More bees and different chat

Doing
I have been doing some really interesting user interviews for the artefact cafe project that we have been doing. Some really interesting insights coming out of it. Several activities that are interesting, one card sorting. A good exercise that always helps start conversations. You need to think about the important themes that you are looking for, they are good for thinking about what is important to a client with a brief. User interviews always make you think deeper about what, how and to who you are asking. I always think the more that you can be visual, get people to be visual and sit back, let them talk to you. Do not lead them, this is hard and takes time to learn. Think about a mixed demographic, extreme users and diverse groups are always advised.

IOT Nottingham an interesting event at Horizon, some great people discussing how and what the affects of IOT are going to have. Thinking about the ethics, who will be involved, how can you opt out etc. I have been finishing off the work for future everything, let me know if you are coming!

catching up on lit review...

Reading
Honey bee tracking with microchips; a new methodology to measuring the effects of pesticides an interesting insight into the software that can be created.

Capacitance, based sensor for monitoring bees passing through a tunnel interesting approach to counting bees, nice integrated approach of tech.

Combining citizen science, bio climatic envelope models and observed habitat preferences good quotes on citizen science and the affect that it can have.
There are some great papers about semantics and the effects that they can have from this conference, Desform 2012. Environmental quality and welfare effects of improving the reporting and capability of citizen monitoring schemes, very insightful and well written, a great resource paper.


Talking
I have been talking to the Honey club, a very interesting project in kings cross. Some really interesting PhD students across different fields.


Thinking
There have been many waves of interesting things going on. Always think about in open design what are the motivations? do you give the user something new and see if they take it? or let them give you what you want? or half way in between... always hard. Open design being the next step in user centred design, do we enable, do we lead? this is the interesting process that we will need to think about more closely over the next few years.