Visualizing the information distance between cities

(via), City Distance is a neat project by bestirario that aims at measuring informational distance between cities. What this means is simple: it creates a visual representation of the the world comparing real geographical distances with informational distances as defined by Google:

“This tridimensional scheme represents the strength of relations between cities from searches on google. The main idea is to compare the number of pages on internet [sic] where the two cities appear one close to the other, with the number of pages they appear isolated. This position indicates some kind of intensity of relation between the cities. After measuring this “google proximity” we divide it by its geographical distance. By this process we obtain an indicator about the strength of the relation in spite of the real distance, a kind of informational distance between cities.“

Which is what the authors of this project calls the “google platonic distance between cities” (See the website for more information about how to compute this).

Why do I blog this? A very curious and insightful representation comes out from this sort of viz. I guess the granularity can be different and reveal finer-grained patterns at smaller levels. Yet another interesting type of urban visualization.

Nintendo DS and Sony PSP information architecture

Last year, during a project with Nokia and the EPFL Media and Design Lab, we “mapped” the structures of the “digital world” as represented in mobile devices (cell phones, iphones, ipods, portable consoles). The point was to graphically represent the information architecture so that we could understand how it evolves over time in different devices. Francesco Cara, design strategist at Nokia is talking about it in his LIFT08 presentation.

Anyhow, I was in charge of looking at mobile entertainment devices (such as the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP, among others) because one my research them is about the exploration of portable technologies to understand the implications in terms of mobility and new interactions. The underlying idea, consists in analysing the usage of the technologies to determine opportunities and constraints for design.

This type of quick graph is interesting at it represent different information architecture strategies (menus globally speaking) and to so in a quick glance how Nintendo simplifies interfaces with a limited depth unlike the PSP. This graph was a first step before other more evolved representations mostly focused on cell phones that I can’t show here (non disclosable yet).

Monocle on cities

The latest issue of Monocle has some interesting article about city life. Of course, there is the Monocle spin that some may not like but there are interesting bits and pieces.

An old french bread vending machine

At a certain moment in time, bread used to be sold in vending machine in France, as shown by the picture below taken last week in Arles. It may have been perceived dreadful (or the machine broke) and the owner it would be better to pain it using the same color of the baker building. Depending on the culture what is acceptable to be sold in vending machine?

Presence of radio waves, revealed

Making radio waves more explicit through stickers.

Urban safari in modern architecture

Each time I’m around Camargue (South of France, near Montpellier), I try to spend time around La Grande Motte. An intriguing beach resort built in the late 60s, early 70s, the place was formerly a desert of sand dunes and lagoons where giant mole hilles (“mottes” in French) has been designed. The architecture was based on the Inca pyramids models in Mexico, designed with terrace systems along with triangular, round and rectangular features to provide wind and sun shields and sea views.

In France, bashing this sort of architecture is a sort of regular sport, although lots of people go there and enjoy the place. The unity and the coherence of the place is amazingly interesting, and although this city has been created ex nihilo it definitely feels more urban than lots of other beach resorts in the area. Some urban aspects are important: such as the fact that the beach and the building are not separated by a road with cars (but only a promenade for pedestrian and bikes).

Wandering around the city after midnight with a digital camera, food bits and flip flops is a curious experience, especially when the place is not yet crowded with semi-naked humans flocking there for the grandes vacances. The first picture shows a global view taken form the harbor showing the odd ambiance mixing modernist architecture and weird lightings. The other pictures I took give the impression of a retrofuturistic spin that you can also get when you go to University of California Irvine.

Strange angles, fantastic cladding textures are also deeply intriguing in this night atmosphere. Lots of small details, big shapes that you discover and rediscover and stumble across a group of teenagers riding their bikes on curved shapes, old cats trying to get some food and a lost tourist sat on the beach with a laptop.

Lots of people consider this sort of urbanism as a big (and ugly) failure, I don’t by that argument and I would be interested in scratching more the surface to understand what works and what doesn’t to understand how that modern urbanism project has some good lessons to draw. Surely the low presence of cars would be an interesting topic. Also, I am pretty sure the infrastructure layer of the city may be fantastic to inspect more closely.

GPS versus maps versus direct experience

In Wayfinding with a Mobile GPS System, Ishikawa et al. examined the effectiveness of GPS navigation in comparison to paper maps and direct experience. Since it’s a psychological study, the study is focused, more specifically on the user’s wayfinding behavior and acquired spatial knowledge.

The results show the following patterns:

“Based on information received from one of these three media, participants walked six routes finding the way to goals. Results showed that GPS users traveled longer distances and made more stops during the walk than map users and direct-experience participants. Also, GPS users traveled more slowly, made larger direction errors, drew sketch maps with poorer topological accuracy, and rated wayfinding tasks as more difficult than direct-experience participants. Characteristics of navigation with these three learning media and possible reasons for the ineffectiveness of the GPS-based navigation system are discussed.“

go4walk describes some of the factors of explanation:

“The researchers have suggested a number of possible reasons for their observations – the users’ unfamiliarity with the technology, the small size of the screen that prevented users seeing their current location and the target at the same time, and the temptation to look at the GPS screen rather than the actual surroundings. This third factor is interesting because it suggests that over reliance on a GPS makes it hard to build up a mental model of your surroundings – where you are and how you got there. The obvious consequence is that should your batteries fail or your GPS ‘lose’ its satellite fix for some reason – you would become instantly lost with no idea how to get back safely.“

Why do I blog this? the paper is interesting as it tries to define the differences between specific medium. Results are intriguing and the last one concerning the over-reliance on the screen versus the surroundings is an important one. It echoes with some results we noticed in the CatchBob experiment with people puzzled by the mismatch between the screen and the context.

Toru Ishikawa, Hiromichi Fujiwara, Osamu Imai, and Atsuyuki Okabe. 2008. “Wayfinding with a GPS-Based Mobile Navigation System: A Comparison with Maps and Direct Experience.” Journal of Environmental Behavior, vol. 28, pp. 74-82.

Why do you read Pasta and Vinegar?

Time for a quick address: it’s been 5 years that I keep this blog and things have changed over time. Topics discussed here vary but revolves around ubiquitous computing, tangible interactions, innovation and foresight, user experience and research. My situation also evolved from the one of a master student to the one of an independent researcher with a PhD. Of course I know some of the readers and got some feedback about what they find here but I wanted to know more about it from people I do not necessarily know.

So two questions: (1) Why do you read Pasta and Vinegar? and (2) What do you find here?

Not sure whether the answers would have an influence but I am curious about it.

Cybercity representations

In “The Cybercities Reader (Urban Reader)” (Steve Graham), there is a wonderful text by Anne Beamish called “The City in Cyberspace” which tackles the city metaphor in “virtual worlds” and how superficial the metaphor is often taken.

Some excerpts I found relevant to my interests:

“What do these digital worlds [Alphaworld represented above, Planet9, Le Deuxieme Monde, Virtual Los Angeles] tell us about the creators’ image of the city? When digital urban environments are designed, the downtown is often seen as the Holy Grailv – the vivid, exciting, teasing, tantalizing city is held up within sight, but out of reach. The image of the city is used to attract us and to draw us into the world, but it functions mainly as a decoration or marketing technique intended to get the customer in the door. The creators of these virtual worlds appear to take the image of the city literally but superficially, and they generally do not seem to have given much thought to what it is about a city that their visitors would find appealing. They use the image of the city liberally but strip it of meaning.
(…)
Too often, rather than mimicking the vitality and excitement of downtown, the digital environment is disconcertingly desolate and empty; the buildings are blandly modern; and it is common to travel around these worlds without meeting another soul.

To be fair, though, the crude and simplistic environment is not always a reflection of the creator’s aesthetic taste; it is also a reflection and result of technology, economics and regulation.“

Why do I blog this Working on both fields of video games and urban computing, I find interesting to observe the relationship between the image of the city and its physical counterpart. For that matter, it seems that some progress are attempted especially with games such as GTA IV. The representation of the city in entertainment is surely interesting as a sort of artifacts to depict “possible futures” which are of course very culturally-situated.

Holding the wiimote

Interesting discussion yesterday at the game studio around the holding of the wiimote. Surely one the topic that emerged from the usability tests of wii games we conducted, especially with people who’ve NEVER touch a video game console. The first picture represents the regular wiimote holding scheme whereas the two other shows how a novice user held it when playing different mini-games.

Some of the issues the tests raised: How do we design applications for the B button in the previous cases? What about the 1 and 2? Can we use them in the interaction? Should the A-button be important so that the thumb or the second finger? Is the “plus” button the right one to break scenes? What about the cross? What’s the role of the direction cross with these two ways of holding the wiimote?