Last week, I visited the Maison d'Ailleurs in Switzerland, which is a museum of science-fiction and utopia. The only public institution of its kind in the world, it's a non-profit foundation functioning both as a public museum and a specialized research center. They have temporary exhibition (with...
Historical analysis as a design tool
In "Historical Analysis: Using the Past to Design the Future", Wyche and her colleagues shows how history can be valuable for ubiquitous computing research; namely, that it can employed to provided insight and methodologies in the same vein as anthropology or philosophy. They point out in what resp...
Head as prototyping device
A curious prototyping device for hairdresser students... sort of uncommon to see teenagers hanging around with chopped off head in train station. Why do I blog this? fascination towards objects that can be employed as prototyping devices. Certainly to be contrasted with this one. ...
Dog vacuum cleaner from 1972
It seems that people wanted to combine toys and robots for quite a long time, as attested by this intriguing dog-shaped vacuum cleaner patented in 1972: "A toy dog closely resembling a real dog and having a hollow interior in which is mounted a vacuum cleaner having a suction hose which is retract...
Concerns about citizens as sensors
In the last issue of Vodafone's Receiver, there is an article by Anne Galloway about environmental sensing projects. Anne gives a quick summary of some meaningful citizen sensing and community mapping projects such as Proboscis' Snout, Preemptive Media's AIR or Beatriz da Costa's pigeon blog. These...
iPhone numeric keypad organizations
Topic addressed during lunch with Etienne Mineur in a nice italian restaurant. Or... the intriguing settings of the numeric keypads on the iPhone.Yes "keypads" is plural because there are two layouts:The dial layout: "1 2 3" in the lower segment.The calculator layout: "1 2 3" in the upper segm...
Representing design processes
Don't think I posted it here but this initiative about mapping and analyzing design process is of tremendous value. Hugh Dubberly collected "over one-hundred descriptions of design and development processes, from architecture, industrial design, mechanical engineering, quality management, and soft...
5000
What? A quickly found picture to celebrate the 5000th post on this blog. By Pierre la Police of course, depicting an imaginary sport elec competition. Weird devices, electricity and strange people. Surely a good summary of this blog. ...
Mobilisable at Arts Déco in Paris
Finally managed to get some time to write down my notes from the conference I attended last week in Paris. Called "Mobilisable" and organized at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, the conference was both a scientific and art event about focused on mobility and the hybridization of...
Prototyping in the urban environment
Two intriguing examples of prototyping in the urban environment. The two pictures above (taken in Geneva and Lyon) depict another form of trying to represent the upcoming colors of a building. Different colors are presented (stand-alone or with a combination of others) to the people who will take...