Inspire connection through creativity

2010

The pixSmix application called for people to connect around the creation of digital collages assembled from a library of public Flickr images. Mosaics were composed on an iPad by dragging selected images onto a structured 3×4 grid to create meaning from the ambiguity of the photoset. These simple compositions then became social artifacts by inviting others in the community to interpret their meaning through storytelling and threaded commentary, annotating a collective narrative for the artist.

This project originated from a desire to create a more engaging form of online dating, but my research led us to explore the use of ambiguity as a way to connect. Our group moved toward creating a more generalized creative social network, where people made meaning on random images assembled into a collage. After some conversations with a colleague studying machine learning and music, I was convinced the creation of mosaics in pixSmix would also be a way to generate information about how photos are related to each other through the choices people make to put them together in a composition.

Design Explanation

The PRInCiPleS framework informed my design process for this design project. Components were gathered as we defined and analyzed our initial design challenge, and the resulting insights were then synthesized in different combinations to inspire several solution concepts. For pixSmix, this process produced both a beta implementation and a CHI paper.

Predispositions

• People take more pictures due to adoption of smartphones.
• Women are frustrated with the effectiveness and experiences with online dating.
• Meaning is created through relationships between a group of objects.
• People will react positively to the creation of visual works.
• Individuals tend to respond to and iterate in the language of their community.
• Constraint inspires creativity.

Research

• Physiological connections exist between sensual stimulus and emotion.
• People construct social artifacts based on the sense they make of the strange images they see, actively constructing a meaningful human experience around the technology.
• Ambiguity falls into three broad classes:
  • Information in the artifact
    • Over-interpret data to encourage speculation.
    • Cast doubt on sources to provoke independent assessment.
  • Context surrounding the artifact
    • Present incompatible contexts to disrupt preconceptions.
  • Relationship in the participant’s experiences.
    • Offer unaccustomed roles to encourage imagination.
• Over time, interpretations become convention, lessening ambiguity.
• Different meanings arise out of different context with the same materials.
• Examples of relevant technology:
  • Modeled after horoscopes, the Home Health Horoscope is a sensor-based project that collects information about activity in a home and turns that data into over-interpreted statements.
  • AuralScapes—a project to bring arrhythmic sounds and overhead images into an enclosed internal room—attempts to change the ambiance of the space. It is purposely incoherent, until the observer gives it aesthetic meaning.
  • In a field test conducted with networked cameras, participants attempted to generate social artifacts from images within context of their own lives. In practice, the device was used as a broadcast tool for storytelling, to express spirituality and affection, to strengthen group bonds, and in supporting conversation.
  • Pangmangi is a flat-panel display installed on office doors to create awareness of the occupant’s availability, but generated frustrations with the lack of precision (example: “When you don’t see her does that mean she’s gone?”).
  • Loki is a chat bot designed to create gossip in an office environment.
• Focus group around a collaging activity revealed:
  • Only 10 of 108 images failed to be used in one of the 10 compositions.
  • Only 1 image appeared in as many as 8 compositions.
  • People sorted images into themes before composing.
  • The shape of the grid (i.e., small landscape squares) impacted selection of images (e.g., fewer portrait orientations used).
  • The most popular pictures were often distinctive and ambiguous.
  • Writing and sharing interpretations of compositions is less engaging than composing with images.
  • Lack of introductions created discomfort but made it easier to focus on the tasks.

Insights

• Interpretation evolves with experience.
• Ambiguity can also lead to appropriation of use.
• Sinister prompts can engender positive outcomes: the technology assumes a negative role, prompting humans in the group to exhibit noble behavior.
• Imprecision, playfulness, re-appropriation, and provocation are potentially integral to engagement.
• People project themselves onto art, especially when the creator is unknown.
• Shared experiences strengthens connection.
• Ambiguity is designed as an interpreted space.
• To maintain ambiguity, materials must be replaced with regularity.

Concepts

• Date My Stuff—present your dating profile as the things in your life that represent you
• Triangulate—social game to name the group of three random pictures
• Digital Collage—cut and paste from an image library to create new digital art
• Digital “magnetic poetry”—use attributes of another person in a social network to craft messages to each other

Prototypes

• pixSmix – a social network around manipulating random photos into a grid
  • Paper prototype with small prints of Flickr photos
  • Mockup flow of interface for digital collage
  • Interactive poster, with magnetized photos
  • Beta version of the digital collage

Strategies

• Facilitate human connection through the enjoyable creation of mosaics and the meaning assigned to them by both the artist and those visiting their online gallery.
• Leverage the initial release of the Apple iPad with an engaging application for early adopters.
• Capture an analyze data on how pictures are associated with each other, looking at the network formed through proximal grouping of images in mosaics to make recommendations of similar pictures, or to validate photo content by scoring where they are found in that network.
• Integrate with on-demand printing to let the mosaics become mugs, shirts, and other merchandise.