Today, Jen, Joanna and I presented our mini research project:
The purpose of this research is to both have fun while also considering if image can help people communicate in a global world where language, culture and life experience varies. The cell phone has become the most common tool of communication and is more available than the internet for many people around the world. This research will use cell phones with camera included (and specifically the multimedia messaging service or MMS) to investigate if image can be used instead of text to communicate.
We asked a series of questions to 4 participants (plus us as the design team):
This idea is based on the game "Telephone", where a phrase is passed to participants by whispering it into another person’s ear. No one knows the original sentence until the end of the game. In the same way, we want to try this principle using cell phones as the means to share the information. Instead of using oral or textual tools, you will use pictures taken from your cell phone.
Six rounds of play occurred that begged various questions. What resulted was a visual response with various interpretations (we're still gathering some data on perceptions of the questions being asked so can't list anything here yet).
This principle of the game has considered both playfulness and meaningfulness as each of us consider our research theses. Jen is looked at adaptive tools for children with disabilities, Joanna is considering cross-cultural community dialogues and I am looking at how the mobile phone can expand as a tool in the "developing world."
Here are a few other links that surfaced in our research that provide interesting mobile ideas that we'd like to explore further.
Analog Blogger
Ushahidi
The Bowler Hat Game
25 March 2009
Tele.fone Project
16 February 2009
30 November 2008
08 November 2008
Lester Beall and Information Design
Lester Beall designed these posters in the late 1930s for the US Government's Rural Electrification Administration.
The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was an agency of the United States federal government created on May 11, 1935 through efforts of the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The REA's task was to promote electrification in rural areas, which in the 1930s rarely were provided with electricity due to the unwillingness of power companies to serve farmsteads. America lagged significantly behind European countries in rural electrification. Private electric utilities argued that the government had no right to compete with or regulate private enterprise, despite many of these utilities having refused to extend their lines to rural areas, claiming lack of profitability. Since private power companies set rural rates four times as high as city rates, this was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
These posters are an interesting point of discussion for me as I consider how communication design can articulate environmental messages to the rural communities of Africa. On one level, we can look at these posters as somewhat ironic (because of our current awareness of energy consumption). But the graphic design (in its modernist form and attempted function) are simple, seemingly clear and almost fit into an information design category. In these post-modern times, does Beall's poster have a relevance we might typically overlook? Can this form influence how one might consider communicating universally?
Clearly, the ideas inherent in the rural electrification administration process are outdated but I like how these images present data pictorially (and without being obvious suggest a place for some leapfrogging):
