Boundary Functions is a project by Scott Sona SNIBBE: "If you participate in this work, you will see a line as a boundary between you and others, which is usually supposed to be invisible, to identify your territory. The boundary changes according to the position of each individual on the floor, bu...
Space, cognition, interaction 1: space/place
This is the first blogpost of a serie that concerns my thoughts about the topic "Space, cognition, interaction" that I address in my dissertation. This issue has been tackled by various disciplines ranging from environmental psychology to sociology, architecture and human-computer interaction when ...
The uselessness principle
Free creatures: The role of uselessness in the design of artificial pets by Frédéric Kaplan is a very relevant short paper, which postulates that the success of the existing artificial pets relies on the fact that they are useless. Frédéric starts by explaining that the difference between an artif...
Will Wright about trends in video games
POPsci features a very long and insightful interview of Will Wright (game designer of The Sims and working on his next project called Spore). IMO, the article is important because it describes the current trends in the gaming industry. Let's see some of them below with quotes: The first trend is ce...
Podotactility: feeling texture with your feet
This is what the french calls a "podotactile", namely a textured strip which runs along the edge of the metro/tram station platform or even sidewalk, which one can feel with the feet. It's meant to warn people (blind or not) that there is limit/boundary between a space one is free to walk in and a...
Accepted paper about the CatchBob! project
Another accepted paper for the Common Models and Patterns for Pervasive Computing (CMPPC) workshop at Pervasive 2007. I co-authored this with Fabien Girardin (Barcelona) and Mike Blackstock (Vancouver). It's called "Issues from Deploying and Maintaining a Pervasive Game on Multiple Sites" and basic...
The roles of theory in interaction design
"Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design (Acting with Technology)" (Victor Kaptelinin, Bonnie A. Nardi) Reading Kaptelinin and Nardi's book, I was interested in the chapter entitled "Do we need theory in interaction design?" because it describes why developing and using the...
How to write gestures and movements
The coming of gestural interactions on mass market products such a the Wii brings lots of question about how to design movements, how to express them and discuss their relevance. This question is of particular importance in the video game industry and there is currently lots of discussion about how...
Paper for CSCL 2007
Our paper "Partner Modeling Is Mutual", Sangin, M., Nova, N. Molinari, G and Dillenbourg, P for the CSCL 2007 conference (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning) has been accepted. The paper, that one may categorize as belonging to cognitive science research, basically described our empirical re...
Ubiquitous computing and foresight
The Bell&Dourish paper I've blogged about last week is still sparking some interesting discussions (interestingly it's not only ubicomp researchers but also architects). What is interesting to me is how this discussion about focusing on the ubicomp of today and less about proximal future connects w...