#immersiveenvironment

Before last week’s class, I looked into whether any research had been done on people’s awareness of how much they use technology. I couldn’t really find anything, which surprised me: I expected to find quite a lot, and be able to use that to further inform this whole why revolving around control over technology. 

What I did find was a lot of very negative media about technology - combined with the phrase titling this post, it seems the media is constantly pushing the idea that technology undermines social interaction. However, there was research going both ways. A study showed that when couples spoke with phones present, they tended to fiddle with the phone and seemed to be a bit distracted. When phones weren’t present, they rated the quality of the conversations, and the level of empathy much higher. 

On the other hand, I found some studies that successfully implemented technology in public spaces to improve social interaction. ‘Fish Pong’, a game that is started automatically when a user places their coffee cup on a table, gets people spontaneously interacting to keep a projected fish from falling off the table. In other cases, large installations, like an interactive wall, are found to have a ‘honeypot’ effect: people will gather around them, and once there, the strangers interacting will end up chatting. 

So the thing is: why are we vaguely talking about ‘technology’ in this way? 

Yet, I found  suddenly realized a problem with this. The term technology is so insanely broad! There’s no point arguing whether tech is good or bad because a) its here, and not going away and b) WHICH technology? We should think about when tech is bad, yes, but also when and how technology can be good. 

In the context of a bar, a social environment, we should be thinking about how we can use tech to improve that social experience. This is the key reason people go to a bar- yes food and drink is important, but you can get that at home too - the social atmosphere is the key. In this space, technology that takes you OUT of the moment, that connects you to the external (the internet, people you are texting) is negative to the social experience. Technology that helps you better ENGAGE with the current environment - either assisting interactions with the people you came to the bar with, or to meet new people there, is positive. According to the authors of the ‘fish pong’ study, the advantage of these tech interventions is that they can get people interacting the way kids do! ‘Play first, talk later’. They break the ice, they get past any cultural barriers, so you can be having fun, and interacting spontaneously, then get to know each other after. 

I think that interventions within this bar then, need to keep this in mind. They should be trying to improve interactions with either 1) people who already know each other 2) strangers in the bar. And they should do this by 1) Discouraging people from using their phones to connect to external, 2) Smoothing, assisting natural interactions between people (eg a system to get server’s attention so you don’t have to be distracted from a conversation to order a drink) 3) Encouraging people to interact WITHIN the space (eg honeypot, or things that only work with multiple people).

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.

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.