The following video is a presentation by Dale Herigstad, Chief Interaction Officer at Possible Worldwide, from the 2012 TV of Tomorrow Show. If you are interested in interactivity and UX across screens and spaces, it is worth taking the time to watch! WHO OWNS THE NEW SCREEN EXPERIENCES?
The "new world" combines TV and the internet, and poses new opportunities for design. Dale encourages flexibility and fearlessness, and setting goals for the long term. This means that organizations must move away from the "silo" approach, and create teams that can integrate across screens, platforms, content, and input methods, moving from flat-space to interactive, dynamic,layered, 3D, and augmented space. BTW, Dale Herigstad was one of the people commissioned by Steven Spielberg to work on the interface design for Minority Report.
Earlier this year, Microsoft bought Jeff Han's company, founder of Perceptive Pixel. Jeff Hans now works for the Microsoft Office division of the company, where there is a push to bring new and improved large multi-touch displays to the corporate world. With this off-the-desktop move, developers are challenged to develop applications for Windows 8 that will be geared towards supporting collaboration in corporate settings. Jeff Han and Nathan Fish were at Microsoft's "Build" conference recently to give a presentation about the nuts and bolts of the new technology - how it works, and suggestions for design. Although the video presentation is over an hour long, it is worth setting aside some time to watch!
Here is the description of the presentation: "Develop solutions that flow with your customers business - starting with individuals and information workers on their phones, desks or virtual offices, moving into conference rooms, brainstorm areas, boardrooms and common areas. Learn how Microsoft's new pen and touch capabilities, software and hardware will enable you to develop products that will help businesses be more efficient. Have a sneak peek on what our large multi-touch displays (82' and 55') can bring to your solutions." -Microsoft Build Jeff Han emphasized that touch interaction is everywhere and is a fundamental requirement in applications. Windows 8 apps should be designed for all screen sizes, saying "It's all about collaboration of people and a collaboration of devices that gets your work done....this is the real thing, and it is about to happen. Devices (referring to large displays) are coming... we do have a mechanism for early access hardware."
During the second half of the video (38:00), Nathan Fish discusses guidelines for designing experiences on large displays, including optimization, handling various interactions via pen, touch, and gestures, the use of application bars and context menus, and more.
At the beginning of his presentation, Nathan Fish briefly discusses the uncharted territory of designing for collaborative large displays, and tells the audience that the guidelines are just suggestions, " nothing is written, we are figuring this out as we go."
My fear is that Windows 8 developers might not have the inclination to think past the smaller screens of smartphones and tablets, resulting in touchy-feely variations of PowerPoint and other Office applications that have been around for too long.
What happened to the Surface Table? I was surprised that Jeff Han's company was not folded into PixelSense, formally known as Surface, the division of Microsoft that focuses on large multi-touch tables. In my opinion, the tables had some potential to support collaborative work in the corporate world. It will be interesting to see how things unfold! PixelSense Take a look at the video clip below for more information:
Discover the Samsung SUR40 (with PixelSense) Samsung SUR40 with Microsoft PixelSense PixelSense Development Partners Insights on Interactive Tabletops: A Survey of Researchers and Developers(pdf) Hrvoje Benko, Meredith Ringel Morris, A.J. Bernheim Brush, and Andrew D. Wilson 2009, Microsoft Research SOMEWHAT RELATED I've been interested in large screen displays and how they interact with smaller devices for a very long time. In 2007, I was taking graduate courses at UNC-Charlotte and planned to pursue further research and work related to this area. At the time, I prepared a paper to present at a conference, but was unable to present due a serious health emergency in my family. The abstract is below: "Large screen displays support the collaboration of two or more people, especially when the nature of the content is visual. These displays, in the form of walls, windows, boards, and touch-tables, will become ubiquitous in the future, and can be found in workplaces, educational institutions, museums, and other public spaces. New display systems have been developed that allow for co-located communication between groups of people, and also allow for collaboration with individuals in remote locations, using mobile computing or communication devices. This paper will provide an overview of the technologies that support this new way of communication, discuss the challenges involved in establishing "interoperability" within these new systems, and examine the possibilities for the future."
If this topic interests you, take a look at one of my Flickr collections: Ubiquitous Sightings of Urban Screens: Interactive Displays in Public Spaces, Digital Signage, and Screens of All Sizes Description: "All kinds of displays are cropping up in shopping centers, malls, banks, stores, airports, schools, businesses, and meeting places. What is the purpose of all of these displays? Displays and mobile devices, everywhere we go. It doesn't look like we've really figured out how to harness the potential of the technology that surrounds us."
Children in the UK were asked to create self-portraits for a special arts project designed to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee. The self-portraits were digitized and transformed to create a media facade that was projected on Buckingham Palace. This example of digital art for public viewing was shared on a number of large screen displays in public spaces around the UK.
This project was part of Face Britain. All children in the UK were invited to submit a self-portrait in an attempt to create the largest on-line gallery of self-portraits in the world.
What I especially like about this presentation is the way the students highlighted the current state of technology in their urban schools, and what they have to say about their schools' policies regarding the use of personal technologies during the school day.
If you are interested in digital media/new media/multimedia and learning, take the time to view John Seely Brown's DML 2012 Keynote: Cultivating the Entrepreneurial Learner in the 21st Century
TEI '12 is finishing up in Kingston, Ontario. If you missed it, like I did, don't worry. Many of the presentations were streamed live, and are available to watch at your convenience. (The panel gets started at about 1: 48 on the timeline)
Exploring peripheral interaction design for primary school teachers Saskia Bakker Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands Elise van den Hoven Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands Berry Eggen Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands Kees Overbeeke Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands
Below is the description of TEI 2012 from the conference website:
"TEI 2012 is the sixth international conference dedicated to presenting the latest results in tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction. It is being held 19th to 22nd February 2012 at Queen's Human Media Lab in Kingston, Ontario, Canada."
"The work presented at TEI addresses HCI issues, design, interactive art, user experience, tools and technologies, with a strong focus on how computing can bridge atoms and bits into cohesive interactive systems. The intimate size of this single-track conference provides a unique forum for exchanging ideas and presenting innovative work through talks, interactive exhibits, demos, hands-on studios, posters, art installations and performances."
"This year's conference features submissions in the area of Organic User Interfaces (OUI). Reflecting this, the theme of this year's conference is "fold unfold"."
You know you've secretly wanted to learn to code. Just do it!
"Make your New Year's resolution learning to code.Sign up on Code Year to get a new interactive programming lesson sent to you each week and you'll be building apps and web sites before you know it." -Code Year http://codeyear.com/
BTW, coding skills are needed beyond the world of apps and websites. Take a look at some of the posts and links on this blog - your imagination just might be sparked! If you already know how to code, why not commit to learning something new?
COMMENT: There is much more to coding than what you'll learn through Code Academy's Code Year process. If you are serious about learning more about coding, computer science, and software systems, take an introductory course at your local community college or university extension program, preferably with a friend. Ask the instructor if some of the assignments can be done through the "paired programming" technique. It is more fun and social than the traditional way of coding!
Of all the textbooks, videos, and coding/programming self-help books I've come across, the series that has made the most sense to me is the brain-friendly "Head First" publications from O'Reilly. It explains things well for beginners. Although it contains text and code, there are many pictures, diagrams, and humorous visual representation of basic concepts that are much more engaging than traditional "learn-to-code" tomes.
It is not too late to learn to code! There are so many great resources available to us now, in 2012, there is no excuse to ignore your inner geek. If some (or all) of your hair is grey, why do crossword puzzles or Sudoku when you can be creative with code?
I took my first programming class about 8 years ago, when my youngest daughter was in high school. It was daunting at first, because the textbook was dry, the programming labs were tedious, and some of my mostly-male classmates already knew how to code. In my case, I was motivated to learn to code because I wanted to create games at the time, and this got me over the hump. I soon learned that coding is both a science and an art, and learning to code opens up a whole new way of thinking. (See the video of Jeanette Wing's presentation about computational thinking, at the end of this post.)
For 2012, my goal is to brush up on my previously learned coding skills and learn a few new ones related to the Kinect. I also want to become comfortable with HTML5.
This will be our third annual workshop in conjunction with CHI 2012.
One of the primary goals of teaching is to prepare learners for life in the real world. In this ever changing world of technologies such as mobile interaction, cloud computing, natural user interfaces, and gestural interfaces like the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect, people have a greater selection of tools for the task at hand. Teachers and students can leverage these tools to improve learning outcomes. Educational interfaces and software are needed to ensure that new technologies serve a clear purpose in the classrooms and homes of the future.
Since teachers are always looking for creative ways to engage 21st century learners, there needs to be an academic venue for researchers to discuss novel educational tools and their role in improving learning outcomes. This workshop aims at filling this void: combining the pedagogical expertise of the cooperative learning, and learning sciences communities with the technical creativity of the CHI, UIST and interactive surface communities. The objective of this workshop is to become a conference within two years
We invite authors to present position papers about potential design challenges and perspectives on how the community should handle the next generation of HCI in education.
Submission: The deadline for workshop paper submissions is Dec 20, 2011. Interested researchers should submit a 4-page position paper in the ACM CHI adjunct proceedings style to the workshop management system. Acceptance notifications will be sent out February 20, 2012. The workshop will be held May 5-6, 2012 in Austin, Texas. Please note that at least one author of an accepted position paper must register for the workshop and for one or more days of the CHI 2012 conference.
