ThingM

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Mike Kuniavsky now announced the lauching of his company (along with Tod Kurt) called "ThingM" (to be pronounced "thingum"). As described by Mike:

ThingM is a design and development studio focused exclusively on ubiquitous computing. We have many hopes for the company, but my dream is to rethink objects in the age of ubiquitous information processing. I believe that information processing can be considered a new kind of material in design (this is the basis of my Smart Furniture Manifesto, and furniture is one of the "object genres" that we have been studying), and that tangible networked objects can be considered a kind of projection of services, rather than mere standalone entities. At ThingM we aim to create a new class of smart everyday objects that abandon the idea of computers as general-purpose devices with a screen, a keyboards and a mouse. Our goal is to change the fundamental nature of all designed objects using pervasive networking and computing. In this, ThingM can be considered a combination of an interaction design studio, an industrial design studio, an engineering consultancy and a software development house, but really, we're a ubiquitous computing studio. Expect to hear more from us in the upcoming months.

Why do I blog this? since I am working on user experience of such ubicomp things, this seems to be a great effort to keep an eye on.

Virtual gold and tool creativity

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ige (Internet Gaming Entertainment) is an intriguing website/company that allows people to buy and sell gold for MMORPG. So people who don't have time to farm can busy gold and use it for them or their guild. What is interesting is that people who used to do it on eBay now have a specific platform for that. The market must be huge. Now, if you look a bit at the creativity about this phenomenon in terms of tools/websites/information available concerning gold/goods, this is quite crazy (price comparators...):

  • Eye on MOGs: "Eye On MOGS is a MOGS search-engine cum comparison/availability tool. Our aim here has always been simple – to provide you, the user, with a quick and easy way to find the virtual good you want; when you want it and for the best price for you"
  • Gold Pricer: "This website is dedicated to finding you the lowest priced World of Warcraft Gold for your server on the internet. Every day, we search more than 30 different providers of WoW gold, to ensure the prices we display for your server are completely up to date".

Terra Nova Symposium

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There will be a State of Play/Terra Nova Symposium on December 1-2 in NYC. It seems to be of great interest to my research (even though writing my phd dissertation will prevent me from any trip overseas). I would be tremendously interested by:

2:15 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. Methodologies and Metrics As with any interdisciplinary field, the nature of the study of virtual worlds is intimately connected to the nature of the methodology used to study the worlds. Qualitative and quantitative methodologies of various stripes all have their role here, but what role? Ethnographies, case studies, historiographies and related methods allow us to detect and understand certain types of behavior. Empirical and quantitative methods are good at creating generalized insights about behavior, but comparatively lousy in generating insights of how and why and with what meaning. In this workshop we will explore when certain methods are better than others, whether these methods are inconsistent, and what we need to understand about methodologies of virtual world research in order to do interesting work.

Panelists: Nic Ducheneaut (PARC); Thomas Malaby (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee); Dmitri Williams (University of Illinois).

Why do I blog this? because I am doing game research, especially about user experiences matters 8using both quant and qual methodologies).

Industrial food production and high-tech farming

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(Via): Unser Täglich Brot ("our daily bread") is an impressive film about industrial food production and high-tech farming:

Ein Blick in die Welt der industriellen Nahrungsmittel-produktion und der High-Tech-Landwirtschaft: Zum Rhythmus von Fließbändern und riesigen Maschinen gibt der Film kommentarlos Einsicht in die Orte, an denen Nahrungsmittel in Europa produziert werden: Monumentale Räume, surreale Landschaften und bizarre Klänge - eine kühle industrielle Umgebung, die wenig Raum für Individualität lässt. Menschen, Tiere, Pflanzen und Maschinen erfüllen die Funktion, die ihnen die Logistik dieses Systems zuschreibt, auf dem der Lebensstandard unserer Gesellschaft aufbaut.

UNSER TÄGLICH BROT ist ein Bildermahl im Breitwandformat, das nicht immer leicht verdaulich ist - und an dem wir alle Anteil haben. Eine pure, detailgenaue Filmerfahrung, die dem Publikum Raum für eigene Erkenntnisse lässt.

Why do I blog this? sunday morning blogpost.

World history timeline

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Look at this world history timeline (by Scientific Timeline Productions):

13.7 billion years of universal history Over 60.000 years of art, technology and religion Over 6000 years of literature, art, world religion, philosophy, science, music and political facts A horizontal and vertical linkage of the artistic, intellectual, and scientific movements in world history. Thousands of important people and their publications situated with data. A full colour edition, illustrated with over 150 images and maps The content is based upon comparison of various reliable courses and supervised by 18 European academics

Why do I blog this? I was looking for some nice examples of timelines/sparkline and visualization of events that happened over time and I found this huge project. I found it smart and informative, would be good to have this at home.

Mining electronic footprints

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A very interesting piece in Science by John Bohannon called "Tracking People's Electronic Footprints" describes how "Digital records, faster computers, and a growing tool kit of mathematical models are now giving social scientists a boost in analytical power" for social sciences:

The mobile phone data set was one of a variety of new collections on display at the meeting--many of them based on the captured digital signatures of human interactions such as communication, travel, voting, and shopping. (...) Having data for individuals in an entire society allows questions to be asked that "traditional social scientists simply could not address." (...) For example: Are suicides contagious? (...) Others, such as Onnela, are studying the architecture of social webs. (...) Whether laws governing social groups can be found is an open question. But many social scientists are optimistic that such sets of real-world data will lead the way, and they are hungrily eyeing new sources (see sidebar on p. 915). "Great science can potentially come out of these efforts," says James Moody, a sociologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. But he and others agree that it will take more than "just mining the data" to learn what drives social phenomena. What's needed is an exponential boost in the power of social science theory and analysis. And this, says Granovetter, "is a very tall order."

Why do I blog this? because this IMO an important trend in social sciences, there is a lot to draw here but as I emphasized in bold, mining is only part of the job. And this reminds me, Marc Davis' discussion at Ubicomp, in which he was explaining how such quant methods could allow researchers to spot the right samples to study with qualitative studies. Besides, the article is full of pertinent examples ("evolving map of the flow of money", "Social scientists studying the collective behavior of terrorist").

Some would also be interested to know that "potential social science gold mine" Google will be more willing to allow scientific collaboration:

But although some computer-based companies such as Microsoft have eagerly embraced scientific collaboration, Google so far has not. "Google has a reputation … for being very negative to letting researchers in," says Richard Swedberg, a sociologist at Cornell University. This could soon change, a Google spokesperson has told Science.

Recommendations for game researchers

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John Hopson has a very clever column in Gamasutra entitled "We're Not Listening: An Open Letter to Academic Game Researchers". It mainly deals with the gap between academic research about video games and the practitioners (who, as a matter of fact "never read this work nor attend these conferences"). He only observe that "individual designers, producers, and developers listen, but the industry as a whole has ignored an entire field of study dedicated to studying it" which is entirely true from my experience. The author explains how for practioners, the average academic pieces of work concerning games "just doesn’t get the job done". The article is hence for researchers who want to "transfer" some ideas and concepts. He then gives tome tips for bridging the gap:

Rule #1: Return on Investment: In order to convince the audience to spend that time and money, the researcher has to show clearly how that investment is going to pay off. This needs to be something beyond “this will help players identify more strongly with the main character”. (...) if the research doesn’t include specific practical recommendations or a measurable impact on the final product, don’t bother trying to sell it to the industry. From the average industry professional’s perspective, there are only two things of value being said in a research presentation: the recommendations and their predicted effects.

Rule #2: Speak The Language: The goal here is to convey information clearly and easily to specific types of game industry readers. They’re already going out of their way to read it, so make it as easy as possible for them to assimilate your proposal. (...) Think of it like grant writing. (...) Don’t write a research paper, write a business proposal. Start fresh ( Start a new slide deck and add every slide with a view towards the new audience and what it needs to know.) Lean and Mean. Think one page. (...) Use examples from bestsellers. A good example from a popular game is more effective than a great example from something they’ve never heard of.(...) Look forward, not backwards. Lose the lit review. Don’t quote references. Don’t worry about background material. This is about specific, concrete recommendations and the impact on their game

Rule #3: Smaller, Faster, Cheaper: All recommendations are not created equal. Some are going to be easier to implement than others. Making a change, any change, to a game that’s already in production is akin to doing auto repairs on a car going 60 mph down the highway. (...) The best recommendations should be: Feasible for one person to implement. (...) scalable (...) modular (...) parametric.

Rule #4: Prescriptive, Not Descriptive: to make that research useful to developers, it’s important to take the next step and give concrete examples of how classifying one’s players helps to make a better game (...) Descriptive statistics is another research area where it’s important to take the leap to prescriptive recommendation (...) The specific recommendation that grows out of the statistics needs to be the point of the article/presentation

Rule #5: Prove It: The best way to do this is to provide an active, working example of your recommendations, with numbers to back it up. Pick a currently popular game and put your idea to work

Rule #6: The Customer is Always Right: A lot of research being done on games simply isn’t relevant to the day to day work of the industry. It’s not bad research; it’s just focused on things that the industry doesn’t particularly care about. Fortunately, there’s a really straightforward technique for ensuring that your work is relevant to industry game developers: Ask them. Ask them before you do the work.

Why do I blog this? this is of interest to me because I am an academic (completing a PhD about CSCW and games + doing some user experience projects about video games) who work with game companies. Judging from my experience, I fully acknowledge this observation. However, this does not mean that nothing can be done.

From my experience, some of the issues can be discussed. Sometime it could be even worse than what the author described. For instance, in lots of cases, game research (for a company) cannot be applied to the project that's currently being developed but for the next ones (because the production process is soooooo tight). In that case I find it interesting to use the results to elaborate more with game designers about the consequences of the study (used hence as food for thoughts for future design and gameplays). When I started doing game research for private clients, I was slightly disappointed by the difficulty in applying results and recommendations to production but then I understood that (1) the prescriptions could be applied for next projects (2) all of this could be of interest to create a "user-centered" culture in the game design area.

I also acknowledge the presentation format, there is no point of giving game designers huge reports. Of course, some are interested by the academic work and presentation but in terms of pragmatic communication I usually do short half-an-hour seminar to present study results with simple handouts. This does not prevent the publication of researchers papers afterwards (if it's possible in terms of disclosure9.

Interaction design primer

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Interaction design primer Vol. 1 is a book by by Walter Aprile, Britta Boland and Stefano Mirti (former Interaction Design institute people, now at Interaction Design Lab.

Soon to be released it deals with the following topic:

- What is so great about design? - What is so interesting about computation? - Why do we take the trouble? - Where do we start from? - How do desires intersect reality? - How do we know what we can do?

From the pre-released chapter I have read few months ago, it is based on a "how–to procedures and stories." Why do I blog this? from the extract I've seen it's a very visual resource with topics that are of interest to me (for instance "game, computation and electronics"); and I like reading stuff "from the inside", to see what happened behind the mirror.

Inflatable interactive games

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This website is a well-documented resource about inflatable stuff. My attention has been drawn to inflatable interactive games because it struck me as the most interesting usage for such devices.

Why do I blog this? I find this interesting to create new types of playground (maybe more temporary), there is a potential to use this as a basis, with some technology augmentation to create new playful experiences. They're quire basic but I'd be interested to see an inflatable brick game. It's also funny to see how they put the emphasis on the word "interactive".

GeoIQ: Heat map visualization platform

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Fortiusone just releases the GeoIQ platform:

GeoIQ is an open platform for building intuitive geographic analysis and visualization tools into web-based mapping applications. It gives people a simple and compelling way to filter, analyze and get value from geographic data without ever leaving their web browser.

GeoIQ is a dynamic geospatial analysis and heat mapping technology that delivers high resolution raster analysis through a web browser.

Developers can use GeoIQ to add geographic data visualization and analysis tools to their web mapping applications. So instead of just seeing search results as sets of points or colored polygons, users can ask the map questions like:

"How does location A compare to location B, in terms of the parameters I have chosen?" "Which places have the most or least of the things I'm interested in?" "Where can I find the greatest overlap between all of the things I'm looking for?"

Why do I blog this? this is a pertinent way of visualizing geospatial traces, with different information flows depicted on a map metaphor. Might be relevant for future projects.

Wii glove and other craft ideas

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Via zogdog, this interesting velcro glove for the wii (mmh why are there two controllers): .Why do I blog this? I know the console has been released yet but I am a bit disappointed that nobody used duct tape and wires already to do something weirder with this game controller. At least with some drawing and sketches like the one above, but maybe I haven't looked enough. There is a good potential to craft cool gadgets for the wii controller (ranging from duct taping it to your arms/legs to putting a huge ball of styrofoam around them to juggle).

Memory modulates color appearance

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According to this article in Nature (by Thorsten Hansen, Maria Olkkonen, Sebastian Walter & Karl R Gegenfurtner), low-level perceptual mechanisms can be affected by high-level cognitive processes. They showed how memory modulates color appearance: natural fruit objects tend to be perceived in their typical color.

We asked human observers to adjust the color of natural fruit objects until they appeared achromatic. The objects were generally perceived to be gray when their color was shifted away from the observers' gray point in a direction opposite to the typical color of the fruit. These results show that color sensations are not determined by the incoming sensory data alone, but are significantly modulated by high-level visual memory.

Why do I blog this? first because it is a strange cognitive phenomenon, second because I am always intrigued by the intricacies of cognitive processes (especially when a high level process modulates a low level one). And third, because it's curious to think about the consequences of such result in design.

Steel stealers and consumer electronic recyclers

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As an avid city explorer, I am always amazed at the items people trash; loitering and trashing practices is of tremendous interest to me. I am impressed by trash bags, dirty piles of garbages, plastic bags with shredded paper... there's a lot to learn from a culture based on that (I won't enter too much into ethnographical issues related to that). And of course this is something that I document, with pictures mostly. Anyway, the other day I stumbled across this very common landscape depicted in the following picture (seen in Madrid, Spain). "Common" is a sad and pragmatic word to express the fact that in occidental cities I visited I often encountered trashed consumer electronic.

Trashed computer

And then... I saw those two guys with trolleys, they were carrying some electric wires and trashed machines left on the street. They're the ones who collect the stuff out of the street but mmhmm they don't wear any city badges or superb uniforms that would make kids want to be like them in the near future. The reason why is that those person collected electronic devices and steel for recycling and selling some pieces on the black market. This is absolutely not uncommmon and I have seen similar behavior in Geneva (where I live). Steel stealers

And at the same time, I was reading Mike Davis' "Dead Cities: And Other Tales", there is one of the chapter about black economy and immigrants in LA that struck me as very close to those pictures:

"The Sisyphean task of Eduardo and Miguel is to smash up everything in order to salvage a few components that will be set to England for the recovery of their gold content. Being a computer breaker is a monotonous $5.25-an-hour job in the Black economy (...) Miguel is about to deliver a massive blow to the VDT of a Macintosh when I ask him why he came to Los Angeles. His hammer hesitates for a second, then he smiles and answers, "Because I wanted to work in your high-technology economy.""

Why do I blog this? this perfectly describes what happen in our world filled with tech devices, there are practices related to them that are unexpected and can have considerable consequences (in terms of ecology, health, economy...)

wii play history

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In this interview of Nintendo execs, there is this interesting mention about the "interaction storing" capabilities of the wii (Timo described this to us during the last NFC workshop but I wanted to go deeper into this issue):

Kuroume: Sure, it's really quite simple. Wii automatically records details of what game was played, when and for how long. This is called the Play History. There's nothing controversial about that, but what did cause discussion was the fact that the Play History cannot be deleted. It's not that we couldn't change it if we wanted to, but at the moment it is not possible to delete it.

Iwata; I think it's best if I give a little background for this one. I've said this countless times already, but when developing Wii, I thought constantly about what we could do to stop games being regarded with hostility in the family. So I came up with a suggestion, perhaps a rather outlandish one! (laughs) What I thought was that if a parent said that their child was only allowed to play games for one hour a day, how about making it so the console actually turns itself off after an hour? I realize the head of a games company shouldn't think things like that! (laughs) All (laughter)

Iwata Of course, the console would save the game data before it switched itself off! (...)

Kuroume What finally came out of those discussions was the idea for a Play History, which recorded the total time a particular game had been played. Rather than the console turning itself off automatically to ensure it is not played for more than an hour a day, it seemed much better to allow parents to use the Play History to discuss with their children how much they are using the console. The decision to make it impossible to delete this data was a separate subject for debate.

Tamaki: Ultimately, the Play History fulfils the function of telling parents how long their kids have been playing, as well as being an interesting talking point. It's just really fun for users to be able to see the record of how long they played. That's why we decided to make the Play History impossible to reset. You can imagine users saying: "I didn't realize I'd been playing that game so much!"... Or, in the future, we could make it possible to plot on a graph how much you've played. Also, with users' cooperation, we could compile data on which game was the most played that year. I think all of these kinds of fun ideas show that it was better to make the Play History into a permanent record.

Why do I blog this? what is not discussed here and what is certainly of great interest to me is the idea that the history of interaction with the console (whatever game or applications is used) can be deployed in other games/services to create new game and innovative gameplay: feeding back history of interactions in game design.

Touch or don't touch?

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While doing a very quick search over touch interfaces, I though back of this very curious Nintendo U-Force controller for the NES:

According to Wikipedia:

The U-Force is an accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System made by Brøderbund. It employed 2 large infrared sensors and a series of switches allowing the user to program it to recognize movements across the sensors as button presses and send those corresponding signals to the NES.

From a print advertisement circa 1989 (emphasis left intact from the adcopy): "Introducing U-Force, The Revolutionary Controller For Your Nintendo Entertainment System. So Hot, No One Can Touch It. Now you can feel the power without touching a thing. It's U-FORCE from Broderbund--the first and only video game controller that, without touching anything, electronically sense your every move. And reacts. There's nothing to hold, nothing to jump on, nothing to wear, U-FORCE creates a power field that responds to your every command--making you the controller. It's the most amazing accessory in video game history--and it will change the way you play video games forever. It's the challenge of the future. U-FORCE. Now nothing comes between you and the game."

Why do I blog this? well some near-field interactions have been tried on old Nintendo projects and it would be good to collect some user experiences insights of this sort of device.

Chumby

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The Chumby seems to be an intriguing artifact expected to be released in 2007:

a compact device that can act like a clock radio, but is way more flexible and fun. It uses the wireless internet connection you already have to fetch cool stuff from the web: music, the latest news, box scores, animations, celebrity gossip...whatever you choose. And a chumby can exchange photos and messages with your friends.

Looking at the product history is quite interesting, I highlighted the aspects I found relevant:

Chumby is different. The chumby was not created in the design department of some big consumer electronics company. (...) We made it all up. Chumby Industries was formed by hackers who wanted to create something interesting, useful and different. (...) What we decided to build was a really low-cost, wireless (WiFi), Internet-connected device that will sit on your bedside table (or in your bathroom, or kitchen, or living room, or maybe even plug into your car somehow...) that could do a lot more than this old clock radio. (...) We also decided that the chumby would be different because it will be “open and hackable.” If you happen to be another card-carrying hacker, you can blow off the warranty, pull out its electronic guts and reprogram it. If you're more of a "crafter," we're providing patterns so you can give your chumby a new skin. You can sew on patches, attach enameled pins, bury it in glue and glitter; whatever you want to do to personalize it. If you're a Flash artist, we hope you'll use chumby as a sort of always-open art gallery for your coolest stuff. (...) The chumby is designed to let you stay connected to your Internet life in locations where it might be fun and convenient. (...) We've now built a few hundred and and are in the process of getting feedback from early users, mostly hackers and artists. We want to learn what people think of chumby, and how they'd like to use it or collaborate to make the world a chumbier place.

Why do I blog this? I like the way this device goes beyond the "communicating object" paradigme (exemplified by the Nabaztag) by expanding the use of information flows (pictures for instance) and taking into account crafting/hacking issue.

Pseudowords and nonwords

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People interested in buying weird domain name for website might be interested in list of pseudowords and nonwords. For the record, a pseudoword is "a unit of speech or text that appears to be an actual word in a certain language (at least superficially), while in fact it is not part of the lexicon. Within linguistics, a pseudoword is defined specifically as respecting the phonotactic restrictions of a language" (according to the Wikipedia). Nonwords go beyond pseudowords "in that they are not pronounceable and by their spelling, which could not be the spelling of a real word. For instance, this list of nonwords:

STIPTSE / ZOORPTH / WOLV / FUIKTZ / GNOEPTZ / THEWMTS / DRASPCE / TIERTSE / NOORTHS / THOINNS /GHRALPS / QUIGHV / GHEABD / SPUIDS / DERPHES / THUIXTS / VOORDTH

And uh, these concepts are not useless (or for domain names), they're used in experimental psychology (as described here). Why do I blog this? I had to explain that concept lately to a friend (my background is in psychology, I have to deal with this stuff for a while before shifting to HCI research).

CHI 2007 workshop about "Imaging the City"

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Imaging the City: Exploring the Practices & Technologies of Representing the Urban Environment in Human-Computer Interaction is a CHI 2007 workshop that quite fits with my research interests.

The aim of the workshop is compelling:

This one-day workshop will explore the practices and technologies of imaging the urban environment, bringing together an interdisciplinary array of designers, HCI experts, urban planners and technologists to investigate such issues as: How do we represent the city in HCI, and how do these representations inform HCI research and practice? What kinds of technological devices, services, and platforms support imaging the city now and might be created in the near future? How are and might these new representations of the city and urban imaging technologies be used for social and political ends? What new methods are required for developing technologies that image the city in new ways? What can we learn from the urban experience to design stronger representations and interfaces within HCI research and practice?

It's targetted to HCI practitioners, architects, visualization specialists, urban planners, futurists and artists. Why do I blog this? I am interested in this topic, with regards to the aggregation/visualization of traces in space, as well as the representation of information flows... maybe as a way to show the intersection between 1st life (the physical world) and 2nd life (a virtual world).