Author: andrea.hurtadotorres

Is a book I got in the Usability Congress by the designer Jaime Levy, she guided us through her experience finding an apartment in Berlin and how she implemented her UX skills to develop a strategy for finding her amazing apartment. 

The book is like a guide for anybody who would like to create successful digital products, Levy breaks down the mix between amazing experiences with business moves. It’s an easy-to-follow book because like in her conference, she shares real-life scenarios where UX strategies are applicable as well, accompanied by great tips on how to create digital experiences that users will remember. 

I would totally recommend attending to a networking event even if it’s just to go out of your comfort zone, you will make amazing connections and engage with professionals who are always happy to guide you. 

This year I saw more talks referring to the usage of AI in design and how algorithms are the future in creative processes, they’re not here to take our places but rather to make our job easier. 

One of the talks referred to emotional design in experiences, which is a part of the topic I’ll be addressing for my thesis, where it was talked about the important of immersion within the experience, how every detail matters in a fictional experience for it to feel real, and how now the usage of technology like augmented reality can help us more real-time intimate experiences. 

The most interesting part was the immersive storytelling, how we can not only create emotions into people with words, sounds or visual, but also with smell and atmosphere, the most interesting part about immersion is how it bring nostalgia, and make use of it to create a memorable experience. 

The thesis a chose is from Heli Juuti, alumni of contemporary design from Aalto University in Finland. It is based in the research of sensory design and how to incorporate a sensory installation with marketing purposes for a dairy brand in Finland which would like to be enter the USA market. 

The level of design and innovation is quite interesting, I´ve seen multiple brands, some of which the author refers to, like glossier, were the refer themselves as brand ecosystems, creating amazing shopping experiences, online and offline. I found amusing how marketing is connected to interactive design and how the perception of a brand changes entirely for a consumer based merely on the experience they had in their shops or websites. 

It was such an interesting approach even doing a research trip to America with the purpose of finding more information an insight of how the experience in these stores is. 

I appreciated the minimalist but colorful branding for this thesis and project it was such an easy and nice layout. The communication was formal but clear and concise, I liked the examples also how certain elements where remarked, like the contribution from interviewees, but there were come grammatical mistakes. 

There was a lot of literature cited, from disciplines like psychology, marketing, and neuroscience. 

When we talk about the epistemology of design, we’re referring to the significance of design not only as a practical need but as a key part in humanity that shapes societies. It does beyond creating and construction, it’s the perfect implementation of planning, scheduling, and systematically ideating. 

Just as Poldma (2013) mentions, design in not necessarily about knowing what only the outcome is but importantly about the construction of the conditions under which the outcome should be judged. Such judgement relies on factors of human nature and the dynamic between people and the practices that generate these outcomes. 

This discipline can be far too complex to understand, design as I’ve said is beyond creating but more about understanding, it’s the human connection between construction and empathy for all the implicated before, during and after the construction. But there are three aspects that are needed within the epistemology of design, knowledge, methods, and clarity of validation criteria. 

Is a project made into an exhibition that show casts posters that represent information from the Report on The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election through design. 

Each poster is composed by important references and citation rom the report accompanied by additional contextual information, it not only talks about the report but also about themes related to transparency, treason, interference, white collar and governmental crimes, fake news, and misinformation campaigns. 

The exhibition is show casted as a timeline within the report in a visually appealing way, eliminating the comprehension barrier. This report, known as The Muller Report, is of general’s public interest and its redactions causes a disinformation in the American citizen, who might not sense the gravity of their political crisis and the effects these crimes will cause in democracy. 

An area in which communication and visual designers can use UX/UI techniques to hook views, interest them with the topics and keep them reading, creating critical thinking and analysis issues of social and political matter. 

Synthesizing text, language, organization, hierarchy, and virtual development strategies could more effectively design documents of social and legal matter reaching a wider range of audiences and comprehending the severity of these issues. 

The more pathways we create in documents of public matter, the more accessible they become, the more informed a society gets and makes us make wiser and well-informed decisions. 

Like Eye in Design mentions, In the era of fake news, graphic design must address the gaps between information dissemination and the public’s ability to understand it. 

Philosophically speaking ‘Ontology’ gives meaning to the purpose of existence of something or someone, this design theory questions on a fundamental level ‘What is design and what does it does to the world?’ Even though design as a discipline serves to a reason and a task, it can be find everywhere and used at any time we, as designers, fail to understand how it structures the possibilities for existence in the world. 

Like Anne-Marie Willies wrote, ‘design is fundamental to being human it is something way more persuasive and profound.’ Seeing design as an imperfect discipline that looks to make things better rather than looking for perfection in a huge spectrum, makes us visualize the unforeseen and unintentional outcomes instead of neglected the consequences it effects. 

Design not only innovates, design changes societies, influences behaviors, creates a new way of being in the world, where other worlds live within. Changing the way one world behaves will cause collateral effects in the worlds within it. 

Generative art as a movement started around 1950’s when artists started experimenting with analog and mechanical devices, praising the chaos that dadaism and surrealism brought into the radar. At the time the only people who had access to sophisticated digital devices that could be used to experiment with component generative abstract art where scientists and professors at universities.

It is a form of art that implements algorithms to generate new ideas, forms, shapes, images, with a pattern. It allows the artist to create her/his own boundaries that are set up to a computer and this will generate multiple pieces of art. It reduces the exploratory phase of art leading to sophisticated ideas. 

The magic of it it’s using information from the real world to represent something unique with it, as a new form of data representation, it’s also a form of brainstorming to bring unique ideas into the real world. 

Katharina Brunner is a Journalist and Data Scientist, alumni from FH Joanneum, who creates generative graphics to represent information relevant to journalism topics, such as gender equality, LGBTQI+ rights, privacy rights and creates open-source code for generative art. 

I came up with her work when I was looking for more AI artists and it interested me the way Katharina uses AI for informing and social causes beyond experiences it’s a new way of perceiving and giving importance to information. Making easier to represent data regarding sensible topics. It created a question on my mind, Is it possible to use AI graphics for creating experiences that would impact our society further than an experience? 

On another note: I played around with her open-source code for generative art and creative some images, like this one 🙂

The LA based artist, born in Tukey. Has been a change maker in digital art and experiences, from showcasing his work in the MOMA to being the first artist to use The Sphere in Las Vegas as a canvas. His work leads viewers to alternative realities. 

But how does it work? His art is a curation of AI data generated images, the information gathers for creating his content goes from sounds, waves, photos or data from free and open sources, like national parks, libraries even the NASA images, creating temporary immersive environments. 

What’s amusing about his job is the way he transforms architectural spaces and façades into giant live art pieces, making it seem like it’s alive. His main focus is creating immersive experiences and to portray how it is to address the challenges and possibilities that computing has impose in society, as well as what it looks like to be a human in a world filled with artificial intelligence, how something we interact with every single day can look like.