Mark Weiser, one of the most important thinkers related to Physical Interaction Design, used a nice analogy for computers in his ground-breaking text “The Computer for the 21st Century“:

It [the computer] is approachable only through complex jargon that has nothing to do with the tasks for which which people actually use computers. The state of the art is perhaps analogous to the period when scribes had to know as much about making ink or baking clay as they did about writing.

This was 1991 and is still true today – there is still a lot to do for us!

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.

(image)

I am currently setting up an interaction design research project in the area of home entertainment and communication. A special focus will be on new technologies as gesture-based interaction and multi-touch. The project will last 4 months and will take place in Berlin.

Now, we are looking for interaction designers with an experience in physical computing/programming as well as user-centered design processes. Experience in designing and implementing interactive exhibits or in designing interactions for consumer electronics would be useful.

It would be nice if you could stay in Berlin for the next three to four month during this project. And believe me: Berlin is worthwhile spending some time!

Just a short addendum to my talk at the TYPO-conference last year, which I gave together with the very smart journalist Ralph Grauel: we discussed the potentials and advantages of computer games:

Today I read this:
Surgeons With Video Game Skill Appear To Perform Better In Simulated Surgery Skills Course
“Those [surgeons] in the top one-third of video gaming skill made 47 percent fewer errors, performed 39 percent faster and scored 41 percent better on the overall Top Gun score than those in the bottom one-third.”
(source)

I know what to ask my doctor or dentist before my next treatment…

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.

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)

The Micro Rhythm Orchestra – a nice little project by J. Foote : a cigar-box, equiped with 4 solenois, which hammer a rhythm.

Through a couple of projects we have been doing at the Interaction Design Lab, I am asking myself, how to develop “Tools for Innovation”. By this, I mean software supported tools, which inspire and help to find opportunities and interesting interrelations.

The first tool, which I am looking at, is “Mapping”: Through a multi-dimensional arrangement of new ideas and/or existing projects one might be able to spot areas of opportunities. My professor, Hans (Nick) Roericht, and his team wrote about Mapping:

en gros
gesucht ist eine art der darstellung, die aufgrund ihrer inneren struktur, geschaffen durch “polungen” analog den himmelsrichtungen, die orientierung innerhalb eines sujets erleichtert.
(we are searching for a diagram, which supports the orientation within a subject, based on the diagram’s internal structure, which is constructed through “polarities” – similar to the directions on the compass)
quelle

Mapping should be used – according the Roericht – for the following purposes:

…für die systematische variantenbildung.
…zur gliederung von begrifflichkeiten.
…zur strukturierung der eigenen gedankengänge.
(…for systematically producing variations.
…for  the classification of the terminology.
…for structuring thoughts.)
quelle 

Together with Fabian Hemmert, Andre Knörig and Julia Werner we developed a flash prototype of “Mapping”-tool, so far a two-dimensional solution

For a project about tactile mobile interaction, we used 11 axis, which could be selected within a pull-down-menue:

Based on the selection of axis the projects would be rearranged dynamically. Here a detail view:

(I did not upload the tool yet, because it is still kind of buggy)

I am wondering, how to further develop this tool. Some ideas we are having are related to more dimensions, but mostly easy access of the project library and the various evaluations. Furthermore it would be interesting to apply Web2.0 ideas to this tool. Any comment welcome!

My former colleague Yaniv Steiner, which whom I taught the wonderful course “Strangely Familar” in Ivrea, gave a talk on prototyping in interaction design. Here you can find a podcast and the slides.

He is also talking about the process, in which prototyping should be embedded:

I especially like Yaniv’s thought “keep it open”: prototyping should always stay a step within a process, never arrive at the goal!

(Regine from wemakemoneynotart went to Yaniv’s talk and wrote a nice blog entry)

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.