This is our local furniture shop Perch, where we bought our sofa. We like the shop and we like our sofa. Shopping for high cost items that will become a permanent feature of your home is not always pleasant. What made us like our experience was the owner’s approach, they were great to work with, helped us get our dream sofa – well, it was like they said on their wall.

Does a furniture store need a manifesto on its wall? Jonathan Galloway, one of the owners says that on the weekends they get lots of people in. They get busy talking with customers and might not get to talk with everyone as they come in. At least the manifesto gives a quick introduction to what’s on offer and a better reason to maybe stay a bit longer or come back another time to start serious sofa shopping.

What counts is clear communication of purpose. That way everyone knows what they’re dealing with and can decide whether or not to engage.

Pantalla Global, an upcoming exhibit at the CCCB in Barcelona, explores the roles of screens in our lives. And of course a major part of that is the role WE play in generating and sharing all sorts of content. With the exhibit, they’ve created a platform for soliciting and broadcasting content submitted by the public and creative partners. It’s nicely planned, with themes for people to contribute content to, and a complimentary web interface to collect contributions –
History / Sports / Advertising / Excess / Play / Surveillance / Politics

The exhibit recognises that people power / publicly generated content is a major part of our media lives today and this is a smart way to both highlight and exemplify the phenomenon.

It’s ‘incubating’ right now – they’re collecting video submissions (you can do that here). The exhibition will run from 24, January to 27, May 2012.

P.S. The CCCB has a fantastic, addictive bookshop. You were warned…

CHIFOO, the Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon, hosted a usability scavenger hunt for World Usability day 2011. In one day, hunters around the world captured a library of usability gems.

Everything around us provides clues about how our environment works. Some are more effective than others. The scavenger hunt gives all sorts of examples of the success & confusion that environmental cues can give. Usability is simply good logic, but it often takes a real live human to experience the user scenario and call out the issues, or success!

The hunt began on Wednesday, Nov. 9 at 6:00 am (PST) and continued through 6:00 pm (PST) on Thursday, Nov. 10.

The design principles of Dieter Rams are on display at SF MOMA‘s current exhibit featuring his simple beautiful product design. They are really universal principles, applicable to any design process. Note: Text redacted from the exhibit has been edited to avoid the use of ‘product’. You can find the original text here.

The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.

Anything designed is meant to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasises usefulness while disregarding anything that could detract from it.

Aesthetic quality is integral to usefulness because the things we use every day affect our person and our well-being. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful.

It clarifies the structure. Better still, it can make the design outcome talk. At best, the thing designed is self-explanatory.

It does not make the design outcome more innovative, powerful, or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

Designed items fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be neutral and restrained in order to leave room for the user’s self-expression.

It avoids being fashionable and therefor never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.

Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and Accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.

Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimises physical and visual pollution throughout the life cycle of the product.

Less but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the final design is not burdened with inessentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity!

And finally – Question everything

You can visit these quotes in person, and longingly browse Dieter Rams’ gorgeous designs at the‘Less and More’ exhibit at SF MOMA, August 27, 2011 – February 20, 2012.

Once a year, Portland’s Art Museum is temporarily transformed, thanks to a collaboration between the museum and the Art & Social Practice course at Portland State University. Shine a Light becomes a stage for events take place all over the museum – special performances, installations, tours, workshops, and games.

The idea is to get visitors thinking about the way they interact with art. What’s important to point out here is that Art & Social Practice is focused on types of art which engage people in the creation process. So when they are invited to take over a museum for a day, the museum experience becomes re-focused on opening up the possibilities of what can happen in a museum, creating new ways for visitors to consume art and also actively being a part of creating art.

Each intervention provides a format for social exchange, with the orchestrators defining just how much authorship is shared with visitors. What you get are lots of formats for bringing people together – lovely, celebratory, strange, intimate, and inspired – visitors decide to do a little or a lot.

Shine a Light pushes hard against standard museum behaviour protocol. Visitors are typically invited to consume art, not engage to the extent of being co-authors as art happens. Its thrilling to extend that opportunity to the thousands of people walking through the door during these events.

What makes the whole experience feel truly communal is that photographic documentation is encouraged throughout.

This is pushed further by Molly Sherman’s project, The Visitors Exhibition Catalogue, which recruits museum goers to collectively produce the 2011 Shine A Light catalogue over the course of the evening.

Volunteer visitors were given assignments (and nifty reporters booklets!) to document specific events and installations with the responsibility of reporting back and handing in written, drawn or photographic representations. The final publication was produced on the spot in collaboration with the versatile Publication Studio.

So much activity and so much to mention…

Museum Cookbook
Hunting through the museum, pick up art-inspired recipes by popular Portland chefs. What a nice way to mix taste buds and other local talents into the consumption of art. Seen above: Braised Shortribs recipe, inspired by Charrette de Boeuf by Vincent Van Gogh and Apple Crumble Pie Holes recipe by Pie Spot. Organised by Lexa Walsh & Crystal Baxley with Jillian Punska.

Food cART
Taste a few of those recipes prepared by excellent food carts outside. Seen above: Plum, pear, fig and blue cheese fougasse by Tastebud, inspired by Childe Hassam’s Oregon Still Life and malt beer by Captured By Porches Brewing, inspired by Rick Bartow’s Ursa Major. Organised by Lexa Walsh & Crystal Baxley with Jillian Punska.

Museum Visitor
An empty platform with a special label lets guests pose next to Duane Hanson’s uncanny life-like sculpture, “The Dishwasher”. Organised by Molly Sherman.

Wish You Were Here
DIY souvenir – take a photo of yourself next to your favourite work of art in the museum and have it turned into a postcard on the spot. Organised by Crystal Baxley.

Art is Forever
Get a tattoo inspired by artwork in the Museum collection. Choose from a selection of prepared tattoo designs by local illustrators. Seen above: Tattoo design by Adam R. Garcia, inspired by Robert Colescott’s “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder”, and design by Kate Bingaman-Burt, inspired by Kenny Scarf’s “TV Rama” (tattooed onto herself!). Tattooing sessions ran from 10am – midnight and were FREE! Not ready to commit? Temporary tattoos were also available… Organised by Jason Sturgill. Photo credits: Jason Sturgill & Kate Bingaman-Burt.

Art As Experience. Guaranteed.
This installation officially certifies visitor experience as works of art. An on-site notary performs the certification. It’s a nod to Art & Social Practice and also acknowledges that visitor interpretation contributes significantly to make up a complete art experience. Organised by Ariana Jacob.

Shine a Light took place on October 14, 2011 from 10am – midnight. The soundtrack? Portland Art Museum’s very own radio station, WPAM, accepting requests and dedications all day, for one day only.

Title photo credit: Oregonian

The Walker Art Center’s summer long events programme Open Field celebrates the act of gathering and sharing. With an open calendar, and field of grass with picnic tables and shade, the Walker invites people to share what they know and invite others to join.

Staff put on an excellent roster of exciting programming, and invite the general public to step up and propose their own activities – it’s literally open to anyone to fill in the blanks via a short proposal form and google calendar. A simple, yet totally transparent embodiment of the ‘open’ ethos. Events include tai chi, bull whip training, financial advice giving, color coded craft action, superhero costume & foam sword making, book club, yarn bombing, chess… you get the picture.

As a result, the Walker’s back yard is a great compliment to the exhibitions inside – it’s constantly buzzing with creative activity and helps make the museum a place to go where people can both consume and generate rich creativity.

Open Field is open from June – September 2011, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And if you miss it this year, make sure you come back for 2012.

The central activity hub for Open Field, just outside the entrance to the museum.

Choose your activity table in the shade of patio trees.

Choose wisely, so many tempting options!

Superhero sword fighting out on the field.

How do you get people to respect the purpose you intended?

At Portland’s annual downhill box car race, bales of hay line the road in case box cars need a place to crash. Lots of people turn up to watch and inevitably they want a place to sit. With these bales everywhere, who wouldn’t be tempted to take a seat?

Sometimes the rules are just so simple. These signs remind us of the intended purpose without making it complicated. A bale of hay can be lots of things. In this case, it’s not a seat.

Yikes! This handy rental car reminder serves as preemptive feedback, integrated right into the natural environment of use. Explaining rules can be so simple. And it’s pretty powerful incentive for me to not lose this key…

Customers, visitors, audiences, participants are weary of a pitch. When does participation turn from a worthwhile exchange and start to feel more like a ploy? I recently felt that itchy sense of suspicion while eating breakfast and considered how participation can tip the balance towards serving one party, rather than feeling like an exchange.

This is my container of orange juice. It’s offering ‘juicy rewards’ in the form of points which people can ‘collect online for healthy savings and fun’ and ‘One carton saves you $15′. This is advertised exhaustively over the carton. It sounds like it may be a good deal. It seems as it’s as easy as lifting off the top to reach the reward. It’s not. The steps required in order to receive points are:

- purchase the juice
- look under the cap to get a code
- go online
- register at www.juicyrewards.tropicana.com
- mandatory fields include full name, age, address, email
- pick out a password
- agree to company terms and conditions
- enter the code from under the cap
- chose from a selection of discounts with specific partner product offers (in other words, you don’t get a $15 rebate, you get a discount through spending more money)
This is getting complex… with so many steps, it’s easy for users to ask, ‘what am I getting out of this?’. Without having signed up for my own Tropicana Juicy Rewards account, I can’t completely verify the rewards system, but did find a pretty detailed account here.

The gist of the consumer benefit:

Eligibility for a $15 discount, though with limitations – only with selected company partners, and only if you can find a product or service you want from the selection available.
And the company benefit:

Direct consumer profile data, and if consumers run through the setup to redeem points the consumer profile data begins to grow through connections with purchases from company affiliates who also benefit from the exchange.
In the end it’s the company who benefits the most, and this feels obvious from the structure of the transaction. When designing an experience which requires a lot of steps, users need reassurance along the way, to feel like the exchange is a fair one. In this case the experience feels like a lot of giving for what ends up as a strings-attached reward.

Blog posts are usually a good resource to dig to the bottom of a rewards scheme. In this case, that too is a bit awkward – there are plenty of positive customer reviews online, but almost every one ends with the following text: Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in the Tropicana Juicy Insiders Ambassador program by Mom Central on behalf of Tropicana. I received 12 free Juicy Rewards points and a $50 Visa gift card to use in redemption of the points and to facilitate my review. The overall story driving the Juicy Rewards experience just isn’t convincing.

Good customer – brand relationships do exist. Want to hear about a good one? Take a look at the experience Powell’s Book Store based in Portland, Oregon uses to drive consumers online, here. And have a look at Nike + Livestrong’s Chalkbot project here.
We’ll be posting about these shortly.

Started in 2002, Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July’s online project, Learning to Love You More, reaffirms the notion that rules are a good thing. As they explain it:

“Sometimes it is a relief to be told what to do… our most joyful and even profound experiences often come when we are following other people’s instructions. When we are making crepes from a recipe, attempting to do a handstand in yoga class, or singing someone else’s song. Sometimes it seems like the moment we let go of trying to be original, we actually feel something new.”

Visitors to the website (which you can find here at – www.learningtoloveyoumore.com) are invited to accept an assignment, complete it by following the instructions and send in a report via text, photo, video, etc. Reports are posted online in a catalogue of over 5,000 the last time they counted.

The formula they’ve developed delivers rich, captivating, meaningful content. It drives people to action in all sorts of ways. What helps make this model of soliciting creative contributions successful:
- Assignments which provide rules and structure for contributions.
- Authorship is shared, the artists maintain curatorship but content is entirely made up of participant work. Participants are also free to curate their own exhibitions of assignments.
- The modest but gratifying reward of getting published and being part of a community.

After 7 years of assignments, contributions, exhibitions, screening broadcasts and involvement of over 8000 people, the site finally closed up shop. All assignments and contributions are still available for browsing on the site, and you can purchase the book there too.

Assignment 55: Photograph a significant outfit

Assignment 34: Make a protest sign and protest

Assignment 39: Take a picture of your parents kissing

Assignment 50: Take a flash photo under your bed

*All photos taken from the book