.IUAV website

.Narrative Design

.Usable Witchery

.Big Wednesday

.Aequilibrium

.MASH

.Flag

.Videos 2004 - 2006

.Photos

aim

The faculty of Design and Arts of the IUAV University in Venice started across 2007 and 2008 a rejuvenation process the involved classes, laboratories, teachers and students in order to bring its work to a wider and more international audience. Part of this process was dedicated to the redesign of the faculty website. The main goal of the redesign was to make the website simplier to navigate and richer of energetic contents.

process

Rather than a simple redesign of the website graphics and layout we considered this work as the possibility to better define IUAV’s web strategy and rethink the whole information architecture. During the initial research we ended with a number of new principles:

The university website shouldn’t be the transcription of all the printed and bureaucratic materials.
Students and teachers are more important to the University than classes’ titles, CFU credits and ID numbers.
Venice is a strategic and unique location for a design school.
The website should be dynamic and give a sense of live action.

result

We simplified the information architecture creating two main menus. The central area is dedicated to a new live diary the daily timetable with live pictures from the laboratories, latest projects and ongoing events. This new feature works as a visual blog of the classes and a fast and easy to use agenda.
We developed a new social platform, Showcase, where both students and teachers can sign in and create their profiles. Students can upload their projects and teachers can rate them and choose their faves. The most successful projects are automatically included in the official IUAV website, keeping the university portfolio up to date and challenging for the new students.

aim

IxD designers commonly use personas (finctional characters) and scenarios (short situated stories) to prototype and communicate their projects.
Within this practise I discovered two interesting areas with opportunities of further development:
Storytelling is mainly used as a communication tool throughout the design process and hardly never as a creative tool.
Personas and scenarios sometimes are flat and stereotypical and don’t challenge designers to provide provocative or innovative answers.
With Narrative Design I tried to expand the designer’s toolbox with techniques and theories drawn from the writers’ world.

process

To achieve a deeper comprehension of narrative and use it in a creative way I develop a number of exercises based upon the fundamental elements of a story.
Before and after

A story is a linear sequence of events. Designer are asked to choose an object, imagine and visualize what there could be before and after it. Objects, pictures, words, even a simple dot could become part of a temporal sequence and deliver unexpected meanings.

Details matter
In any story, simple or complex, details are responsible for its success. Telling a story only through its details is equal to create a sort of narrative jigsaw where a single move changes everything and different mixes generate new narrations.

The secret life of characters
Characters can be defined by a number of different categories:

* emotions

* actions/skills

* biographies

In general these three categories are coherent in real persons but in order to generate more challenging profiles designers are asked to play a sort of mix and match game and create original and extreme characters.
Real persons are not static in their feelings and behaviour. For this reason designers need to consider how this elements evolve in their characters’ perspective.

Narrative patterns
Once the designers have the characters and the basic elements of the plot it’s time to enrich the stories moving them into narrative structures, one of the most challenging aspects of storytelling.
The structures are patterns inherited from our cultural and mythological history. They are deeply fixed in our commom sense behaviour and we almost unconsciously use them to understand our perception.
In 2004 Christopher Booker published the book The Seven Basic Plots where he identifies seven narrative patterns that can be found in every story, from the ancient greek myths to the latest blockbuster movies. I built upon Booker’s theory seven narrative maps and a deck of inspiration cards that help the designers develop the right stories for their purposes.
Each map contains a simple timeline with a number of keypoints and questions. Depending on the project the designers need to choose which is the best structure and then match to it all the elements they have in order to create a meaningful story and use it to organize their work.

result

Narrative design workshop
On the 5th of March I ran a workshop with the students of the IUAV undergraduate course in fashion design in Treviso testing the exercises and the method I developed.
During the workshop the students created stories to explore and imagine possible connections between the italian fashion and luxury industry and technical clothes and accessories such as trekking shoes and bags. Through the use of storytelling the students succeed in highlighting users’ needs and values and sketched a number of possible solutions.

acknowledgments

I want to thank the IDEO London team and especially Niels Clausen Stuck, Juho Parviainen, Gen Suzuki and Aimee Tobin who gave me the initial inspiration for this project, the teachers and students of Scuola Holden in Turin where I conducted interviews for this project, the director of the fashion design course Maria Luisa Frisa who made the workshop possible, the students who attended it and all the IxD students in Venice for helping and suggesting me throughtout the work.

Here are some pictures and videos about the Usable Witchery Workshop by Yaniv Steiner. In those days we learned a few magic tricks and a bit of robotics. They seem unusual topics to be merged, yet they do match as the two sides of the same coin.

Magic
Magic has been used as a passepartout to describe the concept of interface and how designers should design it. Such as a skilled magician knows how to entertain the viewer, by understanding his need of being surprised to enjoy the performance, a thoughtful interaction designer should understand the user’s needs in order to provide a more natural and efficient interface.
In both cases the trick is simple: the magician/designer has to see from the viewer/user’s eyes.

Robotics
If magic was our theorical framework, robotics has been our playground. We built an animatronic hand based on tanntraad’s instructable (link) and then learnt how to animate it grace to wiring.
Truly, this has been our first attempt in creating a piece of humanized technology. We tried to replicate the natural movements of a real hand so as to demonstrate the linkage between artificial and natural, two basic elements in interaction design.

More pictures can be found in the usable witchery flickr pool.

Thanks to Yaniv Steiner , Philip Tabor, Gillian Crampton Smith and all workshop teams!
Thanks to Tailsnap, Quirky Berry and Teddy.see for the photos.

See more on nastypixel.

Four interactive boxes inspired to perception, the main theme of IDEO’s 2007 Big Wednesday event, a evening of lectures, music and fun.

Tell me a secret
A telephone that records secrets from people: lift the phone, tell a secret and wait…in a while it will give back a secret choosen randomly from people recordings.

Time machine
The time machine recorded people movements during the evening. There’s a wheel in the right side of the machine that brings you back through past and shows a flow of pictures recorded every 5 seconds.

Touch Me
A box simply made with 4 holes in 2 sides: every hole has a little container with a material and putting all the fingers in each, it will give back a strange perception of touch.

Welcome to IDEO!
A box at the entrance: shaking the hand inside the hole, all IDEO people tell you their welcome at the Big Wednesday.

During the physical computing class we have been asked to design an installation for the city of Venice with the purpose of giving informations in an subtle and emotional way.
We decided to focus our attention on the Venetian Lagoon and its biological cycle. The lagoon is affected by many human affections that are generally invisible to the people who temporary or permanently live in Venice.

Aequilibrium is built upon a simple concept: every action you take has an effects in the environment around you. We are not interested in showing you the right or the wrong behavior but we want you to learn that everything is a question of balance.
We identified four main categories of human affections: fishing, pollution, traffic and global warming; we used these categories to create an immersive environment that simulates the aquatic life and shows its reactions to your actions.
We decided to set Aequilibrium in the famous Rialto fish market in Venice.

Aequilibrium is a mesmerizing experience where the aquatic environment is projected on the fish market floor.
As you enter the fish market the fishes on the floor react to your presence: a dark area appears around your feet depending on the noise you are producing. Fishes never liked you, because you make noise and disturb them, so they avoid you and run away. If you are polite and respect them they will become friendly. Of course you can choose to kill them but your game will end soon..
The columns of the fish marked are used to display past information and future predictions about the lagoon.You can affect the prediction and see it changing according to the actions you and the other people performe in the installation. The future columns and the floor simulation are connected to each other and update in real time the displayed data.

We developed Aequilibrium with Processing and Wiring and the precious help by Durrell Bishop from Luckybite and Davide Rocchesso.

Aequilibrium has been featured in we make money not art.

Enhance the group experience
Red Cross volunteers are people from 18 to over 60 years old with different cultural backgrounds and skills who dedicate part of their free time to help the local community.
Being a volunteer requires great determination and emotional commitment: it’s an extra job where the group experience and the sense of sharing something important—sometimes even dramatic—with other group members are the most important rewards.
Mash (the name is a dedication to Robert Altman’s brilliant movie) has been designed to enhance the group experience and help the volunteers in building the common memory of their group.

I conducted reasearch and observation on how common spaces (for instance kitchen rooms in students houses) are used by the community members to communicate with each other and interviewed Red Cross volunteers to create a better profile of the potential users of Mash.
A few interesting points emerged:
Noticeboards are the easiest and fastest way of communication in commom spaces for small groups.
Red Cross volunteers are nomadic since they come from different cities and spent a lot of their duty time away from the Red Cross headquarters.
They consider the Red Cross headquarters as a second home, a social space where they can relax and share stories. They enjoy spending time in it even after the end of their duty.
Volunteers have different technological skills.
Volunteers generally feel part of an elite group.

Mash is a multi layered communication tool comprising four elements:

A RFID pin that detects the presence of the volunteer in the Red Cross headquarters and identifies the volunteer in public spaces such as museums, train stations or airports in case of an emergency.
A LCD screen noticeboard located in the Red Cross headquarters where 1) handwritten messages are captured and converted to digital, and 2) computer generated messages are displayed on the same surface.
A desktop application connected to the physical board in the headquarters that displays and stores all the messages—both computer-generated and handwritten.
A mobile application connected to the physical board in the headquarters, used for on-the-fly communication and updates.

Volunteers can use Mash to check who is in the headquarters and communicate, share and save stories both inside and outside the building. Mash seamlessly merges handwritten and digital messages building and maintaning a private visual archive of the group’s stories and activities.

Designed in 2006 at IUAV University of Venice with Professors Gillian Crampton Smith and Philip Tabor with technical support from Vinay Venkatraman.
Prototype developed with Processing.

With over thirty pavillions, thousands of artists, curators, critics, buyers and hundreds and hundreds of artworks visiting the Venice Biennale Artshow could become a nighmare if you are not a serious art victim with plenty of time available.

We set some simple rules and interaction patterns for the Flag system in order to keep your eyes and time focused on the exhibitions.
You have three flag to give to three different pavillions. When you enter the Biennale Giardini you can download the java application to your mobile via bluetooth. A public display shows the Giardini map with the current pavillions statistics so you can plan your visit. While you are visiting the Biennale you can use your mobile to navigate through the pavillions and assign your flags. Once you have finished you receive as a gift a code that gives you access to press exclusive materials in a dedicated web site.

With Flag you can track the pavillions’ flag both daily and throughout the whole exposition period. The pavillion’s icon changes through time according to the whole flags number. As you may guess a higher number of happy people moving around the pavillion’s icon stands for a good performance while a lonely, ruined pavillion means that visitors did not really liked it.

Flag is a simple application made with Processing Mobile. We developed it at IUAV University in Venice with Professors Gillian Crampton Smith and Philip Tabor in collaboration with Andy Cameron, Oriol Ferrer Mesià and Vinay Venkatraman.

This video is part of an installation where the images are projected on six different screens.

Starting from the works of the art critic Carlo Ragghianti we tried to realize a video analysis of the poetry of the Itailan writer Vivian Lamarque.

We took Vivian Lamarque’s lines and tried not to translate them into images but to visualize the rhythm of the accents, the narrative and the formal structure of the poetry and the general emotional tone of her works.

Director / Cinematographer: Marco Zamarato
Set decoration / Editing: Elena Milani
Visual Effects: Marco Zamarato
Acting: Elena Milani
Original Music: Victor Andrini + Fabio Bonelli

Director / Editing: Marco Zamarato
Cinematographer: Andrea Olivo
Set decoration: Elena Milani
Acting: Elena Milani
Original Music: Marco Zamarato

I made this videoclip (at least a part of it!) for Bjork’s song An Echo a Stain at IUAV University in Venice (ITALY).

The videoclip is about a nitghmare. The girl wakes up during the night and discovers that her house is 90° degrees turned and she needs to make her way to the kitchen to stop the water.

I made this video with Cinema 4D and some basic blue-screen and compositing tecniques.

Acting: Roberta Lombardi