Last year, during a project with Nokia and the EPFL Media and Design Lab, we "mapped" the structures of the "digital world" as represented in mobile devices (cell phones, iphones, ipods, portable consoles). The point was to graphically represent the information architecture so that we could under...
Monocle on cities
The latest issue of Monocle has some interesting article about city life. Of course, there is the Monocle spin that some may not like but there are interesting bits and pieces. ...
An old french bread vending machine
At a certain moment in time, bread used to be sold in vending machine in France, as shown by the picture below taken last week in Arles. It may have been perceived dreadful (or the machine broke) and the owner it would be better to pain it using the same color of the baker building. Depending on t...
Presence of radio waves, revealed
Making radio waves more explicit through stickers. ...
Urban safari in modern architecture
Each time I'm around Camargue (South of France, near Montpellier), I try to spend time around La Grande Motte. An intriguing beach resort built in the late 60s, early 70s, the place was formerly a desert of sand dunes and lagoons where giant mole hilles ("mottes" in French) has been designed. The ...
GPS versus maps versus direct experience
In Wayfinding with a Mobile GPS System, Ishikawa et al. examined the effectiveness of GPS navigation in comparison to paper maps and direct experience. Since it's a psychological study, the study is focused, more specifically on the user's wayfinding behavior and acquired spatial knowledge. The res...
Why do you read Pasta and Vinegar?
Time for a quick address: it's been 5 years that I keep this blog and things have changed over time. Topics discussed here vary but revolves around ubiquitous computing, tangible interactions, innovation and foresight, user experience and research. My situation also evolved from the one of a master...
Cybercity representations
In "The Cybercities Reader (Urban Reader)" (Steve Graham), there is a wonderful text by Anne Beamish called "The City in Cyberspace" which tackles the city metaphor in "virtual worlds" and how superficial the metaphor is often taken. Some excerpts I found relevant to my interests: "What do these d...
Holding the wiimote
Interesting discussion yesterday at the game studio around the holding of the wiimote. Surely one the topic that emerged from the usability tests of wii games we conducted, especially with people who've NEVER touch a video game console. The first picture represents the regular wiimote holding sche...
Horizontal codes for vertical planes
That pictogram ensemble is a project by german artist Ulrike Gruber. It actually re-uses urban signs targeted at pedestrian and project them on the building facade. As described on the public work authorization (only in french), this painting aims at using pedestrian pictograms to describe new ele...