Don Norman on Consumer Electronics May 14, 2007
Posted by reto wettach in innovative interfaces.3 comments
In this exciting article about Apple’s design approach, Don Norman, who used to be VP of advance technology at Apple from 1993 to 1998, says:
”The hardest part of design, especially consumer electronics,” says Norman, “is keeping features out.” Simplicity, he says, is in itself a product differentiator, and pursuing it can lead to innovation.
Rolston agrees. “The most fundamental thing about Apple that’s interesting to me,” he says, “is that they’re just as smart about what they don’t do. Great products can be made more beautiful by omitting things.”
Is a good quote to the way I think about interaction design.
Robotic Gadgets January 26, 2007
Posted by reto wettach in gadgets, innovative interfaces, mobile.7 comments
Finally a research at the Soon Chung Yang University (Korea) finally implemented a long dream of us, the merger of a mobile phone with a robot. The robot finds its powerstation by itself and automatically drives to the call receiver. It also can indicate whether a nice or a mean person is calling – through “pleasant and unpleasant motion patterns”. (Video here, Thanks Andre)
There are lots of earlier studies about bringing robots and gadgets together. Here two my favorites:
CLOCKY (earlier report) by Gauri Nanda from the MIT is an alarm clock “for people who have trouble getting out of bed”, which runs away, when it starts ringing.
The concept phone Nokia 888 is a shape-changing phone: it can communicate its status by changing shapes, but also two owners of the 888 can send shapes to each other, as e.g. heart shapes.
Multitouch and Multigesture November 17, 2006
Posted by reto wettach in innovative interfaces, physical interaction design.2 comments
Jeff Han and his wonderful multitouch investigation is nothing new to the interaction design community. But this little video (produced by podtech)from Microsoft resarch is quite stunning, because it allows similar functionalities with a finger-tracking interface. I wonder how it feels to interaction with no tactile feedback…?
(via NSTB)
Mobile Touch at Microsoft Research October 31, 2006
Posted by reto wettach in innovative interfaces, mobile, physical interaction design.1 comment so far
Last week I had the chance to listen to Patrick Baudisch from Microsoft Research. At the Technical University in Berlin he gave a talk on “making sense on small screens” (slides). Within his talk he introduced his “summary thumbnail”, something like semantic zooming: Patrick developed an algorithm, which would scale down web-sites to the size of the screen on mobile phones, still keeping the most important fragments of the text readable.
Patrick also talked about SOAP, a – as he said – very personal research project. He developed a “a mouse-like pointing device that works in mid-air”. His project is based on the observation that – when buying a mouse – we actually only purchase half of a pointing device: the other half is the surface, which is needed to operate a mouse.
SOAP is basically the technology of a wireless infrared mouse put into a sock: the user can move this sock or skin over the internal technology containing object, which has the shape of a soap. In the discussion afterwards somebody said that it reminded of playing with a foreskin. An interesting, but true statement.
Touch for Mobiles – Update October 31, 2006
Posted by reto wettach in innovative interfaces, mobile, physical interaction design.1 comment so far
Touchsensitive areas or screens are one of the hot directions for mobile interaction.
Not too new, but still interesting is Sony’s concept of Pre-Sense (Rekimoto, Ishizawa, Schwesig, et. al., 2003) , which basically combines a touch-pad with keys. Amongst other features, this technology allows interfaces, which are showing the user, what will happen, if he presses the key.
Quite similar is a the phone PG2800 by the Korean company PanTech: This phone can recongnize finger writing on top of the keys.
Another quite new patent is looking in using touch area surrounding the screen: Apple just filed this patent, which descibes an Electronic Device Having Display and Surrounding Touch Sensitive Bezel for User Interface and Control.
Through these interaction principles, the screen area will not be disturbed by some interacting fingers. Furthermore the screen might not get dirty of scratches through being used as an interface. (via hrmpf).
String-based Interfaces July 14, 2006
Posted by reto wettach in innovative interfaces, making the invisible visible, mobile, physical interaction design.10 comments
A string is a nice way to represent a 1-dimensional set of data through length.
This alarm clock by Duck Young Kong is set by pulling a string; the length of the string is representing the time remaining until the alarm goes off. This is interesting, because here input and feedback are done through the same media – the string. I am wondering why the designer did not add some kind of scale to the string so that reading becomes easier (in an earlier post I am describing a system, which does this).
The string has also been one of the earliest expamles for Ambient Interfaces: the LiveWire by Natalie Jeremijenko. In her case, she not using the lenght to communicate information, but the activity of the wire: the more the wire dangles, the more net work traffic is happening in the building in this moment. (image by Marek Plichta)
An interface based on a rectractable string was recently presented by Gabor Blasko et.al.: in this case not only the length of the pulled string is used to receive information, but also the angle in a polar coordinate system. Additionally Blasko is adding LEDs to the string to create a “1-D-display”. Scenarios of how to work with this interface include mail reading and calendar checking.
(images are courtesy of Gabor Blasko)
Sound Feedback Interfaces July 14, 2006
Posted by reto wettach in innovative interfaces, mobile.add a comment
Due to the danger of interacting with devices “on-the-go” (a car might run over you or you might miss saying hello to your boss), there is a development in the direction of interfaces, which give feedback through sound.
An interesting one is SonicTexting, developed in Ivrea by Michal Rinott: a joystickbased text-input is enhanced by sound. I like the quality of the sound feedback, especially as Michal developed different variations – according to the expertise of the user.
Recently APPLE filed a patent for a “talking i-Pod”:
“The new iPod will tell you what it is about to play, removing the need for users to look at the screen while selecting music, and making the device safer and easier to use while driving, cycling or in badly-lit locations.” (source)
New Mobile Services July 5, 2006
Posted by reto wettach in innovative interfaces, mobile, physical interaction design, rfid.1 comment so far
Vancouver one can finally pay his parking fee via phone – powered by Verrus. Call a number and type the number of minutes you want to park. Nice additional feature: if you leave early, you can call the number again and cancel the remaining minutes…
I am wondering, whether it would be nice to have gestures for these kind of services – gestures as in table whacking.
Buscom from Finland is doing a trial with Nokian on this issue: One can pay the bus fare with a simple gesture with the mobile phone:
Challenging Interfaces July 5, 2006
Posted by reto wettach in biofeedback, innovative interfaces, physical interaction design.1 comment so far
During the two teaching projects on alarm clocks, which I taught in Ivrea and Potsdam, we came across various “challenging interfaces”, which would force the user into a state of higher concentration/attention.
Well known is CLOCKY, a robotic alarm clock, which runs away and hides, so that the user is forced out of bed.
During the classes I was teaching, my students also came up with some interesting “challenging interfaces”:
Hayat Benchenaa developed SEFRA, an alarm clock hanging from the ceiling, which is switched off by hitting is. Each time one hits the clock during the snooze function, it would rise toward the ceiling and therefore force you out of the bed.
Blanc-o-matic by Eva Burneleit and Katrin Lütkemöller is a blanket, which would after each time switching off the snooze-function be torn down in the direction of your feets by 20 cm. Works only in winter.
Another commercial product for a “challenging interface” is the “Pattern Clock“, which forces the user to play a round of Simon-Says.
Similar to the samples above is the Dead Man’s Switch, which is used in trains and should guarantee the the operator is not incapacitated (or asleep). There are different levels of complexity for this function, as reacting to beep.
Another kind of a “challenging interface” is the part in onlineregistration processes, where you need to prove that you are human through recognizing some strange words (images taken from the yahoo mail registration).
Are there more challenging interfaces? And what can we learn from them? And why are we not using physilogical sensors for this task?
To be continued…
POUTS-The Physical World talks back June 18, 2006
Posted by reto wettach in innovative interfaces, physical interaction design.add a comment
I am quite interested inTangible Interfaces in our daily lifes. Quite nice are in this sense the Fridge Magnets by Microsoft research, which are augmenting your family’s information source by blinking after a certain time.
Even more interesting are the POUTS (2005) from the University of Nottingham. Just to explaing the word: “PINS push in and POUTS pop out” – finally the revenge of the physical world!
I really like the idea of notes falling down from a pinboard after the expired!
