“ZeroN (by Jinha Lee at MIT Media Lab) is a new physical/digital interaction element that can be levitated and moved freely by computer in a three dimensional space. Both the computer and people can move the ZeroN simultaneously. In doing so, people and computers can physically interact with one another in 3D space. Users are invited to place or move the ZeroN just as they can place any other objects on surfaces. Once levitated, ZeroN’s behavior can be digitally programmed. For example, users can place the sun above physical objects to cast digital shadows, or place a planet that will start revolving based on simulated physical conditions. “
“He felt rather uncomfortable. Ill at ease. Strange goings on in his job. The way he did his job. The people he was supposed to be designing for. He wasn’t quite sure who they were anymore. In fact, he wasn’t quite sure what they were. Where they came from, what they wanted, where they might be going. Things were getting way more complicated than he’d ever been led to believe.”
Teagueduino is an open source electronic board and interface that allows you to realize creative ideas without soldering or knowing how to code, while teaching you the ropes of programming and embedded development (like Arduino).
Abracadabra by Chris Harrison is a magnetically driven input approach that makes use of the (larger) space around a (very small) device. The technique provides robust, inexpensive, and wireless input from fingers, without requiring powered external components. By extending the input area to many times the size of the devices screen, our approach is able to offer a high C-D gain, enabling fine motor control. Additionally, screen occlusion can be reduced by moving interaction off of the display and into unused space around the device.
Designing for touchscreen mobiles, tablets and other surfaces requires new thinking and an expanded design vocabulary. This cool little animation by Punchcut introduces their design principles.
Design for immediate access
Keep gestures smart and simple
Leverage clear mental models
Design for real hand sizes
Touch feedback is key
You can read more about these insights on the Punchcut blog.
If you walk past the windows of Unit 9 in Hoxton Square you might notice a group of people hanging out playing with their phones (what’s new?) - or you might notice the instructions on their windows telling you that if you pull out a touchscreen mobile device or iPad and open a browser the device should detect their wi-fi as the strongest signal and automatically redirect you to a simple drawing tool optimised for multitouch devices.
Whatever you draw on the screen, appears on their office windows in real time. Click explode, and watch your knob drawing doodle explode as a firework.
According to their press release “Its not an app. It’s a wi-firework experience in HTML5.”
According to me it’s an interesting exploration of interaction between mobile devices and urban screens. It might be a little clunky - and ultimately useless in its current form but it’s quite good fun and It’s quite exciting that people are beginning to play with this kind of thing.
Technical Stuff
The web application was written in HTML5 supporting multi-touch and the drawing is made using HTML5 Canvas and Javascript to listen for touch events. Every 500 milliseconds it checks if there’s any activity on the device. If there is, it sends the activity to the server side socket.
On the server side, it’s running a regular socket server that listens for all activity sent from the mobile device. A C++ application is running on the server machine to generate the drawings received from the mobile and the graphics it generates are projected on the window.
I’m very lucky to have been part of the Summer School at CIID (Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design) for the last week.
Matt Cottam ran the show with his wife Maia and took us through “an analogue exploration of interaction design” via a combination of classes, video screenings, discussions and hands on exercises to help reinforce the things we covered.
We discussed information design, service design, smart objects and urban informatics and we produced analogue infographics, performed service design roleplay and annotated street scenes with the information that could be collected, displayed and acted upon in a fictitious ubicomp utopia or dystopia. Matt finished the week by blowing everybody’s minds with his recent personal projects and talking about fablabs and the future of making things.
I had a fantastic time at Summer School and would recommend it to anyone interested in breaking free of screen based design, moving into the world of interaction design for physical/ubiquitous computing and exploring the services that they can enable. Even though I know a fair amount about the topics covered it was truly inspiring to hear someone like Matt talk about them in the way he did. I feel I’ve learned such a lot from him and consolidated even more knowledge in the week I spent there through the activities and discussions with other students.
Thanks so much to everyone that took part in the first week. I’m sad I can’t be there for the second and third weeks but I look forward to hearing the reports. A big thank you to Alie from CIID for making sure everyone was looked after and a huge thanks to Matt and Maia. I really feel I made some new friends over the last week and I hope to be able to stay in touch with everyone.
Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are developing an innovative work environment specialized for the management of emergency responses. A Precision Information Environment (PIE) system consists of a combination of novel interactive interfaces that aim to transform the way stakeholders, ranging from first responders to policy makers to the public, engage with each other and with dynamic information.
