WONDERLAB FALL 2011

Luci Laffitte and Manuela Kind

STARTING POINT
As a starting point, we randomly chose cards with one word each. They had a service, a location, a group of people and an object. We used these words as inspiration to go out and have new experiences and wonder about our world. We decided to just jump in and go bowling, get waxed at a beauty salon, eat chicken nuggets and meet adrenaline junkies playing paintball, to see what we could discover in those places. We captured our adventures with cameras to document what we experienced.

Emotions and reactions at the bowling alley

BOWLING ALLEY
We went to the bowling alley with a group of about nine people. Some of us played better, others were unlucky, but everyone enjoyed the outing! We were intriqued that each player had their own routine, style of throwing, and way of showing their reaction to the the row. It was also interesting to see, that Manuelas dad who doesnt speak any English, was as much part of the group as anyone else, as the communication during the game was mostly based on gestures and facial expressions.

Sharing stories at paintball

ADRENALINE JUNKIES
We arrived in a bus with other students and once we got there, we got instructions for how to play the game safely from a scary ex-marine. It was very interesting to see how at first the group was quiet and seperated, but after just one round of play everyonewas really excited to share their stories from what happened during the game and show off their battle wounds. We found that throughout the day, the individual cliques melded into one big group.

Getting waxed!

EYEBROW WAXING
Monday morning at nine, we arrived at Judit, a beauty-salon in Southside for our appointment to get our eyebrows / arms waxed. We entered a very carefully decorated room with little figures, flowers and lots of little beauty supplies. The whole procedure of the waxing itself was very relaxing, even though it was painful. We wondered about how much pain people, especially women, are willing to take on in order to fit into society.

Analyzing chicken nuggets

CHICKEN NUGGETS
We decided to eat some chicken nuggets very attentively. Before preparing them, we read carefully whats inside the nuggets we were about to eat. Although everyone knows that eating chicken nuggets is not healthy and that its not only chicken in there; it was weird to read about it and eat the nuggets at the same time. Usually we tend ignore the truth about what we out in our bodies. We questionned why do we eat Fast Food, even if we know how harmful it is?

CONCLUSIONS
As we started to analyze and try to understand the experiences we had over the weekend, we realized how much all the things had in common, even if they seemed to be very different at the beginning. All of them were somehow related to how people interact which eachother or society and the norms in it. How do we act in certain places? Why do we pay for experiences that can be painful, hurtful, or unhealthy for us? When do we decide to really engage in something and behave that way? How much a part of an experience are the people around us? Would we act differently, if we were with other people? Why would we act that way? We decided that we wanted to dive deeper into how we act/interact in certain situation and and with certain people.

QUESTIONING
To synthesize deeper what we had experienced, we rearranged all our pictures and sticky notes. We tried to figure out, what all those experiences have in common and how can we break this common ground apart to very concrete questions. A very interesting moment seemed to be the point when people switched between certain behaviours. Where do we decide in playing paintball, that this is just a game and has nothing to do with real war? How can we get really emotional about the score in a bowling game, even if there are so many more things to care about? Why is it important for us to be able to play? What do we gain from a game? Why do we still enjoy it that much, even when were grown up? Do we interact differently if we play the same game with our closest friends than when playing with our buddies from the soccer team? When is it appropriate to play, and are there people with whom we can never play a game? How do we make that choice?

DRAW US A PICTURE
After all those questions emerged, we decided to go out to discover peoples opinions about their behaviors with regards to groups. We went to different places in Squirrel Hill and on CMU Campus to talk to people from a lot of different age groups, cultural background and genders. We asked them to draw us a picture of the groups they belong to, what they do with each group, and what their role is in each group. It was interesting to see that people were very willing to participate. A lot of the people we talked to told us that they had never really thought about what groups theyre in until then.

TRYING TO FIND AN ORDER

After recieving more than 25 responses from people from age 16 to 55, we tried to arrange them in a meaningful order. We hung themup based on age and also seperated them by gender. We listed the different types of groups that people listed on purple sticky-notes and all the roles that they think they have on pink sticky-notes. After a little while, we discovered, that age really affects how people see their own role in a certain group. First of all, the older people were, the less groups they listed. It seemed as if they chose to only draw the more important ones or maybe had become to focused or busy to be part of more groups? We wondered do people really have less time or interest in belonging to groups when they get older, because of their responsibility to a family or job? It was also interesting to see, that the roles that younger people defined for themselves were rather superficial, for example: Im the funny one or Im the well dressed one. We also found that the 40+ crowd tended to describe their role in a more functional way, such as Im an electrician or Im the mom. While, people in their 20s were more likely to use specifics and personality traits. We wondered about how our understanding and awareness of our own role changes over time?

th e d e c is io n

maker th e m a k er

the

mak

er

the

d o n t b u il d s tu ff y o u rs e lf b e co n fi d e n t b e d o m in an t, e ve n i f u n b e u n w su re av e ri n g m ak e j udgeme n ts sp e ak y o u r o p in io n d ir e ct h e ta lk l o lyt u d ly ta lk o ve r p e o p le

sion deci

mak
ours

er

med

iato

op inio ns ne u t ra iona lly lly ath etic m a nd frie ndly nd co m p ro mis e

her

th e li s te ner

uild s u re nt b f un ent do e n i gather opinions nfid t , ev e co b inan think neutrally dom ering be v act rationally n wa nts ly be u eme i re c t judg o n d be empathetic pini ake o m your stay calm and friendly ea k ly sp loud l e connect and compromise eop talk p ver be curious lk o ta

ff y stu

elf

the

ork teria it w ma ake with m ent m ly peri c ret ex m ak e i e co n t w o rk t co m hink t n ou o e xp e ri cus m e n t w it ion s h m at e ri f o scus th in k co al it di n cr e tl y lim fo cu s o mediator n o u tco m e li m it d is cu ss io n

the disagreer
question everything dont explain yourself be persuasive be picky make people rethink speak directly r

the

b e a tt e n ti ve u n d e rs ta n d e ve ry th in g b e e m p at h e ti ca l m ak e p e o p le t al k ab o u t d o n t j id e as udge d o n t q u e st io n i d e as b e o p e n -m in d e d

disa

idea the

mak

wn

the

org

qu th e id e a esti maker on do eve nt ryth ex p be ing lain p you be ersuas s ive pic nreerl f b e fo rwar th in ki n g ky te m b e i d e ake h e l i s al is ti c an pe t op sp d c re at iv d e le g at e le r ea k e eth dir ink ectl d o n t b the class clown stu ff y u il d y o u se lf n g se e t h e b ig p ic ive ythi tu re tent th in k ab ever e at b tand e a s st ra ct ly ders ical out im co m d u n un pathet ic at e i d e lk ab m entertain people as ta e ple b e be charming and clever peo ake m win people over dge as u e n id nt j d o dont contribute to the task estio d t qu inde don be relentless n-m ope b e make it fun bring the party

gre

er

g inkin ive arth reat nd c forw be tic a alis ide elf be te yous lega tuff de ild s u re nt b ig pictu do he b ee t actly r s as abst ide ink th icate m u n the organizer m co

be structured make it run smoothly make a plan tell people what to do oversee the situation keep it clean and in cont

CREATING A TASK

We spent a lot of time discussing how people take on roles in different groups and how these roles work together. How do we define our role in relation to other people and their roles? We realized that we stumbled on something really interesting and decided to create an activity to gain more information from people. What would happen, if people were told to take on a different role? We tried to develop a task that would be taken on by a group of strangers with roles given by us. Example roles- the mediator, the disagreer, or the decision maker. We created a list of attributes to help our participants get into their new roles by surveying our peers. But after we trying a test-run of this activity with our class-

be str uctu m re d ake it r m un ake smo a p te oth lan ly ll ov people wh erse at t e th ke o d e si ep o tua it cl tion ea n and in co n t ro l

aniz

er

mates, we realized that we might not be able to gain that much information from this activity, and that our idea was too dependent on the task itself to really gain insights about the behavior of people.

GIVING ROLES
We decided to stay on our path, but we had to change the way we approached the probe. Should we really make them do something specific and fullfill a mission, or would it be more interesting to see, how they behave in the real world on a saturday night? We invited friends to go out with us after a dinner at Lucis house. Before we actually went out to a bar, we pulled out a bunch of name tags that people usually wear at first meetings or group gatherings. But on our name tags, we wrote roles and stereotypes like listener, artist, foreigner or the flirt. We had our friends choose tags for eachother, with the proposition that the tags didn't have to exactly match each person's personality. It was funny to see how much people enjoyed to do this, and that all twenty tags were distributed after a few minutes. However, there were some undesirable roles that people didn't want to wear even if they knew that it was just for fun and didnt really represent their actual personality. But mostly, the decisions were made very easily, and soon we were ready to go out and observe what would happen next.

TAKING ROLES
Only a few minutes after arriving at the bar, we realized that our simple name tags got a lot of attention. People that werent involved showed a lot of reactions to it. These ranged from Hey, whats this? to Why would you wear that? and Can I have one, too? We were surprised how much feedback we got. In some way, people seemed to believe in what the name tags said. A stranger wentup to the person who was wearing the Pushover-tag and told her, that he could totally see that in her. Another person, wearing the Princess-tag, got handkisses from strangers, and the nametags seemed to actually affect the service at the bar. The person wearing the do-gooder-tag didnt get a drink, while the person wearing the out of control-tag even got kicked out of the bar by the end. We also noticed that some people that participated hid their tags after entering the bar or changed it during the night because they found their tag to be unfavorable or embarassing. How could those little name tags cause so much action?

CONCLUSIONS
We got back from this roleplay excursion with a lot to think about. Obviously, we had hit on something that resonated with people. We tried to split up the evening in three parts: 1. What happened when people could define roles for eachother? People had a lot of fun, picking roles for eachother and discussing if this was a good choice or not. Even if the role was supposed to be the opposite of the acutal personality, often there was still some spark of truth in the role that the person got. 2. What happened, once they started to get into that role and played the game? Once people got the nametag slapped on, they started to experiment with what they could act like... if they would really be like that role. It was surprisingly easy for everyone. We found that people really enjoyed taking on the roles, even if we didnt tell them specificly to act in a different manner. 3. What were the different kinds of reactions that we got and how did those reactions affect us? We noticed that the tagged people got a variety of different kinds of reactions. And obviously, the reactions and potential judgements from outsiders influenced how comfortable people felt wearing the tags. Somehow, people were also very ready to accept and believe in the roles

its not good for my kids

if its not cold enough, i wont take it

i should get my picture printed on it

if its diet, it wont be that harmful

CREATING A TOOL
Now we reached the point where we wanted to show what we learned from our experiences, and how other people could benefit from them. How could we apply our new-gained knowledge to a useful tool for designers? Our experiment showed us, that people are willing and able to take on roles, and believe in it to a certain degree. What if designers could also take on different roles, and through this gain new perspectives on the product they are designing? We decided to work further in this direction, and try to develop a kit that would help design teams who are stuck on a project, to change their point of view and gain new approach to their work in a fun and playful way.

W H AT
is iT A plAyful WAy To reseArcH And find inspirATion.

WHo
is iT for projecT TeAm THAT is sTuck And needs To discover neW perspecTives.

HoW
iT Works escApe from your usuAl perspecTives by selecTing neW roles for eAcH TeAmmATe. imAgine HoW your neW self inTerAcTs WiTH your projecT.

WHen
T o p l Ay leAve THe office An Hour eArly And HeAd To THe neAresT bAr. slAp on THe TAg before you depArT And leAve your old self AT THe door.

WHere
To go pick A plAce WHere you HAvenT been before And geT inspired by THe environmenT, seen THrougH neW eyes.

WHy
iT Will cHAnge your life design isnT jusT for you. Try To see your projecT THrougH THe eyes of An user you mAy noT HAve considered yeT.

CREATING A TOOL
If we wanted to create a tool, we first had to answer a few questions to ourselves, to better understand what we were creating.

PREPARING THE FINAL PROBE

To make sure that our idea could actually function in a space that we couldnt control, we decided to re-run our experiment and try to get strangers involved. Maybe our first try was just lucky or our friends only participated because they wanted to do us a favor? We set up a board full of prepared name tags with roles on it. We also posted simple instructions: Pick a role. Pick a friend. Slap it on. We wondered what would happen if we just set it up and watched. Would people be curious about it? How long would it take until people started to play the game? Would people get bored of it, or would it just need one person to start, so that others can catch fire? Well prepared with more than a hundred name tags and lots of curiosity, we went to a bar in Shadyside and set it up.

TRY OUT IN PUBLIC

Only a few minutes after we arrived at the bar and started to unpack our project, the first person came and asked us what we were doing and why. She immediately decided to participate and took three name tags to slap on her friends. We started to make the rounds, carrying a few name tags with us, slapping them on random people to gauge their interest and reaction. At the beginning, a few people even asked if they had to pay for it. It was interesting to see that most people enjoyed being involved in something. On the rare occasion that the first person of a group that we approached didn't want to participate, the rest of the group often didnt want to either. After a while, we just let people pick and play, and waited for others to come up to the board and ask what it was. People seemed to enjoy it a lot, to pick tags for eachother and the feedback was very positive. We couldnt believe that after only two hours, almost all of our nametags were gone! The few leftovers were all unfavorable roles e.g. over-confident and unhappy. The name tags seemed to be a real icebreaker people wearing the tags started conversations even if they didnt know eachother before.

THE TAG TEAM KIT

We packaged our probe in a kit that could be distributed to or purchased by design teams. The kit contains name tags, a sharpie, a disposable cameras, and instructions for use.