Media
newdesign magazine | issue 37
briefcase
PSP – how do you play yours? Crouched on the edge of the coffee table? Sprawled on the floor? Locked in your bedroom under the duvet? Tessa Chirnside attends a furniture exhibition inspired by the playing positions adopted by PSP users Playing position
Product: Furniture inspired bv the PSP
Client: Sony
Designer: Students from the Royal College of Art
Brief: Create an exhibition that amplifies the multi-player capabilities and possible social interactivity PSP offers
The ultimate gaming experience was what students at the Royal College of Art (RCA) were briefed to discover and respond to through creating an exhibition that amplified the multi-player capabilities and possible social interactivity PSP’s (PlayStation Portable) offer. Beauty, freedom and iconic design were the key criteria in this extremely loose brief provided by Sony.
The exhibition was to be part of PSP’s UK launch in December 2005 and with a deadline of eight weeks for all research, concepts and developmenno be completed, the team of six first year students selected from the Design Products, Interaction Design and Industrial Design Engineering departments were united in a quest to create their response. Their research began in the slightly unorthodox (however, very fitting) format of a BBQ house party.
For those of you that are not au fait with the PSP and the available technology it offers users, it is a hand held garning device, (hence portable) each with it’s own LCD screen and directional keypad. Users can not only play against the computer, but also interact with other networked ‘local’ gamers by way of PSP’s wi-fi capabilities, thus opening the possibility to spontaneous new relationship building via competitive gaming connection. How exactly this interaction took place within a group environment was what the students began to observe as the PSP BBQ got into full swing. It was here, amongst the beverages and fine foods, (hotdogs I am led to believe) that the initial stages of the original concept began to form.
Common positions of the involved gamers began to emerge – leaning against walls, huddled over their PSP’s on benches, cross legged on the floor, generally oblivious to the rest of their (non-gaming) surroundings. But what was really understood from this and other research activities was the level of interaction between players, whilst they simultaneously searched for isolation in order to focus wholly on their personal gaming experience. This was eloquently demonstrated by gamers involved in an early evening multi player session draping their jumpers over their heads in order to see their screens more clearly and to limit distractions from surrounding party goers, however, from within these jumper enclosures came the ‘gaming banter’ that proved interaction within the group was still a required stimulant and very much part of the full experience.
With this in mind, and after plenty of ‘required’ personal PSP time, the students began to thrash out the finer details of their design. ‘Once the conceptual idea had been generated it was a question of looking at the different options of form and materials,’ explains Alan Outten, an Interaction Design student. Lifesized cardboard mock-ups of the structures were built as the students perfected the design and began to look into manufacturing possibilities and restrictions. ‘The process was quite complex,’ says Manolis Kelaidis, an Industrial Design Engineering member of the team. ‘All the panels (profile 800) were different, so the whole fabrication resembled building a 3D puzzle. Each piece had to be cut and then joined with its neighbours at the right angles.’
Like many design processes, the project evolved through a lifecycle almost of its own. As the students dealt with the limitations that were in place through time and budgetary restrictions, the structures final finished form was continually evolving throughout each of the design and manufacturing stages.
Originally, the structures were to be upholstered with a thick felt onto a fibreglass base, in order to focus on the necessity of creating an insular environment that delivered a cocoon like enclosure around the player and blocked out exterior distraction. ‘Eventually we went for perforated steel as a compromise between cost, structural properties and weight. When manufacturing started we realised that the perforated steel’s opacity served our objective best – to encourage a shared experience while at the same time providing a degree of isolation and immersion. We decided then to upholster only a few panels in the interior to provide more comfortable use,’ says Kelaidis.
When you view the finished exhibition, it is hard to imagine the concept being as successful should they have not made this realisation. The perforated steel offers exactly the right level of isolation and inclusion within an environment. Looked at from certain angles exteriorly, (when looking past the slightly rough finishing applied to a number of the joint welds) the structures seem solid, yet from others you are tantalized by the possibility that ‘perhaps’ these massively imposing enclosures actually house ‘something’. (This conceptual layer is even more appreciated by those who have seen the effects of hours of continued PSP gaming – many a human quality can be drained from the involved participants!)
From the interior of the semi enclosed space you seem to take on the power and size of your shell structure, you feel transported into another world. A more futuristic world, a world where you become immersed in your personal gaming reality almost immediately, yet remain subconsciously aware of your exterior surroundings and hence share spatial and intellectual dialogue with gamers that are equally immersed in the exact same gaming reality.
It seems that the RCA students have interpreted the rather abstract brief from Sony with a certain amount of youthful wit and, in having done so, managed to bring the PSP ultimate experience a little closer to being understood and possibly experienced even by those who would have previously seen little reason to pick one up. With their interpretation of the brief being sound in itself, and their design one that certainly begs for a level of interactivity from its audience, it seems the design grew organically rather than through a linear design process, thus resulting in the products slightly unrefined finishing due to time and budgetary restrictions. However, perhaps really the only thing missing is a way for users to be successfully drip-fed an alcoholic beverage whilst keeping two hands on the PSPcontrols!