Theory

Busy Week, Busier Weekend

| Binaebi

I spent this past entire week working on a presentation that I gave yesterday at the local Instructional Systems Technology conference. I was freaking out for some reason, and literally did nothing but prepare my slides for the presentation. I move quickly through my slides, so I wasn’t surprised that I had 75 slides for a 20 minute presentation. Other people thought I was insane until I actually went through my presentation.

It was super well received, which surprised me. My question-answer session was challenging, but I handled it really well. I mean, I thought the questions were manageable, but people afterwords told me they were really tough questions. One of my questioners told me I should pursue a PhD with my topic, and that my topic should be my dissertation because it’s timely and meaningful. And  I think I would, I do love this topic and my research, I just need to learn how to create and stick to a routine that makes sure I eat and sleep properly. Life as a student for essentially 20 years has ruined me.

Anyway, people who had never seen me present before, but have been friends here on campus, saw me do my thing and were impressed. I video recorded the entire thing using my FlipCam Ultra, so when I get time (ha!) I’ll post it to Vimeo and link it to you guys.

There is a reason behind my madness over Steampunk. And other academics are recognizing it. Yay! Also, I want to thank Chad, Burr, Yujia, Xuan, Nate, Lynn, Ammar, Gopi, and Vidya for attending my presentation session. Having familiar faces in the audience was comforting, and those of you who asked questions asked some really good ones!

I also had an informal meeting with the other research capstone students yesterday. They helped me with my current problem, which is that I think the methodology I outlined for analyzing my interviews is the wrong one for me. I really enjoyed speaking with people, and soaked their enthusiasm, and I’m beginning to see patterns. However, I don’t relish the idea of analysis because I feel the methodology I chose sucks out the enthusiasm that defines Steampunk.

My research peers suggested that I listen to my interviews again as if I were listening to a story. Where are the climaxes, the lulls, the plot twists? This definitely works for me much better because I am a narrative soul, and when describing the interviews to my thesis adviser I was narrating, rather than reporting. As such, my plan is to listen through the five interviews I have, prepare for my interview tomorrow, and write insights onto Post-Its so I can ask people to help me with an affinity diagram. The affinity diagram will help me abstract the main insights, and strengthen my theory.

In the meantime, I should stop blogging and continue grading my third of 55 undergrad reports. The joys of being a teaching assistant! Later, kids.

Intentional Redesign vs Non-Intentional Design

| Binaebi

A little while ago, Lynn told me about Design by Use because of its applicability to my capstone. I thought I’d use Siriomi Reflects to capture my notes and reflections on the matter.

Intentional Redesign and Appropriation

The authors discuss appropriation as changing the experiential meaning by its transfer to a “different cultural context” (50). They continue, “Making things your own by endowing them with personal meaning seems to be a deeply ingrained human need” (50). They talk about such things as “waste as inspiration,” and other instances where “objects are used differently from their intended purpose” (47, 35). This is different from non-intentional design (NID), because these different uses are not based in “situational use” but rather consistently misused, as it were (35).

Non-intentional Design

The authors go into this idea of non-intentional design by observing “similar forms are used for the same purpose even if they were not created to fulfill the same function” (55). For instance, using a butter knife, keys, etc, to open a letter. They therefore say that “form follows use” rather than the adage “form follows function” (55).

This is a big difference, because function implies the designer’s intended use, versus the user’s actual use of the object. “Use implies choice” (56). I think my favorite line in this book is:

If, in the spirit of NID, things are used for purposes other than they were intended for, this is not due to a misinterpretation of their original function, but is instead rooted in our ability to see beyond this and discover abstract or open forms.

Thoughts

While this book focuses on appropriations defined by non-intentional design, i.e. using a radiator to dry a pair of wet shoes, etc, I still found it interesting. My appropriations are related more to the intentional redesign, or intentional use that is other than the use intended by the artifact’s designer. This could mean the functional use of the artifact, or the aesthetic use of the artifact, which changes the interaction/experience.

I hope this post makes sense. I’ve been completely knocked out by a sinus-cold-thing the last couple of days. This is my first true day of lucidity. Yay me!

References

  1. Brandes, U., Stitch, S., and Wender, M. 2008. Design by use: the everyday metamorphosis of things. Birkhouser, Boston, Mass.

Making is Thinking

| Binaebi

As a mentor for the incoming Human-Computer Interaction Design (HCID) class of 2011, I engage the students in many philosophical discussions. It is the highlight, I feel, of having a mentor relationship with students, because it allows me to reflect upon myself, my actions, my thoughts, and my understanding of the courses here at Indiana University. For instance, in October 2009, I had a conversation with one of my students, where in being completely honest with him, I surprised myself.

The student was asking for advice about electives. He was unsure what he wanted to take, because he wanted to “get the most” out of his experience in the HCID program, but at the same time, was unsure if he needed to expand his artistry background since he was coming from a technical background.

That said, he asked me what elective I took during my second semester, and whether it was something related to HCID. I told him no, the course I took had almost nothing to do with HCID explicitly. I had taken a fiction writing course. After all, “I am a writer, an artist, a designer, an engineer. In that order.”

It boggled his mind that I, being what he considered one of the top performers in my class, did not put “designer” at the beginning of the list of adjectives describing who I am. I replied,

“It works because writing is all about how to express your ideas. If you have an awesome idea, but can’t express it, it doesn’t matter.

“That goes directly back to HCID. My profession isn’t who I am. It benefits from who I am. It doesn’t define me.”

This is my position in terms of design theory, and being a designer. I am a writer, an artist, a designer, and an engineer. My “ability to know” is based on my “ability to construct meaning” from my “experiences” (Smith 2005). I am, in other words, utilizing my previous life experiences to inform my design thinking, as suggested by Krippendorff. Acknowledging that I am a tactile person, that I must be creative with my hands, and that I must have creative outlets in general or I will likely go insane, is imperative to understanding me as a designer.

You see, I believe “thinking and feeling are contained within the process of making” (Sennet 7). The semester I took this design theory course, I was also taking ceramics. This elective, much like fiction, has little to do with HCID explicitly. However, there are implicit similarities that have altered—and improved—my design thinking.

The craftsmanship of Ceramics and HCID

Ceramics was one of two artistic realms that I had not truly ventured into; photography is the other, and I will be taking a course next semester to fill that hole. As such, by entering the course, I was admitting that I was a novice, but that I hoped to develop a connoisseur’s eye toward ceramic design and craftsmanship. At the beginning of the semester, something as simple as making a slab could take me 45 minutes because I was unused to the clay material, which seemed to have a mind of its own. The clay could be too wet, and not hold its form, or too dry, and fall to pieces. The clay could have bubbles in it which, if not found, could result in the sculpture exploding in the kiln.

The only way to learn all of the different pitfalls of the ceramic craft is either to experience them, or watch someone else go through it and learn from their mistakes. By the end of the semester, I could make a slab in ten minutes, without air bubbles, but only because I put so many hours into failing at slab-making at the beginning of the semester.

In this way, I learned that my discipline with drawing, painting, and playing violin could once again be applied to a new forum, ceramics. It is like the architect Renzo Piano said, “You think and you do at the same time. You draw and you make. Drawing… is revisited. You do it, you redo it, and you redo it again” (Sennet 40).

Why do I have this discipline instilled within me? I could have lost my patience when I first trained myself to draw when I was eleven. I could have assumed I would never reach my sister’s potential when it came to painting when she was fifteen and I was seventeen. I could have convinced my mother to let me quit violin when I was fourteen, the way I wanted.

I did not give up any of these times because I am, I have realized while taking this course, a craftsman. I believe in craftsmanship, meaning that I believe in the “enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake” (Sennet 9). I believe in collecting experiences in which I am a connoisseur, in which I have gained the “art of appreciation” (Smith 2005). I want to have the “ability to see, not merely to look” (Smith 2005).

What does this mean for HCID, and my theory of design? Everything. It means that when I learn how temperamental clay can be, I can apply such knowledge to designing an interface. I will never know what sort of “mood” the clay will be in when I make it to the ceramics studio, the same way I will never truly know what sort of “mood” my users will be when they interact with my interface and/or software and/or product designs.

This is what I mean by believing that I am a craftsman, and indeed that all designers ought to be craftsman. By gathering my experiences to look for patterns of behavior from seemingly unrelated events (i.e. using clay as a metaphor for people/users), I am using a “solution” from one field to “uncover new territory” in HCID (Sennet 11). Through my artistry, I have come to realize that “problem solving and problem finding are intimately related” (Sennet 11). By knowing how the clay works, I am able to recognize when a problem is forming, and therefore determine the possible solutions.

What is the moral of the story?

As designers, it is imperative that we recognize the material properties of our craft.

In ceramics, it is to know the material properties of the clay. It means to recognize that by throwing the clay one way, I am aligning the clay particles to slide against one another so it becomes a slab. Or that by pinching the clay, I will eventually create a bowl. Or that if I add enough water to the clay, I will have a clay solution so thin I can paint it in layers, thus achieving a smooth, delicate surface.

In HICD, it is to know the material properties of the people using our design. Who are they? What is their responsibility? What is their main concern when interacting with my design? Do they realize it as such? Will they have varying moods while interacting with my design? Must they have the use of both their hands? Must they have use of all of their senses?

In this way, I am the writer, the author attempting to tease out the concerns of my characters. What are their motivations, and how can I help them? What can I do to get in their way, and is it necessary? Everything to me is a narrative, from working with the clay, to practicing the violin, to walking through a storyboard for a proposed interaction.

This is because I am a craftsman, and thus represent that “special human condition of being engaged” (Sennet 20). I am fully engaged, and so should other designers be. We all ought to learn from the miniscule events in our lives as much as the traumatic ones. We ought to “do good work,” which means we need to be “curious about, to investigate, and to learn from ambiguity” (Sennet 48).

REFERENCES

Definition of Identity

| Binaebi

According to my (albeit limited) readings, identity is a hot topic in the psychology, sociology, anthropology, folklore, and other realms of study. This makes sense, right? Because how we define our sense of self  potentially defines how we see/interpret/comprehend the world around us; it colors our actions and scopes our interests. Identity and sense of self are big. However, I’ve come to realize that identity is in no way the same thing as sense of self.

Identity is a representation of that self, as far as I can tell, but not the self itself. If you get what I mean.

Common definitions

All that aside, I’ve begun working on my definition of identity, the same way I went about doing it for appropriation. So first, the common definitions of identity are as follows:

  • Merriam-Webster: (1a) Sameness of essential or generic character in different instances. (1b) Sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing : oneness. (2a) The distinguishing character or personality of an individual : individuality. (2b) The relation established by psychological identification.
  • The Free Dictionary: (1) The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known. (2) The set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group. (3) The quality or condition of being the same as something else. (4) The distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity; individuality. (5)  Information, such as an identification number, used to establish or prove a person’s individuality, as in providing access to a credit account.
  • Wikipedia (philosophy): identity (also called sameness) is whatever makes an entity definable and recognizable, in terms of possessing a set of qualities or characteristics that distinguish it from entities of a different type. Or, in layman’s terms, identity is whatever makes something the same or different.
  • Wikipedia (social science): an umbrella term used throughout the social sciences to describe an individual’s comprehension of him or herself as a discrete, separate entity.

According to these definitions, identity is about the individual; about the unique properties, qualities, characteristics that make one autonomous. Okay, I can go with that.

Academic definitions

Then I started looking at more academic sources of information.

  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Your identity in this sense consists roughly of what makes you unique as an individual and different from others. Or it is the way you see or define yourself, or the network of values and convictions that structure your life. This individual identity is a property (or set of properties). Presumably it is one you have only contingently—you might have had a different identity from the one you in fact have—and one that you might have for a while and then lose: you could acquire a new individual identity, or perhaps even get by without one.
  • According to Markus and Kitayama [1], self has two major “constructuals,” you can have an “independent” view of the self, or an “interdependent” view of self, which can “influence” and “determine” the “very nature of existence” (224). Essentially, it boils down to this (as found in summary table on pg 230):
    • Independent: internally-defined through thoughts and feelings, separate from social context, bounded and stable, determined to be unique, etc
    • Interdependent: externally-defined through status and relationships, connected with social context, flexible and variable, determined to fit in, etc
  • Oring [2] has a similar idea as the common definitions by stating that “personal identity is shaped from experiences that are unique to the individual as well as from those common to a collection of individuals” (212).

I have two books coming from Amazon that should also help me define identity: Hebdige’s book on subculture, and Turkle’s book on identity in the age of the internet. So I’m excited to read those.

Thoughts

In the meantime, while waiting for these books, what are my thoughts on (personal) identity? Well, it seems to me that identity must and is interdependent as well as independent. When alone, I think, see, interpret myself and my actions as one way. However, once in a social setting (i.e. I am no longer completely alone), I begin to interpret my thoughts and actions in ways I assume others may interpret them. As such, my identity and understanding of myself shifts.

That said, I agree that identity is a collection of characteristics, skills, qualities, etc, that make one an entity, as with the common definitions. Since I also agree with the academic definitions about interdependency, especially as we are never truly alone but are members of the culture in which we live, my definition of identity must keep this in mind. There is something to be said about having a collection of qualities, experiences, etc, which are unique to an individual but also to a community of individuals, as Oring states.

Working definition of identity

All right. So it’s now time for me to bite the bullet and determine a working definition of identity. I am mainly focused on personal identity, rather than individual identity or communal identity, though they do have influencing roles, so there is that. I do believe identity is about being unique, yet influenced by the community/culture. So my definition of identity, in terms of this capstone project about the overlap between identity and appropriation, goes something like this:

Identity is the unique set of experiences, qualities, characteristics, thoughts, behaviors, etc, that recognizably define an individual or collection of individuals, and the relationships occuring between them.

Phew. Here’s hoping that Hebdige and Turkle have definitions that similarly relate! Those of you who took the time to read this massive post, what are your thoughts? Those of you who have a stronger anthropology, folklore, psychology, and/or sociology background, am I on the right track? What are the seminal papers on identity and the self in your field?

References

  1. Markus, H., and Kitayama, S. 1991. Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. In Psychological Review 98 (2), 224-253.
  2. Oring, E. 1994. The arts, artifacts, and artifices of identity. In The Journal of American Folklore 107 (424), 211-233.

Light-bulb Moments

| Binaebi

Things have been pretty hectic around here, but somehow I still manage to make progress on my capstone. I love having conversations with the people in my program because the most interesting points come up.

Creativity isn’t consistent

I had lunch with Chad Camara one day, and we got into this conversation about creativity. He mentioned that even though we are both creative, he sees our creativity as being very different. Mainly, that mine is extremely personal. I write stories that reflect some deep belief or question that I have. I paint, draw, dance, sing, sketchnote, and create objects from clay.

I write this because it seems that my intrinsically personal creativity is a huge part of my self-perception and identity. If I can’t be creative, I feel lost. In the same way, if I can’t appropriate something into my world so that it feels personal to me, I don’t care about it. So that’s food for thought.

Getting push-back

I had a design session with my roommate, Lynn, and she had the brilliant idea of looking at how people look at objects. She made the point that I see everything as a potential building material to make something else… which she simply doesn’t do.

Nov 5, 2009: Lynn Dombrowski suggests that I do a design exercise where I take people to Goodwill, etc, and ask people what they would do with the objects they find. Will they see built/”finished” materials as components of new projects?

It has since occurred to me that not only do I learn from what they choose, but also what they don’t choose. As in, what do I see as building materials, and why don’t they see them that way?

Nov 8, 2009: Rachel Bolton asks me questions that stump me, only because all my information is stuffed somewhere in an inaccessible part of my brain. Her questions, however, start a subtle thought-chain which eventually lead me to my light bulb moment.

  1. What makes the steampunk appropriation unique… what are the
    specific implications for HCI?
  2. What makes the creative/identity rewards of appropriation
    (specifically steampunk?) different from other identity-forming
    endeavors like sports?  Is it the process, the materials, the people
    that are attracted to it?

Because I find I have difficulty answering these questions, I begin to wonder if it’s so smart to be studying steampunk in the first place. I love the topic, I find it fascinating, but really, what does it mean for HCI? I asked for push-back from Rachel, and she gave it to me, and I had no answer. Sigh.

Class Exercise

On Tuesday, Nov 10, we were required to bring our sketches in for discussion in small groups. Because I’m doing a research capstone, I was a bit stumped. I’m not sketching, at least not in the visual sense. So I brought in my pseudo-affinity diagram, pictured below.

Poster of Themes and Questions

So I threw it up on the wall with all the other sketches.

Sketching Exercise

Sketching Exercise

During this exercise, we had groups of four-to-five students. We walked to our different sketches and discussed the purpose of them, etc. My group was awesome with feedback. CJ Page admitted that he doesn’t appropriate anything at all, which just boggles my mind. I appropriate almost everything that comes into my life, in some form or another. It’s my way of engaging with the world. Which struck me as a worrying point while CJ spoke.

Light-bulb moment

That night after capstone, I climbed into bed with a frown. Something was off, I realized, in how I was approaching this entire research project. It wasn’t until about eleven at night that I had my epiphany.

You see, I had a dream about capstone. Specifically, a dream in which I realized my case study group (steampunks) don’t have to be my target user group. At first, I stayed in bed, repeating that mantra to myself: “Case study doesn’t equal target user.” I quickly became paranoid that I would forget the epiphany by morning’s light. So I grabbed my whiteboard markers and attacked my unsuspecting whiteboard for about two hours.

Sketching Exercise

I’m feeling pretty good about this direction. I feel like I have an idea of how I can apply the literature and my own experiences, compare them to the experiences of people who don’t do such things, and see what we can learn. Now if I could only find the time… and get some sleep!

Making my thoughts tangible

| Binaebi

Over the weekend, I threw together some sticky notes, as mentioned in my status report. This has been extremely helpful for me to get some of my thoughts out without censoring myself, which is great. When my thoughts are hidden in my head, they’re locked in a black box. When thrown out onto sticky notes? I can move them around, create associations, transcribe the ideas into a meaningful post on a blog, etc.

Theories, Concepts, Issues and Questions
Theories, Concepts, Issues and Questions

Above, is a photo of the wall above my bed. The orange notes are my questions, the blue notes are questions that are explicit from the papers I’ve been reading, and the fuchsia are the theoretical concepts, theories, and issues that I’ve determined from my papers. Continue reading →

What do I mean by Appropriation?

| Binaebi

This is a great question that was brought up by Nate Husted during an impromptu design session over Thai food at lunch.

(By the way, while Siam House on 4th in Bloomington is pretty good, I’m still partial to Esan Thai’s chicken fried rice. Thai curries just don’t do it for me the way Indian curries do. Yum.)

Back to business.

“What do you mean when you say appropriation?” Nate asked me as we walked to Siam House. It was drizzling, and cold. A miserable day, actually, where it wasn’t wet enough to open my umbrella, yet, it was misty enough that my glasses were rendered useless. His question was simple. So simple, that I was, for a moment, dumbfounded that I hadn’t thought to define my understanding of appropriation yet.

This isn’t to say that I hadn’t thought about it a lot, I had. I’ve read almost every paper in the ACM library on appropriation, so I have a working knowledge of how other HCI/tech researchers are approaching the appropriation research/design space. What about the general public? When they want to understand what it means to appropriate something, where do they turn?

  • Free Dictionary: (1) To take for one’s own use, esp illegally or without permission. (2) (Economics, Accounting & Finance / Banking & Finance) To put aside (funds, etc.) for a particular purpose or person.
  • Wikipedia: Appropriation is the act of taking possession of or assigning purpose to properties or ideas and is important in many topics.
  • Wiktionary: v (1) To make suitable; to suit. — William Paley. (2) To take to one’s self in exclusion of others; to claim or use as by an exclusive right. (3) To set apart for, or assign to, a particular person or use, in exclusion of all others. (4) To annex, as a benefice, to a spiritual corporation, as its property. –Blackstone.
  • Dictionary.com: adj (1) Suitable or fitting for a particular purpose, person, occasion, etc. (2) Belonging to or peculiar to a person. v (3) To set apart, authorize, or legislate for some specific purpose or use. (4) To take to or for oneself; take possession of. (5) To take without permission or consent; seize; expropriate. (6) To steal, esp. to commit petty theft.
  • Merriam-Webster: (1) To take exclusive possession of : annex. (2) To set apart for or assign to a particular purpose or use. (3) To take or make use of without authority or right.
  • Oxford English Dictionary: (1) To make (a thing) the private property of any one, to make it over to him as his own; to set apart. (2) Const. to oneself: = next. (3) Hence ellipt. To take possession of for one’s own, to take to oneself. (4) Eccl. To annex (a benefice) to some religious corporation, as its property. (5) To allot, annex, or attach a thing to another as an appendage. Obs. (6) To devote, set apart, or assign to a special purpose or use. Const. to, for. (7) To assign or attribute as properly pertaining to; to attribute specially or exclusively. arch. (8) To make, or select as, appropriate or suitable to; to suit. arch. (9) To make proper, to fashion suitably. (So Fr. approprier.) Obs.

So that’s a pretty good start, right? This, of course, is all impromptu research I did after Nate’s question sparked genuine worry that I wasn’t doing my job as a researcher. How could I possibly attempt to understand why people appropriate, without having a general definition of appropriation in the first place?

My answer to Nate went roughly like this:

“Well, I’ve read a lot about what the ACM community thinks about appropriation, so I guess I could talk about that. But to me, appropriation is when you take something, whether be a finished product or simple materials, and adapt them to fit you. You engage the artifact, whatever it is, and bring it into your lifeworld, as it were.

“Example… okay, so a ton of people have an iPhone, right? But no two iPhones are exactly alike, if you think about the apps that people download. Or the cases they buy. Or the other little personalizations and customizations that make your iPhone yours, and someone else’s iPhone theirs.”

“So appropriation is personal customization?” Nate asked.

“Yes, to me anyway. It’s making the object personal to you. But that’s just appropriation. I think my topic, my subdomain of appropriation, is actually about the do-it-yourself, creative aspects of customization and personalization. The extreme end of appropriation, where you engage the artifact to the point of using your creative talents to make it your own. What drives people to do that? Why do I do that?”

“So steampunk fits in…?”

“Because steampunks are all about doing it themselves. They embrace their creativity and engage the objects around them. They are an extreme of the appropriation spectrum. They are my people.”

So… okay. What’s the moral of the story? I’m sure you’re wondering. Well, the fact is this is why it’s so great to talk to people about my capstone. The fact that everyone seems interested, asking great questions… it’s invigorating. So invigorating that even though I was completely ready to sleep, having been laying in bed for an hour, I couldn’t sleep. Why? Because I kept thinking, I need to write down my thoughts on appropriation before I fall asleep and they drift away. So here I am, writing this entry at 12:30 AM EST on a Saturday night, after having literally traveled across the country, starting my day at 3 AM PST (6 AM EST, to be fair). I spent twelve hours traveling, and returned to Bloomington to partake in an excellent Diwali celebration.

I should be exhausted. I should be unbelievably cranky.

I’m sure I will be when I wake. But hey, let’s be completely honest here… What’s another few hours of late night, bloodshot cogitation to a seasoned graduate student, anyway?

Brass Goggles and Lace

| Binaebi

So I’m working on my capstone proposal, and I’m worried. I’m worried, because I’m not sure this is exactly what I’m trying to study, or if I’m letting professors put words into my mouth because it sounds good, or if I’m saying these things because I feel it’s easier to argue for them. Anyway, see below for my draft, which took far too many hours to write. I need critique!

—————————————————-

Title
Brass Goggles and Lace: Steampunk as a Case Study of the DIY Creative Process and the Implications for the HCI Design Process

Target group affected by study
Interaction Designers

Client
Binaebi Akah

Description of Problem Space

Why does the do-it-yourself (DIY) movement exist? It is more convenient and possibly even more practical to buy a finished product. Yet, stores like Lowes, JoAnn Fabrics, and Hobby Lobby; television shows like Design on a Dime, Trading Spaces, and Carter Can; and websites like Design Sponge, Etsy, and Instructables, are all flourishing. Why is this? I often hear it is the economy, and this is why people are doing more on their own. This is both true and untrue… it is still much cheaper to buy clothing than to make it from a yard of fabric, for instance, and I have the receipts to prove it.I contend that a large portion of the DIY movement exists because it is in people’s nature to be creative; to want something that is personal, meaningful, unique, and with a story. But DIY itself is vast and deep; so I am focusing on Steampunk as a case study.

Steampunk has multiple connotations with fashion, fiction, music, and technological aesthetics, among others. I am focusing on the latter. The technological aesthetics of Steampunk rebel against our always-connected-with-my-super-high-tech-homogenized-gadget culture by finding inspiration in the past, specifically, the Victorian era, when industrialization did not mean homogenized yet. Why do people join this movement, and how? What is their creative process?

Why Important

My goal is to learn how and why people become involved in this movement. What is their creative process? How does it differ from traditional computer science and interaction design processes? The do-it-yourself movement is all about discovery, personal meaning, the art of craft, choice, freedom, and invention… is it possible to bring some of these traits into the interaction design process? What would this mean to human computer interaction design?

Predispositions

People tell stories.

People create and feel creative.

People embed objects in their personal lives.

People invest when there is a perceived benefit.

Approach

I have been reading about appropriation, the diy movement, hacking, creativity, identity, and, of course, Steampunk. This is to get a basis for definitions about creativity and the individual, and how it shapes the individual’s creative process. I have begun to involve myself in the Steampunk movement by buying the independent magazine and following the top blogs. I will conduct narrative interviews and hopefully some walkthrough probes to learn about the creative process and how these DIYers define themselves as creative individuals. I hope to attend a Steampunk convention, but that depends on availability.

Preliminary Plan

Please see here for my visual timeline.

Analogy for Affinity Diagramming

| Binaebi

Yesterday while at work I was copying insights from interviews onto Post-its for an affinity diagram. The undergrad intern working with us walked past, asking what I was doing.

“Prepping for an affinity diagram,” I said with great aplomb.

Of course, she had no idea what I was talking about. I explained that an affinity diagram is where you write user-generated comments, thoughts, and opinions onto Post-its. Then you take your pile of Post-its and group them based on topics. Topics with the most Post-its are high-interest, etc. This helps you determine what the person who your design is meant for finds most interesting, versus what you the designer might find most interesting.

The reason I’m talking about this is the analogy the undergrad intern used to understand the concept.

“So it’s like one of those things where the words are bigger to show more people have commented?”

Yes. That’s exactly what an affinity diagram is. An analog tag cloud. I love it.