Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy

The Serendipity Engine - #ozchi24

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 10:30:00 +1100

The Serendipity Engine - #ozchi24

The Serendipity Engine

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 10:29:29 +1100

What is serendipity

#ozchi24

An important aspect of our design process was trying to determine a definition of serendipity that we all agreed on. As we wandered about Hobart CBD and the Salamanca Markets the ideas of the pleasant surprise and the joy of the accidental discovery really jumped out at us as what we felt was truly serendipity. We decided that serendipity is essentially something random and uncontrollable, something that cannot be engineered. But the experience could be discovered through changing the everyday into something with less restrictions than what the daily routine can provide.

The process

Our design process began with a brainstorming session where any and every idea was discussed and written down into a shared google doc. We decided to focus on the isolated experience of “wandering within an environment” lived by people ever day. Then with this in mind we decided to roam around Hobart and surrounds to try and grapple with the concept of serendipity, hoping for a serendipitous event to occur.

The ideas presented by Zuckerman about a cities inhabitants becoming more isolated and remaining inside the restricted spheres of their daily routine led us to try and think of ways to break into the everyday and insert some randomness into peoples lives.

To this end we combined the concepts of Smart-Its and intelligent environments along with the idea of designing for randomness that may lead to a serendipitous experience. Through this process we arrived at the idea of “The Serendipity Engine”, created using a series of “smart” objects from our daily lives such as walls or trees that would interact with people passing-by. The engine is designed to be simple, it’s goal is to merely facilitate a break in the ordinary. From our own experiences of wandering around Hobart, and from the literature we read, we noticed all it takes is for the ordinary to be modified in a small way for serendipitous events to possibly occur.

The implementation

We used an iterative design process to create a prototype of a “smart” object which would make up the serendipity engine. Following each design iteration we conducted a real-world evaluation of the smart object prototype. Our evaluations were informed by a combination of observation and interview of potential members of our user population.

The ending

The Serendipity Engine will allow people to momentarily break free of their routine, insert a little random into their lives and hopefully lead them into unique serendipitous encounters, the future for The Serendipity Engine is nigh on boundless.

References

L. Holmquist, H. Gellersen, G. Kortuem, S. Antifakos, F. Michahelles, B. Schiele, M. Beigl, and R. Maze. Building intelligent environments with smart-its. Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE, 24(1):56 –64, jan.-feb. 2004.

T. Leong, S. Howard, and F. Vetere. Feature: Take a chance on me: using randomness for the design of digital devices. interactions, 15:16– 19, May 2008.

T. W. Leong, P. Wright, F. Vetere, and S. Howard. Understanding experience using dialogical methods: the case of serendipity. InProceedings of the 22nd Conference of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of Australia on Computer-Human Interaction, OZCHI ’10, pages 256–263, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM.

Zuckerman, E. 2011, CHI keynote: Desperately Seeking Serendipity, 1 October 2011, <http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/05/12/chi-keynote-desperately-seeking-serendipity/>

"That’s good, so we won’t have to beat him with a rubber hose"

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 08:21:18 +1100

“That’s good, so we won’t have to beat him with a rubber hose”

- McJones #ozchi24

Almost at the finish line. Some video editing to go…

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 07:45:04 +1100

Almost at the finish line. Some video editing to go…

Oh my, where did you come from. #ozchi24

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 06:24:43 +1100

Oh my, where did you come from. #ozchi24

"I hear the sounds of birds, that means the sun’s coming up"

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:43:10 +1100

“I hear the sounds of birds, that means the sun’s coming up”

- Harry #ozchi24

"Imagination and Cogs"

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:32:29 +1100

“Imagination and Cogs”

- McJones

#ozchi24

Surprise Gumby #ozchi24

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:55:17 +1100

Surprise Gumby #ozchi24

Working hard #ozchi24

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:49:06 +1100

Working hard
#ozchi24

The real work continues. #ozchi24

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:46:41 +1100

The real work continues.
#ozchi24

What is serendipity?

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:16:00 +1100

#ozchi24

An issue we’ve had in this challenge was to truly nail down what serendipity meant to us, without a hard definition it’s hard to figure out what can summon it.

In the end we ended up deciding on a definition that worked for us based on the encounters we had as we roamed about Hobart and surrounds. Serendipity to us is the idea of positive random events occurring, it’s something undefinable and utterly unique to each person.

Third testing environment

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:00:00 +1100

Third testing environment

Random ramblings

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 01:07:00 +1000

One of the different ideas we had early on was to use augmented reality in some way to encourage serendipitous events. We spent a long time trying to figure out what about augmented reality would actually be something that people would want to see. We thought the idea of being able to see what is occurring around you would lead to people choosing to do something completely ad-hoc and lead into serendipitous experiences.

This idea turned into a magic wand which could be waved around to see what was occurring on around you, or binoculars you could use to see through the normal into the events and places you normally couldn’t see from your current point.

We then started to imagine what it would be like to see the information transferred through the air, being able to see the TV channels and radio stations as you walked about.

In the end we moved away from these ideas because of the very meaning of serendipity. These ideas, whilst good, were ultimately too active on the users to allow for true serendipity to occur in our opinion, so we went back to the drawing board to start again.

Second testing environment

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:40:00 +1000

Second testing environment

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3.

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:39:15 +1000

So, that’s two rounds of iterative testing complete. Time for the hard slog to the finish.

The day so far...

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 19:35:00 +1000

#ozchi24

And so it has begun, another 24 hours of randomness, design, intelligence and stupidly. Somehow, on this day our eccentricities combine, erupting into a torrent of twitter one-liners, jokes and visions of foolishness. Yet we still somehow maintain a shred of professionalism behind the scenes, and manage to create something that actually has purpose.

Arriving late—again—we were at our designated meeting place by 11:00, and began debating serendipity. How should we approach this, which definition and focus should we adopt? Will this box us in too early? And so it goes. No matter where you are, 24 hours never feels enough. For us we always feel limited; we usually only figure out what we want once it’s 16:30 on a Saturday and most people have disappeared…go us! Frustration, desperation, and then exaltation. From sitting in the wonderful couches in the tea room, to wandering the Salamanca Markets and Hobart CBD, to libraries and mountains, the brainstorming yielded magnificent fruit…mmm…delicious fruit.

We began turning these ideas into prototypes, assessing their feasibility and potential. Taking our cue from the Challenge Brief, we allowed fate to play its part—serendipity as it were— it was our chance encounters that prompted us to decide which of our prototypes (and thus ideas) to pursue. With our first [CONFIDENTIAL - ack ack] deployed, our initial results came in. Filled with excitement and that wonderful feeling of frostbitten appendages, we sat down to review our results, and to relate them back to the research.

Now…it’s dinner time.
Till the next update, om nom nom

It was pretty cold on the mountain. #ozchi24

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:51:06 +1000

It was pretty cold on the mountain. #ozchi24

#ozchi24 #encounter We had been walking around Salamanca Markets...

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:34:16 +1000

#ozchi24 #encounter We had been walking around Salamanca Markets and Hobart City to try and garner some inspiration for the challenge when we saw this box on the ground, we instantly stopped and dug through it. Although in the end there was nothing in the box we wanted we felt that this encounter is the very essence of a serendipitous encounter, a single element had stopped our lives for a moment and made them better because of it.

The team was climbing a mountain. #ozchi24

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:23:00 +1000

The team was climbing a mountain. #ozchi24

We made you a song. #ozchi24

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:22:34 +1000

We made you a song. #ozchi24