Back in Dundee

So I'm back. It is really amazing how nothing changes. I mean, being away for half year and having so many things happening around me, makes me expect that whole world would somehow change. But it's not. Dundee's the same - grey, rainy and depressing. Why Scotland is not in Spain. I mean it would be so much nicer, seriously.

A last pretty picture from Valencia, for consolation...


and now welcome back Scottish stagnation....

Design for All

La accesibilidad al medio fisico, la inginieria y el diseño (3-6.11.08)

Last week I have been attending the conference about accessibility design (La accesibilidad al medio fisico, la inginieria y el diseño). It was quite a challenge as the lectures were five hours long, four days in a row. And they were all held in Spanish.

The buzz phrase for all of the lectures was 'Diseño para todos' (design for everyone). It was said, that about 40% of the world's population has somehow reduced accessibility. Mainly due to their age (children, elderly), disabilities (handicapped, mental impaired) or temporary states (pregnancy, injuries). Many environments and products are not suitable for those people and create obstacles in their everyday lives, which is twice as unfair, as their lives are quite complicated anyway.
The current trend is to design with the consideration of users with reduced accessibility. 'Trend' is not the right word. I would say it is a necessity, that is strongly supported by European and Spanish legislation (every single lecture started with quoting the Spanish 'ley 55/2007 de 28 de diciembre' - I know it by heart now...).
I believe the matter is really important. And design is only one aspect of the problem. Looking at the bigger picture - it is a social challenge: to change the perception of the people, who are now seen as 'abnormal' and include them back in the society. And certainly it does not mean designing special objects/services for them, which would only exaggerate the difference, but creating universal things, that are equally attractive and accessible for all users.
Sounds so good and noble... and unfortunately very utopian.

Piracy

Funny, YouTube on it's main site recommended me to watch this video and it turned to be very interesting and so true. I don't know how did YouTube know I would like watch this one. Modern technology amazes me...

It's a talk of Larry Lessing about the copy write law, we have nowadays and which doesn't really apply to the internet reality and it makes everyone a pirate. I think I am a pirate. I'm never 100% sure when I post some content in the Internet if it's legal or not. For example when I copy my friends pictures from facebook and post them on fotolog, is that steeling. Well, they are in the internet anyway... And all the downloading... everyone does it.



I remember the other day, we wanted to go out in the evening with some of my Polish friends and we had to wait for one hour for Meggi who is addicted to House and had to see the new episode that was aired on TV that night. Everyone was quite annoyed and we said to her why didn't she download it from the internet so that she could watch it the other time. Then Meggi said she can't do that because it's illegal. Everyone gave her a weird look and laughed. It sounded so ridiculous. I think no one treats this law seriously.

Story of things

I was just looking through some designers websites and I found a website of a design group called Front. They are 4 girls from Sweden and they are doing amazing things. Very inspiring and clever. One of the projects they are running now, is about our homes and the objects that define the space we live in. They are doing very interesting research, collecting stories of the objects by writing them on the plastic moulds of those objects. It reminded me of the project that guys in Dundee are doing now about cultural probes. Are those not interesting examples?
For me those red plastic moulds are even more interesting than the originals. They tell the story about their owner and themselves, a bit like they were revealing some secret...

Granada

I didn't have much time for blogging recently, because the Valencian life has been very intensive last days. But from now on I'll be posting more often, as I have to start researching for my dissertation. It will be the hard task, as in Valencia, there are not many resources available in English, so I mainly have to rely on the Internet.

So, for the update from recent days I'd like to write about the trip to Andalusia I have made with a couple of friends from here. Last Thursday, there was a local holiday in Valencia, so we had 4 days off from studies. That's why we decided to spent this time travelling.

First 2 days we've spent in Granada, which is lovely city, situated at the foot of Sierra Nevada mountains. The city is mostly famous for the Moorish palace Alhambra, which architecture is just stunning. All the walls are decorated with oriental patterns (arabesques) and stucco which lets the sunbeams shine through them. It makes them look a bit immaterial. Together with ubiquitous fountains and the exotic nature it all looked magical. I can remember from my history of art studies, that the fountains were there not only for decoration, but also they sprayed the perfumed water... Oh, I can imagine, 500 years ago, Sultan sitting there with his hundred wives and servants, dancers, artists, tigers, parrots, oriental music, drinking, eating, smoking... It must have been a paradise on Earth...

Well, so the next day we moved to Malaga. Actually, we were staying outside the city, in the small town next to the Mediterranean sea. Malaga wasn't that great when it comes to architecture, but it had vibrate night-life (vida nocturna). But for me, the most memorable point of this part of journey was when we went on the beach. The wind was very strong and the sea went wild. I have never seen as huge waves as those. I reckon they were greater than 2 meters. Some people went to swim, but soon they regretted it.

Generally, the trip was a nice experience, both cultural and social, and it gave us the chance to get to know each other. But now I really have to start working hard.

Kick off

The last two days of EPS classes were very busy. We had a new lecturer - David Ashworth from Nottingham who did a couple of sessions about project management. For me this was entirely new material, showing design process from completely different angle. Before, whenever we were asked to draw our design process we were simply naming the stages (research, brainstorming, idea generation, idea selection...) and then organising them in relation to each other. Here, we were asked to plot them against time, estimate the effort and the resources needed to complete each one, and assign the roles within the group. I believe this was very useful exercise that helped us to foresee how much work do we need to do. It also gives a complete structure to our project.

Classes with David required working in the teams. As on Thursday we were still waiting for some lecturers to come and do their presentations, many students were still undecided. Fortunately, there was enough people interested in project concerning accessibility, so we formed two groups - one, that will develop something for blind people, and another designing for senior citizens. I'm in the second group. We have 5 members - Anne, Remco and Eva from Business and Management background, and me and Lisa who are studying Design.

Accessibility Design

To finish off the discussion about the EPS projects. I just wanted to say that I finally decided to be working on the accessibility project. I find it the most connected with users and giving great possibilities for development. I still need to wait for Pedro's approval, because what they are trying to do here, is to mix up people with different backgrounds.

The project is very open, first of all we have to choose one group of users with some accessibility limitations, mostly connected with their health, disabilities or age. I have some experience in designing for disabled children (the Sensations project we have done in the first year) and the Microsoft project we've done last semester in Dundee taught me a lot about designing for old people. So this time I wanted to focus on a different group of users. Again my reading of polish Polityka came useful. In the article from 16/08/08 "Wejście Smyka" I read about the new social trend concerning bringing up children. Obviously, the article was mostly taking about Polish society, but I believe it's generally true for most of Europeans. Parents take their children everywhere with them - to the restaurants, on the exotic holidays, on the board of planes. As they do not want to resign from their normal life, they combine parenthood with everyday activities. Which basically means that children are more present in a public space which is often not children - friendly. This creates problems not only for parents but also for other users. I'm sure many people experienced a flight with crying baby on board. Nightmare, isn't it? To be fair, the first thing I do while coming on board, I try to spot all the babies and take a sit as far as possible.
I think this is a design problem that gives wide possibilities - it can be a product, a service or some interior design solution.
It also quite interesting for me, as I may be a future user.