Ethnographic Animation: Using Fact-Based Storytelling to Develop Products
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This document discusses ethnographic animation, which uses animation as a development tool to envision user interfaces and products based on real-life representations and social/technical research. It provides examples of ethnographic animations that were used for market research, product development, and conveying complex processes. The document outlines how ethnographic animation can show things the eye cannot see, present things that don't exist, convey information, and allow users to experience something. It argues that animation is useful for prototyping experiences, communicating across disciplines, and iterating on designs before building physical products.
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Ethnographic Animation: Using Fact-Based Storytelling to Develop Products
- 3. Who Am I?
- 4. What are we going to talk about? • What is Animation? • Animation isn’t Animation Anymore • Ethnographic Animation: – What’s it all about? – How to use it. – How it scales through the product continuum. • Fight Club • 3 Things to Remember about Animation • Questions
- 5. What is Animation? A mouse, some dwarves and a bunch of talking toys…
- 7. “Snow White”
- 10. Animation Isn’t Animation Anymore Sands Research Animation can be more engaging for the brain than real actors
- 11. Animation Isn’t Animation Anymore Journal of Science Teaching Significantly higher conceptual understanding
- 12. Animation Isn’t Animation Anymore Riyadh Technical College Animations that convey mechanistic descriptions help students to learn
- 13. Animation Isn’t Animation Anymore The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association Comprehension was markedly higher for students who used the computer animation
- 17. What animation can do… • Show you what your eye can’t see • Present something that doesn’t exist and make you think it’s real • Convey complex information • Exist in time • Allow you to feel an experience
- 18. Ethnography aims to describe the nature of those who are studied. Ethnographic Animation is social science storytelling. It’s fact-based animation. It’s about using animation as a development tool not just a means for telling a story
- 20. “Marble Answering Machine” 1992 - Durrell Bishop’s physical visualization of a system. Allows critique – both good and bad “What happens when my 3 year old gets a-hold of the marbles”
- 21. • Study people • Turn technical and social research into experiences based on real life representations • Envision UIs and develop products • Deeper impact on communication
- 22. “Vacuum”
- 23. Wearable
- 24. Usage of a UI • Appliance • Lives in public – in a mall? In a train station? • Crowds • Queues • Left-handed / Right-handed • Carrying packages / bags / babies
- 26. Does It Work? • “The animation work has been critical to our success in making great ideas real.” • “It allows developers to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ what needs to happen; not just put a requirement to it and start building something.” • “It not only allows me to design my product and experience and then test it with people but it also gives me the beginning of the spec to have my engineers actually build it.”
- 27. Market Research • Today’s computer keyboards are set up to use letters, not characters, which makes it difficult to use Chinese or other character-based languages on a computer. • In the future, you will be able to easily write Chinese or other characters directly on the computer “trackpad”. • For example, you use your finger to write a character on the “trackpad”. The computer recognizes the character and shows it on the screen, making it much easier to write emails, instant messages, website URLs or anything else you would want to enter into a computer than it would be using today’s keyboard.
- 28. Market Research • Today’s computer keyboards are set up to use letters, not characters, which makes it difficult to use Chinese or other characterbased languages on a computer. • In the future, you will be able to easily write Chinese or other characters directly on the computer “trackpad”. • For example, you use your finger to write a character on the “trackpad”. The computer recognizes the character and shows it on the screen, making it much easier to write emails, instant messages, website URLs or anything else you would want to enter into a computer than it would be using today’s keyboard.
- 29. Market Research
- 30. Market Research
- 31. Fight Club Video vs. Animation
- 32. Fight Club: Video vs. Animation Video 1. Connect with real people in real situations 2. Show off your new product! 3. Capture the moment Animation 1. But real people are a demographic, a certain age, nationality and gender. 2. Show your product before it exists! 3. Iterate, change and customize then…do it again!
- 33. 3 4 Things to Remember 1. Animation isn’t animation anymore 2. Animation is the prototype of the experience 3. Animation Scales! 4. Anything is possible
Editor's Notes
- Before we begin let me tell you a little bit about me…. OK so who am I? I grew up in a TV family – my dad was in WWII Parents met CBS, new fangled thing called TV Acting – not being a part of day to day College – behind the scenes Portland – production. Kind of in a similar way to my parents, I got involved in that new thing called The Internet and Animation both of which really weren’t around before Now with all of that said, now that you know a little bit about me, I should tell you that really to an audience like this and many people in the design world…. (next slide)
- I’m an Alien. Although I’ve been working in TV, production and story telling – I’m not an animator ADi – in through the side door. I came into the world of animation as a film producer, as a video producer, as a commercial producer. I didn’t enter the world of animation as a fan of it. I started in animation in 1997 – working in the business of animation and I have always looked at animation as a tool -- from the very first time I put my hands in it as a supplement to the live action I was producing. I love business. I love problem solving. I love finding new solutions. I love math and the physics behind animation. I should explain this slide And I am passionate about evolving people’s understanding of WHAT animation is and how it can be used
- So, today, What are we going to talk about? First off - What is Animation…: Animation is defined as a simulation of movement created by displaying a series of pictures, or frames, --- and I’ll show you some examples of that which you are probably familiar with. And then I’d like to show you how this general definition of animation isnt animation anymore: -not in my world, at least. I’ve started to allude to that already, but I’ll tell you why it has changed and what has contributed to that change. And then I’ll get into the heart of this today – with Ethno anim..: What the heck do I mean by that. And considering the audience here today, how does this apply to you and what you may do day in and day out. Fight Club. Yes, Fight Club. Here today. We’ll keep it controlled…I’m not planning on asking for any audience participation., no worries. I’ll give you 3 things to remember about animation – things that I hope that you will take back with you when you go into your next project. Open it up for any questions you may have.
- Ok So – I want to explore this question: What is Animation? How many of you have an answer to this questions? Raise your hands if you know what animation is? I’m hoping all of you raise you hand – because I think most people know what animation is. That might sound like a silly questions but I think it’s important to understand what it is – not just for us here in the room – but what is animation to most people. What do they think of when I say what is animation? Is it about a mouse, some dwarves and a bunch of talking toys?…. Let’s see…
- This was how much of the world was introduced to animation. This is Mickey Mouse of course in “steamboat willie”. Played before feature. When you talk to most people this – or something similar to this - is how they envision what animation is – a mouse dancing around on a ship. …it had a storyline, it fed both the visual and auditory senses all at once. And people remembered and talked about it when they left the movie theatre – which was a lot more than could be said for the feature it played before. Name of movie – an ‘independent feature film called ‘Gang War’ – gangster film
- Now lets move forward a little – In 1937 Disney makes snow white. It’s the first full length animated feature that most people would see. And comparing this with Steamboat Willie, you can see that the Animation itself has gotten more complex. It can tell long form stories with multiple characters – in this case seven dwarves and a princess – and all the characters have depth – Grumpy, Sneezy and all the rest. The characters have personalities, they have dare-I-say backstories. And they defintely have emotions. This is how people at least in the 20th century came to understand animation as a story telling platform.
- Ok – now we get good. The coming of the computers! In 1985 we have Dire Straits Money for nothing video. It was crude but it was the first all CG music video. You guys know what I mean by CG? Computer genreeated. (How many of you actually know who Dire Straits are? Raise your hands.) Ten years later you have Toy Story – one of the most successful movie and animated franchises of all time. So --- When you talk to most mainstream people today and say “animation” all of this is what they think of – a mouse, some dwarves and a bunch of talking toys – It’s a very powerful- and I don’t use that word lightly – it’s a Powerful tool for telling stories to people of all ages. But I’m here to talk about none of this. I’m here to talk about how in the last 5 to 10 years animation has changed. Animation isn’t animation anymore. Over these last 10 years I’ve watched what animation is and how it’s made, and how it has fundimentally change….and why did it change….next slide
- But when I say “The Don” changes everything I mean what he represents. Generation Y. Schoolhouse rocks. a whole new set of tools and training and who see animation as just another way to communicate, more than just stories You see, animation isnt a medium that you have to wrap your head around to understand. And we’ve come to a time now where we are no longer distracted by this medium; My point is that our emotions and our reactions are more viscerally and intuitively tied than ever before to these CG worlds. It’s so much more than just a story telling medium. ‘Experience’ is a key word when people discussing game-based learning, for example - and games engage people psychologically – they can be very emotional experiences – and they also engage people physiologically. Games are very good at using drama, storyline, humor and characters to create a compelling experience which, from a training point of view, can develops memory hooks and a means so that learners not only remember what happened but also why it happened.
- it comes down to INTENT – what do you want to do with the animation. And these days animation – this computer and physics based animation that “The Don” and many of the rest of us produce isn’t JUST about the story and the human connection – it’s a tool for doing business. And that’s really powerful. CLICK – In a recent article on neuromarketing - and what is now being called neurocinema - http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2011/03/neuromarketing-and-the-oscars.html – Steve Sands, the chief science officer of Sands Research said that “animation can be more engaging for the brain than real actors.”
- (next two – both experimental and control groups were used) CLICK The Journal of Science Teaching, waaaaay back in 2006, conducted a study that explored the effect of computer animations in the class with college students'. Animations were used in two treatment situations: (a) as a supplement in large-group lectures, and (b) as both the lecture supplement and an assigned individual activity in a computer laboratory. These two experimental treatments were compared to a control group. Both treatment groups received significantly higher conceptual understanding than did the control group. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.3660320508/abstract
- (next two – both experimental and control groups were used) CLICK In a technical paper from Ree-yahd (Riyadh)Technical College They conducted a study to ascertain whether animated images of a mechanism would help students to understand the mechanism of a reaction. this experiment was in the field of organic chemistry, --- and as y oui might guess , understanding the mechanism of the reaction is a crucial part of the understanding process in organic chemistry.
- Journal of the American Osteopathic Association: They found that computer animation can clarify instruction by allowing students to visualize complex, dynamic processes. Students consider it to be a useful learning tool. and study time is usually shorter with CAI. Such reports suggest that the use of CAI can be an effective instructional tool. comprehension was markedly higher for students who used the computer animation. Many of the phrases used by students to praise the computer animation consisted of emphatically positive terms. These included alert, come to life, eager to learn, enabled, fun, more please!, superior, and vivid. In comparison, most of the terms used to describe the textbook chapter were emphatically negative, including boring, confusing, dry, inferior, intimidating, relieved when finished, stagnant, and yawn reflex. http://www.jaoa.org/cgi/content/full/106/1/9 So – animation is more than just a means to tell stories, but its also a tool for educating, perhaps for training, and most definitely for doing business.
- SO let’s look at what animation can do. What are the different INTENTS Show you what your eye can’t see Present something that doesn’t exist Convey complex information Exist in time Allow you to feel an experience 1. So animation can show you what your eye cant see. You can represent the internal workings of a product. You can take the data from an engineers CAD drawing and highlight – maybe through a stylized xray vision – how that gear helps that pulley system work. You can present something that doesn’t exist in the real world yet – and you can make people think it IS real. We are using animation today for more things than just telling stories – the INTENT of animation can go far beyond that – and it can be a tool for studying people’s reaction to products and experiences and because, with computer generated animation, what you create and present can be based on real world physics. Therefore it can also be a viable platform for exploring your product or service even before it exists in the real world You can convey complex information. Let’s say you need to explain an intricate process to someone. Middle pic: how does this wind turbine work? And as there is with many processes – there’s a lot of factors, a lot of ‘If this, then this’ situations – and to try and list that out in a word doc doesn’t really give much hope for someone to retain that information. So you create a visual – having that visual association helps in the retention rate. Animation can exist in any time period – past, present, future, - all or some of that. You are as reliant on the real world factors and assets as you want to be. CLICK
- SO let’s look at what animation can do. What are the different INTENTS Show you what your eye can’t see Present something that doesn’t exist Convey complex information Exist in time Allow you to feel an experience 1. So animation can show you what your eye cant see. You can represent the internal workings of a product. You can take the data from an engineers CAD drawing and highlight – maybe through a stylized xray vision – how that gear helps that pulley system work. You can present something that doesn’t exist in the real world yet – and you can make people think it IS real. We are using animation today for more things than just telling stories – the INTENT of animation can go far beyond that – and it can be a tool for studying people’s reaction to products and experiences and because, with computer generated animation, what you create and present can be based on real world physics. Therefore it can also be a viable platform for exploring your product or service even before it exists in the real world You can convey complex information. Let’s say you need to explain an intricate process to someone. Middle pic: how does this wind turbine work? And as there is with many processes – there’s a lot of factors, a lot of ‘If this, then this’ situations – and to try and list that out in a word doc doesn’t really give much hope for someone to retain that information. So you create a visual – having that visual association helps in the retention rate. Animation can exist in any time period – past, present, future, - all or some of that. You are as reliant on the real world factors and assets as you want to be. CLICK
- SO let’s look at what animation can do. What are the different INTENTS Show you what your eye can’t see Present something that doesn’t exist Convey complex information Exist in time Allow you to feel an experience 1. So animation can show you what your eye cant see. You can represent the internal workings of a product. You can take the data from an engineers CAD drawing and highlight – maybe through a stylized xray vision – how that gear helps that pulley system work. You can present something that doesn’t exist in the real world yet – and you can make people think it IS real. We are using animation today for more things than just telling stories – the INTENT of animation can go far beyond that – and it can be a tool for studying people’s reaction to products and experiences and because, with computer generated animation, what you create and present can be based on real world physics. Therefore it can also be a viable platform for exploring your product or service even before it exists in the real world You can convey complex information. Let’s say you need to explain an intricate process to someone. Middle pic: how does this wind turbine work? And as there is with many processes – there’s a lot of factors, a lot of ‘If this, then this’ situations – and to try and list that out in a word doc doesn’t really give much hope for someone to retain that information. So you create a visual – having that visual association helps in the retention rate. Animation can exist in any time period – past, present, future, - all or some of that. You are as reliant on the real world factors and assets as you want to be. CLICK
- And it’s this last point that brings us to the power of what ethnographic animation is and what it does. And yes – I’m finally getting to that – to this idea called Ethnographic animation. So, when we talk about this form of visual learning, we talk about the impact of learning best by seeing information. We talk about memory hooks from seeing human experiences, like in game based learning.
- First, One high level definition of ethnography is: Ethnography aims to describe the nature of those who are studied. Now, I’m not a social scientist and I don’t pretend that this describes what ethnography is in full but it gives you a general idea Dr Bell said that Ethnographic research is NOT just about the fieldwork – meaning going out and studying people which is what many ethnographers do --- she said that ethnography is also about making sense of the material afterwards. Making sense of what you leaned and saw from your observations and studies. PARC, a Xerox Company: - work at all stages of the commercialization process – from ideation to development to tech transfer – helping our clients accelerate time to market, generate new revenue streams, and build lasting competitive advantage. “Transformative innovations are about solving the right problem, not solving the problem right” Steve Hoover, PARC #PIM11 CLICK When we think about Ethnographic animation and how we have been using it as we work with ethnographers, anthropologists and developers – since we do use animation as a tool to study people – but we also use it to capture people’s experience in animation as well. That can be an experience with a product or a service or anything really and once you have captured that or even the beginning of that in an animation you can begin to look at it differently, And the beautiful part is that it can now be a tool – because you can test it. and then think about how to do it all better. We’re at the very base of development, Before Ideation, we don’t know what we’re making yet – with EA, we’re giving a visual to what IS the problem…that we then hope we can solve. Ethnographic Animation is social science storytelling --- It’s fact based animation. It’s about using animation as a development tool not just a means for telling a story. Which it is so good at. But it’s so much more than that. So ethnographic animation uses a different kind of story telling – a social science story telling based on facts – Just as really good animation is also based on physics - ethnographic animation is based on social science as well. And using it can not only be a tool to study people but it can actually capture experience based on physical science and social science…..and that’s new! That’s not a mouse, some dwarves and a bunch of talking toys. What I find interesting is once we’ve created these ethno animations – what we can do with them. Animation is a great way to show cause and effect, process and results. It can be used to great effect to minimize distractions of unnecessary details. Let me show you a couple of examples of what I’m talking about. Next slide
- This is just one example of the type of animation I’m talking about - this would fall into this category of what we’re calling ethnographic animation. This isn’t by my shop. This is from 1992 – note this is a pre-cellphone world -- and is by Durrell Bishop – very well known and respected innovator in product design and physical interfaces, as well as interactive media. He used the animation as a physical visualization of a system, which, in this case is a “Marble Answering Machine”. Is anyone here familiar with this? So in the animation we have an answering machine. It answers each phone call and takes a message – once the message is recorded it is put into a marble and it rolls out into a tray (point to the first photo) PLAY ANIMATION To recap -- When the user comes home they can pick up the marble and place it in the little divot (point to second illustration) to listen to the message. If they don’t need to keep the message they can drop it in the little hole at the back of the machine or they can place it next to the machine in the little plates with people’s names on them. You can’t read the names but there are names of different people in the house by each plate and the users is dropping the message there. Now what’s interesting about the animation is that is gives you a real feeling of how it would be to use the Marble Answering Machine – it’s kind of cool and fun. It makes the messages tactile, things that you can pick up and move around – it’s kind of neat because the messages arent just blips on the screen they are things. And of course, because this machine doesn’t exist, you cant show it any other way than through a computer genreated way. Now one of the reasons why I like this example is that once you’ve watched the animation a few times you not only start to think about what’s good and fun and cool about the animation but you also see what’s kind of weird and wrong about it as well. By capturing the consumers experience in the animation Bishop has given us a chance to test it with people – ask them not just what they think about it but also how we can examine what we might change. The animation was his prototype. And let me say that again – the ANIMATION was his prototype. The interaction that he was trying to show wasn’t a UI – but rather it was an interaction with a product. This is one of the favorite quotes I heard about the it (quotes) CLICK -- also another quotes was– it involves the family dog getting into the marbles and eating that really imporant message from your boss and having to wait around for the message to “pass” before you can listen to it again http://vimeo.com/19930744
- To recap – HOW IT WORKS When the user comes home they can pick up the marble and place it in the little divot (point to second illustration) to listen to the message. If they don’t need to keep the message they can drop it in the little hole at the back of the machine or they can place it next to the machine in the little plates with people’s names on them. Now what’s interesting about the animation is that is gives you a real feeling of how it would be to use the Marble Answering Machine – it’s kind of cool and fun. It makes the messages tactile, things that you can pick up and move around. And of course, because this machine doesn’t exist, you cant show it any other way than through a computer genreated way. Now one of the reasons why I like this example is that once you’ve watched the animation a few times you not only start to think about what’s good and fun and cool about the animation but you also see what’s kind of weird and wrong about it as well. By capturing the consumers experience in the animation Bishop has given us a chance to test it with people – ask them not just what they think about it but also how we can examine what we might change. The animation was his prototype. And let me say that again – the ANIMATION was his prototype. This is one of the favorite quotes I heard about the it (quotes) CLICK -
- Oh yeah and here’s an attempt at a bad joke – that humans may actually be different than developers. But really what I mean by that is that one part of the use of this type of animation is that we use it for ethnography and the other part is that we use it for serious product development – but I’ll get into that in a moment. The stills along the slide here show some different experience animations (we’ve made). They depict people using products and services in different environments with different UIs and form factors. And we create this world where the people are. In this case, the people are very stylized as blue people. No discerning charactreristics of what country or region or culture they may be from and as a viewer you (be it human OR developer) youre not distracted, conciously or subconciously, that this person does or doesn’t look like you. What you Do start focusing on are the items that seem more tangible and fully developed in the scenes. In this series, all the consumer products are fully realized – fully rendered – to be photoreal. And during the animations themselves, you see the way that peopole are having these experiences. And when these animations were developed, these products didn’t exist yet. And in every movement – from where they touch a button on a screen to how they set up a room, really, of where the tv is in relation to the couch, and all of that is all based on the ethnographic research we receive from our clients. So, as you may imagine understanding now more of what the heck ethno anim is -- -I cant actually show you the EA work that we’ve done; it’s all early development work. But here is an example I can show. TURN OFF SOUND SHOW RETAIL ANIMATION -- so what you are paying attention to is the experience going on here, not so much that it’s a girl with blue hair. You can easily dismiss that without dismissing the technology that is being presented. Animation can make you think you are seeing something that IS real now. BUT These animations did more than that – once we used this work to understand HUMANS – then we used them to help DEVELOPERS Because the animations were based on real physics and design – the developers in this work and in other work that we’ve done have actually taking the 3D model of the devices and built them. Now that was amazing – to create something in an animation and then one day they come in and plop it on you desk for real! Also the developers we’ve worked with have taken our UIs that we make for the screen to get across the experiences and actually built them as well. It’s pretty awesome when the 3D UI you’ve been working on shows up on screens all across Europe in a product. Next slide
- Oh yeah and here’s an attempt at a bad joke – that humans may actually be different than developers. But really what I mean by that is that one part of the use of this type of animation is that we use it for ethnography and the other part is that we use it for serious product development – but I’ll get into that in a moment. The stills along the slide here show some different experience animations (we’ve made). They depict people using products and services in different environments with different UIs and form factors. And we create this world where the people are. In this case, the people are very stylized as blue people. No discerning charactreristics of what country or region or culture they may be from and as a viewer you (be it human OR developer) youre not distracted, conciously or subconciously, that this person does or doesn’t look like you. What you Do start focusing on are the items that seem more tangible and fully developed in the scenes. In this series, all the consumer products are fully realized – fully rendered – to be photoreal. And during the animations themselves, you see the way that peopole are having these experiences. And when these animations were developed, these products didn’t exist yet. And in every movement – from where they touch a button on a screen to how they set up a room, really, of where the tv is in relation to the couch, and all of that is all based on the ethnographic research we receive from our clients. So, as you may imagine understanding now more of what the heck ethno anim is -- -I cant actually show you the EA work that we’ve done; it’s all early development work. But here is an example I can show. TURN OFF SOUND SHOW RETAIL ANIMATION -- so what you are paying attention to is the experience going on here, not so much that it’s a girl with blue hair. You can easily dismiss that without dismissing the technology that is being presented. Animation can make you think you are seeing something that IS real now. BUT These animations did more than that – once we used this work to understand HUMANS – then we used them to help DEVELOPERS Because the animations were based on real physics and design – the developers in this work and in other work that we’ve done have actually taking the 3D model of the devices and built them. Now that was amazing – to create something in an animation and then one day they come in and plop it on you desk for real! Also the developers we’ve worked with have taken our UIs that we make for the screen to get across the experiences and actually built them as well. It’s pretty awesome when the 3D UI you’ve been working on shows up on screens all across Europe in a product. Next slide
- What this shows is that there is a process behind this – what you just saw was around the virtual protoyping The assets and the IP get carried through the entire process – the product developsAround the problem / challenge that comes from the field. (Quote Steve Hoover / PARC ?) great economies of scale in this production, too. Ethnographic – visual represenation of how things exist now Ideation – this is the stage where you take the insights from the ethnography, or just trying to find new ideas based on problem solving New product visualization – could also be characterized as scenarios – developing use cases Virtual Prototyping – exploring form factors, UIs, different feature sets – without having to manufacture anything Working simulation – as close a simulated experience as possible – demonstrates cause and effect User testing – market research, usability, etc Market introduction – marketing, sales support, distribution support
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- (next two – both experimental and control groups were used) CLICK In a technical paper from Ree-yahd (Riyadh)Technical College They conducted a study to ascertain whether animated images of a mechanism would help students to understand the mechanism of a reaction. this experiment was in the field of organic chemistry, --- and as y oui might guess , understanding the mechanism of the reaction is a crucial part of the understanding process in organic chemistry.
- (next two – both experimental and control groups were used) CLICK In a technical paper from Ree-yahd (Riyadh)Technical College They conducted a study to ascertain whether animated images of a mechanism would help students to understand the mechanism of a reaction. this experiment was in the field of organic chemistry, --- and as y oui might guess , understanding the mechanism of the reaction is a crucial part of the understanding process in organic chemistry.
- (next two – both experimental and control groups were used) CLICK In a technical paper from Ree-yahd (Riyadh)Technical College They conducted a study to ascertain whether animated images of a mechanism would help students to understand the mechanism of a reaction. this experiment was in the field of organic chemistry, --- and as y oui might guess , understanding the mechanism of the reaction is a crucial part of the understanding process in organic chemistry.
- Ok – that should give you an idea of what I’m talking about when we say ethno animation. It’s a powerful tool for doing business, understanding people and even building actual real products and UIs. But let’s put it to the test – let’s have a little fun and have ourselves a little fight club between animation and it’s age old rival video – – let’s get started (Ding Ding)
- Let’s do a side by side comparison of what each is good at: (Ding Ding) CLICK 1: Video: Real people are good. Real situations are great to document. CLICK 1: Animation: . Real people are a demographic, real people are a certain age, nationality, gender. People are messy. People are unique. People watching other people always look to identify with someone in the commercial or book or article they are reading. People naturally want to find the roots of a relationship of some sort when making this connection. So video, actually, may be a barrier to people paying attention to the thing that you want them to pay attention to. With animation, you can control everything in the environment that you are showing – be it people or objects. Connect with information that you didn’t even realize you could make a connection to, or with. CLICK 2 Video: Shooting a live action scenario where your product is the star. Like a car commercial – with the car zooming down a mountain road. Or a demonstration of new product or prototype. CLICK 2 Animation: What if you are still in the early design stages of your product? And sure, you can have ‘real’ ppl in your videos, but what if you don’t even know enough about these real people yet – what if you need to show your supervisor, your C-Level of your company ,your business partners, or maybe a focus group, something about your product or design or whatever it is that you are developing, and you arent sure yet what your audience or your user even looks like? You may not have defined yet – you may not be able to define if your user is a male or female, if they are 20 or 50. With animation you can show people in environments living lives with products that don’t exist yet. CLICK 3 Video: Video has been used for many years as the way to give a visual and to document (hence, the word documentary) a real world situation and experience. It can be in documentary style – or it can be a pre-coordinated and scripted shoot to ‘re-enact’ a scenario, complete with actors. Real people are good. CLICK 3 Animation: You can still be creative at the point of making an ethnographic animation. But you can also introduce and incorporate the real world physics. I’ve eluded to physics and animation a bit so far, and what I am talking about is that within CG animation you can attribute the real potential size, shape, weight in relation to it’s atmosphere, in relation to the character handling the object, -- and see what effect that would have on the person or the environment, and see what the effect would be if you made it smaller, or bigger, or heavier or lighter. What would a 5 pound product look like it it went into the pocket of a pair of jeans of a 15yr old who doesn’t – and wont – wear a belt? And then you get feedback of what is preferred- internal feedback, focus group feedback from watching the animation, – and then you develop your product based on what happened in that CG world. Learning the fullness of the experience. Ethnographic animation is modeling reality and human experience. It’s a business tool.
- OK, so, here’s your 3 things to remember: CLICK ANIMATION isn't’ ANIMATION Over the last 5 to 10 years animations has fundamentally changed. The training, tool and expertice that go into today's animators and today animations are quite different than just a generation ago. We are using animation today for more things than just telling stories – the INTENT of animation can go far beyond – and I believe it is a perfect tool for studying people’s reaction to products and experiences and because it is based on real world physicals it can also be a viable platform for exploring your product or service even before it exists in the real world CLICK EA Ethno Animation is not just about story telling - using science both social and physical we can actually capture people experiences with the product or device and then use the animation to develop real products and Uis CLICK 3. EA Testing Dev Marketing Economies of scale And thinking about it – actually – there is a 4th thing to remember --- CLICK ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE You can go places you didn’t even consider before when all you had were data sheets and quant studies.Absolutely. Positively. Anything. I mentioned it before, but ethnography isnt just the gathering of the information, it isnt just the fieldwork, but it’s making sense of the material afterwards. It’s the architect’s model. It’s the prototype of a future experience. And animation can give you the complete visual of all that research, results and possibilities.
- The purpose of service design methodologies is to design according to the needs of customers or participants, so that the service is user-friendly, competitive and relevant to the customers. The backbone of this process is to understand the behavior of the customers, their needs and motivations. Service designers draw on the methodologies of fields such as ethnography and journalism to gather customer insights through interviews and by shadowing service users. Many observations are synthesized to generate concepts and ideas that are typically portrayed visually, for example in sketches or service prototypes. Service design may inform changes to an existing service or creation of new services. service design as planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communications and material components (like smart phones, kiosks, web sites, etc). It’s very scenario based, use cases, sequences of action – I think all pertinent to ethnographic animation.