making places

MAKING PLACESINFORMATION ARCHITECTURE IN A POST-DIGITAL WORLD

ANDREA @RESMINIANDREA @RESMINI

ZURICH, FEB 21ZURICH, FEB 21

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrosimoes7/124758243

Let me tell you the story of what happened last summer when my daughter decided to brush up her French and attend a language school abroad.

INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU (THE SCHOOL)

As the story might get a little complicated to follow here and there, I’ll be providing visual clues. Namely, the school will be represented by Peter Sellers’ own Inspector Clouseau from the original Pink Panther movies.

SPECTRAL TARSIER (ME)

For reasons that will become clear as we proceed with the story, a spectral tarsier will play me.

AIRLINE

FLIGHT NUMBER

THE SCHOOL’S WEBSITE

Now, finding real information about language schools online is nigh to impossible. No forum discussions, no Tripadvisor reviews, nothing. Just their websites. I’m pretty sure they pay good money to get anything they do not like off the Web. Or plain kill people.

Anyway, we made up our mind, went for a school in Paris, and started filling in their enrollment form. Midway, probably after giving them information about what her grandparents thought about the Winter War and the Finnish Interim Peace, this screen popped up.

So I fired up my mail and asked them.

...

A few days went by. Nothing happened.

So I picked up the phone and called France.


We exchanged pleasantries we didn’t really mean, and then I asked them “I can’t complete your online form to enroll my daughter in one of your classes unless I provide a flight. Now, am I really supposed to book a rather expensive flight when I do not know if she will be accepted, since you have yet to confirm you have places available in that period?”


“Yes”


“Swear to me you will have a place for her”


“Yes”

(legally speaking, *no*

binding value whatsoever)

It goes without saying that, legally speaking, they could say whatever they wanted and plead misunderstanding any time.

THE AIRLINE’S WEBSITE

But time is ticking away, so airline website it is.


PERSON PICKING UP THE MINOR

PASSPORT NO.

Only we have a very unsurprising request from them. After all, we are talking about sending a 15yearold somewhere on a plane, right?

At this point we have started two processes which are caught in a Catch 22 deadlock. So I call the school again.


“I need the name of the chauffeur who will pick my daughter up at the airport in Paris”


“Impossible. We raffle them up 23 days before students arrive. Just give them any name”.

Moar international phone calls.


“Hello, airline? I’d like to have my 15yearold daughter fly with you to her language camp in France, but you ask for the name of the person picking her up at destination, the school says they will not have a chauffeur until close to the departure date, and I can’t get her ticket which I also need to sign her up. Listen, it’s complicated. What do I do?”

(this was of course mixed up with a lot of ranting, moaning and complaining)

EDDIE KESSLER (THE AIRLINE)

(A note: the airline will be represented by Eddie Kessler from Boardwalk Empire. No particular reason, I just like the idea. It’s my presentation after all.)

“Sir, just write your name for the destination as well, then call us as soon as you have the correct name and we’ll do the necessary changes”


“Oh, that’s nice, but what do you mean call us? If names can be changed, can’t I simply access my booking and make the necessary changes there?”

EDDIE KESSLER (THE AIRLINE)

“No. Call us”


(TOTALLY FAKE NAME HERE)

(NOW ENTER THE REAL ONE)

This would be too easy, right? It would probably rob you of all of your selfesteem. I mean, if you don’t sweat it, it’s not worth it, right? Anyway, I temporarily entrusted my daughter to the care of Pennywise the clown and we secured a seat on the right flight to Paris. Armed with date, time and flight code I went back to the school ...


PROPOSAL COMPLETED

YOUR TOTAL ISAN INSANE AMOUNT OF MONEY

WILL MAIL TO CONFIRM ENROLLMENTWILL MAIL FOR PAYMENT

... where I found out that the reward for completing the form was more waiting, as they had to confirm enrollment and send me further instructions for payment. Using a carrier pigeon, if I had to guess. Status: flight booked and paid, but we still have no 100% guarantee we’re on.

...

And of course a couple of days go by with no mail, no confirmation, nothing.

Then this comes in.

+

This is how I read it, actually. Bottom line: while the form asked you if you wanted chauffeur service or taxi service (I chose chauffeur), both are necessary for minors. Because reasons. And of course, that means you have to pay more.

You remember we booked the flight, right?


VOILÀENROLLED!

IT WAS EASY, RIGHT?

So I pay.

That brings in good news (enrolled) and more ridiculousness. Passport scan?


What the ..?

Moar writing. Where I try to keep it polite but do not really succeed.

...

A few days pass without no mail back.

Then this finally comes in. Apparently not a big problem.

(Worth stating: my daughter spent a wonderful week in Paris, studied and practiced her French, and came back home a happy girl)

so many thingsare broken here

ownership

ethics

these have nothing to do with

interactions

gestures

these have

everything to do with

information architecture

Here some of you might say: wait, isn’t information architecture that set of methods you use to create the structure for a website? Like labels, menus, and so on?

Sort of. But what we structure today is larger, pervasive systems where the website is just one piece in a much more complex clockwork. Mail, the Web, phone calls, a banking system, the airline, online forums, these were some of the pieces we stitched together to enroll my daughter to French camp.

http://is.gd/h4me67

To explain this change, I have to take you back to the mid90s.

computing was

precisely bounded in

space and time

R. S. WURMAN

When this book came out in 1998, Lou and Peter were working in a world that was strikingly different from the world of today.

BLOG.SEVANVATOSSIAN.COM

“smeared across multiple

sites and moments in

complex and often

indeterminate ways”– W. J. MITCHELL, ME++ (2003)

JSJOUST.COM

CASHIER?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/33689131@N07/15900592780

If you took pictures in the 70s, this is the closest to the conceptualization of a selfie you could get back then. You would definitely say what you have here is “photography”, right? There’s a camera, you guess there’d be film, a dark room along the way, and a printout that was at a later point in time turned into the file I’m using here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewfysh/14437303498

Taking a picture today probably happens most of the times this way. Remember that photography after all means drawing or writing with light, implying that light gets transferred to some support and made visible.

There’s no printing, no chemicals reactions, no lenses, no “photography”. Most of what we capture is not even meant to last. Still, this is photography, right? Granted, it might be bad photography, but that’s an entirely different issue.

This is because we understand that photography is not really bound by the technical limitations imposed by of 19th century technology. It’s about composition, framing, and constantly transposing the principles of capturing what made one moment a special moment into and through whatever tools we have at hand. Dark rooms, photoshop. Still photography.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/27485954@N07/4940794289

Unsurprisingly, you can apply this also to other phenomena. I was around when this was cool, and we used to call this music. It implied clunky players, batteries, cassette tapes, some record player and vinyl you could duplicate songs from, and terrible earphones.

Now this is music. Not only it generally does not involve half the gearwork you needed to enjoy your Sony Walkman, you do not need the Walkman cassette player itself. You only need a way to access the source. Thanks to technological convergence, we can haz music on our smartphones, tablets, laptops, a number of home appliances. Soon it will be wearables. And we call it music.

what happens when we

all are co-creators?

STANLEY KUBRICK

Let's not even mention the phenomenon of Russian car cameras, right? Still, can we just close our eyes and make these go away? Or dismiss them as “bad”? This video, online since 2012: 17 million views. Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol, also out in 2012, sold 24.3 million tickets.

The Ice Bucket challenge videos have globally been seen more than a billion times.

when products

become services?

when we access and

remediate information on

the move 24/7?

a cultural and social shift

CHARLES MOORE, PIAZZA D’ITALIA IN NEW ORLEANS

PULP FICTION

“a spectacle in front of

which the individual sits

powerless”

– A. KIRBY, THE DEATH OF POSTMODERNISM AND BEYOND (2006)

O.J. SIMPSON CAR CHASE LIVE FEED

O.J. Simpson’s slow escape, broadcast live in 1994.

STEVEN SEAGAL: LAWMAN

This is not necessarily a good thing, and while some of us might find “Steven Seagal: Lawman” mildly entertaining, “Extreme couponing” has substantially fewer redeeming qualities in my book.

what we have is a

post-digital world

– S. JENKINS, WELCOME TO THE POST-DIGITAL WORLD

“the web is not a destination

in itself but a route map to

somewhere real”

cyberspace is not a place

we go to but a layer

tightly integrated into the

world around us– INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE, 2010

ASSASSIN’S CREED UNITY

N. NEGROPONTE

In 1998, a momentous year it seems, Nicholas Negroponte of MIT wrote an essay for Wired titled “Beyond Digital”.

“is digital destined for

banality? certainly”

– N. NEGROPONTE, BEYOND DIGITAL (1998)

“it will become

tomorrow’s commercial

and cultural compost for

new ideas”– N. NEGROPONTE, BEYOND DIGITAL (1998)

At a certain point, digital will be so intertwined with the fabric of daytoday reality that we will only notice when it’s not there. Just like here, when the conference wifi goes down and you can here the “awwww” from miles away.

At that point, it will simply be a catalyst for creating something new.

A society that understands precision and punctuality is a society that has perfected the measurement of time and that has turned it into a widespread commodity through clocks, watches, and timetables.

FORD ASSEMBLY LINE – WIKIPEDIA

Precision and punctuality and linear order allow the conceptualization of the assembly line.

What do services like Uber tell us about our own society?

mobile is not

the revolution

mobile is what makes

the revolution possible

activities and artifacts

merge into complex

experiences

suppose you want

to go see a movie

you talk to friend(s)

and/or significant other

you resist the temptation

to binge watch obscure

series on Netflix

you maybe arrange

for some late dinner

you choose your

means of transport

SKATING, PABLO FERNANDEZ – HTTPS://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/HADOCK/8365191212

you buy popcorn, wear

glasses, enjoy movie

ECOSYSTEMS

BUS BIKE

CAR

CAFE

HOME

NETFLIX CINEMA

TV

PHONE

IM

BIKE

SKATES

MOVIE

DINNER

CINEMA

FRIENDSIM

Services sit at the intersection of many different, selfcentered ecosystems. As such, this being digital has very little to do with competencies, or with being geeks, or with technical skills. It is just the way we do things.

ECOSYSTEMS

BIKE

SKATES

MOVIE

DINNER

CINEMA

FRIENDSIM

Crosschannel ecosystems are individual constructs.

information architectures

weave cross-channel

ecosystems

new places in a blended

space merging digital

and physical

is facebook virtual?

No. Can we please retire this word now?

And while Facebook is arguably a place where pictures of lolcatz are shared in great quantities, it is still commanding enough attention that arguably one of the most powerful offices in the world, that of US President Barack Obama, needs to have a presence there.

if it is not, what kind of

place is facebook?

What it really is is the bad pub in your neighborhood. Bad beer, uncomfy chairs, the owner stopped caring in 1965. But all your friends are there, so you just go there. For the stories, for the narratives.

but blended spaces

can be devious

They are much more than a simple overlay of funky digital information over the fabric of reality where you can still separate the two original spaces. They are a new brand of reality that mixes these into new uneasy blends.

they silently create their

own new rules, logic and

affordances

... and these are mostly invisible, or more difficult to spot.

IMAGEPHONEBOOK.COM

The Panopticon.

The Ferguson riots. Intervening in physical space has immediate visibility and consequences.

with information providing

a steady back beat to

everything we do

this is not just about

architecting happiness

this is about

making places

good places

how we are

going to do that?

telling the story is part

of solving this mess

understanding is part

of solving this mess

VILLE SAVOYE, POISSY

HIGHCLERE CASTLE

we make the tools

then the tools make us

acting on the

architectures makes the

processes visible and

actionable

SAMPLE IMAGERY

http://www.elektropastete.de/origami-tessellation/ http://www.elektropastete.de/origami-tessellation/

ORIGAMI TESSELLATIONS

https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7185/6881397761_470d81ae60_z.jpg

http://www.123rf.com/photo_25126315_couple-of-buildings-in-high-contrast-black-and-white.html

STRIKING CITYSCAPES

how we are

going to do that?

we already started

THANK YOUANDREA @RESMINI

MAKING PLACESINFORMATION ARCHITECTURE IN A POST-DIGITAL WORLD

WIAD 2015 ZURICH

making places

Design

justgi tarsier mehello

andtheniaskedthemican

airlines websiteperson

cantis kessler

postdigital worldandrea