The Spotify Box has been selected finalist for the IxDA Awards 2012. The winners will be announced at the Interaction12 conference in Dublin next week. In the meantime, it would be awesome if you can help out and vote for the People’s Choice award. The competition is tough, but we’ll see what happens.
Thanks for your help! Let’s hope for the best!
From the TPB’s blog:
We’re always trying to foresee the future a bit here at TPB. One of the things that we really know is that we as a society will always share. Digital communication has made that a lot easier and will continue to do so. And after the internets evolutionized data to go from analog to digital, it’s time for the next step.
Today most data is born digitally. It’s not about the transition from analog to digital anymore. We don’t talk about how to rip anything without losing quality since we make perfect 1 to 1 digital copies of things. Music, movies, books, all come from the digital sphere. But we’re physical people and we need objects to touch sometimes as well!
We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years.
So here is a new term: physibles. I like it :-)
http://thepiratebay.org/blog/203
[via Jan Borchers on the Sketching mailing list]
I’ve been working at a place called R/GA in New York for the past 3 months.
It’s been an intense and overwhelming new journey for me. I’ve had to work harder than I ever worked before and I’m learning a lot of new things about the commercial World of practice and theory. Working in an ‘interactive agency’ is very new compared with working at Ergonomidesign, Teague or the other more traditional Industrial Design consultancies we are familiar with. Our education in Umeå, due to its industrial design roots, prepares us to practice in an industrial design setting. Working in the agency format gives me a chance to compete among other backgrounds and skills and its actually quite challenging. The focus is a lot more on narrative, web, mobile, visual design and interaction design plays an ever-evolving role in their work equation.
A team I work closely with has just launched one of their biggest, top secret projects in recent years. It’s called the Nike+ Fuel Band and it monitors your body activity. It’s pretty cool albeit not the first in its space.
What I know is how much intensity and work it took to make it happen.
The team had to sweat blood for a year to bring this to market on schedule. Will see how it performs with fingers crossed and get me one asap!
SIDeR 2012, Intertwine and Play
March 22-23 2012, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
The conference theme for the 8th SIDER conference is Intertwine and Play. Intertwining traditional services with new media forms and engaging play is the core challenge for future interaction design. In all parts of the work of an interaction designer, from gathering requirements, to performing methods and creating products, it is important to take respect to what is already there, from organizational and theoretical level to spatial and practice level. At the same time, by playing and experimenting with traditions, and intertwine them with new media and new technology, interaction designers will be able to inspire and visualize new perspectives of the future.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Papers must not exceed 4 pages (~2000 words) in length following the standard ACM format. The papers will be presented orally by authors on stage for 10 minutes, and the presentations are grouped in sessions with other related papers. There will also be a limited number of opportunities for exhibiting projects as an alternative to presenting on stage.
TOPICS
Suggested topics for papers include but are not limited to:
Human-Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, Multimodal Interaction, Tangible User Interfaces, Aesthetics of Interaction, Experimental Design, Game Design, Design Methods, Interaction Techniques, Social computing, Information visualization, Design cases, Mobile computing
DEADLINE
Papers must be submitted as a pdf-file to sider2012[]chalmers.se before February 1st 2012, with the subject header: SIDER Submission. The email should be sent to all of the co-authors, so that we can reply to all of you. The submitted papers must follow the standard ACM format. Notice of acceptance will be sent out March 1st at the latest. You are welcome to contact the conference organizers for additional information at sider2012[]chalmers.se.
OPTIONAL
For a better experience of the conference we would also like you to attach to your submission:
a photo along with a short bio and links to relevant portfolios or social network profiles of the authors where conference participants can find out more information about your design interests (the photos should be individual and at least 200×200px), a cover photo/image of your project.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Johan Redström, Staffan Björk and Johan Peitz. More information here.
REGISTRATION
The conference fee is 300 SEK and includes printed proceedings, coffee & cake, lunches and a conference dinner. Register page.
http://www.cse.chalmers.se/research/group/idc/ituniv/sider12
The V&A museum in London hosted an exhibition named Power of Making earlier this Fall.
Making is the most powerful way that we solve problems, express ideas and shape our world. What and how we make defines who we are, and communicates who we want to be.
For many people, making is critical for survival. For others, it is a chosen vocation: a way of thinking, inventing and innovating. And for some it is simply a delight to be able to shape a material and say ‘I made that’. The power of making is that it fulfills each of these human needs and desires.
Those whose craft and ingenuity reach the very highest levels can create amazing things. But making is something everyone can do. The knowledge of how to make – both everyday objects and highly-skilled creations – is one of humanity’s most precious resources.
Check more videos and the curator’s text about the exhibition.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/powerofmaking
Too bad it is over now, I would have like to see it. I ordered the book as a consolation prize.
Background: In 2010 Ergonomidesign had the opportunity to develop a game which would showcase Microsoft’s new Surface. The project was internally funded by ourselves and a software developer called Connecta with the aim to create a compelling interactive experience using multi-touch. Together we created a music game called Sonicspree that launched in 2010. The game was very well received and Fast Company magazine listed it as one of the top “killer applications” for Microsoft Surface. It won the Microsoft .NET awards in 2010.
We believe this game has much more potential! Our goal is to take the game over to the ipad to be released to potentially millions of music lovers and gamers.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1469771149/sonicspree-battle-friends-and-family-for-music-sup
Intel asked the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) to look 10 years into the future and imagine how people might capture or display photos given expected advances in technology. Intel is in the ever faster processor business and uses these predictions to steer chip architecture as well as to help spur developers imagination to maintain demand for faster silicon.
Over the course of the project one of the teams (the one made by Chris Bierbower and Marco Triverio) realized that using photos for story telling is such a fundamentally instinctive behavior that it is safe to predict it will last through several generations of technological innovation. The concept they created, called Living Frames, develops on this insight. However, foreseeing 10 years into the future is tricky. With IBM’s Watson, we’re seeing a sneak peak of improvements in natural language and intention recognition. The Living Frames team thinks that one of the photo related advances users will enjoy are computers that will actually help us tell stories and have richer conversations. They created a video to illustrate the idea.
Click here to see the Living Frames video.
Click here to know more about the process behind Living Frames.
Jan Chipchase, Insights guru at frog design, previously at Nokia, recently plublished an essay titled Imperialist Tendencies on his personal site. He answers, via a long and very informative detour, a few questions pertaining to design research, users participation in insights activities, and other similar activities under the umbrella of ethomethodology. Mr. Chipchase explains his drive to conduct such inquiries, and to what extent big corporations (and all designers) are guilty of some form of design imperialism.
My summary is not that good, so head over to his personal site for a proper read. It would be super inspiring to have him visit UID at some point in time!
More bits and pieces on Design Imperialism:
Design Crusades: A Critical Reflection on Social Design
The Language of Design Imperialism
Is Humanitarian Design the New Imperialism?
Design For the First World
From the Android Developers Blog:
Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) is our biggest redesign yet — both for users and developers. We’ve enhanced the UI framework with new interactions and styles that will let you create Android apps that are simpler and more beautiful than ever before.
To help you in that mission, we’re introducing Android Design: the place to learn about principles, building blocks, and patterns for creating world-class Android user interfaces. Whether you’re a UI professional or a developer playing that role, these docs show you how to make good design decisions, big and small.
Does it hurt your eyes when you code? “Solarized is a sixteen color palette (eight monotones, eight accent colors) designed for use with terminal and gui applications. “
Mads Soegaard (and the team from Interaction-Design.org) continues to provision their Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction with world-class educational material. The newest chapter on Affective Computing is written by Kristina Höök, professor in Human-Machine Interaction at Stockholm University. It is definitely a must-read for any IxD designer, and be sure to check out the four additional commentaries by Rosalind W. Picard, Paul Hekkert, Egon L. van den Broek and Joyce H. D. M. Westerink.
Affective Computing, Affective Interaction and Technology as Experience
Everyone is raving about 3D printing now (new MakerBot Replicator and Cube), but this foam cutting robot is much sweeter.
[via]
“The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities.
But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.”
The Socio-Digital Systems group at Microsoft Research Cambridge is starting a series of publications titled “Things We’ve Learnt About…”. These publications are an effort to communicate and package design research insights into something easily accessible for anyone involved with the development of tech products, designers and non-resesarchers in general.
The first issue tackles Human-to-Human Communication. It is available in digital format or in print-on-demand on MagCloud.
You can read more about the Things We’ve Learnt About… project on this page. The people responsible for this series are Richard Banks, Nick Duffield, Richard Harper and Abigail Sellen. Very inspiring work, and I can’t wait to read the coming issues.
Solving that one problem with touch screens: they are still screens.
article:
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665749/ui-magic-this-tiny-mic-turns-any-surface-into-a-touch-interface