Random Lift Quotes

Since I am too busy handling things for LIFT06, I just managed to reach my mac for typing few quotes: "Lost for example is designed as a video game although it is a tv series. There is the creation of a virtual space that makes people react and try to figure out and decrypt." Bruno Guissani

"A camel is a horse designed by committee" Jeffrey Huang quoting Alec Issigonis.

"20-30% of the workers in the video game creation industry in France have picked up and moved to Canada in recent years." Pierre Carde

"Easyjet had made more connected europeans than the European Union" Thomas Madsen-Mygdal

"unlike what friedman says, the world is not flat, but rather spiky" Pierre Carde quoting Richard Florida

"Innovation lab is a physical blog on speed" Thomas Sevcik

"...and spimes may lead to teddy-bear supporting machines... a rothweiler kicking the shit out of a teddy bear" Bruce Sterling

"IM and VoIP are supporting continuous communication" Stefana Broadbent

"It's not longer learning anywhere anytime, it's learning SOMEWHERE; we are social animals" Pierre Dillenbourg

"why MS is not advertising in women magazines" Anina

"... those fake art projects [presented by Regine Debatty] reminds me Piaget's work with counter-examples" Stefana Broadbent

"was there greenpeace movement before tv?" David Galipeau

"Games are bloody repetitive and boring" Kelly Richdale

"SMS is to tell you I miss you, Email is to organise our dinner, Voice is to say I’m late, and IM is to continue our conversation" Stefana Broadbent

Pigeons that blog

Food for thoughts for the workshop about "blogjects" and the internet of things, these pigeons bloggers are curious. I think I saw it already at Regine's place but Julian reminded me of this because it's close to the blogject idea. It's a project by Beatriz Da Costa:

PIGEONBLOG provides an alternative participatory way to environmental air pollution data gathering. It equips Urban Homing Pigeons with GPS enabled electronic air pollution sensing devices, capable of sending location based air pollution data as well as images to an online Mapping/Blogging Environment in real time. (...) PigeonBlog uses a combination of Siemens' XT 56 miniature GPS/GSM unit, an electronic automotive CO and NOx sensing unit and the Atmel AVR microprocessor. Detailed tech and datasheet information is forthcoming on this site.

However, in addition to being used for PigeonBlog, Cina Hazegh is currently working on broadening this platform towards a more general Open Source Hardware cell phone project. (...) Pigeons releases will occur once a day throughout the duration of the festival on the ISEA premises. Release location: ClockTower in San Jose. The first release will take place during the opening ceremony of the festival on tuesday evening. Additional "White Dove" releases are planned at strategic high pollutant areas within the San Jose region. Exact locations are to be determined.

Be careful with Lego Mindstorms

A friend of mine has been arrested yesterday in a train in Germany. He was basically playing/programming LEGO Mindstorms during his way in the train. The cops said he was suspected to prepare a bomb and then had to answers some questions about the material he was carrying. After few hours, they released him but he had to pay a 50 euros fine and had to leave his mindstorms gear there. Fortunately he could take back his own laptop. Update: my friend got back his mindstorms kit

Web surfers decide the worth of a site in a mere 50 milliseconds.

Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression! by Gitte Lindgaard, Gary Fernandes, Cathy Dude, J. Browñ, in Behaviour & Information Technology, Volume 25, Number 2 / March-April 2006, pages: 115 - 126. The paper shows how web surfers decide the worth of a site in a mere 50 milliseconds.

Three studies were conducted to ascertain how quickly people form an opinion about web page visual appeal. In the first study, participants twice rated the visual appeal of web homepages presented for 500 ms each. The second study replicated the first, but participants also rated each web page on seven specific design dimensions. Visual appeal was found to be closely related to most of these. Study 3 again replicated the 500 ms condition as well as adding a 50 ms condition using the same stimuli to determine whether the first impression may be interpreted as a ‘mere exposure effect’ (Zajonc 1980). Throughout, visual appeal ratings were highly correlated from one phase to the next as were the correlations between the 50 ms and 500 ms conditions. Thus, visual appeal can be assessed within 50 ms, suggesting that web designers have about 50 ms to make a good first impression.

Why do I blog this? this is an important fact to be taken into account for interaction designers... as users' attention span is decreasing, their decision are taken very quickly... so much for Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" (Malcolm Gladwell).

Millenial folks and IT Consumption

There is very good article in the NYT about how millenials (those born between 1980 and 2000 now in their early to mid-20's) deal with current technology: A generation serves notice: It's a moving target by Tom Zeller Jr. The paper begins by explaining the importance of the Internet for this generation ("For Mr. Hanson, even his new job is an Internet-based, media-intensive labor informed by feedback") and the corollary topic is then:

The number of vehicles through which young people find entertainment and information (and one another) makes them a moving target for anyone hoping to capture their attention. (...) advertising and short videos for mobile phones, for instance, cell networks with dedicated game channels, and $1.99 TV programs to download to iPods and PC's.

What is very relevant is the qualitative trends the article describes:

"We think that the single largest differentiator in this generation from previous generations is the social network that is people's lives, the part of it that technology enables," said Jack McKenzie, a senior vice president of a market research and consulting firm specializing in the news media and entertainment industries. (...) "What's hard to measure, and what we're trying to measure," Mr. McKenzie continued, "is the impact of groupthink, of group mentality, and the tendency of what we might call the democratization of social interaction and how that changes this generation's relationship with almost everything they come in contact with." (...) And as the millennials diverge from their elders in their media choices, so do the ways in which they can be reached and influenced. (...) The preceding generation may have thought that e-mail, newsgroups, Web forums and even online chats accelerated the word-of-mouth phenomenon. They did. But they are nothing compared with the always-live electronic dialogue among millions of teenagers and 20-somethings. "What we're seeing is a whole different relationship with marketing and advertising which obviously has ripple effects through the entire economy, For the millennials, he said, "reliance and trust in nontraditional sources - meaning everyday people, their friends, their networks, the network they've created around them - has a much greater influence on their behaviors than traditional advertising.", Magid calls it the peer-to-group phenomenon, "When someone wants to share it, forward it, record it, take a picture of it, whatever the case may be, that puts it into a form of currency," Mr. McKenzie said. "And when marketing gets to a level of currency, then it has achieved nirvana status.""

Eventually, the author brings out some concerns about "the group-mentality dynamics that the Internet and the instant-message age may be fostering." as it can prevent some of them from developing as individuals (e.f. think and plan for the long term) and of-course the dangers of being "always-on" (To really unplug would be to risk being swept aside by a virtual torrent of information - or, worse, being forgotten.)

The whole article is very insightful and would be a good examplification of how certain people around here behave ;)

Update! The last report of the PEW Internet and American life project is about this issue. Get the PDF and see that "Internet users ages 12 to 28 years old have embraced the online applications that enable communicative, creative, and social uses. Older users are more likely to engage in online activities that require some capital: travel reservations and online banking. ".

Pre-Lift Event: blogject workshop

In the context of the LIFT conference, I organize (along with Julian Bleecker) an invitation-only workshop called Blogjects and the Internet of Things.

Blogjects - a neologism Julian Bleecker came up with for objects that blog - exemplify the soon-to-come 'Internet of Things', i.e. a network of tangible, mobile, chatty things enabled by the miniaturization, the ubiquity of consumer electronics and a pervasive Internet. In its most basic form, a blogject is not dissimilar to people that blog - it is an artifact that can disseminate a record of its experiences to the web. It would report the history of its interactions with other objects and with people. (...) this topic ties into the idea of proximity-based interaction and usage scenarios for mobile contexts.

The aim of the workshop: is to discuss usage scenarios of blogjects, the design issues they raises as well as their significance in various usage and design contexts.

We will discuss potential ideas related to the Internet of Things, trying to sketch some new directions that - I hope - will go beyond current location-based applications.

Technorati Tags: lift, lift06, blogject

The Economist on Knowledge workers

The Economist on Drucker-like knowledge workers: Thinking for a living. The most interesting part of the article (IMO) is the one that deals with how knowledge workers communicate:

how to improve knowledge-work productivity...is one of the most important economic issues of our time.” One way, he suggests [Thomas Davenport in his book “Thinking for a Living”.], might be to examine how different workers use knowledge; to see which technologies best gather and disseminate the information that knowledge workers need; and to find the workspace that is best suited to people who are highly mobile and need to concentrate a lot.

I took the liberty to put this graph I found pertinent, even though it's not commented in the article, because it shows the importance of e-mail for instance; it's a pity they did not discriminate the various forms of email (mailing-lists, one-to-one, group mailing...)

The source of this the book "Thinking for a living" by Thomas Davenport.

Leapfrogging in Eastern Europe

Leapfrogging is not only for third-world countries. There is this relevant information in the NYT/IHT today:

A recent survey of how the Internet is being used in Europe shows that in some key areas, the east is ahead. It's a symptom of the "leapfrog effect," in which technology laggards skip a couple of middle steps that mature markets take, according to Alex Burmaster, European Internet analyst at Nielsen/Net Ratings.

For instance, a higher percentage of Internet users in Lithuania - 42 percent - access the Web from portable devices like mobile phones than in Britain, where the figure is 25 percent, the Net Ratings survey showed.

The same is true for instant messaging, looking for a job online and a handful of other tasks that the industry considers advanced use of the Internet, Burmaster said. (...) More startling, perhaps, are the survey results for online news. Eastern European surfers are more likely to be reading the Internet version of newspapers than the print version, he said, and far more likely to get news off the Net than Western Europeans. Ukraine, Hungary, Poland and Latvia are the four European markets whose online users are most likely to read an online newspaper, the survey showed

For reader who are not aware of it, leapfrogging is "the notion that areas which have poorly-developed technology or economic bases can move themselves forward rapidly through the adoption of modern systems without going through intermediary steps

The best-known example of leapfrogging is the adoption of mobile phones in the developing world. It's easier and faster to put in cellular towers in rural and remote areas than to put in land lines, and as a result, cellular use is exploding." (According to Worldchanging).

Why do I blog this? this is very interesting, now old europe is made up of late adopters...

A wearable location tracking-device by solar cells

Some good folks in Zurich are working on using solar cells to measure distance indoors. It's called Luxtrace: a wearable location tracking by solar cells. It's described in "Towards LuxTrace: Using Solar Cells to Measure Distance Indoors" by Julian Randall, Oliver Amft, and Gerhard Troster (Wearable Computing Laboratory, IfE, ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Navigation for and tracking of humans within a building usually implies significant infrastructure investment and devices are usually too high in weight and volume to be integrated into garments. We propose a system that relies on existing infrastructure (so requires little infrastructure investment) and is based on a sensor that is low cost, low weight, low volume and can be manufactured to have similar characteristics to everyday clothing (flexible, range of colours). This proposed solution is based on solar modules. This paper investigates their theoretical and practical characteristics in a simplified scenario. Two models based on theory and on experimental results (empirical model) are developed and validated. First distance estimations indicate that an empirical model for a particular scenario achieves an accuracy of 18cm with a confidence of 83%.

The flexible solar module system on the shoulder (1) transmits one or more RF pulses only when there is sufficient energy to do so i.e. beneath a light source. This data is collected and processed by the belt worn computer (3):

Why do I blog this? it's a novel way of doing location-tracking I was not aware of, interesting, after using gps, wifi, ultrasound, tv-signals, there is this.

Inflatable module

A personal rescue system “Savior” as a pneumatic braking cone equipped with mini-compressor, and a dummy. This inflatable module is meant for rescuing both people and valuable cargo from high-rise buildings in case of fires and other calamities.

Multiple Space Management

A. Dix, A. Friday, B. Koleva, T. Rodden, H. Muller, C. Randell, A. Steed, "Managing multiple spaces" In P. Turner, E. Davenport (eds.) Space, Spatiality and Technologies, Kluwer, 2005. The authors' aim is analyse the way in which multiple spaces, both virtual and physical, can co-exist.

By this we mean that people and objects may have locations in and relationships to both physical space and one or more virtual spaces, and that these different spaces together interact to give an overall system behaviour and user experience.

They use 4 cases (City, CityWide, the Drift Table and Ambient Wood) to see how multiple physical and virtual spaces interact. The choice of the different environment is pretty pertinent since there are mobile applications and an interactive table. They then discriminate 3 types of space:

• real space – the locations and activities of actual objects and people in physical space
• measured space – the representation of that space in the computer and the representation of locations of objects and people from sensor data, etc.
• virtual space – electronic spaces created to be portrayed to users, but not necessarily representing explicitly the real world

I like this representation, here is how they represent it (the discussion about each relation is vrey insightful afterwards):

Why do I blog this? this spatial topic is very central to my research in the sense that I adding another point to each these 3 spaces: a kind of social layer. It's actually thinking about how objects or people relates to the real space (for instance a person located somewhere) the measured space (which feature do we measure from this person? his/her proximity to me?) or the virtual space (What do we represent? and what do we want the user to be aware of with regards to this person/object?). Do people also keep in mind a representation of their partners' position when they're collaborating? Is is it useful in terms of task performance? communication? collaborative processes? The model they propose is very relevant and is a good brick to work on.

An as they say "Given a measured space we then obtain the location of objects within that space using some form of sensing. This sensing may vary in accuracy. (...) there is not a simple relationship between the real and the measured". This is definitely what fabien is investigating: how people deal with this gap between the real and the measured (which is in the end what is reflected by the service). The authors conclude, from their case studies, that people deal remarkably well with complex special relationships, but that it is harder for mere computers. I am not so sure about it (depending on the level of infoliteracy of the users, familiarity with the technology...) but hey let's fabien work on this ;)

Finally, there is surely some food for thoughts for end of cyberspace...

Handheld augmented reality: the Invisible Train

Found this on <a href="http://del.icio.usdel.icio.us: The Invisible Train by Daniel Wagner, Thomas Pintaric, Florian Ledermann, Dieter Schmalstieg, a cool augmented reality game with a multi-user component:

The Invisible Train is a mobile, collaborative multi-user Augmented Reality (AR) game, in which players control virtual trains on a real wooden miniature railroad track. These virtual trains are only visible to players through their PDA's video see-through display as they don't exist in the physical world. This type of user interface is commonly called the "magic lens metaphor".

Why do I blog this? I like this new trend in augmented reality called "handheld augmented reality": the interface is lighter, the rendering of the scene is done on a (cheap) handheld and (costly) glasses as represented on this picture: This makes game development more realistic (through the lens), the point is now to create games with specific tags as in this case. I'd love to have such a feature on my DS.

Interactive table by Philips

Marc-o points on this new interactive table by Philips:

The Entertaible concept is a tabletop gaming platform that marries traditional multi-player board and computer games in a uniquely simple and intuitive way. Entertaible comprises a 30-inch horizontal LCD, sophisticated touch screen-based multi-object position detection, and all supporting control electronics. It allows the players to engage in a new class of electronic games which combines the features of computer gaming, such as dynamic playing fields and gaming levels, with the social interaction and tangible playing pieces, such as pawns and dies, of traditional board games.

Initially aimed at the out-of-home game market such as restaurants, bars, and casinos, Entertaible has the potential to evolve into a gaming platform for the consumer market.

Why do I blog this? first because I am following closely the interactive table design+user experience (for a course we give at the school), second because I see interesting applications of this to games. This one is not so original but hey it's Philips... when a mass-market consumer electronics enter this kind of field, I am curious to see how it can work out. Related see this list of interactive table I try to update.

Art piece generated from video game usage: players' location

I think I did not look this project as it deserves: Generating Art from a Computer Game. It's actually an interview with Alison Mealey by Artifical.dk (a great news resource for information about net art, software art, and other computer based art forms as it defines it).

Alison Mealey has chosen to base her art on the computer game Unreal Tournament. More precisely, she lets a number of virtual players play the game for approximately 30 minutes at a time and uses the data from the games to produce complex drawings. These drawings are also based on photographic portraits.

For instance, Alison Mealey: Unrealart, Jake, 2005.

Why do I blog this? Since I am interested in location-awareness and how people use others' position in space, it's this aspect that interested me in this project:

Interviewer:I'd like to learn a bit more about the relations between the data from the game and the visual output. How are the characteristics of the lines and circles determined from the game data? Alison; Only two types of data are taken from the game. The position of every player (taken every second), and the acknowledgement of a death. As the data from the game is coming in 1 second chunks, Processing takes every seconds chunk and produces a drawing from it, these drawings are built up over time to produce the final images. The circles represent the positions of the players. The X and Y positions taken from the players are drawn as-is, producing a top down 2D view of 'the field of play'/canvas. The Y values from the players alter the size of the circles, if a bot is mid jump they are therefore closer to the camera and the circles will be bigger, if they are crouching the circles will be smaller. The Y values have been greatly exaggerated in some of the more recent works, to produce (in my opinion) more beautiful images. The lines simply connect every second's points to produce separate drawings from every second. The death data is used in some of the images as a big black circle, indicating where a death took place. In some of the other works the death data forces a global colour change.

Of course, it's quite messy but it's an amazing way of visualizing players' paths, it's definitely less precise than what the Whereabouts clock can show BUT it's less intrusive and anonymous...

pasta + vinegar faq 2006

Quick notes for readers who are puzzled by this blog:

• This blog is about various things that I ran across and that I find relevant with regards to my interests.
• My interests ranges from human-computer interaction/ergonomics/cognitive sciences (psychology mostly)/user-centered design/interaction design to innovation management/research and development issues/intelligence/insight and foresight/Ideas transfer from R&D, but also architecture (be in interactive or not), interactive art, space and place issues, life hacks, curious things, quirkies
• There is a strong weight of posts about technology since my work and my interests are related to how people use technology in various context such as working, playing or learning. That's why I am dealing with pervasive/tangible/ubiquitous computing, video games, groupware, location-bases services, web2.0, the Internet of things... For of all those, how the technology is or can be used is more important than the techno itself.
• It's about what I stumble across while working (as a researcher doing a PhD but also a researcher working for video game companies)
• I also post about what I do: paper I published, conference or workshop I attend/organize
• There is a wide load of posts about location-based services/geolocation/mobile devices because my PhD project is about this very topic.
• And last but not least, yes there are weird things in what I post... I am intrigued by weird things :)

Oh and finally, yes, 2006 will still be about all this stuff.

A non-user centered Internet of Things

Today I perused the ITU report about "The Internet of Things" more seriously. The whole report is a compilation of fact, figures and technologies to support the idea of an ubiquitous computation platform refered to as the "Internet of Things" (some trendy person will soon call it "Das Internet des Dinges"). The point is that in the future, "most of the traffic will flow between devices and all kinds of “things”, thereby creating a much wider and more complex “Internet of Things” and "By connecting the world’s things, the internet would truly achieve ubiquity in every sense of the word." Roughly speaking the equation is something like:

ID (thanks to RFID) + Sensing/Reacting (through sensors) + Computation Power ("smartness" or "intelligence) + Miniaturization (through nanotech) = Internet of Things

Existing technologies are well described and lots of examples (drawn out from labs) are presented, which is great. Overall, the report aims at showing Telcos why this is important but somehow fails at moving forward existing scenarios like "forget-me-not-bags" or "pills that think". The user is scarcely present in this report. However, there is this:

Lack of awareness among users is perhaps one of the most important constraints to the development of the Internet of Things. Since the Internet of Things is still in its nascent phase, many users might still have limited knowledge of its potential. RFID is a case in point. Despite the fact that it is currently the most mature industry in the family of the Internet of Things (and tags are used on a regular basis without the knowledge of users), a survey by Capgemini has revealed that only 18 per cent of Europeans and 23 per cent of US consumers have heard about the technology. The general public is even less familiar with the benefits associated with nanotechnologies and wireless sensor networks.

Furthermore, the lack of information coupled with unbalanced coverage may lead to misunderstandings about the advantages or disadvantages of emerging technologies, thereby creating an unfavourable consumer attitude. For example, the public perception of robots, machines whose only purpose in life is to “replace human effort”, has been largely shaped by science fiction and Hollywood blockbusters. This has led to a general lack of trust in robotics. Fears of the general public range from job losses to an invasion by tiny robots or “grey goo”. Unresolved issues related to privacy and data protection block further diffusion of technologies and even instigate active protests, e.g. in reaction to the adoption of RFID for tracking in-store goods.

They do have some concerns about user-centered design:

The question is whether technology itself will create new markets or whether market demand will determine the direction of technological research. (...). If a company is strictly technology-driven, there is an even greater risk that it will lose its investment if it does not find an audience for its technology.

But what IMO they miss is that they only think in terms of usability:

In order to make the Internet of Things an everyday reality, the core enabling technologies have to be adopted by the general public. This will be possible only if consumers are aware of the benefits and advantages of using or installing new systems and are not faced with complicated user instructions. User-centric design and usability will be particularly important features, especially when taking into account the evolution from simple to complex systems, in which the user might have to become system administrator. In all cases, innovation should occur for the benefit of end-users and not merely for the sake of innovation itself.

It's not just about usability! There are important concerns about the users' needs, their potentiel interactions with the system and of course as they mentionned their fear towards it. And I don't agree that usability is the only key of this! Nevertheless, the report presents some business ideas and scenarios of deployment. And fortunately concerns about privacy are well described.

What is a Digital Library Anymore, Anyway ?

Great article in the last issue of D-lib: What is a Digital Library Anymore, Anyway ? Beyond Search and Access in the NSDL by Carl Lagoze, Dean B. Krafft, et Sandy Payette, Cornell University, et Susan Jesuroga, UCAR-NSDL.

Based on a variety of calibrations1, we are now in the adolescence of digital libraries. Like any adolescence, there is reason for optimism and concern.

The optimism comes from the successes resulting from a decade of research, development, and deployment. Any list of these is inevitably incomplete, but certainly includes Google, the Handle System, Dublin Core, OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting), OpenURL, arXiv, Dspace, and LOCKSS . These and other accomplishments, in combination with the general explosion of the Web itself over the last decade and a half7, approach the digital library vision of "Universal Access to Human Knowledge" articulated in the 2001 report of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee

Why do I blog this? Normally, I don't like the statement that sometimes technology is seen as the ultimate solution for lots of problems but in this case IT can be a good earthquake for librarians (or a wake-up call) to encourage them to move forward and pay attention to some better user-centered tool than their services. Well.. anyway.. the article is very interesting and presents good insights about the future roles of libraries, based on their answers to the neverending discussion about "In the age of Google, what is a digital library anymore, anyway?"

Blue Rotterdam by Florentijn Hofman

(via) An impressive arty project by Florentijn Hofman: Beukelsblue:

The borough of Delfshaven, Rotterdam, asked me [Florentijn] o come up with a plan for a block of derelict buildings, which will eventually be demolished. The agreement with the neighbourhood is that the block will remain blue as long as there isn’t a new plan for the area. This was once one of the most unseen blocks of houses in Rotterdam, and by applying a layer of only 2 micron of blue paint onto it, it became Rotterdam’s most photographed one. By redecorating this block, which was built in the first years of the 20th century, people start looking again at what was and is there, and maybe think about what they will get in return.
It also puts in perspective blocks of houses as such, architectural 'fashions' and demographic processes like city migrations, by making those blocks look like toy houses or archetypal buildings on an architect's maquette.

Why do I blog this? From an urban study point of view, I guess that it's interesting because it shed some light on a specific area. Plus, pictures are awesome! Also check his other project: DHL in which he transformed my second van into a courier van, by copying the fleet marking of DHL Logistics & Mail.

Card-driven strategy gameplay

Discovered today, after a meeting at Swisscom, a video of a very innovative augmented-board game by Sega. It's callesd Sangokushi Taisen and it mixed arcade gaming with card-games.

There is a description of this on the IGN website:

As the name may suggest, this game is based on the Sangokushi historical period made popular in the videogame realm through countless Koei titles. Your goal is to make your opponent's castle fall first, making use of cards to control troop movements. The game makes use of the flat card reader technology featured in the popular WCCF soccer arcade game (the most popular arcade attraction in Japan right now), with players moving cards across a flat play surface in real time. Five different types of cards will be featured in the game, each representing a different type of unit. Units have parameters set at different levels, and each has a cost associated with it. You can combine cards only as long as your total cost remains below a total of eight. As with other card-based games, many will enjoy just collecting the cards featured in the game, as they're all decorated with artwork from famous artists.

Why do I blog this? I like this mix of board and card game with a tangible interaction spin. This raise interesting HCi issues (but less interesting is the addiction to buy cards that will suck down massive amounts of yen). There is also a football game with a similar interface (actually it was the first attempt of such a card-driven strategy gameplay).

P&V status

I currently feel like this: