NORDES conference in Oslo
coming soon…
New book: Engineering Haptic Devices
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.
Paper accepted at IASDR 2009 in Seoul, Korea!
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.
Recent interesting bits on Haptic and more
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 notes and report
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…
CRD seminar Citerna
coming soon…
SIDeR’09 notes
coming soon…
CHI’09 notes
coming soon…
Symposium Split notes
CRD seminar Luleå
CRD seminar Luleå
March 9-11 2009, Luleå, Sweden
Gender and Design
The latest CRD research school meeting took place up north in Luleå at the Luleå Tekniska Universitet (LTU). The theme for the seminar was Gender and Design and I have to say I really enjoyed the event. I couldn’t understand all of the deep discussions during the three days, but I understood quite a bit, enough at least to find the different issues at hand very interesting.
The event took place at LTU’s DesignLab, part of the Work and Occupational Studies (Arbetsvetenskap) department. We had the chance to visit their nice facilities (including the nice acoustic rooms and an elaborate driving simulator). It was also interesting to learn and discover their Industrial Design Engineering program. They have quite a lot of students attending this education and the projets we could see looked different from what you expect from an Engineering school. This program seems to seat directly at the meeting point of Industrial Design and Production Engineering. Quite technical, but very interesting, really.
The first presentation from Janne Johansson was a truly interesting historical review of the Work and Occupational studies field. He presented the different roots and important works that led to the current situation we have today in this domain. Sweden and Scandinavia were precursors in many aspects, and it was nice to get this historical perspective.
During the following days, many presenters took the stage and revealed their work/research related to Gender and Design. I never realized that so much gender-specific are present in our day-to-day life and the objects/services surrounding us. We you stop and think about it, it’s everywhere, and kind of scary actually. And I don’t think we can avoid it really. We are all humans and member of one gender. Females and males are different in many ways, but we are naturally alike in other ways: we all social creatures that need to sleep, eat, interact with the world. Our value system is particularly culture-dependant and it affects greatly how we relate to gender-specific issues. Designers play an even bigger role as their “job” is to materialize, concretize, fulfill user’s needs and wishes. Bits and atoms are shaped and assemble according to a strange mix of personal values (or client’s ones) and technical possibilites. It is inevitable that gender-specific characteristics are present in designers’ works, both consciously and unconsciously.
Marcus Jahnke, from HDK/Göteborgs presented his work and publication FormgivningNormgivning. It contains fine examples of gender issues in relation to design, both from a critical perspective (discursive design he calls it) and from a proactive perspective. Nothing revolutionary, but definitely essential to explore/consider/reflect upon in today’s design projects.
I have now many articles and documents to read about the field. I’ll definitely try to embrace this aspect in my own research (and teaching also).
Resources and links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_role
On gender and things: Reflections on an exhibition on gendered artifacts
Design and emotion: the experience of everyday things
By Deana McDonagh, Paul Hekkert, Jeroen van Erp, Diane Gyi
Ewa Gunnarson, article/page