Nokia Research Center's Mixed Reality Concept Video

Nokia Mixed Reality- Nokia World


More info:
The World Is My Interface blog

Interactive Digital Art/Music at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts

This video gives some background about the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, and also provides a glimpse of some interesting interfaces and interaction.


forward/slash: The Gray Area Foundation for the Arts Story from GAFFTA on Vimeo.


"Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) is a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to building social consciousness through digital culture. Guided by the principles of openness, collaboration, and resource sharing, our programs promote creativity at the intersection of art, design, sound, and technology. By making digital culture accessible, substantive and inspiring, we aim to help realize the greatest power of technology: to bring us closer, faster. For more information and how you can be a part of our vision, please visit gaffta.org"

Thanks to Seth Sandler for the link!

(This is a cross-post.)

The World Is My Interface

THE WORLD IS MY INTERFACE  is the new  title of my Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction blog.  The name was just too long!

The first post written under the new title has a variety of links about ubiquitous computing, off-the-desktop interaction design, use of technology in public spaces, and so forth.  There are a few links to scholarly research and related projects, too.

Engaged, Interactive, Collaborative: Microsoft Surface, Finguistics, and Churchend School in the UK - Watch the video!

Finguistics created educational applications for Microsoft Surface. Watch how engaged the students are in this video as they work in groups, and look at the excitement on the faces of the teachers!



The teachers and students have lots of positive things to say about it. Play = Learn

I would like to have the chance to convert my single-touch prototypes to multi-touch for use on the Surface or something similar, but for now, I'm happy with the newly-installed SmartBoards at my favorite school and the two existing Promethean boards, which are used to deliver interactive, rather than passive learning activities for students with multiple special needs, including autism.

RELATED
Under the Hood with Finguistics
Educators get Microsoft Surface!
(MSDN Academic Alliance subscribers now have access to the Surface SDK Workstation Edition)

Interactive Touchscreen Displays at the Chicago Botanic Gardens

 
"15 letters, a Chicago-based interactive design company developed eight interactive, educational touch-screen kiosks that will enable Garden visitors to get a hands-on experience in understanding the essential role plants play in every day life and the critical role garden scientists are playing to preserve and better manage natural plant communities."


“Each of the eight interactive touch-screen exhibits in the new Rice Plant Conservation Science Center is dedicated to a specific lab in the facility,” Rattin continued. “We created interactive game-like simulations that will allow visitors to manipulate an environment and see the outcomes of their actions. This hands-on approach to education is becoming more commonplace as museums and research centers are encouraging the development of the next generation of scientists.”

Research laboratories featuring interactive kiosks include:
• Harris Family Foundation Plant Genetics Laboratory
• Economic Botany Laboratory
• Reproductive Biology Laboratory
• Dixon Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank Preparation Laboratory and Seed Bank
• Herbarium
• Population Biology Laboratory
• Soil Laboratory
• Abbott Ecology Laboratory


For more information, there are a number of videos regarding the Chicago Garden Interactive Kiosk Project



Plant Conservation Science Center Fly-through Simulation



I plan on visiting Chicago again, and I'll make sure I visit the Chicago Botanic Gardens!

The Touch Research Project, re/Touch, and Near Field Communication Touch Interaction

The Touch Project is based in the Interaction Design department of the Oslow School of Architecture and Design in Norway. "Touch is a research project that investigates Near Field Communication (NFC), a technology that enables connections between mobile phones and physical things. We are developing applications and services that enable people to interact with everyday objects and situations through their mobile devices. Touch consists of an inter-disciplinary team involved in social and cultural enquiry, interaction/industrial design, rapid prototyping, software, testing and exhibitions." -

Nearness Explores Interaction Without Touching

Nearness from timo on Vimeo.

iPhone RFID: Object-based media

iPhone RFID: object-based media from timo on Vimeo.

reTouch Web Site

reTouch Info Sheet (pdf)

reTouch is part of the Touch project, and it " brings together hundreds of cross-cultural examples of social norms and values involving touch—all categorised according to actions related to touching. Using quotes from ethnographic accounts written between the late 1800s and the present, re/touch encourages designers and researchers to explore how touch is used by people to relate to one another and the worlds in which we live. Browse re/touch to create design briefs, refine interaction scenarios, devise game play, or otherwise think, make and do things touchrelated." -reTouch web info, Anne Galloway.


One of the members of the research team is Anne Galloway, a social researcher and the author of the  purselipsquarejaw blog, which she recently resurrected after taking a year off from blogging.

Anne also contributes to the space and culture journal.  I've followed Anne's writing for a while.  Over the course of her Ph.D. studies, she has thought deeply about the intersections of technology, space, and culture,  including cross-cultural meanings of touch.

RELATED
Inspiring Touch Related Interaction Design

Designing With RFID

View more documents from Chen pinmiao.

Original Design Thinking Approach for Researching RFID
-Nikolas Nova, Pasta and Vinegar


Note:  Nikolas Nova's Pasta and Vinegar blog is worth taking a look at if you are interested in design, UX, emerging technologies, pervasive/ubiquitous computing.


About Nikolas and his blog:
"User Experience researcher at LIFTlab. My work is about studying how people use various technologies and turn them into insights, ideas, prototypes or recommendations to inform design and foresight.This blog is a selection of the material that I collect, especially in fields such as mobility, urban environments, digital entertainment and new interfaces. I am also part of the near future laboratory."

Sample of Pasta and Vinegar Posts:
(Touch) Interaction Vocabulary
A Graphic Language for Touch-based Interactions