one part truth, two parts mixer

Playtime part 2

Repost from Run on Toast

My round-up of Playful continued from here, no faffing about - I'm just going to jump straight in.

Russell Davies mainly spoke about how we use pretending to make things more interesting (reminded me of a kid at school who used to go to the CIA/FBI websites and pretend that he was hacking into their mainframes). For example, the role of a watch:

And also how stuff that allows you to pretend has to be hidden in the detail (i.e. you can't pretend to be in an army vehicle driving a Hummer, because you are in an army vehicle - too bleeding obvious).
Most importantly, after his talk I desperately have to go here.

Molly Ränge talked about some really cool examples of Scandinavians playing, but crucially for me raised the question of how you 'evaluate' play, i.e. prove that it works. How do you make sure that when you put playful events into practice, that they aren't just limited to one-off events.

Duncan Gough: All I can say is that he made me think about what it would be like to play Friends (yes, the TV show). Slightly disturbing. Although, he also talked about what it would be like to play the Wire or Press Gang, which sound much more interesting ;).

Rex Crowle did his presentation on OHP:

The second analogue presentation in as many weeks (other one here)!
One of the interesting things he bought up the point that to help people play, we should give them the pre-defined bits to create a whole because that is less daunting. Also that a naïve animation style (like on Little Big Planet, which Rex worked on) encourages people to play.

These themes were revisited in Simon Oliver's talk: he gave the example of Spore, where the low level work of creating 'bits' is done for you, so you can get on and create a character. He also gave the example of South Park with the warning that slick visuals doesn't guarantee a good product.

The thing that made me happiest was hearing about TimWright's Kidmapper project. Basically when reading Robert Louis Stevenson's book Kidnapped (which follows the story of 'David Balfour running for his life across the Highlands, sometimes accompanied by tough and rebellious Alan, sometimes pursued by the English army'), he came across a passage which showed that the whole book happened between the dates of 30th June to 25th August. He basically decided to follow the trail, on foot, to see if the dates were right. What an awesome project!
I think he's organising a project where people meet up and follow a set trail from a book together, but I can't find anything on the interwebs (granted, I haven't looked that hard). He also wondered how nice it would be if books came with real maps of the areas covered inside, along with space for notes. The 'adventurer's version' if you like. I really like the idea of tying fiction to the real world. In fact visiting the spots from Bulgakov's Master and Margarita in Moscow ended up being a key to discovering a whole bunch of cool stuff.

Thanks to all the guys who organised it, looking forward to next year.

Playtime part 1

I was absolutely gutted to miss Playful last year (damn work!) but made up that pesky deadlines didn't get in the way this year. Roo Reynolds has written a good summary of the whole thing here, so I won't do that again, but in typical fashion list out my highlights, interesting bits and thought-starters from the day. So here goes:

Firstly there was a little plug for Wordr at the beginning of the day, which is like twitter but you can only use one word. Reminded me of the 1-track mixtape project that Martin and I never started, where you made MP3 mixtapes on floppy disks (3.44MB is generally enough for one lowish-quality tune).

Roo Reynolds started the day off with an interesting look at films of computer games and vice versa:

But it was a mostly excellent talk because it introduced me to this. The full talk is up on his site (here), it's well worth a listen.

A couple of things from Daniel Soltis (from Tinker.it):

• I liked the idea of a competitive picnic (basically go fish with picnic food) which was from a student project
• The joy that you get from physical gamepieces, the tactile experience, assigning them meaning
• The idea of trying to play a normal game with Guitar Hero/Rock band controller
• The Reverse Geocache Puzzle project by Mikal Hart, where a box is modded so it doesn't open until you reach certain co-ordinates. Read more here

 
The Reverse Geocache Puzzle Box (pic from here)

Lucy Wurstlin touched on a project by Mudlark to help people access data that's kept on them, for example from their oystercard, and play with it themselves. Also touched on a project to create an binaural game - Papa Sangre. Definitely have to investigate more into both of those. 

Robin Burkinshaw was interviewed by Matt Locke about the awesome Alice and Kev, and said one of my favourite quotes of the day: 'Interesting things happen because of the character's free will'. Free will? It's mad to think of video game characters as having free will, but did get me thinking about how video games are changing from a narrative determined by the game-maker to one defined by the gamer. The Sims may be the only game that truly does this now, but most games that exist within a world (such as Grand Theft Auto) allow the user to do their own thing to some extent. I wonder when gamers will be able to create their own story arc, or build their own missions that can be downloaded and played by their peers (it's very likely that this is already possible, I'm just not into those sort of games).

James Bridle's talk was just unbelievably awesome. He recreated MENACE (Matchbox Educable Noughts and Crosses Engine) which is/was an analogue machine that can learn how to play noughts and crosses (I think). I don't think I can really do any better than that so I'll leave you with another of my favourite quotes of the day ('Babbage was really into miracles') and some pictures (more here):


Tired now, going to have to make this a two-parter.

UPDATE 2/11: James has posted his slides and notes here, definitely worth a read.

Snippets of magic

Just spent a couple of minutes looking through the FromKeetra site. I definitely recommend it. A couple of highlights:

Little public plaques designed to instil 'wonder in the daily routine'. I love stuff like this:

Invites of the type that I hope to receive or send some day in my life:
 

 

 

A message that I would paint on my fridge if it wasn't covered with magnets, photos and coupons:

via Sarah

The city speaks

Adam Greenfield's talk at dconstruct was interesting because he was talking about a lot of things that I've been thinking about generally. His talk was about the networked city, where objects talk to each other.

One point he made was that 'urban savoir faire' - the ability to be a 'power user' of the city because of specialist knowledge gained by discovery - is under threat from search. I think this could be a good thing because it makes good local businesses easier to find, and therefore more profitable, less likely to close. There is a part of me that doesn't want these hidden finds to become busier, but if this is what is needed to save them from the inexorable march of homogenity, then I'm all for it.

And those that still seek the satisfying feeling that discovery brings can just opt out of 'search urbanism' by turning off their phone. When we were in Moscow, I forced Jas to go on a pilgrimage of all the spots in the Master and Margarita, and we chanced upon loads of cool boutiques. When I worked in Adidas Originals, I remember them saying they purposely put the shops off the beaten track to make the shoppers feel like they'd discovered them. Actually the whole merchandising idea was built around some weird flea market idea, but ended up looking like a clinical interrogation room (those lights were bright!). 

Photo by Henry, hope he doesn't mind me using it

You know by now how much I love buzzwords (ugh, trends what have you done to me?!) and so I obviously lapped up 'wayshowing' (although it maybe doesn't top 'dimensional synesthesia' by Ben Cerveny). If Wayfinding is about us looking up things digitally, wayshowing is about digital showing us the way. The Microsoft concept video that August de los Reyes showed us what that might look like, with our tablet/phone/mental thing guiding us through life. While all this stuff does make our lives easier, it also robs us of the skills to survive alone, but more importantly trains us not to enjoy discovery.

Anticipation

Saw this on my way to work this morning (on Waterloo Bridge):

I sometimes wish that they wouldn't make it so easy to find out what these things are about. Anyways, Legible London is about making the city easier to navigate by foot - which I'm all for as a keen public transport dodger/urban walker (you like that?).

I've always loved the idea of putting things on the pavement. I may have written about it before, but my friend Tansy and I once devised a plan to spraypaint a compass marked with north outside every tube exit to help orient people leaving the station. We obviously never got round to it, as with most of our plans, but a couple of years ago they did talk about doing something similar in NYC, but I don't know if that happened.

But if there are going to be more people walking, we also need a code of conduct. London walkers please say 'Thank you' when someone stops to let you pass.

If the shoe fits

I often wonder whether Clarks still has the amazing foot measuring machine of my youth - I realise it would be easy to go and check, but that is exactly why I haven't done it. It actually made shopping for school shoes an exciting experience for me as a kid, and probably gave my parents validation that they were buying properly fitted shoes for their little princess (we were all princesses the year they released Magic Steps).

Anyway, the point I meant to make is that correctly fitted shoes are important. Even as adults. However we only really make an effort to buy correctly fitted shoes when they're for a specific activity, i.e. running.

I recenly went through the saga of buying walking boots (for this). What I learnt is that every shoe manufacturer has a different fitting, so depending on what type of foot you have different makes will fit you. I remember from buying running shoes that most manufacturers cater for different types of feet within their range. This is all very well for shoes that we don't mind being ugly as sin (sometimes I think the manufacturers do this on purpose, so you are forced to buy correctly fitting shoes), but what about the shoes we wear for the majority of our day - shouldn't we be paying the same attention to making sure they fit properly? Or at least as close as possible to proper?

In a world where companies are increasingly catering to large niches (i.e. petite clothing ranges for shorter people) why haven't the shoe companies got involved by offering width fittings? I can only think of New Balance who do this. If you're creating a 'bespoke' shoe, i.e. Nike ID, you should be able to pick the width fitting surely?

And while we're on the subject, can someone start to make boots for people without fat calves?

No logo

Repost from Run on Toast

Saw an in interesting post over on Influx Insights the other day, about how Freshjive are removing branding/logos from all their products (you can read the interview with owner Rick Klotz here). I always thought that the interesting thing about a lot of luxury fashion is that there is no branding on the outside of the clothes. The kudos comes because fashion people are so geeky that they will be able to recognise who you're wearing by what you're wearing. It's interesting to see a brand taking it further, with no branding at all.

Around the time of No Logo I remember there being a brand called No Label (can't find anything on the internetz, sorry), which made canvas shoes with a label that said No Label. I always thought that was a pretty stupid statement to make - it being a label called No Label - but I'm sure some people felt it was a zeitgeisty, ironic and cool statement.

But does this box become a logo of sorts? Pic via The Hundreds

A couple of quotes from that Klotz interview:
"Throughout the years I’ve become uncomfortable with this business of branding and brand identity. I’m not the type of person that buys something for the brand name. I’ve also never done a very good job at creating a captivating identity to our own brand logo." The cynic in me wonders if this just a savvy marketing ploy for a brand that hasn't built a successful reputation as it would like?

"... when I see kids wearing company logos it reminds of people who are trying to be a part of a “tribe” or “gang”, as if they need to be part of something, which seems to go against the idea of individualism in style."

"It’s really invigorating to approach designing a line WITHOUT the constrictions of how the logo is gonna be placed or used on the garments. " Imagine designing an ad without having to consider where to put the logo. Within the market that Freshjive operate in, it's as radical a thought.

It's an interesting case to follow. If you take away the brand and the logo, you are left with just the product. What to do you to your product to make it desirable?

Conceptual consumption

Ah, the hangover from working in trends - I can't help but love a good buzzword. Came across 'conceptual consumption' in this paper by Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton. It's short and worth a read, but most of the content has been written about elsewhere.

One thing that really interested me was an idea about how memories influence our consumption; they cite the phenomenon 'whereby people who have truly enjoyed an experience, such as special evening out, sometimes prefer not to repeat it'. On the surface it seems counter-intuitive to how we consume experiences, but Ariely and Norton go on to explain that 'by forgoing repeat visits, they are preserving their ability to consume the pure memory - the concept - of that evening forever, without the risk of polluting it with a less-special evening'. Actually, when you put it like that, we've all been there. Coupled with the amount of repeat visits that haven't lived up to the first that we experience as consumers, it poses quite an interesting question for the entertainment and hospitality sectors in particular. Is this an argument for consistency? It's widely held that the restaurants in the Caprice Holdings stable don't stay on top of the popularity charts for their amazing food, but rather the consistency of quality and service ensures a good time every time.

Multi-tasking

I was looking through some old photos the other day (is there a company/teenager you can pay to digitise all your analogue stuff?) and found this:

It may not be much to look at, but I was reminded of a what a great laundrette this was. Not only could you wash your clothes, you could have a beer, play some pool and even eat some barbeque while you waited. Death of the laundrette? It doesn't have to be so.

It was in New Orleans somewhere, hopefully not destroyed by Katrina.

Design notes

Went to a LS:N Global network evening last week, where they - ahem - considered 'how and why superlative design will be come the key way to target clients and customers in a post-recessionary market'. I'm not sure that this question was answered, but the evening was really stimulating nonetheless. A couple of bits that I'd never really thought about before:

Paul Austin from Made Thought spoke about treating light as a graphical tool when designing shop interiors. I thought that was really well articulated, and after spending a year under the strip lighting of the Adidas Originals store in Covent Garden, I realise how important it is that someone thinks like this.

I always think of design as something that should be functional, but Libby Sellers believed that 'the idea of functionality [had] changed in the 21st century to respond to emotional need'. It's quite mad to get your head around the idea that creating things that don't excel in a function, but a nice validation for the work coming out of design (and justification for the price tags?).

Lastly Sam Hecht , speaking about making things that last, used the term 'commitment-phobia' to describe the culture for disposable goods. He said something like, 'no form of ownership means no form of responsibility'. I like the idea of responsibility for items, which ties into the stuff about patina that Russell Davies wrote about quite eloquently.