Flows and interaction

Reading about support for mobile social interaction or social icebreakers I was inspired to this idea of a projector based system which would project information in front of you. The user would be presented with three or more possible flows or directions to moving each of which would expose different types of information to the user.   if the user followed a particular branch that Branch might then split up again into more detailed information.
The idea would be that if two users were exhibiting interest in the same kind of subject than they might be directed to collide with each other and then over the subject might discover they have some interest in common.

File this under experiments to do when I had a near infinite number of projectors on hand

Space and Place

“We will argue that the critical property which designers are seeking, which we call appropriate behavioral framing, is not rooted in the properties of space at all. Instead, it is rooted in sets of mutually-held, and mutually available, cultural understandings about behaviour and action. In contrast to “space”, we call this a sense of “place”. Our principle is: “Space is the opportunity; place is the understood reality”. Place is a fundamental concept in architecture and urban design, and we can learn from those disciplines how to think about

place in collaborative systems. Place derives from a tension between connectedness and distinction, rather than from three-dimensional structure, and we can see this at work in a variety of collaborative systems.” (Harrison & Dourish, 1996). 

I guess my big problem with this is our architects seeking to create place or are happy just to define space. My feeling is that architects are frequently trying a create places. The big message from a developer I once saw was "we build homes not houses".

My own Phd thesis on the spatial structure of neghbourhoods was that space gives the affordance for place.

I am currently reading An Architecturally Situated Approach to Place-based Mobile Interaction Design by Mikael Wiberg as part of the background to a paper I am writing. It is a stimulating work and deserves a read.

Subtleties of Color (Part 1 of 6) : Elegant Figures

Subtleties of Color (Part 1 of 6) : Elegant Figures

I do this my self but this lovely hand crafted visualisation asks me the question why should all visualisations be mechanically crisp? I think it makes the data look more cerain that it is.
lovely image any way.

Encoding quantitative data with color is (sometimes literally) a simple matter of paint-by-numbers. In 1964 Richard Grumm and his team of engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory hand-colored the first image of Mars taken from an interplanetary probe as they waited for computers to process the data.

Transport Systems Catapult Vision ( and the Internet of Stuff )

In case you didn't know transportation Systems catapult vision is setting up in Milton Keynes and looking for collaborators.  I was watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MtlqZsEx0I&feature=youtu.be

And a few of things have occurred to me from a research perspective. 

• I’ve been reading a PhD thesis on cycling in Newcastle. And the thing that truly still offends me is that there is no good transportation model or modelling tool for cycling. On the one hand I feel confident that my experience from developing modelling tools for pedestrians I could produce something that would work for cyclists. The downside is that this is really transportation research and way outside the remit of HCI. That said my current research arc is looking at interaction and navigation in buildings so there is some leeway. 
• As I mentioned to you I could create a nice box for counting cyclists. I think a real-time picture of cycling in a city could be quite interesting. 
• I like the idea of taking a lean start-up approach to encouraging cycling in the city.
• From a more computer  point of view and with the transportation hub strongly in mind I would think that people like MatterNEt ( http://matternet.us )  would be a big concern for the transportation hub people. Check the TED talk.  http://matternet.us/ted/  Amazon have also reported delivering items via drones. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25180906 currently this is illegal in the US/UK which is why the matter let people are looking at the Third World as a prototyping area. Clearly there is some interesting research looking at what would happen if  a change in the law was made.
• I think there is a very interesting PHD looking at modelling drone deliveries ( drone logistics).  Four example
• If we had deliveries via this kind of drone air force how many machines are we considering having in the air?
• What kind of delivery system would we have to have to match up with what we get at the moment by courier services?
• I am sure that lot of people would like to know about the costing of such a system. 
• Would having drones delivering goods to your back garden or office be cheaper than delivering them by courier?
• This would be quite a complex question involving needing the modelling of multiple autonomous agents.
• Four example, it is cheaper to ship by rail but the flexibility for trucks to move more on demand makes shipping by road a preferred option. 
• It would also be interesting to look at the energy consumption of these kinds of devices.
• Four example many people have suggested that it would be impossible for the UK to switch to a largely electric transportation economy. The current vision is that petrol will still be largely the only viable transportation source.
• The drones are still mostly electric would this mean that shipping lots of goods via drones would reduce our overall energy dependencies?
• Finally and I think Santi probably has this wrapped up already, but do the transportation modelling people have a good visualisation tool to look at these new transport models they are making?
• There definitely seems some possibility there for research. 

Interface Concept/ Masters project of the day.

I was just reading some papers and thought of an interesting idea that would allow one handheld computer (iPhone) to identify itself to a laptop/desktop. 

I am wondering if you can transmit vibration from the phone in a controlled way. Four example via low frequency (inaudiable) sounds or  use of the vibrating mechanism found on many phones. The experiment would be to see if the desktop computer such as a laptop could detect the vibration with it's accelerometer witj enough fidelity to pick out a signal.

Thus one phone could be used to login to a laptop by placing it on the laptop's surface. It would transmit a short binary stream which would be an encrypted identifier. 

I guess if you were using your iPhone as a way of identifying yourself ( keys to computer ) then you could use the cameras/screens as well.

Some students at UCL generated a nice system using bird tweets to transmit short packets of data between phones that could share images with other physically co-present users. 


The idea is that by using touch or visual techniques it would be very difficult for someone to do a man in the middle attack which is more possible with a wireless transmission stream (e.g BlueTooth).

The system would be more convenient than having to remember your password on different computers but it would be as and secure as your house is (if you lose your keys a stranger can use them on your house).  Equally if you lose your phone and don't do anything about it then your access to  Desktop computers would be compromised.  

I guess a working system would be more convenient if getting your phone out and launching an app is quicker than remembering and typing your password accurately.  This is a bit debatable but for people who don't like writing or remembering ( eg. youg children, people with cognitive impairments and possibly the elderly) it could be a good working alternative. 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOUR GEEKS ARE 100 TIMES SMARTER THAN YOUR ADVERTISING PEOPLE

Samsung Amazing Flexible Display [CES 2013] - YouTube:
Come and look at some serisouly cool OLED technology for a foldable display. I like the notion of a phone form factor that can unfold like a book into a tablet (pretty cool).

Also check out what happens when you give the most sublime technology to a lame advertising company. I wish Steve Jobs was alive to put a stop to this advert.

Worrying news for HCI on the new A-Level curriculm for computer science

If you check out the new

Proposed GCE AS and A Level Subject Content for Computer Science
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/252932/Computer_science_subject_content.pdf 

You might be agast to discover that anything to do with Human comptuer interaction has been exised ( removed) from the circulum leaving a big hole.

The subject content ( knowledge and understanding ) and the skills particularly design seems to be missing anything relating to state the Aims and Objectives which are

an understanding of the consequences of uses of computing, including social, legal, ethical and other issues; and
an awareness of technologies and an appreciation of their impact on society. 






I would suggest that the subject context needs to be amended.

Analysis

• Evaluate the possible need for development of a computer-based solution to a problem.
• Judge the feasibility of a computer-based solution to a problem.
• Derive the user, data and processing requirements of a system, including a consideration of the user,social aspects and context. and physical environment
• Specify and document the data and processing requirements for a computer-based solution to a problem. 

DESIGN

• Understand that a user is at the heart of any utilised system. 
• To be able to use a number of methods such as prototypes to understand how a final application would change the users approach to the problem
• To realise that Analysis and Design is frequently and iterative process 
• Specify and document, using appropriate systematic methods:
• the functions of the parts of a system;
• the interrelationships between the various parts of a system;
• the selection of an appropriate hardware and software configuration;
• the method of solving the problem including, where appropriate, evaluation of alternative proposals;
• the algorithms, data types, data structures and other requirements of the solution;
• the method of testing the solution and the selection of test data; and
• the effectiveness of the proposed solution in meeting the requirements of the problem.

0. Implementation
•   Select appropriate software and hardware, and techniques for their use.
•   Implement the design.
•   Carry out testing.
    Carry out user testing.
1. 
   
2.   Develop documentation. 
   
   
   

BBC News - Amazon testing drones for deliveries

BBC News - Amazon testing drones for deliveries

You might remember I blogged this idea last year. Now Amazon are doing it.