352 Media Group: Creating a Microsoft Deep Zoom Silverlight Wall: Great idea, could use some optimization for touch or IWB interaction

Ever since I explored the Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia website on my HP TouchSmart PC, I've been on the look-out for other great touch-friendly applications created with Microsoft's Deep Zoom and Sliverlight.  Today, I came across an example that holds some promise, although it needs some tweaking before it is truly touch-ready.

352 Media Group is a web development firm that has been experimenting with Microsoft's Deep Zoom in Silverlight.  The results can be seen on the 352 Media Group Deep Zoom Page.  On this page, you can interact with the deep zoom wall. You might need to install a Silverlight plug-in on your browser. Scroll down and read the "How Did We Do It?" section for specifics.


Note:  I tried this in three browsers on my HP TouchSmart PC,  Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox.  At the top of the viewing box, it says, "Click inside to zoom in".  Clicking the picture or touching my touch screen did not activate the zoom.  However, it did enable me to zoom in the wall through scrolling with my mouse.  

If you touch the picture with your finger, you can move it around, and you can do this with your mouse as well.  At the upper left-hand corner of the frame, there are tiny icons that will allow you to zoom in or out. If the icons were just a little bit larger, with just a little bit more space between them, it would be easy to activate the zoom feature with my finger.


RELATED
Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines: Touch
Windows 7 Touch
Microsoft Silverlight Deep Zoom
Information from Microsoft Live Labs about Sliverlight Deep Zoom
Autostitch
This was the program used to help stitch together the pictures on the wall into a format that could be used with Deep Zoom.

Cross posted on The World Is My Interface blog.

Thomas Hansen's Multi-Touch Wisdom: "Windows Touch vs PyMT - Why programming on Windows is too complicated!"

If you are interested in designing or programming multi-touch programs and like elegant, concise code, you'll appreciate Thomas Hansen's recent blog post:


Windows Touch vs PyMT:  Why multi-touch programming on Windows is too complicated!


Here is an excerpt from Thomas Hansen's blog post:


"If you read the rest of the blog post, I’ll show you what I mean about context, and why e.g.  Windows Touch makes life difficult if you want to program multi-touch.  I’ll show you how to rewrite a windows touch example project (5 C# source files and > 400 lines of code) in Python using PyMT (1 source file with 12 lines of code).  Yes 12 lines, you read correctly (and then there is the whole thing about it just running on Linux or OSX as well…but we’ll leave that for another blog post)."


At the end of his post, Thomas makes a comment that I think is worth considering:


"The interaction paradigm is so revolutionary, I think we need to adopt our development tools more to it and explore the interaction space.  Instead I think people are jumping the gun on trying to standardize the interface while using the development paradigms we used for the GUI."


Well said!


Thomas Hanson is a member of the NUI Group.  He is a graduate student at the University of Iowa, pursuing his PhD in Computer Science, specifically Human Computer Interaction.  

IDPedia: Interaction Design Patterns for Games Library!

From the HelpYouPlay IDPedia (Interaction Design Patterns for Games Library) website:


"Design patterns are ways to describe best practices, explain good designs, and capture experience so that other people can reuse these solutions. The idea of a pattern was introduced by the architect Christopher Alexander for use in urban planning and building architecture, but since then a pattern community has emerged that specifies patterns for all sorts of problems. Interaction design patterns aim to capture optimal solutions to common usability or accessibility problems in a specific context. Typically best practices concerning interaction design are described as guidelines or heuristics. We consider interaction design patterns to be more descriptive than guidelines as it tells a designer exactly when, how and why the solution can be applied." 

Thanks, Barrie Ellis (One-Switch Games) for the link!


SOMEWHAT RELATED
Game Usability and Accessibility
Donate to the AbleGamers Fundraiser!
The funds will support the work of the AbleGamers Foundation, and donations are tax-deductible.

"The AbleGamers Foundation's mission is to empower the disabled population to enjoy the digital revolution that is taking place in gaming... We believe in harnessing the power of many people's voices to solve the problems of the not so few. The AbleGamers Foundation strives to bring together individuals from every lifestyle with a common goal of improving the lives of the disabled. Everyone has the right to enjoy the world, and together, we can make that possible. Together, we can make it possible for everyone to enjoy the rich content of digital entertainment with his or her friends and family regardless of disability."

Eelke Folmer's Human-Computer Interaction Research

Usability Patterns in Games (pdf)
Accessibility in Games and Virtual Worlds
Interaction Design Patterns

Eelke Folmer's presentation at the 2009 Games 4 Health Conference, Boston
Game Accessibility WorkshopG4H: game accessibility research @ University of Nevada, Reno

View more presentations from eelke folmer.

Jeremy Perez-Cruz: One Minute Video Presentation for the AIGA Make Think Design Conference

During the opening night community session at the recent AIGA Make/Think conference, twenty AIGA chapter leaders from around the country took the stage. Jeremy Perez-Cruz,of AIGA Orlando, was one of them. This was his 60 seconds:

Make Think from Tea&Letter on Vimeo.
Quote from Jeremy's Vimeo channel:
"My one minute video presentation for the AIGA design conference's 20/20. 20 designers in 20 minutes. October 8, 2009 Memphis, TN. Shot and edited with the patient assistance of deebstudios.com Music: "Joy" by Four Tet (Make Think remix by me)."
Jeremy's design:related page
Jeremy's AIGA Profile

More Multi-Touch & Urban Screens: SoTouch, onedotzero, the Aurora Mindstorm table, and collaboration at the Adventures in Motion festival in London

SoTouch and onedotzero collaborated to create a multi-touch, multi-user application that ran on a Mindstorm Aurora table at the onedotzero Adventures in Motion Festival at the BFI Southbank in  London during in September 2009. The interactive application provided festival participants enjoyable ways to filter and search the festival program. The art director for this project was Alex Le Guillou.



(Music: Raindrops, by Basement Jaxx)

How it works

How does it work? 
According to information provided by So Touch, users can search by dragging and dropping keywords in personal search discs.  Physics rules incorporated into the SoTouch application allow the manipulated objects bump and react to each other, encouraging social interaction among the people at the table.  For this particular application, each even could be viewed in a description panel, including timing, description, pictures, and videos, enabled for multi-touch gesture interaction. Additionally, people could use the table to send emails to friends, using a scalable keyboard.

The application was designed for flexibility, using the TUIO protocol, and allowing it to be customized for use at other festivals or shows through xml.


Detail


About SoTouch "Intelligent Surfaces"
"We deliver complete solutions to turn passive environment into active business contributor in retail, show room and trade show, leveraging multi-touch and touch-less technology."

Julien Lescure, CEO, and Florian Bernard, CTO, founded SoTouch, an advanced digital agency,  in early 2009.  The company is based in the U.K.

About onedotzero
"Onedotzero  is a contemporary, digital arts organisation with a remit to promote innovation across all forms of moving image and motion arts, activities encompass public events, artist + content development, publishing projects, education, production, creative direction, and related consultancy services ... onedotzero was conceived at the start of the desktop digital revolution in the mid-1990s out of a desire to explore moving image across single screen, interactive and live audio-visual work. today, onedotzero remains committed to providing a home for visionary moving image experimentation and contemporary creative collisions."



Interactive Urban Screen

The interactive urban screen installation, also known as the 2009 onedotzero identity, was made interactive by a Nokia n900 mobile phone, as shown in the pictures and video clips below.





onedotzero interactive identity powered by Nokia N900 from onedotzero on Vimeo.

Nokia n900 onedotzero Installation- Behind the Scenes


Onedotzero - Watch the interaction with an urban screen with a Nokia n900 (Story behind the scenes story).


RELATED
N900 to appear in London next week!
(JBC, Nokia Conversations, 9/4/009)
According to the article,  the application for the installation was developed by digital artists/computational designers Karsten Schmidt and Gary Birkett. (I think the ad agency Wieden + Kennedy London was also involved with this project, since Nokia is their client.)



More about Mindstorm   
                        
Simon Cowell and X Factor judges us Mindstorm interactive touchscreen to decide who goes through. Paul Milligan, AVInteractive, 10/6/09





Mindstorm Aurora Table

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:

More from Multitouch Barcelona!

Multitouch Barcelona is up to more great work!

Multitouch Space Invaders XL

Multitouch Space Invaders XL from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.

Guten Touch, by Multitouch Barcelona

GUTEN TOUCH from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.

"Designed for the Red Bull Music Academy 08, Guten Touch is an interactive installation that involves people into a natural relationship with technology. A two projected display system plus a 3m x 2m multitouch wall showcase applications designed to engage us into human friendly experiences rather than flashy and jaw-dropping visualizations. Space Invaders hit by foam balls, pixel paintings created with brushes and digital objects held by hands try to blur boundaries between real and digital."

Multi-touch Barcelona (new site)
"Multitouch Barcelona is a recently born interaction design group that explores natural communication between people and technology. They design touch sensitive environments where real world interactions move to a digital context. Interfaces where people touch, play, move, feel...Where senses play their natural role, where everything just 'happens" as it does in the real world. "




RELATED
Offf 2009: International Festival for the Post-Digital Creation Culture

xXtraLab's Multi-touch Projects

xXtraLab is an interaction design firm located in Taiwan. The xxtralab team has been working on some interesting multi-touch projects. Take a look!

Multi-touch wall for briefing and real-time info sharing
Multisensory iTea-table

LIVING 3.0 - multi-sensory i-TeaTable and briefWall from xxtralab on Vimeo.

NIKE 6453 TPE Multi-touch Table

NIKE 6453 Interactive Table from xxtralab on Vimeo.

"xXtraLab Design Co. is one of the leading multimedia company in Taiwan, focusing on the design & engineering of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) interfaces in museum, exposition, and showrooms (client lists here). Members of xXtraLab come from diversifying fields such as visual design, digital media, architecture, interior design, information engineering, design computing, industrial design, and fine art. we respect different cultural views and work as a multi-disciplinary team to offer inclusive design services."

Interaction Design 2009: Video of Dan Saffer's Presentation

Dan Saffer - Attention Awareness for Interaction Designers 2009 from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

Dan Saffer is an interaction designer who recently spoke at the 2009 IXDA conference. His company is Kicker Studio.

FYI: Gestural Entertainment Center


RELATED:
What is Interaction Design?

How soon will we see interactive information visualization for multi-touch & gesture systems?

The field of information visualization is growing. Until recently, most visualizations were created for use on a single PC or larger screen, allowing for interaction by only one user at a time. I have a feeling that this will be changing in the very near future.

Why? Interactive duo and multi-touch interfaces are becoming more common, and now come in all sizes of screens, from the iPhone, the Surface, and CNN's multi-touch "Magic Wall". People of all ages play interactive games on the Wii, often on large flat-panel displays. In my opinion, the time is right for those developing applications for the InfoViz world to think about harnessing the power of multi-touch.

Below is a picture of the front page of the Visual Complexity website. If you go to the site, you can select a visualization, and then explore it more in detail, as each picture links to a web-page that provides background information about the visualization project, the artist or team behind the project, and links to the project's website.

I took a look at a variety of the examples posted on the Information Complexity website, and think many would be enhanced by a transformation to a multi-touch, gesture, bi-manual, or duo/multi user system. I'm interested in learning what others think about this. If you are working on a collaborative information visualization project, feel free to add a comment and post a link.

Here is a a nice quote from the website:

"Functional visualizations are more than innovative statistical analyses and computational algorithms. They must make sense to the user and require a visual language system that uses colour, shape, line, hierarchy and composition to communicate clearly and appropriately, much like the alphabetic and character-based languages used worldwide between humans." Matt Woolman Digital Information Graphics

Update: I did a search for "multi-touch" on the Visual Complexity website and found a couple of interactive applications:

Reactable (I've posted about this system a few times!)
(Reactable website)

Prototouch

(Wirmachenbunt Website)

Scratch: A new programming language for kids that supports stories, animations, games, music, art, and web-sharing, from MIT.

"Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design." (Scratch website)

Scratch can be downloaded, free of charge, from the website. It can run on Windows as well on Macs. There are over 12,000 contributors to this project, with over 60,000 registered members. The website provides plenty of support for teachers and students.

The Scratch project is run by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, along with the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation.

I'm looking forward to playing with Scratch on a touch-screen or interactive whiteboard.

Leave a comment if you use Scratch with kids- or for yourself.

About: Interaction Design (off the desktop)

Interaction design is a relatively new field that combines concepts related to human-computer interaction (HCI), mobile, pervasive, and ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), interface design, service design, user-experience design, interactive media design, and more.

According to Dan Saffer, an interaction designer at Adaptive Path, and author of Interaction Design: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, interaction design is "about people: how people connect with other people through the products and services they use." If you are interested in learning more about designing for interaction, Saffer's book is a great starting point.

Saffer has recently established a wikki about interactive gestures, a site for the "dissemination of gestural interface information such as found on the iPhone and Wii." This is an important resource for those of us who are interested in developing useful interactive applications for emerging technologies.

(Related information can also be found on this blog.)

More touch screen "surface" display musings...

I had my first chance to use an interactive touch-screen SmartBoard, by Smart Technologies in 2002-03. Since I work mostly with kids and teens, I wondered why large-display touch screen technology wasn't more widespread, since there are so many free, interactive websites that provide pretty engaging activities for users.

One of the things I learned was that large-display touch-screen technology is in the preschool stage. There are problems with screen responsiveness, screen resolution, durability, and input.

In recent years, the idea of a touch screen has evolved to table-tops and drafting boards, embedded within wireless systems that allow for interoperability with mobile devices and remote applications.

Great technology exists, but no-one has pulled all the components together in a way that can easily scale for the people who would benefit from this sort of technology the most - people who spend most of day time teaching, learning, or both. I had a great experience using a NextWindow Human Touch large-screen display for some of my projects last semester. It was difficult for me to track one down, but once I got my hands on it, I liked it, even though it did not have multi-touch capabilities.

One laptop for each child? That was a good idea for the late 1990's and early 2000's. One high-quality, affordable, large touch-screen display or table for each classroom would be more effective.

One touch-screen display/table for every 4-6 students would be better. Is there anyone out there who is up for the challenge?

Next Post: Updated links to interactive multimedia websites appropriate for large touch screen surfaces.