Architec Tradure

Author: Julie Knight

  • 30AprTilt and feel

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!

    Shoogle, created by John Williamson, Roderick Murray-Smith, Stephen Hughes at the University of Glasgow, UK, is an interface for sensing data within a mobile device.

    It is based around active exploration: devices are shaken, revealing the contents rattling around “inside”. Vibrotactile display and realistic impact sonification create a compelling system. Inertial sensing is used for completely eyes-free, single-handed interaction that is entirely natural.

    Download the Shoogle’s paper for Chi 2007

    Video of Shoogle

    Stephen Hughes was previously a researcher in the Palpable Machines research group with Sile O’Modhrain at Media Lab Europe. The group published key papers on vibrotactile display and mobile multi-modal interfaces.



    MESH an iPaq running a simple tilt-driven maze game by the Palpable Machines group


  • 30AprTangible Programming in the Classroom

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!



    Tern: Wooden blocks shaped like jigsaw puzzle pieces

    Created by Michael Horn and Robert J.K. Jacob at Tufts University, Tern is a tangible programming language for middle school and late elementary school students. Children connect the tailored wooden blocks to form physical computer programs, which may include action commands, loops, branches, and subroutines.

    Download Tern’s paper for Chi’07



    Quetzal

    Prior to designing Tern, the authors created Quetzal (pronounced ket-sal), a “tangible programming language designed for children and novice programmers to control LEGO MINDSTORMS robots. It consists of over one hundred interlocking tiles representing flow-of-control structures, actions, and data. Programmers arrange and connect these tiles to define algorithms which can include loops, branches, and concurrent execution.”

    Also Oren Zuckerman from the MIT Media Lab created Systems Thinking Blocks for children to model and simulate dynamic systems.



    Flow Blocks for children “to create 3D structures in space, that look like common structures in life”


  • 30AprTangible Programming in the Classroom

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!



    Tern: Wooden blocks shaped like jigsaw puzzle pieces

    Created by Michael Horn and Robert J.K. Jacob at Tufts University, Tern is a tangible programming language for middle school and late elementary school students. Children connect the tailored wooden blocks to form physical computer programs, which may include action commands, loops, branches, and subroutines.

    Download Tern’s paper for Chi’07



    Quetzal

    Prior to designing Tern, the authors created Quetzal (pronounced ket-sal), a “tangible programming language designed for children and novice programmers to control LEGO MINDSTORMS robots. It consists of over one hundred interlocking tiles representing flow-of-control structures, actions, and data. Programmers arrange and connect these tiles to define algorithms which can include loops, branches, and concurrent execution.”

    Also Oren Zuckerman from the MIT Media Lab created Systems Thinking Blocks for children to model and simulate dynamic systems.



    Flow Blocks for children “to create 3D structures in space, that look like common structures in life”


  • 30AprSuiPo: the interactive poster

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!

    The interactive Poster “SuiPo” by Fuminori Tsunoda, Takayuki Matsumoto, Takeshi Nakagawa, Mariko Utsunomiya, East Japan Railway uses a combination of IC card ticket Suica and Internet accessible mobile phone where customers can get e-mail information by touching their IC card ticket on the reader located near the poster.

    More on SuiPo


  • 30AprReadyMade: How to Make (Almost) Everything

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!

    Beautifully designed ReadyMade book by Shoshana Berger and Grace Hawthorne.

    Written by the cofounders of ReadyMade magazine, this is a book of all original material that revolves around the reuse of six building materials—paper, plastic, wood, metal, glass and fabric. This hybrid of how­to, editorial and historical content yielded a design that is simultaneously smart and fun, structured yet chaotic, sophisticated yet accessible.

    In the spirit of ReadyMade’s reuse ethos, the book itself is a reusable object, with the spine serving as a ruler—inches on the front cover, centimeters on the back. Since the book’s content swings wildly from do­it­yourself projects and scientific diagrams to lifestyle articles, historical timelines and random sidebar nuggets of information, we deliberately pushed ourselves out of the usual structural comfort zones of contemporary book design—limited typeface use, repetitive grid structure, white space—to see how much variety the piece could sustain and still be coherent. – Aiga


  • 30AprReadyMade: How to Make (Almost) Everything

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!

    Beautifully designed ReadyMade book by Shoshana Berger and Grace Hawthorne.

    Written by the cofounders of ReadyMade magazine, this is a book of all original material that revolves around the reuse of six building materials—paper, plastic, wood, metal, glass and fabric. This hybrid of how­to, editorial and historical content yielded a design that is simultaneously smart and fun, structured yet chaotic, sophisticated yet accessible.

    In the spirit of ReadyMade’s reuse ethos, the book itself is a reusable object, with the spine serving as a ruler—inches on the front cover, centimeters on the back. Since the book’s content swings wildly from do­it­yourself projects and scientific diagrams to lifestyle articles, historical timelines and random sidebar nuggets of information, we deliberately pushed ourselves out of the usual structural comfort zones of contemporary book design—limited typeface use, repetitive grid structure, white space—to see how much variety the piece could sustain and still be coherent. – Aiga


  • 29AprJapanese books

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!

    Cute Japanese books I found on amazon.jp!


  • 29AprJapanese books

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!

    Cute Japanese books I found on amazon.jp!


  • 28AprAnother book

    If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!

    Books I bought today …

    Sagmeister: Made You Look by Peter Hall, Booth-Clibborn publisher.





    Envisioning information by Edward Tufte



    Curious Boym: Design Works The discreet charm of the ordinary by Constantin Boym, Peter Hall, Steven Skov Holt


  • 20AprInteract 2007



    Prototypes of Moving Pictures

    Yessss! The full paper written for Interact 2007 with Dr Hiroshi Ishii is accepted! It shows how Textable Movie designed for facilitating video production has informed Moving Pictures. It presents a mechanism to seamlessly interface the various parts in video production and present our observations. The conference topic is socially-responsible interaction. So see you in Rio de Janeiro in September!

    Abstract: The paper presents a novel approach to collecting, editing and performing visual and sound clips in real time. The cumbersome process of capturing and editing becomes fluid in the improvisation of a story, and accessible as a way to create a final movie. It is shown how a graphical interface created for video production informs the design of a tangible environment that provides a spontaneous and collaborative approach to video creation, selection and sequencing. Iterative design process, participatory design sessions and workshop observations with 10-12 year old users from Sweden and Ireland are discussed. The limitations of interfacing video capture, editing and publication in a self-contained platform are addressed.

    Download the 14 pages paper

    Thank you all of you for your feedback!