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This Prezi was produced for students at Coventry University on the MSc Industrial Design and MSc Transport Design Courses. The students were required to produce an A1 sized poster that described their research project, its methodologies, outcomes and how it would be used to feed into their major design project. The presentation itself may be of use to others who are required to create information rich documents and features advice on the creation of inforgraphics and poster layouts as well as links to external sites that are both supportive and critical of infographics.

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Of late I’ve become sufficiently concerned with Google’s underlying motives in choosing to ‘simplify’ its user privacy policy that I’ve taken a decision to actively retreat from the vast majority of its offerings. Not that I had a great many in the first place; at least, not  by today’s norms. There’s analytics, calendar, a Google+ account  (for all of about a week) and an Android phone that I use rarely and that’s pretty much it. I’ve never been tempted by Google docs and the same is true for Gmail.

Given this relative paucity of committed engagement with Google’s beguiling offerings one could be forgiven for thinking that Google wouldn’t actually have much on me that would enable it to do what it would so very much like to be able to do – which is to serve up a more ‘personalised’ online experience; which is, of course, code for being presented with adverts ‘better’ targeted to what Google thinks is my precise needs.

I tend to use Firefox for most of my browsing, but not exclusively so, and I have all the privacy settings across all the browsers I use set to their most restrictive. I don’t browse while I’m logged into my analytics or calendar accounts and caches and cookies are cleared on closing, no history is retained, ad blockers are installed and activated, ‘do not track’ options checked where available, etc. I also have a few Firefox add-ons that further limit what does or does not make it onto my browser. Yet increasingly, I’m seeing things from Google that lead me to think that Google already knows – or is deducing – a great deal more about my surfing activities than I imagined it might be capable of under the settings I choose to operate under.

Here’s a casual example. This evening I was reading an article on the BBC website about the forthcoming film, Hunger Games. Since the whole Hunger Games thing has rather eluded me until I read the article I did a quick Google on it to get the backstory. When I’d finished the article I returned to the Google search page which (I’m guessing) I must have reloaded because now at the top of the listings was a link to a local cinema that is advertising the film. Now I know that it would have been a matter of plain routine for Google to use my IP address to work out where I am and to extrapolate from there to find out where my nearest cinema that is screening it is located. But it seems to me that Google is also accessing other little nuggets of information that even within my less than co-operative browser settings it has no difficulty in tracking and exploiting.

This could, of course, be complete coincidence but I’ve seen quite a bit of this sort of thing recently. Could it be that cookies or somesuch are actually being passed from site to site as I browse and used to build a picture of my browsing activities? Quite possibly.

With that in mind I decided to install an add-on for Firefox that I’d come across recently. It’s called, ‘Collusion‘ , and its developers say of it that:

“Collusion is an experimental add-on for Firefox and allows you to see all the third parties that are tracking your movements across the Web. It will show, in real time, how that data creates a spider-web of interaction between companies and other trackers”

The results are both interesting and more than a little unsettling. One thing is certain, there are a huge number of agencies out there who are very interested indeed in your browsing habits and with, presumably, a great deal of valuable intelligence to be gained, I don’t see much hope for any of them voluntarily respecting a ‘do not track’ instruction while there’s nothing really to effectively stop them doing exactly that.

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The new Windows 8 Metro interface has drawn praise and scorn in almost equal measure. Widely hailed as an innovative and imaginative departure from established paradigm when used on tablets, it has been roundly condemned when put to use within the PC desktop environment; an environment in which the touch interface seems innately less appropriate. By way of contrast, the Apple OSX interface is commonly held – not least by Apple themselves  – to be an interface of such intuitive simplicity (‘it simply works’) that the claim has almost gained acceptance as a simple given.

A position that I happen to hold on the issue of the ‘intuitive interface’ is that there is as good as no such thing in real, practical terms. There may a slightly stronger case for an intuitable interface, but even then such claims need more substantiation than are generally offered.  My central argument is that anyone engaging with an interface for the first time ought to be fully able to fathom its mysteries on first encounter. No excuses.

A couple of recent YouTube videos seek to cast a little non-scientific light on the reality of whether Windows 8 or indeed Apple OSX are as intuitive as their makers and proponents claim them to be. The results are as entertaining as they are enlightening.

Engaging with Windows 8 for the first time:

Engaging with Apple OSX for the first time:

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A critical & creative thinking activity

Essentially, a version of a traditional design object analysis activity, this is a creative exercise that introduces students to the idea that all objects can convey meanings; meanings which can be clear, obscure, shifting, ephemeral, long-lasting, trivial, profound, widely understood, narrowly received, lost – and more. The activity can be run with any number of variations, but the one presented here is set against some dystopian future in which all the inhabitants of planet Earth have abandoned it, leaving behind only their manufactured artifacts. At some time subsequent, an alien civilisation finds abandoned world and sends down a landing party to explore. The biggest puzzle they face is trying to make sense of the objects they find around them and trying to get a sense of the beingsthat made them.

Once the scenario has been played out, the students are presented with a number of unusual objects that the students – in the persona of alien archaeologists – have to interpret while trying to come to conclusions based solely on deduction and applied reason (critical thinking). The students are asked to examine the objects and try to determine a number of elemental factors:

• What is the object? – What does it do, what is its primary function?
• Is the object necessarily functional? If it’s not functional, then is it in some way symbolic?
• What elements of the object are functional (if any) and which elements might be described as decorative (if any)? How do you know?
• Based on its construction, could you say if the object would have been a prized object among the beings that made it?

The students must try to avoid all statements that are based on tacit knowledge, such as ‘it’s a musical instrument’. (An alien civilisation might not have any concept of music.)

The deeper the students immerse themselves into their alien roles, the harder it becomes for them to recover any meaning from the objects. Ultimately, some students come to see that it’s probable that no manufactured object could ever possess an intrinsic meaning that could been universally understood in isolation of any understanding of  the culture that created it.

In a similar vein…

What would a machine for drawing conclusions look like? How would a machine that could get a camel through the eye of a needle unharmed actually work? Find out here: http://prezi.com/ghgeaog-haxc/fantasmagorical-machines/

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If ever there was a symbolic illustration of how little free time I have in my life these days, this painting is it. In total it probably took around 8 hours or so to paint.  Sadly, those eight hours were spread across nearly a month. What with TMA marking, day schools, work commitments, family life, domestic emergencies and the ordinary hustle and bustle of everyday life I began to feel I’d never finish this picture. When I started it I was clean shaven. Over the time it took me to complete it I grew a beard (which I started to paint in) and then a few days ago I shaved the beard off which necessitated the painting out of the beard and getting things back to more or less where I’d started nearly a month ago. I finally completed the picture in the tiny wee hours of this morning. All of the painting was done either very late at night or in the small hours, which I think is reflected here in the slightly weary look, especially round the eye.

There are passages that I really like especially where I managed to achieve something with a single brush stroke (as opposed to my too-often overworked scrubbing around). I wanted to create something rather more enigmatic than the earlier portraits and the off-centre composition adds a tension that I find strangely compelling. My daughter thinks it’s spooky; which I like.

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The role of research is vital in any meaningful design effort. Design students can be either confused or indifferent to the demands of and requirements for research. Even for those who recognise the value of research the problem often comes at the point when it becomes necessary to make sense of all the information that’s been gathered. This short Prezi provides a simple overview of how data can be used and interpreted. It includes invented data for illustrative purposes as well as genuine examples of data interpretation as well as a YouTube clip from students who’ve undergone a research process.

The overriding lesson is that research should justify, substantiate and inform the design process.

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So often, the hard part about teaching – and indeed, learning – is to get a basic understanding of the subject under scrutiny. Once an underlying foundation of understanding is established then the processes of consolidation and expansion of knowledge and understanding can happen. The ability to explain complex issues with simplicity is often a surprisingly difficult task. Bridge8, an Australian ‘foresight agency’ were tasked with explaining the underlying principles of logical argument and critical thinking. It’s intended audience were children aged 8 – 10, but it’s also great for grown-ups too! As an example of clear, effective and engaging creative thought in its own right, these short video clips are glittering diamonds;

Critical thinking animations

Click for more information on Bridge8

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Starry Night (interactive animation) from Petros Vrellis on Vimeo.

Occasionally one comes across a piece of work, whether in the world of atoms or the digital realm of bits and bytes that represents a quantum shift of imaginative and creative endeavour; the kind of work that makes one feel very humble indeed. And Petros Vrellis’s sublime, gentle, visionary wonder is such a work. His starting point is Vincent van Gogh’s, The Starry Night. The painting itself, as anyone who’s even remotely familiar with it, is a night scene looking out over Arles with the blue mountains on the far horizon underneath which a swirling maelstrom of stars dance and whirl in a sky that fills two-thirds of the scene and bears down on the town and fields huddled below. One can feel dizzy simply gazing upon it. What Petros Vrellis has done is to turn this iconic image into an interactive work of art in its own right.

Admittedly, couched in those often dreadful and much abused terms, ‘interactive art’ – things don’t sound promising. But Vrellis has the delicate aesthetic sensibilities of the finest artist and as such he’s sought – and succeeded in bringing the picture alive in a way that seems not only natural – but so right that one wonders why it hasn’t been done before. The video shows the painting slowly coming to life; still at first, the painting swirls and daubs grow, swell, glide and pulse with gentle rhythm, light and harmony. And then comes the interaction. As hand and fingers drag across the surface, the vortices organically swell and shift, ebb and flow in response. The magic of Vrellis coding skills is such that movement is not uniformly responsive across the entire picture plane; it’s the sky that responds most freely and fluidly, while the fields and town quietly rock to and fro to a more subtle tune.

And like the original that served as the inspiration, this is a masterpiece.

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Anyone with any sensitivity to art could not look upon this image and remain unaffected by it.  Painted in 1998, it’s a self-portrait by American born artist, William Utermohlen, and was created at a time when the ravages inflicted upon his brain by Alzheimer’s disease were already such that his work tangibly manifests his dwindling capacity to externally reflect upon and render his sense of self. The paintings and drawings stop in 2000.

“He died in 2007, but really he was dead long before that,” explains the bright-eyed woman to a room full of sympathetic listeners. “Bill died in 2000, when the disease meant he was no longer able to draw.”

This painting was one of a series presented by Utermohlen’s widow, Patricia Utermohlen, and Dr Shelley James at an Urban Times supported event held in the GV Art Gallery, London on 26th January 2012 as part of the Trauma series.

The press notes for the event explain the nature of the exhibition and seek to contextualise Utermohlen’s work. While the paintings undoubtedly function as an artistic and artifactual record of the artist’s tragic decline into cognitive oblivion, they also serve a role as medical documentary evidence that might contribute to some advance in understanding the aetiology of Alzheimer’s:

Doctor Rossor’s team and his nurse Ron Issacs encouraged him to continue drawing and portraying himself. The last self portraits painted between 1995 and 2001 are unique artistic, medical and psychological documents. They portray a man doomed, yet fighting to preserve his identity in the face of an implacable disease encroaching on to his mind and senses. With perseverance, courage and honesty the artist adapts his style and technique to the growing limitations of his perception and motor skills to produce images that communicate his predicament.

The series of paintings created between 1967 and 2000  – and especially those from 1996, painted within a year of the initial diagnosis – record with frightening clarity the dreadful, inexorable destruction of a mind. The last image, drawn in 2000, is almost too painful to regard. It’s as though for one final, vanishingly small moment Utermohlen was able to see and know himself for one last time before the blackness overcame him.

I wasn’t at the event itself, but a reviewer for the New Scientist, Andrew Purcell, was and his words echo my own horrified realisation of what Utermohlen must have endured before he succumbed to nothingness.

“That Utermohlen was able to continue with his art as his disease progressed amazed the evening’s final speaker, Stephen Gentleman, neuropathologist at Imperial College London. “It’s astounding,” he says. “Utermohlen just shouldn’t have had the mental ability to be able to carry on doing these as long as he did.”

Then came the bombshell – the words that stuck with me and played over in my head as I lay in bed later that evening: “It sounds awful,” Gentleman told me, “but in cases like these, you really hope that the patient themself loses understanding as quickly as possible, because to be in a body whose brain is failing and still have insight into what is going on must be simply horrendous.” The works on display indicate that Utermohlen did not have even this small mercy.”

Tragic and unsettling though Utermohlen’s final paintings are, when one looks beyond the bleakness of his fate what comes through is the realisation that creative expression and the capacity and overwhelming drive to create, to record and to leave some tangibly unique testament to one’s existence appears to be so strong, so primordial and so intrinsic to the human condition that it is metaphorically hard-wired into our brains. And it’s only when Alzheimer’s has finally wrought its ultimate necrotic havoc and the creative light flickers out that we can reluctantly face the painful reality that while the body might continue to survive, beyond any shadow of doubt, the light of a mind has been forever extinguished.

Acknowledgements:

Thanks to Jeremy Ashcroft for bringing this to my attention.

New Scientist, Culture Lab: Self-portraits of a declining brain

William Utermohlen’s official website

Urban Times – Art & Alzheimer’s

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This portrait is somewhat out of sequence in relation to the recent paintings. It’s from one of my sketchbooks and I rattled it off in about twenty minutes one evening in early December 2011. It was one of those sketches that simply drew itself; every line seemed right and the whole thing was effortless – to use a contemporary idiom, I was in the zone. It’s weird the way it sometimes happens and to this day I’ve not been able to reliably get myself into the zone at will, which can be infuriating on those occasions when things simply do not go well and everything seems difficult. Strange, strange processes at work. Until today, I hadn’t seen this sketch from the time I initially drew it, and looking at it again I really like it. If only I could turn it on at will.