Saturday, September 26, 2009
Near Field Communication Touch Interaction
From the Interactive Multimedia Technology blog:
The Touch Project is based in the Interaction Design department of the Oslow School of Architecture and Design in Norway. "Touch is a research project that investigates Near Field Communication (NFC), a technology that enables connections between mobile phones and physical things. We are developing applications and services that enable people to interact with everyday objects and situations through their mobile devices. Touch consists of an inter-disciplinary team involved in social and cultural enquiry, interaction/industrial design, rapid prototyping, software, testing and exhibitions." -
Nearness Explores Interaction Without Touching
Nearness from timo on Vimeo.
iPhone RFID: Object-based media
iPhone RFID: object-based media from timo on Vimeo.
reTouch Info Sheet (pdf)
reTouch is part of the Touch project, and it " brings together hundreds of cross-cultural examples of social norms and values involving touch—all categorised according to actions related to touching. Using quotes from ethnographic accounts written between the late 1800s and the present, re/touch encourages designers and researchers to explore how touch is used by people to relate to one another and the worlds in which we live. Browse re/touch to create design briefs, refine interaction scenarios, devise game play, or otherwise think, make and do things touchrelated." -reTouch web info, Anne Galloway.
One of the members of the research team is Anne Galloway, a social researcher and the author of the purselipsquarejaw blog, which she recently resurrected after taking a year off from blogging.
Anne also contributes to the space and culture journal. I've followed Anne's writing for a while. Over the course of her Ph.D. studies, she has thought deeply about the intersections of technology, space, and culture, including cross-cultural meanings of touch.
RELATED
Inspiring Touch Related Interaction Design
Original Design Thinking Approach for Researching RFID
-Nikolas Nova, Pasta and Vinegar
Note: Nikolas Nova's Pasta and Vinegar blog is worth taking a look at if you are interested in design, UX, emerging technologies, pervasive/ubiquitous computing.
About Nikolas and his blog:
"User Experience researcher at LIFTlab. My work is about studying how people use various technologies and turn them into insights, ideas, prototypes or recommendations to inform design and foresight.This blog is a selection of the material that I collect, especially in fields such as mobility, urban environments, digital entertainment and new interfaces. I am also part of the near future laboratory."
Sample of Pasta and Vinegar Posts:
(Touch) Interaction Vocabulary
A Graphic Language for Touch-based Interactions
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
A Brief History of the Future of Urban Computing and Locative Media: Ann Galloway's Ph.D. Thesis
The purse lip square jaw blog was one of my favorite blogs. The author of the blog, Ann Galloway, focused on "critical social and cultural studies of technology and design", and published the blog from 2000-2008, as part of her Ph.D. work at Carelton University in Canada.
Anne recently completed her Ph.D. dissertation, which is available on-line. (pdf)
If you are serious about issues related to pervasive computing, related technologies, and the "bigger picture", Anne's dissertation is well worth reading. For those oof you who have less time, visit the archived blog. It is conveniently organized by year and month. I encourage you to take some time to browse around.
Fellow bloggers and future historians of blogging/Web 2.0 will find that Anne's reflections and participation in the blogosphere over the past years enlightening. Here is one of my favorite quotes from her blog:
"But I started to rally for multiplicity instead of homogeneity. I wanted to belong to "the race of words, which homes are built with" and to "get free of myself". I chose to be guided by Deleuzian ethics. I recognised writing my blog as a method of inquiry and began to see my dissertation as writing to get free of myself."
Excerpt from Chapter 3:
"Emphasising how blogging is simultaneously private and public, individual and
collective, I raise a variety of questions about authorship, audience and authority
in contemporary academic knowledge production. Beginning with a discussion of
blogging and affective politics, I use excerpts from my blog and the comments
people made there to draw attention to the more physical and emotional,
financial and political, aspects of intellectual labour. They may be excluded from
our formal work, and often even from the classroom, but they can nonetheless
find a place online—where we and others can engage them in new and productive
ways." - Anne Galloway
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Who studies ubiquitous/pervasive computing?
Last year I took a course in Ubicomp, and as I delved into the research, I learned that people from a variety of disciplines are involved in this area.
I didn't return to school until mid-life, after working for many years as a school psychologist. My second major as an undergraduate was social science, and it's exciting to see what people in the social science are doing in this forward-looking, interdisciplinary field.
I've come across a few more interesting researcher-bloggers, and I'd like to devote some of my future posts highlighting some of their work and accomplishments.
I mentioned in a previous post that Sam Kinsey, a PhD candidate in cultural geography at the School of Geographical Sciences in the University of Bristol, is focusing his research in Ubicomp.
Sam Kinsey's current proposed thesis title:
"Practicing the technics of disappearance: emergent spatialities and the experimental development of ubiquitous computing."
Anne Galloway is a Ph.D candidate and a lecturer in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada. Take a look at her Purse Lips Square Jaw and Space and Culture sites/blogs.
Anne's blog statement:
"My research interests can be found at the intersections of space, culture and technology. I particularly enjoy critical social and cultural theory, social studies of science and technology, design and new media studies, material culture studies and qualitative methodologies."
More later!
