Design Documentaries

video 'personas' for Heartlands

For Heartlands, a large regeneration project around the first tin mine in the UK, in Pool, Cornwall, STBY did a range of research projects that fed into workshops. All aimed to involve local stakeholders, from individual citizens to Cornish organisations, in the design process set up by architects and landscape designers. Outcomes were several types of personas, archetypes of future users of Heartlands,scenarios for future use, and responses to designs of the architects.

One of the 11 activities we organised so far focused on artists and performers, for whom studios in several forms will be built at Heartlands. I visited artists in their studios near Pool, and talked with them about mundane things as the floors they have and prefer (two quite different things often!), but also how they feel about visitors peeking or even walking in their spaces. This last issue is pertinent to Heartlands as it is a public space where many people will be drawn too, also for just a day out.

Three types of space had already been determined in the architectural plan, but there were still many ways these could be filled in. To inform and inspire the detailed design, I made three personas based on interviews with five artists. These personas are not representing people however, but the three types of space that will be built.

Each of the buildings 'talks' from its own perspective about how it can accommodate what the artists want to do best. These are personal stories told by buildings, using the video footage I took at artist spaces, with very few lines of text in between (as a written voice over almost). 

You can see the results at http://bas.blogs.com/artatheartlands/. 

Designing Across Boundaries

Mid September STBY participated in a multicultural design challenge at Villiers Highschool in Southall, London. We worked with Sao Paulo-based designers, London-based designers and teenagers from Southall. The goal was to design something for the school, using card board, in 60 hours with about 40 people in three teams. We counted more than 30 countries when we explored where all the participants and their parents came from! This became the starting point for all three projects that were completed. Each team designed events or ways to enhance relationships between pupils at the school rather than objects such as a new school bag or table.

Each group used video to do the research in the school, develop their ideas and communicate them. Bas Raijmakers and Geke van Dijk (for STBY) coached the teams when shooting and editing video, as part of their research and design process. This resulted in 3 short films about the projects. Bas and Geke also made a film about the challenge as a whole and how it connects to everyday school life. This 12 minute film is available here. Villiers students speak the voice overs. It includes short versions of each of the films made by the project teams, explaining their ideas for the school.

 

The approach was taken from the design challenges organised by the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art, who use it to allow designers to experience participatory, inclusive design first hand by working with the people they design for. Yanki Lee of the RCA organised this challenge. We also used the approach of Brazilian designer Paula Dib, International Young Design Entrepreneur of the Year 2006 and her company trans.forma. She works with local communities in Brazil and materials that are locally found, often recycling waste materials. From Brazil she brought her friends Renata Mendes and Fernando Maculan, both designers she collaborates with, and 8 students from the FAAP design academy in Sao Paulo. Karine Waldron of Villiers Highschool completed the team. We had a great group of about 40 people together for three days of intense working. The project was presented at a 100% Design forum during the London Design Festival 2007.

Thrill

Three short compilation films by Jessica Charlesworth, Michael Burton and  Tom Wynne-Morgan, for Brendan Walker's "Fairground: Thrill Laboratory" at the Science Museum, London, October 2006. I coached all three filmmakers.

 

Jessica Charlesworth explored "Excitement"

The project presented three events in the Science Museum where fairground experiences were explored in different ways, and one was through our films. The Thrill films were not explicitly created for a design process, but they easily could have served a design process for a fairground, or even something else related to one of the three experiences. For the designers, making their film was like doing research; a way to explore and understand experiences, and then communicate that understanding to others.

 

Michael Burton explored "Pleasure"

These films are different from most other experiments I did because they are made completely out of archive footage and offered an opportunity to work with compilation techniques like zapping, scratching and repetition  and examples of how movements in different shots can flow together. This is visible in the results: the editing of the films is clearly guided by the rhythm in the movements of the fairground rides, the people in the shots, and the camera. This takes the films beyond an exposé about fairground experiences towards an exploration of these experiences.

 

Tom Wynne-Morgan explored "Frisson"

Swim

A design documentary about swimming lanes in a pool and smart textiles.

 

The film expresses the experience of swimming as being in a bubble with your own thoughts. Here, these thoughts are about swimming and smart textiles. They are fragments of a conversations one of the swimmers (STBY researcher Geke van Dijk) with an engineer and a weaver, and with another swimmer.

The design documentary was produced in 5 parts each with a different theme. They were used in a creative brainstorm session about new concepts for smart textiles in relation to swimming lanes. The total length of the design documentary is 6 plus 4x3 minutes. The length of the clip shown in this blog is 2 minutes.

This project was commissioned by DesignPlus in 2006. The film was made by Bas Raijmakers (direction, pool camera, editing) in collaboration with Stan Swallow and Asha Thompson (Intelligent Textiles), Geke van Dijk (conversations and production, STBY), Christopher Nicholson (sound) and Francisco Varvaro (camera). Warren Valentine (fashion designer at Gul) participated in the brainstorm, with Stan Swallow, Asha Thompson and Geke van Dijk.

Drift

A design documentary about wandering through a city and smart textiles.

 

An exploration of how smart textiles can help people to navigate in a city if they are wandering around instead of going from A to B. An engineer and an artist who work with smart textiles walk around the Barbican in London with the researcher, meeting people and finding stories.

The engineer and artist also tell stories about their own work and engage in conversation with the researcher about smart textiles and possible interventions or applications that could be designed with this technology.

The film was used to inspire a brainstorm workshop with industrial design company Therefore who for instance develop navigation systems. The total length of Drift is 18 minutes. The length of the clip shown here is 2 minutes.

The research was commissioned by Design Plus in 2006. The film was made by Bas Raijmakers (direction, additional camera, editing) in collaboration with Verity Parker (engineer) and Suzi Webster (artist), Geke van Dijk (STBY, production and sound), Francisco Varvaro (camera) and Christopher Nicholson (sound and camera). Jim Fullalove and Andy Clift (industrial designers at Therefore) participated in the workshop, with Suzi Webster, Verity Parker and Bas Raijmakers.

Alena’s Strawberry Farm

A short film by Xiaoxiao Sun about the everyday lives of migrant fruit pickers at a strawberry farm in Kent.

 

We wanted to develop new design concepts for telecom services through exploring the everyday life of people who spend long periods away from home. One particular group we focused were seasonal migrant workers. We got in touch with a group of East European fruit pickers on a farm in Kent who live for up to six months on a caravan park at the farm.

Xiaoxiao mostly worked alone, but was supported before and during shooting by our project team. Her style is observational, but she also included interviews, sometimes done by me and Nadine Jarvis, designer in our team, when we joined Xiaoxiao for a day. Xiaoxiao intervenes in the film by adding music that comments on the situations she shows.

The film was commissioned by Goldsmiths College/Interaction Research and France Telecom/Orange in 2006. The total length of the design documentary is 14 minutes. The clip shown on this blog is 2 minutes.

Media Mediators vlog

A video weblog about the Media Mediators project by Tobie Kerridge and Andy Law.

One of the goals of the project was to explore different ways of co-creation with users inspired by the Open Source movement. I helped the team to make video diaries of the project to support this approach.

The 2-3 minute diary entries on video were all immediately posted on the internet at mediamediators.blogspot.com in a video-blog (vlog), to facilitate communication between designers and participants who would later adopt the objects for a few weeks. The participants shot video diaries of their experiences, which I edited and added to the vlog.

This collection of short films did not serve as an initial assessment of a situation for or by the design team to inform and inspire their project, like the films described above do. Instead they capture the making of the Media Mediators, and present this to the first users of the objects as a source of inspiration for their creative use of these objects and further development of what they do.

The roles are reversed here: the designers provide the inspiration to the participants through the films to hack into the objects. As such, the diaries of the participants are an example of using discovery research at a late stage in the design process.

Video weblog (vlog) of the creation, adoptions and appropriations of abstract moving objects connected to processes on personal computers in the home. With Tobie Kerridge and Andy Law, who created the objects

In total the vlog contained 22 video entries. The clip shown in this blog is 1.5 minutes.

The Media Mediators project was commissioned by Philips Design to Tobie Kerridge and Andy Law at Helen Hamlyn Research Centre at the Royal Collage of Art in 2005. Tobie and Andy were at the time part of the Interaction Research Studio at the RCA where I did my research too.

Snow Train

Investigation of the possibilities a train ride offers for dreaming, as suggested by Michel de Certeau, in: The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. (2005, 3’)

 

Debra

A design documentary about everyday life as a heart patient. Part of a series of three films about heart patients, with Kent and Fred.

Debra is a persona based on 9 interviews with heart patients in San Diego, conducted by Philips Medical Systems in Seatle. In the design documentary Joan, a heart patient from London, responds to a letter the filmmaker has written in the name of Debra. Joan compares the experiences of Debra with her own daily life.

The film uses performance techniques: Joan talks directly into the camera to the fictional heart patient Debra. Joan and I shot the film in two days. We recorded several takes of each response until we were both happy with the result.

Design documentaries Debra, Kent and Fred were used by a multidisciplinary design team at Philips medical Systems in Seattle, to develop more engaged intuitions about the everyday life of heart patients as a source of information and inspiration for the design process. I published about the three films and how they were used in a paper for DIS2006.

 

The total length of the design documentary is 10 minutes. The clip shown here is 2 minutes.

This project was commissioned by Philips Medical Systems North America in 2004. Scripted, directed, filmed and edited by Bas Raijmakers in collaboration with Joan Simpleton, a heart patient living in London.

Kent

A design documentary about everyday life as a heart patient. Part of a series of three films about heart patients, with Debra and Fred.

A heart patient in London embodies the persona Kent (an archetypal heart patient developed by Philips Medical Systems based on 9 interviews with heart patients in San Diego) by presenting parts of his own everyday life as illustrations of key issues in the life of Kent. I juxtapose these with voice overs written by myself, based on the persona description.

Design documentaries Debra, Kent and Fred were used by a multidisciplinary design team at Philips medical Systems in Seattle. The film stimulated the team to add their own stories about friends and family with heart problems and continue the exchange of perspectives that started in the film. I published about the three films and how they were used in a paper for DIS2006.

The total length of the design documentary is 11 minutes. The clip shown here is 2 minutes.

This project was commissioned by Philips Medical Systems North America in 2004. Scripted, directed, filmed and edited by Bas Raijmakers in collaboration with David Jones, a heart patient who lived in London.