IDEO's Human Centered Design Toolkit - A MUST READ and a great resource!

Update 12/3/12:  The IDEO HCD Toolkit is available for download, but you will need to sign up in order to download the free 105-page copy on the IDEO  HCD Connect website.


The 105-page document is a great resource from IDEO, a global design consultancy.  It is clearly written and contains a variety of pictures, charts, and diagrams that facilitate the understanding of concepts.  A 61-page field guide is also available for download, and provides support for facilitators of design projects to lead group meetings and individual interviews. It includes exercises that teams should complete before going out into the field.


"Why Human-Centered Design?"
"Because it can help your organization connect better with the people you serve.  It can transform data into actionable ideas.  It can help you to see new opportunities.  It can help to increase the speed and effectiveness of creating new solutions." -IDEO


The HCD Toolkit, 2nd Edition, was prepared for use by organizations that work with communities of need, primarily in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, which is important for high school students to know about, particularly those who are pretty sure about pursuing further education in a technology-related field.  


I also think that exposure to concepts related to human-centered design focused on work in developing countries would be helpful to encourage more female students to enroll in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) courses.  (This still is a significant problem. Both of the high schools I work at have very few girls in the computer programming classes, even though both schools have at least one female who teaches programming!)


At any rate, I think this toolkit should be a MUST READ for anyone interested in emerging technologies and human-centered design, anywhere on the planet. It transcends the concept of "design as a job that must be done" to something that can facilitate broader innovation across organizations, our communities, and the world.


The toolkit is full of tidbits of wisdom:


"Tip 1" (addresses the measurement of outcomes, akin to the "miracle question" used in solution-focused therapy/counseling/consulting.)
"Ask yourself what you would expect to see happening if the solutions were improving the lives of people. For example, if your goal was to increase household income, would women starting more businesses be an early indicator? If your goal was to increase childhood vaccinations, would the number of casual conversations about vaccines be a possible indicator?" -page 99
"Tip 2"
"It is critical to track the effects of solutions on men and women, young and old, empowered and disempowered – even if your ideas are focused on other groups. Often the group that is not the intended audience for the solutions is a key player in the implementation and use of solutions." -page 99


The toolkit also provides useful cautions:
"Watch Out"
"Often teams look for only the positive and intended consequences. To get a full view of impact, it is critical to challenge yourself to look for the negative and unintended
consequences of solutions." -page 99


The toolkit provides specific strategies, including helpful worksheets and forms, and good advice about story sharing, prototyping, identification of patterns, and so forth. Below is an example:





-IDEO



-IDEO, via Fast Company
Note:  The Human-Centered Design Toolkit was developed with the International Development Enterprises (IDE), Heifer International, ICRW, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

RELATED (and somewhat related)
Design Thinking for Social Innovation (Stanford Social Innovation Review,Tim Brown & Jocelyn Wyatt, Winter 2010)
IDEO's Guide to Designing for Social Impact
About IDEO:
Founded in 1991, IDEO is a global innovation and design firm that uses a human-centered, design-based approach to help organizations in the business, governments, education, healthcare, and social sectors grow and innovate.
Open-Source Innovation:  IDEO's Human-Centered Design Toolkit (Fast Company, Allisa Walker, 7/7/09)
Video: CEO of IDEO, Tim Brown, on Creativity, Play, and Innovation
(Touches on how our schools and work environments can and do suck out our playfulness and creativity, and provides interesting, simple suggestions.)

Update! The Post-WIMP Conversation: Some Thoughts About Conceptualizing NUI, Part I

The content of this post has been moved. For the most recent update of this post, please see:


The Post-WIMP Explorers Club:  Update of the Updates, Morning of 12/31/09

Quick Post: Video of Stantum's Multi-touch "Slate PC" Digital Resistive Touch Screen Netbook

The video is is of the Stantum Slate PC, via Netbooked's YouTube channel...The system in the video is running on a modded Dell Mini 10, and doesn't require calibration. Notice how the system easily handles a variety of interaction- fingers, thumbs, pinch, rotation, multiple finger swipes, brush strokes, fingernail action, stylus, and more.

At this time, the Stantum Slate is available for developers only.

RELATED POSTS

Stantum's Multi-touch Slate PC, Windows 7 Certified (11/17/09)
Interactive multi-touch for sound design, dj-ing, and music creation (10/25/09)
Stantum's Mobile Phone Multi-touch Interface:  Demonstration of precise interactions on a resistive touch screen (9/7/09)
Updates about NextWindow and Stantum; Upcoming Emerging Displays Technologies Conference (6/2/09)

FYI:   Netbooked's Netbook Blog

A little off-topic: Video parody of the Facebook friending ritual, only in real life - (and more serious thoughts about social software apps)

Facebook in Real Life is a short parody of the Facebook "friending" ritual by theBritish comedy sketch group, Idiots of Ants



I came across this video featured in a blog post on the Core77 website, "Software: The Other "Design for Social Impact", by Gentry Underwood, after following a link from Experientia's Putting People First blog. 

Gentry Underwood works at IDEO, and he's spent some time thinking deeply about social software design and everything that surrounds it.  His article is long, but in my opinion, very important to read, even if you are not a designer or developer.  

After you finish the article, you might be interested in visiting Underwoods' new Designing Social Software website.

Interactive Multimedia Across Platforms and Screens: Adobe's Open Screen Project; MEX Mobile User Experience Manifesto.... (Please don't annoy the user!)

I'm not sure what I think about ubiquitous Flash 10.1. and Adobe's Open Screen project. I like the idea of anything that is seamlessly cross-platform, but I shudder to think that this might let out a wave unwanted or annoying "push" advertising on on-the-go screens of all sizes. I'm assuming web developers, along with TV ad producers, will be jumping on this train without fully thinking about how their applications and designs will play out in the off-the-desktop, digital-out-of home world.

I decided to take a look, drill down through the hype, and share a few links related to this topic.

Adobe Pushes for a Flash-ier Mobile Web
Rob Pegararo, Faster Forward, Washington Post (10/5/09)
"Are you anxious to bring Flash to the mobile Web, even if it means being subjected to some over-eager Web coder's song-and-dance routine? Or would you rather do without it on the go, even if that means having to switch to a "real" computer to use some Web sites' features?"

Hopefully the "over-eager web coders" will heed the MEX Manifesto:

MEX:  Mobile User Experience 2009 Manifesto (pdf)
"The Manifesto sets out our beliefs as to how user-centred design principles can enhance the experience of multi-platform digital services."

A framework for user journeys in a multi-platform world:  Marek Poawlowski, founder of MEX

MEX: User experience journeys in a multi-platform environment from Marek Pawlowski on Vimeo.

"User experiences are evolving into increasingly complex sets of interactions between multiple devices.  In this video presentation, Marek Pawlowski of the MEX Mobile User Experience strategy forum, shows how a framework can be used to map user journeys through the multi-platform environment."

"Unencumbered by wires, information is flowing into every corner of our world at an ever increasing rate and through an ever increasing range of digital platforms. The single greatest challenge facing digital industries is understanding how this explosion of data will be woven into the fabric of consumers' lives." -- Marek Pawlowski, founder of MEX.

MEX Blog 

OPEN SCREEN VIDEO

Open Screen Project from Vyshak V on Vimeo.

"The Open Screen Project is an industry-wide initiative, led by Adobe and backed by other industry leaders who all share one clear vision: Enable consumers to engage with rich Internet experiences seamlessly across any device, anywhere. Partners in the Open Screen Project are working together to provide a consistent runtime environment for open web browsing and standalone applications — taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe® AIR®. This consistent runtime environment will remove barriers to publishing content and applications across desktops, mobile phones, televisions, and other consumer electronics." Learn more

Reinventing Storytelling in the Digital Age Across Platforms, Across Screens

NAB 2009 presentation by Shantanu Narayen of Adobe and A.D. Albers, of Disney Interactive Media Group, from NAB 2009
Adobe and NVIDIA Deliver Rich Web Experiences on Netbooks and Mobile Devices
Reuters (10/5/009)
"At Adobe MAX, Adobe's worldwide developer conference, Adobe Systems Incorporated and NVIDIA Corporation..announced that both companies are bringing uncompromised browsing of rich Web content to netbooks, smarphones and smartbooks built with NVIDIA GPUs. The companies have been working closely together as part of the Open Screen Project to optimize and dramatically improve performance of Flash Player 10.1 by taking advantage of GPU video and graphics acceleration on a wide range of mobile Internet devices. NVIDIA customers embracing Flash Player 10.1 for their new devices include HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Acer, Asus and more..."


RIM Joins Open Screen Project  Reuters (10/4/09 )


Honey I Shrunk the Flash Player Simon Bisson and Mary Branscome, ZDNET, 10/12/09

Teaming up with Adobe and the Open Screen Project -Google Blog   Bill Coughran (10/5/09)


Paramount Digital Entertainment Launches Interactive Thriller on MySpace  Tracy Sedlow, InteractiveTV Today (10/28/09)
"The company says that it can deliver the show's multiple interactive elements to viewers across devices using Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR, "because of efforts by the Open Screen Project, an industry-wide initiative led by Adobe and supported by PDE and close to 50 other industry leaders, to enable people to engage with rich Internet experiences across any device, anywhere." -

Two good articles by Bill Buxton: The Mad Dash Towards Touch Technology; The Long Nose of Innovation

I came a couple of interesting links to a couple of articles from the Putting People First blog. The links are articles written by Microsoft Research principal scientist, Bill Buxton.  If you've never heard of Bill Buxton, he's the guy that was doing multi-touch research way back in the 1980's. 

The Mad Dash Toward Touch Technology
Bill Buxton, Business Week, 10/21/09
"True innovators need to know as much about when, why, and how not to use trendy technology as when to use i."

The Long Nose of Innovation
Bill Buxton,  Business Week, 1/2/08
"The bulk of innovation is low-amplitude and takes place over a long period. Companies should focus on refining existing technologies as much as on creation." 

RELATED
Updated!

Multi-Touch Systems that I Have Known and Loved
(Bill Buxton)


I came across Bill Buxton's Multi-Touch website in early 2007 when I was taking HCI and Ubicomp.  I was searching for information about large touch-screen displays and applications for a couple of class projects.  The website was the answer to my graduate student prayers.  On the site, you'll find a fantastic overview of the history of "multi-touch", including gesture recognition and related surface technologies. 

The website has interesting links.  If you have the time, take a look at Buxton's main websitehttp://www.billbuxton.com/. You'll find loads of interesting links. I especially like the links to his Business Week articles.



Bill Buxton is the author of "Sketching User Experiences:  Getting the design right and the right design", a book that I own and recommend.

The WSN-Bar: Ambient Intelligence + Wireless Sensor Network + Interactive Touch Technology + Art

AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE + WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK + INTERACTIVE TOUCH TECHNOLOGY + ART


Graduate students at the Center for Art and Technology -Taipei National University of the Arts,created a interactive touch creation, called the WSN-BAR, based on the concept of ambient intelligence, utilizing a wireless sensor network and vision-based tracking technologies. The video below demonstrates two modules, the Garden of Light, and Vivacious Bushes.

According to information from the WSN-Bar website, the installation detects the changes in the brightness of the environment, temperature, the C02 density of the outdoor air, and the movement of people within a building. This technology works in harmony to support the artistic focus of the WSN-BAR. It provides a means of looking at environmental factors and the relationships between humans and nature, in an innovative way. 

WSB-Bar


The WSN-Bar was created by Jiun-Shian Lin, SuChuHsu, and Ying-Chung Chen. The artwork was by Chiung-Fang Tsao, Chia-Wen Chen, Yu-Hsiung Huang and Yi-Wei Chia.  I'm not sure who created the relaxing ambient background music in the video.


 
 -Interactive WSN-Bar


Wireless Sensor Networks:  a building block for Mass Creativy and Learning (pdf)
(To appear in the Proceedings of ACM Creativity & Cognition 2009 - Understanding the Creative Conversation)

Thanks to Kevin O'Mahony for the link!

RELATED
ACM Creativity & Cognition 2009
Everyday Creativy: Shared Languages & Collective Action
Octobmer 27-30 2009
Berkeley Art Museum & UC Berkeley

 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi Professor of Psychology & Management
Claremont Graduate University [California, USA]

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin Director, Allosphere Research Laboratory
Nanosystems Institute [California, USA]

Jane Prophet Professor of Interdisciplinary Computing
Goldsmiths University of London [London, UK]

Interactive micro-projectors for everyday life, from Light Blue Optics

LIGHT BLUE OPTICS: INTERACTIVE MICROPROJECTORS IN YOUR DAY-TO-DAY LIFE   -(The World Is My Interface blog)

10/GUI: Another Twist to Multi-touch Interface and Interaction

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

I came across a link to this video via Experientia's Putting People First blog post about MG Siegler's TechCrunch post, 10/GUI: One Very Slick Desktop Multi-Touch Concept (Video).  This video was created by R. Clayton Miller, and the video above is a concept video, food for further thought and discussion.

I've written about the need for more appropriate form factors in the past, and the idea that Miller proposes is quite intriguing, since I've toyed with the idea of using something like a flexible mouse pad as an adaptive interface for students who have problems with fine-motor control, limiting their ability to use a mouse, keyboard, or even some of the adaptive switches that are available.

(It is interesting to note that Siegler's blog post was written on 10/13/09, and as I write this post on 10/15/09, it has 92 comments and 460 tweets. My guess this is a hot topic, especially now that HP has released new versions of the all-in-one HP TouchSmart PC).

Siegler discusses Michael Arrington's 10/12/09 post, Why Desktop Touch Screens Don't Really Work Well For Humans. Arrington's post discusses the reasons why he's not happy with the TouchSmart, because the desktop on which most people use it requires them to keep their hands up on the screen, above the heart, which can be fatiguing.

I have an HP TouchSmart, and I switch back and forth, depending on what I'm doing.  I didn't think of this before, but I have a very adjustable chair that I raise up when I use my hands on the touch screen. Without thinking, I've made the appropriate adjustment.  Not everyone has the luxury of a fancy adjustable deskchair!

From what I can tell, Miller is focused on how multi-touch technology can support the work or pleasure of just one person, which is still how many people interact with their computers.  What is needed is more thought about ways this technology could support two or more people working together.  My HP TouchSmart works well with two people, even when when running single-touch programs. But it is better when it runs duo-touch enabled programs!

Interactive Motion Graphics Showreel from Filmview Services - great content!

Here is a showreel from Filmview Services that simulates how tech-usability in an interactive gesture/touch world should be!



Here is a quote from the Filmview Services blog:


What Are Screen Graphics?

"...So it works out more cost effective for the films to actually have someone put the graphics on the screens for real. It also greatly enhances the performance of the actors. You only have to watch any of the Star Wars Eps 1-3 to see how wooden acting is when you don’t actually know what is in front of you. Actors love to be able push buttons and bang touch screens during their scenes. Having to actually do it in a certain order can stretch their capabilities mind you, and I am pretty gob smacked at how absolutely computer illiterate some of them are. Don’t they use email?


Anyway, due to this diminished ability to hit and bang things in any certain order, it is our job to make it impossible to mess things up. That’s why they are all genius typers. We make it so they can type any old thing and the letters still come out the way they are meant to each time. We also put little locking codes into our programming so they can’t accidentally escape the graphic mid job. It’s amazing how many of them can type the Esc button when they are meant to be spelling LOGIN."

Thanks, Tim!

SOMEWHAT RELATED
Coincidentally,  when I was visiting the NUI-Group forums this morning, I came across a link to Jakob Nielsen's "Usability in the Movies -- Top 10 Bloopers", which are worth taking a look at. I've posted the list, but you'll need to go to Nielson's web page to read the descriptions. You'll smile.

1. The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI
2. Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs
3. The 3D UI
4. Integration is Easy, Data Interoperates
5. Access Denied/Access Granted
6. Big Fonts
7. Star Trek's Talking Computer
8. Remote Manipulators (Waldo Controls)
9. You've Got Mail is Always Good News
10."This is Unix, It's Easy"

Near Interaction Multi-touch Tables and Displays: London College of Fashion & More

Near Interaction is a company based in Lisbon, Portugal, and London, England. They are a team of interaction and media designers, focsuing on interactive physical and digital installations. Here is a sample of their work:
























Information about the Fashion Graduate Exhibition 2009 from NearInteraction's Vimeo site:
"The London College of Fashion Graduate Exhibition 2009 displays six multi-touch tables with integrated object recognition to unveil the 570 student portfolios. From a wide choice displayed on the three walls, visitors can make a selection of their preferred cards. Activating once a card is placed on the tables, visitors can move, zoom and rotate by touching the surface of the table a variety of portfolio images representing the chosen student...London College of Fashion Graduate Exhibition 2009 was designed and produced by NearInteraction in association with Paul Albert and John Nussey."

London College of Fashion Graduate Exhibition 2009

NearInteraction at the London College of Fashion Graduate Exhibition 2009 from nearinteraction on Vimeo.


Tangible Multi-touch Connectivity

Tangible Multi-touch Connectivity from nearinteraction on Vimeo.

"As part of Future Labs - Visual Experiences of the Future at FPC, Tangible Multi-touch Connectivity explores the multi-touch gestural concepts of touch to activate, pinch to enlarge and scroll to select within a multi-user environment, combined with the interaction concepts of user-identity, networks, and behavioural lifespan through a metaphorical game."

NearInteraction Playtecture: Physical + Digital + Kids + Play

NearInteraction at Habitar Portugal | Playtecture from nearinteraction on Vimeo.

Interesting, evolving work!

Accenture's Interactive Wall for the Louvre Exhibit at the High Museum

I just came across Lauren Hayne's blog about her experience developing the Accenture Interactive Wall for the Louvre exhibit at the High Museum in Atlanta during the first part of 2009.  Lauren is an analyst at Accenture.

FYI

Louvre Atlanta uses Accenture's Interactive Technology to Explore Changing Nature of Masterpieces

Interactive Wall Technology: Seeing the Big Picture

Louvre Atlanta Case Study(pdf)

Interactive Technology Fact Sheet (pdf)

Interactive Touch Screens Out and About: Touch Screen Party Planner for ASDA, by H Squared LTD

Found on YouTube:



The video below was produced by H Squared LTD, a creative retail design company based in the UK. It demonstrates how a single-touch application is used to help people plan their parties when they visit the ASDA store.



This company just uploaded a number of videos, which can be viewed on the H Squared LTD YouTube channel. It looks like this company has some experience with interactive television. I'm not sure if this company has ventured into multi-touch.

To learn more, I visited  the H Squared LTD website, and found that it works pretty nicely on my TouchSmart PC. You can turn the pages of Issue 1 of the magazine.  The music's fun, too, and it sounds as if someone put some thought into how it was mixed.

If you are contemplating what sort of outfit you'd like to wear to your next costume party, take a look at the styles  in the ASDA's photoshoot video.  The music? "Somebody's Watching Me".

A great beat, and you can dance to it.

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

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!

More Multi-touch and Gesture-based Natural User Interfaces: Bamboo Wacom Tablet; Multi-touch PresTop Kiosk and Snowflake Suite software

Wacom Tablets Get Multi-Touch, Gestures
(Charlie Sorrel, Wired, 9/24/09)
"For the tech-curious, the new tablets have 512 pressure levels in the pen tip and the active area of the tablet is 5.8 x 3.6 inches, and all lose the in-pack mouse (for obvious reasons). The Touch and the Pen models are both $70, and the Pen & Touch is $100. Also, if you were thinking of buying Photoshop Elements 7 for the same price, get a tablet instead — Elements comes in the box."






Official Wacom Video

"Bamboo Touch is new type of computer input device by Wacom that lets you navigate and perform commands like zoom, scroll, rotate and more with a series of simple finger taps and hand gestures. Bamboo Touch brings Multi-Touch capability to your Mac or PC"

Video from a Wacom user:

A nice alternative to a mouse.  I'm going to get one for my laptop!


Multi-touch Kiosks!
Press release:  Dutch touchscreen supplier PresTop partners with Natural User Interface (NUITEQ)
 



RELATED

I couldn't find any video clips of PresTop's multi-touch interaction. From what I can tell, PresTop multi-touch screens will be using SnowFlake Suite from Natural User Interface Technogies AB.

How-to:SnowFlake Suite Flash multi-touch Interactable component (NUIversity)

Without a single line of code, you can do quite a bit with Snowflake Suite

"This video covers how to make a rotatable and scalable image. The beauty about this is, that we have developed a Flash mouse input simulator, so that there is no need for multi-touch hardware in order to develop your applications. Simply simulate multiple mouse inputs for multi-touch.This project is still in alpha phase and a download will become available with the next release of Snowflake Suite 1.7 for the NextWindow platform and camera based multi-touch solutions."


Below is a video of single-touch interaction for PresTop, from Omnivision:


PresTop  PresTop offers interactive hardware and software solutions that can be used indoors as well as in outdoor environments.

Ron George's Interaction Design Toolbox

Ron George, an interaction designer, recently posted a comment on my blog. So I visited his blog and found that he has a great set of resources that many of my readers would appreciate!

For starters, take a look at Ron's Interaction Design Toolbox page, and then spend some time browsing around the rest of his site/blog.

Ron works at Microsoft on a team that is exploring Natural User Interface/Interaction (NUI). He previously was on the Surface team.

More Multi-touch! Rumor of the Mobile Apple iTablet; Adobe XD & Multitouch; 10-Finger Mobile Multitouch

I heard that Apple is coming out with a larger iPhone, an "iTablet".



This is a rumor I've heard for a while. Here are a few articles:

Tech Rumor of the Day: Apple, Verizon Team Up on Tablet
Scott Moritz, TheStreet.com, 7/21/09

Apple to Release Subsidized Tablet Through Verizon Later This Year?
Eric Slivka, MacRumors, 7/22/09


I also heard that lots of things are happening at Adobe.

Wouldn't it be fun to paint like this?

The interface on the left is multi-touch and allows you to effortlessly fine-tune color selection as you paint. This interaction is described in the Adobe XD video below.



Senior Experience Designer Julie Meridian and Senior Computer Scientist Tim Kukulski discuss the future of multitouch, and showcase XD's cutting-edge multitouch R+D effort.


XD is the acronym for Adobe Experience Design, a multi-disciplinary group that numbers over 100. This group is focusing on multi-touch applications for a wide range of uses.

FYI: The Adobe Experience Design Team offers an on-line publication, "Inspire". I think that the website could use a re-design...




Ten-finger multitouch headed to mobile gadgets this year
Jacqueline Emigh, BetaNews, 7/22/09
"Synaptics, the creator of touchscreens already embellishing the iPhone and G1 Android phone, today rolled out new multitouch technology for mobile gizmos which rivals that of Microsoft-'s table-sized Surface."

-photo from BetaNews

"For people interested in building their own multitouch-driven mobile applications, Synaptics plans a Microsoft Windows .NET-based development kit for the end of 2009, to coincide with the first 3000-driven handheld gaming machines, personal navigation devices (PNDs), and other gadgetry from Synaptics' OEM partners."

For more information, see the video.

RELATED

TechOnline's On-Demand Webinars:

Designing Compelling User Interfaces with Multi-touch All-Point Touchscreen Technology
Touch Screens: The Magic Behind Multi-Touch

Note: I haven't had a chance to see the above webinars. If you've viewed them, please leave a comment!

Dr. Jan Borchers' (Annotated) Top Ten List of Books on Human-Computer Interaction - Of interest to HCI students (and HCI students at heart...)

The academic year is coming up, and a new wave of students will be searching for good resources pertaining to human-computer interaction and related areas of study. A couple of months ago, I shared the following information on a blog post, but thought it was worthy of recycling.

The list is useful to HCI students, but also to people who have little background in HCI who find themselves working on real-life projects that require a good amount of this knowledge.

Dr. Jan Borchers, head of the Media Computing Group at RWTH Aachen University, recommends the following list of books. I've read many of these books and I agree that this list is great. (The comments regarding the book are Dr. Borchers'.)

Dr. Jan Borchers' (Annotated) Top Ten List of Books on Human-Computer Interaction:

1. Alan Dix, Janet Finlay, Gregory D. Abowd, and Russell Beale: Human-Computer Interaction, 3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 2004. Currently the best, most well-rounded book I know to teach introductory HCI if you need to limit yourself to a single title. Technical enough, good breadth, not too fuzzy for a CS curriculum, very current, with a web site that includes resources such as sample programs, slides, etc.

2. Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant: Designing The User Interface, 4th ed., Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2004. Best overall reference book for all areas of HCI, providing an introduction and great up-to-date pointers to most sub-fields of HCI research and practice, especially different interaction techniques. His Golden Rules of User Interface Design and sample questionnaires for user testing are very useful in an introductory class. Unfortunately, the companion web site costs money after an initial trial period.

3. Donald A. Norman, The Design Of Everyday Things, Basic Books, 2002. A classic text from 1988 with an updated introduction that, while some of the technologies described or envisioned seem somewhat outdated now, still provides the best introduction to the spirit of good human-centered design. A not too technical read with hilarious stories of badly designed everyday technology, it provides some very useful basic models for human cognition, such as the Seven Stages of Action. This book also introduced the fundamental concept of affordances to HCI. Changed my view of the world of technology around me, and is probably the best initial brainwash for engineering students to "get" user-centered design.

4. Jenny Preece, Yvonne Rogers, and Helen Sharp: Interaction Design, 2nd ed., Wiley, 2007. This title focuses more on the process of designing good user interfaces, and is less technical, but excellent and up-to-date in the area it addresses. The companion web site has slides, case studies, and other materials.

5. Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions, MIT Press, 2008. A truly beautiful "coffee-table style" book on interaction design, also covering product and industrial design of digital technology (Moggridge is a founder of IDEO). It has wonderful short essays about seminal digial product designs, from Engelbart's mouse, to the Mac and Palm, to Google and other internet services, as well as articles on digital product design theory. My own Sweet Sports and Baroque Technology article was based on one of the theory articles. Special treat: video interviews and chapters are available for free, on a weekly rotation, at http://www.designinginteractions.com/.

6. Bill Buxton, Sketching User Experiences, Elsevier, 2007. Similar to Moggridge's book in style, this book focuses on the early stages of product design. It also includes very interesting stories of key interactive products, such as Apple's iPod. And of course it's written by one of the long-time key players in HCI. More at http://www.billbuxton.com/.

7. Terry Winograd (ed.): Bringing Design to Software, Addison-Wesley, 1996. An excellent and very well edited collection of contributions from key players in HCI, from Kapor's Software Design Manifesto to Rheinfrank's Design Languages. Its particular value also comes from the profiles that link chapters and give an insider's view of how some of the most seminal UI designs came to be, from the Xerox Star to VisiCalc and HyperCard. Terry has some information about his book at http://hci.stanford.edu/bds/, and I used it with great success when I had the fortunate opportunity to teach an introductory HCI class in his program at Stanford in 2002.

8. Brenda Laurel (ed.): The Art of Human-Computer Interaction, Addison-Wesley, 1990. While ancient by today's standards, this book is another carefully compiled and very coherent collection of highly relevant articles on HCI by some of the most influential people in the field. I particularly like the article by Scott Kim on interdisciplinary design, and Tom Erickson's chapter.

9. Apple Computer: The Apple Software Design Guidelines, latest edition 2005. OK, I'm a Mac head, but then many HCI people are because Apple has such an excellent sense of doing the right thing when it comes to user interface design. These guidelines have been around since the 90's, with several new editions since then, and especially Part I ("Application Design Fundamentals") contains excellent, system-independent, hands-on advice for anybody developing interactive software, especially desktop applications. And it's free! Apple's developer website has the latest version both online and as downloadable PDF. I often recommend this as a quick read for engineering types that just want the bare essentials to help avoid major UI design catastrophes.

10. Jef Raskin, The Humane Interface, Addison-Wesley, 2000. Similar to Norman's book above, but more recent and more technical, this is another good first read to start thinking about user interface design, written by the father of the original Apple Macintosh. Some of the ideas presented here are quite unusual, and that's intended. Some related materials, such as demos of his Zoomable User Interface and The Humane Environment are at http://www.jefraskin.com/.

"So that's my top 10 list. I may add some more in the future. But I figure it's more important to restrict myself to those books I think are really outstanding than bother you with additional titles that don't really have that special something....For a good current PhD-level HCI reading list that is based more on papers and individual chapters than single books, see Terry Winograd's HCI reading list at Stanford University." -Dr. Jan Borchers


While you are at it, Dr. Borchers has a list of HCI hardware toolkits for physical user interface prototyping.

(I want to take more HCI classes and play with this stuff!)

Kicker Touchscreen Conference Phone (front)

Kicker Touchscreen Conference Phone (front)
Originally uploaded by Kicker Studio

I am a fan of the work by Kicker Studios. I especially enjoy reading their blog that gives great details about how product design is done. I always come away from the blog with something new.

In the case of the touch-screen conference phone, the designers focused on their own needs, since they spend a chunk of time in conference calls. To get a closer look at the design process behind this phone, see the blog post, " Product Concept: Touch Screen Conference Phone".

RELATED

The 30 Most Influential Interactive Products

The Children's Interactive Library: User Experience Design and the Library!

The Children's Interactive Library was a collaboration between Interactive Spaces, the Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, the Department for Design, Aarhus School of Architecture, and others.

(Please excuse the audio - there are two narrators, each speaking a different language.)

"The Children's Interactive Library project was an untraditional interdisciplinary research and innovation project exploring the children's library of the future.

The objective was to create spaces for children in the library that offer new experiences, learning, events, sense impressions and physical activity. And at the same time acknowledging the library's unique capacity of being the place where children come in order to acquire information and knowledge."

The video shows how pervasive computing and natural interaction, and a child-centered focus were combined to create rich "user experience" at the library.

The Story Surfer:





Inspiration: Strategies and Prototypes for the Future (pdf)
Abstract from Children's Interactive Library Project, 2004-06, with lots of pictures and diagrams depicting the design process and products.

The following video provides a good overview of how user-focused HCI strategies were used a means to develop innovative plans for cool new libraries, otherwise known as "Media Spaces".
From what I can see, these strategies were used by the Aarhus Public Libraries,in Denmark, during the development of the Children's Interactive Library project, highlighted in the previous video.


Thanks, Matt Gullet, for the link to the video.



FYI: The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, in North Carolina, is pretty cool.

Pictures from ImagineOn, the main library in Charlotte, N.C. for children and teens (Spangler Library & PLCMC):


ImagineOn, the LibraryLoft for Teens, and the Spangler Children's Library


Video production and editing at ImagineOn


Making games with Game Maker at the library


Lan Party at the Library