Establishing Criteria of Rigor and Relevance in Interaction Design Research by Daniel Fallman and Erik Stolterman is a paper about the epistemological underpinnings of interaction design. It addresses the problem of ‘disciplinary anxiety’ that is often felt by people in this field and the inherent ...
Multitasking TVs at the airport
Stuck at the airport in Austin the other day, I couldn't help being fascinated by the three TVs in a café. Each of them was on a different program (news + sport 1 + sport 2) and the sounds of each channel was mixed with the background noise of the place (+ music). The different device sit there al...
How socialbots could influence changes in the social graph
Socialbots: voices from the fronts, in the last issue of ACM interactions, is an interesting multi-author piece about how socialbots, programs that operate autonomously on social networking sites recombine relationships within those sites and how their use may influence relationships among people. ...
Cultural hybrid: chinese kebab
Why do I blog this? The first time I encountered this weird signage taken in London (Shoreditch area), it struck me as a good example of cultural hybridization, certainly one of the first step of the creolization process I blogged about yesterday. Overall, it also reveals a sort of weird "new aest...
Creolization
The terms ‘Creole’ and ‘creolization’ are used in many different contexts and generally in an inconsistent way. It is instructive to start with the origins of the root word. It was probably derived from the Latin creara (‘created originally’)… The French transformed the word to ‘créole’… ‘Creole’ ...
Drones controlled by Playstation-like joypads
Just found this: "And yet the US military does little to discourage the notion that this peculiar brand of long-distance warfare has a great deal in common with the video-gaming culture in which many young UAV operators have grown up. As one military robotics researcher tells Peter Singer, the auth...
SXSW2012 talk about mind and consciousness as an interface
Yesterday at SXSW Interactive 2012, Julian and myself participated in a panel about "mind and consciousness as an interface". We basically covered the whole spectrum from the cultural backdrop (science-fiction movies, reiki approaches) to current technologies involved in this. We also concluded abo...
Mysteries and Curiosities map of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Two weeks ago, when in California, Luke Johnson gave me this fantastic (and sort-of psychogeographic) map of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The project is called "Mysteries and Curiosities Map of JPL: How can design influence an established culture?" and it has been conducted by Luke and a bunch ...
Some interfaces encountered in Los Angeles this week
Few examples of technology/software-enabled spatiality encountered in Los Angeles last week: First, this marvelous dashboard from a Toyota Prius, an energy monitor that dynamically gives indications to the driver. As soon as I got into the taxi, I became fascinated by this visualization, it looks l...
Touch technologies in shared public toilets
Towards Touch-Free Spaces: Sensors, Software and the Automatic Production of Shared Public Toilets by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin is an essential read for anyone interested in how software-enabled technologies have implications at various spatial levels. In this case, it's about touching things wi...