User Designer

8pen is a novel alternative to the keyboard. I wonder is it any good and useful? How does it compare to Dasher? Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) are on the rise – a recent Nature paper covers an experiment where measures of thinking are used to separate out images. The BCI research community is gaining traction – [...]

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Neat video showing off Paper Computing. Author electronic circuits by painting and dropping electronic components on paper! (found via Turbulence.org) Any ideas on how I can design and build a Charisma Augmentation Device…? Learn about the science of charisma. Handy handy – a useful new and free visualisation tool called Parallel Sets has just been [...]

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All the world is aflame with the iPhone! Have a look at this example of the iPhone used as an Augmented Reality device. (thanks Karl) See how the world looks to a baby’s eyes. What is our psychology of time? Read The future is nonlinear on Mind Hacks to learn more. Drool drool love the [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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) [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Time for a quick hop skip and jump into cognitive science. Yep, I’ve already broken a New Year resolution by writing a longer post than I aimed for….though it is about some really interesting research that goes directly to the heart of User Designer: Are there benefits and dangers of changing artifacts and tools to [...]

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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 [...]

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Do you know when your right is wrong? How distorted is your experience of reality? Read about the 26 different kinds of Cognitive Bias. I wonder how the biases influence user experience? For when you’re in a dancing mood and craving some eye candy: lots and lots of music videos “that overlap the music video [...]

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Oh dear, battle of the brain! This is one of those makes you blink very interesting ideas: Do the neurons in a baby’s brain compete against each other in a Darwinian fashion? On idealist you can read about lots of (possible) inventions or share your ideas and creativity. I’d like to get my hands on [...]

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Here’s a great TED talk by Dan Gilbert where he talks about Synthetic versus Natural Happiness. “Natural Happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted. Synthetic Happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we wanted.” During the talk he discusses the implications of some experiments which demonstrate that giving [...]

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