction design lifestyle, subculture, conceptual design, musical interface, design methodology

Acknowledgement

This thesis almost became “the project that never ended” if it hadn’t been for the encouraging words and guiding from several individuals. Therefore I would like to send a big thank you to Johan Redström for his patience and excellent tutoring, to Ramia Mazé for her even bigger patience and inspirational ideas. Johan Sandsjö and Lalya Gaye for feedback and support.

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ContentsIntroduction .....................................................................................1The Cultural Context .......................................................................2Problem area ..................................................................................3Designing for cultural niches ..........................................................5Approaching the cultural context in design ....................................6Endnotes ..........................................................................................8

Influences .......................................................................................9Hertzian Tales – Psychosocial Narratives .......................................10Projected Realities ..........................................................................11Alternatives .....................................................................................12Sociology and interaction design ....................................................14Academic view on Culture ..............................................................14Cultural Expression in practice .......................................................16Lifestyles .........................................................................................17Defining lifestyles ...........................................................................18Lifestyle and the uses of objects .....................................................20Subcultures .....................................................................................20Endnotes ..........................................................................................23

Methods ..........................................................................................24Overview .........................................................................................25

Sonic Modulator ..............................................................................27Problem Area ..................................................................................28The electronica music community ..................................................29Design Process ................................................................................30Collecting material ..........................................................................31Interpreting material ........................................................................33Creating a theme .............................................................................34First design concept – subtle destruction ........................................35The final concept .............................................................................36The Prototype ..................................................................................36Sonic Modulator - Discussion .........................................................37Endnotes ..........................................................................................38

Sonic City ........................................................................................39Problem area ...................................................................................40Creating a prototype ........................................................................40Expanding the concept ....................................................................41

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Interaction issues ............................................................................42Design process ................................................................................43Observations ...................................................................................43Collecting inspirational material .....................................................45Developing scenarios - Creating characters ....................................46Making up stories based on characters ...........................................47Identifying themes and interaction models .....................................48Ideal scenarios and sounds ..............................................................50Sonic City - discussion ...................................................................50

End discussion ................................................................................53Other issues .....................................................................................54

Referenses ......................................................................................56Literature .........................................................................................56Web pages .......................................................................................57

Appendix .........................................................................................I1. Destructive Gestures and Tools study - Sonic Modulator ...........IWalks through the city ....................................................................IVJoanna .............................................................................................IV

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Introduction

This thesis will explore ways to design information technology (computer related material) in relation to the cultural context in which

the final design proposal will be put in to. It focuses on understanding the cultural and socially communicative circumstances surrounding a design situation, to the fact that designed objects are carriers of symbolic meaning which will be experienced and interpreted in different ways by different individuals and groups. By understanding the cultural context and bringing this knowledge into in the design process, it is my belief that the final design will be improved or work as inspiration to find new solutions.

The main many reason for why I chose to explore this approach to interaction design is because I think there is a need for understanding the totality of user’s everyday life. There is an overrepresentation of information technology focused on helping us solving tasks and work related problems, a development which has resulted in designers focusing on functions that are efficient, time saving and generic. By fixating on these types of functions designers fail to approach other aspects of everyday life, which might just be as important and meaningful to users as the completion of tasks or receiving assistance at home and work.

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Why I chose to focus the cultural aspects of a design is because I think this is one of the aspects rarely addressed by designers of computational material. I believe that cultural forms such as lifestyles and subcultures can help us to understand how individuals and groups actually uses designed objects and also what meaning these objects have in their lives.

I intend to demonstrate designing in relation to the cultural context through practical examples. By describing the design process for Sonic City and Modulator I will show how I worked with the cultural context, what type of problems and solutions it lead to, the benefits and the drawbacks. More generally I hope the essay can give suggestions to other interaction designers who want to work more culturally aware with their products. It is about exposing the issues and questions that I dealt with during the work, but also the solutions I suggested. From a more general view it is about how interaction designers can benefit from using the understanding of culture as inspiration or source of knowledge of how both groups and individuals relate to designed objects.

T h e C u l t u r a l C o n t e x t

I will use term “cultural context” as a collective description of the social and cultural circumstances in which the final design is placed in. When you design something you always have to think of the circumstances in which the product will end up in and the result of the design is dependent on how you as a designer chose to relate to these circumstances. For instance when designing a watch you might want to consider the physical context it will end up in, that the watch might be exposed to rain, snow, extreme temperatures and water. Therefore you make a choice to adjust the design to fit under these conditions. Another context can be about focusing on the potential users, if the watch is intended to be used by visually impaired you might want to make the pointers bigger, and perhaps build in extra functions such as a light or a voice track that tells the time. There are an infinite number of variables that can influence a design and as a designer it is your call to decide which ones that is important to the intended solution.

In my view, when you design with the cultural context in mind you are aware, or have an understanding of, the socially communicative side of the product, how it will be perceived by groups and individuals in society. If you make the watch in solid gold you understand that some people will consider it as something expensive and desirable and others as posh and

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boastful. It might even be worn as a sarcastic statement, as something kitschy or in bad taste. Being aware of the cultural context means that look beyond pure functionality of an object, you understand that people use things to communicate with each other, that sometimes a hat is just a hat but under some circumstances a hat is a thing of power, or perhaps a thing of ridicule.

Through out the essay I will refer to a “cultural niche”, a “cultural group” and a “social scene”. They are all variations of the description of a specific cultural context, a group of users or a cultural space that contains a set of ideals, assumptions, visual styles, behavioural structures or materialistic values.

Problem area

From my point of view designing is an approach to, or have a (creative) relationship to everyday life. Whether a design solution is suppose to aid us in our daily tasks, solve problems, entertain or provoke us, every design solution is a response the situations and circumstances of the users everyday life. This statement is a rather safe one to make since the term everyday life incorporates everything we humans do, all the activities we perform (including the acts of design themselves). But there are many ways and perspective in which a designer can approach everyday life. In this section I will discuss what I believe is the most common approach for design in relation to computer material.

Information technologies have been in our everyday lives since the middle of this century. During the last two decades the computer has made the leap from our work spheres into our homes, from stationary workstations to personal computers and laptops. It has also gone from being a solid object with a specific purpose to a design material of its own, with its unique characteristics and abilities being integrated into traditionally non-computer objects such as cars, calendars, phones and toys. As computer technology becomes more efficient in its tasks it also becomes smaller and cheaper to produce, enabling designers to make use of it in every possible areas and in any possible ways. We are living in a time where computers are taking the step from being something to becoming a part of everything, infiltrating areas where digital technology rarely has been applied before. In other words, computer technology is permeating all levels of everyday life.

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In my view the most common way for interaction designers and developers of computational material to approach the user’s everyday life is by focusing on tasks and task related functions. There is an overrepresentation of computer software and information appliances designed for (or suggested for) the purpose of completing or helping the user to complete tasks in their daily work. Digital technology aids us in our chores, both at work and at home, making them easier and faster to complete with a result that is accurate and efficient. Baking machines, automatic lawnmowers, internet billing-systems and electronic calendars are examples of computer related technology in our homes which helps us save time leaving us more time for recreation, which is yet another area in which computer technology has had a huge impact. Here technology completes tasks but with the purpose to help the users in their inactivity, which is the case for products such as DVD, MP3-players, interactive toys and computer games.

The point I want to make is that contemporary information appliance design and production views everyday life as mainly consisting of tasks in constant need of attention and completion. This is not a faulty perspective; computer technology has in many ways been very successfully integrated in our everyday lives and we are dependent on it to help us solving tasks. However I think it a very limited design approach that fails to see the totality of our everyday lives. This is an issue that Gaver & Martin deal with in the paper “Alternatives”:

“Suggestions for how digital technologies might be employed in everyday settings tend to represent a narrow range of cultural possibilities, reinforcing a simple dichotomy between work and play. Many devices import values from the workplace into the home, emphasising the requirements of “domestic work” by allowing chores to be done more efficiently or productively. Others emphasise the desirability of taking “time off,” allowing people to play unproductive games or access new forms of broadcast media. Other values seem rarely to be addressed at all.” [1]

As Gaver & Martin points out, the possible ways of usage suggested by designers of electronic devices are narrow, or in my opinion somewhat unexplored. I think there lay great possibilities within expanding the design space of everyday life, exploring all our needs, activities, behaviours and preferences.

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Designing for cultural niches

In working with Sonic City and Sonic Modulator the ambition has been to design for everyday life, viewing it as an arena for personal and collective expression. My intention has been to focus on the designed object as a carrier and communicator of meaning, a meaning that could only be fully understood when put into a wider social and cultural context. Both projects are in their own way the result of considering and understanding this context. In the case of Sonic Modulator the main ambition was to create a physical interface that would be accepted into the electronica music scene, a subculture or cultural group with distinct preferences and tastes. Working Sonic City was more about using elements of lifestyle and contemporary culture to explore new possibilities for an existing design proposal, expanding the concept to find ways of usage that would be considered meaningful by users.

To design for cultural niches like subcultures is not something new. Most consumer products today are intended for specific lifestyles, micro cultural activities (such as skateboarding or golfing) or street cultures. Products now days are not only valued because of their functionality or their obvious areas of use. They are valued for their mythological possibilities, for the way of life suggested with using the objects. When buying a skateboard the consumer might have the intention of requiring a vehicle for transportation. But he or she also buys into a mythological package, or at least part of a mythological package. From being a consumer in need of a cheap way of transportation the ownership of the skateboard suggest that the consumer is a part of, or wants to be a part of, a social scene, a group of people with certain characteristics, values, ideas and styles. Buying just the skateboard might not be enough to claim membership of the particular group, to show a stronger affiliation he or she might have to buy certain clothes, have a new haircut, listen to the right kind of music and actually start to skateboard more frequently.

Consumption today is often about buying into a lifestyle package, which has become a very effective way for companies to market and sell products. Once a consumer starts to buy into a part of a lifestyle he or she often continues to buy the whole package. To a large extent these myths are suggested and withhold by companies through extensive marketing and branding. By establishing a commercial myth a company can make sure that the customer keeps coming back to buy their exclusive products. This development in consumption behaviour has led to product designers focusing on lifestyles and cultural niches, especially in the areas of leisure activity and fashion (except for high fashion) where this type of design is crucial for the survival on the market.

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In my opinion interaction design and information appliance production have for better or worse not followed this development. Until now there are few examples of products in this area that are designed for cultural niches. Of course these products are designed for certain lifestyles and ways of life, for instance the Sony Walkman [2] was in its design suggested to be used by active and sportive users who wants to listen to music when exercising their energetic lifestyle. Some cellular phones are designed for particular areas of interests, such as the Nokia N-Gage is designed to be used by young people who like to play games on their phones.

Generally I believe that interaction designers treat design issues concerning lifestyles and culture in a broad way. The general attitude seems to be to create solutions that will be applied to as many users as possible. Historically it has been too expensive to develop designs for every considerable subculture or lifestyle so instead the ambition has been to create all-purpose objects for large societal groups and categories such as the business world, women, sports and youths. This has lead to information technology and consumer electronic to be generic, both in appearance and ways of usage. But as computer technology evolves, when computers are becoming wearable, ubiquitous and embedded in other products the relation between interaction design and the cultural context will change. The question is only how it will change?

Approaching the cultural context in design

I intend to focus on how interaction designers can approach issues and situations of designing for the cultural context. This is obviously a huge topic which I by no means will completely deal in this thesis. My intention is to introduce a way of approaching these types of issues. I think there is a huge potential for interaction designers to explore cultural forms such as lifestyles and subcultures. By regarding them as sources of knowledge designers can discover issues that were not thought of in the original design solution. How users actually uses objects in ways that was other than suggested in the design, or how objects become meaningful to groups of individuals, not because of their functionality or intended area of use, but just because they seem to reflect or harmonize with the groups ideals and style.

Designing in relation to a cultural context is not without its risks. The most common way for product designers to approach cultural niches is by changing an objects surface, modifying its visual style. This is the easiest

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form of complying with the demands of a cultural group, changing the look to fit an audience. The downside to this is that designers contribute to a stereotypification and erosion of lifestyles and cultural niches. Another problem is that the lifecycle of a certain type’s culturally related products can be very short. Since consumer electronics and information appliances generally take a long time to develop the targeted lifestyle might just be out of style before the design reached production.

The approach I want to encourage is the potential for interaction designer to study how cultural groups actually use objects and bring that knowledge in to the design process. In a way cultural groups can be considered as frame works or instructions for how their members should relate to society’s products, what type of products they should consume and how they should be used. In many groups, especially in subcultures, these rules are constantly challenged and evolved. Instead of passively accepting and striving for the mythology of a lifestyle, many times individuals and cultural groups take the traits of an object, the functionality or the visual style of the design, and re-appropriate it to fit with their ideals or style of usage.

As an example of the re-appropriation of the functionality of a digital object I have chosen “Nanoloop” [3] and “Little Sound DJ” [4], two software applications for Nintendo’s Game Boy. They are both synthesizers and sequencers utilizing the unique sound producing qualities of the Game Boy to make music. Originally a student project Nanoloop evolved into a company selling the software to musicians all over the world. The Game Boy, which was designed for being used as a portable video-game, now have evolved into a tool for creating music, a development which was not conceived or endorsed by Nintendo. These two applications also spawned a network of musicians and fans of the Game Boy’s low-fidelity and vintage computer sounding music. Bands like “Puss” [5] and “8-bit Rockers” [6], and the collection album “Nanoloop 1.0” [7] are examples of the unique cultural expression which grew from the “misuse” of the Game Boy.

As an interaction designer I think it is interesting how users actually use objects and I believe there is much to learn from cultural groups in society who constantly re-appropriates, re-contextualize and experiment with the usage, the social symbolism and the functionality of objects. The suggested areas of use which we as designers provide in our design solutions are consciously disregarded by these groups because the users are creative, playful and have a need for colonizing objects. That is to make objects, or ways of using an object, their own. As designers I think it is important

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that we take the knowledge about this into the design process. Not only to make design proposals which will fit into the appropriate cultural context, but to explore and expand the design space.

These issues and thoughts were those who initiated this essay and the design process with Sonic Modulator and Sonic City. In the next section I will discuss some of the design projects that influenced my methodical approach.

Endnotes

[1]. Gaver, B., & Marin, H (2000): Alternatives: Exploring Information Appliances through Conceptual Design Proposals, p. 209. Proceedings of CHI 2000 ACM press The Hague, Amsterdam.

[2]. Sony Walkman by Sony

[3]. WEB INFO ABOUT NANOLOOP: http://www.nanoloop.com

[4]. WEB INFO ABOUT LITTLE SOUND DJ: http://www.littlesounddj.com

[5]. WEB INFO ABOUT PUSS: http://www.pusstracks.com

[6]. WEB INFO ABOUT 8-BIT ROCKERS: http://media.urova.fi/~sliuski/

[7]. WEB INFO ABOUT THE NANOLOOP ALBUM: http://www.disco-bruit.de/

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Influences

In this chapter I will discuss some of the interaction design literature, projects and products that influenced the design processes of Sonic

Modulator and Sonic City, both ideologically and methodically. Both the projects have their individual influences and theoretical inspirations as well, so the material presented here are those that affected both the projects and me as an interaction designer.

One of the things these theoretical sources have in common is the focus on the values a design suggestion might deal with. More specifically they focus on how interaction design can be used for approaching alternative values and behavioural effects on the user. Rather than focusing on the technical side of a design solution, if it will work or if the user will understand it, they call attention to the social, cultural and psychological influence that design solutions have the potential of invoking.

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H e r t z i a n T a l e s – P s y c h o s o c i a l N a r r a t i v e s

In “Hertzian Tales” design research fellow Anthony Dunne uses the term psychosocial narratives [1] to describe the unique “narrative potential” of electronic products. That is their ability of suggesting a fictional world in which the user is a protagonist. While using an electronic object the users enters a “narrative space”, a parallel world in which they experience themselves to be in centre. Through this perspective the designer becomes an author, the creator of the narrative space suggested for the user:

“By using the object the protagonist enters a space between desire and determinism, a bizarre world of the ‘infra ordinary’, where strange stories show that truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and that our conventional experience of everyday life through electronic products is aesthetically impoverished. “ [1, p. 60]

Within the narrative space there are possibilities for the user to break the limits suggested in the design of electronic products, a possibility to misuse or abuse its original intention. Therefore the narrative space is not only a place conceived by the designer, it is a place experienced by the user where he or she can potentially disregard the suggested behavioural directions and create a space of his or her own.

“When an object’s use is subverted, it is as though the protagonist is cheating the system and deriving more pleasure than is or her due. The subversion of functions relates to a breakdown of order; something else becomes visible, unnamable, unable to find a correspondence in the material world. The subversion of function is related to not being able to find the right word, creating neologisms that bend language to accommodate something new. Desire leads to a subversion of environment creating an opportunity to reconfigure it to suit our ‘illegitimate’ needs, establishing new and unofficial narratives.” [1, p. 62].

I think the perspective Dunne introduces is very constructive, both as a design ideology and as a method. By looking at the designer as an author creating fictive worlds, he exposes the possibilities for designers to impose cultural, social and psychological values with their design suggestions.

We as designers only provide the users with a suggested world. If they are not content with it they will change it to suit their needs and pleasures. To regard misuse and abuse as stuff for design is something that I there is potential in exploring, if nothing else but to get inspiration. Generally,

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the notion of a designed object being constantly misused might seem like an interaction designer’s nightmare. We can never anticipate or calculate how people will respond to a design solution. By applying methods such as participatory or collaborative design, or by conducting extensive user testing and interviews, we can get feedback on our design proposals. But since these types of methods are an open dialogue between the user and the designer we can never be sure to get the whole truth, that the users reveal all their desires, pleasures and needs. The misuse of objects potentially exposes personal sides of a user, characteristics that might be difficult to reveal in open environment.

From a methodological perspective I think there can be much to gain in designers exploring how to work more like an author. This is something we did when developing scenarios for Sonic City, for example writing stories to illustrate a user scenario or develop fictive characters with extensive emotional background.

P r o j e c t e d R e a l i t i e s

“Projected realities” [2] is one of few interaction design papers that actually deal with the issues of designing something for a culturally niched audience, the micro culture of a housing area. In the paper authors Anthony Dunne and Bill Gaver explores how to create a conceptual design that would produce meaningful effects on local culture. The project was set in a community called Bijlmer, a housing development outside Amsterdam in Netherlands. Bijlmer had at the time a bad reputation, with a high rate of unemployed inhabitants, drugs and crime in the area. The purpose of the project was to increase the presence of elderly within the community but also to find new ways that technology can enter and affect everyday culture. The main idea behind the design suggestion was to let the people of Bijlmer communicate their emotions publicly through a system of electronic displays installed in public areas around the area. The elderly inhabitants of Bijlmer would govern these displays deciding the content of the output.

In my opinion one of the most interesting aspects of the project is how Dunne and Gaver approached the intended user group, the elders of Bijlmer. Rather than interviewing them “scientifically” to get information, Dunne and Gaver wanted to create a dialogue with the inhabitants by sending them cultural probes, a sort of participatory design situation based on techniques from conceptual arts. The probes contained provocative material aimed

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to make them react towards their environment, both emotionally and aesthetically. For example one of the objects in the probe was a disposable camera together with a list of requested pictures such as “what will you wear today”, “something ugly”. They hoped to provoke reactions among the elders, making them respond to the probes with material that were then used as inspiration for the whole design process.

This method of working, letting the user group influence the design process through their aesthetical output rather than their intellectual input, is necessary when you want your design solution to have a cultural effect. At least it is something that you as a designer cannot completely disregard. Since one of the deliverables of the project was to create a design solution which would affect the every day culture one of the starting points would be to examine the cultural expressions existing within the intended user groups. This approach is about attempting to understand the totality of the user’s every day lives, to realize that people express themselves not only through verbal communication, but through aesthetical and symbolic material. By letting this material inspire or guide the design process can make a design more culturally affective.

A l t e r n a t i v e s

Gaver and Martin introduce a series of design projects in the paper “Alternatives” [3]. The common negotiator for these projects is how they explore alternative values to those traditionally imposed by information appliance design. The authors argue that modern-day digital technology rarely addresses other values in every day life than those of imposed by working ethics (like productivity and efficiency) or those that correspond to our desire for taking time-off. The design examples introduced in the paper are suggestions for other values, aspects that we might find meaningful or personally satisfying, which the evolving field of information appliances can explore. Gaver and Martin suggest that the following values are being explored in the examples:

Impressionistic displays – deals with peoples desire for attention to and variety in the aesthetics of devices they use in everyday life.

Diversions – we often find value and enjoyment in distractions that leads us from our expected behavioural patterns. This is about promoting the unexpected and surprising elements of everyday.

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Influence – the notion that people want to have influence and control over their environment.

Intimacy – how we find meaning in subtle and non-verbal communication.

Insight – we tend to desire things that can help us understand and change ourselves in relation to the context we live in, like self-help books or New Age materials.

Mystery – appeals to the side of human nature that is drawn to the unknown and unexplainable.

Through the design examples in Alternatives, Gaver and Martin shows that digital technology can appeal to and explore sides of human nature which are not fully represented in this type of design today. For me the main deliverable of the paper, were the design examples themselves showing how the designers actively worked to achieve the desired cultural impact. An example of this is how they where presented, as fictional products sketched in a workbook and not actual functional prototypes. Even though each example is technically plausible their strength is their ability to communicate the concept and the user experience it invokes. In this way the audience imagine themselves in the situation of using the design proposal and how their lives would be affected:

“In this way, the proposals acted as probes into the values and beliefs of our design partners, eliciting a conversation about the directions we might take in pursuing information appliances” [2, p.215]

In describing the design examples the authors tried to achieve a balance between concreteness and openness. The suggestions needed to be concrete enough so that there would not be any doubt of how they were suppose to work. On the other hand they needed to be open so that the audience could suggest extensions and development themselves and thereby getting more involved in the design process.

This way of working makes it easier to focus on the implications of the design. In a similar way we approached creating scenarios for Sonic City, focusing on the values and cultural affect rather the technological functionality.

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Sociology and interaction design

In this section I will introduce theories, ideas and frame of references derived form social science disciplines such as sociology, social anthropology and cultural studies. These academic areas have focused on studying contemporary culture; subcultures, lifestyles and symbolic aesthetics for years and I think there can be much to gain in bringing this knowledge into interaction design.

I would like to point out that my intention of using these theories has not been to make my methods and design solutions scientifically valid. The idea has been to explore different aspects of what makes objects meaningful for individuals and the theories provided me with a framework of terms and theories for doing so. The theories worked as inspiration and sources of knowledge rather than rules for design.

A c a d e m i c v i e w o n C u l t u r e

In our everyday life we as humans express ourselves all the time. Not only through our speech and language, but also through our clothes, personal belongings and actions. By presenting ourselves or acting in certain ways we can communicate things without the necessity to speak and thereby save a lot of time. Everyday life is about how we conceive and experience our lives. It is more than just how we organize our activities; it is about personal experiences and emotional states and how we communicate them; everyday life is an aesthetic practice:

“On the one hand, by foregrounding the world as both mental and sensual experience it problematically expands the range of meaningful elements attributable to the every day. If, for instance, boredom is seen as a central experience in everyday life it is clearly not limited to the realm of thought (which is usually ‘where’ meaning is located). Boredom can affect the body and mind as a form of existential and physical tiredness. How should this experience (or these experiences) be understood? How should they be described? This takes us directly to the other central aspect of aesthetics: aesthetics insists of examining the way in which experiences are registered and represented. So aesthetics is concerned with experience and the form such experience takes when it is communicated.” [4 p.19]

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As culture studies researcher Ben Highmore suggests in the above quote; we as humans tend to communicate our experience of everyday life through aesthetic practices, in anything from art to designed objects, literature, poetry and other expressive forms. We seem to have a desire or a need to show other people what we cannot put into words, our experiences, emotions, desires and fears. We are culturally expressive.

The term ‘cultural expression’ refers to how we communicate cultural (collective consciousness) belonging and affiliation through what we create (artefacts) and what we do (rituals). A cultural expression always has a relationship to groups or a collective’s values, ideas and traditions. They are statements saying something about their bearers, what background come from, their regional origin or what they do. For instance a veil can communicate its bearer’s religion, nationality and to some limits their opinions. A hairstyle can reveal a statement against society that was the case with the punk hairdos of 1977. Cultural expressions help us to communicate more efficiently, both within social groups and outwards to external groups. Through cultural expressions receive information about an individual or a group without the need to talk to them. We can more easily see if we have something in common with the individual, or perhaps if they belong to the enemy. The language of cultural expression can be deliberate and systemised by society, which would be the case when some work groups (the police, maids) have uniforms. It can also be subtler and almost noticeable. It can communicate on different levels in anything from showing national and geographic belonging, socioeconomic position to showing its bearers personal tastes and interests. It can be functional and instrumental but also emotional and personal. Whichever form the expression might take it always stands in relationship to a dominant culture.

Culture is a word that has been defined and described by a number of sciences, arts and philosophies. Therefore there are a lot of definitions to choose from when describing what it is about. One of the biggest misunderstandings is that culture is the same thing that the terms high culture and high art describes. In other words that it is a setting of activities and crafts associated with high society such as art, classical music, theatre and literature. The perspective on culture I want to bring forward is derived from cultural researcher Paul Willis that he describes in his paper “Symbolism and Practice”:

“The heart of what I understand to be ‘culture’ is in the relation of wo/ma’s consciousness, individual and collective, to the objects, and artefacts, both functional and expressive, around her. The study of

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either of these areas alone will not constitute a study of human culture. It does not matter theoretically whether we understand the objects in this relation to be expressive or functional, or indeed whether they are natural or wo/manmade. The essential and defining feature of culture I take to be the relationship of wo/man to all the objects and artefacts s/he is consciously involved with. The whole culture of a society or group is the sum of all such relationships.” [5, p.7]

According to Willis what distinguishes culture are the objects or cultural artefacts we surround ourselves with and how we individually and collectively relate to all of them. In other words: how the cultures members use and value artefacts. Every culture has a symbolic order where some artefacts are valued higher than others.

A culture is a sort of collective consciousness. It is about a specific group’s values, ideas, emotions, tradition and heritage and how this is related with and communicated through language, artefacts and rituals.

Cultural Expression in practice

The previous chapter dealt with culture through a very basic and simplified model. When put in context with today’s post-modern and mass-consuming society the notion of cultural expression becomes a bit more difficult. Contemporary culture research and theory deals with the conditions of life for individuals and social groups in a very rapidly changing society. It is a society where old traditions, cultural structures and institutions are in constant re-formation, creating new conditions of life for its habitants.

I have chosen to present two perspectives or types of theory to exemplify cultural expression in today’s society. The first section deals with the notion of lifestyles, one of the most dominant forms of expressions in our society’s mass consuming culture. The perspective I present is derived from the book “Lifestyles – Key Ideas” (1996) [6] written by sociologist David Chaney. In the second section I present some theories and research about British subcultures done by a group of scientists generally referred to as “The Birmingham School”. This short overview of their work was derived from the book “Ungdomskultur: identitet och motstånd” by Johan Fornäs, Ulf Lindberg and Ove Sernhede [7].

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Lifestyles

“While lifestyles are dependent on cultural forms, each is a style, a manner, a way of using certain goods, places and times that are characteristic of a group but is not the totality of their social experience. Lifestyles are sets of practices and attributes that makes sense in particular contexts.” [6, p. 5]

Chaney describes the notion of lifestyles as social and cultural phenomena that historically can be documented from modernity and forward. Lifestyles are a product of modernity that is the political and social changes that occurred during modernity were fundamental to the existence of lifestyles. One of these vital processes was the growth of consumerism, a way of life that stem from other processes such as the ability of mass production, the economical growth of the middle class, the development of department stores in metropolitan areas, the evolving marketing and advertisement industry, the capitalisation of leisure activities. Lifestyles are features of consumerism because in the way that the status given by membership of a group, does not exclusively come from the occupation or social privilege that members of the group share; but from how they use those privileges and resources that they are able to enjoy. Lifestyles are therefore based upon the social organisation of consumption.

Another vital process was the erosion of the class-based society where the distinction between the social groups was being blurred. It was now possible for other groups other than the privileged ones to express opinions about everything.

Urbanisation and the development of metropolitan areas was also imperative to the growth of lifestyles because with this process offered (or forced) anonymity of citizens. Chaney argues that under older social forms the material culture was more distinctively used and appreciated. The symbolic meaning of objects was more widely known, shared and accepted in these stable communities. It is under the guise of anonymity that symbolic meaning is constantly re-invented because individuals are able to experiment with identity.

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D e f i n i n g l i f e s t y l e s

But what exactly are lifestyles? Chaney differentiates between ways of life and lifestyles. Ways of life are more about the actual conditions under which we live our lives, often based on social forms such as occupation, ethnicity, gender and physical location. Lifestyles are about identification, what we identify ourselves with; it is about the expected behaviour associated with the lifestyle. For instance being a doctor is a way of life in the way that it determines the actual activities for an individual, like driving to and from the hospital, being on call, the art of practicing medicine, the actual cases solved and so forth. The lifestyle of being a doctor is more about taking the cultural identity of a doctor, acting the way a doctor should act both in the occupation and in social life, like having the typical tastes of a doctor, driving a certain type of car, enjoying typical leisure activities like playing golf, or being a member of an exclusive social club.

The last sentence might more seem like a cliché or a stereotype of doctors than a lifestyle portrayal and there are a lot of medical patricians that would not agree with the latter description. This was an exaggerated example to lead us up to another point of definition; lifestyles are structures of free will. Unlike social structures such as ethnicity, gender and social class one can chose how one relates to a lifestyle. Some doctors might agree with the first description and even try to achieve it. Others for while others might find it untruthful but strive for another type of lifestyles associated with doctors.

Chaney argues that lifestyles are patterns that differentiate people. By applying the notion of a lifestyle we can behave in a certain way without the need to explain ourselves. In that regard they also help us to make sense of other peoples activities, what people do and why and what doing it means to them and others. Different lifestyles enjoy different kinds of statuses in a society. Some are related to ways of life such as being wealthy or politically influential while others are more specifically focused on finding sympathising with particular social and cultural groups. An example of the latter would be the Swedish hip-hop lifestyle in which its members by buying and using stereotypical commodities (such clothing, accessories and music) to sympathise with Afro-American subcultures. This brings me to another point; lifestyles do not necessarily have to be preceded by ways of life. One can live the lifestyle of being wealthy without actually being wealthy, that is one can send the social signals of being rich by using the right types of commodities.

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So lifestyles can be seen as ideal images we project on ourselves and others and these images can in a certain degree explain our behaviours. But what type of behaviour are generated through or contained in the lifestyles? Lifestyles can provide any type of behavioural pattern, but most significant is how they relate to consuming patterns. All lifestyles have a more or less unspoken rulebook of how its members should relate to commodities; which ones that are considered important and desirable, which ones that give status both within and outside the lifestyle. In that regards lifestyles are generally materialistic social forms:

“[…] the increasing significance of lifestyles derives from a re-evaluation of material culture, away from the immediate monetary value of objects and towards their social or cultural value. Although I noted that it has been presented as a ‘discovery’ of marketing strategies, it is in fact inherent in the sorts of things lifestyles are. The reason is that lifestyle is a patterned way of using or understanding or appreciating the artefacts of material culture in order to negotiate the play of criteria of status in anonymous social contexts. Clearly the currency of lifestyles is the symbolic meaning of artefacts, that is, what they are seen to represent over their manifest identity. Of course things like an Armani suit or a Porsche 911 are still valued for they can do, but the quality of their ‘engineering’ is an element in a more complex identity.” [6, p.43]

Commodities have a symbolic meaning depending on the context they are put in, or depending on how it relates to lifestyles. Wearing a fur coat can be a symbol of status and wealth for some lifestyles while others such as animal rights movements might find it repulsive and unmoral behaviour. Hence lifestyles contain systems of commodities symbolic values and how its members should relate to them.

In today’s society mass media and marketing firms are using lifestyles as a way of selling products. By focusing on specific lifestyles, seeing them as potential markets, the advertisement industries specialises in selling products that concur with the lifestyles ideals and desires. Lifestyle images are to a certain extent produced and withhold by the entertainment industry and media.

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L i f e s t y l e a n d t h e u s e s o f o b j e c t s

“Each instance of a lifestyle is a way of telling a story, inflected by ways of life such as gender and class, that is a form of creative work. It is a way of redesigning material culture in infinite variety. A way of responding to the ‘presence’ of several or a multiplicity of cultures in material objects and practices” [6, p. 147]

Lifestyles can be seen as sources of knowledge. They are in themselves rulebooks for how its members relates to commodities. Seen from a designer’s point of view they show use how the users actually uses designed artefacts. This is something that goes beyond instrumental use, by studying lifestyles we can see how users value the designed artefacts and use them as strategies to achieve desired social and cultural status.

Chaney points out that lifestyles are aesthetical projects, they display an active aesthetics in how its members use (both by playing with as well as using instrumentally), not just make objects or elements of a material culture. Many lifestyles show great creativity in the way they re-contextualise and re-appropriate objects meaning. Lifestyles are constantly being evolved and re-evaluated; they can only be portrayed and suggested by media and market industries, but in the end individuals desire for novelty forces progression.

Subcultures

Examining subcultures reveals some aspects of cultural expression. During the 1970’s the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in Birmingham, England, released a variety of research material concerning youth culture in Great Britain. With a unique approach to studying different groups of marginalised youth’s and subcultures researchers such as Paul Willis, Stuart Hall and Dick Hebdige formulated theories that had a huge impact in the field. With an eclectic approach to their research, they borrowed methods and theories from various academic fields such as anthropology, ethnology, criminology and semiotics.

One of the main points of their work was to show the impact British class society had on youth cultures and lifestyles. In their opinion there is a connection between personal aesthetics and the conditions of society. This should be seen in relation to the dominant academic perspective that saw the offensive styles and cultural expressions of sub cultural youths as

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a product of capitalism and mass media. Instead the CCCS-researches saw youth cultures as symbolic expressions of class and society related experiences. The participants of a youth culture use common commercial products in a way that reforms their previously intentional message.

The process of reworking established social symbols is explained through the term bricolage, a term borrowed from the French social anthropologist Lévi-Straus. Bricolage means to reorganise the functions of objects, to take an element from one context to another and change it’s meaning. The CCCS-researches suggests that subcultures borrow signs and symbols from other lifestyles and re-appropriate them, changing their meaning by using them in their own context. This however is nothing that happens by random, the subcultures have their own style of communicating; a symbolical system of objects based on their subcultural logic.

This logic is formed through the conditions of life for the subcultures members. To elaborate this theory the CCCS-researchers uses term hegemony to describe dominative structures and relations in a society that are not directly visible. They suggest that the middle class and the bourgeois ideology have a hegemonic position in British society (or at least did at the time the theories were elaborated). That meant that other social groups and minority cultures such as the working class and ethnic groups were considered inferior to the dominating middle class culture. The working class who had been a strong and homogenic culture in England slowly started to deteriorate during the 1950’s and 1960’s due to economical changes. These conditions made it very hard for working class youths to succeed in their supposed careers. In order to get a good job they had to adapt middle class values and lifestyles and there by denounce their own cultural heritage. The CCCS-researchers suggested that youth subcultures started as a reaction to these conditions, that their misuse of bourgeois symbols, commodities and lifestyle markers should be seen as a statement against the dominant culture – a class struggle on a symbolic level.

The misuse of middle class symbols is portrayed by Phil Cohen in his book “Subcultural conflict and working class community” [8] from 1972. He describes the ‘Teddy Boys’, a subculture who was common in British city suburbs during the early 1950’s. They developed their own styles of by mixing American rock and roll attributes and English aristocratic fashion. Cohen saw this as a collective solution to a societal problem. This was a period when old patterns of living for the working class were breaking up and a consumption lifestyle became dominant. Seeing their parental generation fail in adapting this new lifestyle the Ted’s evolved their own collective identity by vulgarising elements from upper class

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and thereby distancing themselves both from the dominant culture and their parental generation. Cohen saw the same behavioural pattern with the 1960’s Mods-movement.

It should also be added that these subcultures also rebelled on society by their rituals, the way they acted and behaved. In the subcultural world typical middle class traits such as intellectuality, knowledge and smarts were ill considered while physical traits such as strength, dexterity and masculinity were idealised. Many subcultural groups made a name for themselves by brawling and fighting with other groups of youths.

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Endnotes

[1]. Dunne, Anthony (1999): Hertzian Tales; Electronic Products, aesthetic experience and critical design, RCA CDRD Research publications; London, UK. , p. 58-67.

[2]. Gaver, B. & Dunne, A (1999): Projected Realities; Conceptual Design for Cultural Effect, Proceedings of CHI, Pittsburgh., ACM Press.

[3].Gaver, B., & Marin, H (2000): Alternatives - Exploring Information Appliances through Conceptual Design Proposals, p. 209. Proceedings of CHI 2000 ACM press The Hague, Amsterdam.

[4]. Highmore, Ben: Everyday life and cultural theory : an introduction, London, Routledge.

[5]. Willis, Paul (1978): Symbolism and Practice: A theory for the Social Meaning of Pop Music, CCCS Stenciled Papers.

[6].Chaney, David (1996): Lifestyles, London, Routledge

[7]. Fornäs, Johan red. (1984): Ungdomskultur: identitet och motstånd : en antologi, Stockholm, Akademilitt, p. 35-52.

[8]. Cohen, Paul (1972): Subcultural conflict and working class community, CCCS Working Papers in Cultural Studies 2, Birmingham.

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Methods

In this chapter I will discuss of how I approached the cultural contexts in two practical design examples. The first example, Sonic Modulator,

was a project for a student exhibition called “Interactive futures”. In creating the Sonic Modulator I wanted to make a prototype for controlling musical applications on laptops, a physical user-interface which would correspond to the cultural niche of electronica music community. The example shows the whole design process, from idea to implementation, and how I consciously worked with cultural elements of the intended user group. The second example, Sonic City, was about creating scenarios and fictive user groups through the study of contemporary culture. The cultural elements were used to explore aspects of what makes objects meaningful for individuals.

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Overview

The examples show the complete process of designing with culture in mind, which decisions were made, what basis they were made on and which were the different issues encountered. I think it is important to show the general conclusions I made through these design processes, to give an overview or a general description of the methodology. This can be seen as a guidelines or suggestions for how a designer can approach similar design situations.

I think there are three major points to consider when designing in relation to the cultural context:

- Precision – At the beginning of the design process it should be defined on what levels the process should be influenced by cultural elements.

- Interpretation – This is about how attributes of a culture, whether it is a lifestyle, subculture or micro-culture, are part of a symbolic system that can be interpreted in different ways but it can be important to make an interpretation that is close to the cultures own ideas.

- Integration – How the interpreted material can be integrated into the design process.

Precision – This is the process of asking why, how and when cultural elements should be approached in the design process. Assuming that the why-question already is answered (why using culture in our design?), we can go directly over to how and when part. How is the design supposed to fit with the cultural context? Is it about designing for a specific cultural group, or is it supposed to be used as a way of constructing scenarios? It is about being precise with what the intentions for the design is so that one can decide how to relate to the process of interpreting and integrating the cultural elements. If the goal is to make the appearance of a design fit with a lifestyle there is no point in investing much time in the interpretational stage. The when-question is also tied together with the designs aim. If a cultural audience is being used as an evaluation group, there is no point in bringing them in at an early stage. If you are creating a design for a specific niche it might be better to conduct a cultural survey as soon as possible. The process of precision is about planning and determining the efforts needed when approaching a culture.

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Interpretation – How does one understand a cultural niche, lifestyle or subculture without being a part of it? Of course one can research and interpret the material produced by a culture, interview its members and make participatory observations, but by not being a part of a cultural group it can be hard to understand the styles, jargons and inside jokes. Collecting all that knowledge and interpreting take an incredible amount of time. Before starting such a venture I think there is one assumption that is important to have in mind; all cultures, no matter the size, are symbolic systems. They are rulebooks for how its members should relate to objects, rituals and other cultures. To better understand these rulebooks I suggest one should see to the expressed material; the visual style like clothing, personal aesthetic, preferred objects they signify themselves with, and how it concur with the internal side; the ideals, attitudes, conditions of life for a group. By understanding both these sides and how they work together you can start to understand what a cultural group is about.

Integration – the final issue to consider is about how the interpreted material should be integrated into the design process. This is of course depends on the aim of the design process. I differentiate this issue from precision because this is more about forming the actual design decisions, going from interpretation to the act of designing. I think a good general approach is to view the interpreted material as inspiration rather than rules. That is, if the gathered material comes in conflict with the design goals one should not be afraid to disregard them.

Another approach in the integration process can be to create a conceptual platform from which one can make design suggestions. In case with Sonic Modulator I created a theme that became the platform between the gathered material and the actual design choices. In Sonic City the fictive characters became the platform. The conceptual platform is a part in the design process where the gathered material is presented or reworked in such a way that it worked as a foundation from which to build logical (or sensible) design suggestions. If the platform is well defined then actual design choices will seem logical. For instance when the theme of destruction was defined in the Sonic Modulator project, the decision for the user’s to interact with the device through destructive gestures became a logical or at least sensible suggestion.

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Sonic ModulatorMusical instruments are often associated with specific audiences and

social scenes. The electric guitar has become the most significant attribute and physical icon for rock performers and their followers. The saxophone enjoys the same status in the jazz scene and so does the turntable for the hip hop fans. By themselves these instruments express a symbolic meaning an attitude or idiom, but perhaps an even stronger expression is transmitted when the musicians interacts with their weapons of choice. Through gestures and movement they seem to embody certain ideals and attitudes reflecting both their and their audience’s personal worlds. The punk rocker that furiously smashes the guitar against the amplifier using his or her whole body to show discontent and despair. Or when the free jazz musician snorts, puffs, and intensely hammers the buttons of the saxophone, amplifying the expression of inhabited creativity, playfulness and eccentricity.

The Sonic Modulator project is an attempt to understand the world of electronic music and live performances, seeing the cultures and lifestyles surrounding musical genres as sources of knowledge and inspiration to incorporate into the design process. It is an exploration of the cultural forms that music today exists in, as social scenes containing their own networks, collective ideals, styles and fashion. From a designers point of view it as an attempt to utilize the communicative quality of collective styles and cultural expressions as stuff for design.

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Problem Area

During the latter years the tendency has been for composers and performers of electronic music to shift from using specialised hardware (like samplers, keyboards and sequencers) to software applications (like PD, Reaktor and MAX). The rapid development in computer performance and audio software has made it possible to record, process and mix music on laptops in real-time, with a very high quality of sound, offering the user a complete portable music studio with endless possibilities. As a result, a lot of musicians go on stage with only a laptop and a mixing board, often sitting through the performance controlling the music through a mouse, sometimes leaving the audience with a static and almost motionless live experience. This can be seen in contrast to traditional analogue musical instruments that demands gestures, motions and expressive interaction from its user in order to produce sounds. Software applications only require small movements of the mouse to unleash the most complex soundscapes while with traditional instruments the musician’s physiology determines the final result of the music. Physical strength, body size and dexterity are few aspects of an infinite which determents the characteristics of the sound produced with the instrument.

The Sonic Modulator is an attempt to force the laptop musician to interact in a more expressive way with the musical interface, making the physical characteristics of the performer count and hopefully, making the performance more enjoyable for an audience to watch. This without loosing the

advantages of using the laptop computer as a musical instrument such as the simplicity of use. That is the user does not have to learn complicated gestures, to read notes or a variety of chords in order to produce music. Another advantage is that the laptop as an instrument is modifiable. The performer can chose exactly which parameters in the music he or she controls with the movement.

The project is also an effort to create a concept and a prototype based upon the cultural context it was being designed for. Rather than just looking at the actual physical context the final product would fit into, effort was put into understanding the culture and social scene permeating the music, basing some of the design choices on this knowledge. Hopefully this would result in a design or prototype that would correspond with the aesthetics of the

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electronic music community and thus appeal to the intended user group. Some readers might object to this ambition. Being static, motionless and cold on stage might just be one of the aesthetical ideals in the electronic music scene. If that is the case than I should emphasise that this design proposal is based on my perception and view of the electronic music scene. In my opinion, both as a concert attander and electronic music composer, there is a need for and something to gain from making musical interfaces more physical. It is just one way of evolving the cultural form making it a bit different and hopefully more interesting for other than just hardcore fans to enjoy.

T h e e l e c t r o n i c a m u s i c c o m m u n i t y

A matter that requires some further attention before I continue is that which in the text is frequently referred to as “the electronica music scene”. I use this term as a collective name for the cultural niche that highly influenced the result of the design. It is this group of potential users which is the source of ideas and inspiration. Defining this group or lifestyle on an academic level requires sociological precision and a lot of more research work than I have put into this project, so my ambition is to loosely define it or give my understanding of what is about. The term “electronica” is, according to author and electronic musician Kim Cascone:

“… an umbrella term for alternative, largely dance-based electronic music (including house, techno, electro, drum’n’bass, ambient) that has come into vogue in the past five years. Most of the work in this area is released on labels peripherally associated with the dance music market, and is therefore removed from the contexts of academic consideration and acceptability.” [1, p 15]

The quote appears in the article “The Aesthetics of Failure: “Post Digital” Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music” published in “Computer Music journal”, winter year 2000, so the electronica music has actually been in the vogue for eight years now (when this is written anyway). I agree with Cascone’s description, but by adding the term “scene” my intention is to include the enthusiasts behind the music, the record buyers, club and live performance attenders, the record label owners and everyone who makes this music at home or commercially. Even though this assembly of people might not be as homogenic as to be called a group or a subculture there is a social network based around this music and with distinguishable features and tastes.

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Design Process

The basic idea behind the design process was to work out a concept for a prototype by first finding cultural elements which I could bring into the design process, then to create a theme around these elements. The theme would be the basis for the specific design choices made during the creation of the prototype. Hence the design process was structured in the following way:

- Focusing approach - Defining how the project should relate to the given cultural context

- Identifying cultural elements – collecting and interpreting inspirational material.

- Developing the concept – a framework for the whole project, making a conceptual basis from which other design choices could be made. I thought it was important for the intended user group’s culture to permeate the whole design process from the beginning; therefore this concept was built on the collected and interpreted material

- Creating a prototype - making the final physical shape and form of the prototype based on the concept.

As I stated above the first step was about defining how the cultural context would affect the final design proposal. Was it about making the physical form correspond with the given aesthetic ideals? Or should the functions be appropriated with the sounds of the music? It was all about deciding how and where these external influences would fit in. My choice was to focus on the act of using Sonic Modulator. I had already decided to create an interface which was gesture controlled, so the outcome had to fall under that category. I therefore focused on how the aesthetics of using SM, the actual gestures and movements required, could be associated with a key element or a theme.

My aim was to make an interface that would express something during the act of using it rather than just in its pure physical appearance. This meant that the final form of Sonic Modulator would depend on how I chose to design the interaction. An alternative solution would have been to first create the shape of the device and then adjust the interaction to fit with it. For example I could have chosen to make the device in the form of a tambourine and then let the interaction follow the general conception of how to use a tambourine, producing sound by shaking it, tapping on it and so forth.

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After making a more precise aim for the prototype the next step became to learn more about the electronica music scene. The plan was to define a theme that was built on key elements and attributes from the electronica music culture. These key elements could be anything from the actual music, the graphical elements circulating in the culture or the aesthetics of the on-stage performances, in other words everything that could be considered as style elements, the extrovert and observable side of the electronica music scene. But I also wanted the theme to have a connection to the intellectual side of the scene as well, reflecting aspects such as collective attitudes, ideas, values and ideals. So the theme would be a style element which corresponded with an intellectual idea or a thought.

I sketched out a proposed method for the rest of the design process:

- Collecting inspirational material

- Interpreting the material

- Create a theme based upon interpretation

- Create concept out of theme

- Define a model of interaction based on the concept

- Create a shape and form from concept and interaction model.

C o l l e c t i n g m a t e r i a l

The initial stage of the design process meant gathering knowledge and information about the electronica music community. Being a partaker of that scene I had already accumulated lot of material such as magazines, books, record label catalogues and web pages. Unlike a lot of other communities and social scenes (like sport clubs, clubs for role playing games or different fan clubs) the electronica music community have few organised associations or special locations for hanging out. Information usually spreads through social activities such as going to clubs, record stores and gigs or through specialised magazines, fanzines and WebPages.

I also gathered material which I thought represented the community’s culturally expressive material or their output. Obviously the most important commodity produced by the electronica music scene is the music itself and the formats on which it is represented. As a subculture the electronica music scene is very focused on musical expression rather

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than visual style. Its members do not signify themselves by any special clothing, hairstyle, symbols, language or wearable objects. However I found distinguishable visual elements, a graphically homogenic style which can be seen in a lot of products such as record covers, Webpage’s, music videos, the layout of magazines, record label logotypes, adds and flyers for clubs and gigs. As an example I found two major influences or tendencies in the imagery, the technical and the minimalistic. I use the term technical as a lot of imagery reveals the close relationship between the music and to electronics and computer technology. Examples of this are pictures of technical equipment and computers [2], CAD-drawings [3], vintage arcade game style of graphics.

The pictures show the record covers for Microstoria [2], Nobukazu Tkaemura [1] and Oval [4].

During the material collection period I also attended to a few live concerts. I focused on studying the visual aesthetics of performances, in everything from the artist’s gestures and movements when playing the music, to the multi media shows and film clips projected on the stage to enhance the mood of the live shows. It also provided a chance to socialise with people in the musical scene.

The purpose of this stage in the design process was to approach the electronica music scene, to get closer and learn about the ideals, attitudes and means of expressions that permeates it. This method of working is similar to ethnographical and sociological methods such as participatory observation and style analysis but with the difference that social scientists use the material as a way of finding a scientifically valid truth. I used the material as inspiration and for generating ideas for the design.

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I n t e r p r e t i n g m a t e r i a l

The next step in the design process was to audit and interpret the collected material. I use the term interpretation to describe the process in which I turned the raw material into substance for design. This was done by first distinguishing key elements and features that were categorized into themes. Each of the themes represented different aspects that I thought were significant and descriptive for the electronica music scene. I focused on picking out elements I thought could be found in both the culture’s inner world (ideas, attitudes) and externalised output (music, artwork). The reason for this is that I wanted to end up with themes containing an inner logic. For instance if I came to the conclusion that the colour red was a key element or a dominant feature on most of the record covers I had studied then it would not be enough to base a theme on. However if the colour red also had an ideological significance or a symbolic meaning, if the musicians strived to produce sounds and music that invoked the feeling of the colour red then I would have a theme that concluded or summarized an aspect of the electronica music scene.

After considering a series of potential themes I decided to work with the concept of destruction. The inspiration for this came about when listening to music and reading articles about “the glitch scene”, an experimental musical trend or sound producing technique which became popular within the electronica music scene at that time. The whole movement was about exploring the sound qualities of mistakes, noises, broken digital musical equipment and glitches in software. Basically sounds that previously were considered unwanted elements in music like clicks, pops, squeaks, noises and distortion now became the basis for musical expression. In a way this was a reaction to the previous ideals of the scene where many musicians aspired to produce flawless, clean sounds. Kim Cascone writes:

“One can visualize techno as a large postmodern appropriation machine, assimilating cultural references, tweaking them, and then re-presenting them as tounge-in-cheek-jokes. /…/ From the mid-1990s forward, the glitch aesthetic appeared in various sub-genres, including drum‘n’bass, drill‘n’bass and trip-hop. Artists such as Aphex Twin, Omni Trio, Wagon Christ, and Goldie were experimenting with all sorts of manipulation in the digital domain.” [1, p. 15].

The development toward “glitching”, in my opinion, concurred with many of the music scenes ideological ideas such as the desire for constant musical renewal, the tendency to rigorously explore every aspect of the sound and the continual re-evaluation of former musical ideals (such as the aspiration for perfect sounds).

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Many albums and artists can be identified as applying the glitch aesthetics. The ones influencing the Sonic Modulator project most are Oval, Tomas Brinkmann [5] and the “Clicks & Cuts”-series of records [6]. Oval is Marcus Popp, a German sound artist who made a name for himself when he started to make music out of destroyed CD-records. By putting watercolour paint on the readable surface of a CD he was able to produce clicks and glitches. These pieces of destruction were then sampled and reworked into music on albums like “Systemisch” and “DOK” [4]. In a similar way techno artist Tomas Brinkmann created music by carving patterns onto vinyl records creating endless loops of sounds when the record players needle jumps between the cracks. Finally the “Clicks & Cuts” record series are two double albums published by electronica record label Mille Plateaux, assembling some of the most prolific artists of the genre.

C r e a t i n g a t h e m e

Inspired by the glitch scene I chose to work with the theme of destruction. The main idea of the concept was to focus on the expressions of destruction found in music, and to associate it with appropriate real life tools and gestures. Destruction should be seen here as a process or an act of transformation; the aim with “destructiveness” in this type of music is usually not to destroy anything per se. It’s a process of reworking and reusing old material and samples, creating something new and exciting.

Why I chose to work with the expression of destruction (rather than expressions of transformation or modification) is because they hold a somewhat primitive and playful undertone. The acts of destroying things can be seen as mischievous or spiteful, but it can also invoke feelings of joy and energy. Like when you hammer on metal, throw a rock through a piece of glass or when a child splatters finger-paint the walls and floors. It is about capturing the energies and emotions expressed in gestures and movement of destroying things, and to translate them into acts of manipulating audio. The destructiveness here becomes creativity. Another reason is that destroying something really demands energetic gestures and physicality from its performer. It’s almost always a physical feat to destroy something, demanding both activity and mental focus.

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First design concept – subtle destruction

The first design concept started by me exploring the theme of destruction outside the borders of experimental music. I studied different ways in which a person can destroy objects, or use objects in a destructive way. I collected pictures of situations and practices in which I thought the gestures of destruction would translate well into the design concept. Being destructive with your body can take a wide range of forms and expressions, from using a hammer to smash something to one crumbling a piece of paper, kicking a rock to slicing a piece of paper with a scalpel.

Since I already decided that the interface should be gesture based I made a small study of destructive gestures and practices that could be performed with hands and tools [7]. By collecting pictures in different categories such as “scratching”, “squeezing” and “pressing” I explored possible ways of interacting with SM, what would be interesting to make and physically possible to create.

I decided that using Sonic Modulator would include using a range of tools signifying the act of transformation or re-working. I also wanted the destruction to be subtle and low-keyed, the required gestures should be less expressive, small and fine-tuned. The reason for this was to match the actual music which generally sounds minimalistic, subtle and transparent.

The concept developed from this study was a set of tools, perhaps a scalpel, a pair of scissors and a hole-stance, which would be embedded with sensors. These sensors would react on factors such as the angle the tool was held in, the pressure it was being applied with and the velocity of the movements in which it was used. The sensor data would be sent to a music software application that applies the values to digital effects. The idea was for the user to stand at a table and destroy pieces of paper with the different tools and in doing so the music would be affected by the different gestures performed. The more destructive gestures performed the more intensively manipulated the music and sounds would get by the digital effects.

One of the aspects of this idea is that even small and subtle gestures would have a noticeable impact on the music so that the performance would work at a low level of intensity and thereby match the existing musical material. However this was one of the aspects that made me abandon this concept as well. Another idea I thought was interesting at the time was that destroying paper would result in a bi-product; the transformed paper

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way became a visible residue of the performance. In a way hoped that the act if destroying the paper in a nice looking way would become more interesting for the musician rather than making the music sound good, that “misusing” Sonic Modulator would be more fun.

The final concept

The first concept was abandoned or rather re-worked. Partly due to the lack of time and material considerations for implementation, but mainly because I wanted the Sonic Modulator to demand more expressive gestures by its users. Instead of trying to match the musical expression with subtle gestures I wanted the SM to stand as an anti-ideal to the glitch scene, stepping away from the minimalistic, subtle and intellectual and instead encourage expressivity, physicality and bombastic movement. It might be argued that I made a turnaround from my starting point, that the ideals of the electronica music scene no longer were not reflected in the final design. However, I argue for that this cultural scene always wants to be challenged and questioned, that they want to evolve their musical and cultural expressions. One of the main ideals is to be explorative and innovative and I think this turn over in the design process made the final concept fit better with the intended user group.

In the final concept the user interacts with Sonic Modulator by using metal objects on a tabletop that senses both pressure from and distance to metal objects. The idea is for the users to literary destroy the tabletop using his or her favourite tool, whether it is a screwdriver, hammer or saw, as long as it’s made of metal. The more force the user puts into destroying the tabletop, and the more metal contained in an object, the more distorted and manipulated the music will sound.

When the concept was developed the models of interaction and the final form of the prototype was created, or rather automatically decided, they were became result of the concept, or the most sensible choices to make considering the material resources.

T h e P r o t o t y p e

Placed under the tabletop are four metal detectors. They are programmed so that it demands physical strain to affect them, allowing the user to push, hammer, hack, scratch or chop with full force. The tabletop rests on four paperweights that are, together with the metal detectors, connected to a

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laptop through a Basic-X chip. Sensor readings are controlling parameters for filters in a music software application. In the prototype demonstration I used Native Instruments Reaktor for playing and manipulating music, assigning the sensors to alter different granular and distortion effects on the music. The controllers were mapped so that the more weight and metal the sensors read, the more filters distorted the music. In that way the more intensively the user destroyed the table, the more of a “destroyed” character the music gets. A simple visual basic program interpret the signals received from the table converting them to midi values which are sent to the desirable software midi compatible software application.

Discussion

There is always a problem when designing for a cultural niche, whether it is a subculture or a lifestyle, that you only enforce clichés and stereotypes already established in society. That the design suggestion mimics the intended user groups styles and the result becomes a pastiche rather than a product that fit with their ideals. I think it is important to consider the possibilities of making innovative statements through the design. One of the ways of making a cultural intended design successful can actually be to make a statement against their ideals. But this is of course dependent on what the intention of the design is. My suggestions for approaching a cultural niche in a design situation:

1) Use the collected material as inspiration rather than rules. There must be a degree of freedom in the design situation, as a designer you should be able to disregard facts and go against the cultural rules. Designing should be a dialogue where the designer suggest a solution and the user group responses. Seeing the design as a suggestion an attempt to evolve the intended user culture rather than something that would fit in can be very beneficial.

2) Focus on usage and not the visual side. Not to suggest that the visual design is not important, but it studying how cultural groups actually use and misuse objects can be a source of information and inspiration.

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Another issue that I think is important is how to actually interpret the gathered cultural material, to turn it into real design choices. There is always a risk that you as a designer misunderstand the cultural clues and social codes being studied. When designing the SM I was also a partaker of the electronica music scene making it easier for me to understand the context it would fit into, but I think that non-initiated designers can approach and understand cultural niches through the right approach and that is to understand both the external and internal side of it. A cultural niche is not only a dress code or a hairstyle; it also contains ideas, values, opinions and attitudes. It is about understanding the totality of the culture to better understand what type of design solutions the users might be interested in.

Endnotes

[1]. Cascone, Kim (2000): The aesthetics of Failure: ”Post-Digital” Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music, Computer Music journal, 24: 4, pp. 12-18, Winter 2000, MIT Press.

[2]. Microstoria (2000): _SND, Frankfurt, Mille Plateau.

[3]. Nobekazu Takemura (2000): Scope, Chicago, Thrill Jockey Records.

[4]. Oval (1997): DOK, Frankfurt, Mille Plateau

[5]. WEB INFO AT: http://www.max-ernst.de

[6]. V/A (2000-2001): Clicks + Cuts, Vol. 1-2, Frankfurt, Mille Plateau.

[7]. See appendix page I for the the study.

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Sonic CitySonic City is a wearable interactive system with which the user’s

urban walk becomes the source for generating electronic music and sounds. The idea for the project was developed by Ramia Mazé (PLAY, Interactive Institute) and Lalya Gaye (FAL) and is described in the papers “Nomadic Audio” [1], “Sonic City: The Urban Environment as a Musical Instrument” [2], “Sonic City” [3] and “Sonic City: Prototyping the wearable experience” [4]. The system consists of a portable computer connected to a set of sensors. The sensors react both to environmental parameters (such as light, noise, moving objects) and the user’s movement (such as walking pace, direction) and the data is interpreted by a piece of software translating it into a sound content. The sound source is the environment itself picked up by a microphone recording live during the walk. It is then processed in real-time by the software applying different filters, delays and other effects to make the final content.

During the summer of 2002 I participated in the design process of Sonic City’s conceptual development, contributing in the work of generating ideas and writing scenarios.

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Problem area

When I joined the Sonic City research team, the project was heading into two directions, actually consisting of two parallel projects exploring different aspects of the concept. The first direction was to develop a working prototype which meant implementing the technology and creating a sound content that would fit with it. Making the leap from an abstract concept on a paper to an actual physical device would allow us to try out Sonic City in the streets, getting hands-on with the experience of using it, finding out what functions and aspects would work and which ones that would not.

C r e a t i n g a p r o t o t y p e

Using Sonic City goes beyond pure functionality. It is an aesthetic experience or practice that is very hard to label. It is sort of like using a portable music player, but not quite, it is sort of a tool for digital composing, but not quite, it is sort of a way of transforming the cityscape and architecture into audio, but again not quite. When we in the design team try to explain the concept to non-initiated individuals, the immediate response would almost always be in the shape of a question: “What should you use it for?” The answer would be for the experience of it or the sensation of it, and that is hard both to explain and define in words. It has to be experienced first hand, or presented in such an expressive way that an audience would sense and feel what it is about, rather than understand it rationally. Hence the choice was made not only make a working prototype, but also to spend time and effort on creating a sound content that would communicate the concept well. Daniel Skoglund, a sound artist and musician, was involved to create the audio output. Usually a member of the experimental band 8 tunnel 2 [5] most famous for their unconventional performances with home made electronic instruments. Daniel had experience of making music and sounds, but also of creating electronic devices and musical gadgets making him an insightful source in other areas such as interaction problems, evolving the concept and pure technical issues.

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E x p a n d i n g t h e c o n c e p t

The second direction was about evolving and designing the application at a conceptual level. Exploring and expanding the possibilities of the idea and the different kinds of user experiences it could give. The most challenging aspect of this work would be to figure out what role it could play in people’s everyday lives. Sonic City could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different users. In our early discussions and brainstorming sessions we suggested that the application could be used as a tool for discovering invisible fields of electromagnetic radiation, as a way of enhancing the moods and atmospheres during a walk in the city, or just as an interesting add-on for re-mixing tracks on a Walkman or mp3 player. Basically all of these ideas can be categorized into three general statements of what Sonic City could be about:

- Intimate practice – how Sonic City could make out a very personal, internally significant part of the users lives. Perhaps as some sort of recreational activity, an escape from reality or a way of interrupting the monotony of everyday life.

- Social activity – this cover ideas about using Sonic City as a group activity. The main reason for usage is collecting or recording material to share with friends, peers or perhaps a Sonic City community.

- Tool – An instrumental and functional approach to using Sonic City. This includes all ideas of SC being used for a very specific purpose, such as some sort of measuring device or a compositional assistant.

Our goal was to create a set of design proposals, or customized user experiences, from the view that the Sonic City made out a “meaningful” part of the users everyday life. Meaningful in the sense that using it would not only fulfill a functional requirement but somehow would corresponded with or appeal to the user’s inner world and preferences. Our approach for designing this was not only to look at pure functional areas of usage, but to bring aspects of personal aesthetics, lifestyles and elements of contemporary culture into the whole design process.

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I n t e r a c t i o n i s s u e s

My role in the design team was take part in the conceptual work, focusing on aspects and issues of interaction. There are two ways in which interaction takes place between Sonic City and the user:

1) From environments to device to user,

2) From user to device.

The first way is about how the device senses the city and translates the sensor input to musical output. In this process the user has limited influence on how the final result actually will sound. Even though he or she chose where, how and when to walk environmental and discrete variables determine the final outcome. The second way is how the user interacts with the actual device for more direct results. This includes a variety of actions, from turning the machine on and off or adjusting sensor placement and sensitivity, to walking in certain ways to produce certain sounds.

My second task in the design process was to create suggestions for ideal sounds and atmospheres. Since our goal was to create an application that was meaningful for the user, we had to provide meaningful, or appropriate, output content. The output had to concur with the purpose of the user experience. For example, if an imaginative user would use the SC device to feel relaxed, it wouldn’t make sense to create a very noisy, intense and heavy dynamic sound but rather a sound that is even levelled and flowing. These suggestions would later be used as an inspiration for the sound producer in the design team.

A recap of the problem area:

- Creating user experiences - Evolving the concept into meaningful personal user experiences, creating them out of our knowledge and interest in lifestyles, contemporary culture and personal aesthetics.

- Exploring interaction possibilities - Discovering both different ways for the user to interact with the device but also issues and interaction related problems that had to be faced.

- Exploring sound, atmospheres - Finding desirable (and undesirable) ideal sound types, atmospheres and themes to illustrate the many roles SC could play users everyday lives.

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Design process

The goal of the design process was to create with a set of scenarios, each describing different ways in which to use SC. These scenarios would be the basis for two or more physical prototypes to be made (that is two more in addition to the working prototype). Rather than being technologically functional or even usable these conceptual prototypes focused on fitting together with the fictive user’s personal styles and ways of usage leaving the technology only partly finished or non-existing. By doing this we would be able to communicate the conceptual side of SC showing its flexibility and the wide range of forms it could take. The user scenarios would determine the final physical form of the prototypes as well.

The team met on regular basis to brainstorm, evolve and evaluate our ideas and suggestions. In between our meetings a lot of work was done individually. I set out to investigate the possible ways of how the user could interact with Sonic City. In this work I went through the following stages:

- Observations

- Collecting inspirational material (lifestyle/culture)

- Developing scenarios - creating extreme characters based on the material

- Identifying themes and interaction models.

- Create ideal scenarios and sounds

O b s e r v a t i o n s

By the time I joined the design team Ramia Mazé already had finished an observational study of pedestrians [6]. However I decided to conduct my own. The purpose of this was for me personally to get some experience of how people in the city actually behave during their walks. By primarily focusing on how pedestrians walked and what type of gestures they made I was hoping to get some ideas and inspiration for how one could directly interact with Sonic City in a continuous way. In other words, how the user could interact with direct functions such as changing volume, alternating sensor sensitivity and so forth by not having to stop the walk to turn a

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button. The idea was to design the interaction in such a way that the act of adjusting the technology would not make up a reason for breaking the continuity of the walk. I hoped to achieve this by letting “natural” patterns of movement and gestures be the basis for this type of interaction. For example the act of changing volume could be mapped to the user running her hand through her hair, touching the surface of a wall or adjusting a piece of clothing. Another idea was for the suggested gestures to be hard to perform by chance; they needed to be distinct from typical walking gestures so that the user would not change any parameters by mistake. On the other hand they also needed to be quite subtle so that other pedestrians would not be frightened or be put off by the user.

The second reason for making observations was to collect suggestions for discrete variables to bring into the project. That is finding new circumstances, environmental conditions and factors that could be interesting to incorporate as variables for creating sounds and music. This was something that had already been done by Ramia and Lalya in an earlier stage of design process but I wanted to see if I could bring in some new previously undiscovered aspects.

I also set out to find interesting spots and locations in Gothenburg that we could use as basis for scenarios, films, photos and testing grounds for the functional prototype. I was looking for sites that would affect Sonic City’s sensors in extreme and dynamic ways. For instance a location with strong contrasts in light and shade would deeply affect the light sensors and there by give a varied output.

My study took place over a few days. I chose spots that I knew would be visited by a lot of people but also provided interesting scenery for Sonic City; they contained environmental factors that would affect the sensor input. In order to preserve my observations I brought a video camera to register the pedestrian’s behaviours. The study resulted in:

- A five-minute film showing interesting situations, behaviours and gestures from pedestrians in the street.

- Suggestions to bring to the brainstorming sessions.

- Suggestions for sites to use for basing scenarios and filming.

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C o l l e c t i n g i n s p i r a t i o n a l m a t e r i a l

In the early stage of the design process we started gathering and reading “lifestyle related material”, a wide range of inspirational material about contemporary culture, personal and group aesthetics, trends, subcultures and alternative ways of life. We studied anything from magazines and pictures to WebPages and movies about areas such as fashion, street culture, contemporary music, art, design, architecture, extreme sports and urban exploration with the intention of finding themes and moods which would inspire us. By learning more about how both individuals and groups use designed objects we were able to discover alternative purposes and areas of usage for Sonic City which we had not thought of before. We were particularly interested in the relationship between people, objects and environments that is how certain objects are used in relation to specific places and situations. For instance how some people use their Walkmans and MP3-players as a way of shielding themselves from other passengers during a ride on the bus. Or how others talk very loud in their cell phones, exposing pieces of their personal life to a disinclined crowd. In this context the phone becomes a tool for grasping the attention and forcing opinions others, almost like a quieter version of a megaphone.

Through our study we explored new aspects and areas of use for Sonic City that were then used for the creation of fictive users. An example of how this process came about is when we created the character “Jean”. The outline for this character is a young man who is very interested in extreme sports and primarily uses Sonic City as a way of competing against himself and others. The more extreme environments he exposes SC for, and the more intense ways in which he moves in the City, the more peculiar soundtrack SC will produce. For Jean using SC is a way of challenging himself and the technology, it is about how far he can push the limits. The main source of inspiration for this character came from learning about a French group of youths performing an extreme sport “Parkour”. Through the official webpage [7] we learned that Parkour is a mixture fragments borrowed from martial arts, rock climbing and acrobatics to explore the urban landscapes of the city. It is practiced in urban environments where the performers utilizes elements of the city such as parts of buildings, balconies, stairs, cars, traffic lights as platforms for climbing, jumping and doing acrobatic tricks. The sport was developed during the late eighties and early nineties but by rock climber David Belle but has lately developed into a street culture of its own with a social network around it.

We thought it was very interesting how Parkour-performers relate to the urban elements and in a sense push the border for how one can interact with the city. They have in their own way redefined what walking in the city can be about.

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D e v e l o p i n g s c e n a r i o s - C r e a t i n g c h a r a c t e r s

While gathering lifestyle related material we also started to create characters, the fictive user group which would personify and exemplify the suggested user experiences of Sonic City. These characters were inspired both by actual people that we in the design team knew or knew of, but also by the collected lifestyle related material.

The method of using fictive users in a scenario description is a common approach in interaction design and a very illustrative way of communicating a design concept. However there is a tendency among designers to portray these users from a very functional perspective. Their traits and characteristics are often in direct relation to the functions of the designated design proposal leving the characters seem as one dimensional, stereotypical and unrealistically lacking emotions. This issue is dealt with in the short paper “Interaction Relabelling and Extreme Characters: Methods for Exploring Aesthetic Interactions” [8] where the authors Djajadiningrat, Gaver and Frens suggests a scenario writing method in which “extreme characters” are created to generate ideas for a design. The method is a reaction to scenarios where a designated target group is portrayed through a stereotypical fictive character that represents the average user. Instead it is suggested that characters with exaggerated emotional attitudes and extreme ways of life could be used as models this design situation. One of the benefits of using this method is that it can highlight aspects and issues of a design which otherwise would go unnoticed. This exemplified in the essay by using the Pope, a drug dealer and a hedonistic, polyandrous twenty-year old as intended users.

When we created the potential Sonic City user group we were highly influenced by the Extreme Characters-method. Even though we did not go so far as creating such a high profiled fictive user as the Pope, we made an effort to give them extensive emotional backgrounds. The reason we did this is because:

1) Motivation - the Sonic City project is hard to describe in functional terms. It is an aesthetic user experience. Therefore our characters needed more personal motivation than pure functional needs. By giving them emotional backgrounds, which could motivate them using Sonic City the concept, becomes more easily communicated and believable.

2) Avoiding stereotypes – since we created these characters on lifestyle and subculture related material there is a risk of us establishing the cultural stereotypes often portrayed by

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magazines and contemporary media. We did not want to end up with archetypical characters like the “computer nerd” or the “eccentric artist”. By making the characters personalities a bit odd and by presenting them from a very personal perspective we were able to avoid the most common clichés.

M a k i n g u p s t o r i e s b a s e d o n c h a r a c t e r s

In a sense the characters are the voices of Sonic City, they tell us why we should use it, they exemplify how we can use it and they embody the whole concept. Thus they play an important part in communicating and presenting the different aspects of the project, both to us in the design team, but more importantly to other people. With this in mind we chose not only to make a straightforward presentation of the characters, we also wrote short stories about them. For every character we wrote at least two stories, one describing their normal everyday behaviour and the other a typical session of them using SC. By writing about their everyday life we could give a more in-depth description of them, making the portrayal feel more alive and making it easier for beholders to sympathise with him or her.

The user experience stories were written suggestions for how using SC would affect the characters emotionally and intellectually. The sounds, environments and sensations experienced when moving through the city were described to paint a picture of how using the different versions SC actually would be like. Te narrative style of the stories was written in literary form (but not quite the quality) so that the reader could sense the atmosphere and ambience of the user session:

“”People are like germs”, she thinks, “moving everywhere at once, without any sense of direction, and there is no way of predicting where they’re heading off next.” With this in mind she picks up the pace and navigates unceasingly straightforward, ignoring all the noise and turmoil caused by her fellow pedestrians. Soon she reaches the end of the shopping street and she turns left towards the escalators. Once there she reaches for her left coat pocket and gently presses a button on the device hidden in there. Almost instantaneously the shouts and noises from the shopping streets gets softer and softer as the headphones, concealed by her long hair, transforms the surrounding clamour into a neatly woven carpet of sounds. The lively conversations going on around here are suddenly turned into muffled, subtle trebles, almost like whispering. In the background she can hear a low, rhythmic bass

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pulsing away as she climbs higher on the escalator to get to the top faster.” [9]

The biographies of the characters was finalized and written by Ramia Mazé and presented in the form of a Webpage [10]. Accompanying each character’s biography is a collection of pictures all representing the themes of the specific user. The pictures are taken from the collected lifestyle material and are representing a certain style or aesthetic surface that we thought suited with the characters theme.

I d e n t i f y i n g t h e m e s a n d i n t e r a c t i o n m o d e l s

Once the characters were established we started to identify “themes”. The themes were aspects of the scenarios which we thought were significant, the unique qualities of the Sonic City concept being reflected. They were based on the characters individual motives together with the accumulated conceptual ideas. As an example of this process the character Maria who’s personal motives for using SC were:

- Enhancement - SC plays the part as a catalyst in Maria’s life, enhancing the mood of the streets she experiences during her walks.

- Escape - it helps Maria to immerse into the environment, making her one with the city’s pulse and thereby helping her to focus on something else rather than her actual problems.

- Exploration She really likes finding interesting and unusual events and listening to them, maybe to the extent that she triggers them herself.

From these personal motives we decided that this scenario would explore the following themes or aspects of SC:

- Punctuation– SC helps to punctuate situations, making them more concrete and concentrated for the wearer.

- Immersiveness – When the sound enhances the cities dramas the user can more easily merge with environment and hopefully close out other thoughts.

- Expression/exhibition – SC is a way of expression for Maria. Not only by displaying the in public, but also as an interactive

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gadget. When she moves in a certain way, she gets a response from SC so she doesn’t mind walking in a weird way or dancing in the streets to produce or explore the sound capabilities.

The themes are almost functional descriptions of the fictive user’s intentions and desires. By defining them we also established a platform for making concrete design decisions. The abstract and esoteric concepts could be translated into terms of functions and aesthetics. For example the theme of punctuation could actually be understood as an issue of calibrating sensor sensitivity. Since Maria wants to experience punctuation in her walk, one of the suggestions for solving this was to make the sound quality of the different environments more distinguishable, either by making the sensors data influence the sound content more dynamically or placing different them so they would be easily affected by the environmental changes. The theme of immersivness could be seen as a variable deciding the shape and form of the headphones to be worn by Maria. Hence the themes became the link between concepts to making concrete design suggestions. By creating them the step of interpreting the scenarios to actual design aspects seemed more logical.

Evolving the themes into concrete design suggestions meant for my part to suggest models for interaction. Every character has their own way of interacting with SC, some might be very physical and expressive, like Maria from the earlier example, and some might be more cautious. In the scenario with the character Jonas, the SC device needed to be modifiable and flexible for him to be able to co-create the environments soundtrack, while Jean would not be in need of such as system. Every scenario meant different ways of interaction being highlighted. In the case of Maria I chose to focus on the following phases of interaction:

- Gestures - It should react to all her ways of movement, like dancing, jumping and walking strange. Buttons for controlling volume and EQ must be hard to modify by chance since she tend exaggerate her movement.

- Events – The SC should respond in a more interesting way when something big happens. When all the sensors get a high reading unexpected things would happen with the soundtrack.

- Meetings – It would be very interesting if SC could sense other people, perhaps the specific colours of their clothing would trigger sound events, or the presence of another SC

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would affect the output in some way. Certain meetings would give a certain sound.

- Biometrics – It would be nice to implement more biometric sensors, to measure the emotional state of the user and change the type of music composed according to this.

I d e a l s c e n a r i o s a n d s o u n d s

In this last part of the design process I made suggestions for the sound content for each scenario. Building on the themes, models of interaction and biographies the idea was to describe the type of sound quality each character would be interested in. The descriptions were quite general giving only hints of what the sound would be like which can be seen in the suggestions for Maria:

- Dynamic – The bigger event, the bigger the sound. The sound should be very dissimilar depending on situations.

- Tangible – Not so much abstract sound as music. She would like very something very rhythmical since she is a dancer.

The reason for making these suggestions was primarily for the presentation of the scenarios. We thought that in order for an audience to understand the user scenarios they had to experience the actual soundtrack when changing through the interaction of the environment.

Sonic City - discussion

In my opinion using cultural material as an influence improved the design process in two ways:

1) Exploring the possible ways of using SC – The gathered cultural material gave us an insight in how groups and individuals use and relate to objects. It made us more conscious about the fact that our suggested ways of using SC would probably not be followed, that SC’s main functionality would be misused or re-appropriated. Therefore we focused on exploring areas of usage in which the main functionality was not as important for the user as for the context in which it was used, or the way it was used. For example the character Jean’s interest for SC lies within the possibilities for him to create an intense soundtrack based on extreme environmental conditions

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and the physical performance from his side. By focusing on his way of using SC we came to discuss the aspects of validity, that there could be some way of validating a soundtrack, making sure that it was genuine and that the equivalent environmental circumstances would produce a similar sound content.

The cultural material provided a platform for exploring the user space in a logic way. We knew our scenarios were at least believable because we borrowed the ideas form real life examples. This is not to say that we conceived of every possible way of using SC but by anticipating possible “misbehaviors” we were able to broaden the user space.

2) From abstract concept to specific design choices – With the cultural material we were able to create a methodological form through which we could go from abstract and abstruse ideas about composing music through interacting with the city to defining low-level ways of interaction.

Endnotes

[1].Gaye, L. Holmquist, L-E. Mazé R (2003) Sonic City: The Urban Environment as a Musical Instrument, Proceedings of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), Montreal.

[2]. Mazé R, & Gaye, L (2003): Sonic City, Cybersonica Cream Symposium, London

[2].Mazé, R and Jacobs, M (2003): Sonic City: Prototyping a Wearable Experience, Proceedings of ISWC, New York.

[3]. WEB INFO FOR 8 TUNNEL 2: http://194.236.50.207/~kim/brax-tone/8tunnel2.html

[4]. WEB INFO, READ THE WHOLE STUDY AT: http://civ.idc.cs.chalmers.se/projects/soniccity/process_observations.html

[5]. WEB INFO ABOUT PARKOUR: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/parkour

[6]. Djajadiningrat, J.P. Gaver W.W. and Frens, J.W (2000): Interaction Relabelling and Extreme Characters: Methods for

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Exploring Aesthetic Interactions, Proceedings of DIS.

[7]. Taken from Joannas story, see: Appendix p. IV.

[8]. WEB INFO, THE FINALIZED CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY AT: http://www.playresearch.com/projects/soniccity

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End discussion

The Sonic City and Sonic Modulator projects are different in many ways. SM was created for a specific audience, the user group was

defined, it had a functional description and an aim, but the actual outcome of the design was not solved. SC already had a design solution; the technical definition had been made. The only thing missing was a specified purpose or suggested ways of usage that could generate a user group. Despite these differences the process of working with these two projects was quite similar, this will become more apparent when put in relation to the methodological overview previously presented.

In the chapter “overview” I suggested a methodological approach of designing with culture in mind. It started with precision, determining why, how and when cultural elements should influence the whole design process. Beginning with SM, this stage resulted in the decision (aim) to work with the aesthetics of using and performing with the SM-device, trying to relate the interaction to the aesthetical and intellectual ideals of the electronica music scene. Thereby, since I wanted the cultural elements to influence the whole process, most aspects of the design process (determining the interaction, creating an appearance, choosing sensors and equipment to use et cetera) had to wait for a conceptual platform

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to be constructed. In Sonic city the use of cultural material was not as guiding as in the process as with SM, where they steered the process into one direction determining the form of the prototype. The purpose was to use the material as inspiration for finding different fictive users and usages it helped us explore a number of possible directions. Even so, they had a great influence over the character creation process, so other aspects (determining the interaction, sound output) also had to wait for a conceptual platform.

Interpreting the material differed in some ways as well. When studying culturally expressive material in the SM-project, it was more important for me to understand the material in order to create a successful design suggestion. I benefited greatly from being a partaker of the musicscene; otherwise much more time would have been spent on understanding the social codes and styles. In Sonic City the understanding the cultural material became more about focusing on individual’s personal motivation for relating to an object in a certain way. Rather than a process of fully understanding the material, it was a process of using the material as suggestions for the characters individual relationship with Sonic City. For instance, it is easier for an audience to understand the characters Jean’s way of using SC as an extreme sports tool when exposing his background as a rock climber.

The projects are very similar in the way the cultural material was integrated into the design. In both the projects a conceptual platform had to be created, a bridge between the interpreted material and the actual hands-on design decisions. Both with SM and SC this became to create a theme based on the interpreted material.

Other issues

This thesis has been an attempt approach interaction design through cultural studies, an effort to explore the design space of contemporary culture and how interaction design relates and can relate to it. As I have stated before I can make no claims to fully have tried to understand every possible angle of the subject, this is just a scratch on the surface so to speak. Therefore I intend to use this space to suggest how this area can be expanded, or in other words: the things I could not fit anywhere else in the thesis.

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A topic I have barley mentioned is how to evaluate the design suggestions. Were my design suggestions successful? Did Sonic Modulator reflect and the electronica music scenes culture, would it be accepted as a cultural attribute? And how would it be accounted for as something successful, how can I measure the cultural impact it would make? The questions of evaluating the design culturally are very difficult to answer. Is it about selling a certain amount of units or how good reviews it will get on the cultural scenes internet message board? Of course a part of it is about the goals you set up during the design process and how thinking and relating to the cultural context helped you to achieve this. For me the success of the design process was about how the cultural elements helped me to guide the design process, to generate ideas, exploring how individuals use objects and so forth. Seen form that perspective I definitely think that the approach was beneficial. But the questions of how the designs would work with the intended user groups, their cultural impact on the users every day life, is the stuff for a whole new essay.

Another subject is the potential of applying sociological theories in interaction design. In traditional interaction design and HCI sociology, or rather sociological methods have been used to study how people use and react to interfaces and objects. An example can be how work related situations are studied in order to form computer systems and user-friendly solutions to make the work process more effective. Sociological methods have been used to study practices in order to justify design solutions, making them more scientifically valid. The motivation and the goal behind this have been to make the design more effective and time saving. I do not think there is anything wrong with this type of development, but as I have stated before, it has led to information technology and interfaces tending to be generic, to look the same and work in the same way.

The perspective I want to push forward is the how sociological methods and theories can help designers to understand new aspect of our everyday lives, to explore the relationship between our artefacts and rituals. By seeing the usage of objects as rituals we take a step further than just looking at pure functional use. We can see how designed objects fit in to our everyday lives, what psychological, social and cultural values they impose. What makes designed objects meaningful on a personal level in our lives but also on a more general and societal level.

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Referenses

Literature

Cascone, Kim (2000): The aesthetics of Failure: ”Post-Digital” Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music, Computer Music journal, 24: 4, pp. 12-18, Winter 2000, MIT Press.

Chaney, David (1996): Lifestyles, London, Routledge

Cohen, Paul (1972): Subcultural conflict and working class community, CCCS Working Papers in Cultural Studies 2, Birmingham.

Djajadiningrat, J.P. Gaver W.W. and Frens, J.W (2000): Interaction Relabelling and Extreme Characters: Methods for Exploring Aesthetic Interactions, Proceedings of DIS.

Dunne, Anthony (1999): Hertzian Tales; Electronic Products, aesthetic experience and critical design, RCA CDRD Research publications; London, UK. , p. 58-67.

Fornäs, Johan red. (1984): Ungdomskultur: identitet och motstånd: en antologi, Stockholm, Akademilitt, p. 35-52.

Gaver, B. & Dunne, A (1999): Projected Realities; Conceptual

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Design for Cultural Effect, Proceedings of CHI, Pittsburgh., ACM Press.

Gaye, L. Holmquist, L-E. Mazé R (2003) Sonic City: The Urban Environment as a Musical Instrument, Proceedings of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), Montreal.

Gaver, B., & Marin, H (2000): Alternatives: Exploring Information Appliances through Conceptual Design Proposals, p. 209. Proceedings of CHI 2000 ACM press The Hague, Amsterdam.

Highmore, Ben: Everyday life and cultural theory : an introduction, London, Routledge.

Mazé R, & Gaye, L (2003): Sonic City, Cybersonica Cream Symposium, London

Mazé, R and Jacobs, M (2003): Sonic City: Prototyping a Wearable Experience, Proceedings of ISWC, New York.

Willis, Paul (1978): Symbolism and Practice: A theory for the Social Meaning of Pop Music, CCCS Stenciled Papers.

Web pages

8-BIT ROCKERs (2004-01-22): http://media.urova.fi/~sliuski/

8 TUNNEL 2 (2003-08-11): http://194.236.50.207/~kim/brax-tone/8tunnel2.html

BRINKMAN, TOMAS (2004-02-17): http://www.max-ernst.de

LITTLE SOUND DJ (2004-01-22): http://www.littlesounddj.com

NANOLOOP (2004-01-22): http://www.nanoloop.com

NANOLOOP ALBUM (2004-01-22): http://www.disco-bruit.de/

PARKOUR (2003-07-08): http://perso.wanadoo.fr/parkour

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PUSS (2004-01-22): http://www.pusstracks.com

SONIC CITY, OBSERVATIONS (2004-02-15): http://civ.idc.cs.chalmers.se/projects/soniccity/process_observations.html

SONIC CITY, CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY (2004-02-15): http://www.playresearch.com/projects/soniccity

Discography

1. Microstoria (2000): _SND, Frankfurt, Mille Plateau.

2. Nobekazu Takemura (2000): Scope, Chicago, Thrill Jockey Records.

3. Oval (1997): DOK, Frankfurt, Mille Plateau.

4. V/A (2000-2001): Clicks + Cuts, Vol. 1-2, Frankfurt, Mille Plateau.

I

Appendix

1. Destructive Gestures and Tools study - Sonic Modulator

CUTTING

II

HAMMERING

ELECTRIFYING

SCRATCHING

SQUEEZING AND STRETCHING

III

SLICING

IV

Walks through the city

J o a n n a

Joanna walks through Nordstan at a fast pace. The shopping mall is crowded with people moving erratically back and forth, sometimes crossing her path leaving her feeling annoyed. ”People are like germs”, she thinks, “moving everywhere at once, without any sense of direction, and there is no way of predicting where they’re heading off next”. With this in mind she picks up the pace and navigates unceasingly straightforward, ignoring all the noise and turmoil caused by her fellow pedestrians.

Soon she reaches the end of the shopping street and she turns left towards the escalators. Once there she reaches for her left coat pocket and gently presses a button on the device hidden in there. Almost instantaneously the shouts and noises from the shopping streets gets softer and softer as the headphones, concealed by her long hair, transforms the surrounding clamour into a neatly woven carpet of sounds. The lively conversations going on around here are suddenly turned into muffled, subtle trebles, almost like whispering. In the background she can hear a low, rhythmic bass pulsing away as she climbs higher on the escalator to get to the top faster. The sudden quirky voice of an alcoholic asking her a question sounds like water poured on metal plates, reverberating in the headphones for a long while until it blends with the other soundscape.

Joanna finally enters the top op the escalator where she turns right into a tunnel. The tunnel consists of see through plastic covered with small drops of water. It’s still raining outside and the clouds are covering the sky. She starts walking straight ahead on the wooden floor. As she starts pacing the thumping bass tries to follow, soon synchronizing it self with her footsteps. A few meters into the tunnel the path expands into a small open room with a staircase blocking the path, forcing the pedestrian turn to reach the destination. As Joanna turns left the high frequency soft sound seems to change is pitch downwards. The change comes quite slow, transforming the soundscape gradually and subtle, forming the background sounds into a soft fluent stream of noise.

Continuing forward, towards the end of the tunnel, Joanna notices that the rain has stopped and that the sun is starting to show itself for the first time this day. She reaches a stair and starts to climb down. As she reaches the bottom, the sun starts to break through the clouds and the subtle noises in the headphones are morphing into clear pitches and harmonics. The

V

audio stream still sounds and subtle and muffled, but is changing to a more concrete pattern of synthesised music.

Once again she changes direction, now towards “the lipstick”, a tall office building which looks like its been made out of glass and red and white plastic, resting firmly by the harbour shore. The sun that boldly managed to penetrate the thick rain clouds has to yield to the huge structure that shadows the street from its rays. As soon as Joanna is within the buildings shade, the sound slowly changes its character and looses all the distinguishable melodic structures. As a cool breeze comes from the water, a quiet radio signal1 panning from left to right is comes in, analogue to the winds force.

“This is starting to get interesting“ Joanna thinks for herself and reaches down her pocket to activate the “record” button. After a short pause she starts walking around the building, towards the sunny side.

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Designing with culture in mind 2 · 2004-09-14 · Keywords: interaction design lifestyle,...

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