On the 2nd December I was able to see Alan Dix a part of SIGCHI’s inaugural lecture. Anthony co-owns Dunne and Raby and also lectures at the RCA .  Anthony presented the work of the RCA and various scientific projects.

Anthony Dunne

Anthony presented his talk “Fictional Functions and Functional Fictions. “.   The talk was about using design to help guide scientists work.  His talk was very similar to the talk at the Innovation Forum.  

Anthony Dunne // Dunne & Raby from Innovationsforum on Vimeo.

Afterwards Anthony opened the floor for questions. I asked him what he thought about the rescission and the possible shift to Asia. He gave me a rather coi answer that almost implied that Asian nations are still in an industrial age and therefore have trouble to think practically about these future problems.  In some respects I agree with him, for example the Japense air bag to falls prevention, in contrast to the more practical work of TRIL.

Afterwards I asked Tony about his ethnographic work, and a more formal ‘user centred design’ process. He said that he dose do this, but leaves this out of the presentation as other projects can be exciting to present.  In comment to my work at TRIL, he pointed out that he helped develop Cultural Probes along with Bill Gaver for a project to assist the elderly.

I shall be keeping a close eye on Anthony, and would think about doing a masters at the RCA. 

Tony / Anthony.. if you find this.. please leave a comment on my work. You may be interested in the EnergyTree concept?

Presentation at TCU

Last night I got to see Alan at the SIGCHI Ireland Inaugural Lecture. Alan gave a very energetic talk, with the first half focussing more on the acadamic methods and paper / lit review for the CHI / HCI crowd. I felt that he said that there is a lot of work comming out the community, yet no one is really studying the roots of the work. Meaning the work wasn’t acadamicly sound.

The second half was interesting as he analyzied what was going on in community and how a service orientated software business would change the development of such HCI things. He touched on a couple of IDEO methods (not that he said that) such as looking at an extreme user and designing for peak experience. Alan describes peak experience as Baked Bean Vs Mars Bar design.

Here is the peak experience slide I stole from him.

If you are reading this Alan, I was very interested in your physicality in design..