Back Track : mark it, go anywhere, get back

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People talk a lot about location-based services these days. GPS car navigation system is quite mainstream for a while, geosocial services such as Foursquare or Facebook places are more and more adopted, and media attention is still focusing on the promises of location-based marketing (even though users in Europe seem to be wary about them).

However, there is less focus on more niche products based on similar technologies. My neighbor recently lent me one of these curious location-based service. It's called "BackTrack" and can be defined as a "personal location finder". It's advertised with the following elements:

"BackTrack utilizes GPS technology in its most basic format, BackTrack has only two buttons and stores up to three locations – just mark it and forget it until it’s time to return. At the end of the day, select your location and the BackTrack displays direction and distance to travel. Use it to find your car in a crowded parking lot, your treestand or the trailhead, even to rendezvous with your group."

Or, as described in a very succinct way: "AS EASY AS 1-2-3 Mark it - Go Anywhere - Get Back". The idea is quite good and the interface is very basic (2 buttons, very limited information on the display), which makes it quite easy to use. However, getting GPS signals is sometimes very difficult in the narrow streets of Paris and Geneva (where I tested it). Using it "on the way back" to your reference point, the experience is curious, as you do not necessary take the same route: you then walk, look at the display and check how to move around with the compass. It was not that efficient to find my way back to my hotel in Paris but I enjoyed having these sort of "location-awareness" information. It told me how far how I was from my apartment in Geneva when spending one week in Paris. Not very useful indeed but surely evocative and close to what I expect to encounter in the 21st Century. Accessing this kind of information without specific ideas in mind about how it can be useful, that was intriguing.

Besides, what's interesting here is that the idea is very close to a project I blogged about last year, called "Address necklace by Mouna Andraos and Sonali Sridhar:

"“Address is a handmade electronic jewelry piece. When you first acquire the pendant, you select a place that you consider to be your anchor – where you were born, your home, or perhaps the place you long to be. Once the jewelry is initialized, every time you wear the piece it displays how many kilometers you are from that location, using a GPS component built into the pendant. As you take Address around the world with you, it serves as a personal connection to that place, making the world a little smaller or maybe a little bigger.“"

The Address necklace is of course different, more poetic and evocative than the use cases mentioned for BackTrack ("at the mall and stadium parking lots, at the outdoor festival, the park, for travel or you next outdoor adventure")... and you can set the location only one time (which makes it very precious and important).

Why do I blog this? Testing the Long Tail of location-based services is always interesting to sense what sort of insights these devices can bring us. It also helps to show that there are different ways to use such technologies.

Reading notes from "Player One" by Douglas Coupland

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A few quotes from "Player One" by Douglas Coupland that I enjoyed (combined with an exploration of how I can export note from a Kindle app on an iPad): About artifacts and objects

Encountered at "Location 92" (Oh btw, given that I read the Kindle version of the book, I exported the note from kindle.amazon.com and got this weird new term that people in the future may refer to as the new version of pages):

"some kind of sin-detecting hand-held gadget lurking in his shirt pocket, lying in wait for Karen to undo more buttons or pick her nose or perform any other silly act that was formerly considered private, a silly act that will ultimately appear on a gag-photo website alongside JPEGs of baseball team portraits in which one member is actively vomiting, or on a movie site where teenagers, utterly unaware of the notion of cause and effect, jump from suburban rooftops onto trampolines, whereupon they die."

Location 869:

"he can’t believe the crap people used to put in their bodies in the twentieth century."

Location 3336 (it's awkward to think about the equivalent in a paper book: page 3336 feels like a vacation to a country with a devalued, say when you trade 10 millions against 5$):

"Dark-Age High Tech Technical sophistication is relative. In the eleventh century, people who made steps leading up to their hovel doors were probably mocked as being high tech early adopters."

Location ? (for some reasons I cannot get an excerpt's location when other people also highlighted it as relevant for their own purposes):

"Cash is a time crystal. Cash allows you to multiply your will, and it allows you to speed up time. Cash is what defines us as a species. Nothing else in the universe has money."

About space and place

Location 1065:

"An airport isn’t even a real place. It’s a pit stop, an in-between area, a “nowhere,” a technicality — a grudging intrusion into the seamless dream of transcontinental jet flight. Airports are where you go right after you’ve died and before you get shipped off to wherever you’re going next. They’re the present tense crystallized into aluminum, concrete, and bad lighting."

About "the future"

Location 1076:

"The future is not the same thing as Eternity. Eternity is everything and nothing. In the future, things that were already happening keep going on, but without you."

Location 1901:

"the thing about the future is that it’s full of things happening, whereas the present so often feels stale and dead. We dread the future but it’s what we have."

Location 1262:

"a clump of business cards so old they lacked area codes in front of the phone numbers. Even amidst the confusion, this absence of area codes struck Rachel as remarkable. Sometimes the events that mark the change from one era to another are so slow that they are invisible while they happen."

What we are as human

Location 1827:

"I think we’re everything: our brain’s wiring, the things our mothers ate when they were pregnant, the TV show we watched last night, the friend who betrayed us in grade ten, the way our parents punished us. These days we have PET scans, MRIs, gene mapping, and massive research into psychopharmacology — so many ways of explaining the human condition. Personality is more like a . . . a potato salad composed of your history plus all of your body’s quirks, good and bad."

Location 2001:

"Look at you all. You’re a depressing grab bag of pop culture influences and cancelled emotions, driven by the sputtering engine of the most banal form of capitalism. No seasons in your lives — merely industrial production cycles that rule you far better than any tyrant. You keep waiting for the moral of your life to become obvious, but it never does. Work, work, work: No moral. No plot. No eureka! Just production schedules and days. You might as well all be living inside a photocopier. Your lives are all they’re ever going to be."

Why do I blog this? As usual with Coupland's book, the vocabulary and the insights brought by his writing are compelling and strikingly pertinent to discuss current socio-technical trends. I find it useful to keep them up my sleeve just in case I need to exemplify certain topics in my presentation/teaching.

The diversity of platforms to read digital texts

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Why do I blog this? Working on a chapter in my book about recurring failures of technologies, I quickly created this diagram that shows the different iterations of platforms to read digital texts/content. The point was to show the large diversity of systems, as opposed to the unique "e-book reader" (reading books on photoframe!?). Of course, it's quickly made so I just mapped the different technical objects that enable people to access digital texts/content (based on various form factors, devices). I also avoided overloading the diagram by only adding seminal devices (lots of Apple devices in there) and some recent versions. I certainly missed other platforms.

Screen multiplicity in a Swiss train

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Sitting on a Swiss train the other day, I became fascinated by this air pilot playing with his laptop PC and his tablet.

But it became even more fascinating when the guy fired up his iPhone:

Why do I blog this? Fascination towards compulsive usage of technologies. This is definitely an extreme user with peculiar practices, but it was fascinating to see how he combinbed certain sorts of interactions/app usage to certain parameters (screen size, presence of a keyboard, etc.). It was also curious to see how the mobile context (a train with a limited personal space) was not so problematic to accomodate the use of three displays at the same time.

From "Learning from Las Vegas" to design research

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During my Christmas vacations, I finally had some time to read "Learning from Las Vegas" by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. Working on a course about field research, I was particularly interested by the way the authors framed the importance of observation in design. Two quotes struck me as important: The first one is:

"Learning from the existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary for an architect. Not the obvious way, which is to tear down Paris and to begin again, as Le Corbusier suggested in the 1920s, but another, more tolerant way; that is to question how we look at things.

There is a perversity in the learning process: We look backward at history and tradition to go forward; we can look downward to go upward. And withholding judgment may be used as a tool to make later judgments more sensitive. There is a way of learning from everything." p.3

I quite enjoyed this one, especially when considering the whole debate about the so-called inability of user research to lead to "disruptive innovations".

The second one is:

"Analysis of one of the architectural variables in isolation from the others is a respectable scientific and humanistic activity, so long as all are resynthesized in design. Analysis of existing American urbanism is a socially desirable activity to the extent that it teaches us architects to be more understanding and less authoritarian in the plans we make for both inner-city renewal and new development." p.6

The implications are important here as well, the idea that design is about synthesis is interesting.

Why do I blog this? Being involved in a week-long workshop about field research for design, I try to find some relevant angles for the students. These two quotes (which of course badly summarizes the whole book by Venturi and Brown) are intriguing and useful for my work. It's also interesting to see what can be translated from architecture to other design domains.

About the history of the computer mouse

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An interesting excerpt from "The best laid plans of mice and men: the computer mouse in the history of computing by Paul Atkinson:

"In the case of the adoption of the computer mouse as the preferred selection device, it seems that there are three discrete relevant groups of user that saw the problem being solved, but from different perspectives. The engineers at Xerox and Apple among others were convinced by Card’s use of Fitts’s Law that the mouse was ergonomically an almost optimal device, despite it’s complications from an engineering point of view. Young users, visually oriented users or users unaccustomed to computers found using a mouse in conjunction with a GUI to be a more intuitive way of accessing computer technology, despite the initial wariness of using one. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the largest relevant social group of user, business users, achieved closure with the computer mouse because of its ability to overcome the need to perform a stereotypically gendered activity. (...) The mouse, then, in a way that none of its designers originally intended, acted to remove the office computer’s association to the typewriter, changing it from what was perceived as a low-status piece of office equipment into a completely new piece of technology, operated in a unique way. The mouse also enabled the different computers targeted at female office workers and male managers to become a single product. I would argue that the mouse played a significant role in the wide-scale adoption of the computer – a computer without preconceived status and gender associations – and in doing so, that it made a substantial contribution to the development of today’s workplace ."

Why do I blog this? it's always intriguing to get back to the history of massively used technologies. More specifically, the paper addresses important lessons about the design choices made by computer mouse designers, the trajectory of its development as well as underlying factors such as gender issues.

"Eye am You"

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"Eye am You" (IAMAS Gangu Project, 2009) by Jarashi Suki:

"You am Eye is a toy that reflects the glasses which are in front of their eyes. Captured from the video camera mounted on the front, and locate the face by face recognition system that has the eyes of his face reflecting the display. This bespectacled users can get near the opponent's territory, surprising the people around you can laugh again. The people around you understand how, in the glasses before bringing your own illustrations and cartoon characters, you can enjoy as you like to change the user's eye glasses Masu. People who meet a variety of self-aware that projected itself among the person, is said to grow. Actions are usually performed unconsciously people do, indeed, "visible" are embodied in symbolic form."

Why do I blog this? an interesting project that can be relevant for one my student. A curious communication-disruption.

Fingerprints on touch interface as interaction pattern

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An interesting project by Design Language:

"Because the primary input method of the iPad is a single piece of multitouch glass, developers have incredible flexibility to design unique user interfaces. It’s hard to appreciate the variety of UIs though, since turning the screen off removes virtually all evidence of them. To spotlight these differences, I looked at the only fragments that remain from using an app: fingerprints."

Why do I blog this? It's interesting to observe how this quick hack enables to observe touch interface usage patterns very easily. The idea here is to benefit from physical traces to describe the accumulation of interaction over time. It would be fun to add a temporal dimension to this.

Saskia Sassen: Talking back to your intelligent city

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Much of what is put under the “smart city” umbrella has actually been around for a decade or more. Bit by bit (or byte by byte), we’ve been retrofitting various city systems and networks with devices that count, measure, record, and connect. (...) The current euphoria, however, centers around a more costly, difficult-to-implement vision. Rather than retrofitting old cities, the buzz today is about building entire smart cities from scratch in a matter of a few years (hence the alternative name “instant city”)
(...)
The first phase of intelligent cities is exciting. (...) The act of installing, experimenting, testing, or discovering—all of this can generate innovations, both practical and those that exist mainly in the minds of weekend scientists. (...) But the ensuing phase is what worries me; it is charged with negative potentials. From experimentation, discovery, and open-source urbanism, we could slide into a managed space where “sensored” becomes “censored.
(...)
The challenge for intelligent cities is to urbanize the technologies they deploy, to make them responsive and available to the people whose lives they affect. Today, the tendency is to make them invisible, hiding them beneath platforms or behind walls—hence putting them in command rather than in dialogue with users. One effect will be to reduce the possibility that intelligent cities can promote open-source urbanism, and that is a pity. It will cut their lives short. They will become obsolete sooner. Urbanizing these intelligent cities would help them live longer because they would be open systems, subject to ongoing changes and innovations. After all, that ability to adapt is how our good old cities have outlived the rise and fall of kingdoms, republics, and corporations.

via whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com

Why do I blog this? Some interesting elements, to be considered after the series of workshop we had at Lift11 this week (about smart cities and the use of urban data).

Henk Hofstra's Blue Road as a city waterway

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Last April, Henk Hofstra created an "urban river" in Drachten, Holland. The Blue Road installation is an example of what mind-blowing urban public art can be.

Featuring 1000 metres of road painted blue and the phrase "Water is Life" written in eight-metre-high letters across it, the Blue Road is reminiscent of the waterway that used to be where the road is now. It's a memorial to nature, but it's also just plain awe-inspiring. There's even a few cool tidbits along the road, like a sinking car.

via torontoist.com

Sifteo: networked cubes as a game system

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Sifteo cubes are a true game system. Each cube is equipped with a full color display, a set of sensing technologies, and wireless communication. During gameplay, the cubes communicate with a nearby computer via the USB wireless link. Manage your games and buy new ones using the Sifteo application installed on your computer. Each cube packs a full color LCD, a 3D motion sensor, wireless communication, a peppy CPU and more. Your computer connects to the cubes via the included Sifteo USB wireless link.

via sifteo.com

Why do I blog this? this seems to be an intriguing "networked object" platform. I like the idea of creating applications/gameplay based on the interactions between several cubes.

An impressive series of Virtual reality helmet drawings found in the US patents:

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Virtual reality interactivity system and method by Justin R. Romo (1991):

Helmet for providing virtual reality environments by Richard Holmes (1993)

Optical system for virtual reality helmet by Ken Hunter (1994):

Virtual reality visual display helmet by Bruce R. Bassett et al. (1996):

Helmet mounting device and system by Andrew M. Ogden (1996):

Virtual reality exercise machine and computer controlled video system by Robert Jarvik (1996)

Virtual reality system with an optical position-sensing facility by Ulrich Sieben (1998):

Multiple viewer headset display apparatus and method with second person icon Michael DeLuca et al (2002):

Visual displaying device for virtual reality with a built-in biofeedback sensor by Sun-II Kim et al (2002):

Virtual reality helmet by Travis Tadysak (2002):

System for combining virtual and real-time environments by Edward N. Bachelder et al (1997):

Why do I blog this? Working on a potential chapter in my book concerning recurring failures of digital technologies led me to investigate patents about VR. As usual when I dig Google Patent, I am fascinated by the graphics (drawing styles) and how much it reveals about design preconceptions. There's a lot to draw from these... especially about what the "inventors" (this term may look anachronistic but it's the one employed in the patent system) bring up in the graphics. Moreover, it's also great to see the different shapes that has been proposed (of course the patents are not just about shapes and design). These elements puts the current 3D glasses discussion in perspective.

Proximeter: an ambient social navigation instrument (H. Holtzman + J. Kestner)

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"Would you know if a dear, but seldom seen, friend happened to be on the same train as you? The proximeter is both an agent that tracks the past and future proximity of one’s social cloud, and an instrument that charts this in an ambient display. By reading existing calendar and social network feeds of others, and abstracting these into a glanceable pattern of paths, we hope to nuture within users a social proprioception and nudge them toward more face-to-face interactions when opportunities arise."

via eco.media.mit.edu

Why do I blog this? although I am not sure about the use case (and how it may lead to some new quirky social behavior), I find interesting FOR ONCE to see a location-awareness device that is not focused on the present/real-time. The idea here is rather to give some information about the near future... and I would find interesting to have this sort of representation only as am ambient display at home: no mobile version, only some simple insights before heading elsewhere.

ThingM Project Feature: Books with Personality

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The intent of this project was to create animism in an object, with the use of programmable BlinkM® LEDs. We were interested in books because, as a set of objects, they still had a degree of individuality which we wanted to bring forward. By accentuating the character that the titles already exuded, we were able to develop each personality in unique ways, furthering the books from their common mass–produced ancestry. This experiment came close to becoming a psychoanalysis of an object–exploring themes of ego, vulnerability, intellect, and self-awareness.

via blog.thingm.com

Why do I blog this? curious project by Jisu Choi and Matt Kizu (from Art Center) about books and how they can be enriched with "Individuality" features through technology.

Brixton High Street: urban design for robots

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An interesting project by Kibwe X-Kalibre Tavares:

"These are a collection of images of what Brixton could be like if it were to develop as a disregarded area inhabited by London's new robot workforce. Built and design to do all the task humans no longer want to do. The population of brixton has rocketed and unplanned cheap quick additions have been made to the skyline.

via flickr.com

Why do I blog this? designing of an urban environment (fictional or not) to accomodate robots seems to be a rather interesting brief. Surely some good design fictions can be built from there to reflect the possibilities of the future(s). The project blog is full of interesting material.

Mechanical faces in Sevilla (with a different number of eyes)

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As soon as you see this kind of gas counter in Spain, you start noticing that its design is pretty similar to a face:

A face likes this:

And then you see a similar device with 3 counters, which you recognize as a "3-eyed face" (see also the native american version):

Later on, you encounter one-eyed faces such as:

Or the wounded version:

Why do I blog this? These observations are close to a phenomena we described with Fabien in Sliding Friction: Mistaking an interface or a device for a face corresponds to a psychological phenomenon called “pareidolia”: a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus perceived as something clear and distinct.

Recently, I also dealt with the link between this and design... showing how Gerty, the robot in sci-fi movie Moon had a pretty basic face cued by a display that showed a smiley. It's fascinating to see how very minimal features can trigger (1) a face-like appearance, (2) rough forms of emotions that individuals can project on the device.

Smart Cities: how to move from here to there? | Lift11 workshop

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Workshop theme: 

Ubiquitous computing: Augmented Reality, location-based services, internet of things, urban screens, networked objects and robots

Over the past few years, "Smart Cities" have become a prominent topic in tech conferences and press. Apart from the use of this term for marketing purposes, it corresponds to a mix of trends about urbanisation: the use of Information and Communication Technologies to create intelligent responsiveness or optimization at the city level, the coordination of different systems to achieve significant efficiencies and sustainability benefits, or the fact that cities provide "read/write" functionality for its citizens.

The common approach to design Smart Cities is to start by upgrading the infrastructure first and consider the implications afterward. We will take a different path in our workshop and focus on situations that imply already existing and installed technologies (from mobile phones to user-generated content and social networking sites). To follow up on past Lift talks (Nathan Eagle at Lift07, Adam Greenfield at Lift08, Dan Hill, Anne Galloway and Carlo Ratti at Lift09, Fabien Girardin at Lift France 09) and workshops (about urban futures at Lift07 and Lift09), the goal of this session will be to step back and collectively characterize what could be a Smart City. This workshop targets researchers, designers, technology experts interested in developing an alternative approaches to technology driven visions of urban environments.

Co-organizers: Nicolas Nova, Vlad Trifa and Fabien Girardin.

via liftconference.com

A workshop I'd be organizing at Lift with Vlad and Fabien.