MICRO | 01

In the Teaching Module “Micro UX”, we MA User Experience Design students started to work with four different external project partners: This Ain’t Rock’n’Roll, Bittersuite, and Moley Robotics and Chelsea Physic Garden.

We got assigned a group of eight students with the Partner TARR ( This Ain’t Rock’n’Roll). We further subdivided our teams into four.

Team Members

Manali Panchal

Ines Yin

Svaney

Gabrielle

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Micro Unit encouraged us to align our industrial and studio practices and research methods working on real briefs in a professional environment.

Brief ~ Design a way to materialise the blockchain.

Partner: This Ain’t Rock’n’Roll

WEEK 1

Kickstart the desktop research

I was new to what a blockchain is; the only information I had was that cryptocurrency could make you rich if you are lucky enough! However, yes, the topic of blockchain made my interest inclined to know more about it, and we started with our desktop research.

As I got my head into the brief, I realised how we need to understand blockchain at the micro-level and identify design opportunities in what we observe at Brixton.

Self-made GIF Depicting Decentralised blockchain network recording data in nodes and shared across the network.

MY UNDERSTANDING OF BLOCKCHAIN

A database 💠 that is shared across a network of computers 🖥 .

⛓

Database Records are bundled together into blocks and added to the chain one after another.

It is decentralized and has no “master.”

As we got our head into blockchain with initial desktop research, we looked upon blockchain's key features and benefits. While researching, we also considered seeing the other side of blockchain by taking note of how this system incorporated, for example, criminality. But as our group discussed more and more, we all agreed to go forward with the positive impact of blockchain technology in the emerging future and its possible uses.

Benefits

• Easier and faster to do peer to peer (point to point; individual to individual) transactions with lower cost (no transaction fee).

• Make the process of exchange more transparent, and help to validate the events more quickly.

• Different parties collaborate without sharing sensitive information, allowing them to trace the origins of supplies, verify their status, and reduce friction throughout the supply chain.

Key Features:

Decentralised ▬ Distributed ▬ Transparent ▬ Fast ▬ Safe

Upcoming Applications:

Being applied to many areas like energy, pharmaceutical industries, and retails for making sure that the resources can be delivered to people that actually have urgent need as quickly as possible (Laclau, 2020; McCauley, 2020).

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Further, we got introduced to the TARR team Charlie Waterhouse (Creative Director) and Clive Russell (Design Director). They shared about the Brixton pounds, a local currency launched in 2008 in the face of the financial crises in Brixton. Further to know more about it, we started our research from the Brixton itself.

Image: First Online meet on Zoom Call with Charlie and Clive from TARR

Past and Present Scenario

Brixton Pond in 2008-2018

Image Credit: brixtonpound.org

When launched in 2008, Brixton pound aimed to prove that money can stick to Brixton. It encouraged local trade, supported independent businesses and built a human-scale circular economy.

Brixton pound in the process, made a micro-grant-giving scheme, opened a pay-what-you-can veggie/vegan café using only surplus food, and ran a local lottery.

Current scenario of 2020-21

The local currency with paper notes and system was a warm-up. They have started working with the Algorand Foundation on the next chapter of the Brixton Pound story. Algorand Foundation gives a globe promising blockchain n technology with a pure Proof-of-stake approach.

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It started becoming incredibly exciting as it was all new to me. I started understanding blockchain technology in my way by drawing it in example scenarios.

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Simplest definition I could think of blockchain technology is

Distributed System Which Can Store Information 

Blockchain glossary terms which I made myself familiar with

Consensus Mechanism - Proof of Stake (PoS), Consensus Mechanism - Proof of Work (PoW),Decentralization/Decentralized,Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT),Node, Mining,Peer-to-Peer (P2P),Smart Contract.

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Trip to Brixton

Our first visit to Brixton gave us a clear outlook of the Brixton Vibe. We notice few apparent aspects which people relate to when they are in Brixton or from Brixton itself

• Cultural

• Friendly

• Community

• Vibrant

• Diverse

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Overview of Concept Development

As we started exploring and discussing about blockchain and its relationship with brixton, we gave a thought on Blockchain technology for social impact.

We made our aim of the project as

How blockchain technology can be used to help create a more equal, more inclusive and more diverse community.

We considered our design thinking with these three aspects mentioned below to keep our imagination within blockchain technology as asked by the brief of the project.

1. Critical terminologies: “distributed ledger”, “block and chain” and the “verification mechanism” (Chen el ta, 2018).

2. Core operational principles: decentralisation, transparency, equality and accountability (Al-Saqaf and Seidler, 2017)

3. Blockchain certainly can go a long-way to making current business and process more efficient and transparent.

Our concept revolved around incorporating human values into the idea, such as local culture, time, love, or understanding. We took this as our starting point of concept, or call it a direction of our project.

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Weekly Presentation

To sum up, in our 1st week of work, we presented our research and our aim towards the project on the screen with appropriate examples. After the presentation in the studio, it was a quiet interactive session with students in class, especially with the other TARR group, as we were thinking on the same subject.

Our faculty, Dr John Fass, mentioned to us to look at Place (Localise, micro); People; Situated scenarios; Experiences and interactions. He also liked the direction we are thinking of from the values like culture, time, love (care), understanding. Also, our tutor, Alaistair Steele, mentioned that how you localise is essential, thinking about place and thinking about spatial relationship keeping brief in mind.

Our next week agenda stayed with the thought of

What is the network, how we exchange, how do we materialise it?

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References

• Al-Saqaf, W. and Seidler, N., 2017. Blockchain technology for social impact: opportunities and challenges ahead. Journal of Cyber Policy, 2(3), pp.338-354.

• Challener, C. (2019) Why the Industry Is Moving Toward Blockchain Technology. Available at: https://www.pharmasalmanac.com/articles/why-the-industry-is-moving-toward-blockchain-technology (Accessed: 28 April, 2021).

• Chen, G., Xu, B., Lu, M. and Chen, N.S., 2018. Exploring blockchain technology and its potential applications for education. Smart Learning Environments, 5(1), pp.1-10.

• Eleks Labs. (2018) How to Craft a Better UX Design for Blockchain. Available at: https://labs.eleks.com/2018/08/better-ux-design-for-blockchain.html (Accessed: 28 April, 2021).

• Laclau, B. (2020) Why the energy sector must embrace blockchain now. Available at: https://www.ey.com/en_uk/digital/blockchain-s-potential-win-for-the-energy-sector (Accessed: 28 April, 2021).

• McCauley, A. (2020) Why Big Pharma Is Betting on Blockchain. Available at: https://hbr.org/2020/05/why-big-pharma-is-betting-on-blockchain (Accessed: 28 April, 2021).

• The Free Library., 2019. BLOCKCHAIN EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION. [Available at: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/BLOCKCHAIN+EQUALITY%2c+DIVERSITY+AND+INCLUSION.-a0591836629] (Accessed: 28 April, 2021)

• Weird. (2017) Blockchain Expert Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty. 28 November, 2021. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYip_Vuv8J0 (Accessed: 28 April, 2021).

MICRO | 02

BRIEF : Design a way to materialise the blockchain.

WEEK 2

After last week’s initial research and familiarisation with the brief, we decided to dedicate week 2 to exploratory analysis.

Key Findings

My team member InesYin and I went to Brixton to find out more about the place and the values over the weekend. We found many useful key findings in Brixton, which included infrastructure design with diverse people. In addition, the lively feeling of Brixton was clearly visible.

While strolling in brixton’s market area we talked to people if they recognise Brixton pounds now. But many few had an idea about it, but at the same time, they were curious to know. We found out few insights on the internet and also talked about it with Charlie and Clive.

Understanding the disappearance of Brixton pounds gave us more profound thoughts on how local currency aimed to reduce carbon emissions from long-distance transportation of goods, maintain the diversity of Brixton’s shops, and build a resilient economy that protects local livelihoods. It can be brought again to lives through incorporating an updated system.

As we started our mind storming for ideas from the direction of mutual aids, funds, charity.

Our main agenda was to how to turn a piece of Money into a valuable, physical thing? Why? What are the cons of existed Money?

Make it a social benefit financial exchange rather than a profit monetary exchange.

Care, time, understanding, culture, eco-friendly

If we are going to design a blockchain, what should be contained? for instance: bitcoin (sender, receiver, amount of coins)

…

While finding out case studies and mind storming on the ideation, I started understanding Money through metaphors. To give my thinking another way round.

Money as a 'connector of value.'

Money does not measure because it is quantitative; money measures because humans need a measure, and any measure is a qualified quantitative relation (Seitz, 2017). It is the connector of exchange. Except for Money, what can connect value?

We had varied initial ideas like using doing a BRPG (board role-playing game) suggested by InesYin or doing. An exhibition in Brixton to educate people about blockchain technology. Materialisation was where we were trying to end, but our pain points remained there through our discussion of how we should create value that would bring trust for exchange. In the end, money is trust.

Below are few imageries for the explorations

Exploring Ideas

Explaining Blockchain to MA: UX peers

While discussing within the group calls, we thought to make blockchain visible in our classroom through an example of Blockchain charity in a hypothetical scenario. Furthermore, we aimed to show the characteristics of blockchain through essential experimentation in the classroom.

Through giving receipts to individuals for both type of charity, we showed them how blockchain helped them get to know where their money has gone.

How did it help to clear mindset of everyone off what is blockchain?

• Visible and traceable transaction

• Authentication of their Donation

This experimentation showed the users of what exactly is the difference between both the approach, and how is blockchain technology. can be new. form of technology for such concepts like charity or mutual aids.

Feedback

Our presentation went quite well in terms of explaining our process. Our professor, Dr John Fass, pointed out that taking a subject like charity in Brixton isn't the best paradigm for Brixton. It's not precisely as caring and as loving because charity tends to run in a particular direction. He left. Switch a question of why do charity exist? Because the state does not provide sufficient support, and that is the reason you need other civil society types of organisations, and that's excellent space to be in this project. We realised that we need to bring our thoughts to what's unique about Brixton? What needs celebration? What do people value about their community? How does? Brixton belongs to them.

Our next week’s agenda is to fit into some of the unique values about the local area of Brixton and give the feeling of togetherness and community aspect.

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References

• Seitz, E., 2017. What Is Money?. Social Analysis, 61(4).

• PixelPlex. 2021. Blockchain in Charity & Philanthropy: Benefits and Future. [online] Available at: <https://pixelplex.io/blog/blockchain-charity-projects-and-their-philanthropic-benefits/>

• Cointext.io. 2021. CoinText – Send cryptocurrency to phone numbers or wallets using SMS text messages. [online] Available at: <https://cointext.io/en/>

MICRO | 03

BRIEF : Design a way to materialise the blockchain.

WEEK 3

After a good feedback insight, we took our Monday morning by researching how we can incorporate experiential research in Brixton and make meaningful participation, giving exactly what we are looking for.

As we were collaborating on miro with ideations, we met online discussed a few of our imaginations. Gabriella showed her interest in an idea for Brixbank. A reciprocity trading system where people earn tokens by providing and can spend the credits on whatever is offered, more like a care system.

As we discussed the ideation, it made me curious to visualise myself, and I tried cracking it through my understanding.

I started developing my thoughts on building platforms that allow different people to connect and make a mutual deal and the events recorded on the blockchain. It sounds pretty straightforward, but making it possible in reality was not easy to execute.

• Earn our trust to earn our wallets

• Take care of the people who take care of us

I researched more about the events which have been successful in Brixton and came up with Brixtopia, a Music festival like Cross the hack. While working on the concept we talked about the Time Banking UK, checking out how is it win action.

Let’s experience Brixton in REAL!

For the second half of the day, we prepared our next days plan of ‘street research’ itself in Brixton.

We managed to pick few minimal things and go out to street to talk to people

• Some white shirts; hangers; colour pens or pigments; cardboards;

• Camera &/ Phones;

• Notebooks &/ Sketch books (for recording or sketching what we get);

• Speaker (for playing music)

What is special about Brixton?

We Planned our visit in noon and started with our lunch from random chit selection of different culture cuisine, as brixton has diverse range of restaurant. We ended up having Thai meals in brixton village.

We pumped ourselves up for the next challenge of interacting with peopled absorbing the local-feel.

How we did a street research!

We had a background sheet saying, share your culture! with t-shirts lying on the ground for people to share their story about their culture, play music, share their thoughts on how they feel about Brixton's multiculturality.

Being from another country and doing a street experimentation in really new surrounding of Brixton, London was not at all easy going tasks. There were negative responses too, but the most exciting thing was how people were willing to share their excitement towards their own culture and see others emotions too.

Compilation video of our day!

Meeting This Ain’t Rock and Roll Team

Somewhere in Brixton!

Blockchain Gang

After engaging with people on the roads of Brixton, we were still excited + nervous as we were about to meet Charlie with his team. As soon our other half (Group-2) reached Brixton, we headed to someplace in Brixton where nobody had any clue.

The day was going so great that we were not keeping track of time; we were actually working outside after a long time as UK restrictions were reduced. Charlie took us to a cocktail bar known as Courtesan. The vibe after entering that place was really different; we said hello to all the team members, and yes, what we ended up with was to see collections of BRIXTON POUND NOTES.

It was an incredible experience as we were having our own Brixton pounds to purchase the cocktails in the bar. Charlie made sure that our meeting will make our ideas revolve. We spoke about what we are thinking to everyone, and the day ended with great conversations.

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Feedback time.

As we presented our whole journey of this week, everyone was intrigued to see how we are moving forward with the values of Brixton. Our faculty admired that we are going out and exploring; they wanted us to synthesis the research and bring the situations where these qualities could apply.

For the idea of BRIX-BANK which we were thinking initially, John explain us a very important thing which is, It all sounds quite transactional. He asked to be careful that thinking about analyzing the blockchain doesn't kind of train your mind into looking at everything as an exchange of a commodity. And that was very true, that is what was happening many times while we were continuously bringing outputs as a exchange of commodity.

Our next weeks agenda was to bring back all what we have experienced into a concept where there is room to exchange values.

MICRO | 04

BRIEF : Design a way to materialise the blockchain.

WEEK 4

This week started with two headlines

• Process the survey (synthesis);

• Resolve the “proof-of-human” and “uniqueness” in some way.

For Synthesis our understanding after few trips to brixton, we started collaboration on micro board and jotted down the points on each subject like Food, street style, diversity, culture hybridity, change of brixton. As we mapped everything out which you can see below, we came up with five main thoughts over it :

4. Unique characters

5. Friendly faces

6. Different music tastes

1. Willingness to participate

2. Cultural pride

3. Storytelling

Primarily, Brixton is a cultural melting pot of food, languages, music and atmosphere. When reviewing everything, a few points stood out to us - especially music. David Bowie was born here; they have Caribbean music playing on all the street corners, the reggae man proud of his radio station and the summer music festivals.

For thinking about a situation where blockchain technology can exist, we started thinking from the frame of an event happening at Brixton. We looked at the event which is named Cross The Tracks - Brixton's Soul, Jazz & Funk Feast.  

On a group call, we discussed how can we bring multicultural + humanly values together to create a system that can be recorded in the blockchain. For the same discussion, we started brainstorming on technologies that could be useful for building interaction between two or more people in a friendly way. Gab mentioned what we discussed with the TARR team about a card recording sound. We started on thinking of what if we hi-fi with cards and exchange (something).

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Imagery : Visualisation of blockchain with keeping sound as ledger.

Done by Manali

But before seeing the technology, what I questioned is about the purpose of the card! is it giving any recall value or access to a music festival? 

Making sound a ledger was interesting, and that could only be if it's a unique sound and after you upload it through a device you are in a network. 

Incorporating blockchain is like incorporating different roadways with which are being tracked and joined with each one of them, imagining it like a 'spider web'.

As we were proceeding we again started with our brief of materializing the blockchain, what that meant for me was to build a system where blockchain is visible in reality to incorporate the technology. Therefore we started thinking of the physicality of the concept, after giving many vague ideas, different values of culture from different subjects like, what if dance? what if food? what if only music?

With the continuous thoughtfulness of blockchains in our brain, we settled on building a networked event named 

Cultural Music Mashup 

Who is this for? 

People who will be going to the Music festival - cross the tracks in Brixton this summer. Every individual can create a new music mashup with people you meet.

Tool for connecting with people to build mashup is your ''ID Card''

As we were developing this concept we immediately tried testing and getting the opinions of our colleagues. After testing with peers, we pointed out the factors which need consideration.

• Why is remixing the songs we like counted as cultural hybridity?

• What about Brixton? what is special about Brixton? Could we have our focus on the music cultures inside Brixton?

After testing the initial concept we were contemplating how to move further. We brought our thoughts to a Better sense of Brixton! Reggae? Soul? Jazz? Funk? Directing on what belongs to Brixton.

We ended our week with more things to solve/rethink

• What is exchanging?MUSIC?SONGS?

• Why people want to know about (validate) the transaction?

• What are the final outcomes of the transactions? How is it visible?

Feedback from Mid Point Review

We presented our work to our collaborators and our faculty. Feedback was very helpful for us to make progress in the next stage. Charlie and Clive mentioned about the stages which would come after a mashup of song, Dr John Fass mentioned us to relate back to the idea of blockchain in a more apparent way. They suggested having a user flow and perform actual testing of music.

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References

• Hall, S., Hobson, D., Lowe, A., and Willis, P. (1980). Coding/decoding. Culture, media, and language, pp.63-87.

• O’Dair, M., Beaven, Z., Neilson, D., Osborne, R., & Pacifico, P. (2016). Music on the Blockchain. London: Middlesex University.

• Rao, P. (2018). How Blockchain can be used in the music industry beyond the hype. Available at: https://medium.com/quillhash/how-blockchain-can-be-used-in-the-music-industry-beyond-the-hype-339e1dbf18a7

MICRO | 05

BRIEF : Design a way to materialise the blockchain.

Week 5

This week our agenda is to test with people with authentic music and see whether the idea is possible to be realised or worth continuing.

We asked our friends from different cultural backgrounds and tried layering two songs with similar speed for testing. We further tried different variation like instrumental and vocal sound.

As we realised this direction was not working, we took some time off and started brainstorming individually. After few hours, we again met online to discuss what we could think of, and we as group finalised an on keeping the blockchain-based music technology that will enable a fair distribution of royalty, tracking and securing the ownership of music rights.

Image credit : InesYIN

Co-Create

My brain was still developing concept. I made a visual depiction of what my ideas were around. I was still on a mindset of why music only if we are making a mashup, why not bring it to a more open-ended idea of preferring what goes with your interest.

Ines and Svaney took initiative of making a storyboard while I started building a system of our idea into blockchain technology considering algorand technology.

Building a storyboard

How blockchain technology exists in our concept?

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Speed Dating With MA:UX peers

We presented our ideation on the table, explained what we were thinking, and gave them their direct thoughts on the concept. The speed dating method helped us better as direct communication makes everyone attentive to listen and think about it.

While speed dating, we also had small experimentation to do with their own hobbies or interest. We gave them an instrument to play sound and collaborate with another peer at the same time. In the feedback, they proposed that we have a platform to see all this happening to get the background of what this is about.

It was an excellent time to discuss my own idea also. I also showed my visual presentation about what if you co-create anything you like.

It could be Artwork + storytelling or Artwork + Skiing. Whatever seems interesting to you.

Everyone was positive towards the idea as it made sense to do what you like; otherwise, you won’t get Into a music mashup until you are really passionate.

Dr John Fass mentioned that our explanation about blockchain is better than before, but at the same time, he suggested looking back at what our central concept was while we were researching on the street, he said to make it 'real.'

Design the experience, next stage of what you did with street research. Bring Brixton and participation together.

MICRO | 06

BRIEF : Design a way to materialise the blockchain.

WEEK 6

After brainstorming on executing blockchain technology in our concept, we were stuck with the thoughts to go ahead. As always, talking to faculty makes us more directed as feedback from the third person is always helpful to see from different perspectives. Our tutors suggested making the experience real in our last feedback, so we thought of going to Brixton and doing an interactive street gathering. We discussed on a video call what are possibilities could make it a smash.

'People coming together out to do something', Not forgetting the social values of Brixton.

However, I continued stating the concept to make it more exact from terms that could make everyone understand the essence behind it. Few pointers which I mentioned were

• Spread the word about the power of peer groups in Brixton

• Developing a multi-local network of facilitators

• Increasing need for '21st Century' cognitive, creative and collaborative skills

• Focus more on human relations, Building a Culture of Collaboration

• Collective learning - How could we create a totally different system, one that brings learning closer to the fundamental purpose of our lives - throughout our lives?

Prove and test

We conducted an interactive research in ‘heart of the brixton, on a tree’. The research was for people to gather collectively and match their own cultural interests or talents with the others’ that they may find interesting or would like to learn. Also, people were encouraged to think about the possibilities of the new upshot of blending two skills collectively. For instance, one girl said she thinks authentic candle making hybridizing with Gospel singing may result in a microphone shape candle that may even have smells on it or maybe textured representing sound.

Doing this research made us prove the notion of building a sensemaking collective collaboration and the audience who were involved with us in Brixton were positively excited about it.

Further we took our research and created a system where you could enrolled in a system and look for different interesting skills. Me Svaney ans Ines involved ourself in making a digital platform where people could access different skills. Gab helped in building physical prototype to show an example to get clear understanding. I personally helped in building the content of website and creating a user friendly interface. Further we did a speed dating session in LCC and got some useful insights which we could incorporate in our system.

Final Output

We presented our final output with updating the changes we thought will make the experience of blockchain “materialised”

We had both onsite- online experiences which we made possible on the day of the presentation.

For making the material part more robust as the brief says “materializing blockchain”, Gab and InesYin worked on creating blockchain in real which was named “MashUp Center” in the studio. It represented the communal area in Brixton where people can walk in, browse experiences and collaborate with others, and do their creations there. As said before we also a digital platform to connect between physical activities and the recording win blockchain through a digital platform. Therefore, we chained the timestamps of the productions, which would be automatically produced and published once the project finished and uploaded to the digital platform.

OUR CONCEPT

DIGITAL PLATFORM

I individually invested some of my skills to make a quick website prototype with the essential UI elements. Ines helped in building information and Svaney helped me with few screens of the Figma prototype. There was consideration given to information hierarchy and how would a user be interested when he reaches the landing page. We also introduced a section named mashup support where participants could apply for funds to start their collaboration and get notified if the fund transfer is successful.

Summary of Micro UX

Our team designed an experience incorporating both physical and digital interactions called “MashUp” responding to the brief of designing a way to materialize the blockchain, a distributed ledger technology (DLT) that can support decentralized, peer-to-peer transactions and verify data events (Nakamoto, 2008; Tang et al., 2020).

Feedbacks

Charlie said the project reflects Brixton very well through our research and outcome. Alaister loved the idea and said it is successful, he liked how we have placed the project and situation. We were still asked to think about the weaponization of the system design.

Dr John Fass said that the brief is hidden with system design, and you have made that truly and have maintained the cultural aspect from start. The digital platform is made well and clear with the visual hierarchy. presentation is well designed and concise.

Learnings

The micro-project gave us a good timeline to explore as far as we wanted in terms of working with people for people. The collaboration aspect of projects helps everyone at last to gain knowledge and understanding. Being with people of different mindsets always creates chaos but also give ability to listen and respect each others ideations, this realisation will surely benefit in the long run. I enjoyed the whole process of how faculty involves themselves with us in a creative environment which has always helped us in reaching out to our goal. I appreciate their hard work too to push us to the borders.