Systemdesign: creating products, services and environments

When a company sells printers, what they actually sell is an opportunity to turn something digital into something physical and analog. A company producing scanners then actually allows the opposite: turning something physical into digital data. What are the essential needs that lie at the core of such an analog-digital-analog problem and how can such a system be transformed and designed? PingMag joined Stefan Rötzel, a young researcher and designer currently writing his master thesis in systemdesign in Kassel, Germany on a walk through Tokyo’s parks to have a chat.

Written by Uleshka

Stefan, how would you describe what you do?

I am a designer with a strong emphasis on systemdesign. I perceive products from the aspect of how they solve a problem and meet a requirement or need. Knowing that each new solution causes new problems, it is important to analyse the demands for a solution from a neutral and holistic perspective, I believe.

How would you explain systemdesign then?

Systemdesign applies design-thinking and design-acting to whatever is exciting. The objects of systemdesign can be products, services, applications, social systems or organisations. The approach is to cultivate design skills for these contexts. Design-processes occur everywhere, from Pemon Indians in Venezuela to a so-called high-tech-company.

Obviously there is a great diversity of design and its processes, but despite that there are similar characteristics. These patterns and characteristics are my field of interest and research within my master thesis.

That still sounds like “normal product design” to me!? What is the difference?

Systemdesign tries to look beyond the isolated product. When I worked on a project for mobile phones, the approach was that this company actually does not design phones but enables behaviours. So we designed “behaviours” that would illustrate the use of a better mobile phone and several mobile-applications.

Within the process, we talked to people and observed how they work to get a distinct sense for the problems they face. When you only look at a phone (and not at the people using it) and try to design that, you only really focus on the shell. So - designing always means perceiving something and the interesting thing about systemdesign is that it forces an extensive perception of a problem or task.

Many of your recent projects are not public to talk about yet. However, could you explain briefly what you have been working on lately and why you came to Japan?

I got invited to Tokyo by Brother to introduce some future scenarios for innovative IT-products and systems. They were interested in new products, new markets etc… Normally those case-studies are idealistic, introducing a flawless product where everything works, people are satisfied and technology helps. But I actually created negative scenarios to illustrate critical aspects of a technology-driven development.

There are so many companies out there developing and producing all kinds of gadgets, that people start questioning where all these new products are leading? It is easy to create a technical innovation, but to foresee and determine its use and application is sheer impossible.

What kind of new problems do you think were caused by IT-products with its information and transaction systems then?

Well, there are many of course and more to come. If you imagine an electronic voting system: that solves the problem of taking a long time to count all the ballots and also cut down costs of printing all the paper ballots. The new problem this electronic solution creates, though, is that everybody mistrusts the digital ballot.

If you think about working conditions and look at how companies were restructured with IT, this may have led to improvement and more efficiency on the one hand side, but for many people this decentralised or so-called “invisible” company structure led to many new problems, often isolation and demoralisation.

IT is such a strong power for further developments that effect the way we live, work and how both will be organised politically.

But to point out a more simple example for a new problem in everyday life, let’s look at online shopping. For the global electronic commerce all goods require a digital representation. When people browse a web shop, they perceive this digital representation of an artefact, for example an image of a lamp. The new problem is now that the image does not communicate the true, real dimensions. (Would that lamp fit on my table? Is it too big or too small?) Online-shopping often ends with a surprise: the artefact is either better or worse than expected.

That is actually a similar problem designers and engineers face when working with CAD. CAD workers need a forced sense for spatial perception. They can scale and rotate the digital object, but often lose the feeling for the true measures of the object. There is a need for perceiving a CAD-object in relation to the real room.

So, what solutions can you come up with when trying to solve this proportion problem?

I introduced a concept for displaying a digital object in the context of the real surrounding. It works by overlaying the digital representation in context to the real surrounding. This could be translucent display someday, or it could be a mobile phone with a photo-camera as well.

The clue is that it is possible to measure the surrounding and the distances to the user’s eye. Being fed the numeral proportions of the lamp, the display looks at the angle it is held in, measures the distances to other objects in the room in relation to the viewer’s eye and then “our lamp” gets displayed proportional to the actual, physical room.

small sample movie to help your imagination here

Therefore a bunch of technologies need to be developed, but that’s what systemdesign is all about: mapping directions for innovative technologies and generating areas of applications. Good solutions come from a good perception of problems.

Nice idea! I wonder how long it would take until one can really buy such a display in the stores…. What other appliances could you find once this technology is developed?

A lot! Another function could be the translation of signs and words. I really like those Japanese characters in the street even though - or because - I can not read them. I see them as cultural identifiers, communicating something beyond their actual purpose, their pure information. So I thought of a way to preserve this local identity but still be informative enough for people like me, who cannot read Japanese. Instead of writing Roman letters all over Japan, one could use some clever technology…

Imagine that sign used a digital code, for example by attaching an RFID chip. If you then stood in front of the sign, it would be possible to read the translation through your translucent display.

… how inspiring a few days of Japan can be! (laugh)

Yes, there are more problems one can think of… Every stranger coming to Tokyo probably experiences how difficult it is to find the way to a destination at some point.

Not only strangers…

Although I like this feeling, I illustrated the function of a virtual guidance system. If we use our display again, one could layer digital guidance-graphics over the real situation remaining in the background of the translucent display.

small sample movie to help your imagination here

People already use their GPS navigators on their mobile phones to find their way around Tokyo. What would your improvement be here?

Keeping the “real” situation in the background and projecting on top would allow a new way of orientation, which becomes much more intuitive and more comprehensive than using current GPS navigators which only provide you with a digital map in the device.

a current mobile phone GPS map to show you the way…

…which still requires you to be good in reading maps and finding your way around, since it still is rather abstract and looks nothing like the street in front of you

At the moment people run around with these GPS navigators and compare the real surrounding with the digital representation in their GPS gadget with a worrying mistrust. This exemplifies the gap between the “real” and the “digital” world. They occur everywhere and there is a need for creating systems that coordinate and manage these “media-gaps”.

What is so new about these innovations then?

If you look at a company like Brother, who creates scanners as well as printers, you could say that they already bridge this media-gap between the “real world” and the “digital world”: take an apple, scan it in, draw a face on it and print it out again and you completed the whole circle. So the topic is nothing new as such. My research was just to identify and come up with more of these “media-bridges” …and the ones I told you about were just a few (smiles).

This illustrated concept relates to developments in augmented reality (AR), but as described emerges from focussing specific problem situations. This is different from having a solution in mind and trying to find the problems for it.

If solutions only create new problems, what positive improvements as well as problems could you foresee if - let’s say - your city-guide-display was to be realized?

Just imagine a city like Tokyo which is already completely full of advertising and information now getting polluted with digital data on your display. Or imagine that this display gets developed even further into a pair of “information-glasses” you wear constantly and which would develop to another key in the chain of indispensible products you cannot leave the house without: keys, money, mobile phone. What would happen if people then relied on those “glasses”? While walking, you could stumble upon a file or a link, you can enjoy a digital graffiti in front of a police station, or a sponsored alley of cherry trees. As long as you can decide when and how much to use it, that’s not that bad and can be an improvement.

Thus it is essential that this technology allows a self-determined use and does not force people to intake unwanted information.

Hmm… If I consider how much I get spammed with noise and advertisment which I do not want to see on a 5 minute walk through Shibuya alone, a responsible use is rather questionable….

When you look at the current developments in AR, there are some products that are truly worrying. When I see a cool cyborg-like equipment with a head-cam and retina projection, I don’t only wonder for what one may use it for, but what kind of human one may become when he or she uses it…

Thanks a lot, Stefan! Some food for thought again!

15 Comments

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   Posted by: Paul on July 7th, 2006 at 11:44 pm

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3. hmm, interesting article, and I really like the “negative scenarios” approach to design. excellent stuff. BUT this isn’t system design - which is a very specific area, and what a shame that all the “new solutions” seemed like all the old ones. AR. yawn. sorry, but, we’ve seen it all before.

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