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In January 2010 I attended a concert with Mathias Tjønn in Oslo. It was one of those excellent concerts that I even blogged about! And as it turned out, Mathias is a nice guy too. We both live in the same hood in Brooklyn now, and I have attended quite a few more shows with his indie folk band Racing Heart. The photo is from a concert at Sycamore this summer.

Mathias hasn’t been playing that many concerts lately, but that’s simply because he’s been busy recording an album; To Walk Beside That Ghost. You can hear the songs Emma, This Pretty Mistake and Photos at racingheartmusic.com or his bands’ Facebook page. I’ve been lucky to have the whole album on repeat for quite a while already. Beautiful vocal harmonies are with us throughout, with the ultimate highlight in the short, a cappella song Et ønske, et håp. These days the quiet Soft Voices is my personal favorite. While the first single, Emma, is a great synth track, it might not be the typical Racing Heart song. Then again, it’s hard to give this album a specific label anyway. Indie folk seems to be what comes closest. Let’s just listen to it instead of labeling, shall we?

The wonderful news is that Norwegians now can listen as the album is finally out back home. And even better, Racing Heart is visiting Norway to play for lucky guests at Internasjonalen, Sound of Mu and Kvarteret in late February. Americans won’t get the pleasure of hearing the full-length album until April. But then again, you can probably catch the gentlemen that make up Racing Heart; Mathias Tjønn, Justin Keller and Kendall Eddy at various venues around Brooklyn in the future. I’ll let you know!

Friday workshop session with my awesome service design group. We spent most of the day in a very tiny, hot chat room at our SVA IxD studio to create a service design blueprint — in our case a.k.a. an object-oriented sticky-note journey.

The very tiny room had no windows. We had to make one to survive.

We took a little break to see one of the highlights of the event User Research Friday that was hosted in our studio. As we were very busy with our stickies, the only speaker we got to see talking was Daniel Stillman. He talked about buttons, knobs, bicycles and washing machine design.

The SVA IxD events always means mingling, bubbly and some yummy snacks. That was an excellent warm-up to prepare me for life outside the studio cave. Studiomate Guri and I went to an gallery exhibition opening at the .NO gallery. Filled with interesting Norwegians, nice art and more bubbly in red plastic cups. Yes.

I took a train out to Bed-Stuy to attend a house party concert. Very intimate, very interesting. First tune heard from the apartment living room had the catchy chorus “If you’re high enough you can do whatever you want”. The last one was about a beaver with a tail that was too fat, but that found a way to be cool through wearing some awesome sunglasses. Uhm yeah. In between we had several sing-a-long opportunities that the 25 guests in the living room did not hesitate to join in on.

The day ended after that house party. But a day is not complete without a brunch, so I will cheat a little and add my Saturday brunch with Yiannis the Greek and Mathias the Musician. We had a creative session where we talked about app development, travel and eggs benedict—fueled by endless coffee refills in Carroll Gardens.

Life’s intense, but wonderful!

It’s the last year of grad school, and it’s time for thesis. Yet, I’m awfully quiet here. Fear not, I’m still making progress! I’m just documenting it elsewhere. As I have decided to do my thesis with my classmate, Carrie Stiens, we had to find a good place to share our thoughts. Leatherducking.com became our collaborative blog, and it’s filled with reflections and prototypes within the area of urban biking – the theme of our thesis. Right now this is where we’re at in our process (with photos and sketches and all), and we also have a somewhat more formal thesis proposal.

As part of our research we just finished hosting a bike challenge, The King of Two Wheels, for our fellow studio mates. We did this to get insights into different bike personas, and the motivational aspects of getting someone to ride their bike for transportation. The story goes like this:

And here are a few behind the scenes blog posts:

Game Launch
Game Recap
Game Rules
Challenges

Patrick Jacobs. (2011) Dandelion Cluster #2. At Otherwordly, MAD museum, NYC.

Children’s curiosity makes them do lots of random things. According to one of my SVA IxD teachers, Chris Fahey, a child aspiring to become an interaction designer might lean towards one of these approaches in play:

1. Taking things apart to see how they work
2. Fixing things that are broken
3. Creating little worlds

One would hope for the parents’ sake that fascination for approach #1 would go hand in hand with #2. Personally, I believe I gravitated mostly towards the least destructive and most practical of the three options. However, even though my tolerance for fantasy as a genre is fairly low, I definitely remember designing some awesome worlds as a child…

I built LEGO worlds (but then again, who didn’t?). I drew some crazy treasure hunt maps for non-existent treasures in my neighborhood using the coordinate system, X marking the spot and all. I created some fairly advanced pop-up-book art with lots of small paper bits and pieces showing up behind windows and doors. I also knitted a tiny teddy bear, to then move on to knit his clothes, a backpack, and even made a little ABC book, full of illustrations from A to Å (yup, all 29 letters in the Norwegian alphabet included) so my teddy bear wouldn’t walk around carrying only air.

I typically always spent more time creating the world then playing within it, which might be why my barbie dolls, my Baby Born doll (the doll that could eat, pee and poop), and the Polly Pockets never really got the attention they possibly deserved. But it’s been a while since I immersed myself into world creation now. Though this CabReel concept video from last semester might come close with all its’ paper wonderfulness.

No matter, the exhibition at Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) called Otherwordly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities blew my mind when it comes to small worlds. The level of details in the exhibition suggests artists who must be blessed with a patience …ehm… out of this world(!). The photos taken of these small scale models reveal so much details and look so real that it’s hard to believe that the photo really is of the tiny model at all. These bad iPhone photos do not do the amazingly detailed art any justice:

Amy Bennett (and SVA IxD student Guri Venstad)

Lori Nix

Gregory Euclide

Junebum Park

Alan Wolfsen

Patrick Jacobs

If you’re in New York you need to go to see this live. GO! Before September 18th which is this Thursday. Or see a few of the artists explaining their art and motivation: Alan Wolfsen & Lori Nix. Thanks to lovely Petra (@prntscreen) for the recommendation!

I am hereby extremely excited about the upcoming semester and all the projects that potentially could turn into some mini-worlds where I can play God for a day. Muahahahaha.

Speechless. That’s what I am. The actions towards my home town, my country, my government, and towards innocent children are just so unreal. For me a Facebook status update about a horrible sound, possibly an explosion close to the Government building in Oslo was what startet my work day here in NYC. Then my day went on with some meetings, and otherwise constantly refreshing Facebook and Twitter to make sure my friends are OK, and of course following all Norwegian online newspapers, streaming news reports from NRK – just waiting for the number of deaths to increase. Then another status update from my sister came along:

So. People on an island hiding in the bushes, and we should not call them. I was just – WHAT is she rambling about? But then again shooting innocent children at a summer camp is simply madness, so no wonder I couldn’t believe her message. But now all I see is love for the city and our country all around. And I wanted to capture that. So I did:

That’s all.

And btw, I am as far as I know NOT related to that maniac.

How do you build movements in the 21st century? The research for my thesis has begun, and I’m now halfway into Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. In the spirit of my thesis theme ‘collaborative consumption’, of course I’m borrowing this book from my local library that is somewhere behind those trees in the background. However, I have already felt the urge to underline and comment a bunch of stuff on the pages. Guessing the librarians would not be happy about that, so using my iPhone to take notes for now.

I definitely need to get more organized in my research, but then again, getting to know my new neighborhood, the lovely Prospect Park, changing my pale skin to a more proper color for the summer, are all high priorities for the weekends, and will unfortunately interfere a bit with my studying. Considering that I spend my work weeks this summer at Purpose, I’m hoping that will give me some valuable insights before next semester starts as well…

Purpose designs movements for social change, and works within areas like LGBT rights (Yay, same-sex marriage law in NY!), fighting obesity, trying to make the world a little bit greener, just and so on. Their focus is on mobilizing people online to take action for different causes. It’s great to be a part of the enthusiastic Purpose team, knowing that all our projects are meaningful and can potentially make a difference in the world.

Building a movement is no exact science, and whether or not something becomes as big as one would hope for is hard to predict. Right now the American Dream Movement (see RebuildTheDream.com), a response to the conservative Tea Party movement, is one to watch. Their arguments are clear and convincing – for a Norwegian social-democrat, anyway. But will their strategy be able to mobilize the American democrats under one umbrella like the Obama campaign did? Watch highlights from Van Jones movement launch speech, read these articles (article I, II, III), and judge for yourself! Unfortunately, I’m afraid Sally Kohn at HyperVocal (article I) might be right in her analysis of the people this movement is trying to reach out to:

[T]he success of the American Dream Movement depends on the willingness of progressive organizations and leaders to glom onto Van’s message. And progressives, in general, aren’t known for glomming on. Maybe it’s because we’re free thinking, anti-hierarchical types who like to create things ourselves. [...] Or maybe it’s because we’re overly analytical or even cynical, too busy dissecting any solution as imperfect to be enthusiastic about the good parts.

I got this rusty old bike last year to ride around NYC. Tried to be economical, but ended up kinda annoyed by this squeaky, heavy, rusty thing. Yes, I wanted a bike with a personality, but then again, getting from A to B was important too. So I decided to upgrade to a new, fancier bike.

But what to do with this old heavy thing? Most people would just lock it up somewhere and watch it go through a slow death, it seems. But I don’t like to throw garbage around like that. As a matter of fact, it’s not garbage. Yet. This bike will get you from A to B still. If you have some patience. Also, it’s hard enough to find bike parking in NYC, so I wouldn’t let my bike steal valuable pole space either. Sell it, then? Wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

Then I remembered what my thesis area of exploration is. Collaborative consumption. Ownership vs. access. Why not set my bike free for the public to use, and see where it goes? Granted, a small experiment that actually would lead to a bit more trouble than just selling it. But to not try the idea out would be a wasted opportunity, right?

The idea came to me the very day I was traveling back to Norway on vacation. This meant I could involve my Mom and her wonderful laminating machine in the project! OhCarolBike was born:

I don’t really know why OhCarolBike became the name, but I figured all riders could have this happy song in their head while riding:

And no project without an online presence. Inspired by the “Yes I am Precious”-bike, I decided to let the bike communicate to the world. But instead of letting various sensors tweet Carol’s story automatically, I want the users of the bike to tell the story. By using Twitter, users can tweet Carol’s story and her whereabouts using their own twitter account and writing on the format:

@ohcarolbike: [write the story from Carol's perspective]

If @TwitterUserX writes:

@ohcarolbike: I had a lovely ride in Prospect Park. Abandoned on Vanderbilt ave. That pizza from Amorina smells yummy!

Then @OhCarolBike writes:

I had a lovely ride in Prospect Park. Abandoned on Vanderbilt ave. That pizza from Amorina smells yummy! (@TwitterUserX)

This is done by using twitter search, hooking it up to Yahoo Pipes, doing some find and replace to change up the tweet (check this tutorial), then using TwitterFeed to feed the tweet into @OhCarolBike‘s twitter account. Unfortunately this has about a 2 hour delay right now. Looking into why that is.

In addition, @OhCarolBike will retweet whenever anyone is talking about her (#ohcarolbike) or to her (@ohcarolbike) by using the same procedure as above. This retweet is not delayed for some reason.

I just picked up my new, fancy bike today at Ride Brooklyn. They were very helpful with the final details for Carol as well- getting the neon orange flag antenna mounted on her so she’s visible from afar. Then Carol and my new Linus Dutchie said hello and goodbye, before I left Carol behind on Bergen street all alone. Hope someone will notice her, read her story on Twitter, and continue it by riding and writing about it.

Maybe it will inspire others to set their old bikes free as well? The idea of “Set your bike free”-kits definitely appeals to me (thanks, Tina!). But then again, it requires a bit of work and some bucks to get the bike ready for the public, so. I don’t know if the biocost for the average old, rusty bike owner might be a tad too high, compared to the efforts required to just leave the bike locked to that pole for all eternity…

Summer is upon us, and as most Norwegians, I am quite obsessed with getting enough of that treasured sun that hides from us all winter. In New York City, people don’t worry as much, but might rather complain when the heat is unbearable. However, while growing up in Oslo, I often traveled further south during summer to make sure I got a dose of that vitamin D.

For my final project in information visualization (taught by Nicholas Felton), I decided to visualize all my travels abroad from the day I was born. I didn’t leave Europe before coming to New York for grad school, so luckily all my travels fit nicely into a European map. But if I were to splash them all on the map at once, I don’t think it would be able to tell the story I wanted to tell with the data. You would see that I’m a fan of Italy, but it would get a bit too crowded to make sense of it all. That’s why I decided to create an animation.

Before I could do any coding, I needed to gather the data. I recorded how I traveled, for how long I stayed in each location, and I even added some notes to spice it up. To fill the 130 rows in this spreadsheet required a lot of work both for me and my family.

Then I could start experimenting in Processing to communicate the travel stories in the best way. I experimented with different line styles to illustrate different means of transportation, and used growing circles to illustrate how long I stayed in each location. I had to figure out how to fast forward during the “dull” periods* of traveling within Norway. I also added a dynamic list to display the latest locations visited. This is meant to also work as a key to understand the visualization better.

Here’s a snapshot, but if you want to join me on my journey of conquering European locations, you need to see it in action. Click the photo below to do so! (works best in Safari/Firefox)

*By not visualizing my traveling within Norway, I do not mean in any way that those vacations have not been as exciting as my travels abroad. There were just way too many of them to keep track! By limiting my travels to abroad travels, I’m pretty sure I have nailed them all down. Exceptions might be some trips to Sweden, as my parents have a cabin there.

It’s getting serious. It’s time for THESIS. It might change radically, but right now I think I want to investigate the idea of ownership. I will explore our urge to own, and which factors need to be present to enable sharing. So. Here is my thesis proposal v.1.0:

To achieve full freedom in life, you must never own more than seven things – or else, they will own you.

I remember this opening line from a TV-commercial from my childhood (see video). A Hindu takes a break from his meditation to tell us this, and he seems at total peace with his life and his seven possessions. Then the scene shifts from serenity to his busy everyday, and he can tell us that everything else in his life, like his flat-screen TV, his fancy fridge, washing machine etcetera, they were all leased from a leasing company called THORN.

With a humorous approach, the commercial told us that we all actually really need these items – even a Hindu with a holy cow as a treasured possession can’t really get by in life without a flat-screen TV. So the commercial sold the dream of luxury and the freedom to choose the latest models. But I remember that this Hindu’s first sentence really resonated more with me than the craving for a fancy flat-screen TV. I don’t think I ever will have only seven possessions, but I dream of a future where we all can get closer to it through using services for sharing, swapping, streaming etc.

For my thesis I want to explore the idea of ownership. What makes us feel like we need to own something, rather than just having access to it? Which factors need to be present for us to be willing to give up our ownership? What characterizes a successful collaborative consumption service, and what is the cultural and business context it lives in? How is the community around the service organized and moderated? How might collaborative consumption, like the use of CouchSurfing or ZipCar, change the people involved? What does a world of products based around access rather than ownership look like?

I believe that the right kind of services can make people think differently about their own life, their neighbors, and the world we live in. They can make us feel more connected to one another, which again can inspire trust, optimism and positive actions. Providing well-designed frameworks for sharing and collaboration could very well lead to behavioral change not only within the frames of the service, but beyond the focus of the service itself.

I would like to research different services that enable sharing and collaborative consumption, explore and compare their models, their communities, and their users. I will choose at least six services from the “Snapshot of examples”-list on the Collaborative Consumption website, and make sure they represent the different categories defined (product service systems, redistribution markets, collaborative lifestyles). Based on the research, I hope to come up with an idea of my own for a service in this area, where I can apply the insights I get from my research.

And when it comes to research, there’s a lot to get through this summer. This list is a start:

BOOKS TO READ

• What’s mine is yours by Rachel Botsman, Roo Rogers
• The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing by Lisa Gansky
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky

EXAMPLES
Examples of services for renting, sharing, swapping, or trading of physical goods, time, skills etc:

• Snapshot of examples at CollaborativeConsumption.com http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/the-movement/snapshot-of-examples.php
• Airbnb http://www.airbnb.com/
• Bartercard http://www.bartercard.com/
• Neighborgoods http://neighborgoods.net/
• Swap http://www.swap.com/
• thredUP http://www.thredup.com/
• WebEx http://www.webex.com/
• WhipCar http://www.whipcar.com/
• Ziok http://us.zilok.com/
• Zipcar http://www.zipcar.com/
• Zopa http://uk.zopa.com/ZopaWeb/

VARIOUS LINKS

• Chris Jordan pictures some shocking stats http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking_stats.html
• Collaborative Services for sustainability http://www.sustainable-everyday.net/main/?page_id=26%3Cbr%20/%3E
• Sustainable Everyday http://www.sustainable-everyday.net
• “Why our design festival has no things in it,” John Thackara http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2007/10/why_our_design.php
• “What should design critics write about?,” John Thackara http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2010/05/post_54.php
• “Use, not own” chapter, from John Thackara’s In The Bubble
• http://www.doorsofperception.com/
• http://www.worldchanging.com/
• http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/

New York streets are congested with traffic, and the subways are over-crowded. Our goal with this project is to get more people biking for transportation. Our target audience is 20-40 year olds that knows how to bike, most likely owns a bike already, but is still not using the bike for transportation. Our main findings from our initial research was this:

1. People have a personal perception that biking in Manhattan is dangerous.
2. Biking is not the easiest and most convenient way to commute – until it becomes a habit.
3. Novice riders don’t have enough knowledge about how to bike and where to bike.

But our Helmet Head will hopefully help the casual biker overcome the initial barriers to biking in the city. It’s a talking helmet that pairs with a smartphone app. We were encouraged to create a user journey to explain the concept in a compelling way:

So that was the storytelling. But we have been thinking a bit about how to make this helmet so incredibly smart, too. Behind the scenes, this is how we imagine that it would work:

This conceptual model shows how tips from seasoned bikers, weather reports, traffic data and bike lanes all go into the Helmet Head database. When the user inputs desired destination into the Helmet Head app, it suggests routes with different levels of safety. After choosing a route, the app can be put in the user’s pocket, where it will quietly track the user moving through the city. The user can concentrate on biking, while letting the helmets embedded headset give directions, encouragement, progress and tips.

When a Helmet Head user becomes an avid biker, he or she might not need the same type of directions, tips and encouragement on the daily commute. The settings in the app will account for this so it could work mainly as a tracking device. In addition, the pro biker would be encouraged to add to the pool of bike tips, to make sure the app has all relevant information for the bikers out there. We also thought about how the app could sync with a bluetooth headset – so we wouldn’t require everyone to buy our helmet to use the app.