But that’s then when we need to remember Stowe Boyd: One of his many points is that living like this on the edge of the internet – in web 2.0 (old hat) – is the indication of how the future will be. right now there is a general rule of thumb that one person can have a certian number of friends, a certian size of social circles and even a high number of things/issues we can focus on without getting stressed. Boyds argument is that all this is changing and growing through how we use the web today. Or you could say: don’t mind the fellng that you can’t oversee the whole and be calm that way – just dive in to uncertainty, share everything that you do, think, feel, blurp, see and then these blurps might just connect to other blurps and become an intelligent conversation possibly even with learning potential.

So the point is: share more than you can think is needed.

I can’t fully live up to that myself, but it is an interesting ideal

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Kollision is made up of probably some of the nicest people in the design industry. My former colleagues Tobias and Andreas are now fully devoted to making the lab a real design office. Over the years they have made an impressive amount of interactive and visionary projects ranging from interactive art over architectural proposals to hardcore consulting for contractors.

Update: The Kollision group resent the connotations to ‘nice’, which I used in the first part of the post.

We are not at all nice people. We are the best, not the nicest

as partner of Kollision Thomas Delman (tall guy in the middle) states. Here we see 3/4 of the team ready to play hardball. Notice the cool cleanness of the artist studio behind them.

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Furthermore they are also right when they say that the extreme level of freedom that we enjoy on-line, where we can create, share and rearrange information freely might very well be good model for how we should deal with problems in organizations, in politics and so on.

The individual freedom is a cornerstone of the society we live in the western world, and which billions strive for in the rest of the world.

So why talk about collectivity and why design interfaces, services product for the collective user?
It’s a simple and yet complex question.

Complex answer part one:
Collectivity and collective intelligence sounds to some as the system talking over control with the free individual. Based on experiences of oppressive political or corporate structures, surely communism or raging capitalism is the opposite of freedom. Within such perspective the skepticism is valid.

But we have to look at collectivity in at least two ways: in this first way collectivity contains and constrains the individual, but in a second perspective collectivity is that which builds on the free individual and goes beyond the free individual.

The simple answer to the previous question is that the experience of radical freedom one can have when participating in a well-tuned collective is freedom beyond the individual. If you have ever experienced or participated in a successful brainstorm or ideation process, you might know what I mean. This type of collectivity is not only powerful but also explosive with evolutionary potential – the stuff that points to solutions that brings us forward as a whole…

Complex answer part two:
It all has to do with structures of consciousness. And one day I will be clever enough to explain what that means in a blog post.

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The movie is made by Imaginary Forces.

On the surface of things beauty, morals and truth cannot be mixed. They belong to separate domains and should be thought of as so diverse categories that they are unable to say anything about each other. This is a fundamental distinction in philosophy going back to Plato: the beautiful, the right and the truth – or – the arts, the morality of society, and lastly the realm of science.

But when we talk about Research Through Design and use design as a method for research and epistemology, then the truth and the beautiful will mix. It’s all because of the wicked problems. The material of interaction design is the people who use a technology and the future technology itself, which constitutes what is known as wicked problems since there is not one given solution to the problem, but a range of possible solutions. The discussion of wicked problems is much longer than what I can fit into this post, but I have gone into some detail with it in my dissertation.

The point is: when a designer designs the future application and future use scenarios of an interactive technology he or she is dependent on their own skills as a designer to create something that is not only functional and useful, but also intriguing, pleasing and novel. This requires designerly aesthetic skills, and that the designer invests something of him/herself. The exact same functional system can be a disaster or a success with the users in the actual use context depending on the design of the system or service.

But what is ‘aesthetic skills?’ I hear you ask. And I promise I will tell you right when I have good a short description of that can be blogged.

I have included a short transcription of what Paul Rand says in the film after the ‘read more’

A fast transcription of what Paul Rand says:

“When you talk about design, everybody has a definition that doesn’t correspond with yours. There are many good definitions. One is the synthesis of form and content. In other words, without content there is no form, and without form there is no content.

A work of art is realised when form and content are indistinguishable. When form predominates meaning is blunted. But when content predominates interest lags. But the genius comes in when both of these things fuse.

‘Without the aesthetic’ means what is not done with love – that it is done for some … some alterative motive: Because it sells, because it popular, because it’s crazy, you know all this stuff.

Graphic design is one of these phrases that doesn’t mean anything. Because anything that’s graphic is graphic. Painting, dancing – if you see it, writing – I you see it – it’s graphic. The genre of art, of graphic design, of painting, is art. That’s the genre. It’s all art.

The vocabulary of a language of art, or of aesthetics: orders, variety, contrasts, symmetry, tension, balance, scale, texture, space, shape, light, shade and color.

This is the language of form.

Don’t try to be original, just try to be good. That’s sound sorta naïve but it’s true.

Without aesthetics, you can’t find the truth – to do things with quality. I think this is in a big sense what aesthetics means.

Art is an idea that has found its perfect form. There are too many possibilities. No matter how perfectly you do something, it can still be improved.”

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Now I have been offered a job as Assistant Manager of Interactive Spaces Research Center and temporary associate professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture. I am looking forward to this.

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I am Martin Ludvigsen and this is my platform for sharing idea, designs, research and offer my services to anyone who would think it interesting to collaborate.

I am currently in a temporary Associate Professor position at the Interactive Spaces Research Center at Aarhus School of Architecture (dept. of Design) and University of Aarhus (dept. of Computer Science).

Next & More is the wide platform that contains all the activity that goes beyond research

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The background for the article is the story of Michael Rasmussen the Danish cyclist who was kicked out of the Tour de France last month by his own team Rabobank. if you followed the race you know what I am talking about, and I you didn’t the short explanation is that Michael Rasmussen was not found to be using doping like some of his competitors but since he was unable to unquestionably account for where he had been before the Tour, there was no trust in the public that he was playing ‘clean’ and there was no trust in the professional field or in his team-management. The result is that what looked like a certain win became a complete crash, maybe even for Rasmussen’s career.

My suggestion was then to change the name of the game and use a web2.0 strategy to rebuild trust and support from the public. If Rasmussen would share everything about his everyday life with the public in e.g. a blog, then we would all know that he is a good guy competing without doping. A lot of the problems for professional cycling right now is that the public does not trust them to compete fairly – without doping – and there is a code of secrecy within the field that enhances this distrust. But the vicious cycle of distrust can easily be broken by an overly generous view into the world. The barrier of closeness should be broken down and replaced by total transparency.

This same strategy goes for a much wider industry too. In the old days it was important to guard your secrets since they could be seen a weapons in the fight with your opponents. Today it is important to share what you know with the entire field of business because this is the best way to participate at the top of the game – and show that you are able to participate at the top. Furthermore it is also the best way we can evolve and survive as a collective field. Sharing the most knowledge gets us closer to the best solutions!

Article:

Web 2.0 Strategy for Michael Rasmussen

These days a lot of Danes are trying to shake of the Tour de France. What looked like a great Danish win disappeared without a convincing explanation. Especially one Dane must be particularly confused. When Michael Rasmussen right now is thinking about how to reposition himself in order to come back and win the Tour next year he might want to consider if there is something to be learned in the new trends within public relations and corporate strategy, brought about by the latest developments in Internet technology – namely the web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is among other things about how we have started to put more and more personal content the net. For example on blogs and in the comments on blogs we are participating in the public debate and sharing on a range of issues.

Companies from an old-school public relation thinking would see it as a problem if employees were constantly talking freely on the internet about important issues in their field of business. Instead they would try and make a well-coordinated, unidirectional and ‘clean’ communication from the company. In the new world that web 2.0 is opening this paradigm is turned completely up-side-down. Instead of control and purity the new keywords are diversity, participation and openness.

And this is precise where Michael Rasmussen might change his current situation. He could choose the reinforce the negative spiral around him by making counter-accusations, law-suits etc. – and these are probably needed for cleaning the air for various imaginations. But instead of going with anger and the role of the victim, Rasmussen might leave this to the experts – his lawyers, and then focus himself on what he does best, namely biking and sports.

A web 2.0 strategy in this context would be about playing with totally open cards, putting everything on the net so people can see for themselves who Michael Rasmussen is, how he thinks, what’s going on right now in his life and how he is preparing his cycling.

In short Michael Rasmussen should get himself a blog where he can tell all those who are interested (probably a few) what he is thinking and how he is going to come-back from the current situation. Furthermore he should buy himself a new mobile phone with a camera and a GPS which he could bring on every training ride and document everything around him: put his training days on the net, tell everyone where he is and how he prepares trials, cycling and Christmas with the family.

The point is to overwhelm the world with openness and make life as ‘Rasmyssen’ totally transparent so everyone can see that he is not playing with hidden cards. Besides that this will making it easier for the doping authorities to find him, it will connect him to all the fans who are not certain whether he is playing fair. This would turn the Public Opinion to his advantage and remove the risk of being ousted by the People’s Court again.

The important aspect of such a strategy is to share your knowledge in order for the collective field to understand and act based on as much knowledge as possible. In this case the field is all those who have been affected by chaos of the Tour this year. Michael Rasmussen’s best bet on turning the game that is currently burying him is to top his opponents in generosity. His best option for a comeback is not through a solo-ride this time, but through sharing as much as possible with as many as possible, and create transparency about himself.

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And people at Reboot seemed to be on a mission. The focus was on Social web and web 2.0 and what the current revolution is doing to our basic concept of being HUMAN.

I was invited by George Pór to help him develop and give a talk on Boosting our collective intelligence – developed to its final form with Yann Mauchamp too. To us designing for ‘boosting’ our collective intelligence means to be very conscious of how we are creating and facilitating social interaction to reach a peak collaboration. Our points were pretty well received and we are working now to make them shaper for next time.

To me collective intelligence is really at the root of what I am doing with Social Design and User Experience. I think that we are drawn towards these situations of increased capacity through collaboration as a natural drive. Collective intelligence is a complex issue to unfold and explore, and George Pór has been a thought leader on the subject for a quarter of a century. It is incredibly interesting to be able to collaborate with him and Yann in moving the edge of the concept as best we can.

Image by Holger

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