Presentation originally given by Matt Jones at Frontiers Of Interaction V, Rome, Italy on 8th June 2009.

1. The New
Negroponte Switch
Designing things that think they are services
and services that think they are things.
SCHULZE
& WEBB

2. Hello!
SCHULZE
& WEBB
Hello there. I’m Matt Jones, and I’m a designer.

3. DOPPLR
DOPPLR
DOPPLR
Where next?
Where next?
Where next? SCHULZE
& WEBB
I’ve spent the last two and half years as a cofounder and lead
designer on Dopplr, which is a social tool for optimising travel.

4. DOPPLR
DOPPLR
DOPPLR
Now I’m a principal at a design company called Schulze&Webb
Where next?
in London. This is a tiny version of me! The availabot is a small
likeness of me that plugs into the USB port of a computer, and
Where next?
when I’m online or chatting to you, it would stand to attention.
When I’m not it would fall slack to the table. This gives you some
Where next?
idea of the attention I’m giving our conversation, in the physical
space you’re in.

5. SCHULZE
& WEBB
At Schulze&Webb we do three things: first of all we’re a design
and strategy consulting company, also we are a new product
development company, and ultimately we make products we
think should be in the world.

6. SCHULZE
& WEBB
For instance recently we put this into the world - the Here&There
map projection, the result of about 5-6years research by my
partner Jack Schulze

7. SCHULZE
& WEBB
Video of Here&There Manhattan
http://vimeo.com/4525678

8. SCHULZE
& WEBB
This is another diagram by Jack Schulze - of what we do, and it
kind of sets me up nicely for what I want to talk about today.
Being a designer for the internet of things.

9. SCHULZE
& WEBB
That as designers (how many of you are designers, or help
create products?) we are increasingly working in a new,
nameless category of practice.

10. Field of potential
DOPPLR
DOPPLR
DOPPLR
http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/cssm/research/lattice.html
...as it is nameless, it is a huge field of potential, which I can
Where next?
poke at only a little in the short time we have today.
Where next?
Where next?

11. Negroponte
SCHULZE
& WEBB
This is Nicholas Negroponte

12. SCHULZE
& WEBB
In 1995, almost 15 years ago, when I graduated architecture
school and side-stepped into work as a web designer, he wrote
a book which became a best-seller and defined the early era of
digital design practice

13. Wired
Telephone TV
TV Telephone
Wireless
SCHULZE
& WEBB
In the book, he proposed a transformation: that things that were
wired would become unwired - and vice versa...

14. Gershenfeld
SCHULZE
& WEBB
And this is Neil Gershenfeld... another MIT professor...

15. SCHULZE
& WEBB
He wrote a book called FAB, which brought home to me and lot
of other people that the era of rapid cheap fabrication of objects
was within reach.

16. SCHULZE
& WEBB
So, I guess I’m proposing a new switch: The Negroponte/
Gershenfeld switch... by which I mean that...

17. Tangible
Products Products
Services Services
Intangible
SCHULZE
& WEBB
That the technologies of rapid fabrication and pervasive
networks are allowing the tangible and the intangible to switch
places and mingle.

18. Tangible
Products Products Products Products
Services Services Services Services
Intangible
SCHULZE
& WEBB
This is the Spime World to take Bruce Sterling’s conception:
‘beginning and ending as data, and things only occasionally’.
This is a very interesting world to be in design practice...

19. SCHULZE
& WEBB
This is the post-digital world as my friend Russell Davies (and
others) have called it.

20. SCHULZE
http://www.reallyinterestinggroup.com
& WEBB
He took the ‘beginning and ending as data, and things only
occasionally’ thought, and with Ben Terrett at http://
www.reallyinterestinggroup.com created a newspaper generated
from blog posts, flickr and twitter.

21. Photo: Roo Reynolds SCHULZE
& WEBB
And at the moment, Paper is perhaps the cheap, quick easy way
to imagine and prototype the spimeworld. In January, we created
‘papercamp’ which was an unconference style event to do just
that, ...very inspired by Aaron Straup Cope’s work on what he
called “The Papernet”...

22. The Incidental
SCHULZE
& WEBB
Which we took inspiration for in a project for the British Council’s
presence at Salone di Mobile. Working with curator Daniel
Charny and graphic designers Abake, we replaced an exhibition
with a service: a daily map built from twitter reports, flickr
pictures and blog posts...

23. The Incidental
SCHULZE
& WEBB
Called “The Incidental” - it was printed every night in Milano, and
distributed to those attending Salone, who scribbled on it,
twittered and flickred new contributions for the next day: building
up both a social map of the best things, and a unique ‘souvenir’

24. Walking Papers Help improve OpenStreetMap by drawing on this map, then visit
http://walking-papers.org/print.php?id=6wfm7f9k
Map data ©2009 CC-BY-SA
SCHULZE
walking-papers.org
OpenStreetMap.org contributors
& WEBB
Mike Migurski and Stamen have created a service called
“Walking Papers” where you print your map for the day’s
expedition, but crucially they have made the ‘return-path’ for you
scribbles, corrections and discoveries to improve the Open
Street Map project.

25. SCHULZE
& WEBB
While at Dopplr I designed this: the “Personal Annual Report” -
an artifact built of service data, visualised and delivered as a PDF
only - deliberately ‘non-digital’ to be put on a wall, or scribbled
on as a social object... as a gift...

26. Brendan Dawes
SCHULZE
& WEBB
And designer Brendan Dawes of MagneticNorth took this further,
creating a beautiful luggage tag from his Dopplr data using the
fabricating service Ponoko.

27. SCHULZE
& WEBB
This physicalisation of the intangible data of a service is
something I’ve started to call an “Attention Anchor” - something
that is in the world as a representation of a rhythm or habit of a
service, and perhaps represents something of that service.

28. SCHULZE
& WEBB
This is not such a new idea I realise... but new technology is
recapitulating this...

29. Poken
SCHULZE
& WEBB
I’ve seen a few people wearing these today: Poken. These are
RFID ‘icons’ for a service that shares your identity across social
networks at a touch.

30. DOPPLR
DOPPLR
DOPPLR
And we’ve seen Availabot already.
Where next?
Where next?
Where next?

31. Tangible
Products
Services
Intangible
SCHULZE
& WEBB
So there’s a lot of activity and more to come from making
‘attention anchors’ or services that sometimes become
products, or expressed through products.

32. Tangible
Products
Services
Intangible
SCHULZE
& WEBB
What about the other way?

33. Rome Bikesharing
SCHULZE
& WEBB
I guess the main expression of this so far is ‘dematerialisation’
through service design. For instance services such as StreetCar
in UK, or ZipCar in the USA where the need to own a car is
replaced by access to a car whenever I need one. Or the
Bikesharing system I saw yesterday here in Rome.

34. Howies
DOPPLR
DOPPLR
DOPPLR
This is not ‘dematerialisation’ but an example of objects or
Where next?
systems that declare their lifespan, their projection into the future
via a service aspect, like this simple design touch in Howies
Where next?
Hand-Me-Down jacket of a name tag that encompasses
generations.
Where next?
It persuades you the object is precious and will survive to be
handed over to a successor. If you have the needlework skills,
the service is provided by yourself!

35. BBC Olinda
SCHULZE
& WEBB
Here’s a S&W project for the BBC: Olinda is a digital radio that
brings the social web into the world.

36. SCHULZE
& WEBB
A simple interface shows who from my small group of friends
and family are listening to the radio at the moment. By touching
them, I can see what they are listening too, and if I like, turn to
that station also.

37. SCHULZE
& WEBB
It also brings the extensible aspects of the web into hardware, by
creating a physical API to be built on.

38. SCHULZE
& WEBB
The industrial design of the object in many ways is a wireframe, a
suggestion. But, it was particularly important to represent the
physical API in the design in a discoverable and provocative way.
More of this later...

39. What does all this
have to do with
frontiers of
interaction?
SCHULZE
& WEBB
So far so good. Perhaps to some of you this product <-->
service / tangible <--> intangible world is familar. Perhaps it
doesn’t feel like the frontier of interaction design any more.
Perhaps you’re yawning.
Don’t. Isn’t it remarkable, that this is now commonplace territory
within reach? That this *is* now material for design, not
academic experiment or expensive corporate visions of the
future. For wit and humour. For humanisation. For everyone.

40. SCHULZE
& WEBB
But a warning at the frontier.
This world is not reliable, and is not likely ever to be, so
designers and engineers need to bear in mind something that
has always preoccupied design.
Not just venustas and commoditas, but firmitas. Here we see
Vitruvius hard at work pitching this concept of his with an early
version of Keynote.

41. Tangible
Products Products
Services Services
Intangible
SCHULZE
& WEBB
I’m sure most of you when you travel have come across this
version of my diagram...

42. Tangible
Products Products
Services Services
Intangible
SCHULZE
& WEBB
I’m sure most of you when you travel have come across this
version of my diagram...

43. SCHULZE
& WEBB
And been left carrying around this version of your not-so-smart-
any-more-phone...

44. SCHULZE
& WEBB
What I think we need to investigate are designs of media, service
and product that are resilient, and self-sustaining as far as
possible.
I like to call this “Thingfrastructure”.

45. “Thingfrastructure”
SCHULZE
& WEBB
What I think we need to investigate are designs of media, service
and product that are resilient, and self-sustaining as far as
possible.
I like to call this “Thingfrastructure”.

46. Every thing that
participates radiates
infrastructure & service
SCHULZE
& WEBB
Designing from the start so that as far as possible, ever thing in
the system radiates infrastructure and service to every other
thing.

47. Thingfrastructure is
resilient SCHULZE
& WEBB
This is a pattern common to the technology of the internet and
the internet of things.

48. Thingfrastructure is
SCHULZE
legible and discoverable
& WEBB
But it needs to repeat up the stack... to the experience of
services and products, and to the aesthetic - so that what
surrounds us in this future is legible and discoverable.
And this is the business of design now.

49. SCHULZE
& WEBB
Thanks for your time and attention, and thank you very much to
Frontiers of Interaction for the invitation.

50. Thanks Roma!
matt@moleitau.com
http://www.schulzeandwebb.com
http://www.dopplr.com
http://www.magicalnihilism.com
SCHULZE
& WEBB
Thanks for your time and attention, and thank you very much to
Frontiers of Interaction for the invitation.