An Interview with The Product

Dennis Paul and Patrick Kochlik from The Product were here in Copenhagen to teach a two-week skills course in Computational Design on the pilot year. David A. Mellis took the opportunity to find out a little more about what makes them tick.

Who are you?

Patrick: I’m a designer, living in Berlin and teaching at Potsdam. I’m setting up a design studio with Dennis Paul, called The Product.

Dennis: I’m a designer. I live in Berlin and have a design studio called The Product.

What do you do?

D: Interaction design and computational design (procedural design). We care about procedures and processes.

P: In the last year, interaction design pieces in public space. Media design for museums, cultural institutions or commercial clients. We apply interaction design and computation design to other disciplines: architecture, spatial design, etc. We try to mix “decent design work” and computational design and broaden the spectrum of computational design.

D: We work with software as a medium and a tool. Interaction design is about how people interact with other people and things. The overlap between the two is process. You can do one with the other, but we are interested in the overlap. We might be unique for our approach. We’re not limited to a discipline. We have grown out of being a graphic designer or product designer but with a distinct approach. We should have named our company the process. (In German, a process is also a trial.)

You’re setting up your own design studio; can you talk about that?

D: We met at ART+COM. We discovered a common interest in getting deep into the medium of software. Deeper than was expected…

P: …maybe even deeper than possible.

D: We overlap in cultural interests as well. Over the years we developed, we were part of a bunch of people that developed an approach to working with software. It was only later that it was called computation design. Other people are Casey Reas, Ben Fry, Marius Watz, Toxi.

P: We really did some pioneering work at ART+COM. We fought a lot of battles and learned a lot in terms of design and social relations. There was that point where we couldn’t really develop any further there. It’s quite hard to say why. Maybe one reason is because we got educated there. And you never become the master where you were educated. We were also quite interested in how business processes really work, how to acquire clients, to decide which project to take, which approach to take on a project. At ART+COM other people decided that.

D: It was the next logical step. We have a saying that when you are an apprentice somewhere, you will always stay an apprentice. When people talk about their careers, it’s always important that you leave when you have learned enough.

P: The question was go somewhere or try to do it ourselves. As I consider ART+COM one of the best studios in Germany and especially in Berlin, there wasn’t really a question of going somewhere else.

What was your most successful project?

P: I still consider Floating Numbers our most successful, on several tangents. I learned a lot: programming, fighting for an approach to a project, and still I consider the process very successful. We had lots of time, lots of discussions with the client, lots of time at the actual exhibition space, we iterated a lot, it was really a good process.

D: We had a lot of time to do that, a lot of liberty to do that. Not at all the outcome, but was really compelling was that we really developed strategies that we could apply later on and change and elaborate. That was really the epiphany. My diploma project was similar, but there was no client, no process with outside people. And we really defined something very new.

What was your least successful project?

D: We don’t want to talk about it. Good question.

D: What’s successful? In the public eye? We have been very successful but working with the wrong client on a difficult project. We got so much attention, but I never really felt that proud because there was so much going on behind the scene.

D: I did some projects that don’t move me. We always try to get something out of it, even exploring the OpenGL shading language or developing a software library. We don’t have any completely unsuccessful projects.

P: Some get more or less attention, but what you get out of it as a person is more important.

Are there projects that, in retrospect, you would have done differently?

P: What I’ve really learned is that projects don’t need to be exhausting. Now we can do big projects quite smoothly, because we get better at what we do, or can recall it more easily. There are projects that would be less exhausting.

D: I have a few projects that I don’t think I pushed as much as I could have. I could have pushed clients or co-workers more to something extraordinary or something new. I try to push the envelope, to make something that hasn’t been seen or hasn’t been done. It may be a cliche of what designers do but in our field there’s an obligation to do something new. This was also a reason we set up our own company. We felt we could be more intense by not having more people deciding what we do. We thought we could add something more if we weren’t part of a big team.

Can you talk about your process for creating a work?

D: When we talk to people that approach us one thing, we always try to look behind people’s literal intentions (what they say) and find the wishes and desires they are trying to communicate. We are often approached with design ideas (from a non-design person), but that’s the designer job: to think about interaction and environment. Often they come with a specific intention, which is cool, and we can work with it and debate, but I’m always interested in looking behind the actual brief and finding the intention. And then we start to work. And how do we do that Patrick?

P: Talk. It’s always good – whether with the client or colleagues – it’s always good to exchange thoughts. Everybody has a certain view and certain set of experiences and expertises, so it’s always good if you keep the discussion running, especially between people of different expertises. So yes, maybe we talk a lot, but it’s okay. Then, it’s very much about the project: whether we start with pen and paper or software sketches to examine more dynamic approaches, or…

D: What I find really interesting is that we sketch a lot, but also in software. I always like to draw upon things I was doing earlier, things which interested me for whatever reason: technology or sketches done for no particular reason. We always work by referencing other people’s work. We try to locate the stuff we work with in a particular realm. I can’t think of any brainstorm we did without quoting 2 or 3 other projects..

P: It’s a good way to create images you can talk about: using reference works. But in a way, when clients approach us and say that they’ve seen some thing that we did a year ago and it’s so amazing, I really like to see that as a reference work, and then find the real intention, and incorporate that intention in a more appropriate way. References are a good tool for discussion, for thought: find the essence, and build another expression.

D: It’s very honest to do that. I don’t like it when people pretend to think things up from thin air. Design is about quoting, being aware of living in an environment. Design you do today can be so obsolete in a few years. Think of 90′s work in interaction design or media art. It can be referenced in terms of back then, but has little current meaning. It’s so much about context. We really like zeitgeist (plus it’s a German word). We very much like autobahns and kindergartens.

D: I really like to see ourselves as designers who fiddle around with things, physical prototypes or software sketches, or printouts. We’re very manual people. We’re quite naive in terms of knowing how to build or manufacture things, but we do it quite often: paper models, ….

D: The network thing. Part of our studio description is that we know when there’s someone else who can do something better. We like to network a lot.

P: There’s lots of stuff that other people can do better.

D: We are part of a network of craftsmen, scientists, other designers and disciplines.

What about once you get beyond sketching?

P: Sketches have at least two purposes: to prototype certain aspects of a work, and also to be able to talk about it, with other designers or the client (maybe more important). By sketching we create those communication pieces that lead in a certain direction and maybe create something you can agree on. Sketching is very important. We don’t really stop sketching until the thing is done. We use it in the conceptual phase, to test interaction paradigms, in presentations to client, to develop algorithms that become part of the piece. Sketching goes along the whole design process. We don’t really stop sketching.

D: Especially when you’re working with processes, it’s very much about trying it out. We didn’t design and sketch processes which we would then implement over a month. It’s more about coming up with something complex in a fuzzy way and then taking it apart and sequentially working on it. I couldn’t imagine really separating sketching and production (it would be really boring). It’s more a theory that they’re discrete. In our life they’re really connected.

P: They can separate very fast if you separate design and programming into different people or different teams. It can happen much more if those phases are connected in time and by people.

D: If you had to be more efficient: there would be one person who comes up with something and gives it to someone to produce. But our work is the signature of the iterative process. In a way it’s a luxury: more expensive, time-consuming, but worth it. To be completely true, the last weeks when we go on a construction site, then it’s not very much about sketching. It’s about doing it and being tough and having “dickes fell” (thick skin). When you try to get people to give you electricity and not spill water on your piece and these kinds of things. It’s a little like hyperspace, you just go there and try to get into the real world. This is very much about the installation work. It’s pretty unique to museum work, especially when the museum is built from the ground and the opening is tomorrow.

What about user testing?

D: I don’t care about that. I’m not against it in general, but for our work it’s not really important. You shouldn’t really equalize too much, which is one of the flip sides of user testing: it draws on what people already know, not what they can learn about. But it can be a tool for convincing clients. In our very specific field that’s how I would apply user testing.

What about retrospective user testing?

D: We’ve written a lot of our software to log data, but unfortunately, we were never given the time to do proper data mining and visualise the data in a meaningful way. This retrospective user testing I’m quite interested in. Not just to do it better next, but to understand how people work. The next time I want to do it differently anyway.

P: It’s not that we’re not interested in how people can interact with what we’re doing. It would be arrogant to say we don’t care if it’s working or not. But sometimes it’s very hard to set up the environment to do proper user testing; that would involve similar space to the exhibition, equal number of people, having the impression that you are observed and can’t do anything wrong. There are some things that can be observed much better if you go to the museum and see how people behave and how they talk about it. People really try to make sense of what they don’t know and in an exhibition they start to exchange what they’ve learned, what they’ve done. They are proud if they can do something and seek help if they can’t. These are hard to take into account when you do user testing.

D: Of course, it’s supposed to be done in advance to make sure you don’t fail. We just go and do observations when the exhibition is running. I don’t know if that’s a valid field; it’s more user observation. Was it Heisenberg who said you can’t separate the observer and observed? People in a room being observed, is very different than going to the museum on a rainy Berlin day.

What are you working on now?

D: A few installations (commercial projects) for a visitor center.

P: And an exhibition about sustainability.

D: We also work on other stuff. Right now, I have a big interest in exploring the potential of procedurally generated objects (fabbing). But this is really something without any specific goals – just explorations. It’s connected to the fact that as a studio we want to get more involved with the real world (physical things): more about designing spaces and integrating spaces into the work.

P: I just want to add that we have the opinion that it’s also good to follow very personal interests. Not everything has to go in line with all the other people. It’s very good to develop personal interests, follow them, explore them.

D: It can be whatever… computer games, physical objects, sometimes it’s more relevant topics.

Do you have any thoughts or advice about the pilot year?

D: An observation: you’ve achieved something extraordinary in that there’s a very strong sense of a group. It’s something you can’t buy. It’s been extremely pleasing and gratifying. There’s been no tension.

P: What I quite like about you people (the faculty): I felt that you were quite a group. Quite friendly with each other, talking on the same level, each with a specific expertise but no one more important than the other. I really like this, it’s one thing that you should go on with.

D: I would love to see you continue teaching students a lot about doing things. For me, that’s always been my inspiration (the doing of things). Apart of being smart and coming up with ideas, it’s so important to be able to work with the tools. Every designer should have a favorite tool of expression. For me it was typography, then programming. I could always go back to being good at something. I hate the kind of students who are always talking about stuff but not doing anything.

P: From a faculty level, this also applies. There are so many people that are so far from doing things, that haven’t done anything for years. I have the feeling that you try to invite people, in the midst of doing things, that are really willing to work with and spend time with the students.

D: I don’t think it’s about being young, but about being open. It’s often associated with being young, but I know a lot of young people that aren’t open minded.

What do you think of Copenhagen?

D: Brilliant:100% on choice of location. It’s the Barcelona of the north.

P: Or the Helsinki of the south. It’s hard for students to find apartments.

D: It might be a little too expensive, but I like the atmosphere. It’s between all these places. I’m amazed by the friendliness of the people.