technology as a cultural practice - ux australia
DESCRIPTION
How do you design a mobile money service for people in rural Uganda who’ve never had a bank account? How do you test the usability of a mobile phone’s address book for users in rural India who’ve never had an address… yet alone an analog address book?As cheap PCs and inexpensive mobile phones flood the global market, usability and user experience professionals will encounter more and more questions like these – questions that challenge not only our research tools and methodologies, but our fundamental assumptions about how people engage with technology. In this talk, Rachel will share insights she’s gained through creating experiences that must scale across vastly different cultures. She’ll share her thoughts on the challenges and opportunities designing for global markets will present to the user experience industry in the years to come.TRANSCRIPT
Rachel HinmanSenior Research Scientist - Nokia Research Center
Technology
UX Australia 2011
as a Cultural Practice
Title
90 Mobiles in 90 Days
NPR slide
NPR slide
NPR slide
NPR slide
NPR slide
NPR slide
NPR slide
NPR slide
NPR slide
What are we doing wrong today, Don?
NPR slide
UX as Problem Solving
Mobile
16
Rapid Evolution
“The rapid development of cell phones is killing early cell phones much faster than it's killing any of the early, older legacy technologies.
I think that is a real principle... something you have to understand if you're going to be in this line of work. It's very romantic. It's very fast moving.
You are building dead lumps of plastic. When people come out and they show you an iPhone, or an Android... they are showing you larval versions of something much more sophisticated.
The world you are building right now is the ground floor for something much larger -- and the soil beneath that ground floor is violently unstable.”
-- Mobile Monday Amsterdam – November 2008
Title
90 Mobiles in 90 Days
What are we missing?
We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.
Marshall McLuhan
Hypothesis vs. AgendaNPR slide
What are we missing?
What are we missing?
Central Idea:
Technology is a cultural practice
Central Idea:
The time has come to stop thinking of our work solely as “problem-solving” and start thinking of it is as a form of cultural expression.
Cultural practice?
Everyday life rituals
Social practices
Medical treatment
Forms of artistic expression
Governance, leadership, and conflict resolution
Power Relationships
Cultural Institutions
Housing
Religion
Cultural Practices:
-Everyday life practices-Social practices-Medical treatment practices-Forms of artistic expression-Religious and spiritual practices-Governance and leadership, conflict resolution-Cultural institutions-Power relationships-Housing and construction
What does technology and user experience have to do with cultural practices?
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
Edges worth tracking
Clifton Evans via Boxes & Arrows
“In some ways, Interaction Design, the practice is a field that seems obsessed with process over product.”
Jack Shulze of BERG:
Some people (they are wrong) say design is about solving problems. Obviously designers do solve problems, but then so do dentists.
Design is about cultural invention.
There are some people who want to reduce the domain of design to listable, knowable stuff, so it’s easy to talk about. Design is a glamorous, glittering world and this means they can engage without having to actually risk themselves on the outcome of their work. This is damaging. It turns design into something terrified of invention. Design is about risk. We all fear authentic public response to our work, but we have to be brave enough to overcome.
“What I often see is that people are frightened by fashion, and that because it scares them or makes them feel insecure, they put it down… There is something about fashion that can make people very nervous.”
CHI 2010 - 2011 Themes:
•Feminism in HCI
•HCI and Politics
•Inclusive Design
•Design for Emerging Markets
•Designing for Social Impact
•HCI and the Environment
Signals
Uganda: Mobile Money
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
“How does it work?”
1. Create an account with authorized dealer
1. Create an account with authorized dealer
2. Download Mobile Money application to mobile
1. Create an account with authorized dealer
2. Download Mobile Money application to mobile
3. Transfer funds – Passcode, recipient’s phone #
1. Create an account with authorized dealer
2. Download Mobile Money application to mobile
3. Transfer funds – Passcode, recipient’s phone #
4. Recipient retrieves funds from authorized dealer (if they have the cash)
?
Gestalt: Figure Ground
McLuhan believed that to fully grasp the effect of a new technology, one must examine figure (medium) and ground (context) together, since neither is completely intelligible without the other.
McLuhan argued that we must study media in their historical context, particularly in relation to the technologies that preceded them.
India: Mobile Literacy
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
774 Million**UNESCO Institute for Illiteracyhttp://www.uis.unesco.org/ev.php?URL_ID=6401&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
774 Million**UNESCO Institute for Illiteracyhttp://www.uis.unesco.org/ev.php?URL_ID=6401&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
Literacy
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society.
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
Technology delivers media.
Technology delivers media.
Media shapes:• What can be said• How it can be said• Who can say it• Who can receive those messages
Literacy = Price of Entry
Empathy
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
Mobile presents an opportunity to invent new ways for users to interact with information and each other.
Opinion!
96
Opinion!
EMPATHY
✔✔ User Research
Empathy is Difficult
Empathy is Difficult
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
✔✔ User Research
How can I apply this idea to my daily work?
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
Less of this, more of that
Hypothesis vs. Agenda
Get out of the UX Echo Chamber
Cultural Relativism
Reaching out and touching and shaping the world… allowing the world to touch and reshape us.
Reuben Margolin
Thanks!