Podcast appearances and mentions of brenda laurel

Bob Stein, Atari's Encyclopedia Project   Bob Stein worked at Atari Research for 18 months beginning in 1981. He was hired by Alan Kay. He worked almost exclusively on an encyclopedia project, a potential collaboration between Atari and Encyclopaedia Britannica that never went anywhere.   I learned about Bob after he uploaded an item called The Atari Drawings to Internet Archive. It's a collection of nine colorful pencil drawings, drawn in 1982 by Disney animator Glen Keane. The drawings depict futuristic scenarios where people use a computerized encyclopedia to get information: for instance, "An earthquake wakes a couple in the middle of the night. The Intelligent Encyclopedia, connected to an online service, informs them of the severity of the earthquake and makes safety tips readily available." and "A mother and her children looking into a tidepool in Laguna ask the Intelligent Encyclopedia about the plants and animals that they see."   Bob described the collection of art in his introduction to the document:   "In 1982 executives from Warner, Inc., Atari's parent company, were scheduled to visit the Research Lab where the Encyclopedia Project was located. Brenda Laurel and I came up with these scenarios to give the execs a sense of what we were working toward. The drawings were made by Disney animator, Glen Keane.   When you look at these, remember they were made 16 years before Google and 12 years before Yahoo, even 8 years before the earliest web-based search engines.   That said, one of the most interesting things about these scenarios as seen today, is that with the exception of the image of the architect and the teacher none of them indicated any inkling that the most important element of the web to come was that it would bring people into contact with each other. What we see here is almost entirely people accessing content from a central server, no sense that we would be communicating with each other or uploading our own contributions to the collective culture. My own explanation for this lapse focuses on the print-era mentality that saw readers purely as consumers of content."   Bob saved and scanned a large number of materials from his time at Atari, and uploaded them to Internet Archive. In addition to the scans of Keane's Atari Drawings, the documents include memos about the encyclopedia project and a transcript of a 1982 seminar for Atari Research featuring Charles Van Doren. Check the show notes for those links.   After Atari, Bob was co-founder of The Criterion Collection, which restores and distributes important classic films; and co-founder of The Voyager Company, the first commercial multimedia CD-ROM publisher. In 2004, he co-founded The Institute for the Future of the Book, a think tank "investigating the evolution of discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens."   This interview took place December 16, 2023.   Video version of this interview at YouTube   The Atari Drawings   ANTIC Interview 420 - Brenda Laurel, Atari Research   Whither The Encyclopedia Project - Atari Encyclopedia Project memos   Back to the Future -- In honor of Encyclopedia Britannica giving up its print edition (Wayback machine)   Stein Kay Atari Memos Pt 1   Stein Kay Atari Memos Pt 2   Exchange With Steve Weyer And J. David Bolter 1983   Hadley Letter 1980-12-01   Atari...Ifugao Question Journal, Michael Naimark   CVD Atari Seminar 20 December 1982   Encyclopedia And The Intellectual Tools Of The Future . . . November 1981   Bob Stein Archives at Stanford   The Digital Antiquarian — Bob Stein and Voyager   Charles Van Doren in Wikipedia   Bob Stein wants to change how people think about the book (2010)

Brenda Laurel is an American interaction designer, video game designer, and researcher. She is an advocate for diversity and inclusiveness in video games, a pioneer in developing virtual reality, a…

Welcome to the fourth episode of this series of A Line Traced, which focuses on Female Pioneers in the History of Virtual Reality. The series is hosted by Paula Strunden, a transdisciplinary VR artist with a background in architecture who taught on the AA's Media Studies programme. In this episode, Paula interviews Char Davies, best known for her groundbreaking virtual reality artwork Osmose, which combines immersive environments, with embodied interactions, and a profound connection to nature.This series of A Line Traced uncovers the untold stories of female pioneers in the early history of VR. Many of the prevailing narratives within this history focus on technological advancements, the development of devices and figures dubbed the 'grandfather', 'father' and 'godfather' of VR. Yet when we investigate the experiences created during the first peak of the VR industry in the 1990s, many of the most significant contributions were made by women. Artists and theorists like Char Davies, Brenda Laurel, Monika Fleischman and Thamiko Thiel, to name a few, transcended the boundaries of binary thinking in the realm of human-computer interaction, interweaving the actual and the virtual, and the body and the mind. By tracing the lines connecting these women, along with the contemporary voice of Krista Kim, this series aims to reshape our understanding of VR's past and reframe the ongoing debates around the role of VR in architecture and in contemporary society.Host Bio:Paula Strunden is a transdisciplinary VR artist with a background in architecture. She has studied in Vienna, Paris and London, and worked at Raumlabor in Berlin and Herzog and de Meuron in Basel. Paula is currently pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, as part of the project ‘Communities of Tacit Knowledge (TACK): Architecture and its Ways of Knowing', funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860413. She is the founder of XR Atlas, an interdisciplinary online platform, and is a passionate advocate for the development of alternative historiographies of virtual technologies.About A Line Traced:As our society continues to unveil fractures within its social and political systems, A Line Traced aims to examine topics that are immediate, prescient and impact the build environment in ways that require urgent architectural responses. An AirAA podcast recorded, mixed, edited and distributed from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, which is based in Bedford Square in London. Special thanks to Thomas Parkes for his contribution to the production of our episodes. Visit air.aaschool.ac.uk to find out more.

Welcome to the third episode of this series of A Line Traced, which will focus on Female Pioneers in the History of Virtual Reality. The series is hosted by Paula Strunden, a transdisciplinary VR artist with a background in architecture who taught on the AA's Media Studies programme. In this episode, Paula interviews Tamiko Thiel, a pioneer in augmented reality art and the visionary behind the design of the Connection Machine, the first commercial AI supercomputer.About this Series:This series of A Line Traced uncovers the untold stories of female pioneers in the early history of VR. Many of the prevailing narratives within this history focus on technological advancements, the development of devices and figures dubbed the 'grandfather', 'father' and 'godfather' of VR. Yet when we investigate the experiences created during the first peak of the VR industry in the 1990s, many of the most significant contributions were made by women. Artists and theorists like Char Davies, Brenda Laurel, Monika Fleischman and Thamiko Thiel, to name a few, transcended the boundaries of binary thinking in the realm of human-computer interaction, interweaving the actual and the virtual, and the body and the mind. By tracing the lines connecting these women, along with the contemporary voice of Krista Kim, this series aims to reshape our understanding of VR's past and reframe the ongoing debates around the role of VR in architecture and in contemporary society.Host Bio:Paula Strunden is a transdisciplinary VR artist with a background in architecture. She has studied in Vienna, Paris and London, and worked at Raumlabor in Berlin and Herzog and de Meuron in Basel. Paula is currently pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, as part of the project ‘Communities of Tacit Knowledge (TACK): Architecture and its Ways of Knowing', funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860413. She is the founder of XR Atlas, an interdisciplinary online platform, and is a passionate advocate for the development of alternative historiographies of virtual technologies.About A Line Traced:As our society continues to unveil fractures within its social and political systems, A Line Traced aims to examine topics that are immediate, prescient and impact the built environment in ways that require urgent architectural responses. An AirAA podcast recorded, mixed, edited and distributed from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, which is based in Bedford Square in London. Special thanks to Thomas Parkes for his contribution to the production of our episodes. Visit air.aaschool.ac.uk to find out more.

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Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/bonus-episode-with-don-norman-panel In this special bonus episode, renowned scholar and author Don Norman (The Design of Everyday Things, Design for a Better World) leads a discussion with recognized design leaders about how design can and should play a role in solving the biggest challenges of humanity today. This conversation was recorded at a live online event August 17, 2023 produced by the UX Design Institute. Panelists who participated in the conversation with Don Norman include Brenda Laurel (researcher, writer, and consultant), Irene Au (Design partner at Khosla Ventures and former Design Better guest), and our own Aarron Walter. Gareth Dunlop is the MC of the event.In this hour-long conversation the panelists discuss: The role of design in understanding and navigating our current socio-economic challenges How to think about design and UX as humanity-centered versus human-centered How to harness the power of design in creating a better future for all of us Learn more about the UX Design Institute, the gold standard in UX education at: https://www.uxdesigninstitute.com/ Get Don Norman's new book Designing for a Better World at: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047951/design-for-a-better-world/

Welcome to the second episode of this series of A Line Traced, which focuses on Female Pioneers in the History of Virtual Reality. The series is hosted by Paula Strunden, a transdisciplinary VR artist with a background in architecture who taught on the AA's Media Studies programme. In this episode, Paula interviews Brenda Laurel, a pioneer in human-computer interaction in the field of virtual reality, immersive theatre, and gender inclusivity in technology and game design. Their discussion addresses Brenda's project PLACEHOLDER: Landscape and Narrative in a Virtual Environment (1993), which she created with Rachel Strickland; project documentation for PLACEHOLDER can be explored here. Read more about Brenda's book Computers as Theatre, first published in 1991, on GoodReads. This series of A Line Traced uncovers the untold stories of female pioneers in the early history of VR. Many of the prevailing narratives within this history focus on technological advancements, the development of devices and figures dubbed the 'grandfather', 'father' and 'godfather' of VR. Yet when we investigate the experiences created during the first peak of the VR industry in the 1990s, many of the most significant contributions were made by women. Artists and theorists like Char Davies, Brenda Laurel, Monika Fleischman and Thamiko Thiel, to name a few, transcended the boundaries of binary thinking in the realm of human-computer interaction, interweaving the actual and the virtual, and the body and the mind. By tracing the lines connecting these women, along with the contemporary voice of Krista Kim, this series aims to reshape our understanding of VR's past and reframe the ongoing debates around the role of VR in architecture and in contemporary society.Host Bio:Paula Strunden is a transdisciplinary VR artist with a background in architecture. She has studied in Vienna, Paris and London, and worked at Raumlabor in Berlin and Herzog and de Meuron in Basel. Paula is currently pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, as part of the project ‘Communities of Tacit Knowledge (TACK): Architecture and its Ways of Knowing', funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860413. She is the founder of XR Atlas, an interdisciplinary online platform, and is a passionate advocate for the development of alternative historiographies of virtual technologies.About A Line Traced:As our society continues to unveil fractures within its social and political systems, A Line Traced aims to examine topics that are immediate, prescient and impact the build environment in ways that require urgent architectural responses. An AirAA podcast recorded, mixed, edited and distributed from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, which is based in Bedford Square in London. Special thanks to Thomas Parkes for his contribution to the production of our episodes. Visit air.aaschool.ac.uk to find out more.

Welcome to the first episode of this series of A Line Traced, which will focus on Female Pioneers in the History of Virtual Reality. The series is hosted by Paula Strunden, a transdisciplinary VR artist with a background in architecture who taught on the AA's Media Studies programme. In this episode, Paula interviews Krista Kim, a pioneer in blockchain-based art and the visionary behind the Mars House, the first-ever NFT house. Read more about the Mars House on Krista's website.This series of A Line Traced will uncover the untold stories of female pioneers in the early history of VR. Many of the prevailing narratives within this history focus on technological advancements, the development of devices and figures dubbed the 'grandfather', 'father' and 'godfather' of VR. Yet when we investigate the experiences created during the first peak of the VR industry in the 1990s, many of the most significant contributions were made by women. Artists and theorists like Char Davies, Brenda Laurel, Monika Fleischman and Tamiko Thiel, to name a few, transcended the boundaries of binary thinking in the realm of human-computer interaction, interweaving the actual and the virtual, and the body and the mind. By tracing the lines connecting these women, along with the contemporary voice of Krista Kim, this series aims to reshape our understanding of VR's past and reframe the ongoing debates around the role of VR in architecture and in contemporary society.Host Bio:Paula Strunden is a transdisciplinary VR artist with a background in architecture. She has studied in Vienna, Paris and London, and worked at Raumlabor in Berlin and Herzog and de Meuron in Basel. Paula is currently pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, as part of the project ‘Communities of Tacit Knowledge (TACK): Architecture and its Ways of Knowing', funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860413. She is the founder of XR Atlas, an interdisciplinary online platform, and is a passionate advocate for the development of alternative historiographies of virtual technologies.About A Line Traced:As our society continues to unveil fractures within its social and political systems, A Line Traced aims to examine topics that are immediate, prescient and impact the build environment in ways that require urgent architectural responses. An AirAA podcast recorded, mixed, edited and distributed from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, which is based in Bedford Square in London. Special thanks to Thomas Parkes for his contribution to the production of our episodes. Visit air.aaschool.ac.uk to find out more.

Elmer Zinkhann was in de vroege jaren 2000 een student van me en zit nu al ruim 20 jaar in London als head of design bij Digital Catapult. Digital Catapult is vergelijkbaar met TNO: een onderzoeksinstituut dat kijkt naar nieuwe technologieën en hoe die in de markt gebruikt kunnen worden. Voor Elmer in zijn werk een combinatie van het doen en het faciliteren: hoe beginnen mensen samen te doen en samen te werken om de problemen op te lossen die ze gezamenlijk hebben. Zijn rol als designer hierin helpt hij met het zoeken naar de juiste methoden om iets mogelijk te maken en het kijken naar wat voor interventies ze kunnen doen en prototypes ze kunnen maken als proof of concept. Elmer snapt nog niet helemaal wat Design Thinking precies is: doen wat een ontwerper doet, maar niet toegepast op ontwerpen, iets maken. Binnen het Design Thinking ziet hij wel dat visualisatie belangrijk is en dat het ruimte geeft voor het doen van gebruiksonderzoek, maar iets maken om naar mensen te brengen, ontbreekt daarin te vaak. Zo werkt Elmer vaak samen met Royal College of Art Service Design en University of the Arts London Service Design en ook daar vragen ze zich af wat kan je aanraken, what is the tangible aspect of the service. Elmer heeft twee tips om ontwerpen beter te begrijpen. Zijn eerste tip is om goed te kijken naar de film Powers of Ten™ door Ray en Charles Eames, die ook onderdeel is van de verplichte stof van ons vak. Het duurde even voordat Elmer zelf de relevantie ervan doorhad, maar de essentie is de quote: "The details are not the details, they make the design". In die film en met dat perspectief, kwamen alle strengen van ontwerpen voor hem samen. Zijn tweede tip gaat over service en interactie ontwerpen en dat is het boek Designing Interactions van Bill Moggridge (2007). Het boek is een collectie van verschillende perspectieven, waaronder een mooie uitleg van wat service design is. Het deed mij erg denken aan een vergelijkbaar boek uit 2009 The Art of Human Computer Interface Design (1990), door Brenda Laurel en Joy Mountford, vol met essays over het toen nieuwe gebied van interface ontwerpen. Zijn eindconclusie is vooral dat alles wat je leert, van je eerste jaar tot het einde van je studie, blijft ergens in je achterhoofd liggen en dat vormt samen later het vocabulaire dat ontwerpen is.

A experiência do usuário era originalmente um ideal a ser buscado, porém, acabou se tornando uma qualidade de projeto e depois um cargo responsável por esta qualidade. Frente aos desafios éticos que os produtos digitais estão pondo à profissão, faz-se necessário recuperar o ideal original proposto por Brenda Laurel.Esse foi o tema abordado no meetup Ética em produtos digitais da comunidade Coproduto. A transcrição abaixo foi realizada gentilmente por Bruna Villar e Marina Neta. Transcrição Boa noite a todes. Vou falar sobre experiência do usuário como ideal ético. Essa é uma apresentação bem curta, direta, para tentar recuperar algo que a gente está hoje perdendo e que estava nas origens dessa disciplina chamada Experiência do Usuário (ExU). Essa é uma reflexão de um acadêmico falando sobre experiências que acontecem no nosso dia-a-dia no mercado de trabalho, mas que podem também ser transformadas através da nossa conscientização. A questão fundamental da Ética é: qual é a maneira ideal do mesmo se relacionar com o Outro? Esses conceitos são um pouco filosóficos, mas eles têm uma referência concreta do dia-a-dia muito fácil de entender: o Mesmo é você e as pessoas são próximas a você, parecidas com você; o Outro é o distante, o diferente, aquele que não é igual a você. Então, Ética diz respeito à maneira como você se relaciona com "eles". Existe a possibilidade de você ou do grupo que você faz parte ignorar esses outros. Pode ser também que você ou o grupo que você faz parte se considere superior ao outro. Ou, pior ainda, você pode se achar no direito, na vantagem, ou na oportunidade de colonizar, escravizar ou precarizar, que é reduzir as condições de trabalho do Outro. A Ética nos ajuda a questionar se essas práticas podem ser consideradas morais ou imorais, justas ou injustas, mas, em última análise, a ética está se perguntando se isso é ético, porque acontece muito de uma coisa moral se tornar imoral conforme a gente vai mudando nossos padrões culturais. Enquanto isso não acontece, nós temos a Ética como uma referência do ideal. A Ética confronta aquilo que temos como um comportamento normal, tradicional, até mesmo legal dentro do Direito. A Ética confronta o atual com aquilo que é o ideal, nos ajudando a repensar o Direito, nossos hábitos, nossos costumes e padrões culturais. É para isso que serve a Ética. Vamos aplicar o pensamento da Ética na área de Design de Produto Digitais. Quem seria o Outro dos designers de produtos digitais? Para perceber isso, é preciso elevar o nível de consciência. No meme abaixo, é somente depois de ultrapassar o nível do fator de projeto que se percebe que o usuário é uma pessoa diferente do Mesmo, é o Outro. Se você expandir ainda mais a sua consciência, você vai perceber que você também é um usuário para outros designers, porque você usa produtos digitais aos quais você não projetou e você sofre, portanto, o que um usuário sofre. Então, quais seriam os ideais do design de produtos digitais? Bom, nós temos um conceito de Experiência do Usuário que é diferente do conceito de Interface do Usuário, ou UI é diferente de UX. No meme fica bem claro que as intenções dos designers, o que eles queriam que os usuários fizessem, não corresponde necessariamente ao que os usuários realmente fazem. Se a interface é complicada, o usuário vai buscar uma gambiarra, vai buscar uma maneira de realizar os seus desejos, que não necessariamente é a maneira "oficial", a maneira preferida pelos designers. Isso é a origem do termo Experiência do Usuário, um ideal que foi perdido devido a um patriarcado. Quem definiu esse termo não foi Donald Norman. Na verdade, é um erro comum e antiético atribuir o crédito desse termo a este homem branco do Norte Global. Quem criou o termo Experiência do Usuário foi a designer, professora e pesquisadora Brenda Laurel. Em 1986 ela escreveu um capítulo que fez parte de um livro que o Norman editou e que ela falava que a experiência do usuário deveria ser um padrão ideal, não o que os usuários estão dispostos a aguentar ao interagir com a interface, mas sim a experiência ideal como ela deveria ser, de maneira que o usuário não sofra e que a gente sempre pense nesse ideal, persiga esse ideal. [...] in seeking design principles for good interfaces, we must, it seems to me, concern ourselves with the best case, and ask, not what the users are willing to endure, but what the ideal user experience might be, and what sort of interface might provide it (Laurel, 1986, p. 72). Norman utilizou esse termo de Outro jeito a partir de 1993 para definir o que dava para fazer dentro da Apple quando ele foi diretor do grupo responsável por essa área de interfaces e experiências do usuário. Essa informação consta até mesmo no histórico oficial da empresa de consultoria que ele fundou junto com Jakob Nielsen após ser demitido da Apple por ocasião da volta de Steve Jobs ao comando da empresa. Ele transformou o ideal da Experiência do Usuário em um cargo profissional. Se recuperarmos o ideal, não importa o cargo profissional. O importante é confrontar constantemente o ideal da experiência do usuário com o atual da experiência do designer. Eu uso esse modelo que ajuda visualmente a pensar sobre essa diferença. A experiência do designer nunca é igual à experiência do usuário, porque se tratam de pessoas diferentes, de grupos sociais diferentes. Enquanto designers costumam ser pessoas que têm privilégios, que têm várias vantagens dentro da sociedade (tanto é que chegaram na posição em que eles podem definir como vão ser as interfaces do sistema) os outros, os usuários, as pessoas pobres, negras, indígenas, mulheres e demais, muitas vezes só conseguem ter experiências de usuárias, porque é o que cabe dentro da nossa divisão do trabalho na produção de produtos digitais. Então, é importante colocar-se na posição de reconhecer que você possui privilégios quando você é designer, ao mesmo tempo em que existem outras pessoas que possuem menos privilégios. O que você faz quando se conscientiza de seus privilégios? Você compartilha seu poder para que haja uma equalização gradual dessa relação para que, no futuro, exista uma outra relação de produção digital em que todo mundo seja designer de seus próprios sistemas. Quando a experiência do usuário é projetada como ideal, acredita-se, então, que sempre é possível fazer melhor para o Outro do que a solução atual. E é assim que eu ensino os meus estudantes de design a se preocuparem com os outros. Na imagem abaixo, vê-se um projeto de experiência de música aumentada, na qual os estudantes criam vários estímulos táteis, sonoros e olfativos, pensando no corpo de outra pessoa, em como ela vai interagir, como ela vai sentir a experiência musical. Assim, vão percebendo como pessoas diferentes vão dar sentidos diferentes para a proposta, nunca da mesma maneira como designers gostariam que fosse. Fazer melhor para o Outro, então, implica sempre em cuidar, aprender e se deixar transformar pela interação com o Outro. Isso é um princípio ético do design de experiência do usuário que está sendo perdido quando o Outro é tratado como um apêndice, uma peça do sistema, ou, principalmente, como apenas um número dentro de uma planilha de estatísticas, com metas para bater. Obrigado e espero que a gente tenha um diálogo interessante a respeito dessa provocação. Vídeo O vídeo abaixo contém o debate completo organizado pela comunidade Coproduto. Áudio Experiência do usuário como um ideal ético MP3 8minComente este post

Paris Marx is joined by Rob Zacny to discuss the potential consequences of Xbox's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and what subscriptions and consolidation might mean for the future of games and the industry.Rob Zacny is a senior editor at Waypoint and co-host of Waypoint Radio. Follow Rob on Twitter at @RobZacny.Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, support the show on Patreon, and sign up for the weekly newsletter.Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.Also mentioned in this episode:Rob discussed the consequences of the proposed acquisition with his colleague Patrick Klepek.Microsoft plans to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.In November, Phil Spencer said he was troubled by the harassment and abuse at Activision Blizzard.QA workers at Activision's Raven Software are seeking to unionize. The company said it won't recognize the union, and is reorganizing the division.A new Game Developers Conference found 55% think the industry should unionize.On January 18, the US Federal Trade Commission began a process to rewrite its merger guidelines.Google shut down its Stadia game studios at least in part due to Microsoft's acquisition of Zenimax.At GDC in 2005, a developer rant session featuring Warren Spector, Jason Della Rocca, Greg Costikyan, Brenda Laurel, and Chris Hecke presented a grim picture of where the industry was going.Support the show (https://patreon.com/techwontsaveus)

Donald Dixon, Robotics R&D at Atari Research Donald Dixon worked at Atari Research from 1983 through 1984, under Dr, Alan Kay. There, he worked in robotics research and development, working on a robotic wheelchair. After Atari, Donald worked at Axlon, Nolan Bushnell's toys and consumer robotics company; and Worlds of Wonder, the company most famous for the animatronic bear toy, Teddy Ruxpin. This interview took place on July 27, 2021. Don's web site ANTIC Interview 11 - David Small ANTIC 2013 Chris Crawford interview ANTIC Interview 420 - Brenda Laurel, Atari Research ANTIC Interview 421 - Jim Leiterman, Atari Research Group Video version of this interview 

Brenda Laurel, Atari Research Dr. Brenda Laurel worked at Atari from 1980 through 1984. She began as software specialist for educational applications then soon became manager of software strategy for the home computer division. In mid-1982, she joined Atari Corporate Research at the Sunnyvale research laboratory, where she worked with Alan Kay. After Atari, she worked at Activision as director of software development. Later she founded Purple Moon, a software company focused on creating games for young girls; and co-founded Telepresence Research, a company focused on first-person media and virtual reality. This interview took place on July 15, 2021. Check the show notes for links to articles she wrote for Atari Connection magazine; her doctoral dissertation, "Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System"; scans of memos on the subject of interactive fantasy that she wrote while at Atari Research; and more. Brenda's web site Brenda's dissertation — Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System Brenda's Atari memos The Renaissance Kid article by Brenda Laurel in Atari Connection Volume 1 Number 1 Atari PILOT with Turtle Graphics article by Brenda Laurel in Atari Connection Volume 1 Number 4 Valley of Genius podcast episode 11: Brenda Laurel at Atari   50 Years of Text Games — 1994: The Playground Brenda Laurel on games for girls Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet   This interview at YouTube

Bonjour à toutes et tous. Voici le Podcast #266 de GeekOrama ! Cette semaine, Octokom a passé son temps à cacarder sur des ennemis exigeants dans un titre Run and Gun qu'il guettait depuis fort longtemps ! Ikson quant à lui a été débordé, mais comme il ne manque pas de ressources, il a su trouver le petit jeu parfait pour accompagner ses dures journées, avec un grand classique du jeu vidéo qui fait toujours très plaisir ! Un instant culture animé par notre Miss Culture dans lequel Addycyclette revient sur la carrière d'une dame qui a cherché à ouvrir les portes du vidéoludisme aux personnes détentrices de deux chromosomes X ! Bonne écoute ! ^_^

We discuss the second edition of Brenda Laurel’s Computers as Theatre. Support this show and all of our videos on Patreon, where you can also get our notes for thisContinue reading33 – Laurel – Computers As Theatre

My guest today is Phillip Hunter. Phillip is a strategy and innovation consultant focused on conversational systems. He has a long trajectory working on such systems; among other roles, he was head of user experience for Amazon Alexa Skills. In this conversation, we focus on conversation itself, and how to design systems that converse. Listen to the show Download episode 49   Show notes Phillip Hunter on LinkedIn Phillip Hunter on Twitter Conversational Collaborative AI Services (Phillip's consultancy) Brenda Laurel Don Norman Google Assistant Amazon Alexa HomePod Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCullough Wizard-of-Oz testing Adobe XD Voiceflow Botmock Google Dialogflow CX Alexa Skills Kit How We Talk: The Inner Workings of Conversation by N.J. Enfield Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commissions for purchases made through these links. Read the transcript Jorge: Phillip, welcome to the show. Phillip: Oh, thank you. So great to be here. So great to be with you. Jorge: I'm excited to have you. For folks who might not know you, can you please tell us about yourself? About Phillip Phillip: Sure. So, I've been doing many sorts of design activities and jobs and things over the course of about 25 years. I actually started my career as a developer, but quickly learned the difference between building computer programs as a hobby versus work. I enjoy one of them! So, I ended up getting into design interestingly, just because I complained so much about the applications that we were building at the company I was with, and how they just didn't make sense to me. And all of a sudden, someone hands me a book from Brenda Laurel and says, you need to read this. And that literally changed my life. I got to meet her one day and tell her that. But that was about the same time the company I was with, which was building interactive voice response started as those touchtone systems that everybody hates for your bank or airlines insurance companies. We started adopting speech recognition as part of the platform. And to me, that opened up so many new possibilities. I learned some really interesting things from the get-go about how designing for that was so different from the things I had been used to before. Now, this was around when Don Norman coined the term “user experience design,” and so it wasn't well-known. But while everyone was also getting used to designing for the web and designing then later for mobile, I was in that, but I was also getting used to designing for conversation: what does it mean to exchange things by voice that's different from how we think about information being presented on screens. So, to speed things up a little bit, I've done that sort of work in startups and then in big companies like Microsoft and Amazon. I was around for the early days of Cortana, before it was public. And I've worked on Alexa as part of their developer third-party focused team. But along the way, I've always also been fascinated by large systems. So I worked at Amazon Web Services for a while where, at the time I started, there were about 35 different offerings that they had, and now it's somewhere around 150. It's just amazing growth over the past 10 years for them. And this idea of how these — all of these — services would come together in different permutations based on who was using it and what they were using it for just really fascinated me as, you know, beyond the Lego-block metaphor into each of these things are by themselves an advanced technology, and then, how do you use all these things to run a business or create a product or serve customers or all the things that we normally do in business, nut now we're doing them with these really amazing technologies. And so, conversation itself is also a system. And so, it was interesting to me to get into the systems thinking from a pure technology standpoint. I've read other things about human systems and economies and healthcare and physiology and things like that. But I'm in tech and I soon began seeing in a different way some of the systemic elements of conversation. And so, for me, the past four, five years has really been amazing in terms of my own personal growth around what it means to interact with machines, including by voice and text, as well as just starting to see the power of systems in our lives. And you know, with technologies like Google Assistant and Alexa, now infrastructure — technology infrastructure — along with our mobile phones, along with our laptops and ways we interact with the worldwide web, all of these things are now very much in our homes every day for many of us. So, they've started to cross some interesting boundaries, that make everything that I've talked about way more interesting and way more pervasive. So, today I'm consulting in that, I've got some product ideas that I'm working on as well to explore where things go now that machine learning is really a big component, and artificial intelligence, whatever phrase you want to put on it, is now a real factor in the mix. 10 years ago, it was still sort of, you know, science fiction more than a daily practice. But now we have… well, for a number of reasons, we have these things, and we have to say, “okay, what's the impact here? What does this mean for our lives too?” So, That's the kind of thing I'm working on and, it's really exciting. Conversation as a system Jorge: You said, “conversation is a system.” What do you mean by that? Phillip: So, most of us who speak, no matter what age, we started learning how to speak and interpret speech very early on. Certainly, before we started reading, some of us start reading, two to three years later after we learned how to interact by voice. And by then, interestingly, we are ready experts at conversation, which raises the question of what are we experts at? Well, so it turns out through the study of things like conversational analysis or through practices like that and linguistics and psycholinguistics… it turns out that language is not just a bunch of sounds that we make spontaneously. In our minds and between each other, we are actually doing some really intricate dancing and processing of emotions, information, contextual settings, history, all of these things that you know are part of our daily lives, and to process those effectively with each other and, some would say for ourselves even, we have developed this system of how conversation works. And the way I think about it in my current work — and this is not a re-statement of anything that I've read necessarily — but there are essentially three levels of where a system is operative. One is types of conversations we have. So, you and I are having a sort of conversation, call it an interview, or a structured discussion, things like that. There are casual, “how are you doing?” You mentioned teaching earlier, lecture as a type of conversation, usually followed by questions and answers. And so, there are types of conversations and at the opposite end of that, there are the linguistic structures that help us understand: this is a noun, this is a verb, this is a modifier. Most of us probably hated studying those sorts of things in school, but we learned them, and we understand the basics there. And we know how to use them. We're experts in them, even if we don't necessarily like to study how it works. In the middle, there's something we don't typically think about, which is how conversations have a structure on an individual level. And so… I'll just use, what you and I did. We joined this Zoom call and we started exchanging words that we both probably could have predicted we were going to exchange: ‘how are you, how is life? What are you doing these days?' All of these things are, some would call it chit chat, some would call it small talk, some people would call it, social niceties but it's also giving us time to understand where each other is currently in our lives. Like I can… you know, especially if you're meeting a friend, let's say you can see, is this person in the usual mood? You know, are they presenting to me how they usually come across? Is something different? Why is it different? How is it different? So maybe think about a loved one. You come home from – back in the day when we came home from work – you come home from work and you see a concerned look on your partner's face and right away you start to pick up something is going on. But maybe you start with a greeting, “hey, how are you?” But at some point, you're going to probably say something like, “what's going on? Is there something…” So, there's these elements of conversation where we connect, we survey, we assess, then we get into things like, a section called negotiation. What are we going to talk about? How do we know what each other means? Do we need to clarify something? So, for us, for you and I today, you know, at some point you said, “hey, here's how this is going to work.” Which is a statement again that I expected but it doesn't mean I know the answer. So, you gave me an outline of how we would use our time today, and now we're doing it, right? Now you're asking me questions, I'm giving you thoughts and answers, and at some point, we'll move — and you said it yourself — we'll move to close out the interview. And almost all conversations have a closure. One of the things I like to point out to people is how often do you…. again, when we would run into someone in the hall at work and we'd say, “hey! Oh, I've been meaning to talk to you about this.” And now you raised a topic, maybe you talk about a few specific items and you say, “okay, great. You know what? Let's catch up on that next week.” “Sure. I'll put some time on your calendar.” “Oh! Hey, by the way, how did that thing go?” And so, you have this other… you have this transition. You're talking about another subject. Then you both start to feel like, okay, we spend enough time doing this. And what do you do? You returned to the first topic and you say, “it'll be great to talk to you next week when we meet about such and such.” And you're like, “sure, looking forward to it.” And that's your signal that it's over. So, all of these are well-documented, and for people who study this, fairly well-understood components of conversations. They're not the types of conversations because they occur across many different types of conversations. They're not the linguistic elements of what sounds and what are the individual meanings of those sounds and how they work together. It's somewhere in the middle around how does a conversation work and these systems are actually incredibly important, for reasons that I can go into in a minute, but that's what I mean about conversation: conversation is a system or more accurately, as is the case with many systems, a collection of systems that's at work. And part of our skill at being able to converse well is a tacit understanding that there are those systems and that we can and should use them to be effective in our day-to-day lives with other people. Protocols Jorge: The word that came to my mind when you were describing this middle between those two extremes is the word “protocol.” It's like, well, we're establishing a protocol, right? Phillip: Yes! Jorge: And the image that came to my mind, I think that you and I are both of the vintage where we remember these modems where you would connect to the phone line and you would hear this awful screeching noise as the modems were trying to figure out if they were compatible. Phillip: Right, right, right. Yes! It's a connection in negotiation which is for nearly every conversation we have, a crucial step, even when it's someone who we talk to on a frequent basis. Now, it will adapt based on who you are talking to. And certainly, for meeting someone new for the first time, it's a very different feel to it; it has a very different feel to it than if it's somebody you talk to multiple times a day. But yeah, it's really important. And I'm really glad you said the word protocol too, because we can breach it. And it causes something else to happen. It may not be a problem. But it almost always is a signal that you have to adapt. The direction you thought it was going to go is not how it's going to go, and you need to figure out what is happening. And that's again, where negotiation becomes a key part of the conversational ability that we have. Jorge: When you breach the subject of conversation in the context of user experience design, I think of two things. One, I think of the “assistant in a cylinder” that you've touched on earlier, right? We have a HomePod here at home, so, we have the Apple variant of that. And I also think of chatbots, which are not oral, but they're text based. Phillip: Yes! Jorge: And I'm getting the sense from hearing you that the type of protocol that you're talking about is mostly the verbal one, the one when we speak to each other. Phillip: Right. Channels Jorge: Do we have different protocols for chatting via text versus talking? Phillip: We do, we do. And I'll mention several books as we go along. And the first one I mention is Because Internet, the author is Gretchen McCulloch and she has studied the evolution of language on the internet, going back to the sixties and seventies, when some of the first chat systems, text-chat systems, were being created and all the way up through modern texting and messaging platforms. So, the difference between how we converse verbally and how we converse via text is a long-standing thing…. And so, like even if you go back to like, when we wrote letters and things like that, conversational protocols were different then, but written was still very clearly different from verbal. So, there are some different protocols and some of them are different because the establishment of context is clearer from the get-go. Meaning that, if I go to someone's website and then I look for this chatbot thing, and I open it. Well, I've already sort of taken a step into a context, right? I've visited a website. I know it's a company. I don't want to do any of the other stuff. I'm making this implicit statement of, “I don't want that stuff,” by choosing this other thing explicitly. But with many chatbots, you still see a greeting, “hi, this is Jojo-bot. I'm here to help you with your questions about X, Y, Z company.” So, the idea is there's still some semblance of this because it's about acknowledgement, a statement of presence; here I am. You can even say things to me. And then the added protocol differences. We have no emotional context, right? And now emojis are a valid expression of emotion and conversational meaning, but we can't appreciate them with the nuance and the subtlety that we can by viewing another human's face and hearing their tone of voice. So, as we all know, when you go to text, like… first of all, when we go from visibility to invisibility. So, if you and I weren't looking at each other during this podcast, we would be having a channel, a signal, that is no longer available to us, right? And then in texts, it's the same thing. But now we also don't have some of the audio signals that we can get from somebody's voice. So, we replace some of these by emojis in some cases, but we also tend to read a lot into certain ways of phrasing. One of the fascinating things that's going on right now in the world of text messaging is periods or full stops, indicate to teenagers — or maybe even into the 20- and maybe 30-year-olds — they indicate a different emotional tone than the lack of periods or full stops. And, you know this becomes just… for me, somebody like me, extremely fascinating to think about that the incredible subtlety that that brings. Part of the problem is like… I mean, one of my kids said this to me. I typed a period in a text message and the question was, “are you upset?” I was like, “No! I just typed a period!” He was like, “oh, well, periods usually mean that somebody is upset.” Like, oh! Okay. Not upset! Also, ignorant! So please, excuse me! So, it's not so much that we… well, yeah, I think you said it: we had different protocols. And we do adjust our protocols based on the channel and what signals are available to us, because at some point, there may be some information we need that might've come in through… as a signal through a different channel of visual tone of voice, and now we're just a text, so we might need to be more explicit. This becomes a problem because — and we all know this, those of us who've been working in tech for a long time — we've known how we can misread emails, right? You see an email and you think, “Oh man, there is something wrong here.” And you go talk to the person and they're like, “no, everything's great.” “Well, your email just made it sound like…” and we use those phrases “made it sound like.” There was no sound involved in this. So, we have some understanding intuitively that the different channels mean different things for us, and if we are missing some, then we have to adapt. But we aren't necessarily good at that. We don't necessarily think — and this is one of the downfalls of conversational technology right now — we think that it's the words alone that matter the most. And I won't quote the stats about like how much of meaning comes across in other channels but suffice it to say that when we have sort of full bandwidth conversations, we are actively using all of the channels available to us. But it doesn't mean that we understand that we're using them or that we are necessarily capable of adapting well to the channel loss or the signal loss. So long-winded answer, sorry about that! But yeah, it's quite different. Jorge: One of the things that I'm hearing there is that there are at least two dimensions that you can use to think about a channel. One dimension has to do with the bandwidth that is available to communicate these nuances that we're talking about. And what I'm getting from what you're saying there is that text — something like a chatbot — is a fairly low bandwidth channel, right? Phillip: Yes. Jorge: Like, we lose a lot of nuance. And another dimension has to do with context, with the amount of context that you have when engaging in that channel. And I'm saying this because, the way I envisioned it when you were talking about it, was that the mere fact that the chatbot is popping up in this website already sets boundaries for what you're expected to deal with, right? Like you don't come to it expecting that it will play your favorite song. Phillip: Right. That's right. Jorge: It's going to be a conversation related to that thing, right? Phillip: Right. And nor do we — for those of us who've used or worked in customer service over the telephone — sometimes where we have these little conversations about, “Oh, where are you? How's the weather, how are you?” So, we incorporate some of these things. You don't see that as much in text-only chatbots. And the other thing, that's a challenge there is the fact that we communicate at very different rates of speed verbally than we do typing and reading. We're much faster verbally. And the other thing is we are much more tolerant verbally of rambling and sort of things that would show up as incoherence if it were typed out. We repeat words, we pause in funny places, we gather our thoughts in the middle of a sentence and take a turn on a dime. And we keep up with that, verbally. Like we're really, really, really good at it! We don't understand how good we are, but we are really good at it. And translating that into text sometimes is just a trainwreck, even if we're doing almost the exact same behaviors. Jorge: Yeah, I can relate to that, having to go through the transcripts for this show and make them legible. It's like, “Wow! There's a lot of repetition happening here.” Phillip: Yeah! And I can almost guarantee you that I'm going to be a tough one for you, even though I do this for a living. Sorry about that! Jorge: No, it's fascinating. And it's inherent in the… I suspect that it's inherent in the channel, right? Like you're, it's almost like you're down sampling to a different channel. Phillip: Yeah! That's an excellent way to think about it. Exactly. And to get techie for a second, when I first dealt with speech recognition, over the telephone… the telephone because of economics is a tremendously downsampled version of audio. You can ask anybody who works in music or who's an audiophile. It's just the telephone bandwidth is terrible when it comes to the higher and lower frequencies. So, it's just a squished down to this middle. And yeah, it's very similar to that. And so, in speech recognition technology, we just lost all of the signal that was available for processing. If you recorded something into a microphone, we had that nice 44K bandwidth, it's so much richer than something that comes out of the telephone. And so, yeah. It's very similar, just that signal compression, the signal loss. And our brains are, again, just really, really expert at doing things with it that we don't understand that it's doing. And so, because we don't understand it, we don't necessarily notice the loss of it, but part of our brain does. And it's like, “but I don't know what to do now because I'm so used to that being there.” Designing for conversation Jorge: We've been talking about protocols and we've been talking about the signal and there's all these different aspects to this, and it also sounds like the channels are quite different. I'm wondering how one goes about designing for conversation. How do you prototype this stuff? How do you model it? Phillip: Yeah! Right, right. Well, this is great. To start this, I'll touch on something, that I think you asked, and I'm not sure I addressed earlier. But when we think about these systems, conversational systems, whether it's the cylindrical devices that we have, or whatever shape they are, how those are different from what we have available to us in human-to-human conversation. Well, a lot of it is that we focused on sort of the nugget of action. So, that's why a lot of these systems, what are they used mostly for? For playing music, getting weather, news, maybe opening an audiobook or listening to a podcast, or turning on lights. You know, all these sorts of things. To do that, the command sequence is all fairly straightforward, right? It's, “whatever-the-name-is, turn on this light” or “play this station or artists” or “start reading my book”. And then whatever audiobook it was last reading will open up. And so, what we're not designing currently, and what is not designed into any of these systems is really anything about that middle structure of conversation. We have different types of conversation. You can play a game. You can do this command kind of interaction. You know, there are ways to simulate interviews and things like that. And certainly, there's this undergirding of linguistic information, right? You have to know what the words are and what roles they usually play in a conversation. This is an interesting experiment: If you take the words in a sentence that makes sense in the normal order, standard order, and then you mix them around, it's interesting to see what these assistants understand and don't. I'll tell you that most of them don't pay a lot of attention to the order of words, but the order does also matter somewhat. But what they don't have is this like clear establishment of contexts and negotiation ability, where you can clarify or correct. The interactions really just sort of jump right to what we consider the meat of a conversation. And then we don't really… closure isn't really part of this either. You can see a little bit more of it in customer service type applications where someone dials a phone number and there's a greeting like, “hi, you've reached such as such, what can I do for you?' There's a… like you said, a minute ago, chatbots have a limited range of things that are expected or understood. Mental model mismatch is a thing, but for the sake of this, we'll just keep it narrow. So, there's just a little bit of this sort of… we're giving some lip service to the greeting — pun intended. We're giving some negotiation, you know, of what's available and what's desired. And then it moves very quickly into action. And then at the end of the action, it might… the closure might be, “is there anything else I could do for you? If not, you know, have a great day.” But with our virtual assistants, that shows up very rarely. It is there in some cases, but it's very rare. So, I say all that to say, one of the first big steps in designing is — like with all other design — is really understanding what's the context, what's the goal, who's participating, what knowledge might they have? What knowledge do we expect them not to have? What do they want? Why do they want it? All of these sorts of questions that are fundamental to any sort of true design activity that we're doing, are still important. The thing now though, is instead of saying, “Okay, well that means we're going to have certain kinds of boxes or certain content on our screen,” we're saying, “How do we translate all of that into words that we can exchange fairly easily?” And right now, I've got to say, we're mostly doing a really terrible job of it. But your question was about prototyping. So, first of all, fundamentally we can prototype very simply. I'm a big, big fan of doing basically the equivalent of conversational sketching, which looks like a screenplay. And it doesn't matter if you write this out by hand — and there's some benefits to that — or for speed, you can write it out. You could type it up. But it basically looks like a back and forth of a screenplay and then you go try it with someone — ideally several someones. Someone who might know the technology and help give you some pointers from that angle, but also people who don't care or don't know about the technology. What you're looking for is how quickly can you come to that establishment of sort of clarity of context and purpose and meaning, so that you can proceed into the conversation. That's what those upfront sections are about. The early prototyping is just simulating this conversation with another human. You can expand that into running that in a way, we call “Wizard of Oz” testing, which is where I'm pretending to be the system, and people are going to interact with me, but they don't know it's me and they can't see me. So, whether it's picking up a telephone that's connected to a different phone in the next room and, you know, pretending to talk to the phone or whether it's, you know, pretending to talk to the cylinder and I can pipe something back into the room… the idea is now you're simulating more of the end context, which is a person and a machine or a device. And there's a couple of different ways we can do that. We used to do that in some ways involving Keynote and PowerPoint and recordings and things like that. But today, there are also some tools that we can use that are prototyping tools for voice. Adobe XD has some of that built-in or tools like Voiceflow and Botmock, that are available to do some of this as well. And they… they're a little bit more system centric in the idea of that they're representing capabilities of the end of the system where you might deploy this. So, they have some built-in constraints. And then like all tools, they have, philosophies and other things built into the tool that when you're an experienced designer, you have to learn how to see, or how to work around, those things. So, around those limitations, the tool designer doesn't necessarily understand all the situations you're going to use the tool for. But those tools are available and some of them can be ported directly to one of these devices, in a private setting, so you can test them yourself. You can interact with them. They use text-to-speech technology to give the audio although you can do human recordings with some of them as well. And really that's sort of the… that's where prototyping ends. There are other tools out there. Google has Dialogue Flow and there's the Alexa skills kit tools, which I helped create. All of those are much more system-centric because you're starting to access the assets of those technologies and platforms. But they also have some level of simulation. They have beta modes where you can release it to a certain number of people to interact with it and get feedback on it, so you can make some changes before it goes live. And then they also have some amount of automated testing available too, where you can start to see holes in the application because you didn't specify some sort of action or maybe you didn't take care of a certain condition that might arise, but, you know, that's getting further into the end stage of development, away from prototyping. Closing Jorge: Well, this is all so fascinating. It feels like there's material here for us to go on, but unfortunately, we need to wrap things up. Phillip: Right, right! Sure! Jorge: Where can folks follow up with you, Phillip? Phillip: Well, my consultancy is called Conversational Collaborative AI Services. Clearly, I am focused on some of the underlying artificial intelligence machine learning things, and that's at ccaiservices.com and I am Phillip with two L's, at ccaiservices.com. And I'm also on Twitter as designoutloud, no hyphens or anything, just all one word, and I'm always happy to connect and discuss things on LinkedIn. So pretty easy to find there. I think I was lucky enough to get Phillip Hunter as my LinkedIn URL so you can find me there, and I love to talk about this stuff! Also, my, site has… I've got a fair amount of content out there about these topics, where I go much deeper on… okay, once you understand these principles, how do you really start to apply them and how do you, have an iterative and thoughtful design approach to writing for voice and text interaction. So yeah, so any of those ways be great. Jorge: Well, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for this conversation about conversation! Phillip: Well, it's my pleasure. And obviously I have a lot to say! And yes, we could go on for quite a while. In fact, I might even forget you're there and just keep talking while you're, while you're sleeping or, you know, petting your cat or whatever I saw…. Jorge: Maybe we need to do a part two. Phillip: Well, maybe so! Let's see what kind of response we get, but I'd be happy to, and you know, it is a fascinating thing to think about and analyze. And if anyone wants to dive in, I have some great resources. There's a book called How We Talk by N.J. Enfield, that is also just really, really fascinating. And I'm currently reading another book, that so far, it's very promising, but I'd want to finish it before I recommend it. But I guess the other thing is, I want to say here to people is, don't just study the tools and the technology. You need to study people and conversation to really be good at this, if you want to get into it. It's way more sophisticated than anything we have done for standard web and mobile design. As important, and as difficult as that work is, conversation has some really special and deep challenges. So, don't limit yourself to just understanding the technology and how to apply it. Jorge: That seems like a great admonition and a good place to end it. Thank you so much! Phillip: Oh, you're very welcome.

Brenda Laurel tells what it was like working at Atari, the office antics and wild parties that occurred, and the eventual downfall of Atari with the infamous ill-fated ET game. Hosts: Leo Laporte and Adam Fisher Guest: Brenda Laurel Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/valley-of-genius. Get a copy of Adam Fisher's Valley of Genius book at a bookstore near you.

Brenda Laurel: Unleash The Alchemical Power Of It All. In this episode, we strap on our VR goggles and take a look at both kinds of virtual reality - the one you make with technology, and the one you make with magic. By the keystrokes of visionary techno-pagan and software pioneer, Brenda Laurel, we learn to bridge the gap between computer, theatre, nature, and reality. Episode Webpage: http://www.missingwitches.com/2018/10/28/episode-6-brenda…-power-of-it-all/

TRAILER Brenda Laurel: Unleash The Alchemical Power Of It All. By the keystrokes of visionary techno-pagan and software pioneer, Brenda Laurel, we learn to bridge the gap between computer, theatre, nature, and reality.

This week we have a conversation with Carly Kocurek, author of Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (2015) and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (2017) and developer of games like Choice Texas. We chat about Al Capone and money laundering, Disney and film preservation, video games (of course), and much more.What We’re Playing:-Overwatch-Ever Oasis-Perception-Lego DimensionsWhat We’re Reading-Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer-Mort (Discworld) by Terry Pratchett-Technofeminism by Judy Wajcman

Joseph Pine is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker and management advisor. Joseph has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, at Ted in California and today is a Lecturer in Columbia University’s Technology Management Programme. He is not an academic, however, having worked for IBM for 13 years, Joseph specializes in helping people see the world of business differently through his many ground breaking books beginning with the award winning, Mass Customization: The New Frontier In Business Competition, including Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want and most recently, Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier. He is most popularly well known for his bestselling book, The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage which was recently name one of the 100 best business books of all time by 800-CEO-Read.   Questions What is your Zodiac Sign? Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey In terms of the book which says Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, can you expound on that a little? If we are in the experience economy and we are on a stage, how do we find out what is our true character or is our character based on the persons we interact with? What are some important considerations for an entrepreneur or an online business owner you to be successful? In a government institution where they move slow, the employees seems like they don’t want to be at work, how can that be translated into a way that as a government, your citizens of the country are running to pay their taxes because the service experience is amazing and is there an economy that exist like that? What is the one online resource, website, tool or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? How do you stay motivated every day? What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you? If you were sitting across the table from another business owner and they said to you that they feel they have great products and services but they lack the constantly motivated human capital, what’s the one piece of advice would you give them to have a successful business, specifically as it relates to constantly motivated human capital? What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people? Where can our listeners find your information online? What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?   Highlights Joseph that his Zodiac Sign is a Libra if he remembers right on the cusp of Scorpio.   Yanique stated that one interesting fact about a Libran is that they are very free spirited and asked Joe if that’s a true characteristic of his personality and Joe disagreed and shared he believes he’s free spirited in being creative and innovative. Joseph stated being free spirited is not a true characteristic of his personality, he is however sort of buttoned up and introvert and a free spirit is very much of extroverts, so he would not say that describes him. If you think of characteristics of a free spirit is being creative and being able to think of new things and do things differently and that part he would ascribe to. He feels like his purpose in life is to figure out what’s going on in the world of business and then to develop frame works that first describe what’s going on and then prescribe what companies can do about it. Joseph shared that his birthday is October 22. Joseph stated that he was very much into computers very early in Elementary School and so he got an Applied Mathematics Degree; he joined IBM and worked there for 13 years. He started off in a very technical job and moved up into management and into a special project he did for a computer system called the AS/400, was to help run a group that helped customers bring customers in the business development process of the system and he discovered at that time that every customer was unique that they want to use the system in different ways and put together different hardware, different data, different software, just unique. He moved into strategic planning and that sent him on a discovery of how they would resolve that issue, how they could design systems for the uniqueness that he saw and that led him to the book “Future Perfect” by Stanley Davies it came out in 1987. In it he had a chapter on Mass Customization and when he read that chapter, it was like the heavens opened up and the angels sang, it explained everything that he saw going on and when IBM sent him to MIT for a year to get his Master’s Degree in Management of Technology, he decided that he was going to study that topic the whole, he was going do his thesis on mass customization and then he was going to turn his thesis into a book and that’s what he did. The book came out in 1993 and really defines that fact that we can give every customer exactly what they want but do it at a price they are willing to pay, so you have coequal imperatives of both mass and customization, the individual customized plus low cost efficient operations. He worked on that and he left IBM in late 1993 to see if he could do it on his own, 23 years later his wife is still not sure if it’s going to work out but so far so good. Early on he discovered that if you customize it good, you automatically turn it into a service and if you customize a service, you automatically turn it into an experience and if you design a service that is so appropriate for a particular person exactly the service that they need at this moment in time then you can’t help but make them go “wow” and turn it into a memorable event and that is an experience. That lead him to discover the experience of the economy, where they would have an economy based off of experiences where goods and services would no longer be enough and companies would need to do is to stages experiences for their customers, and so he took on Jim Gilemore as a partner in 1996, they started to develop ideas together and that resulted in their book The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage in 1999 and that really laid it out and that set the stage for the entire movement towards customer experience and operation towards user experience and towards experience marketing and marketing all of that is fundamentally based on the fact that they are shifting into an economy where experiences have today become a predominant economic offering. When they first wrote the book in 1999, they talked about the nascent experience economy, the coming experience economy, they came out with an updated edition a few years ago and they changed all that language saying “no it’s here, it’s now, we are in worldwide, we are in an experienced economy” that’s what consumers are looking for. Since that time, they also discovered that in a world of paid for experiences people often question what is real and what is not and increasingly they don’t want the fake from the phony, they want the real from the genuine, and so they came out with the book in 2007 called Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, the new consumer sensibility describing how companies can get customers to perceive their offerings and by extension their places in their company as authentic. In 2011, he also came out with a book called Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier, so that goes originally to his technology background, looking at how digital technology is being used in experiences and recognizing that what it is about is fusing the real and the virtual and that’s what that book’s about. Joseph also mentioned that his partner Jim Gilemore has come out with a new book called “Look” about the observational skill, it’s a great book on how you can bring different kinds of observational skills into your personal practice and into your company.   Yanique commented that she recently read a study done by New Voice Era that said “up to $62 Billion a year is being lost by companies collectively on a global scale because of poor service.” She stated that assuming that the service is based on the experience they have had, so it’s no longer the price or sometimes the quality of the product, they will work with you if you are willing to make certain amends but how they manage that whole experience with the customer really depends on whether or not they stay with you. Joseph agreed and stated that it is important to recognize that each of the offerings he’s talking about is distinct economic offerings. You grow an economy based off commodities, the things you pull out of the ground or raise in the ground, animal, mineral, vegetable and then we shifted in the industrial revolution hundreds of years ago into an industrial economy where goods, physical things became the predominant economic offering and in the latter part of the 21st century, we shifted into a service economy and that’s where quality became job one, that’s where services became important and the research that Yanique points to is about services which are the intangible activities that you perform on behalf of an individual and that’s why mass customizing a good turns it into a service because you’re doing it for an individual not inventorying it, doing it on demand. Now what we are shifting into is an experience based off experiences. Experiences are in fact a distinct economic offering as distinct from services and services from goods, they use goods as a prop and services as the stage to engage each and every person and by creating a memory which is the hallmark of the experience. It’s important to differentiate that, you don’t want to talk about the service experience and they are distinct things. You can have a service; you can surround that with an experience and the term you are using “Customer Experience” it’s important to understand what that should mean. Most people use the term they mean “let’s make it things nice and easy and convenient” and all of those are good characteristics but they are service characteristics, you’ve got to go beyond nice and easy and convenient if you want to create a true distinctive experience.   Yanique stated that in terms of the book Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, she stated that she does a lot of customer service training and the why how the mind processes things and that’s based off what she hears from the participant. When you say to them, you have to pretend like you are on stage that contradicts the whole authenticity approach. They should come to work and pretend but at the same time you want them authentic, be true to who they are and be true to the quality and culture the company stands for.   Joseph stated that it’s a very common misconception of acting is that it is fake, that it is pretend, that’s not what real acting is about. You can have people that pretend when they are acting. The book they talk about the real fake makers and basically defines that people can perceive your offering as real – real or fake – fake but also as real – fake or fake – real and acting can be any one of those four as well, so a lot of people that are fake acting which really is pretending. His favorite example is Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, Fish Market You Tube Video he was just there leading an Experience Expedition with clients 2 months ago. Pike Place Fish Market is a fish market, it is moralizing the fish video, and the most best selling business video of all time and what they do is getting fish out of the sea and putting it on ice in an open market so they are commodity traders but how they sell that fish is with wonderful theatre, they have these different routines to engage guests, often 20 to 40 people around the fish market waiting for someone to buy because that’s when they have their signature moment, when you order a fish, they shout of the order like “7 flying to Minnesota” and all the others shout back “7 flying to Minnesota” and then they throw that salmon across the counter, 15 to 20 feet where somebody catches it and wraps it up for you and people love seeing that happen. These people understand that they are on stage, they understand that they are acting but they are very real, they go home smelling like fish, so the fish video goes through 4 different principles, they are all acting techniques. They talk about play, the notion that you are on stage, you are there to have fun and give a great experience for the audience. They talk about “be there” which is a standard acting technique that you need to be there in the moment, you need to forget about everything else and focus on the task at hand and that’s what actors have to do. The other is chose your attitude, acting is fundamentally about making choices, about choosing what parts of yourself to reveal to those in front of you, we all know we act differently in front of our boss than we do our subordinates, we know we act differently in front of our friends than we do strangers, in front of our parents then we do our children, it’s not that we are being fake or phony, it’s just choosing what part of ourselves to reveal and that’s what real-real acting is. Joseph Pine stated that in general and this relates to authenticity which is you have to true to yourself is one of the 2 key standards of authenticity that create that real -fake matrix and the other is you have to be who you say you are. The character must come from within; the character that you are and that you bring that to life. Another great example of acting is the diner in Chicago called Ed Debevic’s, it’s very famous and it’s shut down for the moment. It’s a normal corner diner, it’s not a high end place, he and his partner Jim Gilemore went there once for lunch and the guy at the front who met them had a nametag that says “Smiley”. So smiley was his character, not sure if it was his real nick name or a character he subsumed but that was a guy that can be smiley and he was smiley. He met them with a big smile and he asked how many people was in their party and he picked out menus and he proceeded to walk them through the restaurant and every once in awhile he would stop and one time he stopped at a table and asked them how they were doing and they would cooled their heels behind him he interact with another customer, at one point he started to talk around the table, up the chairs, up the tables, back down the other side and they kept following him until he finally delivered them to their table right at the front of the restaurant. It’s a wonderful, engaging theatre and it is that character that he created call Smiley. Speaking of phone interactions, one of the companies that is famous for great customer service that he thinks rises to the level of an experience in Zappos in Las Vegas, where they sell shoes on line and they are famous for their call centres where people would call in. Joseph met their Chief Culture Officer, Jon Wolske and he came up from being a phone representative himself, contact centre employee and he said that what he would do as he played in a rock band when he was younger, he would take on that rock band persona, he had things around his cubicle that talks about being a rock star, whenever he gets a call, he would look at that image that says “you are a rock star” and that would be the character that he played but that was a character that was a part of himself, he wasn’t trying to be something that he’s not. Yanique stated that she is a big fan of the movie “the Fast and the Furious” and Vin Diesel has a very jovial personality and she has been watching him offline in some of his snaps he puts up on Snapchat as well as Instagram and even on Facebook and he seems like a very relaxed, easy going and jovial person but he doesn’t play those characters in “the Fast and the Furious” he’s serious and person in the family who doesn’t smile too much. She said that is very interesting that if you get a role that epitomize your true character, it makes it that much easier and more believable for people to connect with you.   Joseph shared that for online entrepreneurs, the key thing to understand is what business are you really in. So understand if you want to be in the goods/ services business or truly in the experience business and then you need to think about how do you create that experience. The number 1 thing is time, like Zappos said. Most companies with their contact centres, they measure how little time customers spend with their representatives. They want them off the phone very quickly, they think it’s costing them money, at Zappos, they don’t measure that. In fact, everyday they celebrate which customer representative got to spend the most time with a an actual, living, breathing customer and it’s usually in the hours and that doesn’t bother them a bit, they don’t think about the dollar signs clicking off about cost, they recognize that they are doing the right job for the customer and that customer is going to be one of their raving fans, they are going to tell other people about it, they are going to come back again because they gave that great experience over the phone and so that can be done online, that can be done in a small business, it’s again recognizing what is your stage, what is the theatre that you are going to put on there. Joseph Pine II shared that an economy like that exists few and far between because being a government employees have so many differences than normal employees, you don’t have the profit motive that causes you to want to do a good job, you don’t have the fear of losing a job or the business if you’re not doing it well, the people you are interacting with aren’t “customers” cause they are not paying you, the government is and so all those things make it incrediblly hard for government employees to really do a great job. Every once in awhile you get what’s call a natural, you get someone who is just naturally vivacious or outgoing or having a service attitude that does want to do a great job and will turn into a great experience interacting with them but for a government entity to do that, that’s very few and far between. Joseph stated that the one that always come to mind is that he and his partner Jim gives out is “An Experience Stager of the Year Award” every year at their annual Think About event. It was be their 19th year September 21st and 22nd in New Orleans. One time they gave the award to a government entity and that was the Cerritos Public Library in Cerritos, California outside of Los Angeles. The Head Librarian Wayne Pearson, he got tired of people telling him that the internet was going to commoditize his business, people were saying “why are going to libraries in the future when you get over the internet every book that’s ever been published, every paper that has ever been written, every thought that has ever been thunk.” He wanted to create this reason for existence for libraries, so he created what he calls “World’s First Experience Library” Cerritos Public Library - Best Library Experience Video and architecturally it ‘s very distinct, it’s the first use of titanium in any architectural structure in the United States of America when it was built in 2002 and they have a basic theme, every great experience needs to have a theme it doesn’t have to be in your face like the Cerritos Public Library, doesn’t have to be fantasy like Disney, it’s simple “The Organizing Principle for the Experience” and the theme for the Cerritos Public Library is “Journey Through Time” that a visit to the library ought to be a journey through time, so they have different areas in the library that are themed after different points in time, a classic period, a modern period, an ordeca period and they have rituals based off of that like when it’s time to close the library, everybody starts to put away their books and gather up their stuff and they go down to the main lobby where this huge screen and every night at closing time they play the scene from the movie, The Sound of Music where the kids are singing, they all sing along and by time the last kid sings good bye, the library is closed and they go again another day. The town has over 3,500 of them are in the library every day. This is a government entity that understands that it’s in the experience business and that comes directly from Wayne Pearson and it’s continued on to this day. Joseph shared that the one online tool that he couldn’t live without would be Google because he is constantly doing research, he is constantly trying to figure out what’s going on in the world, looking for new examples, seeing what people are doing and that always gives him new ideas which eventually lead to new frame works. Often his Google goes into Wikipedia to be able to research something in deep but he also has Google alert so anybody that’s in the praising experience economy or mass customization or authenticity business context and also chief experience officer, he’s a big promoter of the fact that companies should hire chief experience officers to lead their offerings and turn them into a true distinctive experiences. He is also on Twitter and he learns a ton just seeing what’s going on, a lot of example through that and connecting with people, he has gotten a lot of business through that. Joseph shared that the biggest thing is to see the effect that they are having in the world. Sometimes it’s very direct in consulting with an organization, he helping them to create an experience plan for example. You can go and visit them when it’s fully implemented and you see the difference that you make and other cases when he’s giving a speech somewhere and you see the light bulbs go on in people’s head and they come up to you after and say “wow this really makes sense” and they talk about how they are going to make a difference in the world. One of the things they have is an Experience Economy Expert Certification Course, 4 and half day of emerging in the experience, publicly every year in August in the United States of America, privately in house around the world and they have over 200 certified experts and they see the difference they are making and sometimes they are the owner of the business so you see what they are doing differently, sometimes they are internal consultants helping the business and sometimes they are consultants to other clients and you see what a difference they are making there. On Twitter, he has people talking about what a difference his book makes, he may not be having any interaction but his books are out there, the ideas are out there and people are taking them on, he doesn’t hear of everyone that does but people are bracing the ideas and making a difference in their business which allows them to hire more people, which creates more jobs, which moves the economy on. So the fact that he knows that he is making a difference in the world is highly motivating. Joseph shared some of the books and first one is “Future Perfect” by Stanley Davis it was written in 1987 and one chapter that inspire mass customization his book Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Values on the Digital Frontier was actually inspired by another chapter in Future Perfect. Another great book that had a tremendous effect on him is “The One to One Future” by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers and that book came out in 1993 and he read it and said “wow, this is talking about in marketing, what I was talking about in operations” if you could mass customize then you could also have a one to one dialogue with individual customers, what could you create. When he was done reading the book, he discovered that Don lived 2 towns over from him in Connecticut at the time. He then called him up, got together and they figured out what that would do is create a learning relationship with customers that would grow and deepen overtime and allows you to lock them in because you always knew more about them than anybody else and you see that come into fruition today with all the companies using AI today to predict what people want. Another great book is “Computers as Theatre” by Brenda Laurel and it really make the case that you need to think about computers not as a tool but as a medium for a stage. He learned a lot about theatre and dramatic structure from reading her book, it’s a great book and he had his class at Columbia University read a portion of it. Joseph shared that understanding that work is theatre and so what you need to do is to come up with that play/drama that you want to create, that’s what your strategy is about, what is your drama that you want to create in the world. And then you need to direct your workers to action, give them roles to play and help them characterize those roles and give them the where it all to be able to perform them, actors rehearse, give them backstage time and then you need to create an employee experience that is as good as the experience you create for customers, so they have the where it all to perform your drama on your business stage. Joseph shared that he doesn’t have people; their business they call “2 Gurus and a Marketer” Jim Gilmore and their partner Doug Parker. They had a partner meeting and came up with some things that they are excited about. One of them is that they are working with some companies to create some videos, to be able to take their ideas and bring them out there further than they can reach with their speeches and consulting and their books. They are working with a company that brings custom learning to individual people in businesses wherever they are and so they are going to work with them to create new modules that they can then help people in their jobs, frontline personnel create that great, wow experience for their customers, so over the next 6 months they are going to do that, increasing the reach to make more of a difference, helping many more people embrace The Experience Economy. Joseph stated that listeners can find him on: www.strategichorizons.comJoseph Pine Twitter Joseph stated that there is a famous quote by Margaret Mead “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”   Links “Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition” by B. Joseph Pine “Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want” by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore “Infinite Possibilities: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier” by B. Joseph Pine, Kim C. Korn and James H. Gilmore “The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage” by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore “Future Perfect” by Stanley M. Davis “The One to One Future” by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers “Computers as Theatre” by Brenda Laurel  

„Our job is to clean up“, hat er mal über Designer gesagt. Aber wie viel kann man aufräumen, bevor eine App oder Website den Charakter verliert? Oliver Reichensteins Vision vom perfekten Texteditor ist ein ständiges Experiment. Ein Gespräch über Minimalismus, Schrift am Bildschirm und Zeitungen im Netz. Oliver Reichenstein (44) studierte Philosophie und arbeitete in einer Agentur, bevor er nach Japan auswanderte. Er gründete das Studio Information Architects mit Kunden wie Monotype, Die Zeit und The Guardian. Zuletzt veröffentlichte iA ein Wordpress-Theme mit John Tenniels Illustrationen zu „Alice im Wunderland“. 01:37 iA Writer13:03 Desktopmetapher (Wikipedia)13:35 Thomas Byttebier: The best icon is a text label16:03 Quintilian (Wikipedia)24:20 Nitti Schriftfamilie (Bold Monday)27:14 Frank Nitti (My Al Capone Museum)37:15 Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theatre (Auszug, PDF)40:13 Charlie Parker: Tiny's Tempo (YouTube)42:24 Die Zeit42:47 Ankündigung zum Relaunch der Zeit (iA 2009)44:32 Khoi Vinh: Halftone Effects in Wildcard 2.0 (Vimeo)45:21 Nick Haley: The container model and blended content50:17 Talk: Structuring Information (Typo Berlin 2015)58:07 Julia Kahl (Slanted)

Wednesday, March 28, 2012 The TD Guest Speaker/Designer in Residence Program and Emily Carr are proud to present interactive designer, researcher and writer, Brenda Laurel and her featured talk, Authorship in Interactive Media: Reflections on 35 Years of Change. Brenda Laurel serves as Professor and Chair of the Graduate Program in Design at California College of the Arts and has worked in interactive media since 1976. She chaired the Graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena ('02-'06) and was a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems Labs ('05-'06). Based on her research in gender and technology at Interval Research ('92-'96), she co-founded Purple Moon in 1996 to create interactive media for girls. Her books include The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design ('90), Computers as Theatre ('91), Utopian Entrepreneur ('01), and Design Research: Methods and Perspectives ('04). Her most recent writing, “Gaian IxD”, was the cover article in the September/October 2011 issue of the journal Interactions. She earned her BA ('72) from DePauw University and her MFA ('75) and PhD ('86) in Theatre from the Ohio State University.Brenda Laurel - TD Guest Speaker / Designer in Residence Program

"New Media in Higher Education: Students Looking Forward," by Brenda Laurel, Sun Microsystems Laboratories, designer, researcher, and writer.