Ive joined the flock

 

I guess it was only a matter of time..@stevenjbirnie

Ideas Day

Ideas Day

My blog posts are not always up-to-date or in chronological order…and this Ideas Day post is an example this.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to attend the Ideas Day event at Dundee University as part of Product Design course. The event is an opportunity for the final year students to get input from industry on their projects. As ever the students work, even at this early stage, was well considered, thought provoking and showed great potential for some interesting outcomes.

Ideas Day

At the end of the day we were invited to debate on interesting topics like the future of social media and what will product design be in 10 years.

On this years bill was:

Abigail Sellen (Microsoft Research)
Tim Regan (Microsoft Research)
Richard Banks (Microsoft Research)
Tim Brook (Nokia Research)
Steve Birnie (NCR)
Charlie Rohan (NCR)
Bill Gaver (Goldsmiths)
Chris Speed (Edinburgh College of Art)
Kenny Anderson a.k.a. King Creosote (Fencecollective).

Ideas Day debate

Anab Jain

Anab Jain at Product Design Research Dundee

The Product Design Research team met with Anab Jain yesterday. It was a good to get the opportunity to sit down with her individually and talk through our own research area and get her valued input.

Founder of Superflux and the instigator of The Power of 8 Anab has experience in interaction and service design, research, filmmaking and speculative design. Her experience in film making on various projects was particularly useful for me – thanks Anab!

IxTEC

Interactions | Transactions | Environment | Consumer

I have recently embarked on a new collaborative consumer focused study with Paul Gault (a fellow PhD student sponsored by NCR) called IxTEC. The project has several has several core aims: To develop methods for design research, to develop a richer understanding of consumers and their desired experience when interacting with self-service technology and for the research to ultimately feed into the Cx Design Strategy at NCR.

MSc Ethnography Post-it Session: Interactions

The first part of the ongoing study has involved engaging with the MSc Ethnography course at Dundee University. Through a series of activities from virtual postcard questionnaires, video probes, street work and several ethnographic post-it sessions a rich collection of information has been gathered. The process of this activity is as important to our research as the actual outcomes and it has been excellent having the ethnography course involved.

A full breakdown of the project so far can be found here.

The next stages of this study will be to collate, understand and articulate all the information that has been collected. Once that stage is complete the information will generate content for a series of consumer focused workshops and further development of design research and consumer engagement methods.

Connection Boxes: Mk II

Connection Boxes MkII

The connection boxes have had an upgrade! Now fitted with a super strong wireless chip which means they do not all need to be connected to each other. This is much more in line with the original concept and should make them much more reliable.

They have been installed in Dance Base as of last week. They are essentially a blank canvas for the Dance Base team. I will be interested to conduct further studies with them to understand what feedback they have uploaded onto them and how successful they have been in attracting customers to use them.

As part of the feedback I will be trying to understand what makes a consumer use a self-service device? What type or level of reward/feedback is appropriate? Also, what makes a consumer use the device again and again, how can you instil loyalty in a device?

The video includes sounds that were created by the Dance Base team. They were deliberately fun and even slightly cheeky to reflect the Dance Base ethos, environment and marketing strategy.

IxDA Dundee

IxDA Pencil DJ

IxDA Dundee

Last night I attended the 1st IxDA event. The event was about bringing together a bunch of like-minded individuals to chat about and drink over all things interaction…

The event was pulled together over a 2 week period by many individuals working together so all credit to them for getting it organised so quickly.

The Dundee chapter of IxDA is in its infancy but will hopefully be something that will build and grow as the word gets out there. It would be great to see more individuals from the design/interaction industry involved in future events.

Everyone who attended the event was invited to have a go on the Pencil DJ – it really was so cool! Using Arduino the “DJ” created a path of resistance in graphite that would control a series of sounds. It was really interesting how the different graphite shapes would create different sounds and when put together with the other “DJs” it sounded surprisingly good!

DJ-ing with a Pencil!

Fast Company article

Fast Company have recently done an article on a range of concepts that came out of the Cx team. It is always good to get some positive press so as a team we are pleased to see our work getting good visibility.

Fast Company

Fast Company article

Pillar ATM ISDA Finalist

ISDA Finalist

Yearbook of Design Excellence

The Pillar ATM reached the finals of the 2010 ISDA design awards.

NCR Student Design Competition: 2010

NCR Design Competition 2010

I am please to announce that NCR will be sponsoring the Student Design competition for the 6th year. Unfortunately Glasgow University could not participate this year due to other commitments but we still have Robert Gordons University, Dundee University and Edinburgh College of Art.

I am also pleased that we not only have the continued support of Scottish Enterprise this year we have added Creative Scotland and the V & A at Dundee. Members from each will be part of the judging panel.

The Brief:

NCR use the brand slogan: ‘Experience a new world of interaction’ – Taking this as the theme, explore what this could mean to you and your generation in the next 2 years. What is the new world of self-service interaction? Research and understand what people want their experience to be in relation to a particular area of self-service. Demonstrate how the consumers experience is facilitated through a concept design. The initial solutions should be able to be brought to market in a 2 year time frame. All final solutions should be sensitive to the NCR brand.

The Kick-off Event:

This year it was hosted by Sue Fairburn of Robert Gordons University in Aberdeen.

There were various speakers, from NCR, Charlie Rohan (Director of Cx | Design) presenting project background, self-service within NCR and the NCR design process. Chistopher McNicholl (last years winner) came to present his winning project and importantly gave the students an insight into his internship within the NCR Cx design team.

During the kick-off event we like to have a small design activity that get the students working with each other and is a bit of fun. This year the students got to play with Lego while thinking about design solutions that matched objects/things on a series of playing cards. It was a great activity to get the creative mind working and really helped to break down any barriers and I am sure all involved enjoyed the activity.

The student group

Competition kick-off event

Design workshop activity

ISA Conference: 11-17 July 2010: Gothenburg : What is a community anyway…?

I recently presented at the ISA world congress of sociology conference in Gothenburg.

It was an interesting experience as it was my first presenting as a PhD student. I think I got away lightly as the audience were not designers, not interested in design and had no idea what I was talking about! I presented the Dance Base activity and touched on elements of the Pillar ATM design process.

ISA Presentation

The fortunate thing was that others on the same panel as I were of the same mindset and at least we were all interested in each others projects/activities. One I particularly liked was presented by Chris Speed of Edinburgh College of Art. He presented a wonderful story of digital tagging, memories and old belongings. You can find out more here.