Inventing Interactive
Recently Philips Design published a report on people focused innovation. It’s a interesting document that not only talks about how they use qualitative research and design thinking, but also shows a wide range of resulting solutions for the healthcare market. And some of the proposals are pretty cool — from ambient environments to a kitten […]
This week, here in LA, was SIGRRAPH 2010 — the annual conference on computer graphics and interactive technologies. The two parts of the event I find most interesting are the emerging technologies and art gallery exhibitions — and there was a lot of thought-provoking stuff being shown. Most was a bit rough around the edges, […]
This is interesting… Microsoft is working on another cool way of looking at map and street imagery. Unlike traditional street view interfaces where you look at the street through panoramic bubbles (which can be a little disorienting), Street Slide arranges everything as a flat, continuous, photo. When I first saw it, I thought of some […]
Cool UI in credit card commercials? These two 2009 commercials from Chase for their Blueprint Visa cards demonstrate not only some advanced interaction models, but upcoming technology ideas, too. The “Couch” ad features a magic paper bill, with qualities similar to Caprica Paper. The bill lets a customer touch an item to get more details […]
It looks like we’re one step closer to the Luminous Room. Take a look at this demo of LiminAR. It’s a project by Natan Linder, a student of Pattie Maes in her Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab. LiminAR is made up of two components, the Bulb and the Lamp: The LuminAR Bulb […]
In a recent post Golan Levin writes about how adding the term “computational” to various non-science fields allows you to imagine all sorts of new subjects. Specifically, he “created” Computational Gastronomy, only to realize that the field sort-of actually exists (!), and so started an interesting list of articles and research in the emerging field. […]
From precisioninformation.org: Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are developing future work environments for the emergency management community called Precision Information Environments (or PIEs). PIEs will provide tailored access to information and decision support capabilities in a system that supports the multiple user roles, contexts, and phases of emergency management, planning, and response. They have […]
Iron Man 2 opens today! And Engadget has posted a great collection of pictures and videos of interfaces that are used the film. Sure, we’ve seen a lot of this before — multi-touch Surface-like tables, Star Trek transparent screens, complex layered windows (any standard windowing os — mixed with a bit of old-school Unix), micro-projectors, […]
Monday Note has a great post by Frédéric Filloux on Reconciling efficiency with serendipity. He starts with, what should be for us designers, an encouraging quote: “For digital media publishers, Design is the biggest challenge.” He then talks about how trapped we remain by traditional notions of publishing: After more than fifteen years of internet […]
Check out this interesting video from Microsoft Research on using a pen and touch together in an interface. It’s part of Microsoft Research’s Manual Deskterity project. Running on Microsoft Surface, the demo has some really cool examples of how a specific pointing device can be combined with the more general input of touch. Using the […]
In What Movie UIs Say About the Future, Tony Walt reviews a variety of interface types featured in some recent movies. His discussion on Complexity was particularly interesting — especially in the context of the iPad and its move towards simplicity: I’ve noticed that UIs in feature films are continually getting more elaborate and complex. […]
I’m a fan of BERG, and so was excited to discover this video of Mag+, a digital magazine design concept they created for Bonnier. BERG’s Jack Schulze talks about what people like about printed magazines… things like the of significance the cover (and our long-term memories associated with them), the sense of completion when done […]
Check out this crazy augmented reality scenario by Keiichi Matsuda. Done as part of his masters in architecture, he describes the film: The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions […]
The recent SyFy series Battlestar Galactica series was incredible. A captivating vision of our pre-history. I’ve tried watching the follow-on series Caprica, which takes place sixty years earlier, but haven’t yet been drawn in. The show, however, has an interesting technology… When a character in Caprica wants to “go online” (or whatever it’s called in […]
On the eve of the rumored announcement of an Apple Tablet, I started thinking about similar devices in Star Trek. In Trek lingo they are referred to as PADDs. For a show made in the 60s and 80s it’s interesting to see how their conception changed over time. In the original show the earliest padds […]
It’s safe to bet that interface design in movies will be a recurring theme here. They give us a glimpse of the future, but from a design perspective of when the film was made. They take current ideas of where technology is heading, and project it forward to a point beyond what is currently possible. […]