Apr 10, 2011

Interview with Don "Design of Everyday Things" Norman on Design Education: STEM+D+Social Sciences, Too! (MIT Technology Review)


David Talbot, MIT Technology Review, 4/6/11

"I think that the current emphasis on STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math—needs a "D," for design. Designers need to learn STEM (where S includes both the hard and the soft, social sciences). But similarly, engineers need to learn D: after all, the point of engineering is to develop things for people and society."-Don Norman


"...the creators of good products and services also must have a working knowledge of everything from the technical underpinnings of microprocessors and programming to the policy aspects of information security."  -Don Norman


RELATED
Some of my previous posts mentioning Don Norman and his work:
Words of Wisdom from Harry Brignull: UX Roots in Psychology, Design, Information Architecture, and so much more!
Essential Interaction Design Essays and Articles: Dan Saffer's Lists, Don Norman, and Interactions Magazine
Don Norman's Keynote at the 21st Century Transmedia Symposium "Design Challenge:  Co-creation" (New technologies allow creativity to blossom)
The Transdisciplinary Design Approach to Building an Interfaced World: A smattering ofideas, food for further thought.
Dr. Jan Borchers' (Annotated) Top Ten List of Books on Human-Computer Interaction -Of interest to HCI students and HCI students-at-heart.

SOMEWHAT RELATED
The following post generated a good deal of unexpected discussion ; )
For a Smile:  Gain Detergent Container Looks Like Don Norman's User-Unfriendly Teapot

Below is my final response to the conversation:
The UX of Laundry Washing:  Response to Comments and Videos of Gain Detergent Fans!

Apr 9, 2011

Keeping up with Facebook complexity

Need I say more?

"Playful Interface Cultures" exhibit video showreel, just released (Ars Electronica Festival 2010)


Playful Interface Cultures from Interface Culture on Vimeo.


"This video showreel provides a walkthrough through the "Playful Interface Cultures" exhibition at the Ars Electronica Festival 2010. The works shown were created within the Master and Ph.D. program at the Interface Culture Lab, University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria." http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at/​

"The exhibition design has been based on traditional Austrian tobacco brands in reference to the historic venue of the former tobacco factory built by the German designer and architect Peter Behrens." -Interface Culture Lab



Instructors:
Georg Russegger
Martin Kaltenbrunner
Michaela Ortner
Varvara Guljajeva
Design
Vesela Milhaylova
Henning Schulze
Production
Reinhard Gupfinger
Technical Support
Mar Canet
Anika Hirt

University of Art and Industrial Design, Linz


SOMEWHAT RELATED
TuioKinect, by Martin Kaltenbrunner: "A simple Tuio hand gesture tracker for Kinect"
Reactable 

Apr 6, 2011

mtBAR Multi-touch Bar Video (Aaron Bitler); Physical Vision, a Kinect Alternative Video (Jonathan Brill); DARPA's 3D Glassless Urban Photonic Sandtray

Here are a few interesting videos and links:


The mtBAR Comes Alive!
Aaron Bitler, 3/28/11


Physical Vision, The Alternative to Kinect
Jonathan Brill, Physical Vision, 2/26/11




Tim Stevens, 3/28/11, Engadget
"It's a DARPA project, a fully holographic table (no glasses required) that can be scaled up to six feet diagonally and allows visual depth of up to 12-inches. The technology comes courtesy of Zebra Imaging, which earlier wowed us with some insane 3D printouts, and the data will come from LIDAR systems like this ROAMS bot." -Tim Stevens

-Photo from Vizworld


Weekly Belated Linkfest
Rouli, Games Alfresco, 4/4/11


So much to share, so little time!

Apr 5, 2011

ICT MxR Lab's Response to Google's "April Fools Day" Gmail Motion, using OpenNI and FAAST

I recently purchased a Kinect and have been chomping at the bit to do something creative with it.  I have been  too busy with work to dive into a project. Fortunately,  great minds have been paving the way!


I was almost fooled by Google's April Fools prank, "Gmail Motion", a mythical application designed to allow Gmailers the opportunity to conduct email tasks through gestures alone. 


Robert Kosara, an assistant professor of computer science at UNC-Charlotte, and author of the EagerEyes visualization blog,  recently shared a link to a video of  a working prototype of the Gmail Motion concept.  The video features Evan Suma, a post-doc at USC who earned his Ph.D. at UNC-Charlotte.  



"This morning, Google introduced Gmail Motion, allowing users to control Gmail using gestures and body movement. However, for whatever reason, their application doesn't appear to work. So, we demonstrate our solution - the Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving (SLOOW) - and show how it can be used with a Microsoft Kinect sensor to control Gmail using the gestures described by Google. This project uses OpenNI coupled with FAAST and was made by Evan Suma and the folks at Mark Bolas' MxR Lab at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies."

Below is the video that almost had me fooled on April 1st  : )
>

RELATED
FAAST Video Gallery
Download FAAST from the USC ICT FAAST website.
University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (USC ICT) 

The FAAST website has loads of  additional "how-to" information. The list below is just a sample of what can be found on the site:


To use FAAST, you will need to download and install the following software:
  1. OpenNI Unstable Build for Windows v1.0.0.25
  2. PrimeSense NITE Unstable Build for Windows v1.3.0.18
    During NITE installation, enter the free license key from OpenNI: 0KOIk2JeIBYClPWVnMoRKn5cdY4=
  3. Hardware drivers for your sensor (only one of the following)
FAAST should then run out-of-the-box; no additional installation or setup is necessary. If you encounter an error on startup, you may also need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package.

FAAST project members are Evan A. Suma, Belinda Lange, Skip Rizzo, David Krum, and Mark Bolas

Apr 3, 2011

INTERACTIVE TABLETOPS AND SURFACES 2011 CALL FOR PAPERS AND NOTES (6th Annual ACM ITS 2011 - Nov. 13-16)

Thanks to Johannes Schöning for sharing this information!

CALL FOR PAPERS AND NOTES
6th Annual ACM Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2011
ITS 2011
November 13-16, 2011
Portopia Hotel, Kobe, Japan
The Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2011 Conference (ITS) is a premiere venue for presenting research in the design and use of new and emerging tabletop and interactive surface technologies. As a new community, we embrace the growth of the discipline in a wide variety of areas, including innovations in ITS hardware, software, design, and projects expanding our understanding of design considerations of ITS technologies and of their applications.

Building on their success in previous years, ITS again features Papers and Notes presentations, as well as tutorials, posters, demonstrations tracks and a doctoral symposium. ITS 2011 will also include workshops.

ITS 2011 will bring together top researchers and practitioners who are interested in both the technical and human aspects of ITS technology. On behalf of the conference organizing committee, we invite you to begin planning your submissions and participation for this year's conference!

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: PAPERS AND NOTES
The use of interactive surfaces is an exciting and emerging research area. Display technologies, such as projectors, LCD and OLED flat panels, and even flexible display substrates, coupled with input sensors capable of enabling direct interaction, make it reasonable to envision a not-so-distant future in which many of the common surfaces in our environment will function as digital interactive displays. ITS brings together researchers and practitioners from a variety of backgrounds and interests, such as camera and projector based systems, new display technologies, multi-touch sensing, user interface technologies, augmented reality, computer vision, multimodal interaction, novel input and sensing technologies, computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), and information visualization.

The intimate size of this single-track symposium provides an ideal venue for leading researchers and practitioners to exchange research results and experiences. We encourage submissions on (but not limited to) the following topic areas as they relate to interactive tabletops and surfaces:

* Gesture-based interfaces
* Multi-modal interfaces
* Tangible interfaces
* Novel interaction techniques
* Data handling/exchange on large interactive surfaces
* Data presentation on large interactive surfaces
* Software engineering methods
* Computer supported collaborative work
* Middleware and network support
* Virtual reality and augmented reality
* Social protocols
* Information visualizations
* Hardware, including sensing and input technologies with novel capabilities
* Human-centered design & methodologies
* Applications

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
Conference Co-Chairs
Jun Rekimoto, The University of Tokyo / SonyCSL, Japan
Hideki Koike, University of Electro-Communications, Japan
Kentaro Fukuchi, Meiji University, Japan

Program Co-Chairs
Yoshifumi Kitamura, Tohoku University, Japan
Daniel Wigdor, University of Toronto, Canada

SUBMISSIONS
Papers/Notes: We invite paper submissions of two kinds: Papers (10 pages) and Notes (4 pages). Papers must present original, highly innovative, prospective and forward-looking research, possibly in one or more of the themes given above. Notes must also report novel and complete research, but where the scope and scale of the contribution is more focused and succinct than papers. Submissions must be submitted as a single PDF file in the ACM format through the submission system. A template for submissions can be found on the ITS

All accepted submissions will be presented at ITS 2011 and appear in the ITS digital proceedings and be archived in the ACM digital library.

IMPORTANT DATES
Paper/Note Submissions: June 30, 2011
Paper/Note Author Notifications: September 2, 2011
Paper/Note Camera-Ready Deadline: October 21, 2011

The calls for the posters, demos, tutorials, workshops and the doctoral symposium will be published soon, please check our website for further information.

RELATED
ITS 2010 Awards

Best Paper:Proxemic Interaction: Designing for a Proximity and Orientation-Aware Environment by Till Ballendat, Nicolai Marquardt, Saul Greenberg
Best Note:MudPad: Tactile Feedback and Haptic Texture Overlay for Touch Surfaces by  Yvonne Jansen, Thorsten Karrer, Jan Borchers
Best Poster:A Multi-Touch Alignment Guide for Interactive Displays by Mathias Frisch, Ricardo Langner, Sebastian Kleinau, Raimund Dachselt
Best Demo:MudPad - A Tactile Memory Game by Yvonne Jansen, Thorsten Karrer, Jan Borchers
Best Paper:Proxemic Interaction: Designing for a Proximity and Orientation-Aware Environment by Till Ballendat, Nicolai Marquardt, Saul Greenberg
Best Note:MudPad: Tactile Feedback and Haptic Texture Overlay for Touch Surfaces by Yvonne Jansen, Thorsten Karrer, Jan Borchers
Best Poster:A Multi-Touch Alignment Guide for Interactive Displays by Mathias Frisch, Ricardo Langner, Sebastian Kleinau, Raimund Dachselt
Best Demo:MudPad - A Tactile Memory Game by Yvonne Jansen, Thorsten Karrer, Jan Borchers




Who's Who
ITS 2010Conference General Chairs 
Johannes Schöning, DFKI GmbH
Antonio Krüger, DFKI GmbH 

ITS 2010 Organization Committee

Daniel Wigdor, one of the ITS 2011Program Co-chairs, co-authored the following book with Dennis Wixon. The book has not yet been released.
 
Brave NUI World: Designing User Interfaces for Touch and Gesture

Description: Description: Book Cover


Note: This post includes links, please let me know of anything I should correct.