Phase 1: Before the meeting: imaginary identification with the t Phase 1: Before the meeting: imaginary identification with the t Phase 1: Before the meeting: imaginary identification with the thing hing hing hing
Retrospectively, it is possible to describe the programmers’ decisions as imaginary, as they designed the software according to an image of what they believed to be the video-game required by the European Union.
They have not yet entered the symbolic register of social relationships and confrontation with the Other. They still follow, literally, the guidelines of the EU, or more precisely their interpretation of these rudimentary guidelines, namely, to design: ‘missing quote’. In the Concept Design document as presented to the client, the thematic of Elder Move is organized around the topic of ‘Park Life’, and the art style is introduced as such:
Preference for a specific art style for this project that is not hyper realistic. Would prefer to have something that is cell shaded. The look and feel needs to be friendly and cheerful.
Moreover, John, the young project manager, describes the park to me as follows:
We could have several environments to choose… we thought a park was a good one as it’s not an intimidating atmosphere and we can do all sorts of things in there, really, targeted towards an older generation. If we chose something like a street, it gets more difficult
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A key element of the instructional design pertains to the environment in which end-users are expected to evolve. The environment is set in a park, where the user will be able to explore and launch ‘mini games’ which are each designed around Physical, Cognitive and Social aspects. The following map of the park was drawn by the instructional designers:
Picture 6. Map of Elder Move’s park
The choice of a non-realistic art style was made to protect the elderly from anxiety by featuring a less intimidating or threatening atmosphere. Louisa, a 3D artist, describes it as cartoony but not patronizing: in her words, ‘not kids’ cartoony’:
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We tried to keep things quite simple… wasn’t a harsh environment, wasn’t too threatening to them so we used, it’s not a cartoon style, it’s just more, it is cartoony, it’s just quite soft, it’s not like kids’ cartoony, simple colours and quite non-fashion, like for example the carnival part of it, the hoopla game, I was doing a really old-fashioned like carnival style.
The following dialogue, captured from the intranet of the firm, shows the debate about how the design choice, including colours and style, (game versus corporate) was derived from an assumption about what the users would be willing to accept and assumptions about how the users would experience the colours emotionally. Hence, for one of the partners, red is harsh and it symbolizes danger.
Picture 7. Instructional designers discussing colours on the intranet.
During my ethnographic observation, I found the art style a bit childish for elderly people, so I asked one of the programmers about this and he did not see it as a problem. More precisely, he didn’t want to think about this pessimistic scenario, which is typically the sign of an
182 alienated desire or, to put it simply, Chris was blindly following the majority without getting
involved personally.
RESEARCHER: Do you expect to meet resistance among the users? They might find it childish?
CHRIS: We haven’t really talked about that. We kind of mentioned the idea that, how if they just outright, reject, all of the Kinect controls, we haven’t really talked about that very much because it’s not a situation that we want to, oh yes that’s totally gonna happen, then we’ll design everything (laugh).
Retrospectively, we can say this is an imaginary speech act, as it misrecognizes itself and overemphasizes the agent’s own potency (‘we haven’t really talked about that very much because it’s not a situation that we want to’). The laugh, as we shall see later, shows the overconfidence of the designers. The irony expresses a sense of self-detachment, which is symptomatic of a cynical lack of involvement.
Yet, in a conversation thread on the intranet of the project, one of the instructional
designers, Jessica, had an early intuition that the art style might be too flowery, and asks her male colleagues whether it was too feminine or not:
JESSICA: Chris it seems you have nicely combined everyone’s feedback here! Can I just ask the male members of our team if it appeals to you? (sorry ladies… I’m just wondering if it’s a little feminine/flowery for our whole audience). If the guys say yes, then it’s a goer for me. JOHN: I like it. I don’t find the flowers particularly girly.
CHRIS: Jessica I really like the logo(s) and feel they are fairly gender neutral. Ideally we will want to run them past a focus of the target audience though.
JOHN: Top middle for me as well.
Jessica acts within the symbolic as her intervention asks for, and takes into account, the desire and the gender of the others (the ladies and the guys). Another interesting aspect is that she also speaks from an ambiguous androgynous position (‘sorry ladies’). Her sexual
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However, her feeling is still not recognized at this stage, and the males of the group keep blindly following the imaginary majority.
The demo was designed based on the above instructions and decisions before being presented in Linz to the partner Methodica. Prior to the meeting, the demo was presented online to the partners on several occasions, so they knew about it and what the designers were doing. However, on the day of the actual meeting in Austria, one of the partners saw it for the first time and made a wholesale objection, as reported by John:
His negative attitude was directed towards us because he thought we were working in our little world. It was quite a frustrating meeting. We need to make sure there is more communication between the different partners. We realized there is not enough communication between the partners and it’s resulting in all different parts of the projects looking at different things
The issue here is presented as an issue of communication. John clearly acknowledges the lack of communication, a lack of symbolic exchanges, of integration of the Other, of the others in general. They were working ‘in their (own) little world’ – in their imaginary world, so to speak.
The shift from imaginary identification to symbolic integration by the Other functions through the emergence of the Real, a shock within the team, which will re-articulate and sediment the symbolic network organizing the group.