I am now in London, spending two weeks working with the nice folks at Tinker.it. The main goal of my time in London is to work on their educational toolkit called TinkerKit and see how it can be further developed.
It is really exciting to develop such a kit because it has so many possibilities and variables. It contains both old technology (cheap and proven) and the latest stuff from semi-conductors vendors. A toolkit has to be useful and helpful to people: that is easier said than done. What is useful? The big answer is: it depends! You need to balance flexibility and simplicity. What is useful for a first-time user can be very different for an advanced user. An advanced user might enjoy very basic features if pressed by time or under certain condition/mindset. So it is never black or white. It’s all grey!
Here are some high level characteristics or qualities I found interesting to consider while thinking about the ideal toolkit:
-openness and level of visibility/accessibility (simplification of complex processes but no secrets of what is going on under the hood)
-hackability (possible to use with third-party parts, for unintended uses)
-added value when time is tight (ability to get going quickly and get results fast, within minutes)
-versatility or 5 ways of doing the same thing (don’t expect that users will only use the device as intended)
-human friendly (technology that speaks for itself, ‘transpires’ its status or ways of working)
I’ll let you know as this project evolves.
HCI 2009 | Cambridge
Sept 1-4 2009, Cambridge, UK
http://www.hci2009.org
HCI 2009, Cambridge
SEPTEMBER 1 2009
Physicality 2009 International Workshop
I was very much looking to this event and I enjoyed it a lot. My position paper was titled Sketching and prototyping haptic interfaces: design challenges and insights. The people taking part in the workshop had very interesting projects to show and/or a nice approach to physicality in its broad sense.
The full proceedings of the workshop are available here.
Erik Geelhoed from HP-labs presented interesting work on Halo, a video-conference system that aims to reproduce real-life settings and context for conversation. “It’s all in the details” Mr Geelhoed said. The latency was generally not a big issue (ok up to 2000ms for video). read more…
I found some quite interesting new titles this summer. 2009 seems to be a fruitful year for publications on haptics. In june I got the Human Haptic Perception, Basics and Applications volume edited by Martin Grunwald [link]. Today, I received my copy of the new book Engineering Haptic Devices edited by Thorsten A. Kern [link].
I am so delighted to discover this book. It uncovers topics and issues I’ve been thinking for many years! I just had a quick look and the information, while quite technical, will definitely help me directly with my PhD studies. It covers all the technical side of things to build and develop haptic systems. There is a fair amount of non-technical content too, including the biological mechanisms, user’s modeling, design process and high-level considerations for successufully tackling haptics.
I’ll read it all carefully during the coming weeks. At over 140€, it is not exactly cheap, but it seems to be worth every euro cents of its price. Until I post a detailed reading report of it, here are some quick snapshots of some pages.
My paper titled Designing for touch: creating and building meaningful haptic interfaces as been accepted to this year’s International Associaton of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) in Seoul, Korea. The feedback I got was quite good and I have only some little work to do for the camera-ready version. The conference seems interesting and the list of keynote speakers is respectable: Donald A. Norman, Kees Overbeeke (I liked his CHI’09 keynote), Elizabeth Sanders and more.
I previously submitted an application for IASDR’s Doctoral Colloquium but it was rejected. The main justification for the rejection was that “the research questions are not yet tamed and developed enough”. I tend to agree with the reviewers. I still have to refine and isolate my topic, it is still way too broad.
Anyways, one out of two is still good. I now have to plan my trip to Korea. I’ll try to combine this event with DeSForM which is happening in Taipei this year, just 3 days after IASDR. I feel it will be a great combo of events: one big research conference + a smaller workshop on more hands-on subjects.
Tactilicio.us, a blog about haptic, tactility and more [link]
David Birnbaum, a graduate from McGill’s IDMIL lab now working for Immersion.
The future is haptic, right? [link]
Last night I dreamt about haptic touch-screen overlays… [link]
haptic finger overlays with dielectric elastomer actuator films [ref]
Haptics: The feel-good technology of the year [link]
ComputerWorld writes about Haptics. Mainstream press is writing about it, not bad!
Physical Interactions over IP [link]
“Touch” is a project to allow two people to touch each other’s fingers over any distance across the Internet.
Human Haptic Perception, Basics and Applications, Grunwald, Martin (Ed.) ISBN: 978-3-7643-7611-6 [link]
A very nice book that I’m reading this summer. One of the best I’ve found so far for my topic. [book]
Touch me! An article on tactile experience
[link]
Nice explorations on tactile experiences from OCAD and Telus (Canadian telecom)
Musée des arts et métiers [link]
Next time I’m in Paris I have to check it out. Seriously!
Why Do We Need Doctoral Study in Design? [link]
I should read it I guess :-)
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics Journal [link]
A nice journal I should check it more carefully. From the titles, there seems to be interesting stuff in there.
Sketching’09 | London
July 17-19 2009, London, UK
http://www.sketching09.com
This year’s Sketching event is happening in Europe for the first time. It was really nice to meet again with this excellent group of people (including UID alumi Fabricio Dore). The workshop/conference is always super interesting and the people attending always something interesting to say or show. I like it a lot and huge thanks to Mike Kuniavsky and everyone who made this event possible.
Elizabeth Goodman took and published extensive notes of the presentations and activities. It is all available on her blog (search for ‘Sketching in Hardware’). Many presenters posted their presentation file here
Here are some notes and highlights for me:
read more…
