Inventing Interactive
Muriel Cooper (1925-1994) was my advisor when I was a graduate student at her Visible Language Workshop at the MIT Media Lab. It was an experience that profoundly influenced the way I work and approach the the world. It’s not easy to describe, so instead these these quotes of hers may start to give a sense […]
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 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 […]
Take a look at Connecting — it’s a short film on the current trends in UI, interaction and experience design — and how it’s making us more deeply and richly connected to information and each other. Created by Bassett & Partners, the film is full of great examples of the current state of user experience […]
I just discovered (via LSD) the metaLAB at Harvard — and it looks fascinating. The lab is “dedicated to exploring the frontiers and overlooked histories of networked culture in the arts and humanities.” And their six research themes are super-cool: the animation of archives, artifactual knowledge, augmented exhibitions, cultural genomics, documentary arts + media innovation, and […]
Greg Tran’s recent thesis at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, entitled Mediating Mediums, is a fascinating study looking at the cross section between augmented reality and architecture. Specifically he’s interested in moving augmented reality from the digital to the material — so that the augmentation is, essentially, “real.” That’s probably way too much of […]
I had a really interesting day today as a guest critic at Art Center’s graduate Media Design Program 2011 thesis review. It was a collection of projects divided into three categories: mediated experiences, exploratory futures, and critical accounts. I’m always fascinated by graduate design projects and the idea of design research. It can be a […]
Here’s a charming Augmented Reality vision piece, “Medley,” created by Mattias Wozniak and Björn Svensson as part of their Masters Thesis at Lund University in Sweden. It’s full of great, beautifully delicate, examples how AR could be incorporated into everyday life. A nice contrast to some of the alternative nightmarish advertising or boring corporate scenarios. […]
Distance Lab was a Scottish creative research organization, created with the goal of “bringing together digital media technology, design and the arts to redefine and overcome the disadvantages of distance in learning, health care, relationships, culture and other domains.” Unfortunately, the BBC reports that they have recently closed down. Two of their most publicized projects […]
ImageFlow is a recently published project from Microsoft Research which aims to re-think the nature of image search. Rather than displaying search results in a grid or flat page-like layout, ImageFlow uses a 3D space in which the searcher can explore the content. The project is built upon some fascinating prior research. Specifically, that user […]
In 1993 Jef Raskin wrote the article Down With GUIs! in which he decried the state of user interfaces. He started with a bang: “Bluntly: Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are not human-compatible. As long as we hang on to interfaces as we now know them, computers will remain inherently frustrating, upsetting, and stressful.” And his […]
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 […]
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, […]
The tangibility of tabletop/object interfaces can make them much more approachable and informal than screen-based applications. That, plus you’re focused on the experience — not distracted by all the other apps or toolbars fighting for your attention. So it was cool to discover these two recent explorations. The first, Augmented Shadow, is by Joon Moon, […]
In 1994 Muriel Cooper presented work at the TED5 conference in Monterey, CA that changed the way designers thought of the possibilities of electronic media. The work, from her group at the MIT Media Lab‘s Visible Language Workshop (or VLW), took typography, literally, into three dimensions — and gave it dynamics and interactivity that had […]