Posted in Design, Fabricate, General, Link Bucket, Physical, Virtual on Jun 8th, 2010 Write a comment »
Image Swirl is an interesting variant of a graph layout information visualisation from Google Labs. So far I like using it to explore clusters of related images, though I wonder whether the clustering reduces the range of images I see. Do I get exposed to more images that are strongly related to each other and [...]
Posted in Design, Fabricate, General, Link Bucket, Physical on May 21st, 2010 Write a comment »
Welcome to the nearly-ready nearly-there future! PaperComp 2010 sounds like a very interesting workshop planned for Ubicomp 2010. Their Call For Papers says “This workshop aims at bringing together researchers exploring the future of printed interfaces and associated practices. It will act as a kick-off event for launching a new research community, articulating how different [...]
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 have [...]
Posted in Design, General, Link Bucket, Physical on Aug 24th, 2009 Write a comment »
How aesthetically beautiful are your photos? Try out Acquine, an Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine. Welcome to the brave new world of computational aesthetics!
Clever – video of evolving a human face using a genetic algorithm. A face detector is used for the fitness function.
Time to start gaming for mental health?
Haunting and beautiful sand art “animation” – [...]
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 because of [...]
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 toothbrushes get [...]
Posted in Adaptive, Fabricate, General, Materials, Personal, Physical on Jan 30th, 2008 1 Comment »
To those of you who voted in the poll about HCI tutorials, thank you. To those who didn’t bother (there’s still time) I mutter a future curse: May all your solar panels develop self-awareness and go on strike.
Anyhow, previously I touched upon the idea of objects and tools that enable us to more [...]
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 mind [...]
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 Differences, Fabricate, Materials, Personal, Physical on May 15th, 2007 Write a comment »
Ooooh the 2007 World Conference on Mass Customization & Personalization (MCPC) should make your earwax melt from idea overload. I reckon I might try and get along.
On Donal Reddington’s excellent MadeForOne.com website Mass Customization is defined as “enabling a customer to decide the exact specification of a product or service, and have that product or [...]
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 when [...]
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?” you [...]
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 in [...]
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
