Meet the Faculty: Phillip Gough talks about his journey as a Designer.
Milla Kim: Thanks for giving up your time today to have a little interview with us for SUEDE. I guess, probably the first question I want to ask is ‒ How did you start your journey into design?
Phil Gough: Well, I wasn’t always studying design, I actually started studying science. So, I was studying physics and I got to the point where I didn’t have the motivation to do the high level math that you needed to do for physics.
We did some classes on materials, how different kinds of materials work, and how to use them. I thought it was really interesting to actually look at materials and so that’s how I got into Industrial Design. I studied Industrial Design for my Undergrad and I graduated right as the Global Financial Crisis was kicking off, so that was a rough time to be a graduate designer. So, I ended up coming back ‒ thinking about studying again eventually ‒ and I thought about where the future of design was headed in Australia and in Sydney. There was a new Master’s program at the University of Sydney and so that’s how I got into Interaction Design.
Milla Kim: Okay, so you went from Science to Industrial Design to Interaction Design? That’s a little bit of a jump. What would you say your motivation was for going into Interaction Design?
Phil Gough: Well, when we did Industrial Design, we did a little bit of coding with HTML, and at that time, Interaction Design was a really new area. It was more about “Do you want to be a Creative Technologist?” ‒ we wouldn’t use that term now since the field has matured so much. Things were much more experimental in that era, because of the field being so much newer.
Going into research for my Capstone project in the M.IDEA program, I actually did interactive installations. We built an interactive table and we had a piece of scientific research based on the Great Barrier Reef that was going on, where there was a scientist who was looking at the way that climate change affected the life cycle of coral. And so we used that to create an interactive museum piece of sorts. There was a multiple channel film that one student worked on, while two of us worked on the interactive table ‒ programming, constructing it, etc. Studying Industrial Design was really helpful in achieving a good idea in how to design for, you know, somebody to use their hands to interact with things, the building, the materials, and all that kind of stuff.
Milla Kim: Yeah, that would’ve come in handy!
Phil Gough: Yeah, but it all kind of came back to communicating science. Getting into research was more about thinking, not just about how to engage people with the science, but how people actually understand it and how they can turn that engagement into knowledge or even perhaps action. So I looked at Data Visualisation.
Milla Kim: Yeah, I feel like Data Visualisation really comes in smoothly with that, since it’s all about communicating complex ideas or complex data into a story that makes sense. So I guess everything you said came down to ‒ was it communication science you said?
Phil Gough: So, going beyond engaging with information to actually understanding and having a good mental model ‒ like, if we think about what visualisation is ‒ it’s not only about making something seeable. You don’t want to just see the data, but if you visualise something like how an athlete visualises themselves winning or how a musician visualises themselves when playing music ‒ this idea of visualising something and making a mental image of it plays into what data visualisation is as well ‒ creating that mental model.
For my thesis, I looked at how different types of visualisation worked ‒ whether it’s an infographic, like a static visualisation, or a video. I was doing my thesis partly at CSIRO, and some colleagues of mine were looking at turning scientific research into videos, so I actually used some of their videos in my research and also in these interactive installations where someone can actually manipulate what’s on the screen. So, just comparing those different approaches.
Milla Kim: Sure. So with Data Visualisation, when would you say was the first time you came across it in your whole career?
Phil Gough: It really started when we were looking at how we engage somebody. I was aware of data visualisation but thinking about it as a designer. It came across when we were making this installation for my Master’s Capstone, where we were just trying to engage people and I was thinking ‒ what does engagement translate to and how do we know?
So by looking at Data Visualisation and deliberately taking something and representing it in a way that you want people to be able to take that story away that you mentioned earlier, rather than just engagement. So yeah, that’s how I started to come across Data Visualisation.
Milla Kim: Interesting! So it was mainly through the Master’s project. Just for the people who may know of it but maybe have not defined it for themselves ‒ could you please elaborate on what Data Visualisation is?
Phil Gough: Yeah so like I mentioned before, at its core, there are two definitions for the word visualisation. The first one is to make something seeable ‒ you visualise something and you make it able to be seen. There’s a lot of perceptual psychology research in that direction, where people can say “What’s the most efficient way to represent something on a screen?” or something like that. But I think the most important thing, especially for designers where you have the most contribution is ‒ how do you help people make their own mental model of the relationships between those data points?
So, if you picture it as a simple bar chart, the relationship is pretty straightforward, but if you think of a huge map, for example, those relationships get more complex. But what do we take out of that? On the train maps that we see everywhere, they all have the same style, which came from a guy named Harry Beck in the 1930s. The original train map could actually be overlaid onto a regular road map. Harry Beck was a draftsman who drew electrical circuits for living, and when he drew his map, he actually removed the distances between the train stations. So you had a schematic diagram, a representation of that information that made all the other geographic information redundant, because the train will only stop at those specific stations. You only need to know what line you’re connected to; you don’t need to know that it’s 5, 7, or 23 kilometres to the next station, because the trains are not going to let you off.
The idea behind Data Visualisation is that trade-off between what we show, and what we take away to give people the important message, and you touched on something really interesting, which is that Data Visualisation now really is about telling stories.
We’ve known for all history that the way to communicate with somebody is through stories. If you go down to the pub and somebody’s telling a story, it will have the same structure as somebody writing a research paper, or as somebody writing a novel or a film. Most, if not all stories have the same basic idea. You give someone a little bit of information and you will upset that view of that information and their worldview, you let them explore ‒ so in a Data Visualisation, you give them that the data to look at and then you give them something that they take away and they feel like they’ve learned or they’ve grown more. That’s a story structure and that works with Data Visualisation as it does with the way that we understand all information as human beings.
Milla Kim: I think that the storytelling aspect is covered a lot in the Data Visualisation Studio we do in Design Computing but, so it’s good to know that it’s a real important thing! I guess you’ve already sort of touched on this as well, but what is your take on Data Visualisation and maybe more importantly ‒ is it a skill that we should all explore and be familiar with?
Phil Gough: I think all designers should at least have experience working with Data Visualisation, because it’s a really nice mix of something that’s a little bit technical and requires a bit of analytical processing on the designer’s part. But in my experience working with Data Visualisation and Research, you have a lot of power to really make an impact through Data Visualisation. I’ve got a project with the Emergency Department at one of the big hospitals in Sydney, and being able to use designerly methods like user testing and be able to explain why these are beneficial, have been really helpful to help develop a really good Data Visualisation for the hospital context.
One of the big challenges with clients is always going to be convincing them that changes need to be made, and using methods like Think Aloud, System Usability Scales, Single Ease Questions, and **all those kinds of things, was really insightful for a lot of people who don’t really understand why we need to talk to people ‒ like, “Oh, we can just make a dashboard, give it to people and we’ll tell them to use it, and because it’s their job, they’ll have to use it” is the way that a lot of people think.
But being able to say, “Look, if we make a few small changes here, we’ll be able to see the difference”, and we’re able to show that with subsequent rounds of testing and all the less experienced people would look at the results from the tests and say, “Oh, you’ve made a huge improvement”, when it wasn’t really a huge difference.
So I think the combination of the analytical skills that designers should practice, along with the contribution of our ability to communicate ‒ because that’s what we do, design is to communicate with people, whether if you’re a product designer and you’re communicating the specifications of a plastic object that will be made by somebody halfway around the world who may not have finished school, or whether you’re designing an information dashboard for clinical experts, or whether you’re designing an app for your users ‒ you have to use diagrams to do that. As designers, we have to keep communicating, so Data Visualisation is a really good skill to develop that.
Milla Kim: Yeah, so designers are really communicators and Data Visualisation is a great way to communicate so they really go hand in hand. Hopefully, more people will be inspired to pursue Data Visualisation after this! Going back to your journey into design ‒ we did a little LinkedIn research and we’ve seen that you’ve done a lot of studying and a lot of research ‒ do you reckon that there is a reason as to why you are so drawn to research and also teaching?
Phil Gough: Yeah, so I enjoy teaching. I enjoy engaging people with people in that way. My dad was a teacher and my brother is a teacher so, part of it is understanding what teaching is like and enjoying that, but for me, research ‒ I think it’s interesting that I have the opportunity to look at the kinds of questions that are difficult for industry to challenge because they may not have the kind of immediate, or even mid-term return on investment. With research, you get a lot more time to look at things and because our goals are different, I’m not trying to make it a profitable company. We can look at different kinds of questions, so with the Affective Interactions Lab that Naseem ****runs, one of the projects that we have at the moment is looking at how we can have virtual reality for people in palliative care, to help them with issues such as connectedness with other people or acceptance of their situation. And so, that’s a really hard thing for the industry to tackle because, what’s the market in palliative care? It is a really difficult area to justify, going into that, and to have a sustainable business in that area.
Another example, perhaps, is the direction that I’m going forward with Bio Design ‒ how do sustainable materials change the way that we interact and we experience interactive devices? We’re very used to making things out of plastic, transporting things in plastic, wrapping things in plastic, and doing everything with plastic and all that. For example, I ordered something online that came in a box that I had to put in the recycling bin. It was kind of housed in this little foam packaging, and that foam packaging will last longer than me ‒ it’s going to be around for centuries!
So maybe there’s different ways we can do this, and research definitely has a role to play in innovation in that area.
Milla Kim: Yeah, 100%. I guess there’s this opportunity to really dive deep into these big questions in those topic areas and you’re happy to take that on and pursue them ‒ that’s great! So, just moving onto Bio Design as well ‒ because I know that you are the Head of Bio Design ‒ could you please tell us a little more about it?
Phil Gough: Yeah so, what I was just saying about packaging and sustainable materials really relates to Bio Design. So, in my hand, I have a coffee cup holder, the kind of thing you use if you’ve got a really hot coffee ‒ often, the cafes will give you two cups if you get a long black because it’s too hot to hold, and some of them have like a sleeve, you know. The one I’ve got in here is actually made out of a combination of sawdust, coffee grounds and mushrooms. So this is an edible mushroom so you can make it from perfectly safe, normal mushrooms that you can find at a supermarket. So things like oyster mushrooms and reishi mushrooms, among others, and they just bind together everything as they grow, making this rigid and lightweight material which is only short-lived. So while it can last longer than cardboard, it won’t last nearly as long as its plastic counterpart.
So, the question I have is, where does this fit in with our society? How does it change the way that we might interact with these things, and what things would be good to interact with? Because some plastic stuff is really good, because it does mean we will have durability. Plastic is really good for that, but not for everything.
Milla Kim: People have said that this is the century of biology, what is the role of Biodesign as we move into the future and what are the underlying principles of Biodesign?
Phil Gough: Yeah, there’s a physicist named Freeman Dyson who said the 21st Century is the century of Biology, just as the 20th Century was the century of Physics. He’s saying that Biology is having as much of an impact to this century as Physics is to last century, so like, if we think to the year 1900 ‒ we’ve since had ****GPS systems, cellphones, the computer, and the silicon chip. All these things didn’t exist before, until halfway through the century. Even something as dramatic as Atomic weapons ‒ these are all things that came from Physics in the last century and he’s saying that Biology is going to be as big in this century. So perhaps, things like what I mentioned earlier with sustainable materials could be made in conjunction or partnership with living things, as opposed to being completely synthetic. It could be the way we deliver and discover new medications, or it could make new kinds of interactive systems.
So there’s a really classic example that’s used in Biodesign textbooks and things like that, where a bacteria is really good at detecting a small amount of a chemical, which would be really hard for electronics to do. So there was a project from these College students in the United States, and I believe they were studying Biology but working with the military or something like that. They developed a system that would put DNA into bacteria ‒ bacteria is quite happy to accept new DNA, it’s just a part of how they work and evolve ‒ so that whenever it detected Arsenic within water, it would rapidly produce a pigment, causing it to turn orange. So you would have this sample of this stuff with bacteria in it, you put some water that you’re not sure about, and within minutes, you’ll have feedback. It’s a basic interactive system ‒ so you’ll have an input of potentially contaminated water, some sort of processing done by a bacteria, and feedback, in the form of a visible pigment.
We had a group of students who combined these into a design sense a couple of years ago, when some of the students were from Medical Science, and some were from Design. They developed a concept that looked at the medical problem and effectively turned it into a design problem ‒ exploring why young people don’t get STI tests as often as they should. So, if you’re sexually active, you’re supposed to get tested for certain conditions in every certain number of months. Young people generally don’t engage with that, and that’s kind of a medical problem, but not a medicine problem, if you know what I mean. It’s not solved by a treatment or a drug, it’s solved by engaging with people.
So their concept was to use a virus that infects the bacteria that infects the person, and to change the virus so that it glows when it reproduces in you. So, you can take a swab, you put it in a little tube, and it can detect certain specific bacteria that causes these infections in humans. And another part of the project was to build an app to go with it ‒ so how do people actually understand how to take the test, and even, as a sexual health app, because there aren’t many around. So by providing that, they’re actually providing something new as well, even though their product was quite conceptual there.
The idea of a sexual health app was to help address this problem of “Why don’t young people get STI tests?”. Well, it’s not because of medicine, it’s because of design problems ‒ things like accessibility discretion. Nobody wants to talk to the GP that they’ve known since they were 12-years old about this stuff, you know. So ease of access, something that you could pick up on the way home from as you walk past a pharmacy, as opposed to actually going to a GP to get a PCR test done.
So, Biodesign really is about taking some of these big problems and turning them from one kind into a design problem that can be solved with different kinds of technologies. The way I like to think about it is to think about this idea from the design of affordances. So the coffee cup example that I had ‒ it affords this kind of use because it’s a good insulator, and so my hands don’t get hot, if I have a hot coffee inside this cup holder that’s made out of mushroom instead of plastic cardboard or something, and it’s also compostable I can think about its end of life ‒ so thinking about the affordances of that living organism can it produce a pigment if it detects a chemical, can it glow if in certain under pressure or under certain conditions, can it move, or does it have good properties that are usable or applicable to a design context. So there are a lot of different reactions natural things can do ‒ glowing or producing pigments are just some examples.
Milla Kim: And it’s already out there a lot of the time. So I guess we’ve already discussed a few core design projects, is there any way that students can get involved with Biodesign?
Phil Gough: Yeah, there are a few classes that we are offering. So in Second Year there are two classes ‒ one in the first semester called Designing for Cyber-Physical Systems, so we used to run physical computing as a core unit. That’s not necessarily a unit that everybody needs to do ‒ not everybody needs to learn about programming microelectronics, whether it’s Arduino, the Microbit, Adafruit Feather, and all those kinds of platforms. But if you’re interested in that kind of thing, we have Designing for Cyber-Physical Systems. The goal for this one is to think about how the living and digital world can be brought together ‒ so how we can take information from the smart city and put it on a display that is actually alive. So, the first time it ran, we used a moss that would open its leaves when it had water on it, so if we could automate that with a little robot, then we could turn that into a display. The design challenge with that is, that it is a very low resolution and slow changing display as opposed to a screen, which has high resolution and changes dozens of times per second. How does that change the information that we should put on that display ‒ so that’s the design challenge.
In the 2nd semester for Second Year students, there’s the Bio Design Fundamentals, which is a class about the core principles of Biodesign, having an approach called Material Driven Design ‒ so rather than starting with a human-centred problem, you actually start with the material, which occasionally happens as designers. You don’t start with the user problem, you’re given a material and are asked, “What can we do with this?”. So, we take this mushroom material and we say what are the opportunities that this affords and then, once we understand that material, we can start doing our user research in ways that it can be applied.
My example is this mushroom material. It’s biodegradable, it’s compostable, it kind of feels a little bit papery or leathery when you touch it. So, is it a fancy expensive material, like the Hermes mushroom leather handbag that they’ve recently created which will cost thousands of dollars ‒ I haven’t looked at the price yet, but you can buy a handbag from Hermes which is made out of mushroom, and you can buy Stan Smith shoes that are made out of mushroom leather as well by Adidas ‒ or is it a cheap, disposable thing, something that we take material from one part of the economy through sawdust, that is a waste, and we give it new value. We give it a new meaning and purpose and then at the end, we can compost that because the mushroom is biodegradable and it will eat that sawdust. So those kinds of questions around “How does the user experience this material?”, helps us understand what the applications are ‒ so there are more approaches than just human-centred design. It’s basically an opportunity to look outside that user-centred design approach that is really important in design, but is not the only way of doing things.
Milla Kim: Yeah, it’s like you’ve flipped all of our views from the more ‘traditional’ way of designing we’re taught. Are there any courses in Biodesign for USYD students?
Phil Gough: Yeah, Biodesign Fundamentals is a prerequisite for the Biodesign Studio, which is basically like our 12 Credit Point studios, but nobody’s got time to do that, so we split it over two semesters. So there’s a project, it’s running in its full form for the first time this semester and we’re actually using the ceramic 3D printers to print interesting designs using the mushroom material ‒ so we’re 3D printing mushrooms this semester.
Milla Kim: Sounds fun! So you do the fundamentals in second year and the studio is split in your third year?
Phil Gough: No, so the fundamentals in 2nd semester 2nd Year and the studio in the 1st semester 3rd Year.
Milla Kim: Do you reckon maybe outside of university, there are still a lot of pathways for students to get involved in Biodesign?
Phil Gough: Yeah I mean, there’s a lot of Masters programs around the world that are popping up. We’re kind of unique that we’re taking an Undergraduate approach at this stage, but there are Masters programs where often architects will work with scientists. I think Biodesign is really exciting because it focuses on some really big goals like sustainability and the circular economy, and if this is going to be the Century of Biology, we’re going to see how that will be applied in the future. It’s hard to say what your career path would be at this stage, because in the same way that Interaction Design popped up maybe 15 years ago, biodesign is a very new field and there is a little bit of the Creative Technologist state of being, rather than the very well defined field.
Milla Kim: Cool, so it’s still kind of kicking off so there’s ways to get involved, but they’re not exactly super clear at the moment, and I think the focus on really big goals is also quite exciting. I imagine some students would be super motivated and excited to be working towards sustainability. And kind of a more fun question, other than studying and teaching the world of design ‒ do you have any hobbies that you like to do in your free time?
Phil Gough: Well, I got a puppy recently so that’s taking up a lot of my time.
Milla Kim: Yeah, of course.
Phil Gough: Anyone who has found my Instagram has seen a lot of bread I bake. My wife and I enjoy cooking quite a lot. I like the combination of art and science that goes into baking. I heard somebody say that baking is like science, that you can eat, whereas my wife is very different. She’ll just kind of throw things at a saucepan and make some amazing things out of it. So, I enjoy baking quite a bit.
Milla Kim: Do you have any last tips, notes, comments or wisdom for Design Computing students?
Phil Gough: I think one of the real advantages of Design Computing is the different pathways that you can take and to really embrace, not only if you’re into the User Experience side, not only to focus on that, but to think about doing things more broadly and getting a broader understanding the technical aspects. Again, if you’re into the more technical aspects, don’t pigeonhole yourself into only doing those things. I think employers want people who are quite well rounded. You need to have deep expertise in one area, but like a broad understanding. This also goes back to being a designer and communicating ‒ if you need to communicate changes as a UX Designer to a Front-end or Back-end Developer, you need to be able to understand those other people that you’ll be working with enough.
As a researcher, I find this as well. You know, working with hardcore Computer Science, AI researchers, it’s a bit of a challenge sometimes, trying to get them to understand why I should talk to a person about what we’re making. And I think that it’s not just a research thing ‒ it’s everywhere. So, having enough understanding of different approaches, I think, is a really important skill set. It will turn you into a better communicator and it will make you more effective.
Milla Kim: So, I guess since we’re students it’s a nice chance for us to explore these different areas and that makes us better in the long run for cross-industry communication.
Phil Gough: Yeah, and if you’re really into the user studies, don’t do your best to avoid the coding side, and if you’re really into coding, don’t farm off all the user studies to somebody else. You’ll be more of a holistic designer if you’re confident and familiar with both.
Milla Kim: It’s like the UX unicorn, like someone who does a little bit of everything.
Phil Gough: And there are the Coder-corns as well ‒ there are the people who do the coding every single time and I think one of the challenges is not understanding how to communicate with somebody who is only on the other side, because when you get out of university and you’re not working with people who’ve done all the same courses as you, you’ll meet some people who have only who did computer science and will say “Oh, I wrote the code, what else matters”, so I think having enough understanding of a broader approaches is really important.
Milla Kim: So keep your eyes and options open. Well, thank you so much for your time today Phil. It was interesting to hear about your whole journey and learn about Biodesign which I actually didn’t know much about! Thanks again!
About
Phillip Gough is a lecturer in Biological Design at the University of Sydney’s Design Lab. He possesses an unwavering passion for all things Design and Science related. Follow him on LinkedIn!
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