Week 5: Me, Ryan, Chenxi

During week 5, myself, Ryan & Chenxi presented in the class. Our topic was technology & everyday life. We wanted to touch upon the good and the bad on humanity's dependence on technology and make our colleagues think deeper about their relationship with technology.

We first started out by narrowing down on topics that were fascinating to the three of us. We each got 15-20 ideas and discussed where can we go from there, the idea was to be passionate about the topics we discussed and convey that information with as much zest to the audience.

That's us discussing and probably quarrelling about technology, whether it's good or bad what's our stance on it as a group.

After three weeks of work and brainstorming sessions later we were ready to present in front of the class and lead a workshop after the presentation. The presentation was titled "Speculating Now".

The Presentation

I opened the keynote and realised its 9 am and everyone sleepy, at which point I made everyone stand up and do some jumping exercises. Just to wake them up.

The next think I wanted to make clear was that our presentation was actually a conversation and that it’s meant to be a two way lane. We wanted to make sure everyone feels comfortable and there can be a dialogue between us and the audience.

The first speaker was Chenxi and he started by elaborating how technology is changing human lives. He then narrowed down on the education sector and how technology plays an important role in that paradigm. He spoke about smart classrooms and how it affects communication, how the modern classroom is different than the ones our parents studied in and how much technology has come in to the classroom. From PowerPoint to laptops we have radically changed the way we look at classrooms.

He then proceeded to a couple of videos that showed the development of technology from the early days to now. He showed statistics on phones and how many people in the world use phones, what countries have the most phone users and how does it compare to the the country’s population. He elaborated that further and spoke about what’s technology’s impact in general on our lifestyle and what sectors of our lifestyle a get affected the most from technology, he elaborated statistics on e-commerce spend annually in different industries such as fashion, travel, games etc.

He left the stage by quoting Matt Mullenweg who said “Technology is the best when it brings people together”.

I was next up after Chenxi and I started by asking the audience about what’s the most ubiquitous piece of technology in the world. After a few answers Neasa guesses it right, it’s the mobile phone. I then lead a small discussion about what was phone actually designed for and how it has evolved from being a simple calling machine to a wearable device our society is hugely addicted to. I elaborated more on addiction and discussed a study that was performed on app called “App Detox” which was created with the purpose of letting people lock certain apps from their phone so they don’t go and check it repeatedly. I then posed the audience with the question “what do you think people would wanna move away from” some people said Facebook, some said angry birds and some said contacts app. I then revealed the study results which showed that addictive games were not even in the top 30 apps which people created rules for. Most rules were created for apps like QQ, Whatsapp and Web browsers. I added that the most rules broken were actually for the android contacts app and pondered upon why users want to strip the most necessary function of a phone away, which indicates that phone has evolved from a basic calling and messaging device to an always connected internet device.

I then spoke about IAD (Internet addiction disorder) which was once a science fiction story but is now a recognised disorder. I asked the audience about what might be the reason for people being so addicted to their phones and went on to play a video by popular YouTube Casey Neistat who explained how our curiosity and addiction to digest more information keeps us on social media platforms, he terms this phenomena “FOMO Factory”. He also spoke on how there’s so much noise on the Internet and how we pay for a piece of information with our time, a new type of economy, attention economy has been put in place. Lastly, we spoke about algorithms and how they’re designed to keep users on the platform for the longest time to keep the business going and incentivise ads.

Last up was Ryan, he spoke about how technology has changed the human experience and how what are the effects of that. He spoke about the unhealthy attachment teens have towards their phones and how it influences their relationships. He also spoke about the effects about being away from the phone which are similar to separation anxiety.

He then asked the audience about the digital detox and their experience with it. The audience were asked to do as a part of our workshop over the weekend during which there were supposed to stay away from all the devices and go as long as they can that way.

He then spoke about the dopamine release in our bodies because of using social media which is similar to gambling and smoking, instant gratification and how it makes it easy to lose control and how how a regular person checks their phone 80-300 times a day. He spoke about terms such as phubbing (Using phone while talking to someone else) and showed a small video about the emergence of social media and how Instagram sits in top of everyone today.

We spoke a little about the future of technology and where the mankind headed is headed and took questions from the audience, that marked the end of our presentation.

The Workshop

After our presentation, we led our colleagues into the design studio for a round of design activity. We described the activity as “A UX design approach to raise empathetic awareness and understand the relationships between humans & technology.” The activity was simple, the class was broken down into five groups and each was group was presented with a design brief which put them into an a weird albeit open scenario where they were asked to design a product/service as a solution to the scenario. After a brief round of introduction we broke down the activity into various stages so everyone could be aware of the time they spent on brainstorming, ideation, refinement, design & presentation.

The persona cards were kept simple, with imagery that would help the team envisage the character better & simple information about the character's life.

It was a great workshop and lasted for 2 hours. The room was completely destroyed by our teams in efforts to look for materials to prototype and convey their idea. The products created by the teams were brilliant and included solutions like a vest that would attach the popular action cameras “GoPro” on cat’s front and back. The group went one step ahead and proposed that the vest was made out of a protective anti scratch material which would prevent other cats from bothering zazzles. There was also a sensor included in the vest which would open the door as he approached the door as if he was trying to escape from a fight.

Another idea that stood to me was that of the keyboard for James the pirate, a keyboard with the shape of a boat steering wheel to allow him to punch in his numbers for his day to day accounting tasks. There was a screen & camera so he could keep in touch with his parrot, Ben. We thoroughly enjoyed their creativity to also present what would happen in the future/allow him to make money to buy his boat.

Each group was asked to present their ideas in the end, we made a short movie to summarise each team's idea and the workshop.

As designers we are on the forefront the tech community, at the same time we create products that impact so many lives. I believe that gives the designer more power and put them at the centre of this transition we are in as a society. With that said, it’s the designer’s responsibility to make sure the products they design are ethical and the issues like data protection and privacy are taken care of in the best way possible. PS - Apologies for no post last week, I was a bit under the weather & couldn't attend Gabriela's workshop.

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