Interaction'18

This is a 15-minutes presentation about my PhD-work from Interaction'18 in Lyon in February 2018; The Creative Possibilities when Designing for Conversations.

Interaction'18

It was pretty scary to be presenting at the big stage with almost a 1000 people, just a short while after Alan Cooper… But afterwards it always feels good to have done it! I learned a lot and had interesting conversations after the talk, and I really like the crowd at the Interaction conferences. It has a great mix of researchers and practioners, women and men, people from every part of the world, young and old. At my first Interaction conference in Dublin in 2012 I met an interaction designer from Saudi Arabia. I enjoy these meetings across, and I find the atmosphere at Interaction to be genuinely curious, reflective and friendly.

Read more information about the presentation at interaction18.ixda.org.

Photos by Thibault Paccard and Alice Dardun.

Interested in my research?

If you are curious about the framework presented in this talk, I am currently developing a guidelines & propositions-document, which is not really guidelines, but rather a ton of questions for the designers of such spaces, one page for each "ingredient" in the model. See pictures from the document below. I am interested in hearing if this could be useful/not useful for you, your team or your students – basically anybody developing concepts for conversational spaces online. My framework is particularly based on contexts such as online newspapers and magazines, where the conversational space is a part of the concept (and not the whole concept), but it seems as though the model might be useful for many types of conversational space concepts.

Please contact me if you are interested in seeing the first draft version of the document.

Cover page and model with "ingredients" or components wherein each of these has a large number of creative possibilities. Knowledge about users needs and strategy (the ingredients in the middle) can influence the choices in the circle ingredients.

This shows one page from the document, about what I defined as Input Options, one of the ingredients in the model. Each ingredient in the model has one page with questions for the designer. — This shows one page from the document, about what I defined as *Input Options*, one of the ingredients in the model. Each ingredient in the model has one page with questions for the designer.

Another page with the ingredient I defined as Conversational Architecture. — Another page with the ingredient I defined as *Conversational Architecture*.

Tweets about the talk

I am simply too proud to not share a few of the tweets below… :D

Want to shape the right discussion online?@NinaLysbakken’s work on ‘Conversational Spaces’ (i.e. not just the same ol’ comment box at the end of the page) can help. @ixdconf pic.twitter.com/0goWpezv8I
— Ashish Goel (@ashpodel) February 7, 2018

Caught @NinaLysbakken's amazing and very relevant talk about designing conversational interfaces at #ixd18 from the @idean HQ today. Now I need to dig into everything she has learned in her research on the topic. #ux #social https://t.co/DNK21jgLV8 pic.twitter.com/ioZJl0iPdh
— Jon 🦊 Fox | UX (@JonFoxUX) February 6, 2018

Different conversations require different designs, says @NinaLysbakken at #IxD18 pic.twitter.com/4xpeXQvnC9
— Sigrun Lurås (@sigrunl) February 6, 2018

presenting abroad?

If you are a Norwegian designer who wants to present something you have learned abroad, you can get funding from Design and Architecture Norway + The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. See stikk.no and the tweet below.

@NinaLysbakken dro til Lyon i Frankrike for å presentere doktorgradsarbeidet sitt. 🇫🇷 Neste frist for å søke UDs #reisestøtte for #designere og #arkitekter er 15. mars. 💶 https://t.co/tZ3YlBwbTb pic.twitter.com/T3AbOpEis0
— DOGA (@doganorway) February 19, 2018

Beauty or Brains, Cautious or Courageous? Gender and Power in Online Visual Designs

This is a video presentation of my first published PhD conference paper. The topic is the process of designing and shaping critical gendered representations and expressions in online newspapers and magazines. How can we think differently around our ways of seeing and designing these and other visual conventions that have been normalized in our culture? The paper includes a fake tabloid newspaper front page, a feminist speculative design, and the learning outcomes from designing a different womens magazine.

"The future, or futures, that are imagined, materialized and intervened by design, represent different perspectives, preferences and, indeed, different realities… Elaborating and multiplying possible futures is an exercise of power."

Mazé, R., 2016. Design and the Future: Temporal Politics of «Making a Difference». Design Anthropological Futures, page 37.

The paper was presented at the Nordes conference (Nordic Design Research Conference in Oslo, June 2017), in addition to the Wonder seminar (Scandinavian Network for Women in Design Research) in September 2017. The conference paper can be downloaded here. An unofficial version of the paper that I showed in the video – with the exact same words and content, but slightly different visuals and designs – can be downloaded here. This is the version I originally made and preferred, but wasn't allowed to use due to conference templates.

For other video presentations of my work, see this 4-minutes presentation (see link to NRK TV, only in Norwegian). Or videos from my master project here (also in Norwegian I'm afraid).

The presentation includes designs by me and two students, Nina Furset Røen and Tina Jenssen from NTNU Gjøvik's BA-course in Graphic design. The students developed the idea and concept visualisation for the proposed magazine, BraDamer. I framed the concept for the course, and developed their visulizations further with permission from Nina and Tina. See image credits in references in the article.

If the world was defined & designed by women…

…What would tabloid newspapers look like?

First of all, this is an impossible experiment, and not at all a wanted scenario. I don't even mean what I've written on this visualization of a tabloid newspaper. I did this visualization to shape an opposite, a provocative scenario where what is selected and presented as news, is shaped from one angle. By that I don't mean fake news (though this is fake news), but I mean what is chosen to be presented as news, what is lifted up in the hierarchy of news, what is seen as ideal and not-so-ideal, what rhetorics is used on gender in news, and which ways of looking at the world dominates the presentation of news. If this was what you were presented for each day, what would that do to you? How would you look at the world? How would you look at yourself? What stories are you fed, and what stories will you not know of? Look at the choice of images, the choice of titles and my notes:

I don't find it very strange that fewer women reads newspapers today, when the frames for many newspapers (tabloids in particular) are what they are. I started making this visualization of a tabloid newspaper in a moment where I was sick of stress, and dead-tired of the debate in Norwegian media on womens sick leave. I had to avoid news, in order to keep as sane as possible, during a challenging time of my life. I was so provoked by the condecending gendered content, that avoiding was better. I found the gendering of the debate on womens sick-leave as patronizing, and always accepting the man as the standard women were measured up against. So in this visualization I tried to shape an expression of women being what men are measured up against. E.g. mens choices of going to the doctor too late, and not getting help for e.g stress or depressions. Or in other fields; sports, ideals of life, at work, in debates, on society, on bodies, relationships, health and home. This visualization is not what I wished was the standard – quite the contrary, I wished we managed to balance all these various perspectives (this visualization only shows one perspective) in a better way than we do today. I mean to criticize the rhetorics of gender in todays newspapers. And I wish to lift up the design and presentation of news as a means of power, similarily with journalism itself. Various combination of images and words can imply values (such as examples here showing patronizing and condecending attitudes). But sometimes we don't even notice them, because we're used to it.

I try to show that what we ridicule, what we idealize, what we patronize about through images and words - all comes from a world view. How we seek to engage and provoke people, what we select as important news, are part of a world view. Whereas each article may be different depending on who wrote it, this presented combination of articles also implies something about who governs the space.

There is probably too little politics in the visualization, I should have added some environmental political stuff, as women tend to rule that area. Or I could have patronized some business political suggestions or something as irrelevant (though I don't mean that…). But I also want to add that the lack of something also says a lot about what one group regards as important and not. Notice the lack of sexualized female bodies. In this scenario of a society, the man is the one that needs to adjust to women – he is there to please her (very heteronormative, though).

In todays newspapers front pages, I find it striking how some types of news are less prioritized than others; there is a lack of sports that often are connected to feminity, sports that women tend to be great at, like dancing. They are simply less prioritized in the hierarchy of news. Whereas sports that requires heavy muscles, speed, or is connected to masculinity, are often lifted up as highly important. So I added articles of dancing and gymnastics – sports that normally gain less attention in tabloid newspapers. In addition I twisted the headlines of one of the articles of male dancers, as I (and many other women) are quite tired of reading about girls who are good at some male-dominated sport, and are framed as “she's played with boys all her life” as some sort of credit to her/them. So I twisted that quote about a male dancer. (Though I have to say that I really looooove a lot of the sports that dominate todays news, so I did concider putting the slalom legend of Mikaela Schiffrin there, but choose to skip her, in favor of Simone Biles.)

This is of course an impossible scenario for many reasons – I do not have the answer to what all women have as goals, I am sure many will disagree with my choices. I even disagrees with this. In addition, our history is depending on so many factors, so I’m basically just picking some elements of today society and switching them – though history would probably have looked very different if women had ruled the world in all times. This is just one of many scenarios.

This is not a visualization demonstrating inclusiveness and representation of many groups in society. I would however like to see this sketch being made from a variety of angles – I am just one person with one background and experience of this world; white woman, adult, a rather worried person, quite interested in sports, and a whole other set of interests and qualities. This sketch could have been made from many peoples points of view; immigrants' point of view (I bet two immigrants from Sweden and one from Afghanistan would look at the world in quite different ways too), an old person, a nuanced person (what would be tabloid and engaging click-bate for a nuanced and balanced person?), a child, or positive and optimistic person. Their groupings are not what's relevant, but everybodys different experiences of life, ways of looking at the world and ideals matters in what we choose as important to present for others. But I would need help and interviews to do this visualization from others perspectives…

This visualization will feature as one of several illustrations in a forthcoming visual essay (that is part of my PhD in graphic and interaction design) on designed gendered expressions of online newspapers and magazines. Other examples are design prosjects of womens magazines.

Photo credits

Simone Biles: Wikimedia Commons CC BY 2.0 Credit: Agência Brasil Fotografias
Usain Bolt:Wikimedia Commons CC-SA-4.0 Credit: Augustas Didzgalvis.
Ronaldo: Flickr CC BY 2.0 Credit: Chris Deahr.
Silvio Berlusconi: Flickr CC BY 2.0 Credit: paz.ca
Male nurse: Stock Image. Credit: shapecharge. www.istockphoto.com, ID:536458067
Zlatan Ibrahimović: Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-SA 3.0 Credit: Илья Хохлов.
Business woman: iStockPhotos Credit: GlobalStock ID:175406040

Depressed man: iStockPhotos Credit: KatarzynaBialasiewicz ID: 482464228.

Hairy man: Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Credit: Nathan Rupert.
Dancer: iStockPhotos Credit: AYakovlev ID: 154277835
Michelle Obama: Flickr Official White House Photo Credit: Chuck Kennedy
Angela Merkel “commercial”: Shutterstock Credit: 360b ID: 214262203 Father and daughter: iStockPhotos Credit: Dean Mitchell ID: 182059535
Mad Men: Official wallpaper

Relationship: iStockPhotos Credit: Yuri_Arcurs. www.istockphoto.com, ID:539208107
Katie Ledecky: Wikimedia Commons CC BY 3.0 Credit: Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil.

A 4-min presentation of my research

Design can change how we communicate and participate in online debates and social media. In this 4-minutes presentation I give a quick insight into my research on the design of online newspaper commenting fields. I work on developing a framework for how we can design social media and conversations online with a basis in the values we wish to build the conversations on, and what the content of the conversations, dialogue or debate is.

This video shows my presentation at the Forsker Grand Prix competition at Sentrum Scene in Oslo the 29th of september 2016. It shows the read thread and bits of my design and research. Since many of the slides don't show in the video, I've added them below with english subtitles so those of you who don't understand norwegian can get understand some of it.

See the video here:

NRK Kunnskapskanalen Forsker Grand Prix Oslo
I couldn't embed the video for some reason. The video is in norwegian, but see slides and english information below.

Slides

Facebook Reactions are designed to make you post more than those cosy family pictures many previously posted on Facebook. They have provided ways of expressing yourself as angry and sad, and made way for people to share e.g. upsetting news and serio… — Facebook Reactions are designed to make you post more than those cosy family pictures many previously posted on Facebook. They have provided ways of expressing yourself as angry and sad, and made way for people to share e.g. upsetting news and serious matters. These choices are also shaping how we view Facebook as a room for conversations.

SnapChat filters are also providing a way for you to express yourself in a funny, weired or amusing way. These designed choices for expressing yourself can give us an impression of SnapChat as a quick and funny "room for conversations". (The fi… — SnapChat filters are also providing a way for you to express yourself in a funny, weired or amusing way. These designed choices for expressing yourself can give us an impression of SnapChat as a quick and funny "room for conversations". (The filters are not the only reason, but a part of the combination of designed choices SnapChat has made.)

I want us to look at the design of digital rooms in the same way as physical rooms: some are designed for fun, some for debate, some for board meetings, and some even for secrets. These rooms are designed with different colours, chairs, curtains, ar… — I want us to look at the design of digital rooms in the same way as physical rooms: some are designed for fun, some for debate, some for board meetings, and some even for secrets. These rooms are designed with different colours, chairs, curtains, arrangement, tables and materials. Some are limited to only two people, some are open for every one who wants to come in. Can we look at digital rooms and their typography, colours, layout, navigation and input options *(meaning the open fields where you can write, scales, polls, or the predefined choices of SnapChat filters and Facebook Reactions)* in the same way? How could a typeface or graphics communicate that it is a fun and cosy place, like the coloured bean bags? What kind of values could we picture that the room could symbolize? When you enter an old, beautiful church, you may get a sense of awe, or feeling small. What do we want you to feel when you enter a debating space online?

Todays commenting fields are often put at the bottom of the site. How important do you feel if placed at the back of the auditorium? Does it feel like your voice matter, when the newspapers never read the commenting fields? I compare the room of the commenting fields to the rooms of sterile, white halls at hospitals. Grey, white, and similar sans-serif fonts in every commenting field. They could have used fonts, colours and graphics that reminds us of something seriousness and reflected, or perhaps more entertainment and fun – which would have indicated different values of this room. This design can imply cold, narrow and sterile. Which MAY have an effect on the debate itself, because it is related to how we perceive this space.

My sketch shows a placement of the conversation that is lifted up in the layout and hierarchy of the site. It shows use of colours and graphics to indicate mood and emotions. It shows what I call "targeted feedback"; an invitation to say something s… — My sketch shows a placement of the conversation that is lifted up in the layout and hierarchy of the site. It shows use of colours and graphics to indicate mood and emotions. It shows what I call "targeted feedback"; an invitation to say something *specific*. It says "I am", and then you must choose a predefined emoji. Then it says "because" (fordi…), and THEN you can write what you are angry, curious, happy etc about. The red bubble says "I am angry because…", the blue "I am glad because…", the green "I am curious because…". It means that the design is pushing your comment into a specific format. It pushes you to talk about YOUR emotions, rather than to let your anger be implicit in an attack on others. I intended the concept to be moderated in a different way than comment fields normally are today: diverse comments are moderated *in,* meaning picking the comments that are interesting for the public, that shows the varied opinions surrounding this topic. The rest will not be visible. Meaning that the goal is DIVERSE comments and perspectives, not a load of comments from ONE perspective).

Keywords: interaction design, graphic design, visual communications, commenting fields, online newspapers/magazines, democracy, participation, respectful communication, ways of expressing yourself, gender, equality, power (the last keywords are less visible in this presentation, but more profound in other parts of my research).

Forsker Grand Prix

I’m participating in something called Forsker Grand Prix, (“Researcher Grand Prix”) which is almost like a nerdy Idol-contest for PhD-fellows. The show is tomorrow, so today is good day to reflect on 11 things I’ve learned so far from this process – things that I wish to bring with me in life.

If you want to come and see the show, it’s Thursday the 29th of September at 6PM at Sentrum Scene – free and for everyone to show up. It’s mainly in norwegian.

1) A mindset of give & learn Go on stage with the mindset and goal of learning something new, and give the audience a gift; your knowledge. That’s a far better focus than to go out there to defend or perform. If I accept that the jury’s comments may guide my further work – rather than trash it, I simply become less nerveous. I also accept that I don’t recessarily have the answer to their questions. The opposite is unfortunately a mindset I know too well; to be scared of feeling dumb, to not know enough (academic environments can be challenging that way), and try to perform. It's not an easy switch, but I think I've come far in working on my mindset, thoughts and attitude.

One of my slides about designing different "rooms for conversations" online… SayNoMore!

2) Being present We have worked a lot on really being present on stage, not just remembering the text and say it. That makes a huge difference, but while practising a text hundreds of times, you can easily loose presence. Kyrre Texnes is a brilliant teacher (and dancer) on this topic – his approach is not so much about “presentation techniques”, but rather on training mentally on finding inner focus and calmness in all kinds of situations. Apparently, you can stop EVER being nervous with this mental training (I ain't there yet, but this is helping…).

3) Embrace the atmosphere/audience “Take in” the atmosphere in the hall. (bad norw-english translation…) Notice your audience, see them. Use them in your content, make it relevant for them.

4) Dealing with fear Find out what I am scared of; For me, the time limit of 4 minutes and a bell ringing when the time is up, was more scary than the room, a big auditorium or concert hall. But I can counter that fear by not seeing it as a threat, but rather as energy to my show; what if the bell rings, speed up and make fun of the last bit. Then the audience might remember me as the energitic one when the bell rang.

5) Safe-note & "It's not that important" I didn't learn this from FGP, but from my previously fellow-PhD-colleague, Sigrun. Before her disputas she showed me a picture of her son, a picture she had with her at the disputas. It reminded her of how little important the presentation really was, that there are other things important in life. When you're at ease, you often perform your best, perhaps due to the absence of fear. As someone else said (translated) It either goes well, or it goes over. My card has images of my boyfriend and our dogs, and says e.g. "Scary faces are often the most interested ones", "Breathe", "Remember to read the words on slides", "They don't have to like it" and "Learn something new".

6) Shaping a positive & safe culture The team around FGP has been very considerate about creating a good environment for testing, presenting and feedback. Nora at Lent were from day 1 focused on how we give feedback to each other (which I don’t think has ever been an outspoken focus in my academic life). This focus on how we communicate was also a topic in my therapy sessions, and it is one of the main things I will bring with me in life, teaching and research. It's about culture; you can distance people or create a tight, great team that builds each other up, rather than tearing each other apart.

7) Network And that brings me to the people I've met – through this shaping of culture, I've met fantastic people with a mindset of not competing against each other, but competing with each other. PhD-fellows from e.g medicin and history has broadend my horizon, and have helped me so much in understanding how I can communicate what I do to people outside of design. (As a designer you might be surprised, but the word "sketch" is not necessarily a clear word for everyone else…) Not just that – they have also given me a professional confidence – they often see more clearly the importance of my work than I do myself… And I'm pretty sure that I'll stay in contact with some of these open and honest people, with whome I share both interests and values with.

8) Tricks from comedy writers I've presented many times to diverse groups of people (I can recommend marketing people and friends who work with research tv-series on TV!), and I have revised the text again and again. One comment was from a guy in a communication department; He said stand-up comedians often use a call-back. As I understood it, is about dropping a hint in the beginning of the talk, then pick it up again at the end, perhaps with a surprising touch. I'm trying it out in my second presentation!

I'm gonna talk about these images of me as pictures, fonts and colours that tells a story about a person, that may give you an image or enforce your prejudice of who I am. … and I've hidden a callback here…!

9) Focus on me I can't do anything with the others, but I can do the best out of my own talk. I've been surprised at how I'm never thinking about beating the others – instead we're a team that's helping each other to make the most out of our own presentation. It is more about daring to stand there and do this scary shit, than it is about competing.

10) Copyrights, images and fonts If it's gonna be on TV, you need to have commercial rights for every picture and font on the slides. I use a lot of pictures and fonts, so the work on contacting people, photographers and portrayed people (in the cases where that particular image mattered – in addition to creative commons licensed images), has taken a lot of time… Do not underestimate if you are a designer dependent on images and fonts! Adobe Typekit allows broadcasting for your synched kits, in addition I asked a norwegian font-designer for permission.

11) Creating surplus & remembering In the final stages, it is basically about making sure you have enough energy to be present on stage, and not using it all on trying to remember the text. If you can remember the text through elements in the room you look at, it may help you in the moment. How do you remember what you are going to say?

Five things I didn't know about design research

I thought and assumed a lot of things about research before starting my PhD. I was sceptic to the thought of working only in a theoretic world, and not the practical world (I came from design and art schools) - things I now find a bit strange. I didn't know any researchers before I started this PhD, so a lot of these things were new to me. Maybe this is obvious for those who did masters at the university - but not for me. Though I know I have lots more to learn about research, these things are probably the ones that has surprised me the most since the beginning.

1) Design research is an argument. In the research traditions I build on, research can be understood as an argument. There are several research traditions, and this is not valid for a lot of researchers within f.ex. medicin (positivistic research traditions deals more with objectivity and truth-searching).
Example: I study social media from a communication perspective and argue that typography, graphics, buttons and "likes" shapes the type of conversation in social media. This does NOT mean that functions and aesthetics DOESN'T shape the conversations, or that it is irrelevant to study the use perspective of social media. It just means that my argument is that a communication perspective is useful when designing social interfaces. As a professor said: "The thesis is not the history of what you've done, but an argument".

2) Research is about critique. Getting critique is valuable stuff, because it forces arguments to be sharpened. It is not so fun in the beginning though, when you've worked your ass off for six months with a hand-in of your proposal, and the only feedback you get is critique and a new date for a revised proposal… I think this aspect of research creates a downside too; academics are generally really bad at giving positive, motivational feedback on what you do. I have never seen worse in any other job!

3) Creating theory is designing. Working with theory does not mean that we're not creating, shaping and designing futures. In fact, that is very much what we do. Research by design is not about knowing theory and history, it is about using theory to get to something new, to move forward, shaping futures.

4) Use value is not the only interesting thing in research. Designers and students are often very focused on the use value of something. I noticed this in the beginning of my PhD when seeing researchers presenting; I was thinking that I didn't see the use value of it. I've seen this reaction in others. In research you can explore a material, challenge perceptions, demonstrate an argument, or show how something can be used. When exploring a material, you don't know if it will become useful. Maybe it will, maybe it wont. A lot of great things has come out of exploring, and research is the place where this is possible to do. An institution for curiousness. Even though it seems meaningless to some.

5) Knowledge: an ability to answer. Research is about producing knowledge. I create and use designs to learn something. A philosopher described knowledge as the norwegian word "svarevne" (Lindseth 2015), in english it translates to something like "the ability to answer". If building on Lindseth, it broadens the horizon of design too; design can also be an answer to a problem. This meaning that design itself can be seen as research. There are probably other definitions of knowledge too, know any?