Architec Tradure

Category: Uncategorized

  • 26JanEmotional relationship with products

    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!

    McDonagh D, Bruseberg A, Haslam C. (2002) Visual product evaluation: exploring users’ emotional relationships with products. In Appl Ergon. 2002 May;33(3):231-40.

    Abstract This paper discusses an industrial designer’s approach to eliciting user perceptions and emotional responses to products through visual evaluation and stimuli. Whilst the authors accept that product functionality is crucial for product success, the appearance, use of materials, shape and form provide the most immediate product data for the user. Less tangible issues such as emotional bonding of users with products, cultural perceptions and social value systems, provide valuable insights for the product developer to help expand knowledge and understanding of the users’ need beyond the functional. This paper presents product personality profiling as a new technique for design researchers/designers, and discusses it alongside other emerging approaches such as mood boards and visual product evaluation. The authors have used these techniques during focus group sessions with users to elicit individuals’ needs and aspirations towards products. Such a user-centred approach is fundamental to applied ergonomics. Experiences, benefits, and limitations of these techniques are outlined as well as the opportunities for further development.

    Paper


  • 26JanNew product development

    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!

    Anne Bruseberg and Deana McDonagh-Philp (2001) New product development by eliciting user experience and aspirations International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Volume 55, Number 4, October 2001, pp. 435-452(18)

    Abstract Industrial design training is embracing the need for designers to elicit user needs in order to support the development of successful new products. This paper highlights the collaboration of an ergonomist and two industrial designers in the development of a range of mainstream domestic consumer products. It documents the experiences gained in applying and adapting focus group techniques to inform the designing process directly, and illustrates how a variety of techniques (e.g. product handling and product personality profiling) can be incorporated to elicit user needs, aspirations and emotions.


  • 26JanNew product development

    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!

    Anne Bruseberg and Deana McDonagh-Philp (2001) New product development by eliciting user experience and aspirations International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Volume 55, Number 4, October 2001, pp. 435-452(18)

    Abstract Industrial design training is embracing the need for designers to elicit user needs in order to support the development of successful new products. This paper highlights the collaboration of an ergonomist and two industrial designers in the development of a range of mainstream domestic consumer products. It documents the experiences gained in applying and adapting focus group techniques to inform the designing process directly, and illustrates how a variety of techniques (e.g. product handling and product personality profiling) can be incorporated to elicit user needs, aspirations and emotions.


  • 04FebFrom Rubix cube to pixel picture

    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!

    When the product meets the digital, a multitude of Rubix cubes becomes a mario brother pixel picture …

    By space-invaders

    Process …


  • 05FebA usb key that can blow up

    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!



    There is a tone of usb keys that are invented now. I chose this one for its potential to blow up.

    The idea behind this usb key is that the size of the device changes depending on the data it contains. My main question is can the usb key actually blow up if there are too many data?

    Made by Dima Komissarov.


  • 05FebJabberstamp

    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!

    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


  • 17FebPixel-graphic style in a physical display

    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!

    Snoil is a physical display made by Martin frey that takes advantage of our experience playing with Tetris-like game, in this case the reference is to the classic arcade Snake game. Now it is slightly more complex than that because the fluid is attracted by magnets to create fluid bumps.
    Images and animations can be produced in a pixel-graphic style as well as plain pixel-typography.

    SnOil has pixel-like graphic features and is physically implemented using electronic components such as electro magnets, controllers, multiplexers, tilt sensors and so forth. Tiles of electro magnets make the system highly scalable. Each magnet has its x and y position. It works like the snake game in the video demo, but this type of interface can definitly go beyond its reference frame.

    In the area of materialized pixels, Daniel Rozin creates a series of awesome mechanical mirrors.


    Wooden Mirror in Wired Magazine

    830 square pieces of wood, 830 servo motors, control electronics, video camera, computer, wood frame.
    Size – W 67” x H 80” x D 10” (170cm , 203cm, 25cm). Built in 1999, this is the first mechanical mirror I built. This piece explores the line between digital and physical, using a warm and natural material such as wood to portray the abstract notion of digital pixels. 1999

    Video of the interactive wooden mirror


    Shiny Balls Mirror

    921 hexagonal black-anodized aluminum tube extrusion, 921 chrome-plated plastic balls, 819 motors, control electronics, video camera, computer. Size – W 56″ x H 50″ x D 20″ (142cm, 127cm, 50cm)
    The third addition to the mechanical mirror group, Shiny Balls Mirror displays a crisp and clean facade of aluminum and chrome utilizing the jewel-like reflections on its balls to form the reflection of the viewer twice: Once on each ball and once on the entire piece. 2003

    Video of the interactive shiny balls mirror


    Shiny Balls Mirror – detail

    Found on core77.

  • 23FebMarisa Jahn

    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!

    Artist Marisa Jahn gave a talk at the MIT Media Lab, in the Tangible Media Group.

    Her work explores ways to engage people in gaining knowledge, from literacy, to environmental literacy. She designed tools and methods to invite people in a comparative analysis of information and self-reflective process. She collaborates frequently with Steve Shada and Natalie Jeremijenko.

    Interested in how human interact and communicate with each others, she designed wearable musical instruments.

    video

    For her master thesis in the visual studies department at MIT, she designed a game called Set. Elements of the set can be regrouped, labeled and organized and shared within the players.

    video

    Project most easily understood through direct engagement, boxSET is a game played as an intervention into any existing collection of objects (archives, record albums, a heap of junk—anything). Involving multiple players, some of whom may not have any prior relationship with the objects to be sorted, the game asks players to develop categories that describes a grouping of objects. However, the creation of order occurs simultaneous with disorder: a player may choose to remove an object from another player’s collection in order to place it in his/her grouping. This rapid taxonomic metabolism encourages players to narrate out loud (or ’show-and-tell’) their categories with the anticipation that it may soon disappear. Further, through taxonomically engaging with different kinds of objects, players become aware of what kinds of objects (data) are better for certain kinds of analyses (formal, textual, psychoanalytic, etc.). As the game evolves, players become aware of the difference in interpretation, the subjectivity of order, and the contingent production of knowledge.



    She created throw-n-Sow a new way for people to think about and engage with their environment. Frisbees deposite seeds while in the air…

    Throw-n-Sow is a flying disc toy similar to a Frisbee that uses the centripetal force generated in the act of throwing to distribute seeds into the environment. Manufactured as a toy made from environmentally-friendly, biodegradable plastics, Throw-n-Sow consists of a main body and a separate container that slides and locks under the disc. This container contains adjustable holes of different diameter to accommodate variant seed sizes. In other words, Throw-n-Sow is a literally empty container into which individuals and communities emplace selected seeds.

    Throw-n-Sow is interactive eco-art project that engages diverse communities in each step of the project (manufacturing, seed-selection, site-selection, plant stewardship, art education), Throw-n-Sow raises questions about the expanded field of drawing, indigenous ecologies vs. selective human cultivation, landscape evolution and succession, ethnobotany, agronomy, etc. Throw-n-Sow ultimately aims to valorize distributive intelligence and interdisciplinary learning.

    Throw-n-Sow is the kind of art that literally passes between two or more individuals. Leaving behind a trail of seeds as it sails through the air, Throw-n-Sow essentially imprints moments of play into the landscape. Individuals carrying the Throw-n-Sow disc from one place to another develop an affective relationship to the toy and to the sites in which it is deployed.


  • 24FebInteraction Design and Children

    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!

    Jabberstamp? It is for adults to understand that a work of art is not a hat, but a boa digesting an elephant! – Yasmine Abbas

    I teamed with Hayes Raffle to work on his Jabberstamp invention.

    This is the first time I work on a project on which I am not the inventor. This collaboration is refreshing through the distance allowed by not being the actual initiator. It brings critical insights on the interaction design. Hayes asked me to join him, because of my background in toy design for children, especially the design of toys for emergent literacy. Out of the technology available, I tried to understand what could children do with the simple mechanism of associating sounds to drawings. Hayes and I end up testing the system, improving elements of the design and discussing its contribution. A pilot evaluation with children confirmed our hypothesis about the type of narrative children explore with such technological system.

    We submitted a video for Siggraph’07, educator program and Jabberstamp was elected for being demoed and exhibited during the conference, the 5-9 of August 2007, San Diego, California.

    A full paper Hayes and I wrote together on Jabberstamp got accepted to the Interaction Design and Children conference. The focus of the conference is on children’s role in the design and evaluation of interactive technologies. So we hope to see you in June 6-8, 2007, Aalborg in Denmark!

    Abstract We introduce Jabberstamp, 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. We describe our design process and analyze the mechanism between the act of drawing and the one of telling, defining interdependencies between the two activities. In a series of studies, children ages 4-8 use Jabberstamp to convey meaning in their drawings. The system allows collaboration among peers at different developmental levels. Jabberstamp compositions reveal children’s narrative styles and their planning strategies. In guided activities, children develop stories by situating sound recording in their drawing, which suggests future opportunities for hybrid voice–visual tools to support children’s emergent literacy.

    Jabberstamp is a MIT Media Lab project developed in the Tangible Media Group with Dr Hiroshi Ishii.

    News (update)
    July 23 07 Digital inspiration by Amit Agarwal.
    July 23 07 Article in Discovery Channel by Tracy Staedter.
    June 29 07 Article in Digital experience by Jonas Petersen.

    Previous post on Jabberstamp.


    IDC logo

  • 25FebThe launch of the Distance Lab

    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 Distance Lab is now opening! The Distance Lab is a new digital media research institute based in the beautiful and culturally-rich north of Scotland.

    The mission of Distance Lab is to invent new technologies and experiences that challenge the way we think about distance and help overcome its disadvantages in learning, health care, relationships, culture, and other areas.

    Based on the research done at the Media Lab Europe in Dublin, and more specifically in a research group named Human Connectedness, Distance Lab will expand on many of the themes from this group as it develops a similar demo-based culture full of talented engineers, designers, and artists from all over the world.

    Distance Lab is now recruiting RAs and interns and if you are interested to apply for a position there, visit the Distance Lab web site

    The ones already on board: Dr. Stefan Agamanolis, Matt Karau, Andrea Taylor and Joelle Bitton.



    Raw: Joelle Bitton’s master piece created with Matt Karau and Stefan Agamanolis at Media Lab Europe

    Raw is an audio/photographic tool for conveying minimally-mediated impressions of everyday life. More about Raw