Collaboration is a coat of many colours – it exists in many forms and for many ends. It can be fun, it can be exciting, it can be extremely hard work and it can take you outside of your comfort zone. In its very best form it gives everyone involved a chance to learn something, to produce something meaningful and not just merely contribute from their own single perspective. HighWire’s strap line ‘creating innovative people for radical change’ doesn’t quite capture the collaborative nature of much of our work and of our thinking. But it’s there, it’s definitely there.

We held our first workshop on Tuesday around the general theme of emotive physicality. What do we mean by this? Well, there’s a sense that physical products can engage and affect us in ways that are different to digital media. Can we make use of these possibilities and provide experiences that seem more natural, more intuitive and maybe more fun? This is what we’ll be looking at over the next few months and the workshop allowed us to kick start the whole process.

As part of our collaborative approach, we were honoured to have both Taylor Nuttall from Folly and Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino from Tinker working with us for the day. They are both truly inspirational.

So, how did it all work out? Well, in the spirit of DIY culture and just ‘making stuff’ the initial warm-up session felt like you’d just entered a primary school classroom, but with less tears. This was surprising; to be honest I’d been expecting more tears. After the ‘getting to know us all’ session with card, felt, scissors, glue, string and balsa wood we then proceeded into the next sessions armed with only post-it notes for support. Stripped bare, we brainstormed ideas around data and data sources, connections and transformations, and finally physical realisations of these data sources and associated transformations.

There were a few novel interpretations of what data would be useful – ‘confusion’ was identified, along with a ‘busyness’ indicator. A cluster of ideas developed around ‘emotional states’, specifically asking the question about capturing the emotional states not of individuals, but of groups, such as an audience. The prize for the most inventive transformation must surely go to the inspired choice of ‘magic’. This struck me as a wholly appropriate way to think about transformations and maybe even interaction design in general. Interaction that has a sense of wonderment about it may be interesting indeed.

Final concept realisations were developed in the heady atmosphere of both the post-it notes and the contents of the craft boxes. Carnage ensued and fun was had by all as teams were rather naughtily swapped at half-time and inherited another team’s half-baked ideas. The physical models produced included adaptive architectures, connected gardens, handbags that dripped e-pheromones, and an interventionist God. What more can I say?

The day was rounded off in rather fine style with fizz and cake. I believe we may have judged the concepts too and awarded a rather special prize.

For me, this was the beginning of a journey. Collaboration, to work well, has to be based upon trust, building of relationships and of mutual interest (and passion) across a broad topic area rather than short-term specific questions. For those interested in forms of collaboration with Universities I can recommend reading Knowledge Exchange and Universities and Business produced by the Centre for Business Research.

One thing that clearly jumped out to me personally was the Renaissance nature of this developing field. It’s clearly post-disciplinary; skills and expertise are required in a wide variety of areas across art, design, engineering, and computing. We also need to both incorporate and synthesise theoretical approaches to help us understand and support these type of interactive experiences.

A final word – it’s likely that we’ll be running more of these workshops, focusing more on practical skills covering, e.g., arduino, processing and rapid-prototyping techniques. If you’re interested in these or in broader collaboration, please do get in touch.

A response to a digital play brief aimed at teenagers and attempts to subvert mass consumerism. Teenagers want to both belong and to sit outside. As Quentin Crisp said – “the young always have the same problem – how to rebel and how to conform at the same time”. They want to distinguish themselves from the crowd, experiment with self-identity and develop new values for a new generation. What is the world’s current obsession? What do we seem most concerned about? It’s clearly economic growth. And our response to this? It seems we need to consume more products. Consume more products, keep buying, keep, in that dreadful phrase, ‘economically active’. What a marvellous opportunity to rebel – almost perfect! Simply stop buying so much stuff. Stop buying stuff. Stop it. Be proud of it and celebrate it.

The koppla bracelet (named after the Swedish for connect) symbolises this rebellion. A commitment to the five values of be active, connect, take notice, learn and give is rewarded through seeing your bracelet turn from its original colour through to pristine crystal. A symbolic transformation that connects you with a new way of living. Commit to these values and you will see a change in your life and it will be made visible to others through the koppla bracelet. It becomes a symbolic totem for a generation. The bracelet is not just symbolic, but functional as well. It incorporates a range of technologies to sense your location, sense your activities, provide communication and provide physical feedback.

These technologies are used as part of its first service offering, launched in connection with events surrounding the Cultural Olympiad. The koppla bracelet provides connection to the community of wearers and access to a special kind of music service. A service that reflects the five core values and enhances a musical experience – we give digital music a home, geo-locate it and make it only possible to listen to it when you’re actually in the location. Artists can decide to locate their music on a beach, on a mountain, anywhere where they think will enhance the musical experience and make it special again. Finally, we provide access to the koppla bracelet and technologies to 3^rd party service providers to enable wider development of digital play services that embody the five values of be active, connect, take notice, learn and give.

I love low-fidelity prototyping – in particular I love the way it often provokes a conversation which wanders well away from the original topic under discussion. The beauty of low-fidelity prototyping is it allows the viewer to fill in all the missing bits from their own perspective – it gives a really personal account of what they would want, on how they are already visualising it. It allows the imagination to run free.

This came back to me whilst at a workshop last week with Daria Loi, Lucy Suchman and Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino who were discussing design prototyping. The ethnography work from the UX group at Intel looked interesting – but it seemed to be as much about shaping future markets and selling utopian science fiction stories as it did about understanding social practices. There was much talk of the political economy at work here – big organisations can bring all the clout of the mass media and celebrities to the table. Does this really free the imagination? Or does it simply provide an unavoidable view of the future?