When You See It!

For this week’s reading I chose a paper which I would normally avoid because of its ambiguous nature. Also people from my learning triangle suggested me to learn more about it, so it is my next attempt to understand the practical value of doing ambiguous design. Paper by Briggs et al. [1] is about exploring Invisible Design through ambiguous film scenarios.

In this paper they present three film scenarios Invisible Design: Biometric Daemon, Panini and Smart Money. All films were professionally produced and then shown to the user-group consisting of older adults. The use of ambiguity for user engagement in HCI has already explored [2], but using film scenarios for PD is relatively new concept. The author’s argument was that Invisible Design can be helpful in early stages of design and in concept development by creating discourse.

Although there was a lot of criticism towards the films – “didn’t really get the point of it”…“I don’t know why you folks have bothered to buy something that didn’t tell you anything” – this discussion led the research team to develop something visible and tangible [3]. Also it was a good method to give disengaged user group (older adults in this case) a change to discuss their everyday problems and start thinking about technologies which could aid them.

I have to admit that I enjoyed reading this paper and for the first time I could see ambiguous design used for developing something that we could actually use. The concept of Invisible Design seems really interesting, but I started thinking about other disengaged user groups; blind people for example. Would you use Invisible Design concept through film scenarios for PD with this group and what is the alternative ambiguous design method?

 

1. Briggs, P., Olivier, P., Blythe, M., Vines, J., Lindsay, S., Dunphy, P., … Monk, A. (2012). Invisible design: exploring insights and ideas through ambiguous film scenarios. Designing Interactive Systems, (1933), 11–15.
2. Gaver, W. Beaver J., and Benford S. 2003. Ambiguity as a resource for design. In: Proc. CHI ’03. ACM (2003), 233-240.
3. Vines, J., Blythe, M., Dunphy, P., Vlachokyriakos, V., Teece, I., Monk, A., Olivier, P. Cheque Mates: Participatory Design of Digital Payments with Eighty Somethings. In: Proc. CHI ’12, ACM Press (2012).