Mayur Karnik

testing

WAITING
We encounter numerous situations in our everyday lives that are characterized by waiting or idle time. Bus stops, airports, train stations, McDonalds, ATMs, bar counters, etc. These situations are often filled with anxiety and unfamiliarity due to lack of social contact or valuable information. At a primary level, the social barriers are raised higher than usual since you are in the midst of strangers. Additionally; it’s not uncommon to experience boredom and a general sense of activity-vacuum. If time is money, waiting is useless expenditure.

THE CONTEXT
So what do we do when we wait? There are different contexts in which we find ourselves when we wait, ranging from ordinary to extra-ordinary. Sometimes, it’s forced upon us and other times it’s out of one’s own will. Sometimes, it’s a long wait or short; for someone or something, for a definite time or indefinite, etc. We look around, fidget about; acknowledge others’ presence yet shy away from looking directly at them due to a social phenomenon called ‘civil inattention’ (Erving Goffman)– ‘the process whereby strangers who are in close proximity demonstrate that they are aware of one another, without imposing on each other’. We make small talk (Malonowski, 1923) if the waiting becomes too long, revealing a correlation between commonalities in problems and social distance – ‘It’s getting cold nowadays’, ‘Oh TAP Portugal has a time-zone dedicated to itself!’ These interactions are marked with over-riding tensions between anonymity and familiarity, between isolation / seclusion (depending on choice) and sociality.

WAITING AND TECHNOLOGY
Mobile phones and music players have changed the way we behave in such situations. We switch on our Ipods and listen to music to create a personal sphere for ourselves. We call up someone and elongate conversations, surf the internet and catch up on news we didn’t have time for earlier since we never cared anyways. Advertisers lap up such spaces to inform you about the next best phone or discount offers in the duty free shops . These come in the form of still billboards or electronic display screens that throw in some valuable information (flight timings, etc.) to arrest eyeballs. In airports, for instance, these ubiquitous screens encourage you to spend time browsing stores or grabbing coffee before you pass through the internal security point (read: points of no-return in terms of boredom). These screens can be put to much more meaningful use.

WHY SOCIAL GAMES?
We like play, we naturally resist ennui. When you are wired in or in the zone, you lose the sense of time. Conversely, when the weight of time is heavy on shoulders you want to find some sense of flow. Flow is focused motivation (Csíkszentmihályi), we crave for it when we are bored. This flow comes through engagement with objects or people, which is why we talk to people or play around with our phones or read a book, etc. Gaming promises to offer that flow, albeit for a short span of time in such a context. While commuting in subways in cities as culturally distanced as Hong Kong and London, people resort to technological artifacts such as music players or PSP / Nintendo DS to keep themselves engaged. Although it’s easy to argue prima-facie that these ‘cut’ away the need to associate or engage with others, the manifested stance is essentially a social statement colored by the tensions mentioned before. It can safely be inferred, as an insight, that people resort to technology and engagement of some sort when faced with long waiting circumstances.

OPPORTUNITIES
Gaming can incorporate the social essence in transient spaces and provide comfort in times of anxiety and information in times of confusion. Some of these spaces (eg. airports) have people from different cultures and backgrounds in circumstances that they can relate to in common. Understanding of games and objectives spans through cultures, wherein very often the games themselves attain unique characteristics due to local adaptation. Games can bridge these cross-cultural differences by highlighting appropriate themes.

Games can also take advantage of technologies described before (that people are already exposed to), such as displays and mobile phones as delivery points for engaging experiences. People constantly negotiate between the contained universes of books / phones / music players and the open-ended universe of the physical environment and information cues (boarding time, directions to toilets, etc.). It can be argued that embedding an engaging experience within the environment that allows for social interaction can be much more beneficial than a game played on a personal device. Alternatively, the personal devices can form an ecosystem with the objects and people around to form a more cohesive flow.

Another area of possible exploration can be interactive experiences installed in waiting spaces. Smart phones today are equipped with sensors that have good potential of making sense of a place and for interaction. The old CSCW Matrix can be revisited as a starting point. Crowd-computer interaction is an emerging field of interest in HCI. Artists such as Chris O’ Shea and Golan Levin demonstrate how these spaces can be converted into sites of active social play.

CAVEAT
Privacy and anonymity need to be respected in any intervention in such a design space. It should not be assumed when designing games for this context that social interaction is a universal need. Some people may prefer to opt out of such propositions and prefer personal space. Designers should be careful of these factors and define clear boundaries in access and involvement, always allowing choice.

SUMMARY
In summary, waiting spaces are characterized by boredom and anxiety. People mostly behave according to social norms in such spaces. There is a tendency to avoid boredom and ‘kill’ time. Technology has an increasing presence in negotiating such situations. Social games, coupled with these technologies, can be instrumental in reducing boredom and lowering social barriers. Games should take advantage of the current socio-technical circumstances in transient spaces to deliver meaningful and engaging social experiences without having people to mandatorily compromise on their anonymity or privacy.

Sugru is a silicone modeling clay like material. It is designed to stick almost any materials together and is used to hack /repair / build many interesting new forms and functions.

http://sugru.com/about

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01. LIGHTER HEAVIER

The cigarette lighter’s weight is a reminder while meditating that our actions and habits can alter the course and length of our lives. It symbolizes the heaviness of our guilt that results from harming ourselves incrementally on an everyday basis.

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02. TRANSIENCE AND FOOTPRINTS

The pencil + eraser symbolizes the transient nature of our existence. Our past is constantly ‘erased’ by our present which in turn writes our future; the vicious cycle goes on till our end. However, not without leaving some marks and traces on the canvas of nature  due to our inbuilt imperfections.

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03. IDENTITY FLIPS

The hybrid Rupee-Euro coin symbolizes the tensions in identity based on relative values. It is a reminder of the constant re-purposing / re-orienting of one’s directions in life in the backdrop of a deep longing to return home.

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Hash Emm is the protagonist of a series of 140 character long stories on Twitter. A hallucinating spy on the run (read:jump), Hash Emm’s mission is to invade Twitter from the inside and control the world from there.
http://twitter.com/mayurkarnik

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Descending is the New Organic Order (Note: just a little anti-Utopia and definitely not Dystopia). Watch this space for further unfolds.

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THE DOG LOOKS UP at #M and smiles. He smiles back. ‘OMG what was that? I have never seen a dog smile’ he gasps later! ‘Me too’ comes a voice.

#M escapes Facebook Alcatraz in the silence of a busy evening. The streets outside were full of faceless people holding no poking signs.

Dodging email-bullets shot by Jailor Zuckerberg, #M trips on a WiFi trap. The guilt of leaving his friends suddenly engulfs his heart. Shot.

“So what do you think is the real issue with this place?” asks #M. “What?” she vollies back. “It fools one into not asking such a question”.

“Why would you ask a question when answers are all around?” she asks. “These answers are but orphans, pregnant with unborn parents” says #M.

Shot. #M shakes off the memory cloud enveloping him and darts towards the tram. A street dog looks up at him and smiles. He slaps himself.

‘Home Sweet Home’ says a poster at the inquiry desk of the Consulate of Utopia. “I want to go home” says #M. “Shh. It’s gone” she whispers.

#M looks at his watch and the setting sun. “One of these needs to be adjusted” reads the Ray-Ban OSD. Man shapes tools that shape him later.

Jump. 4K miles W. 5 more hrs for dusk. #M gets down from LDN I. Throws the Utopian passport into the Thames. Walks towards the Red Queen.

“Keep running to stay in the same place” she proclaims. “I am a Hyperlink, your Highness! I don’t need to” says #M. “Underline thyself then”.

“But I don’t have a destination, your Highness. I don’t return anything!” says #M. “Keep clicking to stay in the same place then” she says.

#M realizes they are not on the same page. He’s on Error 404 and the Red Queen on perpetual F5. “I am not lost, I am just free.” he thinks.

“Are you #M?” asks HalfQ from behind. Yes? No, I meant – are you? Yes, I think I am free and don’t you read me!  http://tinyurl.com/l7ehu5