Category Archives: Design

Online Scams

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Harry Brignull has recently published an excellent and accessible book called Deceptive Patterns. In it, he describes the diversity of techniques that web developers have used to nudge and manipulate users into giving information or paying for goods or services they had not wanted in the first place. An insidious example that some airlines use is ‘trick wording’, making it hard for a user to opt out of things, such as default travel insurance. Often, the way the website is set up is for travel insurance to be automatically included, meaning that the user has to actually find the option to deselect it. In most cases, it can be done by unticking a box. However, one airline designed it to be really difficult to find the ‘don’t insure me’ option; they placed it in a drop-down menu of a long list of countries, hidden between Denmark and Finland. That really does take the biscuit. Most people will not expect or even notice this option, and so end up buying the insurance, being totally unaware that they had the option not to.  That is plain right deceptive. The internet is awash with these kinds of nasty tricks. New ones keep popping up despite new regulatory laws and policies coming into place. Mainly through greed and desperation to hit their targets, e-commerce sites and online advertising continue to persist in using deceptive features – even with it now becoming increasingly illegal.

Criminal scammers have also used all manner of psychological mechanisms to trick people into unwittingly giving their bank details. These include the rather harmless sounding terms of “phishing” and “catfishing” – which are anything but benign. The latter refers to when someone sets up a fake online profile to trick people who are looking for love, in order to get money out of them. Another well known tactic is using lures to tempt someone to click on a link that offers free prize money or a free gift, but if clicked on, will infect their computer, with ransomware or other malware.

It is not surprising, therefore, to see each year banks reporting huge increases in online scams. It seems scammers are getting cleverer with their methods, catching people out by playing on human weaknesses. The question on many people’s lips, is whether the situation will get even worse now that genAI is ready to hand? Will the scammers exploit it to ever more nefarious ends?

BBC News conducted an investigation to see just how easy it would be to use ChatGPT to come up with email and messaging scams. Using the paid-up version of OpenAI, they were able to create an AI bot that could help with the wording of scams – potentially making it easier for criminals to get started when setting up a scam. Having created their chatbot, they then asked it to write some text using “techniques to make people click on links or and download things sent to them”. And sure enough the chatbot did.

However, the results in my mind were rather predictable based on well-known scams, including the ‘dear mum’ text, which sends a damsel in distress type message replete with emojis. Easy to fall for but any savvy scammer would know about that one. Another one of its suggested scams was the one about a wealthy person in Nigeria who wants to deposit a large amount of their money into your bank account. As if! That one is as old as the hills and easy to cut and paste from the web without the help of AI.  More generally, the chatbot suggested writing a scam that “appeals to human kindness and reciprocity principles”. That again, does not need AI to tell you that. If anything, paradoxically, the use of genAI could make it actually easier to detect scamming by enabling companies and users to see the patterns in the phrasing used by chatGPT.

What scammers really need is not some predictable text of well-known scams, but ways of finding a person’s details such as phone number and their name. Then they can use their own human ingenuity to come up with new ways to catch unassuming people out.

So how does a scammer stay ahead of the curve and create a new scam? Not by resorting to chatGPT. But by manipulating and taking advantage of people’s weaknesses and psychological blind spots. According to Stacey Wood and Yaniv Hanich (2023), who are fraud psychology researchers, scammers are using ever more sophisticated methods to combine different types of fraud to trick people. This includes the rather unpleasant sounding ‘pig butchering’ – that is a long drawn-out process of deception. An example is where elements of romance scams are combined with an investment con over a long period of time. The idea is to “fatten up” a victim first with affection before going for the kill and “slaughtering” them.

It usually starts with the scammer sending a text to a new person who has joined a dating site. Then over a few weeks, they will send a series of messages building up trust and affection with that person. A prime target might be a recently widowed person looking for friendship. The scammer will then progress the email messaging to a romantic relationship all the while learning ever more about that person’s personal history, financial situation and vulnerabilities. The person then starts to look forward to the messages from the scammer and begin to depend on them for their emotional connection. At which point the slaughter starts, where the scammer introduces the idea to them of making an investment in cryptocurrency. To make it seem convincing they will use fake crypto platforms to demonstrate returns. The person often invests being able to “see” strong returns online – which are of course fictitious. They keep investing, thinking they are making more and more money. What is actually happening is their money is going directly to the scammer. Really nasty deception and psychologically damaging once the person realises they have been stung.

That would seem a step too far for using chatGPT to get involved in this kind of drawn out deceit – especially if it involves setting up fake sites and platforms while pretending to develop a romantic relationship. It really needs a human touch to be convincing.

What we need are AI tools that can be developed to detect any new kinds of scams, and to then try to prevent them or to find ways of locking the scammers out. At the very least, genAI could be used to help raise awareness about the new scams and the underlying psychological mechanisms they are being tapped into.

Super Shoes

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Kelvin Kiptum Nike shoes Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

This autumn, Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa broke the woman’s world marathon record. She took just 2 hours 11 minutes and 53 seconds – which is 2 minutes and 11 seconds less than the record set previously 4 years ago. That is a whopping amount of time she was able to shave off. Not surprisingly, it raised eyebrows. How was it possible to run so fast? Some commentators put it down to the trainers she was wearing that gave her the advantage – the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1. Not long after, the Kenyan long-distance runner Kelvin Kiptum broke the man’s world record time, wearing the latest Nike Alphafly 3 trainers (see left). So, what is it about these new kinds of super shoe that literally make an athlete run like the wind?

A big step change is the way they are made up and the materials used for this. This has enabled a new thick but lightweight structure to be built in the sole of the shoe. The way the layers of material are engineered seems to give the runners that extra spring. They also have added a stiff rod in the midsole that is made of carbon, which helps the shoe keep its shape. The Alphaflys also have a curved geometry in the sole that has been designed to propel runners forward. Taken together, they are truly a step up from previous running shoes. A marathon runner who was interviewed in an article in the Guardian on the super shoes said “on average I reckon that they are worth four minutes for a top male in a marathon.” And the proof is in the tumbling records this year.

But is it fair?

Technology has been developed for years to improve all manner of artefacts, clothing and equipment that are used in sport – including tennis racquets, cricket bats, racing cars and racing bikes. It is par of the course in sport innovation. But some ruling bodies see it as unfair and needs to be stopped in its tracks. For example, back in 2009 a new kind of high-tech super swimsuit developed by Speedo was banned by the swimming’s governing body on the grounds that it gave certain swimmers an advantage, and in so doing, was ruining the sport. The full body swimsuit was made from polyurethane which can trap air in the suit and increase buoyancy to the swimmer making it faster to swim.

The LZR Racer Suit unveiling at a press conference in New York City in February 2008. From wikipedia

Another concern is its impact on the past. Many world records from years gone by are being broken, especially those that were made by great sportsmen and women, who have since become legends. They did not have the same kind of high-tech super shoes, etc., then, so it is considered unfair to take away their crowning glories by those who have the super shoes, swimsuits, etc..

But records are there to be broken. And speed and innovation go hand in hand.

Another line of argument is that giving sportspeople these new kind of superpowers is equivalent to doping which entail taking certain kinds of drugs to improve fitness. But the big difference between doping and super tech is that the former is an internal enhancer while the later is an external aid. While both can improve speed, doping goes one step further by invisibly enhancing an athlete’s stamina which is especially important in endurance and long distance sports. The various substances, like EPO, used in doping increase the taker’s red blood cell count, enabling more oxygen to be transported around the body and to the muscles, thereby increasing stamina. No-one questions whether this should be banned because not only can they give certain athletes an unfair advantage, they can be dangerous, causing health issues. It is also difficult to see how much someone has taken and for how long so it is a very unfair playing ground.

Super shoes, on the other hand can be checked to see if they fit certain regulations. The same could potentially be true for full body swimsuits (they still remain banned from the ruling of 2009).

Ten years ago Google developed a concept shoe that could talk to the wearer to motivate them to get up and go. It was long before chatGPT had arrived. In the near future it might be the case that the super shoe could be embedded with a GenAI app so that it could talk to the runner like in the video – helping them keep going in the way trainers and spectators currently do from the sidelines. Now that would be truly super.

 

Numbing numbers

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A part of my work involves advising various companies and government bodies about their future technology research strategies. This week, I had the pleasure of visiting the EPSRC headquarters in Swindon for a two-day meeting. Besides being super excited about meeting up with other members of the scientific advisory team for the first time in 3D (many of whom I had only met as digital postage stamps during the past 3 years), we were also invited to tour various facilities at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in nearby Didcot. I was assigned to a small group that went to see the Diamond Light Source. Sounds like a big laser show but it is in fact a massive science centre. On entering the building we were shown a model of the building to see what is inside. From an aerial view, it reminded me of Apple’s latest donut campus – in terms of its shape, scale and size.

This huge set up enables a laser beam to whiz around a circuit at some unbelievable speed that has the effect of giving off light 10 billion times brighter than the sun. The mind boggles at what that actually means in practice. Of course you never get to actually see the beam racing around the donut but I was mightily impressive to know it was hurtling around while we mere mortals were walking tentatively around the place. What you do see are various numbers, graphs and images in the nerve centre that lets you know what it is up to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The shining beam is siphoned off into lots of little labs where teams of scientists use it to study all manner of topics, including fossils, jet engines and vaccines. In a nutshell, it is a ginormous microscope that allows lots of measurements to be taken during millions of experimental trials. The scientists and engineers we were introduced to, who work on site, told us how having such a powerful magnifying beam enables them to do incredible science. Making the invisible visible in all sorts of unknown ways. However, they all also mentioned that the data that is collected from the various beam runs is so massive, that outside researchers who come to run their experiments at the facility, nowadays can’t cart their data home with them because there is simply too much of it. Instead, the data has to be stored and analysed on site before a digested form is sent back to them. A few years ago they could save it all onto a portable hard drive…

So what do scientists do with this ever growing mountain of data? How do they count it, describe it and then importantly, work out how to turn it into new knowledge? While data scientists may revel in this sea of data, other kinds of scientists often find it somewhat overwhelming, to put it mildly. To help them in their quest, every now and again, the ‘numbers’ community come up with new names to  make it more manageable to describe it. Just this month, the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures introduced some new names (or prefixes, cf. milli- to be precise). These included talking about data in terms of being a ronna which has 27 zeroes after the first digit or a quetta which has 30 zeroes after the first digit.

So how would you use these funny number names to talk about science? Consider the mass of the sun. Previously it was talked about in terms of 2,000,000,000 yottagrams. Now its mass can be said to be 2,000 quettagrams. To me it all sounds a bit double-dutch but to data scientists it provides a new and hopefully more meaningful way of expressing huge quantities of digital information.

Coming up with new data words must be one of the fun parts of the job. I wondered how did they choose them this time?  What were they thinking of? Ronna is also a girl’s name meaning “rough island and true image”, while a Quetta is a fort and is the tenth most populous city in Pakistan! And what will replace the ronnas and quettas to express the ever growing volumes of data that will have accumulated in the next 5-10 years? What new words will be dreamt up?  Perhaps Tom Lehrer should get in on the act. I am reminded of his classic song, The Elements, from 1956. Makes me laugh every time I hear it.

Thanks to John Collomosse for taking the photos inside the Diamond.

The Metaverse

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The Metaverse Is on the Way: Here's What You Need to Know - CNETWhy is there so much hype about the Metaverse these days?  It has even taken over from AI as the hottest tech topic. Last week when I asked Matthew Ball, the author of a forthcoming book about it, if I could take a peak inside he told me unfortunately no since the publishers want to keep it under wraps until it actually comes out in print. According to the blurb on Amazon’s site about the book, the Metaverse “is suddenly everywhere…It is a persistent, 3D, virtual world―a network of interconnected experiences and devices, tools and infrastructure, far beyond mere virtual reality. And it is poised to revolutionize every industry and function, from finance and healthcare to payments, consumer products, and even sex work. The internet will no longer be at arm’s length; instead, it will surround us, with our lives, labor, and leisure taking place inside the metaverse.”

That is hype to the max!

No wonder everyone is talking about it. Only today, I heard a radio show scaremongering the audience about all the potential dangers children face when entering the Metaverse – from being bullied to being groomed. However, just like AI, the idea of the Metaverse has actually been around for a while. Its earliest incarnation was in the form of virtual worlds, like Second Life, where people could create online spaces to socialize, learn, and hang out in. The virtual worlds were represented in 3D graphics which were navigated and experienced via a desktop. People could fly around and walk through walls to get from one place to another.  I remember on my first visit, ‘flying’ to a virtual lecture in a massive stadium that resembled the Coliseum in Rome. All rather strange and fun for a while but nothing to get really excited or worried about. So why now?

In the early 2020s, Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) took it upon himself to talk up the Metaverse as if it was the next big thing since sliced bread. One of his ambitions was to make the next generation of virtual worlds feel truly immersive. The step change from the older virtual worlds, like Second Life, was to radically change how people experience and interact in the Metaverse. Not through a desktop display, but by donning a VR headset and using the connected VR touch controllers to move their avatar’s arms around in the virtual world just like they do in physical world. This more extensive form of embodiment is what is envisioned will provide the compelling immersive experience.

This image shows one version of Zuckerberg’s vision of the Metaverse. Three avatars are enjoying the outdoors, moving their arms and hands around, as if they are together, even though they are apart in the physical world. However, look closely and you notice something slightly odd about the avatars. They don’t have any legs! The reason for this it seems is largely down to technical limitations. In contrast to the VR controllers which can map onto arm and hand movements relatively well in real time, the sensors and controllers which are currently available that can be placed on someone’s legs, are not able to represent someone’s leg and feet movements in VR nearly as well. It is often the case that obstacles can get in the way (such as someone’s belly), resulting in movements of the legs being obscured and so not able to be detected accurately. Because of this, VR headsets like Oculus, were not designed to capture the whole body of a person. Time will tell whether these kinds of occlusion problems can be overcome. You never know, in the future, we might see people putting on a whole body suit (like a Spiderman outfit) rather than just a VR headset when entering the Metaverse.

Meanwhile Second Life  has become commercialized. People can go there to shop for clothes and gadgets. The first ever Meta fashion week took place in Second Life last month. Even though the model avatars are impressive in how they move they still seem to be floating in air rather than walking down the catwalk. After the show, skins of the outfits that were modelled on the virtual agents could be purchased with Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Once purchased, people could then dress up their own avatars and parade them in Second Life.

 

Instead of using human models some designers like Dolce & Gabbana decided to use cartoon cats to show off their skins. One of the reasons is they look cool. Another is they avoid the problems of trying to emulate a human model and so don’t have to worry about how lifelike the model avatars appear. And no cats are harmed in the process. It is fantasy world all over again!

TikTok Food

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TikTok has been around since 2016 and caught on like wildfire amongst young people all round the world, as quickly as Facebook did when it first took off. It is fast and furious, and because of this terribly addictive, leaving you wanting more. Essentially, it is a social media platform primarily targeted at GenZ, who spend hours making and viewing their’s and each other’s short, snappy and slickly-edited videos. Each TikTok video typically lasts less than a minute. After clicking on a random video, the viewer can easily find themselves immersed in watching hundreds of other videos from that person’s account and then before they know it are onto someone else’s videos. An hour or more can easily pass by just as the videos do.

The choice of topics covered on TikTok is endless, but most videos are about the stuff that young people are into these days, including dance moves, fashion, jokes, adorable pets, lip synching and slapstick pranks. They also include skills that traditionally most kids have not shown much interest in, such as cooking. I was listening to The Food Programme on the radio the other day which just so happened to be featuring the growing trend amongst young people watching TikTokers demonstrating how to cook, that is quick and easy, without fuss, while looking yummy. Collectively called #FoodTok, videos in this genre have been viewed many billions of times. The mind boggles.

One of the people mentioned in the programme was Poppycooks, who has made a name for herself by specialising in how to cook the humble spud. Her video of how to make roast potatoes went viral which she then followed up with several other recipes of cooking potatoes, from crispy to crunchy to fried to mashed. She was really clever in working out how to keep viewers coming back for more, by adding a new video each day of the advent calendar, this Christmas just gone, comprising 25 recipes. The best was left to the 25th December, salty, super-thin, mouth-watering chips. They are indeed moreish. Poppy also has a cheeky look, adding a pinch of humour every now and again. You can’t but help fall for her and her style of cooking. The sound of her breaking open and biting into a crunchy potato is mouthwatering – and would make most people want to peel some potatoes and get cooking.

Like with other social media platforms, the secret to which TikTok videos become viral is largely down to a combination of algorithms, appeal and advertising. The trick is working out how to sustain interest. Many people may have a one hit wonder while a few go on to make a career out of it. Poppy, for example, has nailed it. She now has over 2 million followers. But staying high in the leagues of TikTok influencers creates huge pressure. The FoodTokers have to keep conjuring up new recipes they can show off in consistently tantalising ways always under 60 seconds! It is an amazing skill. Unlike the celebs of yesteryear, who have become famous through wealth, being in the know, being a looker, and/or having a huge talent, these youngsters can rise to the top  through their deft video-making and editing skills, making things look easy and super cool. They may only discover they have a real talent to entertain when beginning to create the videos. And literally anyone with a smartphone/camera can bubble up and become a star over night. This is one of the joys of this media – its serendipity.

Sometimes, people experience autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) when watching FoodTok videos, which essentially is a tingling body sensation that starts on the scalp and then progresses down the back of the neck and spine. For some people, this kind of sensation can be triggered by listening to crunching, slurping and other whacky sounds. SamSeats, for example, has made an amazing video of many tingling sounds associated with preparing a fancy ratatouille dish.  The sounds include ice cubes being dropped in a bowl, a knife slicing through an assortment of veggies and the rapid and fine chopping of garlic cloves and sprigs of herbs. It is music to the ears and makes you want to watch and listen to the video again. Each time you do, you hear something new. The second time I viewed it, I heard the glugging sound of oil being poured from a bottle and the frying of onions. Such food performances, speeded up to fast-beat tempos, are simply sumptuous. I can see how addictive they are (although sadly I never experienced the ASMR sensation of tingling).

And now I am tempted to upload to TikTok my old fashioned YouTube video (10 years old now) of ‘a plate of sizzling food’ being served up. Here it is: sizzle sizzle.

 

(Image of roast potatoes from lianaskitchen.co.uk)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wikipedia What?

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I was chatting with some friends about where we get our general knowledge from. One reminisced about the rows of hardback, dark blue covered books, called the “Encyclopedia Britannica”, her family had bought from a dodgy door-to-door salesman. Back then in the 60s and 70s, it was a status symbol among working and aspiring families to have bought the entire collection. She admitted hardly having read them but pointed out how they filled the bookshelves nicely. According to Wikipedia, it was the longest lasting printed tome, first published between 1768 and 1771 in Scotland. It kept growing in size with new volumes being added each year such that the 15th edition spanned a mighty 32 volumes, comprising 32,640 pages.

For some reason my family bookshelf did not possess a set. Instead, we had the slimmer ‘Golden Book Encyclopedia’ that was made up of 16 slender, hardback volumes. Each has its own distinct shiny colourful cover made up of a collage of enticing objects and targeted at the family rather than keeping up with the Jones. I would often take one or two off the shelves at a time and dip into them to learn and wonder; whether it was reading about the brain, seeing volcanoes spew forth or discovering strange animals existed like the aardvark. It was a joy on a Saturday afternoon to be lying on my bed absorbing this general knowledge while whetting my curiosity. The writing was accessible, the text illustrated with enticing figures and drawings. I was hooked on the multimedia of my day. I loved the feel, smell and weight of the books in my hand and occasionally liked to rest my chin on the top of an open one, that I balanced on my bed, as I daydreamed about mummies in Egypt or seeing lions in Africa.

Then  the Internet and Google arrived, transforming how people got their knowledge – free and instantly available. It was the end for printed versions of encyclopedias. Next, Wikipedia came into being at the turn of 2000. And that makes it 20 years today. Happy birthday! The online resource started off by being written by a few keen editors contributing articles about things they knew about which were then edited by others if they felt they needed to be corrected. Over the years the number of edits grew exponentially while the number of contributors levelled off and then declined considerably. There are now over 40 million accounts, suggesting a huge number of people worldwide have had a go at adding to this collective memory of knowledge. However, of those only 127,480 are actively editing today.

Then there were the infamous editing wars over the years where editors who disagreed about the content of a page repeatedly wrote over each other’s contributions, sometimes to the point of being quite vindictive – be it about politics, history or scandal. Someone, also thought it was a good idea to start contributing biographies for ‘known’ people – be they footballers, academics, actors, musicians and so on. As a result, it also became a Who’s Who. We all quickly discovered you can learn lots of interesting things about your colleagues – that you did not know otherwise – like what school they went to and how old they are.

But who has the time on their hands to do all of this? Especially, since it is not paid for. It seems the contributions are not evenly distributed. The person who has edited the most articles is Steven Pruitt who has made over three million edits! He has also created more than 35,000 articles. I wonder if he wrote or edited my entry. It now needs updating and I don’t think I should do it.

Dancing Queen

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Since the pandemic turned our world inside out most of us have been sat for hours on end each day in front of a display (phone, tablet, laptop or PC) interacting with all manner of virtual talking heads. We have gotten used to this way of connecting with our colleagues as the new normal – even joking about still wearing our pyjamas as no-one can see our lower half while on screen. We have also developed a new norm – turning our cameras and mikes on and off when coming in and out of focus during meetings. We don’t do this in the real world but we all do it now in the digital world. It is easier and less stressful to not be visibly present when not talking. Then there is the abrupt ending to our meetings, clicking on the ‘leave meeting’ button transports us back to our home life in an instant.
Today, I gave a keynote at a virtual conference called ISMAR20 that is about mixed and augmented reality. I have given a few invited talks now during lockdown. They are quite different in the extent to which I feel connected with the audience. Some totally detached and others more engaged. Today’s talk was more the latter. The organizers had asked me to record my talk beforehand so that I could be more relaxed during the session and also to reduce the risk of too many technical hiccups overshadowing the talk. The conference setting was a 3D virtual world; that was designed to be like a futuristic virtual campus, comprising lifelike campus buildings and luscious outdoor spaces (the actual conference was meant to have been held in Recife, Brazil).

It has been a long time since I have properly set foot in a 3D world. It required me becoming an avatar and controlling it with my keyboard as if just behind. I had a few attempts to get used to using my keyboard to move around. It is easy to move too fast and walk into or through a wall. A nice touch they had added was ‘clippy-cloppy’ noises as I walked. It almost made it feel I was walking in stilettos. For my appearance, I selected some clothing from a virtual wardrobe, dressing myself up for the occasion. I donned a blouse, skirt and jacket in contrasting colours. Instead of wearing a badge, my name appeared automatically above my head in a halo cloud that followed me around, making it easy for others to see who I was at a distance. Then I was ready to enter centre stage.


There was a lot of tech involved to switch between and to turn on and off at the right time – that needed practice. It seems virtual A/V is just as tricky to get right life as is physical A/V – if not more so. But we got there. Then when it was time for my talk I stood by the virtual podium facing the audience and my pre-recorded talk appeared on a large display behind me. It meant I could not see my slides as I ‘talked’. So, I popped up my slides on my laptop back home and listened to myself rabbiting on in the virtual space. All very strange. Sometimes I had an out of body experience.

 After my video ended, I ‘walked’ my avatar to stand besides another screen, clicked on it and there I was again, only this time, as a larger than life video feed fielding the audience questions, which the chair asked me via his avatar. At that point, there were too many of ‘me’. It made almost for an existential crisis, especially when the audio started reverberating. But I managed to cope – as you do – and answered the questions without too much waffling.

Then as I walked off the stage, I was not sure what to do with myself (there was no-one to go for coffee with) so I tried out some of the other avatar actions (like dancing, waving, clapping). Doing the samba was fun and reminded me of Theresa May’s entrance when she danced to Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’ at the Tory party conference in 2018.  But mine was as an exit to an empty space rather than as an entrance to a rousing crowd. Given the world is so topsy turvey right now  it seems apt to dance off stage than on to it. And then in a flash it was all over; I clicked the ‘quit menu option and walked to Tescos down the road to get a sandwich.

 

 

 

Remote Nurturing

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Many of my friends have taken to gardening during lockdown, making raised beds and planting whatever seeds they can get their hands on. Just like the craze for baking and bread-making, there is now one for growing your own food. The other day, my neighbour, Julie, proudly listed the latest seeds she has pricked and planted in our new communal street garden, including peas, potatoes, runner beans, borlotti beans, spinach, garlic, carrots and beetroot. We can all take it in turns to go and help nurture them, weeding, watering or adding more plants, although one neighbour is definitely the head gardener.

It got me thinking how could we could capitalize on these enterprising green finger efforts to make them even more of a shared event, where potentially hundreds or thousands of people could take part to grow one mega veggie patch or a series of connected gardens. Wouldn’t it be amazing if those who don’t have a garden could feel as connected to the earth as those who have actual gardens? As I wondered about this possibility, I was reminded of a project from many years ago when the internet was just getting off the ground called Telegarden. Anyone could log on to the site where you could watch a circular garden with a robot arm. You could also sign up to control the robot who would plant flowers and then water them. It was created by artists Ken Goldberg and Joseph Santarromana from California. It was kept alive for 9 years and during that time 10,000’s people connected. It was a fusion of tech and nature. The idea that a physical garden could be operated by users online was considered by the artists as being “the most absurd”. Now, in lockdown it does not seem quite as absurd.

How about we try to recreate a more up-to-date version of Telegarden (call it Lockdown Garden) in empty school yards, university campuses, national parks, meadows, or even on the land that people own but don’t have a use for. School children, grandparents, single people, young and old people, bored people, well anyone really, could log on, pay a small fee and select from a catalogue of fruit and veg seeds to grow. Drones and automated robots could work in tandem nurturing the garden, weeding and picking the veggies, that could then be donated to people in need. Our favourite TV gardening presenters, like Carol Klein and Monty Don in the UK, could judge the best kept Lockdown gardens and the most crazy, beautiful, bountiful and so on. And of course there could be disasters filmed by the drones that could keep the viewers and growers hooked, like the robots overwatering, marrows growing to be the size of a small car, and robots refusing to cooperate. Perhaps I am getting a bit carried away here but it would be a fun challenge for all those makers and engineering students who are now at a loose end.

Standing Out

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Much has been written about the power of a label to make the object it is attached to stand out. Popular techniques used include striking images, bright colours, ironic slogans and unusual designs. The trick is to make the label grab someone’s attention – be it online, in a store or in a catalogue. The competition for customer’s eyeballs is particularly marked for wine where there are thousands of brands vying for their attention.

On a recent trip to Western Australia, I visited Tylers, a small family-run vineyard who market their wine through a fun form of ‘selfie-labelling’. Visitors can pose for a photo which is then made into a label that can be stuck onto a bottle of wine they have purchased – transforming it into their very own personalized wine. All for no extra cost.

The vineyard was very low key, comprising a small farm shack where the tastings took place; the inside and outside of which were covered from top to bottom in previous visitors’ wine labels. Located in one corner of the shack was a dusty old PC, that was used to design the labels and a printer that kept getting jammed. It felt like stepping back in time to the halcyon 80s computing days. Some of my colleagues, who I was with on the wine tour, immediately saw how they could improve the tech. But for me, I thought its ‘old fustiness’ simply added to the place’s nostalgic charm.

Another recent innovation – also from Australia – has been to use augmented reality (AR) to make printed historical characters appearing on the wine label come alive – as if they were actually talking to you. The brand ‘19 Crimes’ has stolen the market on this; presenting a line-up of british convicts who were sent to Australia back in the 18th Century, and who regale their stories for why they were incarcerated and how they then subsequently became colonists. The AR characters celebrate the rebellious spirit of the exiled men and women who then went onto forge the national spirit in Australia. It is intriguing and atmospheric listening to their stories . Rather than using AR as part of a game, such as Pokeman Go does, it has been used in an adult context, bringing the story behind the wine label alive in a playful, mysterious and slightly uncanny way.

Placing labels on people, however, has a very different impact. The compulsory yellow badges that were required to be worn by Jewish people during the Nazi era were intended to stigmatize, humiliate, segregate and control them. Quite abominable. Nowadays, labels in the form of badges are used to signal implicit messages to the general public, asking for understanding and acts of kindness – for example, politely requesting someone give up their seat on the London Underground if they see a woman wearing a badge saying ‘baby on board’.

In Japan, a label has even been created for female staff to be worn when working in a store to indicate to other staff they are menstruating. The badge is adorned with a cartoon character called Miss Period. The underlying message is intended to enable other staff to feel OK helping the wearer and for the wearer to be excused if they feel the need to have a longer break. To many outside of Japan, it may seem somewhat strange and a little demeaning, to see someone wearing a Miss Period badge.

For shoppers not in the know, it might be read as saying, ‘I am having my period now’. But what is the customer to do? Should they avoid the sales assistant? Say something to them or other? Without any guidance, it can be awkward for the general public to know what to do or say on seeing such a badge being worn. In this context, the image is clear and rather cartoon-like, but the message less so, resulting in both the wearer and the observer feeling uncomfortable.

Another form of product labelling is one that informs consumers about something. One such initiative that is doing the rounds again is called PACE – which stands for ‘Physical Activity Calorie Equivalent or Expenditure’. The underlying rationale is that a label is placed on food or drink packaging to specify how much exercise would be needed to burn off the calories, if it was consumed – for example when eating a burger or drinking a can of coke. Some people may take the number literally and spend 40 minutes on a treadmill to earn their drink. Others might think twice about having extra fries or a muffin, when reading how much exercise is needed to burn it off. It might just nudge them to refrain.

An ongoing debate is whether this kind of information is more effective at making people change their behaviour than simply stating the number of calories. Does a calorific number (e.g. 600) or a type of activity (e.g. a 40 minute run) increase the likelihood of taking more exercise and or eating less? A recent study by the University of Loughborough has suggested that people selected about 65 calories less per meal when their food was labelled using the Pace system. That is nearly a whopping saving of 200 calories a day. It is not clear, however, whether its impact also increased their physical activity in the manner subscribed.

I also wonder if it might make people think that as I have saved on eating less during the day by having an apple rather than a chocolate bar, I have earned myself an extra glass of wine in the evening. When it comes to Christmas dinners, I can’t see many saying no to a second helping of  homemade trifle and then hoofing it down the park for a 2 hour run.

Men First

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Thread ad on trainSitting on the tube on my way to work a slogan in a new ad on the train caught my eye, “Cheat. Dress Better.” Whatever could it mean? Not being a particularly natty dresser myself I took a closer look. The company called Thread brings “expert stylists with clever AI to find great clothes in your style, size and budget.” Wow that sounds just what most of us need. First warning sign all was not well was when I looked closer at the mobile app also being shown on the ad, which simply showed a pair of jeans, trainers and a plain shirt. The sort of uniform casual look that many of us dress ourselves in each day. Why do we need other intelligence (human or artificial) to dress us when we can do it ourselves perfectly well? I was intrigued by their claim that they could dress us better and so went to their website.

Then I saw red. The website was not ready to dress me! It is available… but only for men. The womens’ one is still in the pipeline as they are busy trying to recruit “a team of women’s stylists” (sic) and “a whole new system of algorithms to help you find the best clothes for you.” The message is loud and clear: men are more important. Why did they think it was OK to put men first in 2019? And why does it need men to dress men and women to dress women?

Sexism aside, I pretended to be a man to get my perfect clothing combo and set about doing the 3 minute quiz that is on their men’s site. It asks me to choose looks for casual, office, and smarter styles (to look sharp). The models, however, have had their heads removed from view (presumably it is cheaper and does not contravene data laws) and so one is drawn to look at other parts of their bodies. I am not sure I should be doing that. Then it gets a bit more personal, asking me which shops I like to buy at and how much do I usually spend on clothes.

Then it asks me to give my sizes for the various body parts, like my waist size and leg length. Then a strange category appears called ‘fit concern’. We all think something is not right about our bodies, I suppose, and would prefer to be shorter, taller, have longer arms, smaller waistline and so on. What else was on offer opened my eyes to other possibilities. I selected muscular thighs and long arms. I pressed to submit but the app came back and told me off for missing out selecting my shoe size (that is also a no-no in interface design as I was not interested in shoes and they should not force me to divulge personal information I don’t want to give). The menu selections continued (I was onto 5 minutes by this stage).

Eventually after opting out of joining their mailing list (a dark pattern that makes me have to deselect rather than being able to opt in) I am presented with some nice sketches of different clothes categories. After selecting from these, the app asks me what clothes do I own? At this point most people would have given up and resorted to browsing clothes stores online. But if you continue – you are asked even more personal questions; including what is in your wardrobe and then at the end they ask you to upload a photo of yourself to show what you look like. “Seeing what you look like will help us make better suggestions.”  I drew the line there, too. I thought that must surely be it but no the app then asks you to add more information about yourself: your hair colour, skin colour, eye colour. To help, they give you menu options, including one I selected out of curiosity ‘white with freckles’. So not me!

Finally, an image of my very own stylist called Alexander appeared on my screen. Looks promising. Trouble is that a message then pops up to say that it will take Alex several hours while working with the AI algorithms to come up with a look for me. That is really crap AI and even worse UX design. Meanwhile, to keep me amused some handy fashion tips appear on the site based on the body type options I selected earlier, about how to dress muscular thighs and long arms. Honestly?

My expectations have been let down too many times on this customer journey. Rather than cheating fashion I feel cheated. I certainly won’t be going back to the site for when the women finally get their expert female stylists to work with their hopefully gender neutral algorithms.

It is great that developers are working out how to enable real humans to be able to interact with AI to make informed decisions about something – be it what to wear, what to eat, what university to choose, what car to buy, what book to read, and so on. This human-AI tool has potential to show how human and artificial intelligence can work together to provide personalization and a new kind of customer attention. But right now it needs a lot more work to make it work. Meanwhile I’ll just pop into Jigsaw and H&M to check out what tops and jeans they have. There might even be a sales assistant on hand to help out if I need a different size, colours or a new combo.

Plastic Robots

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Six months ago, I was all in favour of the arrival of interactive androgynous robots in public places, like shopping malls and airports, that had the potential to be equally appealing and entertaining to kids of all ages and gender. Now I am not so sure. When departing from San Jose airport the other day, I came across a new breed of plastic robots that provide public services for travellers and their young children. The first one I encountered was a weird looking robot-guide, about adult-sized, who looked less robot-like and more digital display-like with a ‘blockhead’ stuck on top.  I approached it out of curiosity, then started pressing icons on the display to get directions to a coffee shop. While interacting with it, its encased head appeared to move while its eyes blinked at me. Not creepy but over the top silliness: a strange way to mix technology. Three of these so called greeters, named Norma, Piper and Amelia, have been at San Jose for over six months! They were developed by a Korean company and cost $120,000 each. That might explain their design but this is Silicon Valley.

Then a hundred meters away, I noticed a play area where two more plastic robots stood motionless amongst a bunch of other more colorful, conventional toys, such as a truck, balls, soft dolls, a desk and chair, crayons and the like. When a mother stopped to look, the human assistant in the play area invited her to place her toddler into the play pen. She then  switched on the robots to make them come alive with the goal of attracting the child towards them. Their tummy displays lit up and they made some sounds. One started moving its clunky arms towards the toddler, as if beckoning it to come closer. The child glanced momentarily at it but then turned to play with the truck on the ground that it was near to. They seemed far too big and ungamely for toddler interest. Compared with the toys that come alive in the Toy Story movie, the robots did not become animated when switched on but stood strangely, inanimate and cold-looking. And their white plastic bodies looked most unappealing. Neither robot had mouths but just big inset eyes. One of the robots had been dressed in a little frilly, red tutu-thingy. It looked most bizarre. The mix of cloth, plastic and digital display materials did not work at all together in this context. And why leave the other one ‘naked’? Most people walked straight passed the play area without so much as a glance. But one couple that did stop (they seemed to know the human assistant already) placed their toddler in the smaller pen next to the robot area. The toddler started to play with some Disney-character, oversized, but more ‘normal’ looking dolls. During this interaction, none of the assembled humans took a blind bit of notice of the robots.

I walked closer to the play area to read the marketing banner that was promoting the new child-friendly robot. “I am cute, I am cool, I am capable” it proudly acclaimed. We have a long way to go before robots start to get  anywhere near being any of these – let alone useful, attractive or desirable – at least in these settings.

Smart AI

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One of my PhD students has been investigating how environmental sensors can be situated in community gardens to provide new data about light levels. The motivation stems from wanting to help the volunteers who work in these gardens decide what to plant and where best to plant new crops. The data can be digitally visualised for them on a display to provide new information about the patterns of shade and bright sunlight over time. Information they don’t currently have access to. Instead they rely on previous knowledge and experiences of what worked and what didn’t do so well. The aim is to augment people’s existing knowledge with new contextual information, especially where it can be difficult to predict how different areas of a garden changes due to seasonal shifts in light and variable plant growth.

However, the initial reaction from the community gardeners was one of scepticism. They did not want to have ‘computers’ in the garden because that is where they come to get away from the digital world. Instead they value the experience of being in the garden and the importance of ‘getting their hands in the dirt’.

But later, when shown the sensed light levels in different parts of the garden over time, using augmented reality, their initial resistance was replaced with a degree of curiosity. They could see the potential benefit of having such light data to hand that could be overlaid on their schematic sketches and maps of the garden when planning in the potting shed. What they were clear about was not wanting an app that gave them advice  about what to do in the garden.

Meanwhile in India, Microsoft in conjunction with the Andhra Pradesh government have been using AI and machine learning to help local farmers determine when best to sow their seeds for groundnut, rice, maize, cotton and the like. Using 40 years of past data for weather patterns and soil conditions, they have been able to develop a predictive model of the likelihood of rain, drought and even pest attacks. From their models, they can determine when the best time is to sow seeds in a given region so as to optimise yield and reduce risk of failure.

The really cool part of the project though is how the new knowledge is delivered to the farmers. Not via a smartphone app but by Microsoft letting the farmers know simply through sending them a text message – in their native language – to their feature phones.  And for those who can’t read they  leave a voice message. Gut feeling, experience and human wisdom are being replaced by straight forward messages – based on a remarkable combination of weather forecasting, satellite images, machine learning and cloud services. And what’s more, the farmers don’t need to have any sensors installed in their fields.

Who wouldn’t want to take heed from free advice coming from the cloud that is better informed and has a better chance of increasing their income? This seems like a win-win situation for all concerned. Local farmers benefit without having to compromise or change their practice. Scientists get to demonstrate a real impact of AI through increasing the income of people living in developing countries – without replacing them with robots or pushing ads down their phones. And Microsoft can bask in a feel-good factor for providing the infrastructure and wherewithal.

But what happens if the advice given is wrong?  And the farmers end up planting too early or too late resulting in a poor crop yield. Do they simply shrug their shoulders and think, oh well even AI can get it wrong. Do they continue to follow the text advice, next time – just like many people now have taken to blindly following their GPS when driving – sometimes against their better judgement. Or will they abandon the advice, revert to their gut instinct and decide once more for themselves? I supect we are in the midst of a quiet revolution in rural farming and there is no looking back. The AI will keep improving, too. But then again, global warming is also in our midst. And that is unpredictable.

 

Driverless Cars

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We hear all the time now about how driverless cars will revolutionize the automobile industry. Billions of dollars, yen and euros are being poured into research labs throughout the world to make this happen. The race is on – who will lay the golden egg? Google has spun out its own company, Waymo, calling itself, “a self-driving tech company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to move around”; Apple’s CTO has described their venture as “the mother of all AI projects”, while relative newcomers to the field, Uber, fancy their chances, too.

The rhetoric behind why such a game changer in car control is inevitable is hard to argue against. It usually starts with how many people are killed in car accidents. From the road crash statistics website, we see that “Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled. More than half of all road traffic deaths occur among young adults ages 15-44.” That makes it the biggest killer amongst young people. The bottom line is that self-driving cars will make our roads safer by reducing human error. The computer controlled cars will be able to be programmed to be reliable, safe and efficient. Unlike, human drivers, they won’t be susceptible to poor judgement caused by road rage, fatigue, failing eyesight, texting, distraction caused by talking on the phone, etc. Furthermore, driverless cars will enable people who can’t drive, for whatever reasons, to be mobile. Instead of hailing a taxi or waiting for a bus they will be able to call up a driverless car from their garage or a special pod and instruct it to go where they want to. Who would not want such a future?

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA. One of the first Google self-driving cars being  displayed at the Google headquarters in 2012 in California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

However, there is a long way to go before anyone gets anywhere near the finishing line. It is a ginormous undertaking to work out how to transform society so that the billions of cars we currently use today are replaced by driverless ones. It is not like developing a single piece of tech, such as a smartphone, or even a big piece of tech, such as a process control plant. The amount of computation required to run a driverless car city is likely to involve trillions of lines of code in conjunction with the necessary radar, LIDAR sensors, and other hardware/software (current cars use millions of lines of code to work). The driverless car city will also need to sort out how to deal with all the legal, social, logistical, ethical and environmental aspects: who is responsible for updating the software, how the cars are taxed, who is responsible for paying out compensation, who pays for the upkeep of the new whole system, whether children can be driven alone in a car and so on.

I have been trying to imagine what it would be like to be in Tokyo, Beijing, Paris, London or even Brighton with a new road system that supports self-driving cars. I find it hard to compute. For starters, people are not stupid and they like a bit of mischief. Once they clock that jumping in front of a driverless automated car will result in it stopping in its tracks – all manner of ‘knock down ginger’ car games will come into being. The autonomous car system will quickly come to a standstill especially when a group of teenagers start the craze of flash mob car standstills. Sure, the authorities will eventually make this kind of behaviour illegal but people will still find ways of getting in the way of the driverless cars.

And what about bikes weaving in and out and whizzing past the driverless cars? That will give their laser beams a right wobble. Next, the authorities will have to force bike riders and pedestrians to wear sensor and laser tech themselves, too – so a system of systems will have to decide who has priority, whether to stop a car or hoot at a person to stop.

Governments will then have the smart idea of keeping cars, bikes and people segregated – just like they did when building the relatively new city of Milton Keynes. In this modern metropolis, the cars drive above ground on a grid and roundabout system while the cyclists and pedestrians cycle on red paths (called ‘redways’) along a network of canals and through a cobweb of underpasses. The result is a city of isolated burbs that don’t connect (and apparently has one of the lowest cycling levels in the UK). As Ben Evans tweeted the other day, just like “horseless carriages – remove the horse and everything else changes”. There is none of the rub of what a city should really be – amongst which the smells, blasts, sirens, laughter, screams and revving of waiting cars are central.

Vehicle autonomy may save more lives than our current cars but at the expense of requiring segregation of the people from their urban centres and separate driverless car networks. Is that what we really want? Perhaps the less lofty goal of augmenting existing vehicles with all manner of driving aids that can help drivers be more alert and help reduce their errors by taking control at opportune times is the best way forward?

All-electric Car

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Driving a fully electric car for the first time felt like being in an ultra turbo charged golf buggy. Well, the acceleration and deceleration part of driving. Instead of going vroom vroom when you put your foot on the pedal the car shot off with a G-force lurch in almost silence. And when you take your foot off the pedal the opposite happens. In equal measures, the deceleration is quite dramatic. There is no need to use the brake as the stopping happens automatically.

The car in question was the new BMW i3. I had been offered the chance to give it a test drive while at a conference in Brisbane, Australia. At first blush, it looks like any other mid-range car – shiny and stylish on the outside, roomy and detailed on the inside. However, it begins to look different when you peer in. For a start there are no door handles on the back seat doors (I begun my trip as a passenger). The driver has to let you in by pushing out a swing-like saloon door. Then, when you take a closer look at the dashboard it seems not quite right. Things seem to be missing while others are in strange places. Switches and buttons have replaced mechanical parts. For example, to start, you press a button to switch the ‘engine’ on and flick another switch to turn the hand brake off. No force is required to yank the gear lever or make sure the hand brake is fully disengaged.
BNW

A light touch is only ever needed throughout the experience. There is never any sense of ‘giving it a bit of welly’. The only welly seems to be hidden in the car when it seemingly takes a lot of the control out of the driving.

So how best to describe the all-electric car? Coffee comes to mind. The drive starts off like an espresso and then switches into a latte. You get a jolt, reaching 100 km from standing in only 7.2 seconds. After that, it feels very smooth and quiet as the outdoors passes you by. There is no smell of petrol, oil or diesel or in the marketing blurb “no odours at the point of use”. And of course, there is no purring or idling of the engine. Just new car smell silence.

The blurb on the website goes onto claim, “first and foremost it delivers exceptional driving pleasure. To move off from a standstill, just dip the accelerator gently and the BMW i3 will accelerate powerfully and almost silently.”

Somehow dipping and driving don’t mix just like oil and water.

“How did you like the dip?”
“Quite a big one, eh!”
“Wasn’t that quiet acceleration out of this world?”

“Zero Co2 emissions, zero noise, zero coke.” It seems, we are increasingly living in a world of denial.

You can’t imagine a boy racer talking like that. The language of driving is going to have change to match the new slipper-soled, all-electric experience.

bmw-i8-spyder-ces-2016-04When I parked the car, I eyed a gleaming orange BMW i8 parked nearby. I could not take my eyes off it – nor could many other passers-by. Now, that is the super duper souped up top of the range going for a song, to the order of £250K. Obviously, targeted at the wealthy to swan about in. The doors open outwards, again, but this time more majestically like insect wings. It flies like an angel, just maybe.

Cognitive Dressing

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gettyimages There is so much hype about AI at the moment; how it is going to transform society in so many ways. The 4th industrial revolution seems to be in our midst. Our lives will be made more efficient and everything will be easier but at the cost of 20th century jobs ceasing to be and machines becoming more autonomous.

The latest offering is from the fashion house Marchesa who have teamed up with IBM Watson to make an AI-enabled dress – somewhat misleadingly called a cognitive dress. The dress has a network of LEDs sewn into it that can change colour depending on signals sent to them. LEDs in clothing has been around for years and is super dumb. So what is intelligent about the cognitive dress? Well it is based on an analysis of social media data in realtime. IBM Watson analyzes Marchesa’s follower’s tweets tagged #CognitiveDress, instagrams and Facebook posts – and uses these to translate the aggregated sentiment expressed through colours. Words like cool, amazing and awesome are tagged as positive emotions and if enough are detected then the dress will transform into a rose colour (signifying joy) and then coral when the sentiments get a bit more passionate, and then aqua if excitement is detected. Others colours projected are lavender that shows the followers are curious about a model or product and butter to show encouragement.

replace_flower_back_2xNow remind me what lavender means? The mappings between the colours and the underlying sentiments seem fairly arbitrary but maybe that does not matter. Followers watching the models on the catwalk can ‘see’ the colours on the dress change in response to their Internet activity.

But this isn’t AI in the true sense. It is a bit of keyword crunching and machine learning, triggering colours to turn on when a threshold for a state has been reached. The underlying technology that was developed to do this is hardly rocket science. IBM also uses its powerful computers to gather thousands of images stored by Marchesa and feeds them into a color design tool, which it claims to be able to understand how the psychological effects of colors, image aesthetics and emotions are interrelated. Maybe that could be considered cleverer. The creative part however is not what appears on the dress – but a neat design tool built on this that can suggest a new palette to designers that they might not have thought about and which fits Marchesa’s brand.

There is much more that can be done with the emerging AI technology. But, importantly, we should be thinking of how humans can work together with computers to make better decisions than each can do alone – about how to live our lives more creatively and enjoyably, resolve complex problems, create new inventions, work out how best to feed 7 billion people, develop new economics models and so on. What excites me is how computation, machine learning, and human intelligence is how we can synergistically come up with new ideas for a diversity of tasks, from planning a complex itinerary, determining the best way to learn, and to help politicians work together on a new global warming agreement, peace initiative, or trade policy. It requires thinking at what points should computers solve problems, simulate solutions, and show outcomes and at what points should humans intervene, overide, control, suggest and inspire.

Super Smellers

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carscentsLast night the weather suddenly turned into a full on symphony as I made a dash from the train to the taxi rank; all at once rain started lashing, wind howling, lightning sheeting, thunder cracking, reaching a crescendo of hailstones crashing on the ground. It really was a case of elephants and lions rather than cats and dogs. I sank into the backseat of a taxi thankful I did not have to wait. The inclement weather was mercifully silenced and shut out by the slam of my door. Within seconds my nostrils were filled with a distinctive smell of almonds that turned to marzipan. Before I knew it, I was being transported back to childhood memories of eating Christmas cake.

Because it was such an unusual and strong smell, I mentioned it to the cab driver who guffawed:

“All the girls say that. Smelling of almonds and then marzipan. It is actually Coronado Cherry.”

I sniffed again and tried hard to think of cherries and sure enough I began to detect some different notes.

“Yes, it is cherries like you taste in Dr Pepper!” I chirped.

He laughed heartily again.

He replied “It is funny because men usually say it smells of chocolate.”

We then got into a very animated conversation about the difference between men and women’s ability to smell. He reckoned that 9.5 out of 10 women say it smells like almonds while 9 out of 10 men say it is like chocolate. His sample is based on the 10-20 customers he picks up a day over the last 3 years he has been buying his tubs of California Coronado Cherry. What is more, he doesn’t ask them directly, but just waits for them to say something about what they can smell. Just like with me that sets him off. What a wonderful icebreaker I mused.

But not only that, it is a lot of data collected ‘in the wild’ that shows a massive gender difference. I had no idea we were so different in our ability to identify smells. Whether women are better is another matter since we all seem to think his car smells more almond than cherry.

littletreeI’ve always thought car air fresheners are a bit naff. My memory of cardboard pine trees in a variety of colours dangling from rearview mirrors is that they were always overpowering and unpleasant – artificial sickly sweet. Reminded me of when I was 16 – and the first time I went on a date with Aaron the carpet-layer from Luton – who had a couple hanging in his Ford Cortina. Whatever was I doing…

carscent2When I bought my Scirocco a couple of years ago, it had that horrible new car smell of plastic and rubber. It never seemed to fade, so I caved in and went to Halfords in search of a car freshener to mask it. I was amazed to discover just how many different kinds of exotic trees, sticks, sprays, and tubs of super smelly gunk there are now to fill our cars with fragrance. Seems the marketing departments have gone overboard with Tropicana scents that conjure up drinking cocktails on a beach. All of them had exotic sounding names with the likes of “Jelly bean Margarita”, “Bahama Aruba Blue Breeze” and “Bahama Waikiki Wild Hibiscus Vent Sticks.” I bought a stick that promised the taste of Pina Colada – coconuts and pineapple. After taking the wrapper off, however, it smelt more like the Costa del Sol than fresh fruits. It was awful. I had to throw it out and keep the car windows open for a couple of weeks to get rid of the new smell.

As we neared home, my taxi driver regaled how he has met women who could even name the make and brand of perfume others are wearing. What must it be like to be a super smeller?

Which Reality?

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markzuckerbergVirtual Reality is all the rage again. Last week Mark Zuckerberg extolled the joys of not only being able to see and interact in virtual worlds but to be able to record those special moments, yourself, using a 360 degree camera. Up until now, we have had to rely on filmmakers and researchers to develop the VR content using expensive equipment and powerful software. But it seems, sometime soon we will be able to get our hands on the technology and start capturing birds in flight, cars racing past and our dogs doing tricks – so that our friends and ourselves can see and share them from all angles. For Zuckerberg, a recent father, it was imagining being able to capture his daughter’s first steps that caught the headlines:

“I hope we have a 360 camera that can capture the whole scene, so if my family isn’t there to experience it, I can send it to them afterwards — or it would be real-time enough where I could stream it to them live. They could put on a headset or get a message and feel like they’re really there and experiencing it.”

What a wonderful sentiment. But I wonder how much better the experience will be than existing ways of capturing those special moments, like using smartphone video or GoPro or even a cheap and cheerful camera – that can be quickly uploaded to Instagram or Facebook or WhatsApp or whatever – for all to see at the press of a button or a swipe of the phone. With VR it requires donning a headset to see the content. For many that could be a step too far. While the headsets will come down in price and every household will be able to afford one for Christmas – it is likely to not be the best quality. For an unknown number of people (could be quite high) it will make them feel claustrophobic, nauseous or headachy. Also overlooked in the current hype and fanfare about VR, is that the headsets are like toothbrushes – fine for you to wear but not for anyone else to use. They can pick up human scent, especially hair sweat – being worn so closely to the head – meaning they can get very smelly and unhygienic. It is likely that no one wants to don the VR headset of a teenager gamer anymore than they would want to try on their sneakers.

phphh9njx The few times I have tried on an Occulus Rift headset it has been sanitized for me with a sterilized wet wipe. Even then, I detected a slight whiff of the last person who wore them. Can’t see people getting the wet wipes out every time they want a quick VR fix. Of course we could each own our own headset but you might find out you don’t like the smell of your own head. I suspect the first generation of VR headsets targetted at the general market will go the way 3D glasses went – those that had to be worn for 3DTV. Most have fallen into disuse, disrepair or got lost behind the back of the sofa.

giphy Besides wearing a VR headset makes people look weird and as this video attests, it is also terribly anti-social. You immediately shut yourself off from the rest of the world in ways that other technologies don’t. While it can be very annoying to be shut out when someone answers a call or checks their phone when you are in a conversation with them – you can look away, fiddle with your own phone or give them a glare to let them know how you feel. When someone goes into VR forget it.

3ddisposeOf course you could meet others in the guise of avatars in a VR world and have lots of fun. That possibility has been around for year for gamers. Other areas, such as training and overcoming phobias like fear of flying have also been benefitting from the application of this technology for a while. The leap from this to everyday viewing and sharing of moments is still a leap of faith. Having said that – when the first disposable 3D cameras came out back in the mid 90s I was bowled over by the 3D postcard photos they created. And spent a happy few months playing with them. Then they just disappeared off the shelf. Whatever happened to them?

imagesMy money is on augmented reality being the winner. Microsoft’s HoloLens looks amazing. Where it differs from VR is in the nature of the wearable and the digital augmentation. The wizardry behind HoloLens, will allow the user to still see and engage with the real world while also interact with all sorts of overlaid 3D content on that world. It is still very much a technology for the individual but at least you will be able to see what the rest of the family is up to in the living room or whether the real family dog wants some attention.

Super Technology

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logo_rememberthemilk My smartphone beeps. This time, a message from my fridge alerting me to buy milk on the way home. This rather tired example of smart technology is still being rolled out whenever anyone talks about the benefits that future technology holds for us. Why can’t it order the milk and get it delivered without needing to involve me? Surely, that would be the smart thing to do. A bottle of milk would be sitting there on the doorstep for when I arrived home. But, equally, I could have nipped out to the corner shop when finding the milk had run out. Just like many of us happily do now. Once there, we might have a chat with the shopkeeper and find out about the local gossip or their opinion about the heatwave or their joy at England beating the Aussies in the latest Test match. And even try the new apple and ginger fruit juice he has just got in.

cornershopMuch of everyday life is made up of these unexpected encounters. We bump into people we know all the time: at work, down the street, at the cinema, in the supermarket and even miles away on holiday. Inconsequential in themselves but which is the social glue that holds society together.

Opportunities for unexpected human contact are slowly being eroded for every transaction that becomes automated – unless you use apps like Tinder specifically to meet a random person you fancy the look of. Taking humans out of the loop is of course nirvana for business, helping them to cut down on operating costs while making services more efficient – and at the same time encouraging people to buy more.

It can also take the headache out of having to queue – and how we hate having to wait for others in front of us especially if they are slow. Last week, when driving to Cambridge, I whizzed across the Dartford Crossing without having to stop at a toll booth and chuck a few quid into an over-sized bucket and then wait magically for the barrier to rise. The new Dart Charge system that has been installed swiftly reads your car registration number and checks to see that you have paid online within 24 hours of crossing. That is super technology.

Dartford_Crossing_400x400dartsystem-large

Trouble is it takes five minutes to fill in the form and register online to use the Dart service. They want to know all sorts of things about you, your car and not forgetting the all important bank details. The same has happened now when parking at Brighton station. There are no barriers or uniformed officials sitting in glass windowed booths. There is still one small wooden hut but it was locked with not a person in sight. All rather eerie. You can pay in advance or up to 24 hours afterwards. After that they slap on a penalty. I paid as soon as I got home fearful I would completely forget once ensconced in domestic life.

It took me another five minutes to key in my details online. The same pattern happens when buying tickets for train journeys. I nearly missed my train last week when trying to buy a ticket to Lincoln on the Virgin site. There was some mix up with being a new user versus a registered one. And it did not tell me until I had filled in all the details including the prized seat facing forward at a table with electric socket. They just vanished from the screen after the error was detected. I had to get a new password as I could not remember what it was. It would have been easier if I had bought it at the station and much less frustrating!

The underside of the relentless push towards ever more automation is that we humans have to do the ‘paper’ work to make it work – tapping all those personal details into our computers or smartphones for every new transaction, making up new passwords and forgetting them. For each new cloud-based system that comes along and replaces the old fashioned way of doing things – like paying with cash and having a human be in charge of the transaction – requires us to sign up before or after and give bank details.

And then there all of those services that we have signed up for using direct debit because it was easier and because sometimes they give a miniscule reduction – be it the TV licence, car tax, gas, water, leccie, Virgin/Sky Media, Netflix, O2 and so on. While taking away the pain of having to fill out yet another form online (once it has been set up) it means we forget how much money each month they are taking from us. When they increase their monthly subscription or charge we simply shrug. I don’t know how many direct debits and standing orders I have now. Some just disappear from my radar. When email notifications pop up from these companies I often don’t bother opening them. I don’t want to really know I have spent an extra £50 this month on data while roaming abroad.

Shockingly, I don’t know how much I earn anymore. Instead of enjoying the monthly ritual of opening a pay slip that would come in a brown envelope – especially when there was a rise due, many of us now have to go online to find out. That means remembering the URL or typing into the search engine when in the work’s intranet and tapping in our user ID and password (finding the one the computer used to have stored is no longer valid) to get to the same information. I simply forget – since there is no monthly email reminder I’ve been paid. And it is not as pleasurable looking at the data in a spreadsheet format – which invariably it is formatted in.

The weather is miserable out there today. So I booked online to get tickets to go to the cinema tonight. It only took a couple of minutes, even after having to scroll down a long menu of countries to enter that I live in the UK. Why do they need to know that? Then up popped a ‘Verified by Visa’ form for me to fill in. I hate those things and can never remember what the 2nd, 4th or 8th or other 3 random sequence of letter/digits they ask for from my password for that credit card. So another couple of minutes filling this bit in and stressing that it was correct.

Hey presto – up popped the message:
“ORDER COMPLETED SUCCESSFULLY”
but then as I read on:

“Collect your tickets from the cinema counter or kiosk – Don’t forget your Reference Number!”

Usually it provides a RFID code that you print off as your ticket so you don’t have to queue. What was the point of doing all that key tapping in again and paying an extra online booking fee (nice one!) if I still needed to line up?

An email arrived a few minutes later with the codes on them. Just as well.

I just read in the news that the number of fines issued by the new automated payment system at the Dartford Crossing in its first 6 months exceeded the number of speeding tickets issued in England and Wales for an entire year! 867,897 motorists were fined £70 each compared to the 713,000 speeding tickets issued throughout the whole of England and Wales. That is a whopping £60,752,790! But it gets worse. Some drivers have reported that they are being charged on days when they have not used the crossing. Apparently, the automated letter recognition software sometimes mixes Cs and Gs and other similar looking letters. That is not smart technology. I dread to think how much has been made by Transport for London (TfL) since the Congestion charge was introduced in London over ten years ago. In 2009, alone, nearly 1.5 million congestion charge penalty charge notices at £120 each were made. TfL managed to collect £77m of what was owed to them. That is daylight robbery.

360 Degrees

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110_view_of_i360My office manager asked me if I would do a 360 degree feedback process for her about the way she behaves at work. I tried to imagine what that would entail – moving around her from above and viewing her from every angle? Just like this new i360 viewing experience currently being built on the Brighton seafront. In reality, it means receiving feedback from a person’s immediate work circle and the person also rating themselves. In other words, 360 means multiple perspectives.

My colleague’s email ended with her asking me, “Please do be brutally honest in your answers.” My immediate reaction was to be aghast at being asked to do this. She reassured me that the process is intended to help her develop as a manager and was not meant to be about evaluating her performance. But there is a fine line. Giving someone feedback on how well they are doing and how they could improve, in my mind, is a form of appraisal. Surely, better done using a proper procedure where there is a form both have filled in to use as a vehicle to talk through, where the appraiser gives a mix of selective, gentle and praiseworthy feedback combined with carefully worded constructive criticism – not multi-rater scales with radio buttons you click on to be brutally honest. And, as I am her line manager she will know immediately what I have said: “Your responses will be anonymous and it will not be possible to attribute ratings to any individual Rater, unless you have been nominated as X’s Manager.”

I was talking to someone else at a different university who is also going through the same Leadership and Management course (seems every university in the UK has signed up their staff for it) and he seemed to think he had learnt more about himself as part of the process. When pressed, however, he seemed less willing to provide specific examples of what this meant in practice. But let’s hope that learning more about yourself in this round about fashion might make you understand how to manage yourself and others better.

Much more fun are the magic mirror augmented reality apps that are coming out, intended to enhance and extend the user experience by giving people real-time feedback on how they look when trying things on, like sunglasses, make-up or clothes. I’ve tried a couple of them with a number of colleagues, students and friends and each time it is hilarious. The first trylive-eyewear lets you try on a range of glasses as if you were looking in a mirror. As you move your head around the virtual glasses appear to stay stuck to your face making it appear like you really are wearing them. It is uncanny.

http://youtu.be/kpwhjGOi5KQ

MakeUp Genius by L’Oreal is a free app you can download that lets you try on lots of different kinds of makeup – especially that you would never dream of wearing normally.

http://youtu.be/67Fw855WzVc

That kind of 360 degrees is a lot of fun!

Voicing Opinions

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VoxBox_sideThis morning I received an evaluation summary, via email, about a conference I gave a keynote at a few weeks ago. It presented lots of pie charts and collated all the comments attendees had cared to write up. I always dread reading this kind of feedback. A comment from a student on the very first course I taught at Sussex University has stuck with me ever since, etched permanently in my brain, “Yvonne needs to speak more loudly. Or get a microphone.” Not the worst or most critical of those that I have received over the years since, but it hit a raw nerve at the time as I thought I was trying my hardest to project my voice.

I scanned through the comments from the conference summary to see what was written about me and staring me in the face was the comment, “Yvonne’s talk was interesting, but her presenting was not as engaging as, for example, the second keynote speaker”. That did not feel good. I got that sinking feeling, being such a sensitive soul. I read on fearing the worst. Someone else had written, “the second keynote speaker was too self-centric and showed too many pictures of himself.” I was the first keynote. Phew!

Further down the evaluation was a section on the catering. People are very picky when it comes to what they eat and drink, it seems, “Almost all tea at coffee breaks was flavored — not tea!” This was counteracted by a comment written by one seemingly happy camper, “As a vegetarian, I am used to going hungry at conferences, either because meals are lost or have no protein. The veg meals here were FANTASTIC.”

Right at the end there was a section for attendees to “describe the best aspects of the conference.” And there in the middle of some praise about the conference organization, venue, and warm atmosphere, someone had written, “The first keynote was really, really excellent in it’s inspirational creativity.” I am not sure it undid the damage made by the first comment as negativity always seems to make more of a mark than positivity, staying longer with you. But that person’s praise certainly helped restore my self-esteem.

I have always been in two minds about the value of this kind of customer/student/attendee feedback because of the way it can sting. Reading the negative reviews on Trip Advisor may be entertaining and informative to the traveller but it can damage someone’s business if it is over the top or simply not fair. Someone may bear a grudge, be picky or have an axe to grind and being invited to write an online review about their recent experience gives them the license to do so – especially if they can remain anonymous.

But it is not just conferences, courses or travel sites that ask for feedback, it seems to have become the default request for an increasing number of our experiences – be it a trip to the dentist, doctor or candlestick maker. Governments, policy makers and councils are all eager to find out more about what we are thinking and feeling. There are numerous online sites asking people to voice their opinions about any number of topics, from internet security to what to do about fly tipping in the countryside. Trouble is it is usually only a minority who sign up to take part in these online forums. Most people are too busy, can’t see the point of taking part or are simply not interested. Others are suspicious of where our personal data ends up. When we see someone with a clipboard or tablet computer in the street coming towards us we look down and steer away from them. We’ve all been asked at some point or other to help out with market research or public opinion. Standing there in the street giving your age, gender, and views about a topic with a stranger is not pleasant and can be socially awkward. Is it any wonder most people shy away from voicing their opinons?
voxbox2Welcome to VoxBox – our latest creation that is “a playful machine that wants your opinions.” Instead of ticking boxes or typing comments online or on paper an assortment of colourful sliders, buttons, and switches are presented for people to turn, dial and slide their answers to. At the end of completing the questions an old fashioned phone rings and asks you an open-ended question. After completing a set of questions the box lights up and a ball drops down a chute to show completion rate. How different is that? On the back are real time visualisations updating the data collected, for example, showing the percentage of people who are enjoying and feel part of the event. We designed it to be deliberately brightly coloured and attractive.
voxbox3
We trialed it for the first time the other week at the Tour de France fan park in Green Park while the cyclists were peddling from Cambridge to London. Many people dropped by to take a look at VoxBox. Over 120 people took part and gave their opinions about the event, including groups of friends, families, couples and individuals. Some even queued for the experience. It was a joy to see them taking it seriously, reading the questions our aloud, talking to one another about the questions and lifting their young kids to voice their opinions. Yesterday I got an email from a colleague who works at the BBC who remarked how it reminded him of, “a mix of Willy Wonka, the controls of the Tardis and those ornate fairground automata. You certainly pulled off the irresistible affordance of ‘come and have a go’. Maybe we should start puting VoxBoxes in conferences…
questionvisualisation

Fascinating Bodies

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shadow02We are fascinated with our bodies and the shadows they project. From making hand shadows by creative molding and twisting of our hands and fingers under a projector light to interactive artistic works that encourage you to move and twist to make larger than life shadows on public walls such as Felix Bonowski’s Proximity Repulsion, recently shown at the Saatchi Gallery. felixrepulsion

Then there is Nature that does it on your behalf, making elongated and strange shapes of you from winter late afternoon suns.

ourshadows
There is something magical about projecting yourself as a flat moving dark shape to appear in front of you onto a surface such as a wall, grass or water, using either natural or artificial light. You never think of it as blocking out light but as an extension of your embodied self that you are in control of; making it bigger, smaller, wider, animal or head like. Felix’s interactive projection is captivating and compelling: a rain of particles falls from the top of the projected shadow and if one hits the edge of it, a repulsive force pushes it away from your head, arm or hand. The effect is to feel like one is playing with particles in a way similar to water or sand but by bouncing off one’s shadow. It is a beautiful piece.

Last week, I went to the Science Museum and came across a new exhibition called “3D: printing the future”. There was a fine collection of plastic artefacts, and various replacement body parts for cars, planes and people. They even had a facsimile of the liberator plastic gun that was 3D printed recently and which caused a furore in the press. liberator gun

And there was also an amazing 3D printed sculpture that was a combination of MRI scans and St Paul’s Cathedral by the artist Tobias Klein. But what really caught my eye was lots of jellybean coloured plastic figurines – like the ones you used to find in cereal packets – hanging from the wall at the end of the exhibit. On closer inspection I discovered they were 3D scans of real people who had visited the museum. They had chosen their own colour and pose. Each was unique in a quite different way to having your photo taken. Whilst no longer attached to the body in the way shadows always are, it felt as if there was still a part of the person in the 3D model. Like little people who might start to come alive as they do in the classic Pixar animation film Toy Story.

figurine2

Only last week, the UK supermarket, ASDA, announced it was launching an in-shop 3D printing service that will scan your whole body to create an 8-inch version of you. Now just imagine getting the whole family done, aunts and uncles and all. And then turning the lights off and putting the projector on… one could act out family dramas with their like-like shadows coming alive. Perhaps, it might get a tad creepy, even uncanny valley.

Slow-Mo Time

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southern_train_interior4 Last week my bag was stolen on the train as I was travelling home. As the enormity of what had happened dawned on me I jumped up and ran out of the carriage to the train door. But it was too late. The train had just started to pull out of the platform. I stood there helpless and my fellow passengers tried to help with offering to phone the transport police. All was in vain. I got off at the next station, Wivelsfield, and ran to the other side to catch a train back to the previous station, Hayward’s Heath, but just missed it. I was stranded at a tiny provincial station and had to wait another 30 minutes for the next one. There was no one in sight – no one I could explain what had happened to me. During that time as I replayed over and over again in my mind what had just happened. It was all in slow motion – paradoxically, as I paced up and down the platform. I was desolute.
265px-Wivelsfield_Station_02
It is common for traumatic experiences to be remembered by people in slow motion. How and whether there is scientific evidence for it is open to debate. But the perception is real to those who have witnessed a crash, been in an accident or had something unpleasant happen to them. Time really feels like it is slowing down. My memory of the moment of realization was it feeling like ages from jumping up from my seat to getting to the door of the train.

The way in which the theft happened was very clever. Two dodgy looking guys distracted all of us sitting in the carriage with a seemingly innocent question – and during that moment they stood up, took my bag (which was next to my feet) from under our noses and disappeared. It was less than a minute later but it was too late. They had gone.

The next 24 hours were desperate times. I had nothing on me except my train ticket. My purse, house and work keys, laptop, phone, ID card, address book, glasses, etc., etc., were gone. When I eventually got home (my neighbours had a spare set of keys so I was able to get in) I started the process of stopping my cards and changing my passwords. Then the next day, I went to the Apple Store and begged them to sort things out for me (they are incredibly busy all the time). I was there for 4 hours and they were very helpful. I ended up with a brand new phone but being credit/debit cardless, had to go home to get other forms of ID that would allow the phone company I had a contract with to agree to give me an upgrade on my account. Backwards and forwards I went.

For the last few days, I have been changing all my passwords and updating all my digital records. There are so many things that we have connected to our cards. For example, the automated top-up feature on my Oyster card failed because my debit card, it uses, had been stopped. My new credit/debit cards, which arrived today, wont work until the new PINs arrive. Deliberately sent a few days later to prevent fraud. I’ve been living on cash (my bank was able to let me get some out using an old cheque book and my passport for ID) for the last few days and it makes you realize how much we depend on plastic for our everyday transactions. The list goes on, from having to set up again other direct debits and credit card details for utility bills, Amazon, British Airways, etc. Exhausting and very time-consuming sorting everything out.

But every cloud has a silver lining. I was able to upgrade on my O2 contract to enable me to get a brand new iPhone 5s without too much extra cost. A slate silver one. It is a very beautiful object. I’ve been exploring all the new functions and enjoying trying them out – in between the relentless pursuit of re-establishing my digital identity. One function that is cute is the slow-mo video that is included as part of the package, that slows down the video to a fourth of its speed. This is my first attempt – one of my new PhD students (Jessi Baker) jumping up and down in my office.

There are many more of them appearing on the Internet. Here is another one I really liked. I look forward to more hours of fun ahead instead of more grief.

iPhone 5s Slow-Mo from Eric Grindland on Vimeo.

Finally, I am reminded of Mark Wallinger’s ethereal ‘Threshold to the Kingdom’ (2000) – a masterpiece of slow-motion, which I have spent much time absorbed in. Best experienced through life-sized projection with loud stereo, but here is a clip of it as a taster:

MARK WALLINGER from John Mallinson Duff on Vimeo.

Future Fashion

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makey makey with grapes Where does work finish and fun begin? I’ve been playing with a Makey Makey kit that turns everyday objects into touchpads. As mentioned in an earlier blog my aim is to encourage elderly folk to see what they can make using it and to see if they can then teach kids how to create using it – inspiring a younger generation to unleash their ideas.

My first effort was to play a drum kit using fruit: I started playing with grapes, then apples and finally tomatoes as my inputs. It was really easy to map them onto the online software program. And when the grapes started sounding like drums it reminded me of when I got my very first computer program to work! Moreover, there was something very childlike and pleasurable in squeezing grapes and tomatoes to make different drum sounds. I then moved onto a digital keyboard. Equally, it it was just as much fun to make a simple piano melody by squeezing grapes and tapping tomatoes. Whatever next? My mind went into overdrive and I started thinking of assembling a fruit orchestra…

Part of the fun with using this kind of electronic toolkit, with fruit and salad as the input, is discovering something new about the world. In this instance, it got me thinking about how conductive different materials are – since this makes a difference to how well they act as input devices. I started off testing out plastic salad serving spoons but that was a clear no-no, whereas when I tried with the grapes I discovered they were very conductive. Apples were somewhere in between. It also led me to look into the fridge to see what else I could experiment with – cucumber, mustard, falafels, cheese, bread, chocolate… so many possibilities. Not only does Makey Makey make you think creatively it also helps you begin to understand some of the principles behind basic electronics.

(I know the video is amateur but it was tricky holding my phone camera, the earth wire and playing the fruit all at the same time.)

I’ve been looking recently at how others have been embedding technology into everyday objects. One of the latest trends is fashion. While, wearable computing has been around for several years, new and affordable electronic materials, such as LEDs, thermoconductive paints, longer life batteries and so on, are providing a richer palette for fashion designers to work with. One start-up ‘fashion and technology’ company called Studio XO, are leading the way. They have been creating and engineering interactive clothing that is stunning to look at and marvelous to wonder about the techno-gubbins behind it. Last month when I was in London, I went to a talk given by the co-founders, Nancy Tilbury and Ben Males, in the very fashionable Soho House club. It was packed to the rafters with fashionista and technology hipsters from all over London – standing room only.

Nancy and Ben were interviewed in a Q&A format by some cool dude who worked for crane.tv (an online video magazine for contemporary culture). After showing a short video they had made, they talked about their ideas and demonstrated their digital mermaid bra designed especially for Azealia Banks Fantasea Tour. It was studded with hundreds of blue and clear crystals interwoven with LEDs, which diffracted light among the crystals, animating them in time to music that was controlled by a pre-programmed circuit. Quite stunning. They also showed a Sneaker shoe they had embedded with various electronics, including a small LCD on the tongue that displayed an animated Puma running across it and various other LEDs in the sole and heal that lit up, depending on what the shoe sensed and did. Many of their designs are one-offs customized for rock bands and popstars. What they are now trying to do now is work out how to move on from one-off commissions to the mainstream clothing market.
Studio XO LED trainers At the end of their interview with crane.tv the audience, strangely, were baying for their blood. “How is it fashion? How is it different from Christmas tree lights?” one member asked? Another wanted to know why they were not creating more down-to-earth, health-related clothing that could improve the lives of millions of people, such as vests that could fend off mosquitos, thereby reducing malaria in Africa. Another wanted a suit that would grow with his expanding waistline and change to match his clothing needs rather than twinkle to reflect his emotions and moods. Others wanted more sustainable and durable clothing. Still others could not see how this kind of fashion technology could become mainstream, H&M clothing. Who would pay the extra for gear, that displayed digital content, other than a few trendy night clubbers?

Nancy and Ben, I thought, had a really tough time under the London fashion spotlights but defended their patch and position very well. I also thought their creations were highly original, pushing the envelope of fashion and technology in innovative ways, and, importantly, were a real pleasure to look at. Aesthetics still plays a vital role. Having digital content appear in various forms on your clothing in ways that the wearer can upload and control offers much potential for individual creativity and personal style. Maybe I am naïve, but I can see their push into mainstream fashion taking off … if only others could be less cynical.

I’ve also recently been exploring how technology can play a role in enhancing the dining experience. Similar arguments surface. We ran a workshop at the end of last year at the John Salt restaurant – that Ben Spalding was the resident chef at the time, experimenting with his creative and quirky pop-up dining experience. The questions raised at our workshop were many, but included does augmenting food with digital technology, such as lights, sounds and other media enhance the eating experience or does it serve simply to titillate? Moreover, might it distract and even get in the way of the enjoyment of eating? What does new technology, in its various guises, add that other ways of contextualizing the eating experience (choosing the seating, the cutlery, the lighting, the colour, the music, etc…) can’t already do. Is it just another gimmick? Or are we onto something quite new?

it seems there is a fine line between fad and fun when it comes to fashion and food. But there is much to be gained working out how best to mix technology with everyday materials to make the combination valuable, pleasurable and worthwhile.

Art for Art’s Sake

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The president and Council of the Royal Academy sent me a posh invitation the other week, requesting the pleasure of my company today at the “RA Now Auction”, starting at 11.30 a.m. with a champagne brunch at Sotheby’s. How swanky is that? The paintings to be auctioned were from top-dollar Royal Academicians and Honorary Royal Academicians, including the likes of David Hockney, Barbara Rae, Anish Kapoor and Zaha Hadid. Some of my favourite artists and architects. It was bound to attract a huge crowd. Much to my disappointment, however, I was unable to accept as I had a prior work engagement.

I’ve been to Sotheby’s once before when R and I just went in one day as we were walking past. A live auction was going on where eloquent Chinoiserie vases and other fine oriental knick-knacks were being bid for. We were gripped by the spectacle, watching the poker buyer’s faces, as they subtly raised their hands in a dance, choreographed by the high-pitched, high-octane performing auctioneer on the podium at the front of the room. Just imagine if I had gone today and raised my hand a few too many times for a Hockney with a glass of bubbly in the other. I dare not think but dream on…

Buying art online from relatively unknown artists is more my line. You can make their day by sending 30-50 dollars for a small piece. One such artist that caught my eye first on Flickr was Harry Stooshinoff – I ended up buying some of his work on a site called etsy. The web is flooded now with such online art sites. Virtual hanging of one’s portfolio on a website, like Flickr, is what any savvy art student or amateur artist does as de rigueur. The trick is deciding which images of your work to upload, how many to include and where to place them on the page; always thinking of how to capture the eye and short attention span of the online viewer (it is so easy to flick through the myriads of art streams). Then you need to know how to promote and push yourself without being too in your face or shameless. How often do you tweet or Facebook your latest? Which people do you email or text personally? How many other like-minded artists do you click on to show your appreciation in the hope they will reciprocate and increase your popularity in the likes and stars leagues? The nuances and etiquette of self-promotion online are for just evolving.

One cool site I visited has turned homemade art into a merchandise business. Society6.com lets you frame your work as prints, or on t-shirts, hoodies, iPhone cases, tote bags, skins and cards – all at very affordable prices. You make it look good by selecting the right colour backgrounds, and you never know, you might just nudge someone into buying one. R, with tag name Beauxtanic, has just put his up for sale in a variety of styles (see below for the hoodie collection). If your work starts selling, it might just transform into hot cakes, and then one day you may reach the giddy heights of Andy Warhol mass production status. Or your throw of the die may mean that it is only your mum that buys your mug for Christmas.

Personalized mugs, t-shirts, key-rings, etc., have been around for a long time. People send a photo to a company who then prints it on the artifact of their choice. Society6’s business model does the same but you send in your art. A possible outcome is that potentially anyone can suddenly become popular through viral t-shirts. Instead of the ironic slogan t-shirts that are currently fashionable wouldn’t the world be a different place if you suddenly saw someone walking about town wearing a t-shirt with a painting your boy has created. If only buying and displaying art in this way would take off – the world would be a lot brighter!

Meanwhile endorsing people on Linkedin seems all the rage. I keep getting emails from people I’ve not heard from for a long time saying they have endorsed me for my skills and expertise. Yikes! Am I supposed to reciprocate?

Olympic Mordancy

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The big countdown has begun. The media is beating its drum for the London 2012 Olympic Games to finally begin. Everywhere you look you see the Olympic logo. It should be a fantastic festival, a great time for everyone to share magical moments, with Usain Bolt breathtakingly running like lightning. But nearly everyone I know who lives in or commutes to London is planning to escape from the metropolis or stay indoors for the 3 week duration. It has become a sentence to be avoided at all costs. In contrast, a massive influx of visitors from all over the world will descend and decamp in London, filling the hotels to the rafters, and paying extortionate prices, seemingly not worried about crowds, congestion or commotion. How is it possible that a vibrant city can empty and alienate itself so spectacularly of its own citizens?

Reams of angry words, laced with caustic humour, have been written about the Games by indignant bloggers, journalists and tweeters. Simon Jenkins scathingly sums up the overblown-ness:

“What the Victorians reinvented as a herbivore festival of amateur athletics has become a parody of Hitler’s chauvinist hysteria. It starts with flags and anthems, moves on to medal tables and “heroes”, and ends as the most important thing on Earth.”

The irony is that while everyone outside of London is getting excited, those living in London and the outskirts are not. Long gone are the days when the locals could show up on the day and buy a ticket to see a track event. Tickets had to be bought a year in advance, from a website that was incredibly complicated, followed by an enormous long tail email trail (informing you of every merchandise, mode of transport, etc under the sun, bar actually sending you the tickets). There were very few of the millions from London who could be bothered to wade through the lottery website maze.

One of my favourite pieces written by Andrew Gilligan in the Spectator this week (14th July) was called ‘a matter of taste.’ Instead of having a go at the inconvenience or the price of everything, he chose to focus on the ‘naffness’ of it all, “being run by people with no taste, no imagination, and no idea how to have fun.” He notes, too, how everything is either grey or in bad taste: the buildings, the logo font, the mascot, the souvenirs, the advertising, the signs, and the volunteer uniforms. I know exactly what he means as I look around me when I make my way through London. Whereas Disneyland is cute, colourful and magically choreographed, the Olympic package is “a face of regimentation, ugliness, and mediocrity.”

I am reminded of the challenge Heston Blumental set himself to change the face of the Little Chef eateries that adorned desolute parts of our A road arteries up and down the country (sadly many have gone into administration). The cartoon logo of the Little Chef was instantly recognizable by all, as was the comfort artery-clogging food they served to the piles of families that tumbled into them from their family estate cars. Heston made a Channel 4 documentary entitled Big Chef takes on Little Chef about his mission. It was absorbing TV viewing; watching Mr and Mrs Huddersfield try braised ox cheeks for the first time. Ironically, his revised menu included the all new Olympic Breakfast, where the dodgy old ingredients were replaced with fresh, good quality ones: “outdoor-bred British pork sausages,
 two rashers of Wiltshire-cured back bacon, two griddled free-range eggs, a slice of Ramsay of Carluke black pudding, a roasted field mushroom served with either Heinz baked beans or a chargrilled tomato. And a slice of toasted bloomer bread and butter.”

If only Heston had been commissioned to help organize the citizen’s experience for the forthcoming Olympics, people in the city might have really looked forward to them, instead of being utterly cynical about corporate Britain dressing London in sponsor-correct ribbons, banners and logos. I am sure he would have come up with much better ways to simply and purely enable us all to admire the human body in all its elegance and glory – which is what the Olympics should be about.

Special Ones

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“Knowledge is when you know a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is when you don’t put it in the fruit salad”.

Debre, an interaction designer here in Cape Town, emailed me this last week – which her brother had passed onto her. I thought it captured the difference between the two very succinctly. But what does it take to know how to have and impart wisdom? The more I read about wisdom and the more creative people I meet, the more I realize that it is about being special in some way, knowing that and knowing how to share that.

How do you know when someone is special?

The first person I met on my dream fellowship, when I set off to New York in early February, was Jerry Bruner, who is now a sprightly 96 year old, brimming with wisdom and love. He is very special, having spent his life acquiring wisdom and sharing it. I flew especially to New York to see him – it had been several years since I last saw him. He invited me over for lunch to his enormous loft apartment in Manhatten. As I walked in, I heard myself chirping away from his wee computer. He’d started playing the YouTube video of my dream fellowship, sometime before I arrived, but because the bandwidth for his network connection was so slow it had not downloaded properly. It was still streaming like treacle through a funnel, intermittently playing for 3 to 4 seconds, and then stalling for several minutes before stuttering a few more words. 7 minutes was being stretched into 3 hours!

Jerry sat down in front of his computer and invited me to sit opposite him in a chair. I obliged but it felt surreal to be in doppelganger mode. As we chatted, I found myself being echoed from his computer. Switching from the here and now to the now and here was disconcerting for me. Jerry, on the other hand, found it quite funny. Eventually (we were about 3 minutes into the video and an hour into our conversation) we moved over to the dining area of his vast open plan place. Thankfully, the digital me started to fade. The real me helped prepare a simple lunch of salad, cheese and berries. We then opened a bottle of sparkling water. As we ate and drank the simple fare, we talked and talked. Much was shared; personal, political interspaced with reminiscing and playfulness.

I finally left late afternoon with much to savour. I walked slowly back to my hotel in Washington Square, a few blocks away, looking at the splendid high rise buildings surrounding me, reflecting on Jerry’s words of wisdom. It was not in the telling of what I must do, read or see in life, but in the giving to me of something special. It is hard to put a finger on exactly what it was. The pearls came through the conversation, not through any worldly advice.

I had been in the presence of a special one.

José Mourinho, Real Madrid’s coach, is known for being special but for very different reasons. He has just won La Liga, knocking the seemingly invincible Barcelona off their perch, having previously won the league title in Portugal, England and Italy. When he joined Chelsea in 2004 he said at his inaugural press conference, “Please don’t call me arrogant, but I’m European champion and I think I’m a special one.”

A stroke of genius, I thought at the time – and the name “The Special One” has stuck ever since; 8 years later it remains his moniker and rightly so. Besides being incredibly handsome, which makes most of us female supporters go weak at the knees, the Special One has that look, know how and ability to work out how to play the beautiful game in ways other managers (with the exception of Fabio and Alex) can only dream about. He is foremost a brilliant strategist, always 5 games ahead and 10 moves along – like a chess master – knowing how to position, psyche and play his team while unnerving his opponents. He meticulously does his homework each waking moment for his master plan using his wisdom and the knowledge. But he also uses technology very astutely to extend his thinking. For example, he externalises his plans far into the future, drawing and interacting with clever software that enables multiple tactical positions to be simulated for each game. And during each game, he scribbles down on-the-fly tactics, challenges and changes using a scruffy note pad that helps him make crucial decisions, when under immense pressure.

In the last couple of weeks, I have been working with an artist from the University of Cape Town, Johann van der Schijff, helping him interview local school kids and teachers about their experiences of being part of his latest art project called Community Punching Bags. It has been for him a very long, extensive and collaborative project, involving many children, teachers, leather makers, photographers and more.

I joined him late on in his project and curiosity has gotten the better of me. We’ve had several probing conversations about what it means for an artist to collaborate with others and to curate something that would not be possible without their participation. For many of us, the idea of collaborating with an artist usually conjures up producing or creating an artifact that the artist wants, such as Anthony Gormley’s ‘Field for the British Isle’ where he recruited lots of kids and their extended families from schools in Liverpool to help him make 40,000 cute terracotta clay figures as part of his immense installation. For Johann, the collaborative process entails asking specific people to do different things that they are skilled at or will push them beyond their comfort zones, that then becomes a central part of his curation – coming up with new designs, running workshops or cutting and stitching leather punching bags.

One comment that he made which struck me was how he can immediately see in the people he recruits who is special and who he wants to work with and push more. Being special to him involves being able to pick up quickly on what has to be done, having self discipline, listening and taking on board what other’s say, and then working it out on your own. In addition, there is always a look, a big smile and a sense of knowing. But to see specialness in others needs developing a level of self-awareness about one’s own specialness.

“People who are wise can interrupt, take a step back, and reframe … a lot of wisdom probably has to do with looking at a situation differently and reframing.”

I just read this in a book on Wisdom by the award-winning science writer, Stephen S. Hall, which is based on a phone call he had with another Stephen (Kosslyn) in 2008.

Special people know that. And anyone can become special provided that they …

Marble Marvel

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Part of my dream fellowship is to open my eyes to new possibilities. So when I was invited by my host Gary and his friend Andrew to watch the Chinese Grand Prix with them last Sunday evening, I accepted without reservation. I’ve never had any real interest in Formula 1 before, except listening to the occasional news snippet about Jenson Button winning or Michael Schumacher returning after his retirement. Andrew and Gary, on the other hand, are both hooked on it – and have been since growing up with it – following every race and anticipating what will happen at the next one. During the race, like millions of others worldwide, they enter the F1 zone, gripped by the fate and fortune of the drivers, as the breathtaking action unfolds.

G gave me a little booklet about this season’s teams and drivers, as we were waiting for A to arrive, so I could at least become familiarized with the basics. As I flicked through the pages of handsome chaps and cars, he patiently answered a few of my rookie questions about which team Jenson and Lewis were in, what the sponsor names were of all the teams, how much it cost each year for them to take part and so on. I then found myself looking at a page of tyres and noticed there were six kinds, all lined up in a row with different coloured lines around them, reminding me of licorice allsorts. They are used for different conditions and stages of the race. There are 4 dry-weather ones: super soft (red), soft (yellow), medium (white) and hard (silver) and two wet-weather ones, which have different treads on them, an intermediate and a full-on heavy rain one. The treads help to expel the water on the track when racing in the rain. Apparently, the patterns of the wet tyre treads are mathematically designed to ‘scrub’ the maximum amount of water from the racing track surface in order to get the best possible contact of the tyre and to prevent aqua-planning.

The tyres, I quickly discovered, play a central part in the race but can be highly variable, all of which adds to the excitement. Gary filled me in on more fascinating factoids and I found myself gripped by tyre talk. Geeky or what? All the cars have to use the same Pirelli ones now so there is no unfair advantage. But the drivers have to use both soft and hard during the race and a key team decision is choosing which one to start with. The skill and luck is in selecting the right one at the right time. Use the soft ones first and you could loose ground. Use the hard ones first and you might burn out too quickly.

Instead of air the tyres are filled with nitrogen – this helps them to keep their shape when they get very hot as the cars zip round the circuit and also helps to keep their pressure just so. However, the downside of driving at extremely fast speeds for nearly two hours is that the tyres wear out quickly. Bits of rubber start to ping off the tyres, especially when the drivers are cornering, and trails of rubber debris can be seen accumulating all around the track. These tyre shreds are affectionately known as ‘marbles’. How cute is that?

Eventually, the tyres, if continually driven at very fast speeds, will blow or lock. They are designed to last for a maximum of 200 km and so the drivers have to make at least 2 pit stops to change them. Each pit stop obviously takes them out of the race temporarily and so at best, adds 20-30 seconds to their time. The longer they keep driving the tyres the more they keep in the race, but the less grip they have, and the more risk that they will lock or blow. Cut your loses early on and you could gain later on. But it depends on where you are relative to the other drivers, as to the pros and cons. The juggle is whether to change 2 or 3 times, early or late, soft or hard. Each involves different risks and pay-offs. There lies the thrill, deciding which one and when.

We settled in front of the big TV screen and the flag went up. Vroom vroom. The boys got straight into it, watching and commenting on the race, seeing things I didn’t even notice, such as which driver was in front, behind, in the middle, who had just overtaken whom, whether they were in the DRS zone where they can really accelerate, and so on. It was all a bit of a blur for me. Their eyes were on split second detail and mine were on the gestalt. But gradually, I started to see things a little more clearly and by the end of the race, I almost kept up with G and A’s octane talk as the race for second place hotted up. I even piped in a squeak or two – noticing one or two minor details.

The most fascinating part of the race for me was the pit stop. It seems that a race can be won and lost in the pits. Each team has to time their driver’s pit stops strategically to the moment, to try to ensure they minimize lost time on the track while maximizing the opportunities to overtake the cars in front using fresh tyres. It is a time when men and machines have to work in close unison, to perform a “precisely timed, millimetre perfect choreography”. You can’t but marvel at the team’s highly focused attention that ideally takes place during a 2-3 second window when all 4 tyres are switched in sync. 3 mechanics look after each wheel: the first takes off the single nut with an airgun, the second removes the tyre, and the third replaces it with a new tyre and then the first places the nut back on again and then tightens it up, using the airgun.

I watched my first pit stop tyre change in awe. Grown men, in lurid green and white jumpsuits sprung into action: machines pounding, wheels vanishing and arms flapping. I was not sure where to look at first as so much was going on. After watching a few more, I trained my eyes to focus on the action around one wheel and then glance momentarily at the other ends of the car and finally on the moves of the lollipop man (!) stationed at the front of the car. The affectionately called lollipop man refers to the shape of the long sign he holds in front of the car to signal to the driver where to stop and when to start. Just like the marbles – another, sweet naming touch. Men can be boys, too.

Clearly, there is a lot more going on during a pit stop than one pair of eyes can see. Awareness of what each is doing in fast motion is key. One slight fumbling and you blow it for the whole team and millions of dollars literally fly out the window. This happened early on to Michael Schumacher when we were watching the race in Shanghai. One poor soul hadn’t screwed the nut back on properly before the lollipop man had moved his shield, signaling to Michael to accelerate. The mechanic waved his hand somewhat limply to signal all was not well but he knew by then, it was too late. Michael had vanished in a roaring puff back onto the track, all the while his left front wheel wobbling. Too late…Within 5 seconds the race was over for him. Such a tiny margin for error is what makes the race so exhilerating for us, but as G and A noted, it was likely to be the end of the road for the poor sod whose nerves got the better of him when fumbling with the airgun.

I have just been reading Negative Camber’s blog where he describes the pit stops in NASCAR racing as being like ballet. I could not agree more. But unlike the 2-3 stops in F1 they have upwards of 8 to 10 stops and sometimes even more. And it is not just the tyres they change but a whole host of other things, including “making chassis adjustments, others servicing the driver, and so on.” This ‘full service’ take 13-16 seconds rather than the 2-4 seconds for the quick service in F1. Now I know what I should have been watching during my wilderness years living in the american mid-west. And to think one of my female colleagues at Indiana University was really into it and we pooh-poohed her. Luckily, there are many more F1 races to go, next sunday it’s Bahrain.

Indaba Reality

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Design Indaba is a big exhibition held every year in Cape Town showing the best of South African design. This year, over 300 designers, from architects to coke tin sculptors, gathered for the weekend to show off their homemade wares, exhibiting an amazing diversity of skills. Jewellery, fashion, ceramics, furniture, décor, craft, candles, toys, lamps, knick-knacks and much more; everywhere you looked was an abundance of vintage and modern, sustainable and forward- thinking design. Now in its 9th year, the organizers claim in their brochure “that creativity can create livelihoods, transform communities and contribute to the country’s economy.” Judging by the thronging crowds at the event, it would seem all is well and thriving.

What struck me most was the reworking and repurposing of stuff. There were seats made of champagne corks, lampshades made of crocheted wool, marmite jars made of beads, and flowers made of recycled tin. I love it when an artifact makes you look twice. It seemed that one entrepreneurial lady had turned the art of beading into a must have artform. All the cool pieces on her stall, including household groceries and VW camper vans had red dots on their price tags. Snapped up by shrewd buyers. And as Sabelo, a local bead artist points out: “In our culture, beads tell stories about who people are, how old they are. The amount of beads you wear indicates your age, and the older you are, the more you’re respected because of the wisdom you have”. I like that idea but I like more the way these bead designers had intricately woven their beaded washing powder box and custard tins to be precise facsimilies.

In the middle of the hall, was a very large public electronic display, which projected a live video of the audience standing in front of it, mainly children. They seemed totally engrossed with their mirror image, dancing, waving and gesturing at themselves. At first it seemed just like a live feed from a video camera focused on them from above the screen. However, after a few moments of looking, I suddenly noticed animated cartoon characters appearing from nowhere onto the screen and then, after a few seconds of performing, disappearing. First a dolphin splashed around, then a spaceman floated by, then a leopard prowled by and then some larger than life dinosaurs waltzed on. I was reminded of the early 90s Smirnoff vodka ads, when an innocent cat turns into a panther as the camera panned across the glass bottle. Likewise, there was something seamless and surreal about the way the animated animals mingled with the virtual kids and the real kids played with the virtual animals.

The company that makes this interactive public display – Live Augmented Reality – has paired up with National Geographic. The set up now tours in public settings, such as shopping malls and Expos, and is a wonderful crowd stopper.

The kids happily joined in the make-believe, squealing with delight as the dolphin jumped and splashed around them. One 5 year-old boy, who was quite a dancer, started moving his hand as if to stroke the leopard, as it appeared to brush besides him – even though it was high up on the screen and he a few feet away from it standing on the floor. He was perfectly positioned to make it appear as if he really was touching it. The merging was a magical design.

The finale was a storm – lashings of animated rain, lightening and thunder descended upon the children. They loved holding their arms up to feel the virtual raindrops splashing on them and clapping their ears as the thunder boomed.

I watched the little dancing boy for a while; he was completely engrossed, repeating his slinky repertoire of dancing, stroking and cowering, as the short cycle of augmented cameo characters, returned again and again. The augmented reality illusion, created by the public display technology was a big hit with Cape Towners. Whilst self-conscious fashion models pranced the catwalk and famous chefs constructively talked the creative walk, the kids hyper-played – without an ounce of self-consciousness.