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
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The World is My Web Browser: Interactive Technology in Public Spaces
Off-the desktop Interactive technologies are spreading quickly, across many platforms. It seems that within the next 3-5 years we will be able to have instant access to a social and dynamic web, with information and entertainment at our fingertips, anywhere we go.
The "world-as-web-browser" concept is one I've touched upon in the past. I'd like to focus on this topic in future posts.
I came across some of the information in this post on the Future of Media Blog,maintained by the folks at the Interpublic Emerging Media Lab, based in California. This blog is a must-read!
The Saatchi & Saatchi ad agency in the UK created interactive games that provide people waiting in bus shelters the opportunity to pass the time by bashing digital falling eggs.
A more utilitarian approach to interactive touch screens is the EyeStop bus stop, a concept created by researchers MIT's SENSEable City Lab, along with the city of Florence and the city's transit service:
MIT
MIT researchers unveil the EyeStop: "Bus stop of the future" can sense its surroundings (pdf)
SOMEWHAT RELATED
IPG Future of Media Blog
(Cross-posted on the Interactive Multimedia Technology blog.)
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Wow! A view of the ClustrMap of my blog visitors from around the world
I have a ClustrMap widget on my Interactive Multimedia Technology blog- I forgot all about it until today, when I noticed it it was getting pretty full.
So I clicked on it to get a better look:
The world map above represents 24,254 visits between December 2008 and May 2009. I am amazed. My on-line file cabinets really are open to the world!
Measuring the World's Use of Technology, Measuring the Impact of Technology Use Around the World
If you are interested in digging deeper into the statistics behind technology-supported human-world interaction, the theme of this blog, take a look at the information behind the following links:
Measuring ICT Website
Measuring the Information Society: The ICT Development Index (pdf)
The Global Information Society: a Statistical View (pdf)
Manual for Measuring ICT Access and Usage by Households and Individuals, 2009 Edition (pdf)
2009 Revised Edition of the UNCTAD Manual for Information Economy Statistics
World Summit on the Information Society
Thanks, Albrecht Schmidt, for the links you posted on your User Interface Engineering blog!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
"Create the world, the interface will follow" - Link to article by Adaptive Path's Paula Wellings
Paula Welling's article, "Create the world, the interface will follow", draws from her observations as an experience designer at Adaptive path and her previous work as a creator of imaginary game worlds. She points out that it is possible for user-centered designers to focus so much on people, via persona development and contextual inquiring, that the role of the real-world environment is not fully explored.
Wellings asks experience designers to look at the bigger picture.
"How can we move from a purely descriptive representation of the people themselves to an approach that explicitly recognizes design as facilitating participation in particular worlds?"
Here is a quote from the article:
"Like the worlds of video games, our real world is a possibility space* that gives depth and context to our interactions. For the most part, people live their lives in environments that provide structure to activities, relationships and opportunities. Changes of environment reveal the power of the world to enable and diminish our possibilities. Both dramatic environment changes such as living in a foreign country, going to jail, and surviving a natural disaster as well as small changes such as moving from a sunny climate to a rainy one can affect people in powerful ways."
As an observer of human-world interaction, I agree with Wellings' point of view.
