Summary 1
I have read “Multisensory Design Probe: An Approach for Reducing Technostress” written by Armaghan Behbahani, Wallace Lages, and Aisling Kelliher from Virginia Tech.
The publication introduces technostress, which refers the psychological phenomenon of people accumulating stress and anxiety via the usage of technology. The authors emphasize that technostress is mainly induced because of the pressure that people feel in the modern era to always be present in the online arena of technology; because technology is constantly innovating and new software is being introduced, people feel the need to stay up-to-date when it comes to learning to utilize new technology. The paper presents a design probe that aims to explore the concept of technostress. According to the publication, the probe is based on slow technology and utilizes multi sensory experiences as a medium for people to reflect upon their relationship with technology.
Slow technology aims at “reflection and moments of mental rest rather than efficiency in performance” when it is referred to as a design agenda. The design probe focuses on providing tangible experiences for the participant so that they “can challenge the aspects of current technologies encountered in our everyday life.” They chose slow technology and a multi sensory experience approach to the design probe because they think that it would give the participants a better way of reflecting upon the technostress that they get from the rapidly evolving status of technology. Participants are allowed to participate in the experiment without a tool requiring the constant attention of the user.
Cultural probes were utilized by designers as a strategy to gain inspiration to shape their experimental designs upon. The personal responses that can be gained from cultural probes can give the designer a sense of empathy towards the participants, and the probes also allow the designers to discover “unexpected ideas and introduce new research directions.”
The authors have selected a multi sensory approach because currently technology is mostly focused on audition and sight; however, they have found out that olfactory senses are actually possible to be utilized to decipher the nuances that are brought about via technology. For instance, researchers have found out that “olfactory notifications in messaging applications … show that it is possible to decode notifications’ meaning through smell.”
They have utilized aroma, an interactive pillow, and other multi sensory elements for their probe kit. They gathered responses from 6 participants and they gained the curiosity of how children would have responded to the kit, how one sensory experience would affect another, and more. They encourage the utilization of various senses and slow technology while designing probe kits for the future.
Here is an image of the probe kit that the authors utilized:
Critique 1
I believe that it embedding multi sensory experiences into the probe kit is a great idea as I believe that it allows the designers to have a more comprehensive insight about the participants as the participants are able to provide information on how they respond to the probe via the variety of senses they have.
This reading was an eye-opener for me as I usually focus on visuals and auditory aspects of items as I am used to those two senses being highlighted in my interactions with technology. My eyes and ears usually get tired, or in other words, my level of technostress increases to the point that I purchase eye masks that increase in temperature to relax my eyes along with noise cancelling earphones to relax my ears.
I think that the slow technology and multi sensory experiences would allow participants to feel at ease and feel relaxed as they are not pressured to respond to the experiment in a stressful and pressured way.
I believe that technostress is induced because of the lack of time and space that technology has brought upon people to meditate and spend time to unwire.
Therefore, approaching the concept of technostress by attempting to awaken the senses that humans do not usually focus on would certainly allow designers to have a novel viewpoint of constructing future devices for people. In this sense, this probe has excellently captured the aspects that are in deficit due to technology.
Summary 2
I have read “Scenarios and the art of world making” by Joost Vervoort, Roy Bendor, Aisling Kelliher, Oscar Strik, and Ariella Helgott. They are from various institutions of higher education such as University of Oxford, University of British Columbia, and Carnegie Mellon University.
The paper focuses on scenarios and worldmaking, in this context, world making refers to the framework for “pluralistic, imaginative scenario development.” It is important to note that they introduce Nelson Goodman’s concept of world making as he believes that there is “no singular, objective world” or real reality as he believes that “world are multiple, constructed through creative processes instead of given and always in the process of becoming.”
The authors agree that scenario practice is an effective mean of imagining the future as they recognize that the future is constructed of pluralistic views of people who are living in the present. The authors argue that scenario practice is beyond probability and plausibility as they believe that probability and plausibility is also based on evaluating past experiences, which is a lens that can easily be biased. Therefore, they highlight that it is important to set the human imagination free when it comes to constructing a scenario.
The authors believe that world making is useful in scenario development as they purport that it would be a “useful language for the application of discordant pluralism in scenario practices, since it speaks of multiple co-existing worlds rather than worldviews, and thus underlining the notion that an overarching framework is often problematic.”
By asking questions about the “worlds” that participants have, the authors are able to elicit the imaginations of people in order to construct a collaborative pluralistic world that can act as a response and a design guideline for building products for the future which is rife with uncertainty.
Critique 2
I agree that there are discordant pluralism in the world; hence, I am in accordance with the argument that world making would be useful in scenario practice. The viewpoint that two distinct worlds can completely understand each other and come together is an extremely idealistic view in my perspective as I have seen individuals with very distinct lives within the context of the status quo. It would take ages for them to fully understand where each one of them are coming from when they take on a certain action as their actions towards any event would vary not only because they are different individuals, but because the culture and context that they were brought up from are disparate. Thus, I praise the idea of world making as I believe that an ideal future where multiple worlds coexist with each other with the acknowledgement that differences exist in this society would be achieved if different parties are not forced to merge with each other.
Scenario practice is an apt word to capture the spirit of world making as the word scenario emanates the feel that it would be possible to have multiple scenarios on the table.
By reading this publication, I have come to the conclusion that it is important to create an environment and setting for the participants to unleash their imaginations without the restriction of the fear and pressure that they would have to reconcile the discords that they have with this world as it is the reality that pluralistic worlds coexist on this planet, and because the world to the individual that holds it is nearly everything to that individual.
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