School of Information
UC Berkeley
314 South Hall
Berkeley CA 94720

Tel: 415-269-1513
Fax: 510-642-5814

Office hours:
Mon 12-1pm (110 South Hall)
Tue 3:30-4:30pm (110 South Hall)
Wed 2-3pm (314 South Hall)

My work builds on people’s relationships with physical objects. Physical objects are charged with history, narratives, and memories of people, both the ones who created them and the ones who interacted with them. We usually do not have access to this information about our physical objects. Enabling access to it opens up a whole new set of possibilities, as it provides an extended space for design, communication, and learning. Right now, the link that allows us to access it is missing. My research is about creating that link, and studying how those enabling technologies influence people’s lives.

It would be terrible if we lost the ties to our physical objects, to the record of our interactions with those objects that helped us grow up to be who we are, and even who we could be. Think about your childhood objects: the teddy bear that you told many stories to as a child, or the old blanket your mom created the week you were born. Who will be able to remember and tell those stories about the relationships with your physical objects? In the digital age, where more and more of our records are stored in a digital format, and physical objects become more and more disposable, are we loosing our personal connection to individualized physical objects? Will all elements of our past eventually get stored away onto an electronic storage device? Will there be any physical objects left that are dear to us, and that we would want to pass on to our children?

BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO OBJECTS

I believe that in the future, the memories of our interactions with both digital and physical objects should coexist, and even support each other in synergy. My approach is to allow people to breathe a new kind of life into the physical objects they interact with. This has two meanings: One is that people can breathe new life into physical objects through the creation of new meaning with the object, be it via stories, illustrations, or ideas.

The other reading is that the creation of meaning also causes past information about the object related to the present action to come back. The challenge is to allow all this to happen in a meaningful physical interaction loop, and taking advantage of the richness of human perception and the skills we have developed throughout our lifetime by interacting with the physical world.

WHAT DRIVES DESIGN?

Different forces can drive the design. (The following discussion is adapted from a talk by Hiroshi Ishii in 2006.)

On one level, there is technology driven design. This approach begins with the invention of an innovative technology. It then applies this new technology to an application or field.

On another level, there is need driven design. This approach begins with careful observation of an existing set of problems. It then shapes the design around solving these problems. This may also be called human-centered design.

Yet on another level, there is vision driven design. This approach starts with a preconceived vision or concept, and then designs artifacts which embody that concept, and eventually evaluates the new concept.

At the core of a radically new design, there is often a new vision. Such a vision, however, needs to be implemented and tested in an iterative process that involves the intense collaboration of designers, engineers, and social scientists.