Posted in Adaptable, Design, Fabricate, General, Materials, Physical, Virtual on Nov 18th, 2009 Write a comment »
I’m always a big fan of TED talks…and here’s a fascinating short 8 minute talk, by Pattie Mae’s from MIT Media Lab. She talks about and shows off SixthSense, which is an invention for turning any surface into an interactive gesture controlled video surface. Neat and easy enough to integrate into current mobile devices. Bosch [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Adaptive, Design, Differences, Personal, Physical on Mar 12th, 2008 Write a comment »
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 [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Design, Fabricate, Materials, Physical on Feb 5th, 2008 Write a comment »
What would happen if your toothbrush could mate with another toothbrush? Would you end up with an even better toothbrush – the best of both toothbrushes? How about if your toothbrush mates with 5, 10 or 15 different toothbrushes, with each new toothbrush in turn mating with another new toothbrush? If you could decide which [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Design, Differences, Personal, Physical on Jan 22nd, 2008 Write a comment »
Isn’t it strange the way faces look so different? Yet we easily recognise that a face is a face. Imagine waking up tomorrow and everyone’s face has disappeared. Each face is replaced with a blank unexpressive blob. Don’t worry about the eating, seeing, speaking and breathing bits – in this brave new faceless world we [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Design, Physical, Virtual on Dec 3rd, 2007 Write a comment »
How can we help people easily create and explore the design space around physical / virtual objects? I’ve touched upon this before when I wrote about physical objects that are designed to be easy to re-shape by physical manipulation, e.g. Snap Cups and Shape A Seat, aka Don’t Forget Me, etc. With that question in [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Design, Materials, Physical on Nov 21st, 2007 Write a comment »
Last week the New York Times had a very interesting article Led by Robots, Roaches Abandon Instincts. The article discussed José Halloy and co’s research where by “using robotic roaches (they) were able to persuade real cockroaches to do things that their instincts told them were not the best idea”, aka social bug peer pressure [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Adaptive, Differences, Virtual on Aug 2nd, 2007 Write a comment »
Clever clever. kameraflage is a way of augmenting your visual environment with extra information. The extra information can be seen by digital cameras but won’t be seen by the human eye! No special software is required for your digital camera. In the above photo you can see an example where a streak of lightening can [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Design, Fabricate, Materials, Personal, Physical on May 11th, 2007 Write a comment »
Recently I came across JennyLC’s Intimate Controllers project (via the always interesting we-make-money-not-art). She writes that the project involved “building game controllers into undergarments so that games are played through players physically touching one another. The goal of this project was to research and create objects that challenge the traditional notions and orientation of video [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Materials, Physical on Apr 5th, 2007 Write a comment »
Imagine clothes that fit you perfectly. No need to get measured and fitted by a tailor. By plugging your new trousers into an electronic gadget you can change the size, shape and style of the clothes. There’s no need to cut and stitch. Shape-memory alloys (SMA) are woven into the fabric. The SMAs change shape [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Adaptive, Physical on Mar 21st, 2007 Write a comment »
Personalised medicine is focused on delivering “the right drug, for the right person, at the right time”. Potential patients undergo tests that measure individual differences in their physiology and genetics. These tests can then be used to help decide which drugs should be administered in what dosages. In the Wired article “Where’s My Personalized Medicine?” [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Design, Home, Materials, Physical on Mar 15th, 2007 Write a comment »
Run, don’t walk, and watch video 1 and video 2 about Chishen Chiu’s FlexibleLove experimental furniture. The seat has drawn lots of attention in the blogsphere over the last few weeks. I wonder what draws people’s attention to it? Are they interested because the seat is different? Do they imagine how they’d use the seat [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Adaptive, Differences on Mar 13th, 2007 Write a comment »
Every now and then I come across a paper that really sticks in my head. These papers strike a deep chord and often put into words whispy-not-fully-recognised thoughts. A few years ago I came across “User analysis in HCI: the historical lesson from individual differences research” by Andrew Dillon and Charles Watson, which was published [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Virtual on Mar 5th, 2007 Write a comment »
Scoble’s two interviews with Ning co-founders (Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreessen) are interesting: Social Networking with Ning, version 2.0 and Build your own social space with Ning, version 2. I haven’t played with Ning (yet) but based on the video and from reading around it sounds like the commoditization of software infrastructures for social software. [...]
Posted in Adaptable, Home, Personal on Feb 27th, 2007 Write a comment »
Make your own cups… What a lovely idea – a simple and elegant way of shaping the functional design of such a common tool. The handle, cup and stems are separate components which you connect as you choose. How far can the idea of producing small lego-like parts be pushed? What are the limitations and [...]
Hi my name is Mike Bennett & I'm a HCI / Vision Science postdoc researcher, interaction designer + hacker in the Psychology Dept of Stanford University. In this blog I explore design, cognitive & vision science, art, psychology, physiology, nanotech, perception, materials, etc, that enable anyone to shape their own user experiences... more
