Adaptive design and layers

One of the topic that struck me as very compelling in Dan Saffer's "Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices (VOICES)" was the chapter about smart applications and clever devices. In this part, the author describes the different ways to design with that goal in mind: give applications/services a sense of history, design for multitasking, allows customization, personalization, adaption or hackability. Among all the different "design for hackability" concepts, the one of "layers" (Steward Brand and Tom Moran) is very relevant. The idea lies on the discrimination of "fast layers" that can change frequently and easily, and "slow layers" that provide stability and continuity, like a foundation. As Dan Saffer describes:

If products are desgied so that the upper layers are more exposed (if the seams show, in other words), hackers can play with those, leaving the bottom layers to provide continuity and possibility to eventually integrate changes made in the upper level.

Such a concept is nicely exemplified in Tom Moran's talk about "Adaptive Design" at DIS in 2002 (see the powerpoint slides as well as Dan Hill's notes):

Moran describes why Victorian Houses are so "adaptable": it's because of their sturdiness , the generous hallway, the room is the module, not the dwelling unit and modular rooms (same size, generous, each has light, connectable). [An aparté here, this is very pertinent lately with computing pervading the environment, as described by Jef Huang's talk the other day that stressed this idea of having a core foundation and flexible components in the Swiss House].

Saffer then goes on:

If an application is designed so that those in the know can find the seams between some of these layers (for instance, form instructions hidden in the visible source code), then hackers can hack those locations to their heart's content.

He mentions people "in the know" who can "hack" but what about the down-to-earth end- users, what about giving them the opportunity to "slip between layers". Maybe what I am discussing here has no sense because this is only about turning every user in a hacker (Ã la Michel de Certeau).

One of the strength in Saffer's book is the well-informed interview that are smart enough to provide more context to his take. About this layer issue, Dan Hill's contribution is a good addendum. In this interview, one of his points regarding the creation of hackable products are to:

1. make sure affordances and seams are clear and malleable.
2. enable interrogation, cloning and manipulation on particular layers.
3. learn for the malleability, object-oriented nature and social behavior of code.
4. build products that are self-aware in terms of behavior/usage, which then present those findings back to the users.
5. enable products to emerge from this behavior, as well as from design research
6. enable social interaction around products

Why do I blog this Back to the idea of building "clever and smart products", I found this discussion very relevant, ten times more than the discussion about automation and intelligent agent that people keep bringing to the table. I am not referring to Saffer's book here, what I'd like to stress here is that the direction I see technological innovation heading will be closer to that vision of adaptive design.

Would it be possible to link those thoughts to the discusson about granularity in uibcomp that Fabien mentions, in his blogpost on that topic?

Empty query on Google

Google prevent users from typing nothing in the search engine. It's a pity, I'd be curious to know what should come out from a research on an empty query.

Why the hell an empty query would be important in a search engine? At first glance, it's a weird idea because if you go to a search engine, it's basically because you want to look up something on the information superhighway. But why not allowing people to search for nothing? This lead to the question of leaving a blank space on a query. On some platforms it could be used as starting point to have an overview of the situation; for example, on a map engine, it could be a way to have the overall representation of the earth; or in an address book it would be an easy manner to get the whole list of people. The problem is that we've google, the domain's huge. I would have expected an empty query to bring me on some sort of representation of the globality as described by Google. They actually do have a good representations of what's available on the noospherian web, so why not providig the users with a sort-of depiction of this? I also expect it to be more elaborated and revealing than the Google Zeitgeist.

Mechanisms for gathering a team in multi-user games.

In this old paper by Ben Calica found on Gamasutra, there is a good description of the existing ideas for gathering teams in a multi-player game. Calica describes three ways to gather a team:

1. Next on the Bus -This strategy is basically first come, next served. Games are filled by people in order of appearance in "line".
2. The far more common approach is the Pick-Me style. Unfortunately it brings back unfortunate echoes of schoolyard horrors everywhere, with a few people waiting to be picked for what feels like their entire lives.
3. Some of the persistent environment games have introduced the concept of wander and gather. That is, just start playing, and if you run into someone you like, play along with him or her.
4. Once more into the Breech, Dear Friends - This is most common in the Doom-like games. Just walk into a room filled with gun toting bastards and shoot anything that moves. If you die, you come right back in to play again

Why do I blog this? Group formation and how individuals manage to gather with other persons they do not know in a virtual environment is of interest to me (in terms of CSCW research and design). A chat last week with a friend reminded me this article I used in 2002 for a study about awareness tools in first person shooters. What is interesting here is (1) to see how at that time these mechanisms were thought, (2) the fact that it did not evolve that much, (3) the emphasis on FPS (which seem to be less trendy right now) and (4) there is now better tools to support this process (such as xfire), (5) the notion of statistics about players was less frequent. Of course, my remarks here come from other papers than this gamasutra article.

Moreover, this can also be of interest for other projects than video games, what about a similar layer in web2.0 applications?

Technology and shabbat

Technology and jewish life by Manfred Gerstenfeld and Avraham Wyler interestingly describes how the development of new technologies has brought with it many challenges and decisions on several aspects of jewish life such as Shabbat observance. I have always been intrigued by how technologies or systems can cause challenges or how these problems can be circunvented by deep user-centered design, for example:

Many hotels have entrance doors controlled by an electronic eye and doors to rooms that can only be opened by electronic keys. Some Israeli hotels have two locks on their doors, one electronic and one regular, the latter for use on Shabbat by the Orthodox. For security reasons, hotels worldwide are increasingly making access to their stairways difficult, and alarms are often set up against entry so that they have come to be used almost exclusively as emergency exits. (...) Modern technology has made it possible for observant Jews in Israel to live in high-rise buildings whose higher floors have formerly been inaccessible to them on Shabbat, as they do not use regular elevators. Many hotels and high-rise buildings with Orthodox inhabitants have a special preset elevator that is halakhically permitted for use on Shabbat.

Also of interest, the discussion about what can be accepted or not:

Some products address extreme or unique situations. One halakhic technology institute constructed a telephone that enabled an Israeli ambassador to use the phone on Shabbat. In the Israeli army a special pen is used by observant soldiers on Shabbat, whose ink-mark fades away after a certain period of time. Therefore their use is not considered a form of the writing that is forbidden on Shabbat. These pens are also used in hospitals.

Why do I blog this? the design of technologies that one can possibly use on shabbat or the discussion of what should not be used is very interesting IMO in terms of user-centered design and as a critical reflection of the articulation between humans and technology. Besides, it's also a pertinent confrontation to a different way to think about technologies and their characteristics.

Phantom ring

According to the Urban Dictionnary, a phantom ring is:

Term used to describe when someone thinks they hear their cell-phone ringing or feel it vibrating in their pocket when it's actually not.

"Excuse me a sec... aw sorry, it was a phantom ring." or "Yes! Finally she called me back *reaches in pocket* Dang it.. phantom ring."

Why do I blog this? I like this idea of "phantom" phenomenon, very well connected to perceptual issues in cognitive sciences and the current trend about "magic" in the ubiquitous computing discourse.

“social phone number”

The NYT has a good piece about cell phones practices:

In an age of information oversharing, the mobile-phone number is one of the few pieces of personal information that people still choose to guard. Unwanted incoming calls are intrusive and time-consuming and can suck precious daytime cell-plan minutes. And the decision to give out a cell number can haunt you for years, as people now hold on to the numbers longer than their land-line numbers. (...) Some people have found a way to avoid compromising the sanctity of their cellphone without committing the modern sin of being unreachable. Instead of giving out her cell number, Ms. McClain has recently been dispersing what has become known as a “social phone number.” This is a free number that is as disposable as a Hotmail address. A handful of Web sites are creating these mask numbers, which can be obtained in nearly every area code (...) Mr. Wisk (creator of the social phone number provider PrivatePhone.com) said a person’s cell number has become the most personal, “the last one you’d give out.”

“Now for so many people,” he said, “it’s the only number, and it corresponds to an object you have on you at all times. It can be a disruptive technology. Having a number that goes straight to voice mail is less intrusive.”

Why do I blog this? I tend to agree with the idea that cell phones # are like and ID and some people do not want to give them up. It's interesting that more and more service will be built around this phenomenon (counter the disclosure of information done in the past).

Use the wiimote to play Half-Life 2 on a windows-machine?

This video is quite intriguing. It shows how some wii-fans used the wiimote to play Half-Life 2 on a windows-machine:

Why do I blog this? it's interesting because it ask the question about to design proper FPS control with gestural interactions, I don't know how hardcord gamer would feel this...

Social software and MMORPG

Rupture is a social software devoted to MMORPG communities (a bit different from the warcraftsocial). It will soon be launched by Shawn Fanning (the guy who was behind Napster). As described by Heather Green:

Using an add on or a software download, Rupture taps into the game to automatically pull together character names, profiles, and resources, and publish them on a personalized site. Rupture will also pull together stats to create individual and guild rankings and provide a place for guilds to organize their playing. As Rupture tracks each member's playing over time, these personalized profiles evolve. And players will be able to chat in groups or with other individuals and download other addons and game demos.

Rupture is starting with World of Warcraft, which is played by 7.5 million gamers. But it also plans to pull together information from and offer services for other games.

Why do I blog this? because it's interesting to see the advent of this sort of tools that allows to add a social layer on top what is already available through the MMORPG platform. What is also pertinent is the automatic capture of information. It would be great if such system could provide compiled, synthetic and valuable statistics about individuals or guilds (might be valuable for guild management) with privacy protections.

The Economist on the future of phone

The last issue of The Economist has a good article about the phone of the future. Some quotes of this compelling overview:

The chances are that phones will not only look very different—they may not even be seen.(...) And even if they are still called “phones”—a word derived from the Greek word for voice—making voice calls may no longer be their primary function. (...) “The cellphone is not a telephone. It is a—I don't know what it is. A communications device? A tool I carry in my pocket?” says Don Norman (...) One thing that is clear is that phones will pack a lot more computing power in future, and will be able to do more and more of the things that PCs are used for today—and more besides. (...) In a decade's time a typical phone will have enough storage capacity to be able to video its user's entire life, says Mr Lindoff. Tom MacTavish, a researcher at Motorola Labs, predicts that such “life recorders” will be used for everything from security to settling accident claims with insurance firms. (...) Researchers at Nokia, meanwhile, speculate that within a decade, the cost of storage will have fallen so far that it might be possible to store every piece of music ever recorded in a single chip that could be included in each phone. (...) No doubt other new functions will be incorporated into phones. But which ones? (...) they might subsume the other two items that are generally carried everywhere, namely wallets and keys. (...) handset-makers now make different devices optimised for particular tasks such as music, photography or e-mail, and combinations thereof. The next step, suggests Stephen Randall of LocaModa, a wireless-services firm, will be a great decoupling, as the screen, keypad and earpiece start to become separate components, or are replaced by other completely new technologies. (...) Some users might choose to hook up separate screens and keyboards when needed, such as when answering e-mail or browsing the web. Already, early examples of such technologies exist. And there are even more elaborate alternatives. Tiny projectors inside handsets could allow walls, tabletops or screens made of flexible materials to be used as displays while on the move (...) This approach also makes it possible to overlay information on the real world, which could be useful when giving directions. Your phone might even label people at a party or conference to remind you of their names. (...) “virtual keyboard” onto a flat surface....Voice-recognition systems ....use of brainwaves to interface

The part about the social impact is interesting too:

The ability to superimpose images and sound upon reality means that future phones will “create layers on our world”, says Pierre de Vries of the Annenberg Centre for Communication at the University of Southern California. Users will always be connected, he says, but in concentric circles of conversations and interactions that range from people right next to them to those far away.

“When I try to make predictions, I don't look at what I see in the technical realm, I look at what I see in the social realm,” says Mr Norman. He has recently been investigating how children interact with each other and with technology. “They are never alone with their own thoughts,” he says. Instead, they listen to music while texting and talking with friends next to them. “We are learning that we never have to be away from people,” says Mr Norman.

Why do I blog this? even though it does not describe brand new idea, it's an interesting summary of the phone as an object , its usage and its potential future. On a related note, check this Nokia video on the same topic.

ITU report about digital life

The ITU will issue its new 2006 report of the "ITU Internet Reports" serie:

Prepared especially for ITU TELECOM World (December 4-8 2006 in Hong Kong), the report begins by examining the underlying technological enablers of new digital lifestyles, from upgrading network infrastructure to value creation at its edges. In studying how businesses are adapting to fast-paced digital innovation, the report looks at how they can derive value in an environment driven by convergence at multiple levels. The question of extending access to underserved areas of the world is considered as an important priority. In light of media convergence, a fresh approach to policy-making may be required, notably in areas such as content, competition policy, and spectrum management. Moreover, as our lives become increasingly mediated by digital technologies, the role of digital identities (both abstract and practical) presents a new challenge. Concerns over privacy and data protection are not being sufficiently addressed by current methods for managing identities online. As such, the report examines the changing digital individual, and outlines the need for improving the design of identity management mechanisms for a healthy and secure digital world.

Update the report is available here.

“Moving with a magic thing”

Finding Uses for New Technology: Moving with a Magic Thing by Anu Kankainen. The paper describes a user research method called “moving with a magic thing” proposed by Giulio Jaucci for "discovering appropriate markets for technology-pushed mobile products" as it says.

“Moving with a magic thing” is a field method. Users are met in their environment and given a “dummy” mock-up of a mobile device. They are told what functionality the device has and are asked to show what they would like the magic device to do for them as part of their daily activities. To collect more scenarios, users can be asked to also create a “moving with a magic thing” photo diary. After the initial observation day, they are given a digital camera for a week and asked to take pictures of the situations where they would use “the magic thing”. At the end of the week, users are interviewed based on the photos they have taken.

This method results in high-level use scenarios which do not come from brainstorming activities conducted in a meeting room but are based on the observation of users in real contexts.

Why do I blog this? it seems that this notion of magic is so omnipresent lately in human-computer interaction that it even pervades methodologies.

A bunch of clickers

Some material for a project about remote control (TV and DVD) and how they are used: ">

Why do I blog this? one of the worst device, the common remote control exists in plenty of forms, I took this picture during the afternoon at the flea market in Geneva, thought it might be a nice pic to use in presentations ;)

PAC-LAN mixed reality game

In the last issue of the ACM Computers In Entertainment, there is a paper entitled PAC-LAN: mixed-reality gaming with RFID-enabled mobile phones (by Omer Rashid, Will Bamford, Paul Coulton, Reuben Edwards, Jurgen Scheible) that I found very interesting. The paper describes how the incorporation of RFID readers in cell phones can turn it into a game platform to allow interaction with physical objects. The authors present an enhanced mixed-reality version of Pacman. Some excerpts that I found interesting: first the game itself is curious:

PAC-LAN is a novel version of the video game Pacman, in which human players use the Alexandra Park accommodation complex at Lancaster University as the game maze. The player who takes the role of the main PAC-LAN character collects game pills (using a Nokia 5140 mobile phone equipped with a Nokia Xpress-onTM RFID reader shell), in the form of yellow plastic discs fitted with stick-on RFID tags. Four other players take the role of the “ghosts” who attempt to hunt down the PAC-LAN player

It's funny to see how the pacman game is revisited over time (see for instance this version, PACManhattan or Human Pacman)

It's not well discussed in the game but I found pertinent to have the representation of the GPRS network/maze, and to design subsequently around it. That can offer a way to think about Matthew Chalmers' seamful design: how can the seams be exploited to design compelling applications.

I also found very pertinent this idea of "game monitor" developed for monitoring and server administration while in the field. Maybe it's because as a researcher I am interested by all the applications/dashboard that would help me to make sense of how the application is used.

The user experience analysis is very informative (for instance "identify tactics that became apparent during gameplay) and what has attracted my attention overall is the "space-time" analysis. The authors used a space-time plot (still have to check this Bamford 2006 reference) for data obtained during a trial and shows PAC-LAN being hunted down by a ghost:

Here is what they found using this technique:

From this space-time analysis, this particular ghost, despite a delayed start, was often very close to PAC-LAN, and therefore very active in the game. This can be measured dynamically within the game by performing a real-time cumulative correlation calculation between the path of the PAC-LAN player and each ghost. At some point in the game, the server can trigger a power move for the most active ghost. The points or power move benefits will not only encourage ghosts to be more active in the game, but could also result in more collaborative play, e.g., two ghosts lure PAC-LAN into an area where a third ghost is hiding with a power move.

Why do I blog this? because this is an interesting attempt to use mobile phones and RFID to create an pervasive game. The authors are trying to go beyond this concept by adapting the Sega Megadrive classic, Toejam and Earl, with NFC-enabled phones to allow near-field interactions (with touch). They indeed assume that "direct interaction as part of the game may produce a greater collaborative gaming experience", which is a good question to investigate with those technologies.

User Interface Friction

In a short note posted on ACM Ubiquity, Andreas Pfeiffer describes the notion of "User Interface Friction":

We use it to describe and quantify the differences in fluidity and reactivity that exist between different operating systems, between software applications, even between different digital devices (music players, cameras, cell-phones, among others).

We can find examples of User Interface Friction in many places. Did you ever notice how menu behavior can slow you down when you are trying to access a command, like selecting a program from the Start menu in Windows? That's User Interface Friction. Did you ever remark how scrolling through long lists of songs on a MP3 player can be annoying? User Interface Friction again. In fact, any user interface has some degree of friction. Some of it we may not notice, despite that fact that it exists, other examples can be severely annoying. (...) User Interface Friction is inherent in any modern, menu-driven computer system and any device that sports a graphical user interface, and depends on a number of aspects, ranging from the speed at which the system displays a menu or sub-menu, to the efficiency of the mouse.

Interaction design primer

Interaction design primer Vol. 1 is a book by by Walter Aprile, Britta Boland and Stefano Mirti (former Interaction Design institute people, now at Interaction Design Lab.

Soon to be released it deals with the following topic:

- What is so great about design? - What is so interesting about computation? - Why do we take the trouble? - Where do we start from? - How do desires intersect reality? - How do we know what we can do?

From the pre-released chapter I have read few months ago, it is based on a "how–to procedures and stories." Why do I blog this? from the extract I've seen it's a very visual resource with topics that are of interest to me (for instance "game, computation and electronics"); and I like reading stuff "from the inside", to see what happened behind the mirror.

wii play history

In this interview of Nintendo execs, there is this interesting mention about the "interaction storing" capabilities of the wii (Timo described this to us during the last NFC workshop but I wanted to go deeper into this issue):

Kuroume: Sure, it's really quite simple. Wii automatically records details of what game was played, when and for how long. This is called the Play History. There's nothing controversial about that, but what did cause discussion was the fact that the Play History cannot be deleted. It's not that we couldn't change it if we wanted to, but at the moment it is not possible to delete it.

Iwata; I think it's best if I give a little background for this one. I've said this countless times already, but when developing Wii, I thought constantly about what we could do to stop games being regarded with hostility in the family. So I came up with a suggestion, perhaps a rather outlandish one! (laughs) What I thought was that if a parent said that their child was only allowed to play games for one hour a day, how about making it so the console actually turns itself off after an hour? I realize the head of a games company shouldn't think things like that! (laughs) All (laughter)

Iwata Of course, the console would save the game data before it switched itself off! (...)

Kuroume What finally came out of those discussions was the idea for a Play History, which recorded the total time a particular game had been played. Rather than the console turning itself off automatically to ensure it is not played for more than an hour a day, it seemed much better to allow parents to use the Play History to discuss with their children how much they are using the console. The decision to make it impossible to delete this data was a separate subject for debate.

Tamaki: Ultimately, the Play History fulfils the function of telling parents how long their kids have been playing, as well as being an interesting talking point. It's just really fun for users to be able to see the record of how long they played. That's why we decided to make the Play History impossible to reset. You can imagine users saying: "I didn't realize I'd been playing that game so much!"... Or, in the future, we could make it possible to plot on a graph how much you've played. Also, with users' cooperation, we could compile data on which game was the most played that year. I think all of these kinds of fun ideas show that it was better to make the Play History into a permanent record.

Why do I blog this? what is not discussed here and what is certainly of great interest to me is the idea that the history of interaction with the console (whatever game or applications is used) can be deployed in other games/services to create new game and innovative gameplay: feeding back history of interactions in game design.

Joke Analysis and Production Engines

I recently stumbled across this Adding Humor to Text-Based Applications paper (by Rada Mihalcea and Carlo Strapparava). What attracted me was this articulating humor and software engineering. This is the starting point:

given the importance of humor in our daily lives and computers in our work and entertainment, studies related to computational humor will become increasingly significant in fields such as human-computer interaction,intelligent interactive entertainment, and computer-assisted education. (...) Although scientific fields such as linguistics and psychology have studied humor relatively well to date, only a little research has addressed the construction of computational humor prototypes. (...) A system called JAPE (Joke Analysis and Production Engine) then exploited the model to automatically generate amusing puns. HAHAcronym, another humor-generation project, developed a system that automatically generated humorous versions of existing acronyms and produced a new amusing acronym constrained to be a valid vocabulary word.4The system achieved a comic effect mainly by exploiting incongruity theories (for example, finding a religious variation for a technical acronym).

The paper is mostly about the applicability to the recognition and use of verbally expressed humor ("Can we automatically gather large collections of humorous texts? Can we automatically recognize humor in text? And can we automatically insert humorous add-ons into existing applications? "). Why do I blog this? I did not go deeper in the user studies that (at first glance) seems pretty interesting because I was more interested by humor recognition and production. Especially if we think in terms of games, there is a lot to create here, and it's very difficult to go beyond bot practices. I like Animal Crossing's way of tuning people's expressions. In this game, you can teach funny hooks and expressions to the virtual inhabitants of the city you live in. There might be relevant use of humor model here to rely on private jokes and absurd situations.

Design for a fax and Alexander's tree

H. W. Thimbleby, 1997, "Design for a Fax," Personal Technologies, 1(2), pp101--117. This article is a very compelling discussion about the usability of button-controlled devices. It exemplifies this question through examining the design of a 1993/4 domestic phone/fax/answerphone machine (DF200). Some excerpts I found interesting:

Christopher Alexander’s classic paper, “A city is not a tree,” (Alexander, 1965) makes an eloquent argument for not designing cities as trees, but rather as semi-lattices. A tree-like organisation isolates activities (industry, education, health, housing, ...) into separate areas without overlap. This means people have to travel between areas, and their lives become compartmentalised with increasing problems as they become older, and isolated into regions specialised to old peoples’ needs. However, the tree structure suits designers because of its conceptual simplicity.

We see a similar effect in the design of the DF200. Its functionality is organised as a tree, with each function isolated into its area. Unfortunately, the area it is isolated in is the specific and unique area the designer thought appropriate. Unfortunately the user may not see it like that!

Why do I blog this? I like questions raised by the authors like "Why is no serious usability design done in mass-market devices?", this is so true, The studies I conducted about remote-controllers strikingly showed similar issues. Besides, I found interesting this use of Alexander's metaphor (different from the pattern thing).

Vernor Vinge's insights about the future of ubicomp games

An excerpt from Vernor Vinge's talk at the Austin Game Conference (transcribed by Mark Wallace):

If you take together all of the things I have been pushing here [augmented reality through high-resolution HUD, geolocation, smart tags...], there really is a situation where cyberspace has leaked into the real world, in fact the title of the talk was Inside Out, which was intended to convey the notion of what was inside box in all eras up to ours, in this sort of era is outside. (...) Wearables are the interface to it, but the situation with the network as a whole is very interesting, it hasn’t gotten rid of big pipes or server farms, however we would be in a situation where reality has become its own database, in the sense that objects in the outside world, millions of them would know what they are, know where they are, know where their nearest neighbors are, and can talk to their nearest neighbors and by extenstion to anything in the world. (...) This produces the possibility of a form of insight into dealing with the real world once cyberspace has leaked out, once you have this inside out thing.

Then he described the consequences for games and digital entertainment:

There’s a mad rush into embedded processors going forward very rapidly. The localization I’m talking about is much harder. Really good 4k by 4k HUDs, I’m actually somewhat surprised it hasn’t happend already. When those come along, there’s suddenly a whole other set of things you can do. (...) One question is how many alternate realities could simultaneously exist. If you work out the arithmetic and believe the hardware infrastructure scenario I painted, you’re getting 10 to 100 gigabits per second to each person. That means that basically the number of possible alternate realities would be at least as high as the number of people, and could be higher depending on what kind of multitasking people were doing. (...) It’s not so much a question of the place of games in the future world, but a question of whether there’s anything going on besides games. It depends what you mean by game. There are going to be very serious things going on in this world, but the technology behind them might not be distinguishable from games, or only in that with a game you can often turn a bug into not only a feature but a selling point. On the other hand, if you are writing software to land aircraft, mother nature does not accept bugs that are selling points.

So what?:

One of biggest problem with this sort of situation is generating content. Nowadays one thing you hear a fair amount about is getting customers to generate content, which has attained almost faddish levels. In an auidience like this that’s probably not that popular of an idea. On the other hand, when you look at the amount of content that would be necessary to support this, which is essentially all of reality, and you look at the fact that already the largest generators of content are people with home cameras, there is probably something that’s going to be going on with that sort of stuff. It seems to me that we are entering an era various companies have figured out, in which there are ways of spending enormous amounts of money on certain hardware platforms, software, social interactions, and coaxing the creative beast to come out of hiding and do things for you.

See also Mike Kuniavsky's notes on that.

Experientia's new blog about playful learning with tangible interfaces

Experientia's new blog about playful learning with tangible interfaces is there.

Playful & Tangible is about playful learning with new interfaces, particulary in museums and entertainment environments. It documents many inspirations and examples of playful and tangible interactions and interfaces, and has a strong interaction design focus. Most of the content is by Héctor Ouilhet and Alexander Wiethoff, who worked as Experientia interns during the summer of 2006.

Good stuff.