Creating right conditions for the right time even if it is not now.

Those who have played Tetris are familiar with series of unfitting, out of place bricks at one go that just wouldn’t fit anywhere. What do you do in that case?…you just put them where they could be least harmful in the wall, where there is still promise of fixing the gap in the future. And when the time is right and you get the right bricks it all falls into place. I guess life is a lot like that too. In tough times instead of giving up you still play what comes your way and put things in the least harmful places at that time, even if they are painful but making sure that they still can be fixed when the time is right again. And when it is, you will have your perfect wall.

A weekend project in (fake stop) animation talking about usability of iPhone. Done in 8 hrs.

1. Ask them to build things from their personal experience.

2. Then ask them to reflect on it.

3. Only then ask them to create something new.

Better chances of success this way or at least this is what we learnt today.

1. The 3 minutes constraint makes us figure out the most relevant and important steps and outcomes of that stage for ourselves.

2. Video is a really powerful tool to communicate. Sketches, doodles and even text comes to life in these videos and makes it easier and far more interesting for a viewer to get a good picture + they can sustain for three minutes without getting bored

You can see the language theory podcast in a previous blog and more process videos are on their way.

courtsey: Google

I had a funny episode with Google the day before. I was trying to register on You Tube when the site asked me for my age. I was reluctant to type in my right age for a lot of reasons. The site didn’t explicitly tell me the repercussions of not declaring myself to be over 13, so I didn’t and  ALL my Google accounts were immediately suspended! Unlike my nature I was actually panicking to read those dreadful lines saying that all my mails and other data on Google would be deleted in 29 days if I don’t reinstate my account by declaring that I am over 13!

Here’s the even funnier part, the three ways to reinstate your account.

1. To mail/ fax a government document saying you are over 13.

2. To use a web form and attach an ID clarify your age.

3. TO PAY USD0.30!

No surprises the last option came with the promise of account reactivation within 15 minutes . I don’t understand as to how paying 30 cents could be the most efficient way of reinstating my account even though it doesn’t say ANYTHING about my right age. Even though I am glad that I had that third option to rescue me I question the legitimacy of this whole system. I might as well been 12 and using my father’s credit card. How are these three options even on the same level?  

In order to simplify the brief for myself, I created this visual for the service design project as a starting point. The overarching theme of this project is Language as a participation (language in consideration here being Swedish). The aim is to come up with a service which helps non-native Swedish speakers to integrate in the Swedish society and have a better participation in the culture. Language is one of the main vehicles for such a participation. The course is orchestrated by Brendan Clarke and Euan Frazer from Interactive Institute, Denmark who have been tutoring us through ethnographic course as well. The sponsor for this course is Microsoft, but their involvement and mentorship in the project is still fuzzy.

The whole class was paired up and given literature related to ethnography. I worked with Daniel to present the paper called The Stranger by Alfred Schuetz. Above is my visualization which we used to present the paper to the rest of the paper. The paper talked about the interaction of a stranger with a new group of people and how their interaction shapes and what are the factors that influence their interaction and understanding of the new group by the stranger. It also explains the key responsibilities of a sociologist.

The paper was an interesting read since it articulated a lot of thoughts and methods I have been using for my past research. It always helps to ground one’s methods in established researches. The paper spoke about the trick of being non judgmental during ethnographic researches, which is particularly hard for me since my design mind is so tempted to process any information that comes my way. It took a little bit of training in the following interviews to frame questions and receive responses in nonjudgmental way. I don’t think I am there yet but nothing that one can’t learn with practice.

The theory outlines three major steps in the language learning process. First step is when you perceive written or spoken language as one image (if its textual) or a rhythm  ( if its spoken), you are unable to break it down into comprehensible elements. For eg. for a dog the word ‘leash’ is synonymous with going out and not with controlling string. In the second stage you start breaking down the textual or spoken new language into smaller bits and start building associations of these bits with the language you already know. In the third stage you come back full circle into perceiving the language as a whole but with much greater understanding. At this stage you don’t need to consciously break it down into smaller pieces to make sense of it, you look at a word as a whole to understand its meaning rather than reading each alphabet.

During these three stages several factors like people and places boost or slow down the language learning process. Depending on the country you are in you might be forced to use the native language more, like in Seoul, SouthKorea it is hard to find English speakers in the commercial places so you are bound to use more Korean words whereas in Sweden, Swedes switch to English at the slightest sign of discomfort from the foreign visitor, making it hard for visitor to build his Swedish vocabulary.