A contagiously passionate project in design, led by Seung Chan Lim, former MAYA Design: Realizing Empathy
He frames the act of making as an inherently empathic act, and creativity, innovation and transformation as side effects. Made me think.
Below a talk of his at RISD in march 2012
Oh boy, here we go (again).
See these for more AR glasses goodness:
BMW augmented reality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9KPJlA5yds
Nokia Mixed Reality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGwvZWyLiBU
Samsung Future Life and Style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nKFW-lDNK8
Brother AiRScouter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rtxz1P2Ogw
Wells Riley, UI/UX designer, offers us a design primer for non-designers: Startups, this is how design works. How many times have you had to explain what is Design to a random dude in an elevator, your grandma or an old friend from high-school. It is not easy to be clear and concise.
While his definition of Interaction Design is pretty darn limited: interaction design helps humans experience or manipulate software or interface with screen-based hardware in order to achieve specific goals – checking email, withdrawing money from an ATM, or “Liking” a webpage, I like how design is globally depicted and exposed. And the link to “Hiring a designer: hunting the unicorn” is an interesting read too.
a very physical approach to a typeface, gestures from capital to under-case
see more on Tien-Min Liao’s behance portfolio
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A talk by Brett Victor at CUSEC’12
http://vimeo.com/36579366
What I saw in this talk was the power of interaction design to make great ideas accessible and to bring (inter-)actions from the abstract to the meaningful.
Bret discusses the importance for creators to see direct results of their actions when exploring ideas. Makes me think of sketching, tinkering prototyping. What are the tools that we use to do this in the digital, virtual realm, and what ‘directness’ do we have there?
Also have a look at the inspiring examples Brett shows on his website.
Gmail’s new keyboard design; in the design lead’s own words:
“You can tap it in the morning, you can tap it at night, you can tap in the bathroom (…).”
In an effort to better understand who we are as a community, as well as why and how we use/make open-source hardware, a few of us (Catarina Mota, David Mellis and John De Cristofaro) created a survey. Please participate so that we can promote open-source hardware and serve you to the best of our abilities!
The survey will be up until April 15, and the aggregate results will be made publicly available in the form of a report consisting of graphics, percentages, and anonymized quotes. By publishing your (anonymous) responses, we hope to provide the public with insights into the practices and experiences of the people involved in open-source hardware.
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Visual aesthetics, as discussed in this chapter, refers to the beauty or the pleasing appearance of things. We discuss the importance of visual aesthetics in the context of interactive systems and products, present how it has been studied in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and suggest directions for future work in this field.
In exclusivity, you can discover this chapter before it goes fully public at this link.
What do you imagine the world will look like in 2025?
The FutureScapes project brings together a range of expert thinkers, designers, futurologists, writers and you – the public – to explore the opportunities and challenges of life in 2025, and to consider the potential contribution that technology and entertainment can make in shaping a better, more sustainable future.
There are more videos scenarios, workshops activities and written report (PDF).
http://www.sony.co.uk/futurescapes
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[Camille: I am passing this along from my supervisor, who is looking for 2 new PhD students. The positions are open to people with CS and/or design backgrounds.]
As a joint venture between Interactive Institute Umeå and the Department of Informatics at Umeå University, we are looking for 2 PhD students in Informatics in the area of Human-Computer Interaction/Interaction Design.
Interactive Institute Umeå, established in 2009 and a part of Swedish ICT Research, is a fast growing, unique multidisciplinary interaction design research studio that in close collaboration with Umeå University and Swedish industry combines deep skills in engineering and design with pioneering research in Human-Computer Interaction and Interaction Design. The studio conducts design-oriented and prototype-generating research, typically in collaboration with external partners.
Research Direction
Under the supervision of Daniel Fällman, you will work in the research program DEIT: Design of Engaging Information Technology – funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research – to research and develop new kinds of interactions and relations to and with information technology around the concepts of human engagement, involvement, and embodiment.
Deadline for application: April 30, 2012.
Read the full announcement.
Nice way to create a web interface for your xbee projects!
“Ethernet shield supports basic html, ajax and json scripting so that you will be able to write and customize your web interface as you wish.”
buy here for $49,95
A short video from an electronic product development firm (bluntly put) Delta, from Denmark. They discuss how they use sketching in an early stage of their design and development.
http://youtu.be/gBQvq4U_a84
More than 10 years to build from scratch, all analog! Impressive.
Read more at web.media.mit.edu/~joep/synth.html, listen or even control the synth remotely at synth.media.mit.edu.
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Jeff Hoefs, formerly with Smart Design, now with Rockwell Group, is releasing a new Javascript framework to prototype stuff at the merger of the web and the physical. The platform is called Breakout and is best presented as follows:
Breakout is a prototyping tool for exploring the intersection of the web and the physical world. The popular Arduino platform and the Firmata protocol are leveraged to enable users to access physical input and output purely from javascript. This makes it easy for anyone familiar with javascript and basic web development to explore the possibilities of using physical I/O in their web applications. Furthermore, the Breakout framework includes a growing library of hardware abstractions such as buttons, leds, servo motors, accelerometers, gyros, etc enabling the user to easily interface with a range of sensors and actuators using just a few lines of javascript code. [from website]
It works across platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux) and on a large selection of desktop and mobile browsers. It supports many if not all Arduino boards and compatible ones, plus Teensy boards. Check the full requirements here. It has pretty nice filters to smooth data and trigger events easily.
Codenamed Tilt and now part of Firefox 11, this is a “WebGL-based website visualization tool that highlights the structure of a page better than a flat view, so anyone can immediately understand the relationship of the code to the page output.” It’s pretty nice, you can even export the 3D mesh to render it externally (or even 3d print it maybe, the tangible web anyone?).