Friday, January 22, 2010
Ubice = Multi-touch On Ice at the Nokia Research Center in Finland (Video + Pic via Albrecht Schmidt)
Watch how the multi-touch surface is built from ice blocks:
The following pictures are from Albrecht Schmidt's User Interface Engineering blog:
![[multitouc-on-ice.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAyk9ETSPyrqIlM4_J7uEBHQbw9DATBpID0NpQ9TdoHPDCVLjf78jFyu6xKABAldz6qIJQVqtXkoqpSMGNAvgz0oI9jw-axWhFaj5fGEjTLVDNE41DF6VHk9gen7aikoS6xwUefa7pn4s/s640/multitouc-on-ice.jpg)
What a great idea for a "Winterfest"! They should take it to the next level: Multi-touch ice sculpture.
(Cross-posted on the Interactive Multimedia Technology blog.)
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
Monday, September 21, 2009
Mixed Reality at the Nokia Research Center: Creating an interfaced and connected world!
The people at Nokia Research Center are working hard at creating an interfaced world. The video provides a few examples of what we might expect in the near-to-mid future:
YouTube Description:
"This concept allows to you to experience immersion and effortless navigation in new ways. New types of interactions involving near-to-eye displays, gaze direction tracking, 3D audio, 3D video, gesture and touch. Through these new types of social linkages people will be connected in innovative ways between the physical and digital worlds."
Nokia's future-looking projects look have many features that support the concept of world-as-interface. Mobile phones will be transformed into mobile magic lenses "which lets users look through the mobile’s display at a world that has been supplemented with information about the objects that it sees." The web will blend with reality through Nokia Image Space, and allow people to upload pictures and related information that can be accessed and explored in a variety of ways, through mobile phones or traditional browsers. Near-to-Eye Displays will be used to augment mobile interfaces, and incorporate gaze tracking technologies.
The physical world will blend with the digital: "Through the use of haptic feedback, and other technologies just being invented, our interaction with the digital world and with each other will become more integrated and tangible. Being able to “feel” when a friend is close by through a shirt that hugs you is one example. Tapping a friend on the shoulder from miles away. Having your shoes vibrate if you take a wrong turn, or walk into a bad area of town".
RELATED
Nokia Research Center
Mobile Mixed Reality (pdf)
Nokia Image Space
Nokia Point and Find
Metaverse Roadmap Project
Metaverse Roadmap Overview (pdf)
Developing Gaze Tracker for Diffractive-Optics-Enabled Near-to-Eye Displays
Hyperlinking Reality via Phones - MIT Technology Review
Virtual Reality Continuum
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Yelp has an Augmented Reality iPhone App for the iPhone 3Gs, "The Monocle" !
Thanks to Dan Saffer for the link from the Read Write Web!
Here is my partial "reblog":
"Social review service Yelp has snuck the first Augmented Reality (AR) iPhone app specifically for the US into the iTunes App Store. The undisclosed new feature allows iPhone 3Gs owners to shake their phones three times to turn on a view called "the Monocle." This view uses the phone's GPS and compass to display markers for restaurants, bars and other nearby businesses on top of the camera's view...Blogger Robert Scoble discovered the hidden feature and posted about it on FriendFeed today. "
Video (in French, but easy to understand by the demonstration)
"Both GPS and a compass are used to determine location and direction being pointed at."
Screen Shots:
I want an iPhone. Verizon, can you hear me now?!
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
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Disney's House of the Future - reminds me of my childhood memories of Expo 67..
I came across an article in MIT's Technology Review on-line about Disney's revival of the "House of the Future". According to the article, the "$15 million (euro10.32 million) home is a collaboration of The Walt Disney Co., Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., software maker LifeWare and homebuilder Taylor Morrison."
This brought back a few memories from my childhood.
I remember visiting a "kitchen of the future" at Expo 67, in Montreal, Canada, when I was a little girl. The most amazing thing that I saw was a video phone. I was so excited to be told that in the very near future, all families will have video-phones in their kitchens!
Are we there yet?!
This clip of the Telephone Pavilion has a brief demonstration of a video phone. Even better is the demonstration of the "Telephone of the Future". Here is an excerpt:
"The Telephone of the Future - you can make a call from the palm of your hand, you touch buttons, instead of dialing, and it has an electronic tone, instead of a bell.. And one day, completely portable!"
There is a demonstration of call forwarding, a picture phone, and a means to pay bills by phone. (Listen the lyrics of the music in the background.. "this is the way we pay our bills..")
The family takes a trip to Expo '67 - (Not my family!)
(Music on the clip reportedly is from Isao Tomita's electronic music interpretation of Debussy's Pictures from an Exhibition, recorded in 1975, but somehow appropriate.)
Tour of Man in the Community pavilion - discusses man, community, and technology.
Expo 67 in Montreal
(John Whelan)
The Expo Lounge Blog
All about Expo 67!
Friday, February 8, 2008
Usability Link: Microsoft Design Center - Mobility (via Putting People First)
Take a look at the Microsoft Design Center's Mobility usability website.
I am impressed. I found the link via Putting People First.
Microsoft Design Center: Mobility
http://www.microsoft.com/design/work/Detail.aspx?key=mobility
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Off the Desktop: Technology Supported Human-World Interaction
This is the first post of the Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction, or "TSHWI" blog. I'm planning on using this blog as a resource for people interested in developing, using, or learning about user-centered application development for emerging and innovative technologies.
Just after I posted the template for this blog, I came across an intersting article, written by Tara Prakriya, a Microsoft Architect who focuses on the "incubation of emerging markets that leverage pen, touch, and ink". Although the article focuses on Microsoft Vista, much of what's covered in article is useful to people developing for other operating systems.
The article, "How to Be Where Your Customer Wants to Be" was written for software developers who are making the transition from desktop to the world.
In the article, Prakriya emphasizes that developers must take an "off the desktop" point of view. At first glance, this sounds like mobile computing, but it is much, much more.
Prakriya shares that Microsoft has "done a lot of research with our customers to try and define some core areas and scenarios for which they want and need to use their computers more times of the day. Taken together, we often hear: “Give me more applications to help me when I am traveling, shopping, on the train or bus-basically, fill the gaps where I know access to information can help me.”
What does this mean for developers? According to Prakriya, Vista has many features that will enable developers to tailor applications to meet the needs of users. These features support collaboration, multitasking, time-slicing, and data/note capture.
Prakriya also discusses a number of areas that are open for project development, which is just about anything people do or need when they are away from a desk, including home automation, social communities, personal productivity, navigation or wayfinding, games, education, media, and entertainment.
Prakriya concludes with a pitch for developers to explore user-tailored application development that takes advantage of the Windows Vista Platform, which supports touch-screen systems such as the HP TouchSmart IQ770 PC, the Tablet Kiosk UMPC.
In my opinion, in order to create useful, usable "off the desktop" applications, traditional software developers will need to take on the perspectives of a sociologist, psychologist, and ethnographer in order to anticipate the technology needs of humans across a wide range of settings and situations. This development might very well provide women and people from other disciplines who are considering a career in software development more meaningful opportunities for study and work.
Short list of related resources:
Roy Want's recent articles, published in IEEE Journal of Pervasive Computing, provide a good background for developers who are moving off the desktop:
Carry Small, Live Large and People First, Computers Second
The work of Don Norman, the author of "The Design of Everyday Things" "The Design fo Future Things" (November 2007), and "Why Things Don't Work" (2008)
UPA: Usability Professionals' Association
