Visual Conventions
What do we mean by visual conventions? Who and how are they made, and how do we, as designers introduce, adopt, modify, elevate, privilege certain conventions? And more importantly, how do we create new models that might be used and embraced by audiences and communities?
In their book, Shaping Information, Charles Kostelnick and Michael Hassett illuminate this space that we, as designers, fill by using common conventions to communicate certain ideas while at the same time reacting against those conventions. The idea that a good designer must be introducing new conventions and not just replicating existing ones is something I think that we all react to as a common charge.
And the key (presumably) is to create more than an amalgam—not just to layer existing conventions on top of one another, but to intertwine them in such as way as to create NEW meaning that offers more depth, ‘realness’, dare I say authenticity to the process. So, I guess the big question is how to do that. I think that we often do it by looking within design. By seeing what other designers are doing, rather than what other disciplines might be doing. We pick and choose those elements that resonate with us, as designers, and attempt to use those in different ways.
But I think this is becoming a tired approach. It is one that I have used and continue to use. But, it seems there is a point at which you are not really initiating anything new into the process or the outcome. So, onward and upward at this point.
The last project exploration in studio was an attempt to ‘initiate’ a defined community (in my case, competitive cyclists) into some new way of thinking, behaving, etc. I chose to initiate them into a more vocal dialogue around street improvements in Raleigh. I did this through a series of street signs placed along training routes. These would highlight the crappiness of the street and the potential to have a say in improving it—directing them to more information on an existing document, The Raleigh Bike Plan, and a public forum that they set up to elicit community input.
Over time, more and more of the information from the actual Bike Plan would be included on the sign, as a way to inform (literally) but also to encourage a re-look, or maybe a first look. Was some new visual language created? I’m not sure. But, the charge to do more than just replicate an existing system was really at the core of this investigation. For me, it was much less about the strategy and even the ‘substrate’ (I hate that term) as it was the attempt to inform a new visualization.
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“Ethnographic Research”
This semester, we are focusing on design and culture. How do we, as designers, consider the (or a) culture for or with which we are designing? How do we study it? How are we informed of and by it? Andrew Blauvelt made an interesting point in an article that he wrote almost 20 years ago for Emigre. In it, he said that designers play the role of being the insider and the outsider simultaneously — that we are constantly negotiating those roles and understandings. And, Penny Sparke makes a similar point in her book “Introduction to Design and Culture: 1900 to the Present,” though hers is framed in the history of consumption. As she explains it, design ‘lives’ as responders to culture, but also as shapers of it. In responding to current cultural conditions, in reflecting those conditions but also in pushing them further, we are not simply a mirror of current conditions – we are complicit in how it evolves.
So, first we might try to look at something that we may or may not already know — a local (chain) coffee shop. From that, we recorded a “thick description” of the experience, and then personify, speculate, create an alternative understanding by writing a short (super-short) story imagining one of the characters that we observed.
Imagining the Story
Doing this exercise actually illuminated something about the (or my) design process, which is that it is (for me, anyway) very iterative. That to work a little bit at a time, making small adjustments here and there, and considering the changes in between, will help temper the design.
anyway, here’s the writing:
The chatter and footsteps and breath ebb and flow. Oh god, here he comes.
“HELLO, friend!!!” I say, wanting to get the best of this beginning.
“Francoise,” he says, “are you a fan of Mark Cuban? You should become a fan.”
“I totally will do that. He’s awesome.” I’m not sure who that is but of course feel like I should. My temperature raises just a little bit. My throat is tightening – I get a little tickle. Don’t cough—not while you’re making the coffee. The smell of it is sickening—like licorice mixed with mud and shit—all stewing together and filling my nostrils like molasses—seeping down my throat and through my stomach, until it lands in the heels of my feet. And I cannot move for a moment. I concentrate on the coffee, starting intently at the machine, pretending to read the cup. I can’t believe she’s gone.
“So, “ he continues, “I say to the guy…don’t shirk responsibility, you know? Be honest, make money, pay taxes…”
“I hear you, man…that is SO true.” I say, probably a little too quickly. Is he still talking about that Cuban guy? I need to stay alert—look sharp, nod, whatever. What would Ana be doing now? It’s about 10, before class. She’d probably be reading that old copy of the Mayor of Casterbridge. God, she loved that book. The pages were old and worn, and slightly damp from the humidity and being left out on the back porch too many times. It was probably twice as thick as it originally was. Her hand wrapped gently but intently around the spine—cradling it in the palm of her hand as she gingerly turned the pages—her lips moving silently as reads, as if she was trying to memorize every word, moment, thought. Oh God, what am I going to do?
“There you go! Double-tall half café soy latte—just for you.”
“Thank God! Francoise, you are the best.”
“It is all yours, my friend. You have a GREAT day.”
Designing a Cultural Probe
At a certain point, don’t we need to actually ASK people, in some way or another, how they might interact with a space, or relay an understanding? Ironically, as part of the cultural probe portion of this project, few of us actually did that.
Maybe I am just skeptical, but I think our confrontation with ‘surveys’ of any number of types, illuminates the sketchiness of the survey—the calculated answers, the disingenuous thoughts that result from these controlled circumstances. No ‘good’ designer wants to have anything to do with that, right?
At any rate, and whether or not surveys are an accurate reflection of anything real, our goal is/was to reform the survey. to get the same TYPE of information in a new and interesting way. To be more inventive, but also more roundabout. But there are two major developments that come out of this. One is that by trying to elicit information through really open-ended means, you are making huge assumptions (or tests) about how people spend their time, how and what they will engage with, and who they are as customers and as people. You imagine an entire schema filled with these assumptions. And secondly, the way that you interpret the data becomes almost infinite. So, you ask people to create something with a set of pieces and take a photo of that. How do you interpret the data that you’re collecting? What does it mean if they write MEANINGLESS on the photo? Does it mean that the survey is ridiculous? Does it mean that they just got fired from their job of 20 years? Finished a book with a bad ending? It really could mean anything. And so, how do we use that data? It’s one thing to find inspiration in the workings of others minds, it’s another thing to turn that interest into something that is “real.”
The way that I tried to imagine it (for better or worse) was to capture ‘real’ behavior – to keep the probe from being too intrusive, but maybe to reflect an understanding that was present, or maybe not. What I think was interesting about a number of them (and this could be equally as true for probes in general) was how the probe itself may play a role in changing the participants behavior.
So, if you ask someone to carry around a chip that only activates with engaged with another chip and then reports that connection back to a central place, that makes a mark on a board (the size of which is dependent on the length of time the chips have connected) will the participants potentially start to seek out other chips with which to engage? The premise of the project fell more into the former explanation, but I think the latter could very well be an outcome.
Helio’s: A Community of Coffeedrinkers
Helio’s has a strong community that engages one another in the space. My basic question was whether or not this community extended outside of those walls? Was it the space and people working in the space that engendered such a strong feeling of ‘knowing’ or was it something else? I proposed a small wearable ‘thing’ that would be recognizable to those engaging in the survey. Participants would wear the piece that had a small GPS / micro chip in it. When chips encountered each other out on the street they would ‘engage’ and send a signal back to the cafe where a digital art piece was being built by these connections.
The Device and Display
Digital Art Wall
Detail of Data Capture Art Wall
