User Designer

Fashionable Technology is a just released book on The interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, and fashion, design and science is a highly promising and topical subject. Offered here is a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing. (found via architectradure)

Therein lies the future - as a follow-on to my post Metamatter: Self-Reshapable Materials check out Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science. CTIHP is a report sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department of Commerce (DOC), so its worth paying attention to. There’s also the follow-on Managing Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno Innovations: Converging Technologies In Society.

Arthur Shaprio, vision scientist at Bucknell University, has setup a new blog featuring visual illusions with explanations of why they occur. I particularly like his Lucy in the Sky illusion.

Beautiful - The Singing, Ringing Tree.

A true HCI classic from 1945 (pre-pre-HCI). Vannevar Bush’s reflections on how technology can augment the human intellect: As We May Think

Neat - Kickable self-reassembling robots. (thanks Graham)

Get some insight into how Google approaches usability and HCI in the talk The Art and Science of User Experience at Google.

An amusing ad. Have you ever felt like that forward thinking little girl when explaining some far out research and design concepts?

Affordances - a common usability term. Do you mean Gibson’s or Norman’s sense of affordances?

Just a quick blog note: For the last few weeks I’ve only posted a weekly Link Bucket. A lot of my time and energy is going into writing up my HCI PhD (woohoo!). Every week I’ll continue sending interesting links your way BUT for the next while I won’t be writing longer speculative and reflective pieces. Got to keep focused.

Very neat - A Periodic Table of Visualisation Methods from Visual-Literacy.org. Hover your mouse over any of the entries and up pops the related visualisation.

Excellent, the 2nd Irish Human Computer Interaction Conference is going to be on on the 19th and 20th of September in University College Cork, Ireland. Submission date is June 13th, 2008. Get writing! For more details keep an eye on the 2008 iHCI website.

Get a very brief glimpse Inside Microsoft’s Research Labs. If you want more depth wander over to Microsoft Research’s website - while there have a look at the recently released report Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the year 2020.

Recently I’ve been reflecting on Science 2.0, especially wondering what my research practices will be post-PhD. Science 2.0 (or whatever its getting called this month) is a much more open approach to science. Scientific America has a good introductory article explaining it. For example Science 2.0 scientists put their lab books online, writing about failures as well as success’ while making early stage research work (pre-publication) available for all to read about. Like others I suspect that the rise of the Internet inevitably leads to the emergence of Science 2.0, with a corresponding increased fluidity of idea exchange and cross pollination. There’ll probably be some of the same kind of issues occurring as in other digital media industries, i.e. ignore the openness, then fight the openness and finally embrace it. Admittedly the process of figuring out how to make Science 2.0 work fairly is going to interesting.

Sensisphere is a multitouch hemispherical display that lets you drag, move, push and pull digitial things with your hands. Pop over to YouTube and see it in action.

Scientists have created an entire synthetic genome. Another important step towards making biological nanobot “machines”, which would be extremely useful as smart malleable materials.

Very very blog relevant and interesting Call For Papers: Imagining Domestic Interiors. This is one CFP I’ll definitely be working towards! Robots are set to play an increasing role in our everyday lives, particularly in our domestic interiors. Already, they have found their way into vacuum cleaners, sweepers, mops, and other automated service machines for the home. Looking beyond these largely predictable developments, advances in self-configurable and adaptive robots promise some radically new possibilities. Our furniture, for example, may be host to interconnected assemblies of robotic modules that can re-configure themselves to suit different purposes, events, or even moods. An adaptive home interior might also physically age with its occupants, conforming to their changing needs and operating to support their states of development and health. (rest…)

What Kind of Genius Are You? Slow burn or short fast bright bright bright.

This post is dedicated to Molly “Isn’t it only natural”.

Alan Kay, all round Human Computer Interaction (and much more) thinker, talks at TED about how good programming can sharpen our picture. His unique software lets children learn by doing, but also learn by computing and creating lessons themselves.

Learn about traffic waves. You’ll never be bored sitting in traffic again. (found at Population of One)

May be worth a read Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity

Read about electronic chips implanted in the eye for restoring sight - Seeing the light.

More sketching Phun. Another very pretty sketching “game” like those I mentioned in Sketch & Draw = Create & Design Interactive “Things” and Link Bucket: Crayon Physics, Optical Illusions, Design Is & Rocky Origins. (thanks Ross)

Design lovely - 16 of the Most Extreme & Modern Beds You’ll Ever See. Especially relevant to User Designer is Animi Causa’s malleable Feel Seating System bed (pictured above).

Read about morphological liberty in the essay Plateaus of Completeness on The Speculist blog. Should people be forced to use tools that are designed to augment their abilities? For example should you be required to use a computer and credit card to book an air flight? What about more futuristic “tools” that are implanted in people, such as FDA approved RFID Tags?

Graph your favourite website in your web browser using a spring / force directed layout. (thanks Baz)

There’s only going to be one UD post this week - lots of holiday days in Ireland this week so I’m chilling out and eating Easter Eggs! Yum.

Visit WhiteVoid for a unique website navigation structure. Kind of a fusion between 3D and Zoomable User Interfaces.

We can simulate you. Out Of The Blue is an engaging article about whether a supercomputer can be used to simulate a biologically accurate brain. Sounds like they’re getting real results.

Nanoscale pretty.

We can model you and you and you and everyone. Use Geosimulation to model urban panic. Pruned (a neat blog) has a good writeup on Paul Torrens related research.

Have you ever gotten into one of those silly arguments about the colour of something? You know where you’re sure that a t-shirt is red, while your friend is 100% sure its redish yellow. Frustrating isn’t it.

Strange as it is, both of you can be utterly right.

You both “see” a slightly different colour because of individual differences in physiology. The receptors in eyes that help convert light into colour often have slightly different sensitivities between people. For most people the differences are so slight they’re not usually noticed, but people with colour blindness experience a world where colours appear very different. Go here for details about the Ishihara colour plate image, which is used in testing whether people are colour blind.

There are thought to be women who are the opposite of colour blind, they are tetrachromats who are able to see more colours than most people (who are usually trichromats). Damn Interesting has a good introductory article about tetrachromats A Life More Colorful, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a good article with a little more science background, Some women may see 100 million colors, thanks to their genes.

Previously I’ve touched upon individual differences in genetics for Personalised Medicine and the Psychology of Individual Differences.

There are many other kinds of subtle physiological differences, such as variations in taste receptors and densities on the human tongue. Here’s an introductory article about taste blindness.

Individual differences in physiology can be measured. These measures can be used to shape the design of objects. For example measures of your taste receptors could be used to automatically adapt a collection of cooking recipes to enhance the flavour for your tongue. Or TVs could have inbuilt smarts that adapt football game colours so a person with red-green colour blindness can more easily see their favourite football team. No more struggling to see a team wearing a red outfit running around on a green pitch, or a red snooker ball on a green table.

If the above is to become possible then self-mallable / re-shapable objects that adapt to the individual physiology of users need:
1) measures of user physiology
2) predictive models of the impact due to physiological differences, i.e. if an object is adapting to a user how does it know an adaption has a positive or negative effect?

This builds on implications from When Toothbrushes Mate: Form & Function DNA. Malleable objects and artifacts need to be:
1) self-describing
2) user describing (predicting the impact on user experiences due to physiological differences).

Time for another Creativity Knowledge. Today I’m pointing you towards Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), aka. Calm Technology.

How could you make shopping for food easier?

Imagine making a shopping list on your computer. As you head out the door to the supermarket the shopping list automatically stores itself on your mobile phone. Of course you’re always forgetting to buy milk. So your phone talks to the fridge and makes sure you’ve enough milk for the rest of the week. When you walk into the supermarket your phone gives the shopping list to the shopping trolley you’ve grabbed. Now you can easily see your shopping list on a small screen built into the trolley. As you put items into the trolley they are removed from the on-screen list.

In the meantime the trolley has talked with the shop and figured out the optimal route to get around the shop with the least congestion and fastest time. As you push the trolley around the trolley wheels subtly vary resistance, so it becomes easier to move the trolley in one direction or another. By dynamically varying wheel resistance you are unconsciously guided in different directions, such as towards a special offer and away from paths other customers are moving along.

Your shoes have also downloaded a layout of the store. While you walk around the height and softness of the shoe soles varies subtly enough that you don’t consciously notice, but they lean (and maybe lead) you away from the sweet and fast food sections. Yep, your partner has told your phone to tell your shoes that you are on a diet!

The above design scenario captures many of the ideas of Ubicomp. Background non-intrusive technologies making your life easier by weaving themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it (from The Computer for the 21st Century).

While there is much to admire in the Ubicomp vision I often dislike one possible implication: We may become automatons of clever technologies that guide, steer and influence us “for our benefit” without us being aware of what is happening.

Mark Weiser laid out the original vision for Ubiquitous Computing in The Computer for the 21st Century, and in the essay he co-wrote with John Seely Brown, Designing Calm Technology. Both essays were, and in many ways still are, an inspiring human centered vision of the less-traveled path I (Mark Weiser) call the “invisible”; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it.

Mark identified Ubiquitous computing as the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives.

His introduction to Designing Calm Technology convincingly describes an installation art work that embodies what he envisioned:
Created by artist Natalie Jeremijenko, the “Dangling String” is an 8 foot piece of plastic spaghetti that hangs from a small electric motor mounted in the ceiling. The motor is electrically connected to a nearby Ethernet cable, so that each bit of information that goes past causes a tiny twitch of the motor. A very busy network causes a madly whirling string with a characteristic noise; a quiet network causes only a small twitch every few seconds. Placed in an unused corner of a hallway, the long string is visible and audible from many offices without being obtrusive. It is fun and useful. The Dangling String meets a key challenge in technology design for the next decade: how to create calm technology.

A collection of Mark’s essays, papers and presentations about Ubicomp are available on this website. Separately there are many research papers available online from Ubicomp conferences, e.g. Ubicomp 2008, Pervasive 2008.

So where are we now? How has the field progressed since Weiser first coined the term Ubiquitous Computing in 1988?

A very good critique paper is Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision by Genevieve Bell and Paul Dourish. In that paper they outline some of the failings and opportunities due to the massive influence Mark’s original vision had on Ubicomp. I particularly like their observations that in many ways we are already living in a Ubicomp world - technology and our lifestyles have merged over the last decade. Also of interest is their observation that Ubicomp environments are inherently messy.

Florian Kräutli has designed and created malleable magnetic curtains that retain their shape. Clunky elegance.

Embodied Cognition “is a growing research program in cognitive science that emphasizes the formative role the environment plays in the development of cognitive processes.” Learn more about this increasingly important area from this website. (via MindHacks)

Gimme gimme one of the Emotiv Brain-Computer Interface headsets. No contact gel required. Of course you could always build your own based on designs from the OpenEEG project.

Neat video of a time fountain optical illusion. Looks like water is running backward defying gravity and hanging in mid-air.

Break out the champagne. Today User Designer is 1 year old!

I’m happy with how the blog has developed over the first year. Though it took a while to settle into writing weekly. Two posts a week has become my regular rhythm. For the 2nd year my posting target will continue to be one post a week featuring research analysis and synthesis, and a second weekly post packed with stimulating and fun links.

Of course not forgetting :) Thank you all for reading and for your great suggestions. Over the last month more than 2000 visitors, or 2500 depending on which counter I believe, came to the website. The feed subscriber count is now between 200 to 300 regular readers and its increasing faster each month.

Anyway…wanna collaborate?

I’m delighted to announce I’m looking for a talented undergraduate student to spend their summer in Ireland on a 3 month paid scholarship working on a new research project. The project is very relevant to User Designer - it is exploring the intersection of individual customization with presence.

The project title is Ambient Jewelry: Be part of your friend’s desktop - Individually designed presence avatars for social connectedness. Prof. Paddy Nixon and myself (Mike Bennett) will be supervising. This project is part of the ODCSSS (Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School) summer research internship which is part funded by an Undergraduate Research Experience and Knowledge grant (UREKA) from Science Foundation Ireland.

Visit the ODCSSS website for more details. There are 15 other funded projects in this years program, all around the theme of Technologies for Social Connectedness. In previous years we had talented and enthusiastic students from all around the world. If you’re interested, or know someone who might be, the application process is now open. If you have any questions about this project you can contact me directly via the contact form.

Project outline:
Ambient Jewelry seeks to explore the intersection of individual customization with presence. The aim is to enable the creation of more personal and richer forms of presence, with the aspiration that this will allow us to more deeply connect with our friends and family in a non-intrusive manner.

Presence is an important part of our day to day lives. Often we will have a sense of who is around us and what they are doing by the sounds of doors closing, cupboards banging, footsteps on floors, voices vaguely heard through walls, etc. In digital spaces, such as GUI desktops, presence enhances our sense of connection with geographically separate friends and colleagues. For example when you use an Instant Messaging (IM) client you see which friends are currently online or away, and when engaged in IM chat you are also told whether the people in the conversation are typing. On social network sites, such as Facebook, presence has a more explicit form. We are told what the people in our social network did, e.g. Mark joined the Ireland network, Eimear and Mike are now friends, etc.

As of yet presence tools don’t enable us to control how our presence is represented. We don’t have little coloured jewels (ambient presence avatars) spinning on our friends’ desktops to show how fast we’re typing, nor do we have a flower opening and closing in the jewel when we move the mouse, etc.

The outcome of this project should be parts of a framework that easily lets people create and share their presence avatars. There will be a desktop client like an IM client. The client watches whether you type, move the mouse, open windows, close windows, play music, etc. The specifics of what you type aren’t recorded, instead your activity is used to update a presence avatar / Ambient Jewel. Your jewel updates, changes and transforms based on your actions. For example imagine everytime you open a window a flower blooms in your Ambient Jewel.

Ambient Jewels are tiny. You share your ambient jewel with your friends. When you get a jewel from a friend you can hang it off your mouse pointer, use it to decorate your GUI windows, place them on the side of your screen, etc. Groups of friends are able to work together to group their jewels into larger jewels, and they can then coordinate how the collaborative jewel looks and behaves based on what they do on their desktops.

The core functionality is:

- Ambient Jewels (presence avatars) encode action
- people can create relationships between jewel transforms and their actions
- people can share these jewels with their friends
- jewels can be used to personalize GUI desktops

Potentially the jewels could be shared on people’s blogs, websites and social network profiles.

Some research questions that arise:

1) Does enabling people to personalise the presence avatars affect the importance and value people place on sharing their presence?
2) How should the interface be designed for simplifying the process of creating relationships between user actions and how the avatars update?
3) Does enabling people to decorate their desktops with their friends’ ambient jewels make desktops less socially isolated? By turning them into shared private spaces?

Previous coding / hacking experience writing GUI’s and networking code is desirable. Candidates should be interested in learning about research in Human-Computer Interaction and Interaction Design. A creative streak, whether technical or artistic, is also useful.

Don’t stress a driver by showing them too much visual information, but how do you know when a driver is getting stressed? Use EEGs to measure brain activity and have the visual displays automatically adapting. Yep, more Augmented Cognition with Brain-Computer Interfaces. Here’s the New Scientist article about the research.

Are you a hacker (maker) or a painter? Or both? Or neither? Which of C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures do you belong to? Paul Graham’s essay on Hackers and Painters may be of interest.

Fascinating talk given by Professor Mark Reed from Yale talking about The Next Frontier: Bioelectronic Interfaces (video).

I had today’s post planned out and was about to sit down to write it when Ross (thanks!) suggested I try out a new computer game called Passage. Wow. Go download and play. Stop reading until you’ve tried it out.

Done already? Seriously I mean it - don’t read any more. Play it.

Beautiful, sad and moving isn’t it. It well and truly answers the question whether games can be art. Jason Rohrer who developed it has written a Creators Statement. In the statement it is clear that he deliberately sought to make “players” experience deep feelings when playing his very low resolution “game”.

Will Passage be remembered in future histories of game art?

If you didn’t try it here’s a link to a Wall Street Journal article that describes the experience of playing Passage.

Though Passage isn’t as subtle it reminds me of one of my favourite poems, Eavan Boland’s poem “Love”:
    Dark falls on this mid-western town
    where we once lived when myths collided.
    Dusk has hidden the bridge in the river
    which slides and deepens
    to become the water
    the hero crossed on his way to hell.
(Unfortunately, I cannot post the rest of the poem due to copyright.)

The source code for Passage is readily available. Anyone want to do a Readymade style Duchamp on it?

I’m curled up with a bug and head cold so today I’m posting a Link Bucket instead of the normal long Tuesday post. Enjoy.

Looks Tasty - see the world with your tongue.

For the last few years I’ve been keeping my eye on the emerging transdisciplinary field of Augmented Cognition. On the AugCog website it is defined as an emerging field of science that seeks to extend a user’s abilities via computational technologies, which are explicitly designed to address bottlenecks, limitations, and biases in cognition and to improve decision making capabilities. Is it a repackaging of a human information processing approach to HCI, or something more? Either way it has interesting potential.

Takes your breath away - UDF SkyWalker is a massive interactive image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The image shows 10,000 galaxies from when the universe was only 800 million years old. You could also try out GEMS SkyWalker. I wonder how many of those galaxies are now teaming with life?

VirtuSphere lets you physically run and walk in any direction to move around virtual 3D worlds! Watch this video of it in action.

Eric Drexler’s forward thinking book Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology is free online. The updated version Engines of Creation 2.0 is also available for free, but to download it you need to be connected via a US IP.

Add to your reading list Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines (KSRM) by Robert A. Freitas Jr and Ralph C. Merkle. KSRM offers a general review of the voluminous theoretical and experimental literature pertaining to physical self-replicating systems and self-replication.

Woohoo, Science Gallery has launched in Dublin, Ireland. What a great initiative. Art + Science + Play = Idea Goodness