Wii Helmet

(via) Finally, there is a Wii Helmet, but it is an april fool:

"Problem is the average gaming geek is just not up to the strenuous task of vigorous arm movement for longer than 10 minutes. This makes those extended play sessions a thing of the past... and who wants to beef up at the gym just to play video games on your couch? We sure don't.

Fortunately for cream puffs everywhere the WiiHelm is now available at ThinkGeek. Simply lock your existing Wiimote into the stylish white helmet and free your hands for relaxation... or other important tasks. After extensive scientific study it was found that manipulating muscles in your neck for 10 minutes uses 64% less energy than waving your arms about like a lunatic. The WiiHelm works great with all of your favorite Wii games and the included foot pedal allows easy button presses using minimal toe effort. "

Why do I blog this? Although it is a joke, that was of the ideas I was playing with few months ago, thinking about a caving game in which you control the light using the wiimote duct-taped to one's head. Playing with the head can be troublesome though... What about yoga games?

Science fiction and predictions

"Corporate research evolved in the 1990s from the invention of science fiction to creating scientific and technological fact (...) the wonders science fiction authors predicted for around the year 2000 - such as mass transportation to the moon and glass-doomed cities on the ocean floor - are within the grasp of modern technology. However, he adds, they are not about to come to pass. The reason: "[writers] forgot the marketing dimension. Nobody is out there that is willing or capable of paying for that"

Wolf-Ekkehard Blanz quoted by Robert Buderi in "Engines of Tomorrow: How the World's Best Companies are Using Their Research Labs to Win the Future" That is why some sci-fi authors prefer to write about things that CAN happen, about problems that could occur in the current situation of R&D prototypes.

An bunch of old stuff

Why do I blog this? I just found nice this picture of old keytags (taken last week in Nice, France). To me, it's very evocative of the passage of time and how design evolves. In addition, think about the value of objects and how this little artifacts made sense in certain period of your life: this bunch of keytags is then full of history that we can never parse since the owners are gone. Maybe it's too poetic here and a pessimistic mind would say that they're just promotional garbage that has been left out. But still.

User experience of sound and earlids

Interaction designers, researchers and architects interested in sound and the user experience of sound in space should really have a look at Karrie Jacobs' latest column in Metropolis magazine about that topic. Analyzing how noise-cancelling headphones works out, She is making the point that although sound is a very important in her perception of the environment, it is sometimes convenient and intriguing to re-discover that very same setting with sound attenuation through a technology she describes (what a long sentence I wrote here). Some snippets:

"many people deal with the acutely intrusive nature of our sonic environment by wearing audio armor. The iPod and similar devices provide them with a controllable acoustic circumstance, one that keeps them reasonably well insulated from everyone and everything else. However, I’m an extremely late adopter— possibly the last person on earth who does not own an iPod. This is a philosophical decision: I like to be where I am. And part of being in a place is hearing it. All well and good, except the world is filling up with sonic spam: endless security announcements, cell-phone ring tones from hell, people talking about their grocery lists at a volume more suited to Il Duce from the balcony. (...) I met with two members of the Bose “noise-reduction technology group” (...) Eventually I tested the Quiet Comfort 2 headphones, somewhat bulkier than the newer model, with big cups that enclose the ear, and I marveled at how the sound of the room’s vent fans disappeared when I turned the switch on (...) I visited the Met to see an exhibition of fifteenth- century Italian art. I found myself bombarded by loud conversation, so I remembered the earplugs, still in my purse. I put them in, and not only did they cut the volume on the voices, but the colors in the paintings suddenly seemed brighter."

Why do I blog this? There is a lot to draw here, especially when you think about designing applications in an urban environment. The discussion about silence is of great interest too (the fact that it does not exist in nature on Earth, the role of religions...).

At a higher level, I find that there is a direct translation from this silence problem to activities. In a sense, designing a new type of urban computing activity puts people in a sort of parallel world, as creating silence with earlids.

Creative design and human-computer interaction

Dispelling Design as the ‘Black Art’ of CHI , Wolf TV, Rode JA, Sussman J, Kellogg WA, Proceedings of CHI 2006. The paper interestingly tackle the issue of "creative design" and differentiate it from the notion of "design" as propelled by HCI researchers. The authors' main claim is that the typical usage of design in HCI is "at best limiting and at worst flawed". The first part of the paper describes what design is not: it's not a formal model, there is a different use of prototyping ("not about punctuating the design process with the rigor of evaluation but rather about presenting the design with opportunities to analyze her work. Analysis here refers to not to user studies or formal evaluation, but to the collaborative and introspective processes of designers"). All the statements and claim of the authors are based on existing literature as well as a case study they present.

What was interesting to me is the excerpts that follows about how creative design build knowledge that is different from the one that emerged from scientific practice:

"Creative design constitutes a ‘praxis’ (i.e., rational action and reflection on decisions within the context of design activity) in pursuit of what we have called design rigor. (...) Design praxis is comprised of the following professional qualities, which overlap with each other and are necessarily entwined, contributing to an overall design culture: 1) a non-linear process of intent and discovery, 2) design judgment, which is informed by a combination of knowledge, reflection, practice and action, 3) of artifacts, and 4) the design critique (‘crit’)."

The article goes further by giving some hints about to move forward:

"To create a thriving professional practice of design within the CHI community, we need to address a number of factors. First, when discussing design, we must account for the strong relationship between intention, activity as inquiry, and judgment.

Second, ensuring design rigor requires organizational support. Projects must be set up with design as a core competency with trained designers on hand to fulfill that role

Third, we need to develop more innovative practices to facilitate shared understanding among members of multidisciplinary teams."

Why do I blog this? I am often intrigued by this discussion about the word "design" tat seems to refer to lots of things (almost as much as the word "research"). Misunderstandings are one thing but how to define design is also important IMO, especially given the context of my work. It would also be interesting to have this discussion with the different "design fields" I have discussion with (game designers, industrial designers, architects).

Coming from a cognitive sciences and HCI background, this is of tremendous importance not to reiterate the mistakes of the past about how research can fuel design.

Finally, this notion of design as a "black art" is of curious and seems also to be opaque even for designers, look at this for example.

Video hat for policemen

(Via Ananova) look at this news:

"Police in a Chinese city have been equipped with video hats. More than 100 patrol officers have been issued with the cameras which link to digital video-recorders attached to their belts.

Head Officer Diao, of Chongqing City Police, said: "The officer only needs to turn it on, and the machine starts to work. It has 1 gigabyte of memory, so recording for one hour should be no problem. Diao says the equipment can save police officers from being investigated for misconduct and protect them from being framed. "It happens that suspects sue police for unjustified or unlawful practice, and with this device, everything will be clear," he said. "Some of the clips could also be edited for TV.""

(Picture from Ananova)

Why do I blog this? sort of "ubiquitous computing of the present", but here it's mostly meant for a weird sousveillance trick.

Artifacts, values and bonds

Via Dr. Fish, this interesting short news about TU Delft that deals with the values of artifacts and how can a designer increase the degree to which people bond with them. Some excerpt:

"During her doctoral research Ruth Mugge investigated the topic of product bonding – the strength of the emotional attachment of a consumer to a specific product (...) Mugge distinguishes four factors influencing product bonding: self-expression (can I distinguish myself with a product?), group affinity (does ownership of a product connect me to a group?), memories (related to the product) and pleasure (provided by the product). (...) Mugge focused particularly on the issue of self-expression. One of her important conclusions in this regard is that consumers bond more strongly with products which have a ‘personality’ agreeing with their own personality (e.g. extrovert or introvert)

Her work also dealt with the added value of personalization (in terms of self-expresion). More about her research here. Why do I blog this? this topic is of interest in terms of design issues, the 4 factors described are important and some are more explored than others. Personalization for instance received a lot of interest, which does not mean that the others are not valuable. The "memory" part is a bit unexplored and can be thought of both extrinsically (how to provide the owner's environment with services or other artifacts that augment the memory of an object?) and intrinsically (how objects can learn from their history of interactions, to have a positive history and things explored by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino).

Besides, it's directly connected to value profile of objects that I blogged about few weeks ago.

Chaos theory and hype around scientific trends

Discover Magazine has a good piece about what happened to the overhyped Chaos Theory

"From The Simpsons to Jurassic Park, chaos theory became fashionable and funny, terrifying and true. In the 21st century, chaos theory, for all its previous pomp, makes barely a peep on the mainstream radar. Still, it hasn’t gone away—far from it, says Harvard University physicist Paul Martin says. “It’s a collection of tools, and it’s a way of understanding phenomena that occur over a wide range of fields.” "

Why do I blog this? overhyped phenomenon in science and technology is a very interesting topic to me. I am often amazed by how certain topics (fractals, web 3D, artificial intelligence, neural networks) gain some incredible attention and then leads to intriguing judgments, decisions and actions. I don't mean here that this topics are not good or interesting but instead that the overemphasis/over-expectations lead to some failures or sometimes hide the genuine importance of what they bring to the table.

However, should such a hype be dismissed? personally I would say no and when it pervades pop culture (the simpsons, sci-fi novel) it can also be a way to bring people to work on these issues. That may be the flip side of the coin.

A mysterious 3-handled tap

Sometimes, the environment encourages you to ask questions:

Three taps are generally uncommon, I've actually rarely ran across such an installation; that one has been spotted in Geneva, in a restaurant close to me block. So, three handles: one for the hot water, one of the cold water and the third one without any feedback when employed. Still, it's there, part of the design and definitely connected to the cold water valve. Besides, there's also a second hole.

Was it meant to be a strategy or a shortcut to get cold water more rapidly? Some complex feature to control the mixing of hot and cold water? Or was it just because the owner broke something and only had this to fill the gap between different parts.

Then, how this relates to design or ubiquitous computing? IMO, what is intriguing here is the relationship people have with technologies. What happened when people looks at this object? well, in the context of this interaction, I washed my hand and - of course - tried to open that handle to see what happened. The presence of this third handle (that I would qualify as an intru) definitely raises curiosity. Such an interface may interfere with the task at hands, not in this case because the interaction is very simple. Moreover, in such standardized setting, it clearly stands out as a focus of attention, there is a clear affordance to use it. But then nothing happens, how mysterious.

Some examples of hybridization

Most of the attention in this domain has started from the research in Augmented Reality in the late nineties, leading to lots of prototypes allowing user to access digital textual or audio information that “augment” physical artifacts and places by showing additional information, hidden objects or navigation helps (Feiner, 2002). Most of the times, this information is received on eyeglasses, helmet displays or headsets if there is an audio output. Lots of projects in this field have put the emphasis on designing compelling visualizations such as 3D models to provided people with a tangible way to manipulate complex information. As of 2005, this technology is even available on cell phones that allow to visualize virtual elements on top of the physical space, thanks to computer programs that use the digital cameras. In the case of Augmented Reality, the locus of the output is the very same of the one of the input, that is to say, digital elements appear on top of the corresponding physical elements that triggers their creation. This is why researchers speak of an “overlay of information”. However, the digital-physical convergence does not imply that this locus is always the same. Advances in location-based applications also make it possible to receive digital information on portable devices such as PDA or cell phones (Benford, 2005). In these cases, the digital information is generally not overlayed on a representation of the physical environment but rather as a textual or audio message. Another difference lays in the event that trigger the exchange of such as message. In augmented reality, it is generally the recognition of a certain visual marker allows to replace it on the display by a computer generated graphic. In the case of location-based applications, the information is sent to the users when he or she is located in a specific place, in the vicinity of a certain person or close to an artifact.

Why do I blog this? I was gathering some examples for upcoming talks.

Augmented stairs

Spotted in Lausanne this morning:

Is this what people have in mind when they think about interactive billboard? Anyway, I found intriguing the use of the stairs infrastructure and shape as a way to present information.

Vocabulary of hybridity

Some vocabulary definitely of interest to describe the Internet of Things:

"linkage, hybridization, merging, fusion, linkage, interconnection, binding, assemblage, amalgam, amalgamation, blend, blending, coadunation, coalescence, coalition, commingling, commixture, compound, immixture, integration, intermixture, junction, merger, merging, mixture, smelting, synthesis, unification, union, uniting, welding, assimilation, alliance, interfusion, soup, salmagundi"

Why do I blog this? working on a paper about digital-physical convergence as well as material for the Hybrid World Lab workshop on this very topic, I was looking for material and concepts to express the different angles. Some are very odd ("soup", "commixture", "salmagundi") or even disturbing ("immixture") but might be useful to describe certain aspects.

Two or three buttons, but will not carry more than four

Read in the NYT (1996):

On the eve of the Wright brothers' historic first flights in 1903, Simon Newcomb, an eminent United States scientist, predicted that the first successful flying machine would be the handiwork of a watchmaker and would carry nothing heavier than an insect. Later he increased the payload: ''It may carry two or three buttons, but will not carry more than four.'' And so it goes. "

More in "The Experts Speak : The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation" (Christopher Cerf, Victor S. Navasky)

About Jaiku and intentional communication

Some excerpts of an interview of Jaiku's co-founder Jyri Engeström in 606tech deals with very relevant aspects about the intricate relationship between technologies and the pragmatic of communication:

"We believe that online social behavior as a whole is moving towards groups who are in a state of constant connectedness. This means shorter, more frequent, more personal updates that assume the recipients already know a lot about the sender and context of the message. The amount of communication increases but it contains less noise because we know more about the context of our peers. For example, in trials of the early research prototype of Jaiku Mobile, the amount of missed calls between the users dropped by about 15 percentage points, because on Jaiku the caller can see when the recipient is busy already before they try to reach them."

Why do I blog this? what is of interest to me here is what I bolded in the excerpt: the assumption that this kind of awareness application is meaningful and relevant for people who already know about the sender. In terms of pragmatics, the reason for that is because the Jaikus themselves can be seen as "coordination devices" that adds up to the current past experiences and knowledge people have about their peers. What is even more important is that these coordination devices are not automatically captured and sent to the others, they're really sent on purpose (this then eventually raises their value).

Pervasive Computing, space and infrastructures

Dourish, P. and Bell, G. (2007): The Infrastructure of Experience and the Experience of Infrastructure: Meaning and Structure in Everyday Encounters with Space, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. This paper interestingly explores the implications of computing getting off the desktop to the everyday world and how researchers are forced to "understand something of the spaces into which it moves, and the practical and cultural logics by which those spaces are organized". The authors made the point that space is rarely examined in computer system design, they only quote the examples of a spatial feature "separation" as a way to keep computational objects from each others (files kept in filespaces, the notion of workspace, etc.). Unlike this instrumental model of space, they rather consider spaces as populated and inhabited infrastructures. What this means is that spaces have a meaning to people in terms of the relationships to practical actions and interpretations. For instance, the presence and the activity of others can direct attention or guide movements. They quote diverse examples about this literature I had to explore in my PhD work.

It's very dense and hugely interesting so I will quote only the conclusion which efficiently describes the implications for pervasive computing:

"1) space is organized not just physically but culturally; cultural understandings provide a frame for encountering space as meaningful and coherent, and for relating it to human activities. Technological infrastructures are, inherently, given social and cultural interpretations and meanings; they render the spaces that they occupy ones that can be distinguished and categorized and understood through the same processes of collective categorization and classification that operate in other domains of social activity. Technological infrastructures and services, then, need to be understood as operating in this context.

architecture is all about boundaries and transitions and their intersection with human and social practice. (...) Everyday spaces are not simply spaces for working or meeting, but spaces for waiting, for reading, for loitering, for watching, for loving, for remembering, and more (McCullough, 2003.) The rhetoric of seamlessness is often opposed to the inherently fragmented nature of social and cultural encounters with spaces; we need to be able to understand how pervasive computing might support rather than erase these distinctions.

new technologies inherently cause people to re-encounter spaces. This isn’t a question of mediation, but rather one of simultaneous layering. One fascinating aspect of the move from the systems we built on the wired internet to those that we experience through wireless and mobile networks is that we are creating not a virtual but a thoroughly physical infrastructure, and we need to think about it as one that is interwoven with the existing physical structure of space (Dourish, 2001). The rhetoric of pervasive computing is one that traditionally ignores the ways in which that computing experience must be implemented on top of, and experience in and through, an existing landscape. (...) The spaces into which new technologies are deployed are not stable, not uniform, and not given. Technology can destabilize and transform these interactions, but will only every be one part of the mix."

Why do I blog this? because the paper gives a good overview of how pervasive computing relates to space and place issues (one of the research aspects I am interested in with regards to the user experience of these technologies). What I find relevant is here is the way these conclusions challenge existing developments and current discourse about such technologies.

There is a lot to draw here, for instance the way they question seamlessness is a recurring topic lately and I find it very important. Lots of people and organizations build things based on this assumption that the world is seamless and then they failed miserably.

Mr. Watson and spatiality

1876: Speaking through the instrument to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room, Bell utters these famous first words, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you". 1915: the replication of the very same venerable lines at AT&T (as described in "Engines of Tomorrow: How the World's Best Companies are Using Their Research Labs to Win the Future" (Robert Buderi)): "Mr Watson, come here, please, I want you!" (uttered in New York) "It would take a week to get there now," came the reply from California

Interaction design for blind people

Two interesting examples of interaction design targeted at blind people: This virtual mapping project by greek researchers (lead by Konstantinos Moustakas) allows to "convert video into virtual, touchable maps for the blind. The three-dimensional maps use force fields to represent walls and roads so the visually impaired can better understand the layout of buildings and cities". The good thing is that this virtual touchable maps work with standard video cameras.

And Demor is a location based 3D audio shooting game that is equally enjoyable for both blind as sighted players (Via Mr. Sterling):

"Players can physically move through the auditory surroundings and hear the different sound objects in their relative positions around them. These sound objects include environmental elements like the sound of a creek or the songs of birds. As the player moves through the game these environmental sounds remain in their geographical place and can function as navigational aids. (...) To play the game, the player is equipped with a backpack containing a laptop, a GPS receiver, a head tracker, headphones and a modified joystick. By using both locative and directional sensors the software can continuously update de spatial audio feedback to accurately reflect the user's position and direction in the virtual space, creating a kind of auditory virtual reality. "

Why do I blog this? I am not into this kind of research but these technology seems to offer relevant opportunities to solve problem with a good innovative angle.

Grid computing and non-intentionality

Interesting conversation today with Xavier about the "grid computing" as a new social paradigm. According to the Wikipedia:

"Grid computing is an emerging computing model that distributes processing across a parallel infrastructure. Throughput is increased by networking many heterogeneous resources across administrative boundaries to model a virtual computer architecture. For a computing problem to benefit from a grid, it must require either large amounts of computation time or large amounts of data, and it must be reducible to parallel processes that do not require intensive inter-communication."

Why do I blog this? It's mostly the "data" part that interests me here. What this grid metaphor means is that everyone's a resource. Imagine if everything that is on your computer is connected to others: there aren't any intention about what you share (unlike, for example, certain P2P systems in which you choose what you want to share with others). This non-intentionality may have important consequences. The fact that you're a node and share stuff is an intentional act, unless this becomes a "norm" and that you're not even aware of it.

Application-led research

The 2005 UbiApp Workshop: What Makes Good Application-Led Research? by Richard Sharp and Kasim Rehman, IEEE pervasive computing, Vol. 4, No. 3, July–Sept. 2005 The paper is a summary of a workshop that happened in 2005 at the Ubicomp conference. It deals with the concept of "application-led" research: projects that aim at designing, implementing, deploying and evaluating applications using an interdisciplinary approach (computer sciences, social sciences, ethnography, HCI). And it's motivated by current world's problems. This corresponds to the distinction made by Järvinen about social sciences: "Researches stressing utility of innovations" versus "Researches stressing what is reality" (understanding a behavior in psychology for instance). These 2 categories are of course different form the technology-led research which is interested in developing applications for a pure technical perspective. The point if this workshop was to discuss what are the criteria to judge this type of research.

A consensus people reached at this workshop was that "the ubiquitous computing community to be effective, it must engage in a combination of technology-led and application-led research". What is interesting is the discussion about whether a demonstrator or "proof of concept" is relevant:

"The problem, very often, is that there is no actual concept to be proven. Either the concept has already been proven viable (there really is no need to prove again that we can build a context-aware tour guide), is never in any doubt (we know we can build location-based services) or is not actually proved by the demonstrator (Nigel Davis)"

Some excerpts I found interesting for my research practice, they are rant-oriented but quite true:

"Attendees generally felt that too many ubiquitous computing projects focus on applications addressing trivial problems (turning lights on and off remotely, finding others with similar interests at conferences, and so on) (...) ubiquitous computing researchers often enjoy “relatively problem-free lives.” So, we should be keen to look beyond our own experiences when choosing application domains. For example, what opportunities exist to address problems in war zones or refugee camps? (...) ubiquitous computing researchers often reimplement applications from scratch, rather than sharing code and building on each other’s work. regard much of this implementation work as research. (PlaceLab is a good exception) (...) Researchers commonly evaluate ubiquitous computing applications solely in the context of small lab-scale user studies. (...) applications are often evaluated only against themselves (for example, “our participants said that they found this application useful”"

Why do I blog this? it's always interesting to read or hear about this sort of discussion in research. I have to admit that I have encountered lots of the problems described here, and as a researcher I sometimes do these mistakes (for instance in CatchBob it would have been good to run a longitudinal evaluation and less a field experiment, but it's a matter of time...). Also, it seems that human beings have a good tendency to reinvent the wheel (e.g. recreating new systems that do the same as others). This does not mean that nothing can be done and the paper concludes with 4 relevant propositions: choose problems and applications carefully, share technical infrastructures, evaluate applications in realistic settings and perform comparative evaluations.

Methodology for public pervasive computing

Public Pervasive Computing: Making the Invisible Visible by Jesper Kjeldskov, Aalborg University and Jeni Paay, IEEE Computer, Vol. 39, No. 9. (2006), pp. 60-65. Through the presentation of a project called "Just-for-Us" (a mobile web service that aims at adapting content to the user's physical and social context), the paper shows how the urban environment inspire researchers to explore the intersections between physical,social,and digital domains. The interesting point here is that it shows how system developers and HCI designers try to obtain a fundamental understanding of a physical space and how it impacts the social interactions taking place there prior to sketch any ideas about technologies. Achieving such a goal is often done by looking at architecural theorists such as Kevin Lynch or Christopher Alexander (maybe the most well-cited in computer sciences, it would be good to know why).

Their methodology is very intriguing:

"our aim was closer to Lynch and Alexander’s original purpose—analyzing and understanding a physical space, from the level of a city precinct down to each individually designed element—but in this case to inform digital rather than physical design. Guided by their analytical techniques, we systematically mapped Federation Square’s physical and informational properties. Several field visits resulted in a collection of 250 digital photos annotated with written observations of the relationship between architectural elements and the environment, as well as about interactions among people inhabiting the space. Using rapid ethnography content analysis and affinity diagramming, we extracted from the photographic data and notes a concise set of descriptive features for the overall city precincts as well as specific architectural elements. We then created a Lynchian map of Federation Square (...) To complement the architectural field study, we therefore studied three established social groups, each consisting of three young locals, during typical outings at Federation Square. An interviewer first talked with each group for 20 minutes about their socializing experiences and preferences and then, accompanied by a cameraman, followed the group to an area within Federation Square where they had arranged to spend some time together. Throughout the filmed visit, the group verbalized their actions as they moved around the space and responded to questions from the interviewer."

It enabled them to reveal four "disctricts" and found "detailed architectural features" that foster, challenge or hinder social interactions. Moreover, the "sociological field study" showed how people rely on cues embedded in the environment (landmarks, focal points...), how they determine what to do by relying on others' behavior and their experience.

Why do I blog this? Rather than the system produced, I was interested in how this was used: "These field studies generated insights that inspired us to create a computing system to facilitate new types of social interaction in urban settings", which is described in the system architecture as well as the user interface.