Britta Kalkreuter

Crowdsourced Feedback With Imagery Rather Than Text: Would Designers Use It?

Cognitive styles theories suggest that we divide into visual and verbal thinkers. In this paper we describe a method designed to encourage visual communication between designers and their audiences. This new visual feedback method is based on enabling fast intuitive selections by the crowd from image banks when responding to an idea. Visual summarization reduces the massed image choices to a small number of representative images. These summaries are then consumed at a glance by designers receiving the feedback leading to thoughtful reflection on their designs. We report an evaluation using two types of imagery for feedback. Twelve designers took part, receiving visual feedback in response to their designs. In semi-structured interviews they described their interpretation of the feedback, how it inspired them to change their designs and contrasted it with text feedback. Eleven of the twelve designers revealed that they would be enthusiastic users of a service providing this new mode of feedback.

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words but Can it Paint Just One

Imagery and language are often seen as serving different aspects of cognition, with cognitive styles theories proposing that people can be visual or verbal thinkers. Most feedback systems, however, only cater to verbal thinkers. To help rectify this, we have developed a novel method of crowd communication which appeals to those more visual people. Designers can ask a crowd to feedback on their designs using specially constructed image banks to discover the perceptual and emotional theme perceived by possible future customers. A major component of the method is a summarization process in which the crowds feedback, consisting of a mass of images, is presented to the designer as a digest of representative images. In this paper we describe an experiment showing that these image summaries are as effective as the full image selections at communicating terms. This means that designers can consume the new feedback confident that it represents a fair representation of the total image feedback from the crowd.

Design and the Evolving Tradition of Sanganer Hand Block Printing: Formation and Negotiation of Artisanal Knowledge and Identities Against the Backdrop of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Abstract Tradition has been described by heritage studies as a transformative process that is being enforced, reinvented, transformed, denied, or contested, with heritage seen as a construct of the past, present, and imagined futures. The role of craft and design interactions in safeguarding and rejuvenating cultural practices has yet to receive adequate attention against this theoretical backdrop. In order to discuss how design affects craft practices, we studied Sanganer hand block printing’s development amidst increasing design influences in postindependence India. We especially consider the way in which artisanal identities and practice, or intangible cultural heritage, are formed and negotiated when engaged with specific design scenarios and actors; and by studying the varied attitudes and realities of contemporary Sanganer hand block printing from this interdisciplinary point of view, the paper offers new insights into a range of “modern,” “traditional,” and “heritage” craft realities.