Wireframing the city.Reporting back from Cognitive Cities.

Andrew Traversbyekick.com | @byekick

byekick.com/403

Before I begin in earnest, a minor housekeeping point:

Don’t worry about taking notes and scribbling down urls.

Everything I cover here, I’ll be posting on my site - links to where you can read more, watch videos and find more coverage of the event itself. Soon. Ish.

When Matthew asked a couple of months ago if I fancied talking at London IA, I was pretty certain that what I wanted to talk about was a conference I hadn’t even been at yet.

Cognitive Cities took place in Berlin towards the end of February. It aimed to ‘provide a platform for exchange and mutual inspiration’ on the subject of

- where cities meet technology, - the deepening relationship between the two - and how we can harness them to make more liveable, open, intelligent spaces

The cast of speakers brought together designers and activists, politicians, planners and academics, writers and technologists. Thinkers and do-ers. A encouragingly, a good few people in this room tonight were there too.

Why I’m talking about it.

Cognitive Cities wasn’t just great fun but I think it was important too.

And the reason is this:

What we do as information architects and user experience designers is fast becoming inseparable from the public realm

We’re rapidly moving from designing what Timo Arnall described as ‘slick, glowing rectangles’ positioned on desks in offices and homes, to designing interfaces that might be used by many people at once, in good light and in bad, inside and out, in rain and shine. On mobile devices and tablets. On public information screens and kiosks. In tangible and in intangible ways. Complex, pervasive computing. An internet of things, and a very different design challenge.

In meeting this challenge we have the chance to - in some way - shape the ʻexperienceʼ of our cities. More than a few people here are already deep in the process of doing so, others just beginning to do so.

This an opportunity that comes with great rewards in terms of what we might achieve, but huge responsibilities too.

Themes.

Cognitive Cities was very much about positing questions, rather than providing answers about the way in which our cities and their relationship with technology become ever more intertwined.

I think there are 4 themes that stood out for me

1. The intrinsically political and legal nature of this blurring of public realm and technology2. Our responsibility as designers to do so in a ethical, responsible way3. The opportunities presented in designing with data4. The challenge for the UX community

1.The politics of artifacts.

Adam Greenfield’s keynote dominated the conference with a typically passionate argument on behalf of the citizen, on behalf of the openness of data, and accountability. Of rights and responsibilities and the need for what he calls ‘a new jurisprudence’.

Greenfield’s case is that objects and surfaces around us are increasingly addressable, collect information about us, sometimes share information with us. The ways that this information is being collected, used and sold is becoming increasingly contentious.

He cited a few examples on how this is manifesting itself, for good and ill, from the East and closer to home too.

This is a Nikon DS700 ad campaign in Korea

Is this disruptive? Or just disrespectful? Where’s ‘choice’ here?

It’s a world away from a utopian vision of ‘calm technology’ that fades into the background of our world

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/nikon-d700-phone

Or this. An aCure touchscreen in Tokyo

It’s fitted with a camera that identifies your gender, age, physical profile and shows you a filtered selection of products

Is that cool? Or prescriptive? Where does the power reside here? In you as consumer, or in the code?

How do you feel about that as a design decision?

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/touchscreen-vending-machines

Here’s a more cheering example.

The data generated by Transport for London cycle scheme isn’t just helping them plan and allocate bikes, but there are numerous great examples of developers

Faltering steps towards sharing back the data through London Datastore, we as citizens are responsible for generating and an equitable exchange of data back and forth

This stuff is rarely mainstream, and we’re just tipping our toes into what might be possible.

cyclehire.eu

‘Our ability to use the city around us, our flexibility in doing so, just who is able to do so, will be shaped by decisions made about the technical design of objects, their interfaces and the precise ways in which they are connected and made visible to the network.’

Adam Greenfield‘Beyond the smart city’

Here’s how Greenfield put it in a must-read essay: Beyond the smart city

‘Our ability to use the city around us will be shaped by decisions made about design, interfaces and the ways in which they are connected and made visible.’

And who is going to play a role in those decisions? Iʼd suggest, it includes designers like us.

2.Designing with data.

Matt Biddulph gave a great talk on data analytics and pulled out this quote from Mike Kuniavsky

‘Information is quickly becoming a material to design with’Mike Kuniavsky

And there was plenty of it at Cognitive Cities

There was, perhaps inevitably, a fair bit of data porn on display

This is a bit of spatial analysis from Urbagram on how journeys on the tube change of the course of a working day.

I think I felt it at the time, and some of the post-talk questions raised it - aren’t we simply visualising what we already know to be true?

Well, yes - and some of it can be kind of trite.

However, data offers us the chance to makes it measurable, provable and actionable - improving decision-making on how we intelligently allocate resources, concentrate public transportation around hubs and peak times for example. Or changing the way we think about an issue

And here’s a rather inspiring example of that from SENSEable City Laboratory at MIT

Using RFID to affect the way we think, as citizens and as governments, about how we consume and... dispose.

This is data informing our future actions, hopefully for the better.

http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/

And here’s a rather inspiring example of that from SENSEable City Laboratory at MIT

Using RFID to affect the way we think, as citizens and as governments, about how we consume and... dispose.

This is data informing our future actions, hopefully for the better.

http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/

Why this matters.

So I’d like to talk a little about the relevance to information architects and user experience designers.

Ten years ago this month, Adaptive Path was founded: a really important moment for our field, and I don’t think there is a person in this room that doesn’t owe some kind of debt to their work over the past decade.

Reflecting on those ten years in a piece on their site, Jesse James Garrett said the following:

‘Sure, we still design websites (and UIs for kiosks, set-top boxes, mobile apps, and pretty much anything with a screen).

But more and more, our clients are asking us to look at the total experience they deliver: integrating products and services, making the digital and the physical work together holistically, and crafting experiences that happen across multiple channels over time.’

Jesse James Garrett‘Ten Years Later: Way Beyond Digital’

‘We still design websites... but more and more, our clients are asking us to look at the total experience they deliver’

This feels very true to me - if it’s not happening to you now, it probably will be soon.

Here’s what Jesse said next:

‘This trend isn’t just happening here at Adaptive Path. It’s where we see the whole field of user experience heading.

The methods and approaches we’ve developed aren’t bound in any way to digital media — or, in fact, to any medium at all.

And bringing a user experience mindset to organizations has the potential to make them more engaged with their customers, more empathic, and ultimately more human.’

Wow. A recipe for UX world domination, eh?

I’d like to just add a little note of caution in here.

Architects of the future.

We’re not the first people to imagine a vision of how we might design a better future.

This is a clip Tom Cordell’s Utopia London - shown at Cognitive Cities - documenting the architects who shaped London’s skyline during and after the wars.

http://www.utopialondon.com/

‘We were trying to build heaven on earth.’

It felt very apt having that film there to bring us back to earth.

These planners and architects who imagined a different built landscape have much to teach us in building a new information landscape.

The very people these architects so aspired to help quickly began to feel imprisoned rather than enriched by their environment - for a whole host of reasons

We’re not starting from a blank sheet of paper, but tentatively entering an era where the work of Jane Jacobs becomes as relevant to us as that of Jesse James Garrett.

The message from CC is that there’s an onus on us to broaden and deepen our knowledge, learn from the past and from the body of work that already exists, to ‘wireframe the city’ in a way that is open, altruistic and inclusive.

Thank you.Slides and commentary available ‘soon’ at:byekick.com/403

London at night by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centerflickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/5413389700/

Adam Greenfield by m-kingflickr.com/photos/98degrees/3887670135/

London cycle hire by pastaboy sleepsflickr.com/photos/odreiuqzide/4933170574/

Jesse James Garrett by martin-kliehmflickr.com/photos/martin-kliehm/536545606/

Thanks for listening everyone.