Logical Lego? Co-constructed perspectives on service design

In the era of ‘digital by default’, internet-borne services reach out into spaces and places. One example of such a service is home-based micro-payments using Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) that depends on reliable information-sharing practices between user and service providers. Traditional business modelling and brainstorming methods struggle to articulate the influences of space and place on service requirements, especially in terms of human-to-human and cultural relations. Shared modelling with Lego produces three-dimensional ‘rich pictures’ of relational services design showing the influences of space and place upon a situated service design. However, previous studies have merely presented results as photographs without annotations explaining model dynamics. Line drawings subsequently made by the authors, based on the model, succeed in extracted recursive patterns of spatially and temporally distributed social practices. These drawings, together with the model, are prime candidates for service designers to articulate the relational spaces and the demographics of target user-communities

Critical visualization:a case for rethinking how we visualize risk and security

In an era of high-profile hacks, information leaks and cybercrime, cybersecurity is the focus of much corporate and state-funded research. Data visualization is regarded as an important tool in the detection and prediction of risk and vulnerability in cybersecurity, but discussion tends to remain at the level of the usability of visualization tools and how to reduce the cognitive load on the consumers of the visualizations. This focus is rooted in a desire to simplify the complexity of cybersecurity. This article argues that while usability and simplification are important goals for the designers of visualizations, there is a much wider discussion that needs to take place about the underlying narratives upon which these visualizations are based. The authors take the position that the narratives on which cybersecurity visualizations are based ignore important aspects of cybersecurity and that their visual form causes the producers and users of these visualizations to focus too narrowly on adversarial security issues, ignoring important aspects of social and community-based security. By situating the discussion of security visualization in a larger socio-historical context, the limitations and implications of current ways of seeing risk become more apparent. Cybersecurity might also learn from other disciplines, specifically critiques of artificial intelligence and the discourse and methods of post-war urban planning. In this way, the article follows a humanities tradition of situating the focus of analysis in a broader tradition of scholarship and critiquing current practices from this wider context. The purpose of such critique is to stimulate reflection on underlying principles and the implications of different approaches to operationalizing those principles. Finally, case studies of participatory modelling and crowdsourcing projects are discussed that aim to foster resilience through social and spatial practices. These case studies illustrate the potential for a wider range of visualizations

Examining the Contribution of Critical Visualisation to Information Security

This paper examines the use of visualisations in the field of information security and in particular focuses on the practice of information security risk assessment. We examine the current roles of information security visualisations and place these roles in the wider information visualisation discourse.\ud We present an analytic lens which divides visualisations into three categories: journalistic, scientic and critical visualisations. We then present a case study that uses these three categories of visualisations to further support information security practice.\ud Two signicant results emerge from this case study: (1) visualisations that promote critical thinking and reflection (a form of critical visualisation) support the multi-stakeholder nature of risk assessment and (2) a preparatory stage in risk assessment is sometimes needed by service designers in order to establish the service design before conducting a formal risk assessment.\ud The reader is invited to explore the images in the digital version of this paper where they can zoom in to particular aspects of the images and view the images in colour

Drawing out interaction: Lines around shared space.

PhdDespite advances in image, video, and motion capture technologies, human interactions are frequently represented as line drawings. Intuitively, drawings provide a useful way of filtering complex, dynamic sequences to produce concise representations of interaction. They also make it possible to represent phenomena such as topic spaces, that do not have a concrete physical manifestation. However, the processes involved in producing these drawings, the advantages and limitations of line drawings as representations, and the implications of drawing as an analytic method have not previously been investigated. This thesis explores the use of drawings to represent human interaction and is informed by the prior experience and abilities of the investigator as a practising visual artist. It begins by discussing the drawing process and how it has been used to capture human activities. Key drawing techniques are identified and tested against an excerpt from an interaction between architects. A series of new drawings are constructed to depict one scene from this interaction, highlighting the contrasts between each drawing technique and their impact on the way shared spaces are represented. A second series of original drawings are produced exploring new ways of representing these spaces, leading to a proposal for a field-based approach that combines gesture paths, fields, and human figures to create a richer analytic representation. A protocol for using this approach to analyse video in practice is developed and evaluated though a sequence of three participatory workshops for researchers in human interaction. The results suggest that the field based process of drawing facilitates the production of spatially enriched graphical representations of qualitative spaces. The thesis concludes that the use of drawing to explore non-metric approaches to shared interactional space, has implications for research in human interaction, interaction design, clinical psychology, anthropology, and discourse analysis, and will find form in new new approaches to contemporary artistic practice.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Holding on to dissensus: Participatory interactions in security design

Recent high-profile cyber-attacks affecting the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK have brought into focus the fact that data, devices, and people are so intermingled that we now need a new way of approaching everyday security that provides an account of place. The assumption until now has been that the security of the individual will follow from technical security and that designing for security requires purely technological solutions. Our creative engagement method puts the human security of actors in the foreground, ensuring that actors who may ordinarily be marginalized may have their perspectives taken into account. The creative methods used include participatory physical modelling to co-design representations of what constitutes ontological security in the everyday for communities. LEGO and other materials allow participants to physically model matters of concern as tangible scenarios, using colored bricks to encode actors, infrastructure, and the movement of data. In this paper, a single LEGO model, depicting an internet-protocol home-banking service, is described in detail. A number of playful and agonistic interactions between our participants are examined through a place-based lens, using descriptive concepts from ontological and autonomous design, an approach designed to tease apart different aspects of our results. This reveals how a community constructs place, the perspectives and horizons of actors, and networks of resilience. We find that participants achieve positive insight into these scenarios by testing out the ways in which they can be broken down by antagonists and adversaries. Participants sustain a space of contestation in which dissensus is established and anticipation of breakdown can be played with.Keywords: ontological design, autonomous design, ontological security, co-design, LEGO