Architec Tradure

Category: interaction design

  • 15MarThese little things in the dark …

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    Our childhood was filled with creatures hidden in the dark. The feeling of them existing outside of our imagination was a source of interaction with the physical world, creating places for them to live. Our imaginary friends were sharing our secrets, they were our closest partner in the world discovery. One book that I recommend on the subject is The House of Make-Believe: Children’s Play and the Developing Imagination by Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer, one of my favorite book on imagination and child development.



    Children interacting with Kage no Sekai

    When I discovered Kage no Sekai, I immediately felt in love with it. The piece projects cute tiny creatures on shadows -and only on shadows- so that anyone can play with them, try to grab them, make them exist in specific places with shadows created just for them, or even trap them (see video of the children interaction with the system).



    Photo by the authors of Kage no Sekai

    “This device expresses this perspective not by using existing media but in the real world itself. The mechanism is concealed, giving the device the appearance of an ordinary piece of furniture. Although at first glance it looks like a regular wooden table, if you look at the shadows on its surface you’ll see the movement of mysterious life forms. When you approach it to have a better look, they sense your presence and hide away. They do not emerge while human shadows are cast over the table, but the life forms hiding within a distant shadow are watching them.”

    Video




  • 13MarThe Fizzees: Physical Electronic Energisers

    I came across the Fizzees (Physical Electronic Energisers) research project by Futurelab. Fizzees is a prototype project that enables young people to care for a ‘digital pet’ through their own physical actions. In order to nurture their digital pet, keep it healthy and grow, young people must themselves act in physically healthy ways!

    The Fizzee comes in two parts – a wristwatch-style device where the pet resides, and an unobtrusive heart monitor which straps around the chest. A sensor in the monitor measures the wearer’s heart rate, and this data is sent to the Fizzee device, which houses an accelerometer to monitor movement.

    I am not sure about the one-to-one mapping between a digital pet and a child. It also depends how the watch can be calibrated, and if there is a limit to the amount of activity! I understand why these devices could become popular especially after the Tamagotchis, and Neopets mania, but why don’t we take it the other way around?

    Wouldn’t that be awesome to have a Fizzlazy(TM) with which the more you watch TV the more your digital pet would become fat and grumpy, and that eventually it will start reading comic books, play video games and sleep until 1pm!


    Picture from the Fizzee’s report. Download the brochure here.

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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  • 10MarTransgenesis

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    Transgenesis

    In 2000 I had the chance to meet Pavel Smetana at Avignon Numrique, in France, and interact with his Room of Desires that he created in 1995. In this project I was connected to brainwave and heart-rate sensors in an empty room, with video projections of pretty relaxing pictures and music. As soon as I would become excited with an image, the system would generate new images and sounds, based on my biofeedback. The audience could witness these changes and understand what imagery would trigger a certain kind of emotions. After a while I would be able to control the system, in a way “controlling my emotions” and also what the audience would see as a result.

    Recently Pavel Smetana in collaboration with Ivor Diosi and Ivan Acher revisited this past work and created transgenesis, a set of virtual environments the audio and the visual parts of which are changing in real-time in dependence on data received form sensors capturing brain and heart activity of viewers. Each viewer enters those and only those virtual landscapes which his or her physical and mental states lead to. Landscapes vary in audiovisual styles ranging from horror-like hyper-realistic atmosphere up to geometric or organic abstractions.

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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  • 07MarSound Candy

    “Sound Candy is a toy which makes public playground yours with sounds and gestures. Wear Sound Candy on your body, record your favorite sounds to it, and jump! Hop! Run! Sound candy mutates the recorded sound according to your movement. Play creatively.” By Shuichi Ishibashi, Daisuke Uriu and Professor Naohito Okude at the Okude Lab in Japan.

    Sound Candy is a device for anyone to create a personal playground with sound and movements. The main idea for Sound Candy is to offer the possibility to entertain and be entertained by using ordinary stones and wood sticks that surrounds us. Because of its small size, Sound Candy can be attached to any part of the human and animal body, artifacts and objects. Sound Candy has two function: a recording one, and the possibility to integrate the recorded sounds and the signals from the sensors, such as vibration or acceleration caused by a variety of movements. The recorded sounds are converted in various ways by selecting either Angle Mode, Vibration Mode, Speed Mode and Rotation Mode.

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

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  • 29FebAdam Boulanger, Dan Ellsey and Tod Machover at TED 2008

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    Tod Machover chose scientist Adam Boulanger to live demo, at TED 2008, the latest cutting-edge research being done in his group at MIT. Tod worked for many years to invite everyone to compose music. Today Adam had the chance to present at TED his PhD’s baby with partner Dan Ellsey. I had mentioned in a previous post his research.

    Adam graduated from the prestigious Berklee’s school of music, studied medicine and worked for a few years as a music neurologist-therapist in New York. When he arrived at MIT he decided to apply his specialty in neurology to music composition. He met with Dan Ellsey who has cerebral palsy and worked together on means to compose with the Hyperscore environment at the hyperinstruments research group.

    For his research with Dan, Adam developed a head-set and supporting software so that Dan could expressively perform his hyperscore compositions as a soloist. Dan worked closely with the team to perform his songs using head movements. If you want more technical detail, I had interviewed Adam on the challenge in designing such device.

    Congratulations to the team! More info about the event on TED’s blog!


    Adam, Dan and Tod – Picture from the MIT Media Lab’s web site.

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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  • 29FebAdam Boulanger, Dan Ellsey and Tod Machover at TED 2008

    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!

    Tod Machover chose scientist Adam Boulanger to live demo, at TED 2008, the latest cutting-edge research being done in his group at MIT. Tod worked for many years to invite everyone to compose music. Today Adam had the chance to present at TED his PhD’s baby with partner Dan Ellsey. I had mentioned in a previous post his research.

    Adam graduated from the prestigious Berklee’s school of music, studied medicine and worked for a few years as a music neurologist-therapist in New York. When he arrived at MIT he decided to apply his specialty in neurology to music composition. He met with Dan Ellsey who has cerebral palsy and worked together on means to compose with the Hyperscore environment at the hyperinstruments research group.

    For his research with Dan, Adam developed a head-set and supporting software so that Dan could expressively perform his hyperscore compositions as a soloist. Dan worked closely with the team to perform his songs using head movements. If you want more technical detail, I had interviewed Adam on the challenge in designing such device.

    Congratulations to the team! More info about the event on TED’s blog!


    Adam, Dan and Tod – Picture from the MIT Media Lab’s web site.

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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  • 13FebPeople and Prototypes



    Paper prototyping—in very early, sketch-based prototypes like these, designers can still simulate the user experience (note the use of the smaller post-it to represent a pull-down menu), but ineffective solutions can simply be placed in the recycling bin.

    Designing interactions is regularly offering chapters to download. Right now one of my favorite chapter, People and Prototypes, is up!

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    ♥ Architectradure

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  • 07FebMutsugoto

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    Mutsugoto is an interactive installation that invites couples to experience an intimate communication over a distance created by Tomoko Hayashi, Stefan Agamanolis and Matthew Karau.





    Begin by laying on the bed and wearing the special ring. As you relax and think about your partner, gently move your hand around your body. These movements are traced on your own body as well as your partner laying in the other bed. Twinkling spots give a hint of where your partner is drawing. If you follow your partner’s movements and your strokes cross, the lines will react with each other and reflect your synchrony.

    Don’t forget to check the beautiful video of Mutsugoto. This is the first time I’ve seen ambient remote communication being that beautifully achieved and that sensual.

    In 2003 Tomoko Hayashi created Intimacy is a series of accessories for people who exist in a long-distance relationship. The accessories are a combination of ties or undergarments with jewelry such as necklace or ring. Each accessory encloses jewelry inside and is heat-pressed to make an embossed pattern of the jewelry on its surface. Lovers can take the jewelry out to give it as a gift to their lover in a distant location. This allows lovers to share the memory of the object remotely and feel close to each other. The embossed pattern will fade away little by little (through pressure, moisture or heat) with daily use. When they meet again, the lovers can recreate the pattern by pressing the piece with a very hot iron.



    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    ♥ Architectradure

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  • 06FebSocial Resonance: Balancing Reputation with Tangible Design

    Online data about our everyday activities is available for almost anybody who takes the time to spy on us. Everything that makes us live in the real world through emails, video, photo, blogs, online shopping, calendar, to name a few, is “trackable”. We are entirely public, our virtual identity is somewhat the shadow of our physical existence. Not talking about avatars up to anonymous content that gives us a second life on the screen, but wouldn’t that be scary to have our anonymous virtual self reflected back to us?

    The research of Alyssa Wright at MIT’s Ambient Intelligence research group directed by Pattie Maes consists of the ongoing design of a tangible reputation system, Social Resonance, that uses a wearable device to merge face-to-face interaction with online networking.

    I love her attempt to bridge a virtual identity with a “real world” one. New forms of tangible systems can be designed to leverage the strengths, and bridge the discrepancies, of reputation systems. Like its virtual counterparts, this system aims to make explicit the perspective of anonymous actors. Yet unlike online reputations, this system is negotiated through real world action and signals.

    Reputation data is mapped to an ambient display and used to preserve public readability without creating personal distress. At any state, the device is on and provides readable data. It is the shift between states, visible over time, that allows for introspection. Social Resonance attempts to map the journey, not the destination, between colors.



    Mapping resonance to 5-phase color shift

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    ♥ Architectradure

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  • 06FebPainting on real objects

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    Deepak Bandyopadhyay, Ramesh Raskar, Henry Fuchs have built a prototype system for virtual painting on real movable objects. A project from 2001 that should by now be easier to democratize!

    Imagine a world where all the objects around you can be animated and augmented interactively in real time; where you can, for instance, paint virtual designs on objects in the environment, which then stay in place as you modify or move them around! This opens up new possibilities for interaction in augmented environments, and gives rise to new applications in tele-immersion, medicine, architecture, art and user interfaces.

    Check also Kimiko Ryokai’s digital paintbrush. Her brush allows artists to draw digitally with an “ink” they just picked up from their immediate environment.

    Posted by Cati Vaucelle

    ♥ Architectradure

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