Back from CHI part 1

Love is a lab with a powerful electromagnet - I'm guessing its done with a sensor which keeps the balls at the right distanced ( so what are they putting in the balls?)


F5 2011 RE:PLAY Film Festival. Inductance from Physalia Studio on Vimeo.

entropy notes

From a conversation at CHI with Nadia that interaction was different from traditional design because what you designed was complex. For me our comprehension and management of complexity & pattern lie at the heart of HCI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjzc4-a6Iwg&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzdvX1ong18&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Interaction venice

Gilian Crampton Smith is a god but strangely down to earth - I had a nice lunch with her on the grass in a park near the conferance at the last CHI.  I used to work with her Husband at the Bartlett school of architecture - he's a really nice guy just wonderful - and met her though him. I used to demo NeXT machines to her students ( this was all pre-internet).  Nina Pope and Rory Hamilton who had both been digital artists in residence who then went to work on Gillian's  Computer related design course. I was always really jealous of her computer related design course  at the RCA. I mean I loved the freedom for the students - provided it was related to computers and design and computers you could do it. Gillian ended up being on my executive committee for the virtual environments course ( now adaptive architectural computation at the Bartlett) which gave the course a lot of credibility to architecture back then. Now Gilian is work in Venice - could you imagine anything more cool ?
If I was young again I would definitely do that course.  


Any way GCS is rightly famous for basically giving Durrell Bishop the space do to the marble answering machine. Still for me one of the clearst and most viable products for tangible technology. I remember seeing this video at the first Doors of Perception conference ( which was so cool). It was one of those - I know the world has change moments when I first saw it. Now you can judge for your self. 




Durrell Bishop Marble Answer Machine from Luckybite on Vimeo.

Head Tracking for iPad: Glasses-Free 3D Display!

IPad2 does 2D without glassess. 


Oddly I thought of doing this with a desktop machine but the hand held does much better. Makes you wonder what kinds of affordances 3D gives you? I'm still impressed withe the graphics power of a machine that thin!

Floor walkers

I  have now heard about floor walkers ( people use different names ) in a number of different contexts

In a military planning centre floor walkers move around from static workstation to static workstation to assist the information conherance between 'workers' ( who can't move ).  

In forensic accounting -  someone from UCL interaction group talked about a floor walker in the context of a group of legal and accounts who take all the records from a large complex fraud. Each person looks at data bit by bit and the floor walker trys to make connections between diffrent people ( 'you thought john Smith was odd hmm jake also found a odd record about John Smith lets make a new file on him'). 

In air trafic control  - someone talking about using multi touch for air traffic control talked about a floor walker moving between static workers who control zones. The floor walker is much more experienced and can solve co-oridination problems or just help individuals when work load is too high. 


I wonder what this means in terms of colocated collaboration across an ecology of devices

neurodiversity dyslexia

1.

Baum, S. Gifted but learning disabled: A puzzling paradox. Eric Digest 3E479. Reston, VA: Council for Exceptional Children, (1990).

Interesting paper about the up sides of dyslexia.

Relates to an interesting lecturer on neurodiversity and dyslexia. 

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/disability/lecture/lecture2010.html

Yvonne Rogers to leave OU and move to interaction group at UCL

Well it's official and I'm slightly well numb.

Prof Yvonne Rogers is off to run the interaction group at UCL leaving the space for a new Professor of Interaction for pervasive computing here. Naturally I'm from UCL originally and I'm very excited for her, she's a top class userati person ( http://www.usabilityviews.com/userati_name.html  ) and she will be going to what is arguably one of the top research places in the UK/World so I can't think of a better mix.

I think this is great for Yvonne and I'm really please for her.

For me I'm not sure - I've been left with a lot of stuff to play with and a nice space to do it in. I'll be continuing the blog, we have a new Pervasive professor joining this year and I'm told a replacement for Yvonne at some point within the next 12 months.

Mean while I'll take some time to absorb it and reflect on my current research agenda.

Multi-touch meets online collaboration for all the right reasons

3 from B-Reel & B-Reel Films on Vimeo.

I remember seeing a proposal for this kind of system some years ago at an old MediaMatic/Door of Perception conference ( with out the sales angle) . I was excited then - you can have a display were everyone gets the text the right way round. Naturally easy to do multi-touch with a  IR camera with this  too.

I wonder what the client has - a flash plug-in or something ? How much do you get the feeling that the operator has to work blind ( not seeing the client ) .

Touch scree scrolling

Interesting alternative to the normal pan based scrolling.
Is it just me or are people thinking that whole scroll bar thing on desktop GUI was a bad idea ?



I'm not 100% convinced this is better

More cool tables

Also a link to useful collection of museum components at Open Exhibits

Idenum have made a very nice plasma based multi touch table - anyone got any budget left guys?

I can only say one thing - leg room!

Transparent computing

I was writing a short description of what my research is and where it is going. This is the bit I've cut out 

I call my current research area, transparent computing. Transparent computing looks to build and study a range of devices trying to investigate how computing will change over the next ten years.

Transparency has two opposing threads which make up the theme, how to make interaction with a device transparent - were the way you use a computer becomes so transparent you don’t have to think about how to use the computer but on how to achieve your goal. This is strongly related to W's calm computing but also has notions of embodied computing. 

The other side of transparency is how to you remove the black box nature of current software systems? How to you visualise what’s going on inside the machine in order for users to better understand the limitations and conditions that the information being presented to them.  Currently computation stands as a Deus ex machina information is captured and the machine delivers the results (‘the machine says no’).  Frequently we don’t have the information to be aware of problems. The object of transparent computing is to give insights into the current state of the digital world. 

visual finger tracking for mice ?

stubled over this - Given you can connect via blue tooth can you use more than one ? I wonder what sized area it covers