"Prototyping with Junk" at UC Berkeley

Award for Junk

Did you catch the New York Times word of the year (WOTY) for 2010? It’s junk! The editors of the “On Language” column chose this word as representative of the zeitgeist of the past year. The honor acknowledges the basic meaning of rubbish or trash, debris or detritus, as well as extended meanings: From junk bonds (devalued securities) to junk food (nutritionally empty), to junk shot (stuffing debris and mud into BP’s leaking gusher in the Gulf). Their award called out one euphemistic sense, the male genitalia. The TSA started full body pat-downs in 2010, as an alternative to scanning, and air travelers gave warning, “Don’t touch my junk.”

Next month I’ll be hosting the activity “Prototyping with Junk” at Interaction Design 2011 (IxD11) in Boulder, Colorado. As I’ve previously written, I occasionally get pushback from people who feel junk is not appropriate language for professional settings. Or, perhaps their reaction is that junk — the actual stuff — is not for the workplace. Now I can respond to those objections with the citation of WOTY2010. I’m hip!

JunkFest (2007)

And I’m in good company: Bernie DeKoven, author of Junkyard Games, and funsmith extraordinaire, recently shared a video from 2007 celebrating Junkyard Sports. Here’s an news report from JunkFest in Redondo Beach [warning: narration lacks captions]

Kinetic sculpture with junk

Another wonderful example of how using apparent junk (PVC pipes plus a bunch empty plastic bottles, and other stuff) can turn into something magical: see how kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen simulates animals walking, powered by the wind near the sea.
[warning: narration lacks captions]

Read more at Talking Science: Dance of the Strandbeests, the BBC article about this project.

Jansen’s example shows how prototypes evolve into working “products” or art, depending on your perspective. His process of successive refinements suggest agility: at each juncture, he stops and tests his creatures, from human-propulsion of walking machines to wind-propulsion (which simulates self-propulsion), and all from vernacular materials with clever engineering.

Learning with junk

We used Prototyping with Junk at ACM CHI2004 (in Vienna, Austria), when we challenged the participants in the pre-conference design collaboration to create a product for elders. As I’ve written for interactions magazine special issue on prototyping, this is an opportunity for creativity and fun in a social context. And, it’s yet-another communication tool for your collaborative design kit.

More recently, students at UC Berkeley’s iSchool engaged in Prototyping with Junk as one among many prototyping techniques they experimented with this past fall. You can see still images and a few short movies. Notice all those smiles!

Eager to meet the group in Boulder. I’ll bring one of the several design challenges I’m currently mulling over, …and plenty of junk.

Prototyping with junk

Devoted readers of Interactions magazine will recall a brief report about “Prototyping with Junk“ – an activity which debuted at the CHI2004|ICSID Forum in Austria, a 2-day event for professional development held in conjunction with CHI2004. Along with my fellow organizers, I invited participants – interaction designers, usability professionals, industrial designers and product designers – to create prototypes using the materials we provided such as colored paper, pipe cleaners, stickers, colored pencils and pens, empty egg cartons, drinking straws, and strawberry baskets.

The participants responded to the design prompt (to create a pill dispenser for older adults) from several perspectives. The teams were able to take their physical models (along with descriptions of the functionality) to the German-speaking residents of a Vienna retirement community later the same day. The teams returned to our conference location to continue prototyping, taking account of the feedback from the target audience. By the end of the second day, each team presented its concept and model to the panel of distinguished judges. These prototypes were put together, carried around town, taken apart and reassembled 3 times within 48 hours.

When I describe this activity, sometimes I’ll get pushback from people who feel the term “junk” is disparaging. For me junk refers to objects which might be treated as trash, though they aren’t soiled or broken or dangerous. They are the clean rubbish that might be found in the recycling bin, such as the cardboard tubes left when a roll of paper towels or toilet paper is used up.  I save empty Altoid boxes, similar metal tins, or small containers made of cardboard, plastic or glass.

After the recycling bin, then what?

These days I am happy to take advantage of the interesting shapes, colors and sizes of sticky notes that can be found at office supply stores, as well as gluesticks, spring-loaded clips in animal prints, colored pens and pencils.

I frequent party stores for fun wrapping paper, theme stickers and banners.

I’m lucky to have great teacher supply stores nearby where I can find tongue depressors and painter’s tape in primary colors, numbers and letters in large or small sizes, cut-outs of familiar objects such as leaves and fruit intended for the bulletin board, and cornstarch peanuts.

You can meet me around the sale tables at Ikea where we’ll pick up last season’s mousepads, wrapping paper or bits of fabric.

At the hardware store, cable ties in day-glo colors, felt dots that protect the floor from furniture scratches, and paint chips leap out at me.

Art or craft supply stores will surprise you with interesting papers, buttons, and glitter paint.

Depending on my next engagements, I may stop at the grocery store for out-of-date candy from the most recent holiday, or drinking straws intended for children’s birthday parties.

Lillian Vernon, meet Miles Kimball

In my efforts to be more environmentally conscious, I’ve cancelled many of the paper mail-order catalogs I used to receive. But those catalogs fed my imagination and let me create my own instructional materials. Perhaps you know Lillian Vernon or Miles Kimball?  The catalogs from these companies fascinated me for their information density, layout, and copywriting, as well as the selection of merchandise. Consider the “closet and drawer organization” category alone, for which the Lillian Vernon online catalog (as of this writing) lists 32 different items, at least 6 for storing shoes.

For a conference session held in Canada aimed at interpreters and translators, I planned an exercise around excerpts from these catalogs. With no advance registration for this session, I couldn’t prepare for a specific language combination. In fact, the participants’ language pairs ranged widely; only a few people had the familiar combinations (French-English for some Canadians, Spanish-English for some from the US), and just a few like me, American Sign Language and English. I took a print catalogue, and cut it up so that I could feature a single item glued to each index card. Could a participant pick out the correct item from listening a colleague’s rendition of the catalog copy – especially given that some items share a similar shape and function? (Click on each image below to view the catalog copy.)

These days, when I’m acquiring design game materials, it’s likely for in-person client engagements using Innovation Games, where Product Box especially encourages manipulation of playful materials. Occasionally team-building occasions or celebratory events demand that I consult the Archie McPhee website. I think I’ll just order a surprise box now for each of the upcoming Innovation Games events.

The juxtaposition of unexpected materials inspires creativity, wild ideas and innovative product concepts in product design activities. Fun stuff – like the out-of-context language from the catalog that let the skilled interpreters stretch their skills with colleagues in a safe and playful session – energizes teams to collaborate in problem-solving.

You can learn more about Innovation Games at www.innovationgames.com.

“Prototyping with Junk” is available as a .pdf document