Escape mechanism for location-based services

As stated by Roy Want and colleagues in 1993 in their paper that describes “The Active Badge Location System”

“there will always be some days when for whatever reason somebody does not wish to be located. The location system tracks badges and NOT people. Anybody wearing a badge can remove it and leave it on a desk. The Active Badge system will then be misled into locating that person in an area that has been chosen for this deception. This kind of escape mechanism is not an undesirable system feature and may be an important factor in making this system acceptable for common use. “

Spectrum range and human activities

This colorful diagram depicts the allocations of frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum in the US. It’s stunning to see how revealing the comparison between different media/communication system and the spectrum range they “inhabit”. For instance, blue is “tv broadcasting”. Navigation is very present too.

Why do I blog this? Lots of stuff to analyze with these inscription, it’s intriguing to see what you can draw in terms of social organization (as well as assumptions about society) from technical diagrams like this. A nice exercise for the bored reader, try to find 3 hidden patterns about human activities in this representation.

On a more user-centric angle, see also “the bubbles of radio”.

The sociality of the play setting

In People, places, and play: player experience in a socio-spatial context, De Kort and Ijsselsteijn (Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 6(2), April/June 2008) discuss the “situatedness” of digital gaming. That is to say, the socio-spatial contingencies of the player experience.

Of interest here is the exploration of how co-players or the audience, as well as the spatial context can shape the player experience:

“This social context cannot be described by the presence of others alone. It also encompasses the player’s ability to monitor other players’ actions, performance and emotions. It includes the other’s role in this setting – acting or observing, competing, co-operating, or co-acting. And it comprises their opportunities for verbal and non-verbal communication. Together, the social affordances and the objective characteristics of the game and play context that contain them define the ‘sociality’ of the play setting.
(…)
The presence of others, or social presence, is seen here as a continuous dimension (as opposed to a dichotomous one) that varies based on the level of perceptual access to the real or virtual others, their communicative realism, and a shared behavioural engagement. “

Why do I blog this? I’ve always been intrigued by the role of audience/bystanders/co-located people in gaming situations, and of course of they influence the game experience. One of the topic I find intriguing is how game design can benefit from this and explicitly create interactions that would take advantage of the complexity of the social setting.

A matter of surface

When you can’t use a surface, bring another one that fit your needs. Seen in Geneva this morning.

User experience of potentiometer in gaming

An interesting add-on for the Nintendo DS is this lovely potentiometer by Taito, somewhat reminiscent from paddle controller. Using a geared potentiometer actuation mechanism, the user experience is quite basic with brick-games such as Arkanoid. Rotating that sole button is intriguing and quite smooth. Of course some folks nailed it down more thoroughly and manage to control Mario Kart DS. Surely something to think about tangentially to this.

From speculative meals to design

A one-day trip to Paris in the TGV gave me plenty of time to skim through Speculative visions and imaginary meals: Food and the environment in (post-apocalyptic) science fiction films by Jean P. Retzinger (Cultural Studies Vol. 22, Nos. 3-4, May-July 2008, pp. 369-390).

The paper interestingly addresses how science fiction highlight dream and anxieties of the present, as particularly shown by the depiction of food. In an insightful content analysis, the authors describe how food scenes can be seen as witness of “popular perceptions about nature, technology, and humanity” or a “liminal cultural symbol”.

Some excerpts I found interesting:

“Familiar foods serve as an anchor in an altered world (evoking both nostalgia and parody), whereas unfamiliar food may become one of the clearest measures of how far we have journeyed from the present.
(…)
In nearly every instance where food is prepared, shared, and eaten in science fiction films, it aids in what Vivian Sobchack (1988) describes as science fiction’s central theme: a ‘poetic mapping of social relations as they are created and changed by new technological modes of ‘‘being-in-the-world’’ ’
(…)
The presence of food at the critical junctures in which the familiar and the strange, the past, present, and future all collide lends materiality to the answers being worked out on screen. (…) Science fiction food scenes help obscure, expose, perpetuate, and challenge the divisions of culture and nature. “

Lots of interesting examples ranging from futuristic food representing a nostalgia for a world that has been lost to unfamiliar meals (with shape or color betraying people’s expectations) in “alienated” places.
Why do I blog this? Well, although one might find weird that I take a look at food issues, the questions (as well as the methodology) described in this paper is relevant to whatever object you can find in science-fiction production and their resonance in design in general. In this case it’s about food, but if you look at other artifacts (be it Marty McFly’s shoes in Back to the Future or BG4′s flying gear), it’s definitely encounters with claims of what the author refers to as “past and present, nostalgia and progress,
memory and desire, familiarity and difference (…) and the significance of these many issues and the choices made to satiate our needs and our desires.“.

So what is the take-away here? as it seems, sci-fi movies, as exemplified by food scenes, explore moral aspects of production, consumption and object appropriation showing both constant design patterns (nostlgia from the past?) or unfamiliar/alienated depictions (fear from an uncertain present?).

Spontaneous kid play activities with cell-phones

Yet another interesting reference for a project about children and mobile gaming devices (ranging from the Nintendo DS to cell phones): In the hands of children: exploring the use of mobile phone functionality in casual play settings by a swedish team of researchers: Petra Jarkievich, My Frankhammar, and Ylva Fernaeus (taken from the Mobile HCI conference 2008).

The paper reports the results of a field study concerning swedish kids (10-12 y.o) and their use of mobile phones in indoor and outdoor settings. The authors mention that they were interested by unsupervised social play and “spontaneous play activities” taking kids as a particular use case of mobile devices target. The locus of their study was therefore peculiar: situations where children were able to play fairly undisrupted for a longer period of time, and in explicit social settings. This is why they chose play centres located in parks. In terms of methodology, it’s a mix of observation and kids interview (focus groups) about cell phone usage over the course of 6 weeks.

A quick overview of the results (although reading the whole finding section is very important to get the sense of what happens):

“The first general observation concerns the dual nature of the phones; simultaneously being serious and important communication tools for parents, as among the children being treated and valued primarily as resources to act locally in the group (…) Sharing media content was one of the key activities that we observed and seemed to play a central role in these respects, where individual ownership of the media content was assessed and valued largely based on its social context.
(…)
Our second general observation has to do with the skills that the children displayed at using the different features of the technology, and how these were constantly appropriated in a variety of ways. Existing physical play activities were sometimes altered and expanded to suit the technical resources, and the discovery of new functionality also inspired entirely new play scenarios. The children thereby also made use of functions in the phones to do things that these functions were clearly not intended for. We also
observed several ways to overcome, and even make use of, the technical limitations of the devices. This suggests that children at this age put much value into the freedom of creating their own play scenarios, as a way to make meaningful use of the technologies at hand.
(…)
Our last more general observation is related to the long-established worry that computing technology may make children less physically stimulated, often favouring passive forms of learning, and how it has tended to force children’s play environments to move indoors.“

And the following “implication for design” is also intriguing:

“some of the most meaningful and interesting technical functions were those that allowed users to invent and develop their own activities. We see no reason to suspect that this would not be a much appreciated feature also among adult users, at least in certain settings“

Why do I blog this? accumulating material about kids and mobile devices for a client project about mobile gaming. I am preparing a field study about that topic and try to get both methodological/results from other researchers. Reading the findings also worth it as it shows mobile phone usage is articulated with kids games such as ‘cops and robbers’.

Urban jigsaw

Mismatch poetry in Geneva.

WASD, ESDF, IJKL et al

WASD according to the Wikipedia:

“WASD is a set of four keys on a QWERTY or QWERTZ computer keyboard which mimics the inverted-T configuration of the arrow keys. These keys are often used to control the player character’s movement in computer games. W/S control forward and backward and A/D control strafing left and right. Primarily, WASD is used to account for the fact that the arrow keys are not ergonomic to use in conjunction with a right-handed mouse.

Some gamers prefer the WASD keys to the arrow keys for other various reasons, including the fact that more keys (and therefore, game commands) are easily accessible with the left hand when placed near WASD. Left-handed mouse users may prefer using the numpad or IJKL with their right hands instead for similar reasons.

After being popularized by first-person shooters, WASD became more common in other computer game genres as well. Many of the games that have adopted this layout use a first-person or over-the-shoulder third-person perspective.“

There are other alernatives such as WQSE, ESDF (sometimes preferred because it provides access to movement independent keys for the little finger), IJKL (common in browser games because employing the arrow keys woud make the window to scroll and thus hinder gameplay), and of course the unix-based HJKL.
Why do I blog this? documenting different styles of interaction, it’s intriguing to see how the arrow key configuration evolves and mutates.

“Designed by an engineer”

The city of Lausanne is very proud to have the first swiss subway system (opening very soon). After two years of constructions, some new urban elements are appearing and it’s funny to see the pride of the persons who took care of that. See for example this stunning sticker that is pervasive around the new subway entrance:

It basically says “Conceived/designed by an engineer”, I wonder about the background decisions that led to this sticker campaign and find it utterly fascinating. Also what will be people’s reaction? Does that make you more confident before taking that elevator?

Of course, I am always thinking how OTHER stickers (such as “Designed by a crocodile wrangler” or “Built by a chicken sexer”) would do.