Architec Tradure

Category: technology and toy.

  • 27Novio brush and Kimiko

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    On the canvas, artists can draw with the special “ink” they just picked up from their immediate environment.

    My colleague and friend Kimiko Ryokai will join the faculty of the School of Information, Berleley, in January 2007. She will teach in the iSchool and the Center for New Media. She graduated from the Tangible Media Group at MIT Media Lab with Dr. Hiroshi Ishii. She is currently employed at the product design firm, IDEO.

    A while back for her PhD, Kimiko designed io brush, a super intuitive platform to paint digitally using colors, patterns, movements that surround us. For her master thesis she invented and researched on Storymat, a pretty mat that stores children’s storytelling play by recording their voices and movements of the toys they play with.

    IO brush movie that I recommend watching (25 mb). Delight warrantied.


  • 05FebJabberstamp

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    I team up with Hayes Raffle to work on his invention Jabberstamp a tool that allows children to synthesize their drawings and voices.

    Jabberstamp is the the first tool that allows children to synthesize their drawings and voices. To use Jabberstamp, children create drawings, collages or paintings on normal paper. They press a special rubber stamp onto the page to record sounds into their drawings. When children touch the marks of the stamp with a small trumpet, they can hear the sounds playback, retelling the stories they have created.

    Children ages 4+ can use Jabberstamp to embed names, narratives, characters’ voices and environmental sound effects in their original drawings. Children’s compositions help them communicate their stories with peers and adults, and allow them to record and situate stories in personally meaningful contexts to share with others, before they have mastered writing.

    Update about Jabberstamp …

    Jabberstamp’s video


  • 03MarSculpting Behavior

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    Hayes Raffle not only just had two full academic papers accepted to the first class conference IDC 2007: Interaction design and Children but he is also a talented sculptor and designer. His Super Cilia Skin reflects his aesthetic sensibility and his ongoing passion for kinetic sculpture.

    Video

    Super Cilia Skin

    After co-creating and designing the award-winning ZOOB building system, Hayes joined the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory and created Topobo, a 3D constructive assembly system with kinetic memory and the ability to record and playback physical motion.
    Video

    a ZOOB creature


    a Topobo creature

    If you happen to be in the bay area, don’t miss Hayes’ talk, open to the public, that he is giving at the Berkeley Institute of Design, UC Berkeley, March 6th, from 1 to 2pm.
    Information about his talk.

    During the talk, he will explain how with Topobo children can assemble sculptures that dance and walk. He will present Fuzzmail a program that allow children to write a message that unfolds in time. He will show how with Jabberstamp children can embed stories, sounds and voices in their original drawings.

  • 29MarInteractive toy for autistic children

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    LINKX an interactive toy that stimulates the language development of autistic children. Via Idealist

    Helma van RijnI designed LINKX, a language toy for autistic toddlers. Throughout the process, experts in autism were involved. She tested the prototype with three autistic children in several play-sessions.

    The following is the video of her tests:


  • 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”


  • 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”


  • 31MayA spying robot

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    Presented in Liberation, a highchool in South Korea, Seoul, will adopt a new kind of robot, the OFRO to check on kids at school. Communicating with school supervisors via a video camera and a microphone, it can detect any suspicious activity. Thank you Olivier for the link!

    I now hope for a subversive robot, much cooler, with fancier behavior, created as a response to this very scaring surveillance attempt.


  • 31MayA spying robot

    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!

    Presented in Liberation, a highchool in South Korea, Seoul, will adopt a new kind of robot, the OFRO to check on kids at school. Communicating with school supervisors via a video camera and a microphone, it can detect any suspicious activity. Thank you Olivier for the link!

    I now hope for a subversive robot, much cooler, with fancier behavior, created as a response to this very scaring surveillance attempt.


  • 18JanPlayPals: Tangible Interfaces for Remote Communication and Play

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    PlayPals are a set of wireless figurines with their electronic accessories that provide children with a playful way to communicate between remote locations. PlayPals is designed for children aged 5-8 to share multimedia experiences and virtual co-presence. We learned from our pilot study that embedding digital communication into existing play pattern enhances both remote play and communication

    The project PlayPals is a team and class project for the Tangible Media class mid-term assignment at MIT Media Lab taught by Dr Hiroshi Ishii. It was presented 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).

    Our concept poster

    On this picture I interact with the doll, Leo being on the other end

    Our implementation poster

    By Cati in computational toy 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