Paper 1: Circles and props—making unknown technology
The OWL Project it's a workshop that lasts about two hours. Participants pick a desire from a list (for instance, vengeance) and point out where the desire resides in their bodies. The next step is pick a material that better resembles the chosen desire.
Theses steps were taken so the participants would create something deprived from reason. After finishing their creations participants would be brought to reason by being asked questions about their creations. Such as "what does it do?".
I believe this article was relevant because it raises questions about whether we should be totally rational when creating something. Or if we should implement this idea of creating something without reason as a step into our design process in order to come with new ideas or perhaps to taking off the pressure of designing something.
Paper 2: Annotated Portfolios
The Annotated portfolios paper was very interesting. I liked the artefacts created and how users would interact with them, especially the Photostroller. Also the concept of annotated portfolios and how they work might prove useful when documenting personal work since they describe a piece of design succinctly.
Overall I believe this paper was a bit difficult to read but I believe as I read more, my understanding will improve.
Paper 3: Taking Our Sweet Time to Search
Slow search is proposed instead of fast paced and instant results. It's argued in the paper that slow search allows the searcher to have time to reflect over the information found and that it can be a journey where people do not exactly know what they are looking for and therefor, find important information along the way.
I agree to this statement to some extent, although I think slow search allows reflection and better quality information, it's very time consuming, however, immediate search, and the means we use to search make it difficult to keep track of what is found in previous searches which might lead to lose important information as a result.
Paper 4: Overcoming Procrastination with ReMind
Overall it was easy to read, it had many figures which allowed to get a better understanding of how ReMind work's. Furthermore I think it's great that there's research related with procrastination, since it's a problem that affects most people.
On a final note I think ReMind makes our procrastination problems more tangible, even more when we delay doing something, the act of moving pucks around makes it more evident for the user that a task is being avoided.
Paper 5: New Media, New Craft ?
This paper is about programming being accepted as a craft like any other. Reason being the developer must now how to manipulate "digital material" in order to create something with it. It argues that there when using digital material there are no physical barriers to the creation of a project, that it can be multiple versions of the same creation and how programming languages reflect the language of nature. I think it was short, easy and interesting to read.
Paper 6: Distinguishing Concepts Lexicons of Interactive Art and Architecture
This article made me think about a problem that I sometimes face while working with other people. Being that we need to understand each other, and since the paper mentions that the term interactive design is misplaced among designers it can have implications on the community and how we work together. The paper is a bit long but included plenty of graphics to get a better understanding of the article.
Read Distinguishing Concepts Lexicons of Interactive Art and Architecture paper.
Paper 7: Theories and Practice of Design for Information Systems: Eight Design Perspectives in Ten Short Weeks
This paper was particularly interesting due to the fact many people study different subjects for multiple reasons. Although it was very long and dry, ultimately it made me reflect on there's a multitude of approaches to design and study design, and the reason might be because each individual or a team found that way just works for them, not necessarily because it's right or wrong. Also it's makes more clear that design is present on most things we create.