MYO - The Gesture Control Armband

MYO - The Gesture Control Armband



Top marks for a cool video. 

Our lab has spent a fair amount of time developing our own arm bands to do things like help teach kids how to play violin properly.  My mind has strayed on to alternative uses for interaction ( the ultimate remote control). The ability to identify a number of finger movements would give the band a wide vocabulary but then your back to the basic problem of all command line driven programs - you have to remember the commands or not have them. 

I guess if they got popular they would be socially learned ( you see other people doing a gesture and remember how to do it). I think the main problem is that I would see them as a pervasive interface - you use your in air gestures to control many in devices in the environment. This works with Bluetooth ( cable replacement) so you have to 'pair up' with the thing your controlling. 

For the moment we are going to stick with our home brew gear. One thing we found important is vibrotactile feedback (band vibrates to tell you something). 

I guess I am in love with the near magical way you can control something with your hand/fingers. Like Arthur C. Clark said technology will eventually evolve to be magic. 

Ps its my Brithday on the 9th of March - MYO's pre-orders accepted. 

Urban Data Challenge: Zurich | San Francisco | Geneva | Urban Prototyping

Urban Data Challenge: Zurich | San Francisco | Geneva | Urban Prototyping

Santi sent me this - I quite like it. Definitely on my list of things to do if I had more time in my life.

Bare Paint - Bare Conductive

Bare Paint - Bare Conductive

Can't choose between art and electronics ? - now you can do both...

These clever people have figured out a way to conduct electricity in a fluid which dries like paint.  Stuff conducts better dry - fancy this in a printer ink ? I like the notion of using domestic printer as 
Circuit making machine.  file under cool and useful. 

DigitalTrompe-l'œil ( the experiment).

I've caught my self thinking about Trompe-l'œil again. Might be to do with the TVprogram on the Baroque I'm watching.

I have a curiosity about creating space in confined spaces - such as spacecraft on its way to Mars or a Japanese apartment. I wonder about the consensual  manipulation the sense of 'space' to make a smaller space 'feel' like a bigger one.

I can't help but think that if you tracked a head you could give the impression when looking at a screen of looking through a 'window' or portal into open space.

The experiment I propose is that the experimenter creates a 3D scene of enough complexity. 
Participants enter the space. half are in a 'static' space and the other half are in a head tracking version 
of the same 'projection'. By tracking the head ( and so eyes) the user is presented with a moving 
Version of the same space. The notion is that this makes the sense of 3D stronger. 

We get people to then report how big they think the space is. Either you get some kind of measurable effect (or
not) which would show up as a change in the average size people report the space as.
 Should also get effects on some kind of scale of roomy...to.... Confined. 

Might be interesting (if tricky ) to work with people with claustrophobia who are sensative to
 small confined spaces. 

Neurodiversity & HCI CHI2013

As part of CHI2013 you have to produce an advert for your paper - it replaces the minute madness with 30 second madness on video !!! Alt.CHI had a late deadline so I only had a few hours to write, draw,record, assemble, edit, compress and export the video for the deadline. It's done, lets hope its OK.

Ceiling interaction at TEI.

Cool looking celing interface TEI.

http://instagram.com/p/Vj5e6mTX9l/

Meanwhile Philips have introduced a LED bulb the colour of which you can control from your iphone. I would love to have a way to control it programatically ( and have rooms gets bright red when your late for an appointment. )

http://www.meethue.com/en-US

http://www.lighting.philips.com/main/connect/tools_literature/lighting-apps.wpd

Starfire - vision of the future (in the 80's)

I love visions of the future. They get it so right and wrong at the same time. This one comes from Tog's (http://www.asktog.com/starfire/ ) website and covers the Starfire interface for Sun. Lovely pre-internet version of the future.

Ignore the haircuts.

Paper acceptance for Neurodiversity & HCI

Dear Nick Dalton,

Thank you for submitting to alt.chi 2013. After careful review, we are pleased to inform you that your paper Neurodiversity & HCI has been accepted for presentation at alt.chi 2013.

Please submit your final, camera-ready version on PCS by 17 Feb, 2013. (More specific instructions will follow on Wednesday.)

We encourage you to incorporate reviewer and juror feedback, as much as is feasible, into your final version.

Sincerely,
Amanda Williams and Daniela Rosner
CHI 2013 alt.chi co-chairs

WO-OH!!!! (wa-hay as they say here)  - I get to go to CHI-2013 which is the big human computer interaction conference.

How "Bullet Time" Will Revolutionise Exascale Computing

How "Bullet Time" Will Revolutionise Exascale Computing | MIT Technology Review

This is quite an over claim for a visualization. I quite like the notion of slowing time down and moving round it as a visualization method but I'm not convinced it's better than doing a normal interactive visualization of some sort. I guess the claim is more about creating something interactive from pre-rendered movies.

Still this sounds like something which could form a good research project - checking the utility of this method against some other method for user preference/accuracy/ insight.

Measuring insight would be the interesting problem.  

Technical Overview - Native Client — Google Developers

Technical Overview - Native Client — Google Developers

This allows you to compile C/C++ as a kind of in web browser app. I could build some very cool things with this ( If I had the time).

My job in simple words.

Can you explain your research using only the most used 1000 words ? 

Mine was

My work is the world of tomorrow.  My work is to help people become more able, to have stronger ideas, have stronger minds,  stronger memories, stronger voices. I do this through the use of computers. I think about how  humans talk to  computers. The computers of tomorrow will not be on your desk. They will not always use words to talk to you. You will have more than your finger to point at things.  I wonder about how we go about doing that. I like to make up a questions which ask why people find things on computers hard to use.To do this  I put computers into things like floors, walls, chairs, cups, things from the everyday world. My computers hide in things and watching us move them and they learn to work with people.

[ Translation I do human computer interaction research specifically ubicomp research ]


Others and I made some art stuff from 24 hanging balls ,   it shows people how many people use the stairs and how many use lifts. The plan was to see if we could use things and pictures to change peoples minds.   
We don't have computers to help people work together when they are in the same room. I have also looked at how people use a table made from computers and lights to help think about this. 

[ transation we built a ambient display sculpture to see if we could effect peoples behaviour regarding stair useage ] 

My student and I  made a shop where lights hid under bottles of red drink. The table would change the color of a light under a bottle to show how liked a drink was. If some one picked up a bottle the lights would show which drinks other people picked who liked that drink.  This is about taking good things from on line book shops and putting them in a real shop.

[ Transation - Phd student Gonzalo built a ambient recommender in to a wine shop ]  

My next work will look at helping people to wonder around large hard to go places and stop them getting lost. People who go to hospitals and other big places like that  can get lost easily. I want to ask about how to we get lost, how do we think about getting lost, what to we mean about hard to find our way? This both in the world of the real and the world inside the computer. Is getting lost in a computer just something we say or is it real getting lost?

[ translation - This year I'm looking at how we navigate from a ubicomp perspective ]

I also talk about people who can not read and write like me, or people who can not read faces, or people who can not sit still. They say they are not sick,  they are not wrong, they have good points. They can be strong but we only give money to doctors to find sick things  people have. They  not to look to find good things about these people.  I wonder what happens if we try to look at people's good points. How do we  go about making things for these people.

[ translation - I'm intreasted in neurodiversity, I have a number of nuerodiverse students  ]

I always need people to play on my things I make, this helps me learn how people use things and what is wrong with them ( the things that is).
[ Translation - I always need people for my experiments ]
[ Try it your self at ]

http://splasho.com/blog/2013/01/17/a-bit-more-about-the-up-goer-five-text-editor/

New public home page

I have just been given permission to put up an outside facing home page for myself.  Try me I'm interactive. 
http://users.mct.open.ac.uk/nd2563/