#barofthefuture

So last week, our group failed to impress the professors with our ‘why’- they felt it was not, in fact, a why at all. My thoughts (and others’) had been that ‘to encourage interaction’ and that ‘if you don’t like technology as it is- change it’ were good ‘whys’. But the presentation really crashed and burned.

This was rather disappointing, as I felt at least partly responsible for the direction the group had taken- I thought I had some good ideas, and wanted to encourage the group to choose them. Perhaps I was too vocal and prevented others from being able to contribute much. I was actually very confused about the reaction to our presentation, but I guess I was too focused on the elements and not on the big picture. I think tomorrow I will see about moving into the UI/UX group because I feel like I am only holding things back in my group and time is limited. 

Anyway! I do think we had some interesting ideas: in particular, the concept (I think Jeremy came up with it) of the AI, Jack, being embodied by the actual bar staff: as people take orders, they are entered into tablets (as is becoming common), but the tablets then let the bar staff know how to behave in order to represent the current personality of Jack. These staff would look and act somewhat robotic. As part of the hijacking the bar concept, people might be able to hijack these staff- control them (limited commands) via a computer like a game. I’ll post a precedent video for this after.

The concept presented by the post-grads is ‘Hi-Jack’: wherein the aesthetic and key interest features of the bar come from the idea of hijacking old technology for a new purpose. They seemed to indeed have in mind a bit of the Edison bulb + wood look, and lots of plants but want to do something more clever with it by incorporating obsolete technologies/items like dial telephones, old radios and picture frames, and pumping new life into them with digital technology. I think its a great idea. 

However, as the dean and a few others pointed out: its not quite there yet. The fact that its a bar in terms of the actual functioning of a bar: the drinks, food, etc seemed to have been neglected a bit, which is funny since I was kinda worried about the opposite - that we’d be paying attention to making the serving process smoother without thinking about the rest of what a bar is! Still, there was also a big issue of WHY in terms of the interactions they proposed: why would people interact with the art etc in the bar? 

I think some of the interactivity needs to be maybe tied more intrinsically to bar functions like ordering drinks (eg via the telephone, or screens that let you make custom drinks). I did really love the mention of sensors that could tell when your drink was empty so staff would come to ask if you want more - great mix of automation with old school human interaction. Interactivity with the music sounds great too. 

I signed up for the team doing research and answering the why question. I am really interested in polishing this concept and getting it to its potential (which is clearly there! The post grads did such a fantastic job with the presentation itself too). Then once that stuff is sorted I’ll get to switch to one of the other groups anyway.

Creating an immersive interactive environment, and with a topic with awesome potential... I’m so excited!

One of the first things I really started thinking about though is what a ‘bar of the future’ perhaps SHOULDN’T be. It should NOT be some kind of completely automated, robotized conveyor-belt experience: nor should the aesthetics look like something from a Jetson’s movie. I think Alex mentioned this too: that it would take away from the ‘romance’ of a bar. Look at the Edison bulb, exposed brick trend we’ve seen in so many hipster bars. People love the warmth of these old fashioned elements.

Not that we want to just copy that look either! Of course, we want to make something new. Still, depictions of bars in futuristic science fiction (eg Star Trek and Star Wars) tend not to stray too far from what we know to be classic components of a bar: eg the physical bar itself with countertop to lean on... the archetypical wise bartender is still a key character in Star Trek’s Ten Forward. And perhaps there is a reason for this consistency... more than simply lack of imagination.

So there’s going to be lots of amazing, innovative, high tech ideas we can put in to this: but we should really also make sure we don’t lose the essence of what a bar IS- and thats not just a place to get booze. A bar is a place people go to escape and to connect people: and in the future, if we see technology everywhere, perhaps it will be one of the things we want to escape from. 

It can be annoying to wait for service at a bar, jostling with others and trying to get the bartender’s attention. But let’s just think about the whole experience and the FEEL before we replace this with a screen and a robot mixing drinks. On a side note, if we DO decide this is ok, we’ll need some mechanism to prevent people being over-served.