Inventing Interactive
A couple weeks ago I was at dinner with some friends. At some point, talking about recent trips, people wanted to see pictures. As iPhones ware passed around (always a little worried that swiping to the next photo might reveal something not intended to be shared), we realized that we could exchange photos with Apple’s […]
I’ve just fallen in love with “The Flavor Thesaurus” by Niki Segnit. The book takes 99 basic flavors and examines how each pairs with the remanding 98. The author acknowledges that the list of 99 and the pairings were only semi-scientific — instead it’s more a way of exploring pairings, categorizing recipes, and sharing personal […]
This past weekend I had a chance to experience Voice Tunnel — an interactive light and sound installation by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. It’s a temporary installation in New York City’s Park Avenue Tunnel and open just three Saturdays this month as part of Summer Streets 2013. The 1,4000 foot long piece runs from East 33rd Street […]
Often, when I work on projects, they’re for a client’s internal use, or otherwise secret, and I can’t share the work. So I was excited to discover that some work that I had helped lead was finally online, and I could post some of it. In 2009 I was working for BMW Group DesignworksUSA and […]
I’ve worked on the design of a variety of enterprise software systems. And I know the desperate desire from their users for tools that feel less corporate, and more consumer. They want stuff at work that feels like what’ve become accustomed to on their iPhones. They want stuff that’s fun! The problem is that it’s […]
Dino Ignacio is the UI lead at Electronic Arts for the Dead Space franchise of games. His work is at an interesting intersection point between fantasy and reality. It has fantastical design elements, and exists in otherworldly environments, but it also needs to be usable, so that players can enjoy the game. Dino took some […]
Having recently restarted my design practice of Triplecode, I’ve become increasingly busy (and, of course interested in) projects involving data and “big data.” My own work tends to focus on information design and giving tools to make the data useful. But there’s a whole other community which explores artistic expression using the same types of […]
I remember visiting a group at Xerox PARC when I was working on a project with them in the 80’s. They had a closed-curcuit video link between their lounge and the lounge of another lab in Oregon. The idea, at the time pretty new, was that with the live link, it would foster communication between […]
I love my new Sonos system. It took me a while to understand what it offered and why I might want it, but now that I’ve got it, I just want more. So – it was pretty cool to discover that Sonos has been (quietly) periodically sponsoring interactive installations that feature their technology… Right now […]
This looks interesting. From Oblong comes Greenhouse, a creative coding toolkit for spatial interfaces. One of Oblong’s founders helped design the gesture interfaces of Minority Report. And much of the firm’s work has been developing tools to make such gesture-based interactions more common place. Their g-speak platform enables multi-user, multi-screen, multi-device, spatial, networked applications. But […]
In design it’s often the small details that matter the most. And a couple recent finds have been great reminders of that. The first is the site KnobFeel. It’s a collection of “reviews based purely on the feel of the knob.” And it’s genius because, for so much industrial design, it really is the subtle […]
Microsoft Research recently held TechFest 2013 — an event showcasing research projects from Microsoft Research’s labs around the world. And, although the event’s website requires Silverlight and isn’t the easiest thing in the world to navigate, it’s worth a look — it’s full of all sorts of future-looking research and explorations. (Or – use their […]
I just realized that I’ve been collecting food-related links. I think it may have started with Why Menus Suck + Other Deep Thoughts on the Food Tech Revolution. In the post, Dave McClure starts with the premise that “menus suck” and then goes on to offer some opportunities to improve the restaurant experience. The most […]
Last weekend, while on vacation, I saw this Surface (or Surface-like) table at the hotel’s concierge desk. The idea of making local information easily accessible to guests is, of course, a great idea. And the dual-interaction possibilities, so that both guest and concierge can work together to explore options, are empowering. But it’s the realities […]
I’ve been collecting these links — hoping to do some posts on them — but, never getting around to it. Because they’re starting to get stale, thought I’d post them simply as recent and interesting links. The changing face of computers on screen is an interesting post on how computers have been portrayed in films — […]
I haven’t done a post on the visual design of an interactive designer for a while — but discovering Jongmin Kim’s work gave me reason to do so. Jongmin is an interactive designer from South Korea currently living and working in New York, and his work is beautiful. FFF (for “Form Follows Function”) is his collection […]
Here’s a great video surveying the creative coding movement from Off Book — a PBS web series about cutting edge arts. What’s especially nice is that the video’s YouTube page includes links to the people interviewed, as well as a Google doc listing every project shown. The video is broken into three sections: Simplifying code with Processing – […]
I love it when designer talk about the process behind their work. And even more when that process is both thoughtful and sketchy. For it’s through sketching and making design tangible that one can begin to experience and understanding it. And from that comes learning and thus the ability to iterate and improve. Berg recently […]
GMUNK, who I previously interviewed for his work on “Tron,” recently put up a Pintrest page full of eye-candy fantasy UI and GFX process videos. They’re all worth a look, but here are a couple cool highlights… The “Tron” video shows some of the graphics from the Solar Sailor sequence. Very beautiful. It’s interesting to see […]
The IxDA just announced the winners of their 2013 Interaction Awards. However their awards page only links to the firms that did the work, not to the projects themselves. Because I wanted to find out more about each project, I did the clicking to get the details on the winning projects. It turns out it was […]