Architec Tradure

Category: interaction design

  • 12JanTaptap, the affectionate scarf

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    TapTap: A Haptic Wearable for Asynchronous Distributed Touch Therapy

    I continued the development on my conceptual idea touching memories and as a team we came up with a final prototype called ‘taptap’.

    TapTap is a wearable haptic system that allows nurturing human touch to be recorded, broadcast and played back for emotional therapy. Haptic input/output modules in a convenient modular scarf provide affectionate touch that can be personalized.

    Movie of Taptap


    This picture shows the second prototype that is a scarf with large pockets with a power supply. The design of the scarf is intended to make it wearable in a number of ways and allow specific TapTap actuators to be mounted wherever the wearer desires. The outside of the scarf is a public color (gray) while the inside and its intimate actuators are a warm color (pink).

    Based on haptic devices, taptap can be re-configured to record and play back the touch that is most meaningful to each user. It is made from felt in two layers: one grey one that faces the public and a pink layer that touches you and contains the haptic modules in specially designed pockets. Taptap can be worn as a regular scarf, and custom touch modules can be placed in powered pockets within to record and play back touch where and when you want it

    Taptap was blogged by Regine Debatty on we-make-money-not-art.com with a nice summary and useful references 🙂

    Taptap is a team and class project for the Tangible Media class final assignment at MIT Media Lab taught by Dr Hiroshi Ishii. I presented with Leo at CHi’06 as an extended Abstract of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘06), (Montreal, Quebec, Canada. April 22-27, 2006) by Bonanni, L., Lieberman, J., Vaucelle, C., Zuckerman, O. (alphabetical order). Download pdf.

    Taptap was part of the second Seamless fashion show, on February 1, at the Boston Museum of Science.

    On this picture, I wear a second prototype

    A few publications on Taptap and its next steps:
    . A Framework for Haptic Psycho-Therapy Published in the Proceedings of IEEE ICPS Pervasive Health Systems Workshop, Lyon, France, 2006.
    . Affective TouchCasting Published in the Proceedings of SIGGRAPH’06, Boston, USA. Abstract from publisher: ACM Press. Download pdf

  • 30AprTangible Programming in the Classroom

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    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”


  • 30AprTilt and feel

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    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


  • 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


  • 03MayCulturally embedded computing and HCI challenges

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    At Chi 2007 I met with Lucian Leahu, researcher from the culturally embedded computing group at Cornell University. The group researches on affective computing by considering the cultural context in which people are in while interacting with computers.

    We analyze, design, build, and evaluate computing devices in cultural context. We analyze the ways in which technologies reflect and perpetuate unconscious cultural assumptions, and design, build, and test new computing devices that reflect alternative possibilities for technology. We are part of a community of critical technical practices [as coined by Phil Agre], or practices that integrate technical system-building with cultural, philosophical, and critical reflection on technical practice. We have a focus on reflective design, or design practices that help both users and designers reflect on their experiences and the role technology plays in those experiences. We work with collaborators in the Affective Presence coalition to develop an approach to affective computing in which the full complexity of human emotions and relationships as experienced by users in central to design (rather than the extent to which computers can understand and process those emotions) (…)

    For instance, their ongoing Fear Reflector project aims to support emotional self-reflection of people while they expect to confront their fears. Using a combination of biometry and camera input, it takes pictures of situation in which the user “fears”. People are then given the possibility to reflect on these “fear” contexts.

    The group had a few papers being presented at Chi 2007. I attended a very impressive talk from their group How HCI Interprets the Probes. They discuss the research techniques of Bill Gaver called Cultural probes that uncover people’s values and activities. They discuss how the HCI community craving for flexible design methods adopted and adapted the probes in their research. By Kirsten Boehner, Janet Vertesi, Phoebe Sengers, and Paul Dourish (from Irvine), How HCI Interprets the Probes.

    .Pdf of the Paper.

    Also a nice interview of Bill Gaver on Designing Interactions for reference.

    Another very inspiring take on HCI is to look at Situationist art practice. The authors specify how the Chi community can be relunctant to consider these methods, or by reducing them to comform to Chi’s ones instead of using the richness of these methods.

    .Pdf of the Chi’07 paper by Lucian Leahu, Phoebe Sengers, Claudia Pederson, Jennifer Thom-Santelli and Pavel Dmitriev.

    Of course, nice references on situationism with video and sound recordings of Guy Debord on Ubu. The most famous and studied book-movie of Guy Debord being Society of the Spectacle.


  • 04MayTouch Sensitive Apparel at Chi 2007

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    Poster presented at Chi 2007

    Our Touch Sensitive apparel is inspired by the vision to leverage stress, comfort, and massage people while they are on the move. When always on the move, as an interview based study has shown, people use technological devices to “tune-out” or express their fear of technology by finding “a place where [their] soul is” . What if objects that people carry with them and even carry on them could offer this sensory comfort that they seem to seek?

    More on our Touch Sensitive Apparel.

    Inspiration In hypermobile societies, people carry objects, information and goods. They develop habits. The notion of habitus coined by Bourdieu relates to everything that someone does, and in fact defines the individual. The search for comfort, to feel at home (to inhabit space through hab-its, habitus) when on the move defines the populations of our hyper-societies.

    Design
    Touch·Sensitive is a work-in-progress to develop a series of haptic modules that allow computational massage therapy to be diffused, customized and controlled by people on the move. It provides individuals with a sensory cocoon. Our current prototypes succeeded in defining a flexible structure, a mechanism of diffusion, and a feedback system for alerting and comforting the user through haptic means.
    In addition, we propose to integrate machine-learning algorithms to understand the massage needs of the users through the analysis over time of the correlation between the motions of the user, the location of the pressure points, the intensity and qualities of the stimulus. We plan to develop these next steps along with specialists in massage therapy.

    Download Chi 2007 WIP paper

    Touch Sensitive Apparel was presented at Chi 2007. Enthusiasm, advices, references, and new ideas inspired by the visitors will lead to a new prototype this summer.

  • 04MayTouch Sensitive Apparel at Chi 2007

    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!



    Poster presented at Chi 2007

    Our Touch Sensitive apparel is inspired by the vision to leverage stress, comfort, and massage people while they are on the move. When always on the move, as an interview based study has shown, people use technological devices to “tune-out” or express their fear of technology by finding “a place where [their] soul is” . What if objects that people carry with them and even carry on them could offer this sensory comfort that they seem to seek?

    More on our Touch Sensitive Apparel.

    Inspiration In hypermobile societies, people carry objects, information and goods. They develop habits. The notion of habitus coined by Bourdieu relates to everything that someone does, and in fact defines the individual. The search for comfort, to feel at home (to inhabit space through hab-its, habitus) when on the move defines the populations of our hyper-societies.

    Design

    Touch·Sensitive is a work-in-progress to develop a series of haptic modules that allow computational massage therapy to be diffused, customized and controlled by people on the move. It provides individuals with a sensory cocoon. Our current prototypes succeeded in defining a flexible structure, a mechanism of diffusion, and a feedback system for alerting and comforting the user through haptic means.

    In addition, we propose to integrate machine-learning algorithms to understand the massage needs of the users through the analysis over time of the correlation between the motions of the user, the location of the pressure points, the intensity and qualities of the stimulus. We plan to develop these next steps along with specialists in massage therapy.

    Download Chi 2007 WIP paper

    Touch Sensitive Apparel was presented at Chi 2007. Enthusiasm, advices, references, and new ideas inspired by the visitors will lead to a new prototype this summer.


  • 10MayInspiring book : the Prosthetic Impulse

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    The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future, by Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra, eds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006.

    The prosthesis is not a mere extension of the human body; it is the constitution of this body qua “human.”
    —Bernard Steigler,Technics and Time

    With every tool man is perfecting his own organs, whether motor or sensory, or is removing the limits to their functioning. . . . Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God.When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but these organs have not grown on to him, and they still give him trouble at times. . . . Future ages will bring with them new and probably unimaginable great advances in this field of civilization and will increase man’s likeness to God still more. But in the interests of our investigations, we will not forget that present-day man does not feel happy in his Godlike character.
    —Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

    The first chapter can be downloaded here

  • 16MayMachine Therapy

    I mentioned the work of Kelly Dobson about a year ago. Today, I attended her VERY inspiring thesis defense at the Media Lab, researching on Machine Therapy. I love her personal relationship to machines. I cannot wait to read her thesis!

    Abstract

    In this thesis I describe a new body of work called Machine Therapy, a methodology for revealing the vital relevance of subconscious elements of human-machine interactions that works within art, design, psychodynamics, and engineering. This practice highlights what machines actually do and mean, in contrast to what their designers consciously intended. Machine Therapy is a cyclical process that alternates between discussion of and sessions for empathic relationships with domestic appliances, personal extension and connection via wearable and prosthetic apparatuses, and the design of evocative visceral robots that interact with people’s understandings of themselves and each other. Combining research and practice in digital signal processing and machine learning, mechanical engineering, and textile sensor design, I have been able to create new objects and relationships that are unique in some aspects while maintaining quotidian familiarity in other aspects. This is illustrated through the documented construction of several projects including re-appropriated domestic devices, wearable apparatuses, and machines that act in relation with users’ autonomic signals. These Machine Therapy devices are evaluated in studies of participants’ interactive engagements with the machines as well as participants’ affective responses to the machines. The Machine Therapy projects facilitate unusual explorations of the parapraxis of machine design and use: these usually unconscious elements of our interactions with machines critically affect our sense of self, agency in the social and political world, and shared emotional, cultural, and perceptual development.

    Dissertation Committee

    Christopher Csikszentmihályi

    Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences

    Muriel Cooper Professor of Media Arts and Sciences

    Program in Media Arts and Sciences

    MIT Media Laboratory

    Rosalind W. Picard

    Professor of Media Arts and Sciences

    Program in Media Arts and Sciences

    MIT Media Laboratory

    Edith Ackermann, PhD

    Honorary Professor of Developmental Psychology

    University of Aix-Marseille I, France

    Visiting Scientist, MIT School of Architecture

    Kelly’s Web site

    Computing Culture research group


  • 25JanInteraction design from product design

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    In Sept. 2006, I referred to the work of Tom Djajadiningrat. Tom Djajadiningrat is both industrial designer and researcher. He works on interaction design and considers product design methods.



    Figure extracted from the paper on Rich Interaction: issues.

    I selected two other papers of his that look at interaction design from a product design point of view.

  • Frens, J.W., Djajadiningrat, J.P., & Overbeeke, C.J. (2004). Rich Interaction: issues. EUSAI2004, pp.271-278.

    Abstrat The topic of this paper is rich interaction. Rich interaction borrows from tangible interaction and the concept of affordances. This is achieved through integral design of form, interaction and function of products. It is applied to interactive consumer products. A digital camera with a rich user interface (RUI) was designed and compared in a user study to a digital camera with a more conventional user interface. Several issues concerning rich interfaces are discussed.

    Link

  • Wensveen, S.A.G., Overbeeke, C.J., Djajadiningrat, J.P., & Kyffin, S.H.M. (2004). Freedom of fun, freedom of interaction. Interactions Magazine, september + october, pp.59-61.

    Introduction The modernist tradition still drives our society and our scientific endeavors. Modernity stood for technology push, progress through industry, linearity, money, the abstract, and the logical. But it has resulted in a feeling of uneasiness, even coldness. That is why, we think, there is now such a drive to get human and societal values back in the equation: Think of human-centered engineering, the experience economy, funology, and the like. In this article we give an exam- ple of the direction interaction-design research might take. We describe an approach that exploits all human skills, including perceptual-motor and emotional skills. We then reflect on the question of why industry has been slow to adopt this approach.

    Link