Inventing Interactive

NFB/Interactive

October 20, 2010 - In Present

I just discovered the National Film Board of Canada’s NFB/Interactive site. It’s a collection of projects — documentaries, essays, art, user-generated media — all with a strong focus on storytelling and authorship. And each one is quietly amazing. Tom Perlmutter, Government Film Commissioner & Chairperson of the National Film Board of Canada, talks about the mission of the site: “We need to support content that is not tied to existing broadcast properties and may never…

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New Haptic Possibilities

October 18, 2010 - In Future, Present - 3 comments

The first time I experienced a haptic interface was back in 1990, when I got a demo of Margaret Minsky’s Sandpaper system at MIT. Using a force-feedback joystick, users could move the screen’s cursor across a textured area and the joystick would simulate the feeling of resistance and surface. It was pretty cool to see how digital space didn’t need to be disconnected from our senses. To this day, however, haptics remain fairly niche. Some…

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Happy Birthday Media Lab!

October 14, 2010 - In Past

Today, the MIT Media Lab starts its big 25th anniversary bash. And I’m sad that I’m missing the event. But the next best thing to being there is reminiscing, right? Twenty years ago, when I was a student there, the Lab was celebrating its 5th anniversary. As part of the schwag for the party, the Lab printed a book. It wasn’t big, just 6×6 inches and 32 pages, but it perfectly captured the mood and…

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Post 119!

October 12, 2010 - In Future, Past, Present - 3 comments

Look! Look! Look! My friend Keith Knueven has created a new logo for this blog! Take a moment, visit his website TDOOKK.com, and then hire him, immediately, for all your projects — he’s great! Thank you Keith!!! When I started Inventing Interactive, at the beginning of the year, I had no posts planed and no idea of how long I’d do it. It’s hard to believe that, with this, I’ve done 119 posts. It’s been…

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Musical CD-ROMs

October 11, 2010 - In Past - One comment

In the mid 90′s there was a mini-boom for pop-music CD-ROMs. Unlike early titles from Voyager, which tended towards intellectual examinations of classical symphonies, these were moody, artistic, experiences. Strongly influenced by Myst, they let users move through virtual worlds, try to solve puzzles, and unlock special content. Their narratives may have been frustrating and unclear, but it was great to see artists experimenting with the medium. It’s easy to forget how slow computers were…

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The Creative Internet

October 8, 2010 - In Present - 2 comments

Head over, immediately, to Google’s The Creative Internet. The site lists 106 examples of brilliant online creativity and experimentation. Many of them you’ve seen before, or I’ve posted here — and I suspect I’ll steal some things and do future posts about them — but seeing them all together is a great reminder of what’s happening. It made me think about part of a post I’d read, a couple weeks ago, from Russell Davies. It…

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iPhone + Book = PhoneBook

October 7, 2010 - In Present

Take a look at this cute project from the Japanese firm Mobile Art. From what I can get out of Google Translate, it’s what they call a “PhoneBook” and it’s titled “POPO and MOMO Ride! Ride!” (You can buy it from amazon.jp.) It’s a simple idea: place an iPhone inside a book-like container, then turn pages to reveal new content. A nice reminder of the easy power of mixing physical and digital. Link via Quipsologies.

Designing for Illiteracy

October 6, 2010 - In Present

The use of technology, especially mobile phones, in poor and developing countries presents huge opportunities for designers. Mobile banking and microfinancing, as just two examples, can help the poor and unbanked with financial services and business support. But it was only after seeing the work by Indrani Medhi that it I grasped one of the deepest underlying design challenges: many of these people are illiterate. In fact there are over two billion people, worldwide, who…

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Journalism in the Age of Data

October 4, 2010 - In Present

Take a look at Journalism in the Age of Data. It’s a great report, by Geoff McGhee, on current trends in data visualization. While the focus is primarily on information graphics, it also demonstrates how giving audiences the ability to interact with the data enables greater understanding. The report covers a lot of ground. I think it’s especially interesting to consider how newsrooms are changing because of the growing importance of these visualizations. Infographics are…

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Writer Intimacy

September 30, 2010 - In Present

Since the iPad has been released, it’s been interesting to see how application designers are taking advantage of the generous screen real estate. The recently released Twitter app, for example, is a miracle in interface innovation for the platform — it packs a huge amount of content into a smoothly multi-layered and very flexible interface. One of the things that makes using the iPad so unique, is how it draws you in and focuses your…

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