If you get lost in the mist of user research synthesis easily as I do, here is an interesting presentation on creating personas that address user needs/behavior.
The biggest takeaway is understanding why tools and methods, and be flexible when applying to the process. After all user research should be better focused when we plan for thesis.
This was done by Bolt | Peters who had been acq-hired facebook. So hopefully they’ll shape a better digital social space soon!
For any folks interested in writing Python on a Raspberry Pi with not too much hassle, check this out.
From personal experience, the Pi is not hard to work with at all. This seems to bring ease-of-coding to even more people. The more the merrier!
Printed Optics is a new approach to creating custom optical elements for interactive devices using 3D printing. Printed Optics enable sensing, display, and illumination elements to be directly embedded in the body of an interactive device. Using these elements, unique display surfaces, novel illumination techniques, custom optical sensors, and robust embedded components can be digitally fabricated for rapid, high fidelity, customized interactive devices.
Karl D.D. Willis, Eric Brockmeyer, Scott E. Hudson, Ivan Poupyrev
Disney Research, Pittsburgh
Bret Victor gives his thoughts on how people (could) learn to program, and why ‘just’ a live coding webapp doesn’t necessarily do it. Sit back, it’s quite a read.
How it starts:
Khan Academy recently launched an online environment for lea
r
ning to program. It offers a set of tutorials based on the JavaScript and Processing languages, and features a “live coding” environment, where the program’s output updates as the programmer types.
Because my work was cited as an inspiration for the Khan system, I felt I should respond with two thoughts about learning:
Programming is a way of thinking, not a rote skill. Learning about “for” loops is not learning to program, any more than learning about pencils is learning to draw.
People understand what they can see. If a programmer cannot see what a program is doing, she can’t understand it.
Thus, the goals of a programming system should be:
– to support and encourage powerful ways of thinking
– to enable programmers to see and understand the execution of their programs
A live-coding Processing environment addresses neither of these goals. JavaScript and Processing are poorly-designed languages that support weak ways of thinking, and ignore decades of learning about learning. And live coding, as a standalone feature, is worthless.
The full article: Learnable Programming
Khan Academy Computer Science
Can machines create original music? Scape is our answer to that question: it employs some of the sounds, processes and compositional rules that we have been using for many years and applies them in fresh combinations, to create new music. Scape makes music that thinks for itself.
– Brian Eno, Peter Chilvers
Discover more at http://www.generativemusic.com
[via]
I guess you have seen the London Tube Map Radio on the interwebs recently. But hey there is more goodness coming from Yuri Suzuki. Great to see Daniel Hirschmann (past UID tutor) from Technology Will Save Us collaborating on the Denki Puzzle Radio. Very inspiring work!!!
Nice stepper motor noise :)
From the website:
“The construction is about 8 m high and 45 m width. Visible elements of system are cubes that move on specially prescribed program. Size of the cubes is 30x30cm and are made of styrofoam. All parts are driven by 3375 customized actuators and stepping motors.”
Sure, we don’t do music video’s here. The leds, pcb, mechanics and such make this one legitimate enough for an ixd blog post.
from animation studio Cyriak
Nicely done, but quite creepy :-)
From the website:
This research project is about gestures, postures and digital rituals that typically emerged with the use of digital technologies (computers, mobile phones, sensors, robots, etc.): gestures such as recalibrating your smartphone doing an horizontal 8 sign with your hand, the swiping of wallet with RFID cards in public transports, etc. These practices can be seen as the results of a co-construction between technical/physical constraints, contextual variables, designers intents and people’s understanding. We can see them as an intriguing focus of interest to envision the future of material culture.
A project from Nicolas Nova (The Near Future Laboratory / HEAD-Genève), Katherine Miyake, Nancy Kwon and Walton Chiu from the media design program at Art Center College of Design (Pasadena).
Check the PDF report and the design fiction movie “A Digital Tomorrow” (below).
A tribute to esteemed museum director Bill Moggridge, who passed away on September 8, 2012 following a battle with cancer. Hear about his pioneering work and influence in the field of design from Tim Brown and David Kelley of IDEO, Bernie Roth of Stanford University and Caroline Baumann and Cara McCarty of Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.
A great project from Montreal (Canada) featuring Turlute, a traditional folk style that sings out instrumental partitions with evocative phonemes. I discovered the project at TEI earlier this year, but just stumbled on the video. Great work from Daily Tous les Jours
