This succession of Nintendo game platforms reveals the slow evolution of interfaces: from buttons to the d-pad, with the intermediary phase (made of 4 buttons). Designed by Gunpei Yokoi and his team, this feature circulated from these devices to other console afterwards. Material to be used in upco...
What can we learn from the analysis of disorientation?
An excerpt from this presentation by Ruedi Baur: "We simply allow ourselves to be guided by the system, led by the hand, almost to the point of losing any notion of orientation in the process. So we can fairly easily imagine this future world in which everyone would be systematically guided by his...
About sailor messages, café and Lift11 in Geneva
I ran across these post-its notes at Café Sport in Horta, Azores. They feature various questions and messages about sailing crew. You want to go to Marseilles? Bermudas? You have certain kinds of skills, help yourself. These inscriptions are interesting as they show the social importance of certa...
The importance of futility in innovation
Convinced that innovative artifacts always seem futile at first, I am a long-time observer of weird patents or odd pet gear. A curious article in the IEEE Spectrum entitled "Whimsy and Invention: Why ridiculous inventions are a good thing", highlights the importance of weird peculiar objects such ...
Location-Based Social Media and the automation bias
Reading this blogpost left me wondering about some companies/people that do not understand the notion of "active check-in" on Foursquare (or now Facebook Places). See for yourself: "The active checkin requirement is one thing holding back location-based social networks (also called “geosocial” netw...
Protected design: no pictures, no copy
A sign encountered at the airport in Lisboa, issued by the Centro Portugues de Design displayed next to different pieces of portuguese artifacts (jewelry, pottery, food). And yes, I'm back to the office. ...
Lessons learned from studying Nintendo DS appropriation
A Nintendo DS attached to a luggage encountered in Marseille the other day. Some excerpts I found interesting from a user study about the Nintendo DS appropriation by kids written by J. Alison Bryant, Anna Akerman, Jordana Drell: "handheld gaming systems, and particularly the Nintendo DS, are covet...
Why mobile phone users engage in vivid nonverbal communication that do not benefit their communication partner
An interesting read for a Friday afternoon: “Not crazy, just talking on the mobile phone: Gestures and mobile phone conversations” by Carolyn Y. Wei from Google research. The paper addresses why mobile phone users engage in vivid nonverbal communication behaviors that do not benefit their communic...
Field research for interaction design: slides from my course
This year, at the Geneva University of Arts and Design (HEAD-Geneva), I gave a course about field research in interaction design. It was a combination of lectures, readings and applied projects. The point was to engage student from this Masters in Media Design in understanding and applying field re...
Into the night with Jason Rohrer + Chris Crawford
Yesterday, I watched the latest episode of the documentary series called "into the night" on Arte (the French/German television). The point of this series is to have two intriguing people and get them to talk to each other. In this episode, the conversation happens between the Indie game designer ...