Given that we spend more and more time communicating with non-humans, the topic of politeness with bots, robots, virtual characters, non-playable charcters in video games has always struck me as intriguing. Few months back, I mentioned the chatbot technology and call centres where “it will be also necessary to program chatbots to deal with verbal abuse”“.

The new issue of Interacting with Computers is about this topic: “Abuse and Misuse of Social Agents“. Two papers I found interesting in that issue are:

“I Hate You: Disinhibition with Virtual Partners” by Sheryl Brahnam:

“This paper presents a descriptive lexical analysis of spontaneous conversations between users and the 2005 Loebner prize winning chatterbot, Jabberwacky. The study was motivated in part by the suspicion that evidence in support of the Media Equation, especially in the field of conversational agents, was supported by incomplete data; too often omitted in its purview is the occurrence of unsavoury user responses. Our study shows that conversations with Jabberwacky often bring about the expression of negative verbal disinhibition. We discovered that 10% of the total stems in the corpus reflected abusive language, and approximately 11% of the sample addressed hard-core sex. Users were often rude and violated the conversation maxims of manner, quantity, and relevance. Also particularly pronounced in the conversations was a persistent need of the user to define the speakers’ identities (human vs. machine). Users were also curious to understand and test the cognitive capabilities of the chatterbot. Our analysis indicates that the Media Equation may need qualifying, that users treat computers that talk, less as they do people and more as they might treat something not quite an object yet not quite human.“

and “Sometimes it’s hard to be a robot: A call for action on the ethics of abusing artificial agents” by Blay Whitby:

“This is a call for informed debate on the ethical issues raised by the forthcoming widespread use of robots, particularly in domestic settings. Research shows that humans can sometimes become very abusive towards computers and robots particularly when they are seen as human-like and this raises important ethical issues. The designers of robotic systems need to take an ethical stance on at least three specific questions. Firstly is it acceptable to treat artefacts - particularly human-like artefacts - in ways that we would consider it morally unacceptable to treat humans? Second, if so, just how much sexual or violent ‘abuse’ of an artificial agent should we allow before we censure the behaviour of the abuser? Thirdly is it ethical for designers to attempt to ‘design out’ abusive behaviour by users? Conclusions on these and related issues should be used to modify professional codes as a matter of urgency.“

Why do I blog this? this is not a research topic I investigate more than looking at few papers once in a while but I am quite fascinated by this sort of behavior and the design implications. Perhaps it’s linked to my interest in the user experience of automation: when human agents are replaced by robots or chatbot, one can observe intriguing issues at stake for “users”.

The next step, something that I would be very interested in observing, is to study when people kick, punch or break physical objects such as roomba, robots or vending machines. There is definitely something here that I’d be happy to investigate more deeply like… figuring out the reasons (role of context? bystanders? mood?), finding the consequences (broken? not yet?), the need to fix the device (oneself? with others?), the justification to others, etc.

I mean, EVERY device can be the target of this sort of behavior. I remember having a Commodore Amiga 500 which used to go “green screen” (the equivalent of Windows blue screen of death); to make it reboot, I use to raise it like 5 centimeters on the table and drop it. It worked pretty well on me (I had to to relieve some nervous steam) and the Amiga as well. I learnt recently that it allowed one of the chip which was not well inserted to be properly reinserted.

Right after reading Dan Hill’s recent post about transport fare system this morning, I had to bring a friend to a tram stop here in Geneva and I had an interesting discussion with what I would call the local “vending machine proxy/broker”.

Transport ticket machines in Geneva are actually a bit complex: the interface is a pain (with buttons without any uses, two little screens, two slots to swipe a care), the pricing is also difficult to understand and to choose (for instance the zoning is not very well described and reflected in the interface). Plus: the ticket does not give back change (it gives you a sort of ticket that you can use to claim your money back at counters). We discussed that example during the LIFT08 workshop about design failures, talking how this situation leads to frustration and waste of time or money since lots of people choose to avoid paying.

That said, the most interesting phenomenon is the presence in some key tram/bus spots of “proxy ladies” who help people to buy a ticket. They generally take your change, ask you where you’d like to go and use their transport card to get the ticket. The thing is that when you buy a “cartabonus” card for X transport then you can get one free (as that lady explained me). They can then make a few amount of money using that trick and help angry or clueless Geneva visitors.

What’s interesting here is that the lady is NOT an agent from the transport company. She’s a freelance proxy to the machine, or “broker” with customers. The whole system itself generated this opportunity to make a little amount of money (incentive for the broker) AND help customers who definitely need a hand.

Why do I blog this? following closely what happen with “urban interface”, I find this example fascinating, especially when you think about it was not planned by the machine designers, how it was a by-product of the bad design+pricing system. To me, that’s a very important example to be understood if one wants to design relevant “urban computing” applications. The presence of a human helper is tremendously interesting here. Although this only happens in crowded transport spots (like the railway station), there are lessons to draw here about “urban interface” in contemporary cities.

Spending time with that lady is fantastic, especially if you consider that she speaks a sort of mix of french and portuguese AND she still manage to help people finding the right ticket to go to a specific zone. Furthermore, the whole transactions between some customers and the “proxy lady” are a very rich terrain to investigate people’s mental representation of the city and how they can be translated into an interface (or a need to have a human face to help them!). Through a discussion with the customer, the proxy lady seems to help him/her transferring the representation of the wanted location (its image-ability) in the zoned map printed on the vending machine, and thus, to choose the right button to buy the correct ticket.

People interested in locative media and ubicomp in the Brussel area (or in Europe!) might be willing to attends NewBraveWorld:

“An “Internet-of-Things” is under construction with technologies for unique digital identification (RFID), geolocation (GPS), embedded computing (ubiquitous or pervasive computing) and mobile networking (e.g. wifi, wimax, umts/3g). Places and objects become linked to digital media which can be everywhere people are.

Our digital life and social interactions are going to happen through tangible augmented objects and our physical environment will become the playground of new social and artistic behaviors, interventions, actions both in data and media spaces.

“New Brave World” proposes 4 workshops exploring the roles of artists, designers, media makers and creative scientists/developers in this context of the merge of digital and physical spaces.“

The third workshop will be held on June 4-8 2008 produced by iMal with the support of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund. With the participation of Talkoo (Electronic Interventions in Urban Context) and the ubiquitous David Cuartielles:

“The Talkoo workshop intends to bring the practice of Electronic Interventionism teaming up with a community spirit for the realization of pieces to be set in the urban environment of the city center of Brussels. After a series of practical exercises with an introduction to Arduino, participants will look into the methods for carrying out interventions with electronic elements in urban locations. Divided into groups, participants will be the creators of electronic machines that will invade the city, provoking situations and stirring sensations in its inhabitants.“

Date: from 4 to 8 June 2008
Fee: 100 EUR
Maximum Participants: 15
Location: iMAL, Brussels

Detailled description and Registration Form here

Still gathering stuff about “failed futures” for a project, I ran across this interview of Matt Jones by Adaptive Path peeps that is very insightful. Some excerpts I found relevant for my project:

“RF: You’ve mentioned the danger of “lost futures,” based on the success of a given device. One model becomes wildly popular, and other, more interesting ways of looking at the problem get cast aside… or at least ignored when they could be doing the most good.

MJ: Exactly - the gravity well of the iPhone is going to be hard for anyone developing innovative UIs to escape for the next few years. In hardware, you’re subject to the determinism of sourcing components.

RF: Our friends the cognitive anthropologists have warned us about the implications of subscribing to the wrong cognitive artifacts…

MJ: So everyone for the last 2/3 years has been offered the same touchscreen components more or less by a few suppliers. And we all (more or less) have similar dimensions we can work within in a touch UI.

RF: So thinking in hardware becomes even more constrained?

MJ: To an extent. UIs will not be so diverse in the next few years… inside a BigDeviceCo you’re going to find it hard to justify the investment in the out-there stuff (as always). But there’s still innovation a plenty to come, its just that for the next few years it’ll be all 16:9 touchscreens, I guess. And then… hopefully someone will Wii on their parade and breakthrough with something as different as the iPhone was to the existing crop of smartphones. That’s my hope anyway. And I think it might be in the area of physical/gestural interfaces, matched with ambient/visualisation tech to give us more natural ‘Everyware‘.“

Why do I blog this? I am trying to collect material about what Jones calls “lost future” (in design+foresight), I quite like his stance here, not only about the example discussed (that 16:9 touchscreen device coming from Cupertino) but, rather, its possible consequence: how it eclipses other innovation. There are different consequences of failed futures, some are about traps like in this examples; others are about perpetuation of wrong ideas.

When Fabien and I had to find a title for our photo booklet “Sliding Friction: The Harmonious Jungle of Contemporary Cities“, the notion of “friction” came up very easily in the conversation. Having read few books by Lefebvre in the last few years, it was certainly one of the reason for picking up that term. Digging my “Docs” folder on my laptop, I recently unburied a very good paper by Jensen & Lenskjold
about similar issues. It’s called “Designing for social friction: Exploring ubiquitous computing as means of cultural interventions in urban space“.

Here’s how they define this “social friction” (a notion they discuss using Lefebvre and De Certeau):

“Social friction is a fundamental aspect of everyday life. We use the term to denote the process, which separates different expressive behaviours and contexts from each other. Social friction is at play when people in the city act and express themselves in surprising and unconventional ways. When people challenge existing norms and leave marks and traces on their social and physical surroundings.
(…)
Social friction can also be described as the ‘rubbing of’ of people on each other. It is the kind of friction that occurs when people, who hold different backgrounds, understandings and experiences, meet on the bus or in the street and exchange opinions, stories or maybe just gestures and glances.“

Now, what about “social friction” and ubiquitous/urban computing? The authors’ point is that this notion is helpful “in the development and analysis of ubiquitous computing in relation to art and design“. They articulate social friction a critical position, which could be applied as a strategy for design. Relying (or designing for) social friction is then seen as way to release new forms of social and cultural potentials. Which, is also related to Nicolas Bourriaud’s idea of “art as a social interestice”.
Why do I blog this? my interest in urban computing and art practices led me to that paper, I quite like that notion of “social friction”. Let’s sleep on it.

In an IEEE article called “Location-Based Services: Back to the Future“, Paolo Bellavista, Axel Küpper, and Sumi Helal gives an interesting overview of the technical issues regarding location-based services. They take an intriguing viewpoint: projecting themselves in 2012 and backasting to discuss “What Was Wrong with First-Generation Location-Based Services?” (i.e. LBS of today).

Starting with a brief history of how LBS evolved from Enhance 911 in the US to the explosion of projects which started around 2005. They then discuss this evolution of time, giving some hints about what they think the 2008-2012 axis can be:

The evolution they envision is made of 4 major changes:

“From reactive to proactive: Proactive LBSs, instead, are automatically initiated when a predefined event occurs—for example, if the user or a target (another designated person) approaches or leaves a certain point of interest or another target. Proactive LBSs demand much less user attention and interaction.
(…)
From self- to cross-referencing: Self-referencing LBSs are services in which the user and target coincide, while cross-referencing LBSs exploit the target location for service-provisioning of another user, thus requiring stronger privacy protection.
(…)
From single- to multitarget (the number of targets participating in an LBS session): In multitarget LBSs, the focus is more on interrelating the positions of several targets among each other.
(…)
From content-to application-oriented: the delivery of such dynamic applications is impromptu. In contrast to content-oriented LBSs, application-oriented LBSs provide a more powerful and richer interaction model, with autonomic installation and removal of dynamically needed components.“

Why do I blog this? although I don’t necessarily agree with all the points here, the articles gives an overview of the technical issues regarding LBS lately. Another comment I had after reading the paper is that all of this looks very cryptic from a UX POV.

If there’s a population that is often overlooked (or dismissed) by urban designers or urban technology engineers, it’s definitely the homeless. A CHI 2008 paper by Le Dantec and Edwards entitled “Designs on Dignity: Perceptions of Technology Among the Homeless” deals with this topic, trying to understand how technology — from cell phones to bus passes—affects their daily lives. Such a qualitative study allows them to challenge reseachers’ assumptions about people’s relationship with technology and discuss possible opportunities to develop services.

Using Photo-Elicitation Interview, the researchers identified different unique needs homeless had and characterized perceptions of technology among them. Some excerpts from the results:

“Staying Connected: The first theme was the importance of staying connected to family members and friends during spells of homelessness. (…) Many of the participants came from places other than their current urban home and keeping in touch over distance was something they worried about.

Synchronous v. Asynchronous Connections All of the participants had voice-mail accounts through local organizations. These accounts were meant to provide a stable number of contact and aid in job searches and managing appointments or other personal business. (…) The difficulty for a number of participants was in accessing their voicemail, leading to a decidedly asynchronous style of communication when using the telephone.

Mobile Telephony The preferred way to maintain a stable connection to family and friends for many of the participants in the study was through a cell phone. (…) cell phones were not without problems (…) the ongoing cost, the need for access to power to recharge the phones, and the inevitability of theft when living in and out of shelters.of his extended friends he would tell about being homeless.

Identity Management: For participants in our study, different forms of identity management came out through their use of technology and social institutions. (…) Identity management took both technology- and non-technology-focused forms. For example, on the non-technologic side, identity management appeared in how participants
managed their physical appearance

Access to Information, Social Networks: The social network was the primary mechanism participants in this study used to navigate the world around them.

The Digital Divide: Participants varied widely in the use of information technology, effectively resulting in an internal “digital divide” within the homeless community.

Health and Medication

Getting Around: Moving around the city was an imperative for our participants.“

As the authors say, although these needs can suggest opportunities for designed solutions, they find it more relevant to consider the broader implications for urban computing:

The social dynamics that are playfully exposed through urban computing ideas could be more thoughtfully considered in their relation to the less-priviledged participants of the urban environment. Appropriate technologies need to consider more than the usability or psychological appropriateness of an interaction. We need to put careful thought into the social impact technologies have for non-users as well as users. In using technology to redefine boundaries, we have an opportunity to do so inclusively, bringing the periphery into sharper focuses, inviting in the disenfranchised and the under-served. “

Why do I blog this? This kind of research help to figure out alternative vision of current urban computing ideas as it allows to adopt another lens concerning people’s relationship with technology and the city. All the issues described in the paper are extremely important to consider the situation in a more holistic way (and certainly not only as a quest for ” design opportunities”).

In addition, I also find interesting the way some concrete problems are considered here. For instance, the article describes how some homeless people make communication decisions based on their ability to predict cost using pre-paid cellular service. The problem of these phones is that purchased minutes expire after as little as 30 days and phone numbers that become inactive can be reclaimed by the service providers after 90 days (which is difficult for people with irregular incomes). What is interesting here is the notion that the problem is not necessarily about the technology itself but rather the whole model of its deployment (business model). This is a good example of a technosocial situation in which the whole ecosystem should be taken into account if a technology is to be adopted. Of course, in this case, this kind of limit in pre-paid phone contracts is generally aimed at getting rid of this sort of population…

Lots of signs on that picture taken in Geneva. Different meanings, some are official (street number), some aren’t (graffitis); some are about navigation (street number), some about making explicit invisible phenomenon (the purple rainbow shows the availability of the wifi signal), some are easy-to-grasp (”COOL”), some are impossible to parse. The weirdest is certainly the black-scotch tape on the right.

“Trace: Mapping The Emerging Urban Landscape” by Alison Sant is an interesting article if you’re interested in the whole debate about digital traces and how wireless networks and mobile devices are “reforming our contemporary notions of urban place”. It deals with a topic I am interested in, which is the boundaries of wireless technology. As the authors says, they have deep implications for our notion of space even though they are not physically obvious.

Sant describes in this paper a project called *TRACE* which make the wifi topography visible, revealing “the intersection of the physical and immaterial infrastructures of the city” (I don’t know why they say it’s immaterial… as WiFi nodes are all but immaterial). Moreover, the project also reveals the fluctuating character of the wireless network, an important characteristic as it challenges the notion of “a purely static notion of public space”. This sort of “Hertzian landscape” is represented as follows, with “binary qualities of being on and off the network, in locked or unlocked zones, and in areas of unique or default node name“.

For instance, it can be represented like this, with the shapes are uniquely suited to each node and are at varying angles:

The process of building these viz also allowed the author to observe very interesting practices:

“The decision to leave a WiFI node locked or unlocked or to rename a base station communicates a bias to those that “see” these nodes through wireless devices. In addition, WiFI node names and encryption states become vehicles to express disparate attitudes about public access. An inflammatory declaration of privacy like “Go Away!” may be opposed by an open invitation to logon in the form of a web site address “go http://192.168.168.4/airport”
(…)
Our understanding of physical space becomes complicated by traces of electronic signals, the way they are formatted, and the information they project to us. The wireless network suggests a new subtext to urban space. In turn, these transmissions change our fundamental understanding of location. Instead of responding purely to the physical space around us, we also become engaged with the fleeting qualities of wireless signal. These “states” of the network begin to inform and direct our interactions with the urban landscape as significantly as the material landmarks on city maps.“

Why do I blog this? I like how the author describes this wireless layer as an hertzian fooprint that is dynamic and reconfigure our relationship to space in novel ways. Very much in line with similar projects such as Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby’s “Tunable Cities” (Architectural Design 68*, No. 11/12, pp. 78-79, November-December 1998):

““. . . [H]ertzian space is actual and physical even though our senses detect only a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Images of footprints of satellite TV transmissions in relation to the surface of the earth, and computer models showing cellular phone propagation in relation to urban environments, reveal that hertzian space is not isotropic but has an ‘electroclimate’ defined by wavelength, frequency and field strength. Interaction with the natural and artificial landscape creates a hybrid landscape of shadows, reflections, and hot points.”“

That issue is important to me as there is an intriguing paradox with the advent of the “digital city” (which gets lots of visibility in the media) and its relative invisibility practically speaking.

Beyond molested bicycles, street cleaning vehicles and bad wiring, shopping carts are highly ranked in my list of intriguing city devices.

One of the reason is because there is always a small proportion of carts that are stolen, abandoned or used or other purposes. Some examples easily comes to mind, see for instance how this bunch of homeless people in LA use the cart:

OR, more intriguing in Madrid, I stumbled across these 2 guys who collect steel material on the street before selling it somewhere. The carts shown below served as a convenient way to carry steel stuff before heading to a buyer:

BUT it’s certainly the abandoned shopping carts like that one encountered yesterday in Geneva, which ranks first in my list of cart behavior.

Abandoned carts always makes me wonder that there are strong design opportunities for micro-distance devices like this in our contemporary cities.

The vocabulary of interaction in this sequence of devices aimed at validating public transport cards in France: “validate here”, “punch your ticket”, “leave your card here”. It’s interesting to nice that only the “touch interface” explicitly tell people where to touch the card (”here”), whereas the “punch” interface (in french “compostage”) does not have to specify where the interaction happen. Designers assume that if there’s going to be something punched (a ticket) it can only be in the grey slit. it’s also because people taking french trains have a long tradition of “punching” their tickets, as a sort of standard.

The shape and size of the boxes themselves is also interesting. People who know the context will remark that the one that look very cheap (on the right) is the city transport one, the second smaller box (on the left) is for regional card and the yellow box in the middle is the national system.

GENEVE*accessible by Antoni Abad is an intriguing project launched by the city of Geneva in partnership with the Handicap Architecture Urbanisme (HAU) association, with the purpose of making travelling easier for the disabled.

The project is simple: disabled phone are handed out GPS-enabled mobile telephones so that they can take pictures of every obstacle they come across in Geneva. By means of multimedia messages they create a map of the accessibility of the city on the internet. The resulting work will be presented at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, within a series of related live events: the “Créateurs Singuliers” week (27th May-1rst June).

Here’s an example of the on-going map with a typology of different obstacles (stairs, entrance, etc.):

Why do I blog this? documenting interesting local projects around here. I like the bottom-up approach of the initative.

Cell phone booster/repeater solution seems to be a trendy path lately, as shown by this NYT article which presents devices such as femtocell to extend mobile phone service coverage indoors, especially where access would otherwise be limited or unavailable.

What I find interesting here is less the technology than the reasons why these solutions are brought forward (or at least the one mentioned/promoted by companies designing these solutions). Excerpt from the article:

““Because more and more people are not taking landline telephones anymore, adding a signal booster is becoming much more popular,” said Richard Holtz, president of Infinisys in Daytona Beach, Fla. His firm plans the placement of cellular boosters in high-rise buildings, dorms and offices.

“People are expecting perfect coverage everywhere,” Mr. Holtz said, pointing out that being indoors or outdoors can make a big difference in call quality.
(…)
Many things get in the way of wireless signals. Trees and intervening buildings can degrade the signal from the cell tower, while brick walls and wallboard supports can block them completely. Sometimes many obstacles will conspire to create a “dead zone” of dropped and missed calls.
(…)
Of course, boosters require you to shell out your own money to improve a service you are already paying for. Pestering your carrier to upgrade its network is a cheaper — but slower — approach.”

Why do I blog this? I’d be curious to know more about the real expectations of people but the seamless coverage might be a need. In our field studies, it’s generally the case that people ASSUME wireless coverage (or perfect positioning through LBS) but then realize there are some discrepancies. It’s then interesting to see both human and technical solutions to this problem. Technical solutions are boosters and repeaters described in this article whereas human solutions are behavioral adjustments (like sending an SMS instead of calling when you only have 2 bars on the signal reception display).

Found here, a new vector in ubiquitous computing:

“A musical condom designed to play louder and faster as lovers reach a climax is to go on sale in Ukraine. Grigoriy Chausovsky, from Zaporozhye, said his condoms came fitted with a special sensor that registers when the condom is put on. It transmits a signal to a miniature speaker in the base of the condom which play a melody.

He told local media: “As the sex becomes more passionate, it registers the increased speed of the movements and plays the melody faster and louder.”“

Why do I blog this? Wacky ideas are always weird, yet they often mean something. In this case, it’s maybe not the proposed use of sensors that is important, nor the fact that you can use the condom context (but who knows?).

It’s rather that it attests that sensors are so small and cheap they can be integrated in very thin membranes. It’s a bit like the challenged that Violet wanted to achieve. Violet is the french company which does the wifi rabbit Nabaztag: their point was that “if you can connect a rabbit to the Internet, you can connect anything”. So maybe here it’s more relevant for people who want to develop health applications or disposable devices.

When it comes to bike rental platforms, I am often intrigued by how digital technologies are employed and for what purposes. A description of how italian biking solution Bicincittà describes it in detail:

“Monitoring and organizational systems: Every movement of the bicycles is transmitted to a server that updates in real time their availability in the area. Upon receiving an electronic card, each cyclist is then registered in the server, having inserted his/her personal information and telephone number. This card is distributed for an indeterminate amount of time and can be deactivated remotely at any time at the director’s discretion. The system’s interface supplies us with the user’s personal information at the moment of the hire, giving us a general overview of who is exploiting the system. As a result we can analyze bike movements and study their statistics in order to increase or decrease the number of bicycles according to demand.

Tele-diagnostic system: Bicincittà is equipped with a remotely enhanced diagnostic system that allows us to know the conditions of the parking stations at any moment. Wherever there may be a damaged or malfunctioning unit, a remote mechanism allows us to reset the device, be it a single parking space or the entire parking station. The practicality of the tele-diagnostic system allows us to solve problems from a distance. This guarantees a completely efficient, indispensable organization in providing quality available alternative public transportation.“

Seems to be very close to Velib/Velov and co. The website interestingly gives some random stats which seems to be more descriptive than explicative:

Why do I blog this? I find interesting to see where digital technologies play a role in bike rental solutions; and the description above is quite transparent regarding how the digital traces of physical activities (movement, parking, diagnosis). In addition, I like the way they describe the whole process. There must be intriguing tools and visualizations to reflect that kind of traces for diverse “urban audiences”:

1. the company which needs to have indicators about his services (but the one above is maybe less informative since it’s regardless of any explanatory variable such as city, weather, etc.).
2. local institutions that what to get information about bike mobility in their city, how the platform is used, etc. in a sort of descriptive way. Further out, they might also need to access to a more explicative dimension so that they could see what works (re-fill of stations, time spent on bikes, etc) and what doesn’t. The point would hence be to modify the system (change the frequency of re-fill, add stations, etc.)
3. Customers who may want to get information about the service availability (number of bikes in real-time at what station) or more elaborated services (why not printing out special maps to depict the best areas to drop a bike, new routes to come past certain empty bike stations). This information could also be coupled with other one coming from other means of transport to help people to pick-up a more efficient succession of transport means (get a bike - use it to go to a metro station - get the metro and get out); in order - for instance - to avoid finding no spots for your bike (or a steep hill?).