information environments @informationenvironments - Tumblr Blog

From IE grad Stephanie Lessmann (@steless) - follows this work:

The school project IS HAPPENING!

Thanks to amazing architects: Marcos Pardana, Paulo Andrade e landscape architect Vania Franck!!!! From MPV Architecture in Fortaleza, CE.

Working together as a group with patience, love and willing to help can create amazing results. It’s like a dream come true.

Now - let’s put our sleeves up, get some money together and help!!!!

IE graduate Michael Faulkner presented his thesis Global Food Superhighways at the British Sociological Association's Food Study Group conference in July 2012.

IE graduate Maulshree will present her MRes thesis Threads of Knowledge - knowledge exchange in Indian craft communities at Making: the international conference on materiality and knowledge, 24-27 Sept 2012 in Notodden, Norway.

Congratulations Masters of Research!

IE grad John Fass presented his paper Designing for Slow Technology: Intent and Interaction at Designing Interactive Systems, 11 June 2012 in Newcastle, UK.

NIFT Delhi

From IE graduate Maulshree:

Gave an hour long talk at NIFT delhi today.. The students are to go to craft clusters for field study and surveys.. Shared my thesis and further my experiences in the field.. Turned out to be quite good.. Got good feedback.. Plus got signed in as a guest faculty and hoping to get some more sessions after the summer :-)

MRes IE graduate Daria Filatova will present her research on Mediation of Visual Memories of Environments by Verbal Narrative on 29 Mar 2012 at Drawing Out: 2012.

The British Library asked IE students to research solutions for 'The Silent Network.' From the brief:

Within the Library building you can see hundreds of Readers poring over manuscripts in silence, absorbed in their own thoughts. They are working on groundbreaking projects, and, on the surface of it, don’t want to be disturbed.

But scratch beneath the surface and there’s a different picture. Do our Readers wonder who is sat at the desk next to them? Do they want to reach out to people researching a similar topic? Are they stuck and need some help and support?

Or if they have a commercial aspect to their work, are they looking for contacts?

What happens when you connect an author with a scientist? Or an inventor with a group of students? There is a ‘silent network’ of Readers that to date has been largely untapped and unconnected. The potential is huge.

Download the resulting research here,

TEDx Brussels was packed with interesting people. Thanks John!

Some personal highlights:

"Any machine that pollutes is only half invented." (John Shirley)

Rudy Rucker said that in the future, we'll grow everything, including products and electronic components

Jacques Vallee called for a physics of information for the digital, not physical, world - freed from the constraints of time, dimension.

David Deutsch said that increasing knowledge decreased predictability of our own future - unforeseen consequences. Thus we need generative knowledge and unforeseen solutions/technologies.

MRes IE 2011 degree show is hung. Looks amazing! More pics here.

Counting ZZZZZs: Self-measurement and how technology mediates perceptions of sleep MRes Information Environments thesis by John Fass

The problem of how new technology integrates into everyday life and creates new behaviour is a constantly evolving topic, and my research applies existing critical frameworks to a field of human activity not well covered by current thinking.

I explore the question of how technology mediates self-perception and behaviour change using self-measurement of sleep as a case study. My research takes an understanding of human reality as socially constructed, and applies this perspective to human computer interaction (HCI). This is a mixed method study situated in a real-world context.

Findings address the importance of design to engage users and remove barriers, the significance of prior knowledge and experience, how people act and think in context.and how this context changes under the influence of technology.

The implications of these findings are related to design research. The body as information environment is a new conception, one that puts together sensing technology, body awareness and social context. It is an idea that has wide-reaching implications for health care, HCI and design.

The classroom as information environment: A case study of a rural Brazilian state school MRes Information Environments thesis by Stephanie Lessmann This research project investigated the influence of the physical environment of the classroom on students' behaviour, including concentration, attitudes, motivation and self-esteem. It focuses on independent variables such as the classroom size, density, design and architecture, information density, the comfort and positions of chairs, privacy, location and noise, and secondarily the outside space, and the surrounding social and cultural environment. The research was conducted in a state school at a rural area in the northeast of Brazil. During a period of one month, participant observation, survey, interviews, drawings, mapping and design interventions were tested. These interventions aimed to analyse the influence that physical changes in the classroom can have on primary-age children. Motivating the students to participate in each step gave them a sense of ownership, and helped me analyse the changes on a daily basis.

Signs and the city: A social semiotic analysis of development sites in Southwark, London MRes Information Environments thesis by Sarah Thompson

The aim of this paper is to consider what signs are contributing to the information environment of London, in what ways and where they are used and what meaning(s) might be extracted from their content and placement. Guided by the theoretical perspective of social semiotics and the study of ‘geosemiotics’ pioneered by Scollon & Scollon (2003), this research study focuses on specific development sites in the London Borough of Southwark. The research was conducted in the summer of 2011 using observation methods and collecting data by recording context, placement and content with notes and photographs. Data was then analysed from a taxonomy designed for the purpose of making comparisons to draw out patterns and examine details. Initial findings show the range of discourses and visual interpretations that emerged as well as the overall “legibility” that is inferred by these sites (Lynch, 1960). I conclude with a discussion that looks forward, considers the role of technologies and makes suggestions for possible future interventions.

Personal paternalism & persuasive technology: How technology could help us make better choices about food MRes Information Environments thesis by Angus Main Angus combines physical computing and augmented reality technologies with 'nudge theory' in this study focused on shopping behaviour. He finds that consumer behaviour in the supermarket is not always rational, and comes up with a novel solution to obscure tempting but unhealthy information.

Sustainable tourism sites: Creating tourist-friendly and learning-oriented places MRes Information Environments thesis by Amy Lee

This study sought to investigate the ways in which visitor learning at historic sites is mediated by information. Methods included questionnaires and observational and behavioural measures, used with a random sample of focused international visitors at Changdeok Palace in Seoul, Korea. Visitors’ demographic characteristics, prior knowledge, information preferences, and learning outcomes were analysed before and after visiting the site. the main finding was that visitors who used only static information sources did not learn as much as those who attended a tour guide’s talks, and a general lack of attention to the physical context of learning adversely affected visitors’ construction of knowledge. the results are used to develop a methodological framework for designing engaging content for mediated tourism spaces. this research is based on a constructivist model of learning, and the results are used to develop a design solution consisting of a mobile tool to augment the physical space, thus also augmenting visitors’ experience and knowledge to create more interactive tourist sites.

Mediation of Visual Memories of Environments by Verbal Narrative MRes Information Environments thesis by Daria Filatova

People love to tell stories, and through these verbal narratives we can get closer to under- standing their perceptions of the surrounding environment. However, humans consciously tend to attach everything they hear to a visual “sign,” since visual narrative, as we can call it, has more power in recalling, and especially in reconstructing, memories. This research investigates the extent to which verbal narra- tive mediates the recall of visual memories of an environment.

This study utilised a two-step data collection process, involving both visual and verbal re- constructions of environments. The first stage employed visual representations of events from memory – specifically hand-drawings, and showed both positive and negative out- comes. On the positive side, it was an engag- ing activity for participants, and the drawings provided useful visual research data. However, this method was seen to cause errors in recall because of differences in participants’ ability to transfer information from memory in a visual, tangible form through drawings.

In the second stage, unstructured interviews were used to find connections between how the participants verbally described a trip, and how they represented it visually. Participants related a narrative account of the environment they experienced, in episodic ‘flash” memories, rather than in linear narrative. The outcomes of analysis of both stages of the research could be useful to help understand the roles that memories of events play in the recall of visual representations of environments.

Social wayshowing: A report on the potential for community-led, designer-enabled environmental graphic design MRes Information Environments thesis by David Kopulos

This report documents the development of social wayshowing, a new concept for urban pedestrian navigation. Positioned as complementary to existing, govern- ment-initiated wayshowing systems of directional signs and maps, this new process-based approach is evaluated in relation to the emerging concepts of collaborative pro- duction 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, par- ticipants 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 Lon- don’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.

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