W7 — Let’s Stack
The stack
Started reading the book, The Stack by Benjamin H Bratton suggested by Alaistar and Greg. This gave me an idea of how the structure of the Blockchain system should be formed. The most intriguing thought was that the layer of the stack should work in specific relation to the layer above and below it (Bratton, 2015), all the layers being correlated to one another and working and responding with each other. Later on, we have altered our structure of the design in a more chronological way as we thought it is easier for people to understand the journey of the transaction and how the system reacts.
We pushed down the network layer to the bottom as it's the last step of the transaction - nodes synchronising and replicating the transaction information to the other nodes. Brought up the data layer to the second position as the encryption process happens right after a person has created a transaction and changed the layer name to encryption layer to give more clarification. Application - Encryption - Consensus - Network.
Fig 1. The Stack. Image by Sue.
Fig 2. Ideation for Consensus Layer. Image by Sue.
Crazy 8
Still, we were very stuck on how to improve our current idea. So we have decided to do a Crazy 8 to quickly generate ideas and really make our decisions. We started by thinking of different ideas for one layer each and passed it around then when finished, we discussed the most potential ideas. The first application layer led me to think about what the context is about our design as a whole - Who? What? Where? Considering if it would be specifically for cryptocurrency users, NFT buyers or people who just joined the blockchain industry. Moreover, it reminded me of the previous reading, Blockchain as a Confidence Machine - seeing the obscured operation provides a high level of predictability which increases the level of confidence on top of trust - and I wondered if the input, the action, the design requires from the participants is the weight of the confidence level using blockchain technology - a physical scale. But then, when I looked back, it did not match our project aim which is to make people reflect on where the trust is for them and evoke conversations regarding the criticalities of the blockchain system after they have fully gone through the structure. Later on, as blockchain shares the same system I thought the application layer can be a set of scenarios that includes cryptocurrency, NFT and their own value they would like to share.
The most difficult part was from encryption to consensus layer, I was struggling to ideate as I thought the core of this layer was to transform the object the participants have put in - physical to digital. But then, I realised it is not the actual form that is transforming but its the idea of concealing the information to be passed on for verification. Additionally, what is needed for the consensus layer was people. It was not an individual verifying a certain transaction but a group of people, forming a community to create a decentralised technology - togetherness! This aspect was crucial for me to demonstrate on the consensus layer. David had an idea of asking people to search and look for the correct information in order to verify. This was very interesting as it was more engaging.
Fig 3,4 and 5. Crazy 8. Image(s) by Sue.
Fig 6. Crazy 8 session. Image by Sue.
Let’s Build
Fig 6-11. Prototyping. Image(s) by Sue and David.
Second Prototype
Vid 1. Second Prototype. Edited by Sue.
Feedback
During the tutorial, Tiff wondered if dropping in the object into the system was metaphorically ideal. Metaphorically, the action of putting in an item was not suitable but I thought as the object / data is moving from one to another I still thought it was relevant. Also she questioned if we were to give a thorough instruction of the model since it might lead the design to be interpreted in a different way. This was also my very concern which leads to a question of “Where does it live?”. I imagine it to be presented in a didactic way perhaps being an educational purpose, since I did not prefer people interpreting the model individually but to understand the concept then to reflect on the criticalities. One of the common feedbacks that we have received was to really consider the criticalities and find a twist of the design. The questions were “What do we want people to feel?” “What are the attitudes in the world?” We needed to make our standpoint clear. As we did not test the design work with anyone yet, they suggested us to do the user testing as soon as possible to gather insights from others.
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Bibliography
Bratton, B. (2015) The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty. Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press.