Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Encountering Brenda Laurel
I first saw Brenda Laurel in 1993 San Francisco at the Digital Be-In, an event during MacWorld week where baby boomers and ex-hippierati were more or less taking credit for the digital revolution. She did a rant with some kind of video feedback. I don't remember if the piece was fully taped or if she was live with the video effects. The
only thing I remember of the content was that she talked about the Lomax brothers doing field recordings and that their work would be used in some kind of holodeck Plato's cave type device. After the rant she introduced Timothy Leary by telling a story of how he hailed a late night cab when hanging out with William Gibson and herself in Italy or Spain by standing in the middle of the road exclaiming he was Timothy Leary. A cab driver stopped, exclaimed "Maestro" and drove him into town. (I also seem to recall that she said Gibson tried a similar maneuver where he was unsuccessful) Laurel is someone who is known as a digital pioneer paving into new frontiers. The easiest way get a handle on the range of Laurel's work and contributions is to take a quick look at the history of the books she has published. First there was her editing of Art of Computer-Interface Design, a big anthology now almost twenty years ago based on a seminar that Apple did that still brims with solid foundational concepts. Secondly, there is Computers as Theatre where she applies classic dramatic theory to the world of computer interface and interaction with the intent of improving the relationship between computer and individual. Utopian Entrepreneur is a summary of her experience in the nineties, first researching the nature of gender and technology and then creating a company, Purple Moon, devoted to developing girl games. Lastly, and most recently there is her anthology Design Research: Methods and Perspectives where she presents a summary of the range of design tools and techniques that designers should consider in their work, providing a tool box not disimilar to the one she helped provide twenty years earlier to help define the interface community.
It is now 15 years since that first encounter with Brenda Laurel at the Be-in. She is now Professor Laurel of California College for the Arts in Oakland, here as guest speaker at a meeting of one of my favorite organizations, CHIFOO (Computer Human Interaction Forum Of Oregon) and has come to share her views and stories about ethnography and other forms of design research. Still it is Brenda Laurel, this is not a sedate lecture. It has elements of theater, she is constantly interrupted by a sarcastic spectacled man who appears in the upper corner of her screen challenging the value of the points she makes. She closes the pop window and proceeds to almost overwhelm with a huge currency of ideas that emphasize her major point: namely that good, unprejudiced design research can not only create good products, it can help make the world a better place.
There were too many probes and ideas for recounting in this space, but there certainly were some significant ones I will be considering for days to come. Such as the fact that Laurel's studies have shown that technology is comfort for young people. "They sleep with their cell phones." Modalities don't matter, whether voice, text, cell messages or e-mail what does is that technology is able to keep them in touch, give them that social touch. An example of the kind of surprise she encountered in her research was that tough shredder skater punk boys hold a strong devotion to family. Laurel told how when this demographic was asked what they would do if they were to make a lot of money the answer almost unvaryingly was "I'd buy my Mom a new house."
It was an inspiring and fun evening. Her enthusiasm and devotion to inquiry countered a rotten twenty plus mile drive through a truly rotten rain storm. Six students I work with were also able to attend their first CHIFOO event. And that was great, too. I hope they were able to take something away from her lecture/performance and realize how unique this pioneer of technology is. I hope they took notice of the final slide of her formal lecture What you do with you know is up to you. For me a highlight has to be the inscription she added to her signature of my copy of Utopian Entrepreneur: "Thank you for being a Teacher."
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:45 PM
Comments:
Is it a coincidence that the acronym for your blog name is WEB? Makes that digital be-in make a little more sense, eh?
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