Oct 5, 2009
Adam Greenfield's Encounter with Fashionable Urban Screens
Curious? I posted about it on The World Is My Interface blog, along with links to Adam's blog post and related information:
Good News for Creative Techies: Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Adds Support for Multitouch!
I sort of knew something was going on at Adobe when I posted the following video clip on this blog a few months ago. Rumors can transform into realities, right?
If you want to cut to the chase, sign up NOW to be notified about the BETA release of Flash Professional CS5 BETA: Adobe Labs: Adobe Flash Professional CS5 BETA
Here are the new features as described from the CS5 BETA website:
Adobe tries keeping Flash in Web vanguard
Stephen Shankland, CNET news 10/4/09
"Flash Player 10.1 also adds support for multitouch user interfaces, which are all the rage for good reason right now because they can enable an intuitive, direct interaction with computing equipment. There have been experiments with multitouch in Firefox, but it's a complicated issue in general since there's some contention about whether the operating system, a browser, or a browser plug-in is in charge of interpreting multitouch commands"
If you want to cut to the chase, sign up NOW to be notified about the BETA release of Flash Professional CS5 BETA: Adobe Labs: Adobe Flash Professional CS5 BETA
Here are the new features as described from the CS5 BETA website:
- Applications for iPhone — Publish ActionScript 3® projects in Adobe Flash Professional to run as applications for iPhone. Learn more.
- New text capabilities via the Text Layout Framework (TLF) — Get unprecedented text control and creativity with projects created in Flash. Advanced styling and layout, including right to left text, columns, and threaded text blocks, let you work with text in Flash like never before.
- XML based FLA files — Manage and modify project assets using source control systems and enable teams to easily collaborate on files.
- Code Snippets panel — Choose prebuilt code that can be injected into projects to increase interactivity and also reduce the ActionScript 3 learning curve.
- Flash Builder™ integration — Use Adobe Flash Builder software as your ActionScript editor within projects in Flash.
- Improved ActionScript editor — Improve productivity with custom class code hinting and completion.
Adobe tries keeping Flash in Web vanguard
Stephen Shankland, CNET news 10/4/09
"Flash Player 10.1 also adds support for multitouch user interfaces, which are all the rage for good reason right now because they can enable an intuitive, direct interaction with computing equipment. There have been experiments with multitouch in Firefox, but it's a complicated issue in general since there's some contention about whether the operating system, a browser, or a browser plug-in is in charge of interpreting multitouch commands"
Oct 4, 2009
Don Norman's Keynote at the 21st Century Transmedia Symposium: "Transmedia Design Challenge: Co-creation" (New technologies allow creativity to blossom)
Don Norman was the keynote speaker at the 21st Century Transmedia Innovation Symposium. I noticed that his speech can be redistributed for non-commercial use, so here it goes!
DON NORMAN'S KEYNOTE
We live in exciting times. Finally, we are beginning to understand that pleasure and fun are important components of life, that emotion is not a bad thing, and that learning, education and work can all benefit through encouraging pleasure and fun. Up to now, a primary goal of product and service design has been to provide useful functions and results. We should not lose track of these goals, but now that we are well on our way to doing that for an amazing variety of goods and services, it is time to make sure that they are pleasurable as well. Not only does this require emotions to be a major component of design thinking, but we must incorporate action as well, actions that use the whole body in movement, rhythm, and purpose.
In the bad old days we learned that thinking - cognition - was king. Emotion was bad. We were encouraged to memorize, to study, to think abstractly in words: reading, writing, and arithmetic prevailed.
But that is not how people have evolved. We are living animals, creatures with bodies, with legs and arms, eyes and ears, taste and odor sensors, vestibular and feeling systems. We use our bodies to understand the world: we learn from concrete experiences, not from abstractions: abstraction comes last. If cognition is about understanding the world, emotion is about interacting with it: judging, evaluating, and preparing to engage.
Games are the natural way we explore the world. Modern games are engaging, entertaining, and filled with learning experiences. They require thinking and acting, cognition and emotion, body motion and mental creativity. Games ought to be how we learn in school. Teachers should learn along with students. The key term here is "Engagement."
Transmedia is a strange beast. It comes from the world of commerce, where different people and companies used to own different parts of our experience. Transmedia talks of the new emergence of multiple media in common pursuit of a story or experience. Alas, it still focuses upon corporations, companies, profit making, and ownership. It mainly speaks of how companies tie together movie releases with videos, games, books, and websites. Blogs and tweets, social networking and telephone calls. Yes, this is a clever use of multiple media, but it is still based upon a distorted view of commerce: We make it, you consume it. The media moguls think of this as a one-way transmission: they would have their companies producing, with us everyday people consuming. Why the asymmetry? We should all be producers. We should all have a say in what we experience.
Let transmedia stand for those multi-sensory natural experiences: trans-action, trans-sensory. Let it stand for the mix of modalities: reading and writing, speaking and seeing, listening and touching, feeling and tasting. Let it stand for actions and behavior, thought and emotion. My form of transmedia has nothing to do with companies and formal media channels. It has everything to do with free, natural powerful expression.
There is another side of this new transmedia: co-development, co-creation, co-ownership. In this new world, we all produce, we all share, we all enjoy. Teacher and student learn together achieving new understanding. Reader and writer create together. Game player and game developer work together. This is the age of creativity, where everyone can participate. Everyone can be a designer. Everyone can be involved.
The personal computer revolution has been both liberating and restricting. We have gained access to powerful technologies for communicating with one another, for creating art, music, and literature. Everyday people could do extraordinary things. At the same time, we were trapped by the confines of a keyboard, mouse, and screen. Instead of actively engaging the world, we spent our days in front of keyboards and screens, typing and pointing.
Today, we are moving beyond the constraints of the mouse, screen, and keyboard. Now we can merge all the benefits of the information revolution with the benefits of movement and activity. We can post notes on buildings where only the intended receiver can see them, or we can let everyone see them, whatever we wish. We can play games or hold meetings with people all over the world, moving, gesturing, and acting.
Products used to be designed for the functions they performed. But when all companies can make products that perform their functions equally well, the distinctive advantage goes to those who provide pleasure and enjoyment while maintaining the power. If functions are equated with cognition: pleasure is equated with emotion: today we want products that appeal to both cognition and emotion.
CONSUMING VERSUS PRODUCING: SPECTATOR VERSUS CREATOR.
There is a major difference between the experience of consuming versus producing, or if you will, between being a spectator and being a creator. In the traditional view of media, most of us are consumers. Artists and companies produce, the rest of us consume. We are spectators.
There is nothing the matter with being an audience, a consumer, or a spectator. It is how we have come to enjoy the great works of art and literature. We go to galleries and view, theatres and watch, libraries and read. We can be casual or engaged, watching from a distance or becoming deeply embedded in the events of the painting, music, opera, video, or book. We can become emotionally involved, weeping or laughing as the scenes unfold.
But there is a great difference when we are actually engaged in the activity, whether as producer, participant, or creator. When playing a musical instrument, I am producing and all the senses are involved. I am engaged with the music and the playing. I feel the sound pulsating through my body. My mind is completely engaged with the music, not only with the emotional aspects and the sound, but also with the physical and cognitive complexities of the mechanics of playing. To me it is simultaneously frustrating and pleasurable. To the listeners, it is probably awful, but I am not playing for them, I am playing for myself.
The same holds true for the objects of our lives. We can purchase them in stores, bring them home and either display or use them. They may give pleasure. But contrast this with objects that we ourselves have created or, perhaps, co-created.
Consider the old story so beloved in introductory marketing courses about the introduction of cake mix. When the Better Crocker Company first introduced a cake mix, so the story goes, it was supposed to revolutionize the making of cakes. Instead of hours of toil, one only had to open the package of cake mix, add water, and bake. The result was a simple, satisfying cake. But the product was not a success. Housewives (which at the time was the target audience - college students and single people were not then considered a market) rejected it. After a bit of market research, the Betty Crocker Company realized that they had made the mix too simple: there was no pride of ownership. The cake could have been purchased at a store. It tasted fine, but it wasn't truly made at home, even if it was baked at home.
The solution was to modify the recipe to require the addition of an egg. This worked: sales soared. Requiring a bit of extra labor gave the cook some feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of being the producer.
Today, a reasonable number of products are designed to require work and effort on the part of their possessor. IKEA furniture has to be assembled by the recipient. Harley-Davidson motorcycles are customized by their owners: many take their bikes straight from the dealer to the custom house, and even though they themselves do not do the customization, they spend considerable time and thought specifying just how the finished bike shall look and behave. Similarly, many home electronics devices are customizable, with personalizable "skins," adjustable features, add-on components, and hand-painted exteriors. So too with automobiles. One could argue that part of the popularity of social sites is that they are personal: one is sharing personal ideas and thoughts.
But how much of this is creative? How much requires commitment and concern, deep thought and effort? Most of this is the simple following o instructions, whether for a cake or a chair. Or customizing an automobile by choosing among predefined options such as color and fabric. None of this is truly creative, none of this is truly meaningful.
Adding an egg to a mix that didn't really need one makes use of the clever psychology, but it is not what I call being truly creative. The cake mix, with egg or without, is mindless. Read the instructions and follow them: everyone's mix produces the same result. Following instructions to assemble furniture does not qualify, but mixing and matching furniture parts to create something personal, something special does. So too with the customization of the Harley bike. Even though the customization is actually done by the specialists in the shop, the specification and design relate to the specific needs and aspirations of the bike owner.
Music mashups qualify. Here, one takes samples of existing music and mixes them to create a truly novel experience. The result may sound awful or wonderful, but that is not nearly so important as the act of creation that is invoked. The world of "Do it yourself" or "make" relishes in creativity and imagination. Mashups work across all media, sometimes producing spoofs and satire, sometimes truly useful and valuable results.
Here is a simple example of a mashup that, although not deep and profound, does reveal cleverness and a sense of humor, creating a clever spoof of two very different events. The first event occurred during the televised presentation of an MTV Video award. Just after one award had been announced, someone (Kanye West) jumped on to the stage to complain that a better performer, Beyonce, had been passed over. The second event was a major speech on healthcare by President Obama to the United States Congress. Obama's speech was interrupted by a congressman who shouted "you lie." An enterprising mashuper recognized the similarities of the two interruptions and quickly combined components of the two videos so that the complaint about Beyonce was inserted into President Obama's speech. As a result, now one can watch president Obama delivering a speech on healthcare with a heckler interrupting to say "I'm a let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time," to which Obama calmly responds, "not true." That is mashup as satire. Mashups don't have to be satirical, of course: when someone takes census data, overlaps it with police reports, and enters all on to a city map, that is mashup as meaningful and important.
Good games can also create meaningful participation, meaningful experiences. Whatever the form of game - athletics and sports, cards, board games, video or computer - the players are simultaneously creating the experience. Perhaps this is why they are so engrossing. They provide a transmedia experience where people are simultaneously spectator and performer, and in the case of many games, using all of the senses, all of the body.
New technologies allow creativity to blossom, whether for reasons silly or sublime. Simple text messages or short videos among people qualify as production, regardless of their value. This new movement is about participating and creating, invoking the creative spirit. This is what the transmedia experience should be about. All of these experiences are allowing people to feel more like producers and creators rather than passive consumers or spectators.
THE DESIGN CHALLENGE: ACTIVE, PARTICIPATORY TRANSMEDIA
Transmedia experiences are not particularly new. Consider an opera, a musical comedy, a Hollywood (or better, a Bollywood) extravaganza, or an amusement park. All of these are experiences that cut across the media: sight and sound, motion and emotion. But all of these involve a transmitter of the experience and a passive audience. Creation is not new. Artists and craftspeople create. Amateurs artists and musicians create. Game players create. But in all of these activities, there are still creators and viewers. Moreover, the creativity is often limited, much as it is limited in so-called "personalization" of software or IKEA furniture: it is limited by the desires of the manufacturer. What is needed is meaningful, thoughtful creation and participation.
Jon Kolko examined this point in a thoughtful essay in Interactions Magazine. Assembling IKEA furniture is not a display of creativity, nor are any of the standard selections of items from a menu that go along with simple personalization or customization choices offered by manufacturers or websites. A simple, mindless twitter is not creative. True creativity requires some thought, some work, some effort. It has to be reflective, even if only after the fact. Mindless creativity has its place, but the real challenge before us is to unleash the substantive creativity inside most people.
The new design challenge is to create true participatory designs coupled with true multi-media immersion that reveal new insights and create true novel experiences. We all participate, we all experience. We all design, we all partake. But much of this is meaningless: how do we provide richness and depth, enhanced through the active engagement of all, whether they be the originators or the recipients of the experience?
How will this come to pass? What is the role in everyday life? Will this be a small portion or will it dominate? Will it even be permitted within the confines of contemporary commercialism? Those are the significant design challenges.
DON NORMAN'S KEYNOTE
THE TRANSMEDIA DESIGN CHALLENGE: Co-Creation
I agreed to give a keynote address at the "21st Century Transmedia Innovation Symposium". Normal dictionaries do not have the word "transmedia," but Wikipedia does. That definition introduced me to many other words that neither I nor my dictionaries had never before heard (for example, narratological). Strange jargon aside, I do believe that there is an important idea here, which explore in this column.(Intelligible discussions can be found in the books and articles of Henry Jenkins (2003, 2006).)
We live in exciting times. Finally, we are beginning to understand that pleasure and fun are important components of life, that emotion is not a bad thing, and that learning, education and work can all benefit through encouraging pleasure and fun. Up to now, a primary goal of product and service design has been to provide useful functions and results. We should not lose track of these goals, but now that we are well on our way to doing that for an amazing variety of goods and services, it is time to make sure that they are pleasurable as well. Not only does this require emotions to be a major component of design thinking, but we must incorporate action as well, actions that use the whole body in movement, rhythm, and purpose.
In the bad old days we learned that thinking - cognition - was king. Emotion was bad. We were encouraged to memorize, to study, to think abstractly in words: reading, writing, and arithmetic prevailed.
But that is not how people have evolved. We are living animals, creatures with bodies, with legs and arms, eyes and ears, taste and odor sensors, vestibular and feeling systems. We use our bodies to understand the world: we learn from concrete experiences, not from abstractions: abstraction comes last. If cognition is about understanding the world, emotion is about interacting with it: judging, evaluating, and preparing to engage.
Games are the natural way we explore the world. Modern games are engaging, entertaining, and filled with learning experiences. They require thinking and acting, cognition and emotion, body motion and mental creativity. Games ought to be how we learn in school. Teachers should learn along with students. The key term here is "Engagement."
Transmedia is a strange beast. It comes from the world of commerce, where different people and companies used to own different parts of our experience. Transmedia talks of the new emergence of multiple media in common pursuit of a story or experience. Alas, it still focuses upon corporations, companies, profit making, and ownership. It mainly speaks of how companies tie together movie releases with videos, games, books, and websites. Blogs and tweets, social networking and telephone calls. Yes, this is a clever use of multiple media, but it is still based upon a distorted view of commerce: We make it, you consume it. The media moguls think of this as a one-way transmission: they would have their companies producing, with us everyday people consuming. Why the asymmetry? We should all be producers. We should all have a say in what we experience.
Let transmedia stand for those multi-sensory natural experiences: trans-action, trans-sensory. Let it stand for the mix of modalities: reading and writing, speaking and seeing, listening and touching, feeling and tasting. Let it stand for actions and behavior, thought and emotion. My form of transmedia has nothing to do with companies and formal media channels. It has everything to do with free, natural powerful expression.
There is another side of this new transmedia: co-development, co-creation, co-ownership. In this new world, we all produce, we all share, we all enjoy. Teacher and student learn together achieving new understanding. Reader and writer create together. Game player and game developer work together. This is the age of creativity, where everyone can participate. Everyone can be a designer. Everyone can be involved.
The personal computer revolution has been both liberating and restricting. We have gained access to powerful technologies for communicating with one another, for creating art, music, and literature. Everyday people could do extraordinary things. At the same time, we were trapped by the confines of a keyboard, mouse, and screen. Instead of actively engaging the world, we spent our days in front of keyboards and screens, typing and pointing.
Today, we are moving beyond the constraints of the mouse, screen, and keyboard. Now we can merge all the benefits of the information revolution with the benefits of movement and activity. We can post notes on buildings where only the intended receiver can see them, or we can let everyone see them, whatever we wish. We can play games or hold meetings with people all over the world, moving, gesturing, and acting.
Products used to be designed for the functions they performed. But when all companies can make products that perform their functions equally well, the distinctive advantage goes to those who provide pleasure and enjoyment while maintaining the power. If functions are equated with cognition: pleasure is equated with emotion: today we want products that appeal to both cognition and emotion.
CONSUMING VERSUS PRODUCING: SPECTATOR VERSUS CREATOR.
There is a major difference between the experience of consuming versus producing, or if you will, between being a spectator and being a creator. In the traditional view of media, most of us are consumers. Artists and companies produce, the rest of us consume. We are spectators.
There is nothing the matter with being an audience, a consumer, or a spectator. It is how we have come to enjoy the great works of art and literature. We go to galleries and view, theatres and watch, libraries and read. We can be casual or engaged, watching from a distance or becoming deeply embedded in the events of the painting, music, opera, video, or book. We can become emotionally involved, weeping or laughing as the scenes unfold.
But there is a great difference when we are actually engaged in the activity, whether as producer, participant, or creator. When playing a musical instrument, I am producing and all the senses are involved. I am engaged with the music and the playing. I feel the sound pulsating through my body. My mind is completely engaged with the music, not only with the emotional aspects and the sound, but also with the physical and cognitive complexities of the mechanics of playing. To me it is simultaneously frustrating and pleasurable. To the listeners, it is probably awful, but I am not playing for them, I am playing for myself.
The same holds true for the objects of our lives. We can purchase them in stores, bring them home and either display or use them. They may give pleasure. But contrast this with objects that we ourselves have created or, perhaps, co-created.
Consider the old story so beloved in introductory marketing courses about the introduction of cake mix. When the Better Crocker Company first introduced a cake mix, so the story goes, it was supposed to revolutionize the making of cakes. Instead of hours of toil, one only had to open the package of cake mix, add water, and bake. The result was a simple, satisfying cake. But the product was not a success. Housewives (which at the time was the target audience - college students and single people were not then considered a market) rejected it. After a bit of market research, the Betty Crocker Company realized that they had made the mix too simple: there was no pride of ownership. The cake could have been purchased at a store. It tasted fine, but it wasn't truly made at home, even if it was baked at home.
The solution was to modify the recipe to require the addition of an egg. This worked: sales soared. Requiring a bit of extra labor gave the cook some feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of being the producer.
Today, a reasonable number of products are designed to require work and effort on the part of their possessor. IKEA furniture has to be assembled by the recipient. Harley-Davidson motorcycles are customized by their owners: many take their bikes straight from the dealer to the custom house, and even though they themselves do not do the customization, they spend considerable time and thought specifying just how the finished bike shall look and behave. Similarly, many home electronics devices are customizable, with personalizable "skins," adjustable features, add-on components, and hand-painted exteriors. So too with automobiles. One could argue that part of the popularity of social sites is that they are personal: one is sharing personal ideas and thoughts.
But how much of this is creative? How much requires commitment and concern, deep thought and effort? Most of this is the simple following o instructions, whether for a cake or a chair. Or customizing an automobile by choosing among predefined options such as color and fabric. None of this is truly creative, none of this is truly meaningful.
Adding an egg to a mix that didn't really need one makes use of the clever psychology, but it is not what I call being truly creative. The cake mix, with egg or without, is mindless. Read the instructions and follow them: everyone's mix produces the same result. Following instructions to assemble furniture does not qualify, but mixing and matching furniture parts to create something personal, something special does. So too with the customization of the Harley bike. Even though the customization is actually done by the specialists in the shop, the specification and design relate to the specific needs and aspirations of the bike owner.
Music mashups qualify. Here, one takes samples of existing music and mixes them to create a truly novel experience. The result may sound awful or wonderful, but that is not nearly so important as the act of creation that is invoked. The world of "Do it yourself" or "make" relishes in creativity and imagination. Mashups work across all media, sometimes producing spoofs and satire, sometimes truly useful and valuable results.
Here is a simple example of a mashup that, although not deep and profound, does reveal cleverness and a sense of humor, creating a clever spoof of two very different events. The first event occurred during the televised presentation of an MTV Video award. Just after one award had been announced, someone (Kanye West) jumped on to the stage to complain that a better performer, Beyonce, had been passed over. The second event was a major speech on healthcare by President Obama to the United States Congress. Obama's speech was interrupted by a congressman who shouted "you lie." An enterprising mashuper recognized the similarities of the two interruptions and quickly combined components of the two videos so that the complaint about Beyonce was inserted into President Obama's speech. As a result, now one can watch president Obama delivering a speech on healthcare with a heckler interrupting to say "I'm a let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time," to which Obama calmly responds, "not true." That is mashup as satire. Mashups don't have to be satirical, of course: when someone takes census data, overlaps it with police reports, and enters all on to a city map, that is mashup as meaningful and important.
Good games can also create meaningful participation, meaningful experiences. Whatever the form of game - athletics and sports, cards, board games, video or computer - the players are simultaneously creating the experience. Perhaps this is why they are so engrossing. They provide a transmedia experience where people are simultaneously spectator and performer, and in the case of many games, using all of the senses, all of the body.
New technologies allow creativity to blossom, whether for reasons silly or sublime. Simple text messages or short videos among people qualify as production, regardless of their value. This new movement is about participating and creating, invoking the creative spirit. This is what the transmedia experience should be about. All of these experiences are allowing people to feel more like producers and creators rather than passive consumers or spectators.
THE DESIGN CHALLENGE: ACTIVE, PARTICIPATORY TRANSMEDIA
Transmedia experiences are not particularly new. Consider an opera, a musical comedy, a Hollywood (or better, a Bollywood) extravaganza, or an amusement park. All of these are experiences that cut across the media: sight and sound, motion and emotion. But all of these involve a transmitter of the experience and a passive audience. Creation is not new. Artists and craftspeople create. Amateurs artists and musicians create. Game players create. But in all of these activities, there are still creators and viewers. Moreover, the creativity is often limited, much as it is limited in so-called "personalization" of software or IKEA furniture: it is limited by the desires of the manufacturer. What is needed is meaningful, thoughtful creation and participation.
Jon Kolko examined this point in a thoughtful essay in Interactions Magazine. Assembling IKEA furniture is not a display of creativity, nor are any of the standard selections of items from a menu that go along with simple personalization or customization choices offered by manufacturers or websites. A simple, mindless twitter is not creative. True creativity requires some thought, some work, some effort. It has to be reflective, even if only after the fact. Mindless creativity has its place, but the real challenge before us is to unleash the substantive creativity inside most people.
The new design challenge is to create true participatory designs coupled with true multi-media immersion that reveal new insights and create true novel experiences. We all participate, we all experience. We all design, we all partake. But much of this is meaningless: how do we provide richness and depth, enhanced through the active engagement of all, whether they be the originators or the recipients of the experience?
How will this come to pass? What is the role in everyday life? Will this be a small portion or will it dominate? Will it even be permitted within the confines of contemporary commercialism? Those are the significant design challenges.
Don Norman wears many hats, including co-founder of the Nielsen Norman group, Professor at Northwestern University, Visiting Professor at KAIST (South Korea), and author, his latest book being The Design of Future Things. He lives at jnd.org
- Jenkins, H. (2003). Transmedia storytelling: Moving characters from books to films to video games can make them stronger and more compelling. Technology Review. http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/13052/
- Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.
- Kolko, J. (2009). On creation and consumption. Interactions, 16(5), 80-80.
Column written for Interactions. © CACM. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. It may be redistributed for non-commercial use only, provided this paragraph is included. The definitive version will be published in Interactions.Thanks, Don Norman, for this inspiring discussion!
Oct 3, 2009
Interactive TV Game Controllers - A variety of permutations for the present and the future (iPhone, iPod Touch, Wii mote, XBox 360 Controller, Gesture...)
Building on my previous post, The Convergence of TV, the Internet, and Interactivity: Updated and Revised, I thought I'd focus on the different ways people can interact with converging content through interactive TV, internet-connected game consoles, and so forth. Is it time someone came up with a user-friendly UNIVERSAL CONTROLLER that could handle cross platform, cross media interaction?
How About the iPhone as Controller for Apple TV Gaming Console?
(Read the article's comments section to see what people think about this concept.)
Of course, if you have a Wii, you know about the Internet Channel:
Wii + Internet=More
Video of a real 12-year-old kid navigating through the Wii Internet and Wii News/Earth. He provides a great "think aloud" analysis of his interaction.
"They should make a video game that is geography based on something like this..."
Wii + Internet=More
Video of a real 12-year-old kid navigating through the Wii Internet and Wii News/Earth. He provides a great "think aloud" analysis of his interaction.
"They should make a video game that is geography based on something like this..."
Xbox permutations:
This:
Or maybe even this, if you blog, chat, or tweet:
The following social/interactive applications can be controlled by your Xbox Controller:(The photos were taken from Gizmodo "Microsoft E3 Keynote Archive" and Zatz Not Funny!: Xbox 360: Welcome to the Social?)
Sky Player on Xbox 360 to Launch Mid-October
With the introduction of gesture-based interaction, such as Microsoft's Project Natal, in the future, no controller will be required to interact with your screen, no matter the content.
Project Natal for Xbox 360 could put Microsoft ahead of Wii with controller-free gaming
YOU ARE THE CONTROLLER
XBox Project Natal Website
Motion Sensing Confirmed for 2010 (Sony PlayStation 3)
RELATED
Interactive demonstration of how BBC's Red Button works for interactive TV content. You can press the red button on the mockup, located on the lower right-hand section of the screen.
BBC Red Button Demo
BBC Red Button launches new CBeebies interactive service
Digital Television Group 9/28/09
Social Television and User Interaction
(Scholarly articles on this topic from the ACM Portal)
Stefan Agamanolis (researcher in this area)
Interactive TV Research from UITV.INFO
The Convergence of TV , the Internet, and Interactivity: Updated and Revised.
Yesterday I read an interesting article about the future of television on Experientia's Putting People First blog:
Herkko Hietanen: The social future of television.
In this article, Herkko Hietanen, a researcher at Helsinki Institute of Information Technology, is interviewed about his thoughts about the future of TV. He observes that "TV is broken" and thinks that "social television" is a concept that needs to be seriously addressed. "Herkko ends with the observation that social television isn’t a new concept. We’ve seen lots of experimentation with split screens, which allow chat alongside live broadcast. “But television is a lean-back experience,” Herkko offers – you don’t want to share screen estate with your friends. Instead, he believes that social interactions will be before and after the show."
So what's happening now? I'm not sure if the people on the technology end of the interactive/social TV scene have thought very deeply about how this will play out in our homes and social networks. Right now, the only way I can access the Interactive TV channel my satellite carrier is through the user-unfriendly remote, which looks something like this.
My experience with the interactive TV channel on DISH Network has been frustrating. Why should I be forced to use a complicated remote-control system to interact with content? Why should I be forced to experience a poorly-designed navigation system? It is common knowledge that remote control systems are poorly designed, despite the fact that companies such a EchoStar have been involved with interactive TV for at least a decade now.
What puzzles me is that things have not evolved very much, at least in terms of TV and interaction design. Here is an example -the following picture is a screen shot from a recent promo video about Playin' TV, an interactive TV offering that is the result of a collaboration between Dish Network and Echostar. From what I can gather from the video, the only way to play the games through the user-unfriendly remote control!
Interactive TV innovations from DISH Network: Playin'TV- Dish Network-Echostar- Promo October 2009 - Play Games on your TV!
(A list of games available for Dish Network subscribers can be found on the DishGames website.)
Visiware is behind Playin'TV, Playin' Casino, MiniKids TV, and Playin'Star. Playin'TV games now available on Internet connected televisions. There must be a better way. Why not control the games with a Wiimote or iPhone? Visiware might be working on some changes, from the information on their User Interface and Design web page: "It’s time for your New Generation Interface Design : Consumers expect innovative yet simple interfaces Compelling, intuitive U.I. is the key to success (Iphone, WII…)"
Digging Deeper
In the video clip below Bill Leszinske, GM, from Intel Digital Home, discusses the future of interactive television. Consumers want to take their television experience and augment it with the internet experience. Bill outlines the different ways this can happen:
Intel's Next Generation TV: Social Networking, 3D TV
How will technology support this convergence?
The following articles provide an overview of Intel's chip technology, previously known as "Sodaville", called SoC, System on a Chip: Intel Unveils "Sodaville" Chip for TV Set-Top Boxes (Mark Hachman, PCMag, 9/24/09)
"But putting PC on a TV doesn't work; we know, we tried it," Kim said. "People want an immersive TV experience on their television." People want the power of the Internet on a TV, but they want it "simple," Kim said...What's needed is a pure Internet development framework, Kim said – and the most popular version of that is Adobe's Flash technology. David Wadhwani, general manager of the platform business unit at Adobe, said that the company has opened Flash and removed all license fees, requiring only that manufacturers to open the platform to third-party developers, as part of the Open Screen initiative.
Wadhwani demoed Flash 10 running on an Intel processor, showing full-screen Flash browsing, not to a Web site, but to a custom screen designed by Disney."
"The Sodaville processor uses an Atom core, and Intel has brought "Moore's Law" to shrink the processor to 45 nanometer technology. The Atom Processor CE4100, as it will be formally called, includes a 1080p video engine not to just decompress streams, but also recorded content supplied from another source, such as a hard drive. Intel doubled the speed of its 2D/3D engine, and added support for MPEG-4. The chip uses either DDR-2 or DDR-3 memory."
Intel Technology, Processing Power Key to TV Revolution (Intel Developer Forum, 9/24/09)
New Intel chips run Web apps on TV sets (Sodaville) (itbusiness.ca, 9/25/09) Podcast version
In the following video, Intel's work in the area of 3D Internet is discussed:
Intel Introduces the 3D Internet
Intel is also collaborating with Adobe to innovate mobile media production, which most likely lead to some interesting outcomes:
Adobe CS4 and the New Intel Core i7 Mobile
"Rendering is blazing fast." Mobile rendering on the road...anywhere anytime editing...
RELATED LINKS AND THOUGHTS
I previously posted on this topic a few times:
March 2009
Digital Convergence and Interactive Television; Boxee and Digital Convergence
December 2008: An Example of Convergence: Interactive TV: UXTV 2008
In my opinion, there are many factors to consider when thinking about television as we know it, web-based TV, and interactive television. Technology exists that can support the convergence of the social web and interactive television, but the key players are coming from different directions and with different agendas. Television still is a "push" medium, and this concept appears to be embedded in the mindsets of people involved with commercial TV programming.
For example, if you watch an episode of your favorite TV show via a network website, you are forced to watch commercials all along the way. If you stop the show and resume it after a break, you might even see the SAME commercial again! This is annoying, just another example of the "push" mentality. In my mind, this is a form of banner ad and pop-up litter- or even contamination! Where is the seamless, engaging, innovative UX here? (There are some examples of progress, such as the ABC's FlashForward website.)
I'm a subscriber to DISH Network, which offers some interactive TV programming. I went to the DISH Network website to find out more about it, and this is what assaulted my vision:
The website design looks pretty pushy to me. Does this foreshadow the future of Interactive TV?
Here's a screenshot of another DISH Network website:
From this web page you can link to the following web pages: DISH Remote Access: Sling "Your Browser, Your TV" - links to product overviews: Slingbox: "Watch your TV anywhere" SlingPlayer Mobile: "Extend your Slingbox experience to a mobile phone" SlingCatcher: " Extend your Slingbox Experience to a TV" Accessories: "Make your Sling Experience Complete"
An excerpt from Sling's promotional information:
"Founded in 2004, Sling Media, Inc. is a different kind of consumer electronics company - one that's working to demystify convergence technologies and to create empowering experiences for the digital media consumer. The focus of Sling Media is to embrace - not replace - existing products and standards by enhancing them with hardware and software that make divergent technologies compatible and greatly improve the consumer experience. Because, after all, can't we all just get along?! "
"Sling Media, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS), is a leading digital lifestyle company offering consumer services and products that are a natural extension of today's digital way-of-life. Sling Media's product family includes the internationally acclaimed, Emmy award-winning Slingbox that allows consumers to watch and control their living room television shows at any time, from any location, using PCs, Macs, PDAs and smartphones and the revolutionary new SlingCatcher, a universal media player that seamlessly delivers broadcast TV, Internet video and personal content to the TV. Sling Media is also the company behind the video entertainment web site, Sling.com, offering consumers a wide variety of popular TV shows, movies and other entertainment free for viewing online or on the TV using SlingCatcher."
I managed to find information about DISH's interactive TV offerings elsewhere on the web:
DISH Network(R) Premieres Interactive Television Experience for New History Series BATTLES BC
DISH Network (R) Announces Winners of 8th Annual Interactive Television Awards
At any rate, here is a smattering of related articles and video-clips related to the future of TV that I'm presently contemplating:
Interactive TV Today: "InteractiveTV Today [itvt] is the most widely read and trusted news source on the rapidly emerging medium of multiplatform, broadband interactive television (ITV)"
TV's Killer App? Guess What, It May Be An App
Joe Mandese, Media Daily News 10/2/09
Ensequence
Video games, Interactive TV, and Cheats
Interactive TV/Internet at the hospital: Interactive TV Gives Patients Access to Movies and Internet
Skylight Internet Access Patient System
I'll add information about the next generation of remote control technology soon.
Herkko Hietanen: The social future of television.
In this article, Herkko Hietanen, a researcher at Helsinki Institute of Information Technology, is interviewed about his thoughts about the future of TV. He observes that "TV is broken" and thinks that "social television" is a concept that needs to be seriously addressed. "Herkko ends with the observation that social television isn’t a new concept. We’ve seen lots of experimentation with split screens, which allow chat alongside live broadcast. “But television is a lean-back experience,” Herkko offers – you don’t want to share screen estate with your friends. Instead, he believes that social interactions will be before and after the show."
So what's happening now? I'm not sure if the people on the technology end of the interactive/social TV scene have thought very deeply about how this will play out in our homes and social networks. Right now, the only way I can access the Interactive TV channel my satellite carrier is through the user-unfriendly remote, which looks something like this.
My experience with the interactive TV channel on DISH Network has been frustrating. Why should I be forced to use a complicated remote-control system to interact with content? Why should I be forced to experience a poorly-designed navigation system? It is common knowledge that remote control systems are poorly designed, despite the fact that companies such a EchoStar have been involved with interactive TV for at least a decade now. What puzzles me is that things have not evolved very much, at least in terms of TV and interaction design. Here is an example -the following picture is a screen shot from a recent promo video about Playin' TV, an interactive TV offering that is the result of a collaboration between Dish Network and Echostar. From what I can gather from the video, the only way to play the games through the user-unfriendly remote control!
Interactive TV innovations from DISH Network: Playin'TV- Dish Network-Echostar- Promo October 2009 - Play Games on your TV!
(A list of games available for Dish Network subscribers can be found on the DishGames website.)
From the Playin' TV website, I linked to the Visiware website:
"Expert in casual gaming, Visiware is the world-leading provider of games for pay television. Its game channels are carried on more than 30 cable, satellite and IPTV networks and reach more than 120 million people within 77 countries." Visiware is behind Playin'TV, Playin' Casino, MiniKids TV, and Playin'Star. Playin'TV games now available on Internet connected televisions. There must be a better way. Why not control the games with a Wiimote or iPhone? Visiware might be working on some changes, from the information on their User Interface and Design web page: "It’s time for your New Generation Interface Design : Consumers expect innovative yet simple interfaces Compelling, intuitive U.I. is the key to success (Iphone, WII…)"
Digging Deeper
In the video clip below Bill Leszinske, GM, from Intel Digital Home, discusses the future of interactive television. Consumers want to take their television experience and augment it with the internet experience. Bill outlines the different ways this can happen:
- Internet access is built into the television.
- The internet can be accessed through the a set-box from a cable or satellite TV carrier
- Interactive internet access can be built into a Blu-Ray box or gaming system
- The technology will support 3D games and social networking.
Intel's Next Generation TV: Social Networking, 3D TV
How will technology support this convergence?
The following articles provide an overview of Intel's chip technology, previously known as "Sodaville", called SoC, System on a Chip: Intel Unveils "Sodaville" Chip for TV Set-Top Boxes (Mark Hachman, PCMag, 9/24/09)
"But putting PC on a TV doesn't work; we know, we tried it," Kim said. "People want an immersive TV experience on their television." People want the power of the Internet on a TV, but they want it "simple," Kim said...What's needed is a pure Internet development framework, Kim said – and the most popular version of that is Adobe's Flash technology. David Wadhwani, general manager of the platform business unit at Adobe, said that the company has opened Flash and removed all license fees, requiring only that manufacturers to open the platform to third-party developers, as part of the Open Screen initiative.
Wadhwani demoed Flash 10 running on an Intel processor, showing full-screen Flash browsing, not to a Web site, but to a custom screen designed by Disney."
"The Sodaville processor uses an Atom core, and Intel has brought "Moore's Law" to shrink the processor to 45 nanometer technology. The Atom Processor CE4100, as it will be formally called, includes a 1080p video engine not to just decompress streams, but also recorded content supplied from another source, such as a hard drive. Intel doubled the speed of its 2D/3D engine, and added support for MPEG-4. The chip uses either DDR-2 or DDR-3 memory."
Intel Technology, Processing Power Key to TV Revolution (Intel Developer Forum, 9/24/09)
New Intel chips run Web apps on TV sets (Sodaville) (itbusiness.ca, 9/25/09) Podcast version
In the following video, Intel's work in the area of 3D Internet is discussed:
Intel Introduces the 3D Internet
Intel is also collaborating with Adobe to innovate mobile media production, which most likely lead to some interesting outcomes:
Adobe CS4 and the New Intel Core i7 Mobile
"Rendering is blazing fast." Mobile rendering on the road...anywhere anytime editing...
RELATED LINKS AND THOUGHTS
I previously posted on this topic a few times:
March 2009
Digital Convergence and Interactive Television; Boxee and Digital Convergence
December 2008: An Example of Convergence: Interactive TV: UXTV 2008
In my opinion, there are many factors to consider when thinking about television as we know it, web-based TV, and interactive television. Technology exists that can support the convergence of the social web and interactive television, but the key players are coming from different directions and with different agendas. Television still is a "push" medium, and this concept appears to be embedded in the mindsets of people involved with commercial TV programming.
For example, if you watch an episode of your favorite TV show via a network website, you are forced to watch commercials all along the way. If you stop the show and resume it after a break, you might even see the SAME commercial again! This is annoying, just another example of the "push" mentality. In my mind, this is a form of banner ad and pop-up litter- or even contamination! Where is the seamless, engaging, innovative UX here? (There are some examples of progress, such as the ABC's FlashForward website.)
I'm a subscriber to DISH Network, which offers some interactive TV programming. I went to the DISH Network website to find out more about it, and this is what assaulted my vision:
The website design looks pretty pushy to me. Does this foreshadow the future of Interactive TV?
Here's a screenshot of another DISH Network website:
From this web page you can link to the following web pages: DISH Remote Access: Sling "Your Browser, Your TV" - links to product overviews: Slingbox: "Watch your TV anywhere" SlingPlayer Mobile: "Extend your Slingbox experience to a mobile phone" SlingCatcher: " Extend your Slingbox Experience to a TV" Accessories: "Make your Sling Experience Complete"
An excerpt from Sling's promotional information:
"Founded in 2004, Sling Media, Inc. is a different kind of consumer electronics company - one that's working to demystify convergence technologies and to create empowering experiences for the digital media consumer. The focus of Sling Media is to embrace - not replace - existing products and standards by enhancing them with hardware and software that make divergent technologies compatible and greatly improve the consumer experience. Because, after all, can't we all just get along?! "
"Sling Media, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS), is a leading digital lifestyle company offering consumer services and products that are a natural extension of today's digital way-of-life. Sling Media's product family includes the internationally acclaimed, Emmy award-winning Slingbox that allows consumers to watch and control their living room television shows at any time, from any location, using PCs, Macs, PDAs and smartphones and the revolutionary new SlingCatcher, a universal media player that seamlessly delivers broadcast TV, Internet video and personal content to the TV. Sling Media is also the company behind the video entertainment web site, Sling.com, offering consumers a wide variety of popular TV shows, movies and other entertainment free for viewing online or on the TV using SlingCatcher."
I managed to find information about DISH's interactive TV offerings elsewhere on the web:
DISH Network(R) Premieres Interactive Television Experience for New History Series BATTLES BC
DISH Network (R) Announces Winners of 8th Annual Interactive Television Awards
At any rate, here is a smattering of related articles and video-clips related to the future of TV that I'm presently contemplating:
Interactive TV Today: "InteractiveTV Today [itvt] is the most widely read and trusted news source on the rapidly emerging medium of multiplatform, broadband interactive television (ITV)"
TV's Killer App? Guess What, It May Be An App
Joe Mandese, Media Daily News 10/2/09
Ensequence
Video games, Interactive TV, and Cheats
Interactive TV/Internet at the hospital: Interactive TV Gives Patients Access to Movies and Internet
Skylight Internet Access Patient System
I'll add information about the next generation of remote control technology soon.
Sep 29, 2009
London Design Festival Winners - Visualization Category: Multi-Touch Barcelona; Experiential Category: LM3Labs
Multitouch Barcelona and LM3Labs were among the winners in the London Design Festival!
Visualization Category: Multi-Touch Barcelona
Human Interface (A Real Human!)
Hi from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.
"With a client list that includes Red Bull, you know these guys aren’t messing around. Multitouch Barcelona designs "experiences that merge real and digital into a creative environment where people are invited to touch, play, move, feel as they do in the real world." Clearly enjoying a tongue-in-cheek methodology, the group’s philosophy seems to grow out of an affinity for natural interaction. The recent work showcased at Offf (a festival for, um, "post-digital creation culture") perfectly shows both their whimsy and tech chops. For example, the Human Interface, a person you use as a computer by asking him to carry out tasks such as email using a keyboard made from cardboard and tubes that carry email around. Nothing short of hilarious and yet strangely alarming." -Grand designers: the world's best design work Paul Armstrong, Wired UK, 8/17/09
I love Multitouch Barcelona. Especially their Space Invaders project.
(I posted this video previously, but I like it so much I decided to post it again!)
Multitouch Space Invaders XL from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.
Another company I follow, LM3Labs, won in the Experiential category:
Showreel:
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