Lift 09 poster

Snowed under work lately (foresight project about the future of the web, gestural controllers research, lift, writing a book about locative media), I have less time to blog but it’s worth having a look at the new Lift poster:

Explained by Bread and Butter themselves:

A city by night, an impressive landscape of anonymous buildings. Could be anywhere.
A luminous meteor carves the darkness, rustling the anarchy of the city, of our memories.
LIFT 09 emerging with new energy, lights and colors.

A feeling of perspective, of vertigo.
An image inspired by the covers of sci-fi novels of the 70-80′s.
This is a typical LIFT poster, 1:1 hand-made, with enough feather strokes to confuse the pixels, impactful.

Carving into the past, LIFT lights up the future that never was. The journey starts now…

You can see the archive of Lift posters here, and download highres versions for printing if you wish.

Technonomadic work

Necessary tool for two-user audioconference using an iphone. Basic artifact for 21st century work process.

Pavement life

Seen in Paris (I spent half of my time in this city lately)

Signage on the sidewalk, dead birds and homeless people living in tents. Or, on other words: designed artifacts for city-dwellers, animal partners which accidently did not manage to live in good terms with (driving) humans, and people left-aside from society.

The urban environment per se, a certainly gloomy winter.

Design-Science relationships

In Designerly Ways of Knowing: Design Discipline versus Design Science, Nigel Cross interestingly discusses the epistemological concerns of design research. Using his own typology he tries to differentiate the design-science relationships: (a) scientific design, (b) design science, and (c) a science of design.

Some excerpts I found relevant:

“Scientific design refers to modern, industrialized design—as distinct from pre-industrial, craft-oriented design-based on scientific knowledge but utilizing a mix of both intuitive and nonintuitive design methods. (…) a desire to produce works of art and design based on objectivity and rationality, that is, on the values of science.
(…)
Design science addresses the problem of determining and categorizing all regular phenomena of the systems to be designed, and of the design process. Design science also is concerned with deriving from the applied knowledge of the natural sciences appropriate information in a form suitable for the designer’s use.” This definition extends beyond “scientific design,” in including systematic knowledge of design process and methodology, as well as the scientific/technological underpinnings of the design of artifacts.
(…)
the science of design refers to that body of work which attempts to improve our understanding of design through “scientific” (i.e., systematic, reliable) methods of investigation. And let us be clear that a “science of design” is not the same as a “design science.” “

Another interesting topic addressed in this paper is the critique of the positivist doctrine implied by the scientific design vector, referring to the following claim by Donald Schön:

“ He criticized Simon’s view of a “science of design” for being based on approaches to solving well-formed problems, whereas professional practice throughout design and technology and elsewhere has to face and deal with “messy, problematic situations.” Schön proposed, instead, to search for “an epistemology of practice implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which some practitioners do bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict,” and which he characterized as “reflective practice.“

Why do I blog this? exploring the design field, I find it relevant to look at this sort of discussion as it clarifies lots of ambiguities. Working with people having both a “scientific approach” an designers, it’s easy to see the gaps and the underlying elements described above. Beyond the “design thinking” meme, it’s also good to see some academic references tackling the problem of design epistemology.

Real-Life treasure hunt on the Nintendo DS

An intriguing use of the positioning system of Nintendo DS wifi is described on Gamasutra. Creative director and lead designer Justin Leingang (at Aspyr) is working on an original Nintendo DS title that uses each player’s DS to create “a real-life treasure hunt,”:

“The project, which bears the working title Treasure Troves, (…) One of Treasure Troves’ main input mechanics operates by scanning for nearby wi-fi networks and generating items based on each network’s unique frequency. (The game continues to uncover items and and optionally emit aural feedback even when the DS is closed, allowing players to “play” in public without needing to actively monitor the system.) These items can then be managed and traded with other players to create special item sets, and can be used for a variety of player-customized in-game functions.
(…)
For example, each item emits a distinct sound, which include musical notes and phonetic noises; the items can then be replicated and arranged on a Mario Paint-like musical grid. Like items and other custom creations, these resultant compositions can be traded with other players.“

Why do I blog this? what an awesome game idea and of course the point here is not to position the Nintendo DS in an accurate way. Instead, it’s simply about using existing Wifi networks to create specific items. Surely an intriguing way to tie in the physical and the digital.

Another interesting element here is that it’s highly uncommon to see this sort of development on a platform such as the Nintendo DS. Although it’s doable to hack the thing for this sort of purpose, it’s generally more difficult for game studio to make it acceptable for Nintendo. Perhaps I should re-read the TRC:

lottery game interface

For lots of people, this is a very common game interface. The picture shows a device usually employed in France to verify whether your lottery ticket is a winning one. You have to swipe the ticket below this light and the results are then displayed on a tiny screen above. Minimal game interface!

Bandai poking box

One of the weirdest electronic toy I’ve played with so far is certainly this “tuttuki bako” (tuttuki box) poking box by BANDAI. It consists in a basic box with a LCD screen, a cute yellow button and a hole on one side of the box. To play the games, you simply have to insert your finger in this hole, and see it appear on the LCD screen.

Apart from being a basic clock, you have different games as represented on the photo below: poking a panda, removing boogers from someone’s face, touching slime or ticking a stick figure character. I actually played with it for sometimes yesterday afternoon at the game studio and it sparked a good discussion about this type of gesture-based interactions.

Why do I blog this? this object is the typical geek magnet as you can see from its presence on tons of blogs about gadgets. Oftentimes, they miss the point and only see the odd character as well as the proximity to old-school tamagotchis. Being interested in electronic toys and their user experience (in a video game project), I try to nail down the interesting aspects of this device.

What’s intriguing here is the mode of interaction proposed. Clearly, sticking one’s finger in a hole to interact with an object is highly uncommon and almost taboo. Furthermore, it’s really about being “engaged” in the interaction physically since you feel that a body part is can be both an input and a somewhat output through the LCD screen.

Second, the vocabulary of interaction of highly interesting. On the physical side: insert, touch, twiddle around inside, stick in, etc. And on the digital side: pushing around a stick figure, ticking someone’s nose, petting a tiny panda bear, etc.

Internet of Things day

The Lift team is helping other conferences with their program, advising on speakers and format. For instance we are organizing a whole day in Sierre, Switzerland about the Internet of Things on January 30th.

With speeches from Daniel Kaplan (from the french think tank FING, who brilliantly wrapped up Lift07), David Orban (of the Open Spime project) and Jean-Louis Fréchin (NoDesign and ENSCI). There will also be different workshops.

Apart from David’s talk, the event is going to be in french.

Switzerland sci-fi museum

Last week, I visited the Maison d’Ailleurs in Switzerland, which is a museum of science-fiction and utopia. The only public institution of its kind in the world, it’s a non-profit foundation functioning both as a public museum and a specialized research center.

They have temporary exhibition (with people such as H.R. Giger, John Howe or Alejandro Jodorowski) and have a tremendous “Espace Jules Verne” with tons of documents (books, pictures, objects) related with this author. They also have a library with a huge collective of pulps and sci-fi documents that can be interesting for researchers.

The most intriguing activities are certainly the research aspects. For example, they have done a project with the European Space Agency called Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications (ITSF). The Maison d’Ailleurs was commissioned by ESA to organise and lead a study of technologies found in science fiction literature in 2000-2001:

“The study supervisors – along with SF writers, engineers, experts and anyone seriously interested in the project – are identifying whether any of these technologies might hold potential for further analysis leading to feasibility studies. The technologies listed are being examined to see what might be possible with today’s knowledge, technologies and materials, or what new technologies and knowledge might be required to make any of the identified SF concepts work.

Following this, an in-depth technological study will then be carried out in order to make a more extensive evaluation of the major technologies deemed to be of sufficient interest by a panel of experts. The objective will be to ascertain whether any of these are worthy of eventual consideration for ESA’s long-term space programme“

Why do I blog this? beyond my fascination towards sci-fi, this place seems to be a highly relevant institution. The material they have can be very interesting for researchers and as a material to work on design related issues. Besides, the museum director will give a speech at Lift 09.

Historical analysis as a design tool

In “Historical Analysis: Using the Past to Design the Future“, Wyche and her colleagues shows how history can be valuable for ubiquitous computing research; namely, that it can employed to provided insight and methodologies in the same vein as anthropology or philosophy.

They point out in what respect historical analysis is relevant:

• sheds new light on recurring cultural themes embedded in domestic technology, and by extension, ‘smart homes.’ Questioning these themes has the potential to lead designers to rethink assumptions about domestic technology use. For example, rather than using “ease of use” as a guiding principle, elders described difficult, yet enjoyable aspects of housework that technology removed
• exploring the past helps us understand who we are today and where we are going. For ubiquitous computing, historical awareness can deepen designers’ understanding of the context they are designing for.
• history can spur designers’ imaginations by revealing the contingency of the present situation, rendering it less obvious and inevitable
• using history to defamiliarize the present supports designers in envisioning future domestic life less constrained by present-day cultural assumptions embedded in technology
• Like ethnography, history forces designers to become more aware of their preconceptions about a topic. Because of its ability to defamiliarize the present, history can be a powerful recourse for inspiring innovative computational devices and systems.”

They apply this approach to domestic technology use with some interesting techniques such as scrapbooking or the the use of personal histories of technology use (asking people to remember the first time they use a certain technology).