As an experiment, I recently sponsored my own design challenge on Kluster (you’ll need a Kluster account to see it). I offered $50 of my own money and challenged the Kluster community to design a killer location-aware application for the iPhone. The challenge ran for about a week and a half, during which time 47 proposals were made and 68,523 watts (Kluster currency) were invested to determine the best among them.

The main purpose of my experiment was to try and re-create the human-centered design process within Kluster, which, according to my previous post, is difficult if not impossible. Not to be a mere critic, I gave my own best shot and making it happen.

I’d say the results were so-so. While some really good ideas were generated (some even innovative), on the whole, the design process I provided wasn’t strongly adhered to. I created three phases: 1) Needfinding: identifying unfilled user needs based on actual personal experiences, 2) Wild brainstorm: going for a quantity of unconstrained ideas, 3) Final solution: the final brainstorm.
Also, in every phase I stressed the importance of being succinct. I’ve noticed that most Kluster projects are plagued by long-winded proposals that could really be said in a few sentences. This makes for really tedious evaluation of the idea’s quality. I went so far as to require a two sentence limit for phases 1 and 2 — which people promptly ignored.

Lessons learned:

1. You can’t expect wild brainstorms when you title your design challenge with a specific solution in mind (i.e. “location-aware iPhone app”). People basically treated phase 2 and 3 the same.
2. People have a hard time discovering needs based on real personal experience. It’s so much easier to imagine “what if…” or “wouldn’t it be cool if…”, instead of developing insights about the current state of the art.
3. Kluster’s algorithmic selection process, based on an investment market metaphor, doesn’t seem to work very well for the small-scale collaborations happening on the site. (The final winning idea was mediocre, at best.) The only projects that draw a large enough crowd are the ones that offer hundreds of dollars or more as reward. Hardly a platform for democratized design… But potentially a good recipe for well-funded crowdsourcing.

After it was all over I received two interesting messages from people who had participated in my challenge. One asked if I would send him a check for $4.70 (his return on investment for the winning idea). Kluster has yet to tell me how I’m actually supposed to pay out my reward. Symptom of a brand-new startup I suppose.

The other person wanted to know how the final idea had been chosen since its stats seemed to indicate it was lower-rated and had less investment than other proposals. My inquiry to my Kluster contact revealed that the timeline of investment plays a big part in preventing people from gaming the system by investing big right before the challenge ends. In other words, earlier investments carry more weight than last-minute ones. While that makes sense, early investments are also much-less informed: there are fewer ideas to compare it to.

I suggested to Kluster that they put this information in a FAQ so people aren’t investing in the dark. I actually lost several thousand Watts investing last minute like that. That was after I’d won over $100 with some good investments in the earliest Kluster projects. I figured I’d use that money to run two experiments. Now you know about the results of the first. Stay tuned for the second.

This one looks at the material redefinition of information in the digital participatory age.

It goes without saying that I’m excited to see how Kluster fares in this space. Others have come before it — Innocentive, Cambrian House, CrowdSpirit, IdeaBlog — but none of these have impressed me as much. Kluster reads like a potent combination of community technologies for online collaboration — prediction markets, community currency, user-generated content, social filtering — and applies it to an area very close to my heart: design. It’s great to see someone create what looks like a solid platform that targets and incentivizes a co-creative community.

However, I have my doubts.

As a student and practitioner of “West coast-style” human-centered design thinking, (as pioneered in the Stanford design community and practiced by pros at IDEO and countless other firms), I’m going to be watching Kluster to see if the wisdom of the crowds can adequately substitute for deep, insightful human-centered design.

The problem is, the Web is still talk-centered, despite rich multi-media support. And Kluster is no exception, where the engines of creation are more or less Digg-style social filtering of idea proposals and comments. What rises to the top is still what sounds good or looks good, not what is grounded in real, meaningful user need.

Kluster’s participatory design is essentially algorithmic brainstorming. That’s only half the battle, and, in the end, can only lead to half-assed products. Good design starts with ethnographic research methods — needfinding, as designers say — which take time and effort (away from computer screen) talking to real human beings in order to understand their worldviews, their culturally-specific meanings, their unmet needs.

Good design also depends on prototyping — putting physical (or software) mock-ups and models in front of actual users get their feedback, then incorporate that feedback into new design iterations.

In other words, good design doesn’t happen in one fell swoop.

Social filtering model is one-dimensional. Stories, comments, pictures, videos, links, etc. bubble up from ground zero to mass visibility. There’s no room for the chaotic ebb and flow of real design process, where ideas that rise up because they seem good at first — sure-fire winners, even — come crashing down after a reality-check…to rise again, crash, and rise again, re-centered on user need. I believe that real, nuts n’ bolts, collaborative design will not be successfully crowdsourced until these elements are included fundamentally in the prescribed process.

Thomas Maiorana, an accomplished human-centered designer and crowdsourcing maven blogs about how to combine the best of both worlds in his Six Steps to Effective Crowdsourcing. Highly recommended.

Let me be clear: I am a huge believer in the potential for democratized design, and I see Kluster as a wonderful first prototype. But there’s a real danger that lies dormant in this field, especially when combined with the democratization of material manufacturing. When products are designed and manufactured merely on the basis of sounding cool — we’ll end up with even more mountains of landfill than we have already, because no one actually needed the stuff in the first place. Human-centered design — which requires needfinding, prototyping, iteration — is more than a smart design process, it embodies an ethics of sustainable design.

Hydrogen Dream
by Daniel Steinbock

My dreams are made of stars
and stars are made of hydrogen.
And though I dream out loud,
I hardly know where to begin,
when dreams are made of hydrogen.

And you carried away the stone.
From my broken back, you lift the heavy load.
And you carried away the stone…

These arms were made to hold you,
your body, the Universe.
And only eyes can show you
what is greater than these many words:
your body is the Universe.

And you danced away the storm.
My broken wings were all at once restored.
And you danced away the storm…

Love was made to disarm.
Love will make you whole again.
And when I cried out loud,
twas Love that led me home again,
where dreams are made of hydrogen.

And you sang up the Sun.
My broken voice could never reach that note.
And we sang up the Sun…

It worked perfectly. I had of course attached funny sound clips from Star Trek, Robo Cop and 2001 to every single system event: windows opening and closing, diskettes inserted and ejected, programs launched, trash filled and emptied. And I found my old writings from sixth through ninth grades, up until we bought our first Windows PC, a 486 DX33. For kicks, I’m going to send my Apple data to RetroFloppy to convert it to a format I read on my MacBook Pro. They’ll even make a entirely virtual version of my old computer (a disk image) that I can boot up in an Apple IIGS emulator!

I haven’t found my oldest writings from pre-sixth grade which must be around here on some 5.25″ floppy disk. That would include my first play, a re-telling of the Greek myth about Paris, Helen and the Golden Apple.

However, I did find a number of early glimpses at my young self. Here’s one that really made me laugh…and wonder in amazement. I’m guessing it’s from the Fall of 1990, near the start of sixth grade. I can’t honestly say I remember what it was like to be that sixth grader. But reading this makes me think I haven’t really changed all that much in essence.

A Proclamation

Be it known by all people that the first week in January is hereby proclaimed to be “Philosophical Awareness Week.”

It is important to recognize Philosophical Awareness this week for the following reasons:

1. Philosophy is important in every person’s life. It is important to explore our innermost feelings and opinions, which we may hide from other people.
2. The study of Philosophy has been neglected for some time and by proclaiming Philosophical Awareness Week, we can rejuvenate this long forgotten mental discipline.
3. The development of a personal philosophy is crucial in the growth process of humans as individuals.

The following activities should be carried out this week in honor of this proclamation (in addition to any special projects, activities, or field trips that might be conducted to make this proclamation even more meaningful):

1. Single or numerous colored ribbons are to be worn on the body, signifying the observance of Philosophical Awareness Week.
2. Philosophical Awareness Week is to be observed starting with the first Sunday of the year. The following Friday is to be a holiday from school and labor.
3. While on holiday, people observing Philosophical Awareness Week for its true meaning should participate in relaxing, enjoyable activities that exercise the skills of the philosopher or of being creative, such as: painting, drawing, arts and crafts; story, play or poetry writing; composing or playing original music; conversing on the subject of philosophy; sharing one’s own philosophical beliefs and expanding on one’s philosophical thoughts.

Signed,
Daniel Steinbock

An interesting and effortless opportunity to practice personal sustainability, care of EcoIron and Rising Phoenix Design.

Consider a simple calculation:

1. According to the U.S. Dept. of Energy, an all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts.
2. At 200 million queries per day, Google (white), is displayed about 550,000 hours per day.
3. Black Google would save 750 megawatt-hours a year.

http://www.blackle.com

If Google is your homepage, try using this instead.

Promote energy-efficient web design. Go black.

As of this writing, you can walk the streets of New York City, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami–maybe more. The automated stitching of panoramas from different days and times makes for some high-tech surrealist photography. Continuing the twisted translation of reality into the Googleverse…. Just wait until these are fed by realtime surveillance/web cameras and the most-recent geotagged Flickr photos.