By karenmmartin on methodology
matchbox
Eric Paulos and Chris Beckman of Intel Research believe that technological systems should cover the full range of human experiences, “from improving productivity and efficiency to promoting wonderment and daydreaming.” Their LoveHatePortland project used intervention as a research strategy to understand what people love and hate about their city and why. 1150 custon-designed matchboxes were distributed around the city inviting people to voice their opinion via SMS. The aim was to develop a dialogue between city dwellers and to “expand the vocabulary of potential urban technologies, enabling a wider range of choices as we form our future urban lifestyles
Matchbox as interface: “It was important that these objects be inexpensive to produce, lack ownership thus allowing them to be found and taken without guilt, and avoid being viewed as so worthless as to be simply ignored as trash.”
When someone sent an SMS to the number on the matchbox they received the last submitted LoveHatePortland SMS. When they submitted their own message to the project they would, at a later date, receive the subsequent SMS contribution. Messages had to include either the word ‘love’ or the word ‘hate’ to be accepted by the system. The drop location and contribution location were drawn onto a map of Portland displayed on the lovehateportland website showing the location of the love and hate messages compared with the drop locations. Their expected response rate for the LoveHatePortland matchboxes was 1% while the actual response rate was 2.7% (31 participants).
white = drop locations, blue = love messages, red = hate messages
Intervention as research strategy: Paulos and Beckman chose intervention as a research strategy for understanding wonderment. They position the exploration of the theme of wonderment in the tradition of research examining areas such as ludic, ambiguous, strange, slow, noir and hermeneutic. These are experiential themes, difficult to measure or to assign a value to. Paulos and Beckman imply that observations, surveys and interviews are too controlled and mediated to generate such experiential responses as wonderment and say that there is a need to study urban life ‘in the wild’ through “seemingly unplanned situations and objects that would catch people off guard and spark their desire to wonder.” Their goal is with the designs generated in this way intended to “provoke open ended discussions around urban technologies rather than present “killer apps” or final solutions.”
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* Posted on: Mon, May 15 2006 3:57 PM
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