Text Wall
A design research project . Real–time streaming media in the domestic sphere
(collaboration with Luke Johnson . Mia Case . Julia Tsao)
class: Super Studio 2 . spring 2008 . term 2
What if we could design a space that could collect and display thoughts, messages and micro–stories within a family? What would that space look like and how could it function efficiently? At first, I was curious to know where and how people confess their thoughts. Confessional booths, holes in ancient ruins, hollow tree trunks, private journals...
With those ideas as a starting point, I wondered how we could provide a safe space for families to project messages and thoughts not normally spoken. By creating a new space for conversation using the affordances of streaming media, how would that change the family dynamic? What new conversations or realizations would emerge?
After many iterations, we came up with a prototype device dubbed the text wall. The text wall served as a family "message board" for mobile text messages. Family members' cell phones were hooked up to Twitter (a mobile text messaging system), and any text sent to an assigned number would appear projected on a designated wall space in a common area of the home.
The text wall was a research experiment that provided us with two main insights:
1) It helped us define and expand the definition and functions of streaming media.
2) It helped us understand both existing and newly formed conversation dynamics amongst family members.
The main questions that arose for the text wall were:
1) If you change who is empowered to lead family conversation, how does this change the family dynamic and discussion space?
2) How does a public space faciliate unspoken conversations within families?
3) What are the perceptions of a traditional shared space and how do these perceptions change with the addition of an activity such as the text wall?
4) What types of connections will families make between texts? Will this create multiple narratives and multiple interpretations of the information of will it create self-reflection?
5) How can designers create alternative family portraits using data driven and created by the user?
6) If you change conversation, will you change the family dynamic? And if you change the family dynamic, is there an opportunity space that can foster new and developing relationships between family members?
There were several successful outcomes we discovered from the text wall. It became:
– a space of public journaling
– a space for storytelling
– a space to exchange dialog
– a space which could unveil and highlight personalities
What was most interesting was how the families ended-up personifying the wall, naming it "Wall-e" or "Wally."
Here are some examples of the texts submitted to the wall:
More information is available about the text wall and the entire project on my graduate site under Families + Streaming Media: Super Studio 2