Eyram Tawia of Leti Games talks about African games.

Eyram is a potential PHD student looking at reinventing the computer science curriculum to be completely ubiquitous and mobile in outlook. In Africa mobile computing is the dominant interaction idiom - something the west is still moving towards. He wants to rewrite the pedagogy computer science which is something we are going to have to do.  The OU has already started on the line with TU100 and a  ubiquitous computing first approach but his ambition is to take it much further.

You have to love Eyram's vision and enthusiasm. I do like the way he wants to make global games from an African perspective. All too often we want to use a western model of development which many times fail to catch on. I think this assumes that other counties and regions are like the west and fails to catch on.  This is because I my opinion they assume technologies are things not part of wider ecologies of technologies, materials, resources and cultural perspectives. From this perspective the best way to get Africa to develop is to economically is to respond to local entrepreneurs exploiting local situations. 

HashBang.TV @ Droidcon London 2012 with Eyram Tawia of Leti Games - YouTube:

I was amazed how thick I am.

BBC News - The Cambridge lab where they test how elderly people use technology

Obviously this is a bit naff - if you did this to 18 year olds you would get the  same kind of results. If you have ever put new technology in front of a user you get the same kinds of responses as seen here.  But the quote 'I am amazed how thick I am' does remind you how much people are willing to blame  them selves not the technology.

There is also a good example of people taking concepts from one technology ( pressing harder) and apply to  another. Initially there was a huge amount of pressure to make computer things like 'real world' things so a form of mimesis (imitation of other things, the use of metaphor) which gave rise to  skeuomorphic design (imitation for the sake of imitation)  - this gave you the calculator that looked like a calculator.

When we had a generation of kids grow up with the technology ( about the same time the web came along ) we got interfaces which broke free of metaphor. Or rather they became their own kind of metaphor - we see different kinds of buttons but still see them as buttons. We forget so much we have learn't' about computer interfaces on their own terms.  So when we push them at people who have never seen a computer before we see who much we 'know' about computers which out knowing we know a huge.

What I did like was the equivalent of the fat-suit for old age. Making you experience what it is like to be old.
Which  Inpires me to built a age/dyslexia proxy - takes a website and renders it as an old or dyslexic person might see it.

Video: Apple iPhone turns table top into invisible keyboard

I've always had something for keyboards on the iPhone.  This is a new concept and shows what happens when you let an art school at a difficult problem.

kuler colour composition

 One day I would write a book about HCI for programmers and this book would contain all the things they don't teach you on an HCI course but you need to know about to make software that works. In this case it would be a short intro to colour theory.

Setting up a colour pallet before you start your design is one of those things you need to do and
kuler
is a lovely tool to help you do it.