Are those examples of the future of gaming?
The juxtaposition of a visual code widgets for marker-based interaction and these finger puppets seen on the market in Geneva might appear absolutely odd and coming out of from the blue. Yet, there are some intriguing opportunities to use a combination of both for a playful phone-based application.
Some rough issue about the near future of gaming, prepared for a workshop for a client: With regards to the notion of gaming, the video game market/industry is COMPLICATED - Because the notion of “games” is expanding from game console/computer games/portable games to serious gaming (e.g. simulation, training applications), web-based games, mobile gaming (e.g. electronic sudoku, mogi mogi), electronic toys and robots (e.g. Nabaztag, Leapfrog products), social platforms (e.g. Second Life, Habbo Hotel) or alternate reality gaming. We now think in terms of “Digital entertainment”. - Because it is composed of different industries, which have different business models, constraints, rules, target groups and timescale/work practices. - Innovation in the field tend to be sustained by outsiders (for instance Habbo Hotel designed by Finnish company Sulake Games, that already has 50 millions users),
In the short term, the picture is actually slightly simpler: - Even though the news are quite wii-centered lately, do not forget that other big guys (Microsoft and Sony) still matter. The tech-driven aspects of the game industry are still important and we still don’t know how users will react to the new game controller. - Sequels (e.g. Pro Evolution Soccer 5) and blockbusters (e.g. Zelda, Super Mario) continue to be important because players still acknowledge their value based on the history. - However, pay attention to game breakthroughs (Elektroplankton, Spore) with disruptive gameplay, which are trying to set new trends of original game design. - Look at the evolution of MMORPG and how the number of player evolves over time; look at how a new job appeared: community manager: a subset of the game designer activity, focused on sustaining and developing MMOG communities. - Try to understand the computer/console game business model (distributors/publishers/design studio) that put an incredible amount of pressure on innovation, leading to neverending sequels. Then think that the most innovative gameplay are designed by new actors (Sulake Games, In-Fusio). - Even though user-generated content is more a matter of videos (You Tube) or pictures (Flickr), the game industry begins to be impacted. And rumors says that Nintendo might provide development facilities on the Wii. - Gaming seems to pervades every moments and places of life (mobile gaming, location-based applications) BUT the home is still the most important location of digital entertainement. Where would be the locus of entertainment in the future? - The Wii re-installed some physicality in gaming, what does that say for other playful environment based on movements/gestures? What are the other scales that matter?
Why do I blog this? these are some raw notes that I used in a workshop about the "near future of entertaining technologies" a while ago, starting point for break-out groups to work on scenarios. Material provided to participants was also: Play Today - an Experientia report on the latest trends in electronic toys and games Alice Taylor's presentation at Aula GAMERS IN THE UK: Digital play, digital lifestyles. (BBC report) It’s only a game by Stephan Somogyi (The Economist, Summer 2006) The Wright Stuff by Will Wright (PopSci) MMOG Chart subscriptions Where Game Meets Web, Raph Koster Speaks Out, an interview of Raph Koster by Bonnie Ruberg (Gamasutra) Participants were also encouraged to read webglogs such as Terra Nova.
Graham, S. (2004): Excavating the Material Geographies of Cybercities, In Graham, S. (ed.) The Cybercities Reader, Chapter 18, Routledge, London. This chapter addresses the "material geographies of telecommunications hardware and equipment" built in the ICT boom of the late 90s showing how the so-called "death of distance" rely on material grounds. The "fabric of cyberspace" is indeed a lot more physical than the immateriality people promote, involving "the messy, complex and expensive construction of real wires, servers, and installations".
Although this claim is now very common in geography/architecture papers (as well as starting to be taken into account in the field of ubiquitous computing), what is very relevant in this chapter is how the authors describe "examples of the recombinant infrastructural spaces that invisibly underpin cybercities. Some excerpts highlight this point:
"These electronic superbanks are not skyscrapers but groundscrapers [interconnected by optic fiber networks]: "huge nine-to-eleven storey buildings with immense floor plates" to accommodate the remarkable IT needs of global financial institutions today (...) Telecom hotels are anonymous, windowless buildings and massive, highly fortified spaces which house the computer and telecommunications equipment for the blossoming commercial Internet, mobile and telecommunication industries. (...) server or 'co-location' farms are housed in highly secure building complexes located in the major global cities of the world. (...) The physical qualities of the chosen buildings (high ceiling height, high-power and back-up electricity supplies) need to be combined with nodal positions on fibre networks (...) isolated and ultra-secure spaces are currently being configured as spaces for the remote housing of computer and data storage operations. There are several elements of this process. In the first element, a variety of offshore small island states (...) old disused sea forts and oil rigs are now being actively reconfigured by e-commerce entrepreneurs, in attempts to secede from the jurisdictions of nation states altogether. (...) the self-styled Principality of Sealand (...) Since September 11th many of London's financial and corporate head quarters have installed massive servers in the platform's concrete legs to improve their resilience against catastrophic terrorism in the City of London. (...) But perhaps even more bizarre is the third part of the process : the reconstruction of old cold-war missile launch sites and bunkers to offer the ultimate in security against risks of both electronic and physical incursion"
Why do I blog this? while I am unsure about "sea forts and oil rigs" (Sea Land has some troubles lately), this enumeration of "recombinant" examples is very intriguing. Surely some material to keep in mind for further investigation about urban computing.
Reading some material (.ppt!) about the Mogi game, I ran across this very interesting slide by Benjamin Joffe:
The picture basically shows different digital maps, with diverse levels of granularity, from the cluttered to the simple.
Why do I blog this? because I find it very relevant to the issue of location-based interfaces, for single-user or multi-user systems. In the single-user system, it's important to convey the location information with the most relevant granularity for the user. In a multi-user application (such as a buddy-finder), things are more intricate given that there is a need to match the granularity between users: is the same granularity pertinent for the 2 persons? what about applications for 50 persons? what about cultural issues if you have an emergency team of french gents in a remote country and people need to collaborate?
Talking about the convergence between robots and ubiquitous computing artifacts, I started to list some of the projects that reflect this trend. I know some aspects of certain are not robots or ubicomp but still. Maybe they are sort of boundary objects that we don't name yet:
Nabaztag
by Violet, the famous Wi-Fi enabled rabbit that "connect to the Internet, send and receive MP3s and messages that are read out loud as well as perform the following services (by either speaking the information out loud or using indicative lights): weather forecast, stock market report, news headlines, alarm clock, e-mail alerts, and others" (Source: Wikipedia).
Chapit
by Raytron: "a small new robot named Chapit which is an "intelligent" companion helping you for some basic tasks like turning the light on or turning on electric or electronic devices (...) one of the biggest advantages of the Chapit is the capacity to recognize a man, woman or child without any programmation. The base model comes with a vocabulary of about 100 words only but it is possible to teach it up to 10.000. It also features an internet connection allowing distant control"
Netoy
by izi robotics: "Netoy. Netoy is an 802.11g-compatible device with a small 1.8-inch screen. He can display music track information, read news, weather, e-books arms and being an overall general nuisance all while flailing its arms"
Chumby
by chumby industries: " a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web: news, photos, music, celebrity gossip, weather, box scores, blogs — using your wireless internet connection".
Stock Puppets
by Mike Kuniavsky: "The G-7 Stock Puppets are an Internet-driven kinetic installation that tracks the movements of global stock markets with seven larger-than-life marionette puppets".
(to be completed!)
A bit I ran across this morning: Tracking Capable Kids, a project on the Children’s Activities, Perception and Behaviour in the Local Environment from UCL’s Centre for Transport Studies (CTS), supported by CASA, the Bartlett School of Planning, and the Department of Psychology.
"the project focused on monitoring the energy expended and the patterns of travel of children between home and school focuses on understanding how and why children walk and play in an activity context. (...) We sampled some 180 children aged between 8 and 10 in three Hertfordshire primary schools over a four day period using a variety of equipment and questionnairiaes to establish their activity patterns. GPS monitors on the kid’s wrists and RTS energy monitors around their waists record movements. The kids filled in diaries and produced mental maps of their environment during the four day period in question (...) A fascinating array of data has been generated and the project team is working on analysing this information at many scales and relating this to the social economic order characteristic of the households of which the children are a part."
Why do I blog this? some interesting bits here, need to read the papers about it. Besides, the question "How children play in their local environment?" is very relevant to my own research about mobile gaming and spatial practices.
Working on my talk for Frontiers in Interaction, I was wondering about a question I might address, which is "Is ubiquitous computing already here?" There are different options here to answer this question. At first glance, one might say "no" because as we do not see flying cars, super fancy fridges and context-aware cell phones are not used by 97% of the earth population. And when looking at the 3% (my approximation) well versed into high-tech practices, things are not that simple.
Another answer would be that yes ubicomp is here but not as envisioned by researchers, this is the claim by Bell and Dourish: "ubiquitous computing is already here, in the form of densely available computational and communication resources, is sometimes met with an objection that these technologies remain less than ubiquitous in the sense that Weiser suggested" that I share. This resonates with news press like this article in The Economist (It was hailed as a breakthrough that would revolutionise logistics. What ever happened to RFID?). The point here is to say that ubicomp is maybe less a matter of the gadgety future propelled by some researchers and maybe existing practices in countries well into broadband and mobile. Lots of reasons can be called to explain why we're not using location-based annotation systems or intelligent fridges, some are related to flawed assumptions about infrastructures, others to the problem of automation, regulation issues, etc.
Another way to think about it is that yes ubicomp is here, latent but not implemented like a sort of normative future waiting to be realized. The ideas and design of ubicomp so pervaded naive or pop culture about technologies (through cultural artifacts like Minority Report) that the future is thought to be like this. I can feel this when running workshop about the near near future (ubicomp, location-based app...). The symptom is simple: the ideas o buddy-finder, place-based annotations, intelligent agents are so present in people's mind that it's VERY difficult to reach innovative conclusions. What is even more remarkable (but maybe expected) is that it's not only the applications people want that are similar but also the underlying trend of hybridization: the improvement/facilitation ofconnection between people and people, things and people, place and things... all these *values* now pervade our culture...
The Digital Invisibility of Broadband and its Representation in the Modern City by Peter Dobers, Paper presented at 97th AAG Annual Meeting, Session "The Invisible City", February 27 - March 3, 2001 in New York, USA. The paper addresses the issue of the concreteness of IT/digitality, especially in urban settings. The "invisible" character of technologies have always been highlighted: the infrastructure of the Internet is invisible to the observer, since dug into the ground and the information transported on these nets is invisible. Based on these premises, the author illustrates how broadband and digits are represented in concrete and socially infused, indeed personalized, ways, discussing "the dialectics between abstract invisibility and concrete visibility and how each is represented". He then gives different examples of "bits" in "very mundance, everyday human siutations" from swedish commercial and Telia movie clips. These are very pertinent to show "how digits are infused with anthropomorphous qualities to enhance our understanding and attachment to digital technology". The idea of having "bits on strike" is kind of hilarious for that matter.
(Picture taken in Geneva few months ago)
Some excerpts that I find inspiring:
"the digits and bits themselves, are rather incomprehensible and therefore invisible to users. (...) Those digits are translations of a situation to which there are no actor that can speak up by themselves (...) [these examples] gives voice and meaning to an invisible part of the modern city, to a situation otherwise incomprehensible. (...) To describe something intangible and invisible as digital information and fast broadband access to the internet, we need to make reference to something else. In this case, something else of the digits of the digital world becomes represented in our world by human beings. These metaphors of humans give sense to a senseless and invisible digital world. (...) Data by themselves can be based on digital rather than analogue media. However, since we live in an analogue world, full of atoms and not full of bits, eventually we need analogue information to reach our senses. (...) It seems that to grasp the invisible, you have to make it visible, and to grasp the abstract, you have to make it tangible and concrete."
Why do I blog this? These aspects are very interesting, from the "hybridization" of space standpoint. It also reminds a talk By Yo Kaminagai (urban designer) about the fact that digitality takes lots of room, and really materialize in space through cables, servers, wiring.
Finally got some time to read "Interactive cities" that was mentioned here a while ago. Some excerpts I found relevant to my work below: Editorial The editorial by Valérie Chatelet gives a good overview of the research questions at stake in urban planning/architecture with regards to ICTs.
"What are the implications of this new urban condition ? How do planning strategies make use of this technology ? Does the use of such technology simply enable people to improve projects or does it entail deeper changes ? What are the relevance and impact of organisational structures and the economic and social models linked to the growth of such technology ? (...) the integration of three kinds of information and communication technology (ICT) for town planning purposes : - as a tool for regulation and communication, this technology is now involved in the very functioning of towns - as a tool for measuring and examining a town. In this respect the availability of data, increased calculation capacity and advances in programming now mean that the scale of a district can be studied to the same extent as that of a town system - as a design tool, the use of digital technology means that the intervention of other players can be taken into account, along with changes and a constantly updated flow of data "
Sense of the City : Wireless and the Emergence of Real-Time Urban Systems (Carlo Ratti and Daniel Berry) In this chapter, Ratti and Berry describes some projects they're conducting about making explicit the usage of cell phone, to show patterns of activities in cities (the Mobile Landscape project). The chapter interestingly describes the added value of such information:
"Mobile landscapes could give new answers to long-standing questions in architecture and urban planning such as 1) how to map the origins and destinations of vehicles; 2) how to understand patterns of pedestrian movement; (3) how to highlight critical points in the urban infrastructure; (4) how to establish the relationship between urban forms and flows, etc. In this sense, the study of mobile landscapes could have a great impact on space syntax11, complementing and possibly substituting traditional pedestrian surveys in the future. (...) Mobile Landscape : Grazis thus a means of listening, observing, and reading the city, a tool that interprets the city as a shifting entity formed by webs of human interactions in space-time, rather than as a fixed and purely physical environment. On the one hand, it provides an analytical mechanism to further understand the urban condition in real-time. On the other hand, it provides feedback, allowing the user to change from being a passive/observed entity to an active participant. (...) initiatives that respond to the urgent need to develop new knowledge tools that mobilize these technologies to better understand the urban domain. In a certain sense, it can be said that the very technology that is changing urban patterns can be used to make them more intelligible. (...) Projects that engage the city in its present, technologically-enhanced state could begin to provide architecture and urban planning with new channels to intervene in the urban realm"
(Picture taken from the project website)
I'll get back later on the chapter by Huang and Waldvogel Why do I blog this? the two chapters I have quoted here are interesting to me because of my interest in the hybridization of the digital and the physical with regard to urban computing issues. Given that they had been written by architects, they are important because they provide some contexts to my research about what practitioners are interested in, what are the questions they want to address and what are the solutions they bring at the table.
Today participating to the Urban Networks and Network Theory at the University of Lausanne. The seminar addresses two issues: 1) The transition from a network/networks of actors, individuals, firms or institutions to the coherent development of a city or system of cities, 2) The potential transfers and links between the various disciplinary and methodological interpretations of the concept “network”. Some notes below about the highlights (raw notes, not well formed).
(Picture taken yesterday in Zürich)
Introduction by Géraldine Pflieger and Céline Rozenblat
There are a variety of scales and aspects which intersect, connect or overlap, and function like networks. The central issue for research on urban networks is to identify, from a transdisciplinary perspective, how each of these networks function and interact in and through the urban space. This will be the central focus of the present seminar.
This will require an examination of the transition from networks of actors to networks of cities through the interlinking of different types of network: - technical set-up: this refers to the actual physical presence of cities, their morphology, density, topology and topography; - technological and organisational innovations and their dissemination in urban practices; - social networks and functional spaces linked largely to the legacies of history but which play an active part in the dynamics of the internal and external networking of cities.
Space of flows: networks between global and local by Manuel Castells
There are interactions between space of flows and ICT. We know that technologies are not a determinant but a mediator. Contrary to futurologists, no demise of cities but we are seeing the most important urbanization phenomenon we have ever seen (we crossed the 60%, 2/3 in 20years).
The most important aspect is the emergence of a new space of flows: of capital, information, technology, organizational interaction, images, sounds and symbols. This leads to a new urban form: the metropolitan region (peter hall+kathy payne use the concept of polycentric metropolis). In most cases, there is not institutional unit in this metropolitan region (even the greater london authority is not sufficient). It's interesting to observe how people call their metropolitan region? You don't say the "SF Bay Area" because San José is bigger than SF. A solution Manuel takes is to use the term employed by TV new: in Los Angeles, it's not LA but "southland" (but south of what?), it's a reference to an area we know it's there.
To Castells, networks explain the concentration in places (you don't grow first and attract). What is important here: - micronetwork of decision making/initiative = face 2 face (you have to be in financial places, knows who is who, what is who) - micronetwork of implementation = through electronic media, the network of implementation is macro
This explains the concentration : once these mechanisms is in place, the rest can be explained: infrastructure of communication, services... it develops because there is something to communicate, creation of opportunities because there is money, there is a market... facilities and... jobs... which attracts globally (hence hubs for immigration, multi-ethnic places)... + economies of synergies (2+2 = 5): being in a place where you interact with others leverage innovation
Cities remain the source of creation value, power, social selection and quality of life has nothing to do with it. It's entirely subjective ("can you imagine more boring places than SV?, these people don't go to SF bars, are they here for quality of life? no they're hypnotize by creativity"). As he said "cities become trendy only when they have the power to launch the trends, the rest is consulting for mayors".
When this multi-layer of global network coincides, in a way, then: - economies of synergy takes place into that node (academic research+tech...) - this becomes a mega-node: london, NYC (but not Boston)
Elements discussed in the Q&As: this node concentrate more and more power and wealth global networks also exclude other dimensions dissociation between the space of flows and the space of places power is constructed in the space of communication the key positions are switchers between networks (politic, business, media...) the more you connect to the internet, the more you talk within the company
Designing connections: people, places and information by Federico Casalegno (Mobile Experience Lab) design/communication perspective goal of the lab: rethink the relationships between people, places and information using cutting edge IT
First part of the talk is about how you can think to map forms of communication (map flow of communication and communities), especially people using mobile phones. How the content of the communication flows between users. "it is not down on any map: true places never are" Hermann Melville map use of mobile phone conversations 3 levels: micro/tribal/macro - micro: conversation+txt+undeground/secret communication (teenagers do not need to talk, they just beep the partner in order to appear, name on the cell phone). This forms an aura of communication: "the womb". - tribal: one person expert in the tribe about a certain topic publishes about it to the others - macro: rave parties, someone got the information that there is a party somewhere, send a message to others that you have to meet at a certain place... word of mouth... and you start exchanging content (what style of music? what dj?). you start to have a level of communication. Then everyone gets in the same place
There are different forms of communication, different metaphors: the womb, jellyfish, butterfly, intimate daisy, etc. they are way to understand social networks of mobile phone users
Two projects to rethink communication, place and people: 1) The Electronic Lens (eLense) creates talking landmarks and radically rethink the interactions between institutions, citizens and places. People will point telephone to physical building and get information (magnifying glass), access to information by pointing to an object. Application that recognizes buildings + post voice messages about buildings + start to design communities/group of users that can access to information.
2) Urban garden: rethinking bus stops (with french company RATP) One node in the city: the bus stop, what is the future of bus stop? Started to design a prototype: parametric design, integrate and support the urban environment They also describe the future of the bus stop as a self organized landmark with user-generated content. Internal interactions: people can see when is the next bus, if there are problems information but also "urban garden" where people can post messages/recommended places/looking for a bass-player in a music band (!). External interactions: physically reflecting the richness of the local communication on the outside messages posted but also sensors and cameras that measure the traffic/noise production/air pollution that can have negative impact on the "tree" representation.
The whole point of these projects is that technologies as mediators between individuals, local activities. These concepts are prototypes, some aspects will be implemented (la ligne 14!).
Conclusion: framed into the history of cities: pre-industrial cities consisted essentially of skeleton and skin then cities in the industrial era had physiologies (water/electric supply systems) electronic systems are now nervous systems where technologies are embed in the urban fabric
Why do I blog this? This sort of multi-disciplinary meetings is very insightful, it gives context and perspectives to what I'm doing (as well as provide data for foresight work). Ta to Géraldine for the invitation to participate.
Location-based games has not really be very surprising lately; this is why Plundr appears more interesting than others. Designed by area/code, it's a game about piracy and trading that one can play on MAC/PC laptop computers by players who are navigating through real-world space. Gameplay is basic but intriguing: action takes place on Islands where you can buy and sell goods, prey on Merchant Ships, and battle other nearby players. The "pervasive" aspect of the game lays in the fact that each Island corresponds to a real-world location.
It's also interesting to note that they use Loki (by Skyhook Wireless). There are also some rumors of a Nintendo DS version ("not quite ready for prime time yet").
Why do I blog this? Some aspects I find pertinent and exciting: "You can play Plundr wherever you have a connection to the internet": but then the fun of the game can be felt when not connected. "If you are the first player to explore this location, you will discover a new Island, congratulations": this is already nice in Plazes, the pleasure of discovering new plazes/islands is very important because it's tight to spatial discovery and social psychology mechanisms ("I am the one who discovered XXX"). Also of interest is the forum about possible improvements.
Vlad sent me this paper yesterday: T. Abdelzaher, Y. Anokwa, P. Boda, J. Burke, D. Estrin, L. Guibas, A. Kansal, S. Madden, and J. Reich, Mobiscopes for Human Spaces, IEEE Pervasive Computing - Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems, Vol. 6, No. 2, April - June 2007 The authors describe the notion of "mobiscope", i.e. mobile sensor networks:
"a mobiscope is a federation of distributed mobile sensors into a taskable sensing system that achieves high-density sampling coverage over a wide area through mobility. (...) physically coupled to the environment through carriers, including people and vehicles. (...) Mobiscopes will be tightly coupled with their users. This presents significant human-factors design challenges and many sociocultural implications that extend beyond limited notions of privacy in data transmission and storage. (...)Mobiscopes are part of our maturing ability to silently watch ourselves and others"
Why do I blog this? documenting new terms about sensor technologies.
Some examples of QR code usage in Zürich, Switzerland (meeting there today). First, you have the formal version... an advertisement for the NZZ (swiss newspaper):
Then some more street-oriented practices also take advantage of QRcodes with the nice duct-tape touch:
I am however skeptical about the real usage of this QR code, which seems rather aesthetic/trendy that meant to foster specific interactions. It would be curious to know whether people use them, any clue about it Roger?
According to the Wikipedia, Sneakernet:
"Sneakernet is a term used to describe the transfer of electronic information, especially computer files, by physically carrying removable media such as magnetic tape, floppy disks, compact discs, USB flash drives or external drives from one computer to another. Sneaker refers to the shoes of the person carrying the media. This is usually in lieu of transferring the information over a computer network."
Some examples:
"Google has reportedly used sneakernet to transport datasets too large for current computer networks, up to 120Tb in size.
The SETI@home project uses a sneakernet to overcome bandwidth limitations: data recorded by the radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico is stored on magnetic tapes which are then shipped to Berkeley, California for processing.
When home broadband access was less common, many people downloaded large files over their workplace networks and took them home by sneakernet. Today when home broadband is more common, sometimes technical workers at institutions with congested WAN links do the reverse: downloading data at home in the evening and carrying the files to work on USB flash drives."
Why do I blog this? I remember the first time I connected to the Internet in 1995, I printed 200pages. It's interesting to see that the sneakernet practice is still around, there are other examples that I've seen, such as people exchanging files on USB key (and checking if the file is deleted after the cxchange).
Crabtree, A. (2004) Design in the Absence of Practice: Breaching Experiments, In Proc. Of DIS 2004, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, pp. 59-68. While IT research and development is now generally informed by studies of practices, this article raises the problem of innovation and design in the absence of these very practices in the context of ubiquitous computing. The author interestingly proposes to deploy new technologies "in the wild" and treat them as "breaching experiments". Some excerpts that summarizes the main meat:
"How, then, are disciplines that take practice as their object of inquiry and study to proceed in the absence of practice and, furthermore, to support innovation in design? (...) a solution we have developed over the course of our own research to address how we might incorporate ethnography into an innovative process of research and development (...) treating technological innovations in an experimental fashion (...) our approach is based on conducting experiments ‘in the wild’ (...) The ethnomethodological notion of breaching experiments: (...) a research procedure that necessarily disrupts ordinary action in order that the sociological analyst might “detect some expectancies that lend commonplace scenes their familiar, life-as-usual character, and to relate these to the stable social structures of everyday activities. (...) in the absence of practice with which to inform design, novel technological innovations might be deployed in the wild in order to confront them with novel situations and ad hoc practices devised on the fly to make the technology work ‘here and now’ (...) they provoke (in the etymological sense of ‘call forth’) practice and make it visible and available design reasoning. (...) Breaching experiments do not make existing practice available to analysis however – as none exists – but make visible the contingent ways in which the technology is made to work and the interactional practices providing for and organizing that work. "
Why do I blog this? some important elements here about how to set proper research methodologies in the context of ubicomp R&D. It certainly connects with the talk that I did recently in Marseille. I found important the clarification about researching practices... that do not exist yet. Besides, the "experiments in the wild" approach is appealing to me, although I may not limit myself to ethnomethodologically-informed ethnography (given that I like to use mixed-methods).
5 Big Biz Think Tank Techniques by Chris Penttila gives a quick overview of how larger companies are using innovation centers to encourage and implement new ideas.
"1. Combine ideas. Xerox Corporation looks for intersections between ideas and how they might merge. “Several ideas could get combined in a next-generation offering,” says Tom Kavassalis, vice president of strategy and alliances for the Xerox Innovation Group, which drives Xerox’s R&D-based innovation. 2. Think backwards. McDonald’s innovation team thinks in terms of “backcasting”—starting with an end product in mind and working back toward the basic idea in a way that’s practical from a cost and technology perspective. 3. Do rapidprototyping. McDonald’s puts ideas through rapid prototyping that can last as little as one day. “What we try to do is to get from the blackboard to 3-D as fast as we can,” says Koziol. 4. Create an internal incubation fund. Xerox sets aside funds that encourage employees to network and chase ideas that otherwise wouldn’t have a budget. “We’re interested in thinking of new ideas that are different from ones we’re currently funding,” Kavassalis says. 5. Take it online. Idea management software is automating the innovation proc-ess. “Everybody can contribute all the time,” says Anthony Warren, director of the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Penn State."
Why do I blog this? some elements to keep in mind and apply in our work processes. Foods for thoughts for LIFTLab.
This picture showed up in Michael Curry's talk tonight:
It's actually the cover of a book by Ted Nelson: Computer Lib (1974).
Why do I blog this? I was impressed by the "you can and must understand computers now" claim there, which definitely show the underlying values that pervaded our culture. The "understand" word is tough though, but as Nelson pointed out, people have resources to do so ("can") but also an obligation ("must")...
Tonight's talk at the EPFL Urban department seminar was "Digital individual: place, memory and the anxiety of reference" by Michael Curry (UCLA). My notes are a bit rough, taken in real time and reshaped in the train... Curry's talk was about the redrawing of the boundaries between the forgotten and the remembered caused by technologies. He went through 4 projects to show the trend towards "the multiple problems of forgetting and anxiety for references": 1) Vannevar Bush's Memex ("intimate supplement of memory", "networked Memex: sneaker network") 2) Ted Nelson's Xanadu, mirrorworlds. 3) Mirror Worlds by David Gelernter (1992): "put the universe in a shoe box": a software model of a piece of reality. You can see the mirror world through the computer screen: an annotated version of the world: a notion of a world where everything has a location, space as a framework focus on density, condition, status, a bit like google mash-ups 20 years later! 4) this is even more epitomized by Gordon Bell's MyLifeBits: a portable memory... putting one's life online, electronic bits in one's local cyberspace (texts, photographs, owns...). Everything can be monitored for the person's point of view (through wearable monitors). But, it should more accurately be termed "bits of my life" because it involves selection and censorship remains (because of legal issues + people still sleep and dream). What is different here is that inmylifebits, it's "the world as I see it, private and personal": it operates on a cartographic model, see the world from above, different from the curiosity cabinets.
To him, there is here a reminescence of curiosity cabinets like musei wormiani historia (worm, 1655). At that time, there were seen as a representation of the world: knowledge was not categorized as in natural sciences here but as a synthesis only based on a visual correspondence + aestetical resonance. A cabinet was a world full of objects that lack order... and then a structure was derived with the assumption that the world needed to ordered. There was a strong visual component given that they were meant for information retrieval through patterns of association (the cabinet as a mnemonic function, a mean of information storage). Still, it was knowledge was contemplation... the knowledge acquired was in a service of the state.
Nevertheless, neither of these piece capture the experience of necessity and uncertainty that we need in our everyday life: the ethics of forgetting is blurred. They can be uses as sources of information for others (and generally use the same categories and variables that can be used to look for terrorists). This way to see the world has taken considerable currency.
What would be missing in these system: judgements and not facts, we make statements like this all the time, we narrativizing/re-caterorizing the past all the time. What would happen when rewinding the past in mylifebits? that's what we do everytime, we revisit things we partly remember and partly forgot. Besides, there are interindividual difference about memory (a large majority of people need order to remember things and do it personally), about how people remember and forget stuff. This also does not take into account the process of re-enactment of events: people return to places where they don't feel lost, they establishment of routines of doing things. Mylifebit misses all of this. They less allow for uncertainty.
What happens is what Curry calls "anxiety of reference", a new sort of anxiety: "oh my god I will forgot what I've done when I was a kid, I'm better off recording everything from now on": this anxiety appear today in a networked worlds, a common glue on the new cabinet of curiosity: the www... which turns to be a Bentham's panopticon. And there is more to worry about: this is a real marketplace!
About that topic, see also: Collective remembering and the importance of forgetting: a critical design challenge by Anne Galloway (2006) Places to read anonymously: The ecology on attention and forgetting by Michael R. Curry and Leah A. Lievrouw (2004)
Results from the folding workshop that happened last week at our lab (organized by Mark Meagher). The point for students was to use the laser cutter to create crease lines prior to folding. The folded paper was then used as a diffuser for an LED wall display. I was not part of it. Some picture I took from that:
Why do I blog this? My role at the lab is not about this topic but it's very intriguing to be surrounded by outcomes from such workshops! Besides, from my POV (as a user experience researcher/psychologist), observing designers/architects work process is appealing and important for me.
Beyond gestural interactions, this nose-based interface developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute by Zane Van Dusen and Pauline Oliveros is curious:
"A computerized instrument that allows people to play music with the tip of their nose could give those who suffer from physical disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, the chance to experience music's positive effects. Not only could the interface allow for musical communication, it could also be adapted for speech, giving physically challenged patients the ability to form full sentences, rather than just providing yes or no responses. (...) Van Dusen's "adaptive-use musical instrument" overcomes these challenges with an inexpensive Web camera and specialized computer software that he wrote. The patient is placed in front of the computer, where they see live video of their face through a Web camera. Motion-tracking software places a red box on the tip of the person's nose and tracks the user's movement across an onscreen keyboard. The lowest notes are located to the left and the highest notes are located to the right. The outline of a rectangle around the person's face can be widened or narrowed in order to accommodate the patient's range of motion."
Why do I blog this? this is a low-cost user interface with some very interesting benefits. The very constrained and focused nature of this UI makes it appealing to some design challenges, especially in the context of kids.