Blog - David Kopulos

The highest form of flattery from the Royal College of Art

2012-02-13T08:28:00.001Z

Good to know that I was on to something: London's prestigious Royal College of Art is rolling out a postgraduate MA Information Experience Design course with uncanny similarities to the MRes Information Environments course I recently completed at the London College of Communication.

David and Hilary with Information Environments professor Teal Triggs.
Photo by Steph Lessmann.

Photo: social wayshowing in practice

2012-02-12T18:14:00.000Z

Spotted on 10 February in a pedestrian tunnel near London Bridge:

"John the Big Issue salesman has had to move. I am now on the walkway close to Richter Sounds. I hope to see all my customers soon. Thank you, John."

Video: this wayfinder needs no signs

2012-02-10T09:54:00.000Z

A London estate's 3D map

2012-02-09T16:09:00.001Z

Spotted this three-dimensional wayfinding map high up on the wall of an estate (that is, a public housing complex) in London:

What a brilliant idea! Why struggle to create a simulated 3D effect on a 2D map when instead you could create a physical 3D model to help visitors understand an environment and find their way in it? Other designers have proposed a similar 3D approach as a way of making wayfinding maps accessible for the blind.

This one has a few problems, though:

Where am I? There's no indication of my current location within the complex.
The map is excellent at showing which building is which, but fails to show how to get to them. The solid, opaque buildings on this model don't show that the ground floors are actually open walkways that connect the courtyards. Here, a literal representation of reality meant sacrificing crucial information.
It's mounted too high on the wall to be touched by blind wayfinder. Why not install it horizontally at waist-height, like a tabletop model? That would benefit everyone by removing the extra cognitive step of spatial translation (up equals straight ahead, down is behind me) that complicates of understanding how the map relates to reality.

Architecture as story: Canada's pavilion at the Venice Biennale

2012-02-02T10:25:00.000Z

Originally posted as an essay on a previous version of my website.

Picture the prototypical Canadian building. It's not the igloo nor the longhouse; not the CN Tower nor Habitat '67; not the Château Frontenac nor the Centre Block on Parliament Hill. It isn't even Red Green's Possum Lodge nor is it Bob and Doug Mackenzie's house. The world's most Canadian building isn't even located in Canada, but it's not the kitschy Canadian pavilion at Epcot, nor the bombastic Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C. You'll find it in a forgotten corner of Venice. This one-story, unheated building -- more a glorified shelter -- is our nation's pavilion in Venice's Giardini Publici, the quiet public park that comes alive once every two years when it hosts one of the world's top art exhibitions, the Venice Biennale. The Giardini contains an eclectic assortment of national pavilions, giving the park the look of a well-worn world's fair.

The Canadian pavilion shares the grounds with pavilions from Korea, Norway, France, Venezuela, and about twenty-five others situated in no particular order between groves of trees and along the gravel pathways. The pavilions were designed and built by the individual nations over the course of the past century, and thus proudly display the aesthetics and ambitions of their country at the time of their construction. Great Britain's entry is all columns and empire; the American pavilion is a Georgian mini-mansion; the imposing "Germania" pavilion could pass for the work of Hitler's architect Albert Speer. If Disney's Epcot theme park had been built half a century earlier by the League of Nations, it surely would have looked like Venice’s Giardini Publici.

Canada's entry in this outdoor architecture museum was built in 1958 and says a great deal about the nation's identity and outlook as a young country coming into its own. Tucked in a far corner of the park -- appropriately beside and slightly behind its colonial parent Great Britain, Canada's diminutive pavilion is a low structure the size of a small bungalow and clad in brown-red brick. A glass wall encloses a small courtyard. Trees overhang the angular roof, and one grows up through the pavilion itself, the canopy erupting from an opening in the wood ceiling. The roof is defined by white steel beams rising to a central point, not-so-subtly evoking a tipi. "Canada" is spelled in capital letters beside the entrance, in a modern font that similarly identifies Toronto’s public schools of a similar vintage. For a modest shelter -- one that bears a striking similarity to a washroom pavilion on the Toronto Islands -- the structure manages to cultivate a story of Canada as a country connected to nature, ready to acknowledge its First Nations roots, and modest yet proud of its accomplishments as a modern, postcolonial nation. In stark contrast to the Canada pavilion at Epcot which encompasses an embarrassing pastiche of clichés -- miniature Rocky Mountains next to a stunted Château Laurier framed by totem poles -- the Canadian pavilion in the Giardini Publici is a manifesto for a nation ready to assume its role on the world stage. Like a frontier cabin, the pavilion articulates Canada's story in a foreign land, and indeed tells that story with more coherence and grace than many of Canada's embassies and consulates abroad. Not bad for a tiny pavilion in a park.

Bottom photo from http://heavyworld.com/theskinny/?p=1369

Design fix: Science Museum

2012-01-31T17:06:00.000Z

Here's the main stairwell in the newest wing at London's Science Museum. Brushed steel, bold colours, spot lighting. Have a closer look at the photocopied sign taped to the wall:

Instead of turning right at the landing, museum visitors were turning left and following the stairs down past the landing, only to find a dark alcove and a locked emergency exit. Enough visitors (including myself and my colleagues) must have made this mistake that an employee posted this sign. They shouldn't have bothered; I doubt that many visitors will stop to read all eighteen words.

Sometimes adding a new sign only compounds a wayfinding problem. In this case, the visitors who 'mistakenly' turned left were making a rational, predictable decision based on the wayfinding tools at their disposal. People navigate unconsciously using environmental cues far more than they rely on signs and maps. Design a space using colour, light, and form to guide visitors, and you may never need a single sign.

Here, visitors were misled by a natural assumption that the lowest floor in the stairwell would be the ground floor of the museum. What environmental cues could counter this urge to descend?

The fix:

Use the existing architecture and interior design to guide visitors out the door to the right. I've used arrows in the edited image above; any number of graphical or architectural interventions would have the same effect.

Use similar tools to deter visitors from turning left and following the stairs down. I've removed the wall and floor paint to expose the unfinished concrete, creating the appearance of a 'behind the scenes' service area. It still fits with industrial aesthetic of the museum and is easily ignored during an evacuation, but it provides the necessary visual nudge to encourage visitors to turn right, not left. No words or signs required.

Memory building: war memorials as sites of rupture and remembrance

2012-01-26T13:57:00.002Z

Originally posted as an essay on a previous version of my website.

Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Photo by Flickr user reutC; used under Creative Commons license.

Architecture is the stage on which war is waged. It is the bridges defended, the bunkers busted, and the ruins rebuilt. When the shooting ends a secondary architecture of war emerges, with memorial sites as sanctioned settings for remembrance.

Architecture has long been the preferred medium with which to publicly memorialize societal traumas such as war. Recent non-architectural efforts such as web-based archives, memory projects such as Claude Lanzmann's Shoah documentary, and participatory media such as the AIDS quilt are still considered by many to have less authority to officially memorialize than architectonic volumes that occupy physical space. Given that confronting and accepting the mass and permanence of a stone monument parallels the necessary encounter with the societal memory and moral lessons of the event itself, the continued presence of stone monuments as the dominant medium for memorialization is understandable. Like a sidewalk under construction, these sites act as physical interruptions or ruptures in the normal patterns of use for the public spaces they occupy, confronting witnesses with the historical rupture of the events they memorialize. The solid calls attention to the void.

The danger of such centralized memorials is that, like a gated cemetery, they delineate a separate space for remembrance, unfairly relieving the community at large from the burden of memorial responsibility.

The role of a memorial site as 'set apart' from the spaces of daily life is specifically addressed at the Holocaust memorial in downtown Berlin. The site is defined by a field of stone blocks of varying height, creating an undulating effect from above and an unsure horizon for those passing through. While referencing the ordered otherness of a cemetery, the site features no fence nor identifying signs. The knowledge of the site's significance, like the responsibility for the Holocaust itself, is borne collectively and thus resists the impulse to contain and render safe the past within a designated area.

The openness of Berlin's memorial obscures the protracted debate regarding its design, which resulted in an extended period when the site was indeed surrounded by fences and left fallow. Some argued that this vacant lot, and even the design competition itself were more appropriate memorials to the national shame of the Holocaust than any architectonic memorial could ever be. Some argued that there was no need for a simulated graveyard in a city that had seen enough real death.

The motif of a physical void symbolizing war likely also inspired the designers of the 9/11 memorial in New York, who created sunken reflecting pools for the footprints of the twin towers. Nearby, a "Freedom Tower" will rise to 1776 feet, enshrining in steel the year of American independence. In contrast to the mournful voids of the pools, the Freedom Tower's height is an aggressive symbol that leaves little emotional space for grief and loss, and the ideological power of a structure's basic physical properties.

At the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, the physical dimensions of the permanent exhibition space -- a chronological walk-through of the nation's wars -- also takes on political symbolism by leaving very little expansion space for future exhibits on future wars. In contrast, the exterior of the museum offers a more contemplative meditation on war. Concrete walls resembling long-forgotten bunkers are roofed by rolling grasses evoking a partially-healed trench battlefield. Here, the museum simulates the site being memorialized. As the actual battlefields are reclaimed by nature or deliberately demolished and the last surviving veterans pass away, simulations like the grassed roof of the Canadian War Museum become the sole remaining loci of memory.

Like the pieces of the Berlin Wall now scattered around the world on public display and in private collections, the memory of conflict is dispersed and reabsorbed into society. Remember that although the fragments of the Berlin Wall are too small and scattered to be reassembled into a weapon of war, they have not disappeared.

The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Ontario

The Hymn Society: a logo design case study

2012-01-20T09:56:00.000Z

Make us look as good as we sound. That was the charge, in so many words, from the organizers of the annual conference of The Hymn Society in The United States and Canada. They were seeking to develop a more consistent, polished image in an effort to attract the next generation of songwriters and musicians.

Past logos.

They provided a brief for the 2012 logo project:

This year in Winnipeg our theme is "The Meeting Place: Sharing our Song" reflecting the fact that two major rivers and over a dozen ethnic groups meet in that city. The idea is that just as Winnipeg is a place where First Nation and immigrant settlers met for business and social exchange, hymn singing is a place where we can "meet" one another despite cultural or ethnic differences. We are hoping during the week to have some of the many different ethnic voices in Winnipeg participate in our conference.

The new logo would have to convey ethnic and musical diversity, Winnipeg's unique geography, the concept of meeting and exchange, along with a respectful nod to the culture of Canada's First Nations. As with most logos, it would need to be simple and iconic for the sake of recognisability and to ensure it could be reproduced clearly across a variety of media, from tote bags to websites.

How to visually represent a "meeting place"? The meeting of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers near downtown Winnipeg provided a striking image when seen from above:

A logo based on the rivers' courses could have been visually striking, but the shapes are less meaningful to those without knowledge of the city's geography:

A more abstract interpretation of the rivers -- with streams and currents meeting and diverging -- was an improvement. This version contained five lines, to represent the five lines of a musical staff:

Perhaps the lines could converge into a central meeting point:

Although this approach incorporated the river, music, and a central meeting place, it didn't engage in a visual dialogue with First Nations culture. It also suggested a vortex, with the central meeting place as a final destination, not a mid-point in a journey.

Back to basics. A literal meeting place is either an outdoor location or a sheltered structure such as a house, church, or cafe. Why not employ an abstracted representation of a shelter once common in the Winnipeg area: an Ojibwe wigwam?

But again, these sketches need refinement. Every line must be crafted to suggest both a literal object (a shelter, a meeting place) and an abstract concept (cultural and musical exchange).

What if the lines suggested both the wood of a wigwam frame and the converging journeys of conference participants as they come together to exchange ideas and to be sent in a new direction?

A digital rendering of this idea validated the concept, but the wigwam was too abstracted and subtle:

Cutting the bottom 'legs' along a straight line helped to imply a ground plane. Experimenting with the forms led to some exciting ideas, but none as simple and legible as the original.

The logo would have to include a large amount of text. To incorporate seventeen words without overwhelming the image, the text was carefully sized and coloured to create a visual rhythm and an information hierarchy. The font was selected to complement the clean, minimal lines of the image.

The result:

As well as representing the meeting of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers at the centre of Winnipeg, the logo suggests the coming together of individuals and the exciting exchanges of songs, ideas, and perspectives that inevitably take place at the Hymn Society's conferences. To reflect this conference's focus on the traditions of Canada's First Nations, the logo subtly evokes a wigwam, a type of dwelling and a place of meeting and shelter built by the Ojibwe people, the area's original inhabitants. The logo could also be seen to represent a human figure with arms outstretched in song and praise.

A Note on the Type

2012-01-19T10:37:00.000Z

Originally posted as an essay on a previous version of my website.

Often on the final page of a book you'll find a 'Note on the Type' that provides a quick history of the typeface used in the preceding pages. It usually consists of phrases such as "this book is set in Goudy Old Style, designed by Frederic W. Goudy in 1915. Notable for the diamond-shaped dots on punctuation marks, Goudy Old Style is one of the most popular typefaces ever produced." Though sometimes interesting, The New Yorker likened readers of 'Notes on the Type' to those who refuse to leave the movie theatre until the final credit rolls by. "Who cares," they asked, "what typeface this book was set in except for a handful of ink-stained, pica-crazed designers with floppy metal rulers?"

Pica-crazed or not, you may be interested in the story behind this website's type: davidkopulos.com is set in a typeface called Arial, which is familiar to most computer users and reviled by most designers. It was designed in 1982 as an imitation of Helvetica, the ubiquitous typeface used in the logos for American Airlines, Toyota, Panasonic, Mattel, Staples, Jeep, Lufthansa, and Target, to name just a few. Arial's ubiquity (it is pre-installed on almost all new computers) has made it one of the most common fonts on websites and printed documents, but most designers see it as a poor knock-off of Helvetica. To them, Arial is the font used by those who don't know any better.

Given its lowly status in the design world -- second only to Comic Sans as a target of derision -- an explanation for the use of Arial on this website is in order. Apart from the challenge of creating a satisfying design with a font as unassuming as Arial, its use here could be considered a statement about the nature of design itself: the tools matter less than the skill with which they're employed.

Logos based on Helvetica.

I've used the term "typeface" where "font" might seem to make more sense. Technically, Arial is a typeface, whereas '12-point Arial Bold' is a font. The term is less relevant in the computer age, but when printing required each metal character to be hand-placed in a row to form a sentence, there indeed were separate drawers of fonts for each point size and variation like bold and italic, and the sum of those fonts was the typeface.

Design fix: Stanthorpe Close map

2012-01-16T10:41:00.000Z

I hope to make Design fix a regular feature on my blog: you'll see an example of terrible graphic or wayfinding design and my proposed fix. Although good design may not save the world, it doesn't have to cost more than bad design, and if it makes the world a bit less ugly and a bit easier to navigate, why not?

A map/sign outside a housing complex in South London.

What's wrong with this sign:

The words "Stanthorpe Close" appear ten times; that's about nine too many. They clutter up a sign that's meant to be understood at a glance.
The map is on the left, but the legend needed to interpret it is on the right. Our eyes are trained to scan from left to right, so we waste time trying to find an address on the map at left, then we're forced to consult the legend at right, then back to the map. This is for too many steps to answer a simple question: where is unit X?
The colour choices don't make it clear which areas are for vehicles and which are pedestrian-only.
There is no reason to show the shape of rear gardens and complex building footprints. These details add clutter and won't be useful to the map's primary users: visitors, new residents, and deliverypeople. Better to simplify for the sake of legibility.
The map doesn't show 'where you are' within the complex, or how to access the upper floors.

My fix:

The sign provides the all information necessary for its intended users, and nothing more. The three-dimensional effect on the buildings serves as an extra cue for those who find it difficult to orient themselves using flat maps. The "you are here" label can be a sticker applied when the sign is installed, so copies of the same sign could be used throughout the complex. As a courtesy for visitors when they leave, the map offers a subtle reminder that Stanthorpe Road is a one-way street.

An improvement?

How websites work

2012-01-13T09:32:00.000Z

This is the first article in a new series where I shed some light on the mysteries of design. Follow the series by clicking the "explained" button above.

Photo adapted from Flickr user Daniel Siddle. Used under creative Commons license.

Consider your favourite magazine. What if, instead of a glossy publication, you were sold a folder of photos, a few paragraphs of text, and a set of instructions for how to put it all together. That's what happens when you visit a website.

Don't believe me? Right-click on a blank area on this webpage and select "view source". What you see are the guts of this webpage; that's what your computer actually downloaded. It's a set of instructions -- a recipe, really -- that your browser program followed in order to whip up the nicely laid-out website you're viewing now.

Although they appear complicated, a website's 'source code' instructions are actually very simple. A very basic code could look like this:

<html>
<p>
<i>
My first website!
<i>
</p>
</html>

Which means: start an HTML webpage, start a paragraph, turn on italics, display the text "My first website!", turn off italics, end the paragraph, end the webpage.

Usually, webpages like this will have a companion 'style sheet' where we could dictate that all paragraphs will be 600 pixels wide, with a blue border and a grey background, and a 12-point font size.

Because each browser program (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, etc) follows these instructions slightly differently, the same webpage might look a bit different on different computers, like two different bakers using the same cake mix: one has an oven that's slightly hotter; the other mixes the batter for a bit longer...

This explanation is actually out-of-date. Most websites today are meant for live interaction instead of passive reading, and so the source code instructions are actually assembled and customized on-the-fly by the host server before your browser downloads them. This is what's known as "web 2.0", and it allows you to book a flight and to leave a comment on Facebook.

But don't let that stop you: find a tutorial online and get set to bake your first website.

Supporting interaction at the British Library

2012-01-04T21:47:00.000Z

If it ain't broken, don't fix it. That was the unspoken rule when The British Library came to us with a challenge: how to stimulate interaction and sharing between its users? Renowned as the steward of every book published in the UK -- as well as countless other resources, from oral history recordings to stamps -- the Library has never been more popular. Every day, more than a thousand Readers fill its vast silent Reading Rooms to be inspired by the vast storehouse of knowledge that the Library represents.

Unsure of its role in a 'post-book' world, the Library was looking to chart a course into the stormy seas of social networking. Currently, there is no easy way for Readers to to share ideas and advice. Two Readers could be few desks apart, researching the same obscure topic, without ever meeting. The artist sitting across from the scientist might be interested in chatting over lunch. The first-year undergraduate struggling to write a paper could be sitting next to an accomplished scholar and potential mentor.

Additionally, the Library was looking for a way to quantify its contributions to society: how many books were written in the Library's Reading Rooms? How many award-winning papers cited sources found in the Library's archives?

There is a ‘silent network’ of Readers that to-date has been largely untapped and unconnected. The potential is huge.

We had no interest in forcing a change on the institution or on the Readers, many of whom enjoy the opportunity for silent study that the library affords. Also, we wondered whether books would still be the primary item of study in five, ten, or twenty years. It was time for some research.

On a tight schedule, a team of my colleagues conducted a day of 'micro-research' at the British Library's main site in London. They observed Readers at their desks and followed their trails through the building. The research was summarized in a handout (click the cover above for a PDF file) which revealed that while most Readers brought and used a laptop computer, they also used a personal note book for written notes.

Even in an age when digital technology could easily replace handwritten note books, Readers both young and old still prefer pencil and paper. Perhaps the book is a more durable symbol of learning and knowledge than we thought.

The notebook would be our hook, our go-between, our site for facilitating interaction between users. If the Readers couldn't speak to each other in the silent Reading Rooms, could their note books converse instead?

What resulted was a proposal for an augmented note book: the British Library Smartbook. Issued to every Reader who wanted one, the Smartbook could do everything a note book does now, but with a twist: the notes you make could be scanned and shared; the resources you read could be recorded, and the note books themselves could become part of the library's collection. An online message system tied to your notebook would display information about other Readers in the Library that day. The Smartbook would also be a go-between for informal meetings between shy Readers, providing an opportunity for exchanging ideas.

Check out the video to see the Smartbook in action:

Photos: postgraduate show

2012-01-03T11:10:00.001Z

The December 2011 postgraduate exhibition at the London College of Communication titled design:research was the culminating event of my masters course. Art-directed and organized by myself and my colleagues, our effort within the larger design:research exhibition was entitled Our cities, our communities, ourselves. We exhibited interactive elements from our final projects alongside work from the design writing criticism course. Additionally, the exhibit space itself was a representation of the recursive, messy, creative process of research we developed and practiced during the course.

The front wall featured our curatorial statement and video interviews with the information environment students answering questions posed by the design writing criticism students:

Our statement:

Overhead, we created a wordcloud of key terms from our research:

The representation of my work was as low-tech as my thesis: a simulated road surface and a challenge for visitors to show the way to their favourite exhibit elsewhere in the building.

A number of students' work included video and digital interactive elements:

A successful show and based on the feedback we've received, the best-designed space within the overall exhibition.

Postgraduate exhibition: behind the scenes

2011-12-14T16:47:00.002Z

Filming the video interviews which were screened as part of our postgraduate exhibition.

Class photo

2011-12-14T16:37:00.001Z

The end of the final (scheduled) class of my masters degree:

Video: promoting the exhibition

2011-12-02T11:42:00.001Z

Here's a quick video recorded by the college to promote the postgrad exhibition, on now!

Design:research exhibition

2011-11-22T16:29:00.001Z

Our postgraduate exhibition, 1-8 December 2011. RSVP to events@lcc.arts.ac.uk to attend the evening reception on 5 December to meet the whole IE team. Should be a fun exhibition, and a great way to cap off an incredible year.

Social wayshowing thesis

2011-11-20T17:11:00.001Z

My major project is complete! Click the image to read the full paper as a PDF.

Here's the abstract:

This report documents the development of social wayshowing, a new concept for urban pedestrian navigation. Positioned as complementary to existing, government-
initiated wayshowing systems of directional signs and maps, this new process-
based approach is evaluated in relation to the emerging concepts of collaborative production and gamification. A review of relevant literature and existing practice explores these concepts as both research methodologies and design approaches in the context of wayshowing. The results of this review informed an iterative series of action research activities designed to test the social wayshowing concept. For the first such activity, participants were invited to find specific destinations in an indoor setting and to make use of pre-made signs to direct others. A post-activity analysis of the signs’ locations revealed distinct styles of wayshowing and the degree to which participants relied on each other’s efforts to develop a cohesive wayshowing network. These findings were incorporated into the design of the subsequent research activity, which took place on the streets of London’s Tower Hill area, a bustling financial and tourist district. Two teams of participants designed and installed signs to destinations they deemed noteworthy, after which they competed to follow the opposing team’s signs to their intended destinations. Captured by the participants using cameras and audio recorders and analysed according to the constructivist principles of social semiotics and geosemiotics, the data generated by this game-based activity revealed the participants’ close consideration of semiotic vocabulary in anticipation of how it would be reconstructed by those who followed. Strengths and weaknesses of the game-based motivational approach were also revealed, which served to indicate directions for further iterations of social wayshowing. These and other results will be assembled into a methodological toolbox, intended to equip professional designers when initiating future social wayshowing projects.

Thesis wordcloud

2011-11-01T18:09:00.002Z

Here's a 'wordcloud' based on my thesis. The larger the words, the more frequently it appears in my paper.

Video: presenting my thesis

2011-10-22T19:57:00.000+01:00

On October 19 I presented my thesis work in a Pecha Kucha format (20 slides, 20 seconds per slide).

Thanks to Steph for the video.

Link: the state of public space today

2011-10-18T19:13:00.000+01:00

Fascinating article from The New York Times about the state of public space and the role it does and should play in society. This in the context of the Occupy Wall Street protesters living and sleeping in a privately-owned park: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/sunday-review/wall-street-protest-shows-power-of-place.html

'Scenius' versus genius

2011-10-17T18:38:00.001+01:00

Here's a new term (new to me, at least) that came up during last week's seminar by Filip Visnjik. As opposed to the idea of a single genius sharing an inspired idea with the world, we're now in an age of the 'scenius' where the components of great ideas are collectively held and can only come together through collaboration.

Link: article about Information Environments

2011-10-06T18:31:00.000+01:00

Course director Dr. Kevin Walker describes the unique Information Environments masters degree I received in December 2011:

http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/design-research-and-research-design/30018/

Thesis data collection recap

2011-09-06T11:59:00.000+01:00

Thanks to all those who participated in the research event on 3 September. It was a fun morning of showing and finding in London's streets and back alleys.

Call for research participants

2011-08-11T11:05:00.003+01:00

You're invited to participate in exciting research about the design of our urban spaces. A graduate student researcher at the University of the Arts London is seeking volunteers to test a new concept for spontaneous and democratic wayfinding signs in the Tower Hill area. Join in for a morning of friendly competition as teams of participants compete to guide each other through the streets of Tower Hill.

10am-1pm
Friday 26 August 2011
Refreshments provided.

Please RSVP here.

Feel free to pass this invitation along to others who may be interested, and contact David for more information.

Quotation: Albert Einstein

2011-07-14T18:14:00.002+01:00

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Photos: Ziggurat exhibition and study day

2011-07-14T08:36:00.001+01:00

Defining "information environments"

2011-07-05T09:20:00.004+01:00

An ongoing challenge amongst my postgraduate colleagues has been how to define our course's subject, "information environments".

Installation by Mike Faulkner.

In a sense, information environments have always been with us. The monastery, the workshop and the campfire were defined by the transmission of knowledge they facilitated. Information was communicated longitudinally, from generation to generation. Today, information spreads laterally, in the blink of an eye, to anywhere and everywhere. A single place can no longer claim authority over specific knowledge or a particular set of practices.

When everyone has the ability to become an expert, what becomes of the continuity of knowledge transmission from master to apprentice? When technology permits shared experiences across geographic distance, where is community? When our lives and the spaces we inhabit are quantified in greater and greater detail, how to we find meaning in the resulting data?

Like the fish who discovers water, we must first define and understand the ubiquitous information environments that surrounds us. With their experience as information shapers, designers are uniquely positioned to navigate these waters.

Wayfinding in New York

2011-07-04T07:51:00.002+01:00

New York City's Department of Transportation is seeking bids for a pedestrian wayfinding system. About time, it seems:

A city survey of 500 pedestrians found that the man on the street is often lost. Nine percent of those surveyed who were from New York said they had been lost in the last week. For tourists, that figure was 27%. One-third of New Yorkers couldn’t point to north. (Wall Street Journal)

A unified wayfinding system sounds like a perfect solution, no? The New York Times reveals a complicating factor: "for many New Yorkers, self-guided navigation remains a sign of true city citizenship."

“This is another step towards making New York friendly for tourists rather than for the natives, who know full well where the meatpacking district is (and how to avoid it) and which way to go to find the Empire State Building (so you can then locate the nearby Maui Tacos),” Michael Musto, the Village Voice columnist, wrote in an e-mail.

The insecurity of a tourist from Washington is also revealed:

It would be better ... if he could just look up at a street sign — because then New Yorkers would never know he was from out of town. “If you’re not looking at a map,” he said, “you’re not a tourist."

An argument for respecting local culture, if there ever was one. Would a prominent, ubiquitous wayfinding system like Legible London fail in New York, with locals and tourists embarrassed to use it? Would a more subtle approach be best? Perhaps signs that could be read with just a passing glance? In New York, it seems, being lost it not just a drag; it's downright shameful.

Obscured industrial park wayfinding map in south London.

Ziggurat exhibition invite

2011-06-27T08:47:00.003+01:00

The Happiest Place on Earth: North Korea?

2011-06-08T08:48:00.000+01:00

My postgraduate research have involved developing effective ways of measuring a society's level of happiness.

In most yearly rankings of the best (happiest?) places to live, and Canada usually follows closely behind Scandinavian countries near the top of the list. Apparently, though, we've been misled: North Korea has just released its own list which -- surprise -- ranks North Korea as the happiest country on earth, with the US at the very bottom!

Photos: Signs of emotion in London

2011-06-05T14:57:00.002+01:00

Emotionally needy architecture.

Half Moon Lane in south London has wisely decided to spend more time with his family.

About cognitive maps

2011-05-31T11:27:00.000+01:00

"Cognitive map" is the official term for your ability to navigate a familiar place without directions or GPS. Your cognitive map operates in complex ways but is largely based on landmarks, which is precisely what were destroyed by the massive tornado in Joplin, Missouri. The New York Times ran a story about the difficulty residents are now having when navigating their own town, since all the familiar landmarks are gone. The streets haven't moved, but for the residents, it's literally unfamiliar territory.

Visualisation of website visitors

2011-05-31T11:16:00.002+01:00

BRIEF
Research, design, and construct a model that communicates information about your history and your location in relation to each other.

STATEMENT

Apparently I’ve been to Russia, Brazil, and South Korea. I didn’t know it at the time; in some cases I slept through it. It’s my website that has been viewed in these places, or so I’m told by the digital breadcrumbs left behind by everything we do online. If my website is an extension of me, what does it mean to say that I’ve ‘been’ to these places? Who are these Koreans and Russians who are reading about me? Where did these visits actually take place: here, there, or in the air?

This project is a conceptual model of my virtual journey through time and space as my website is viewed around the world. By exploring the room with your hands, you can see the live data from the most recent visitors to my site, as if floating in mid-air.

Disaster names as taboo information

2011-05-30T12:12:00.001+01:00

Words can be radioactive. Know anyone under 65 with the name Adolf? Like toxic waste, this taboo information will be unearthed only when future generations have forgotten the reasons it was buried in the first place.

Hurricane names are reused every six years or so, except for those representing particularly deadly storms. Those names are retired, perhaps to the same place as the name Adolf. New York's twin towers were destroyed twice: once by hijacked planes on 9/11, and again in the months that followed, as shots of the towers were methodically removed from our culture: logos and TV graphics were changed, signs were replaced, movie scripts shelved.

In the news recently was the case of the flight numbers of the United Airlines planes hijacked on 9/11. Removed from the rotation after September 11, 2001, the numbers were briefly (and likely accidentally) reinstated, to the chagrin of the passengers' families. This mistake sheds light on the airlines' unspoken rules of taboo information: if a plane crashes and people die, that flight's number is retired, and future flights along the same route receive a new number. These retirements are at the airlines' discretion and are not logged in any official database. These numbers form a kind of anti-Hall of Fame, the opposite of a sports legend's number being retired and hoisted to the stadium's rafters.

Photo by Flickr user Jason Tester.

Packaging as a disinformation environment

2011-05-24T18:43:00.004+01:00

Consider the label for this liquid soap. See the four round logos toward the bottom? The first shows a water droplet between cupped hands, the second a stylized flowing river, the third has another water droplet in case you missed the first, and the fourth sports a checkmark. Following today's product design conventions, these round logos probably attest to the soap's environmental qualities; they could even be seals of approval from recognized organic and sustainability certification groups.

Look closer, and the tiny words orbiting the icons tells the real story: "kills bacteria, fights germs", "combats odours", "dermatologically tested". In short, these are essential qualities for all soap; if it didn't do these things, it wouldn't be soap, just goop.

You're likely familiar with the concept of greenwashing, in which companies use wordplay and visual tricks to make their products appear at first glance to be better for the environment than they actually are. This is a particularly brilliant example. No lies, exactly, and no broken laws, but the design creates the distinct impression that the product is something it isn't.

For good measure, the label on the reverse says: "we are against animal testing and fund research into alternatives." Note that they don't actually say "this soap was not tested on animals", so I assume that it was.

Euston Road research paper

2011-05-23T11:18:00.001+01:00

Click the image at left to read the paper as a PDF file.

ABSTRACT
This paper is a summary of and reflection on research completed to-date for Unit 2.1 of the MRes Information Environments programme, for which students were asked to develop a research-based design proposal which considered urban spaces as curated or museum environments. This research is concerned specifically with London’s Euston Road and the subjective happiness and quantifiable health that the road affords its users. Focusing primarily on my reviews of relevant literature and practice, this paper provides groundwork for additional research and a designed response to be installed for an exhibition in July 2011.

Major project proposal

2011-05-11T18:12:00.002+01:00

Click the image at left to read the paper as a PDF file.

ABSTRACT
I propose exploratory and evaluative research into collaborative methodologies for wayshowing design. This project views the designer as a facilitator and enabler of co-designed wayfinding solutions based on the environmental knowledge collectively held by the space’s users. Inspired by existing methods of structuring collaborative activity, this project will engage participants in a range of activities to generate and evaluate relevant methods for effective designer-user collaboration. This research will generate a methodological toolbox to equip design professionals to engage community knowledge and resources on a broad range of socially-relevant topics.

ABSTRACT OF THE ABSTRACT
A research project to develop methods of tapping our collective knowledge of, and interest in, the public spaces around us.

Airport security academic poster

2011-05-03T11:16:00.000+01:00

This is the academic conference-style poster summarizing the findings of my airport research. Click the image below to view it as a PDF file.

Soviet monuments look like my artwork

2011-04-27T11:03:00.000+01:00

In recent years, photographer Jan Kempenaers has travelled eastern Europe to capture images of decaying soviet-era monuments, which bear striking similarities to the paintings I exhibited this past November in Toronto. The monuments' heroic, gravity-defying shapes push the capabilities of concrete as a sculptural material, and seem both impossibly futuristic and touchingly anachronistic, like the ruins of a world's fair.

For comparison, a painting from my "Fun with Concrete" exhibition:

Airport research paper

2011-04-18T07:51:00.001+01:00

Click the image at left to read the paper as a PDF file.

ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to explore strategies for improving passengers’ experiences as they pass through security checkpoint queues at London’s major airports. By learning from best practice in other fields, recent scholarship on the qualitative experience of queueing, and data collected through observations at Heathrow airport, I propose a new concept of ‘deep information’ for presenting facts to passengers in a manner that positions the queue space as the locus of the airport experience. In addition to improving passengers’ levels of satisfaction, outcomes of this approach will serve to improve security by enabling staff to more easily identify those with criminal intent.

Local global news

2011-03-28T11:55:00.000+01:00

This past Saturday brought massive protests to London's parks and streets, a few miles from our flat. Unions, students, and concerned citizens marched to protest government cuts. A small minority took the opportunity to riot.

How did we find out? An email from a concerned friend 5000 miles away. The world may be an Information Environment, but beware the dead spots.

Chernobyl and unknowable information

2011-03-24T11:11:00.001Z

Thinking and reading about strategies of learning, it's sobering to realize that there's data that simply can't be known. A recent article in the New York Times revisited Chernobyl and the aftermath of its meltdown. The 200 tons of nuclear fuel that oozed out the bottom of the reactor "remains so highly radioactive that scientists cannot approach it." Placing instruments "nearby" was itself a heroic endeavour, and the readings revealed that one hours' exposure equaled an entire year's safe dose.

Quantum theory offers a similar situation: due to the unintuitive behaviour of subatomic particles, certain aspects of that world are permanently unknowable. It's not about building more sensitive instruments; the laws of the universe simply don't allow it.

The radioactive, 200-ton result of the Chernobyl meltdown, nicknamed the elephant foot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/weekinreview/20chernobyl.html?_r=1
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/elephants-foot.html

About my masters degree course

2011-02-28T19:11:00.000Z

Welcome. Here you can keep up with my projects and ideas as I complete a Master of Research degree at the London College of Communication in England.

The focus of the course is Information Environments. Huh? Our working definition of an IE is any space or place where information is generated and experienced. Think of a museum or a street corner: the signs, sounds, lights, and everything in-between all communicate something, intentionally or not. How do we find our way through these spaces, and how can we design these spaces more deliberately? By researching the way people behave in the museum and on the street corner, we can develop proven solutions that address real needs. Ever been bored in a museum? Ever been lost in a foreign city? We'll fix that.