Dig for Design

Finally the demos on TEI2011.

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I’ve just came back from TEI2011, an event about tangible, embedded and embodied interaction. It’s a very huge conference with the participation of some great design and technology schools like MIT Media Lab, Carnegie Mellon, TU/e, KAIST e among others.I’ve presented a paper about a project in Brazil for Natural Sciences Museum PUC Minas.There were a lot of interesting WIP presentations, for instance from Bill Verplank. Verplank is a proeminent interaction designer, he worked with Bill Moggridge on IDEO, had worked in the first GUI, the Xerox Star, and taught on IVREA School. He presented a work about assertive musical instruments, a different kind of feedback instrument that helps to create experimental music performances.The very last panel was a great thought about tangible media, moderated by Bill Verplank with Justine Cassell (Carnegie Mellon University), Gillian Crampton Smith (IUAV University of Venice), Donald Norman (Nielsen Norman Group) e Norbert Streitz (Smart Future Initiative). Where I recorded this video below:Right now I’m trying to edit the demos and art exploration videos, stay tooned. For 2012 TEI will happen on Canada.A sort of photos from flicker:

Update: During the event it also had a design challenge, design your superhero, where I’ve worked with Marcos Paulo Machado and we won a honorable mention in inventiveness. Here is a video about the challenge:

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The documentary tells the story of Arduino and its creation on the extinct IVREA interaction design school. Enjoy…

Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.

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The video above illustrate one week in two minutes on IDEO. Note that are no computers involved in this sketching sessions. At a first look could sound weird to work with interaction design without computers. But, IMHO it is impossible to design optimal experiences without a paper and a set of pencils and pens. BTW, there’s a lot of people spending a big amount of money and time designing only in computers within not-so-easy-to-use softwares that only designers or even engineers could operate.

And when we talk about paper prototyping, people often argue that paper is not relevant to usability tests or it’s a wasted time because paper prototype is too low-fidelity to get ideas in a project. Well this is not just false, but it’s even a wrong way think in design means. Bill Buxton in Sketching User Experiences wrote about the Laseau Funnel as a process in design. The overlaped funnel illustrate the whole process, so you come with a lot of ideas, make a lot of rapid sketches and than you move to more specific and detailed prototypes. The prototypes turn into more and more expensive ones, at the same time you get less design alternatives.

Following this funnel, it’s better to start with a bunch of ideas, than just one closed mental model. Of course! If you start with a closed mental mental, you’ll probably have more work to redo in future. It’s not easy to change something after developing or even after a detailed prototype. Engineers reacting to rework is a common scenario where paper sketches are not a reality. Carolyn Snyder in the book Paper Prototyping points out more advantages than just economic factor. She wrote that paper prototyping is a excellent media to test with users and there’s a lot of advantages comparing to hi-fi prototypes:

• It is less intimidating than a computer.
  Technophobes, elders or kids could feel better with a piece of paper than a monitored computer in a usability test session.
• More creative feedback.
  Users and stakeholders feel more confortable and creative when testing a paper prototype. They usually propose more changes and improvements, than a “final version” interactive prototype.
• No nitpicky feedback.
  When testing a hi-fi prototype users tend to pay attention to minor visual issues or even colors. When you use paper prototype is all about interaction and experience, nothing more than this.
• Earlier Communication across Disciplines.
  Engineers, designers, clients, users can communicate early in firsts days of a project, so this minizes the impact on changes and keep the UX richer.
• Multidisciplinary teams can participate.
  You don’t have to be an specialist to understand and iterate with a paper prototype, this means more participation and clearer discussions.
• Avoiding miscomunication.
  Paper prototypes can be used as a rapid documentation in order to avoid miscomunication between UX designers and engineers, for instance.  Here is a great pattern you can use to document your project.
• Opinion wars.
  As ideas are more physical, it’s easier to discuss them. It’s even easier to compare  and avoid opinion wars.

So, find your old pencils, pens and paper and start sketching, better now than tomorrow!

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How many times I have tried to understand a electronics schematics? or just looking how to illustrate a specific component. For designers who usually build electronic prototypes, all thigs get mad :/ This is what a crazy guy did in a considerable free time. He categorized all those components for us! But the better is comming… A tag organization allows to filter by format (rectagle, triangle, etc), atritbutes like arrows, dotted lines e everything else that looks like a Chinese horoscope symbol. So, save this bookmark in your delicious with love.

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The XRDS magazine published by ACM is out now with an edition dedicated to the future of interaction. With a series of articles about tangible interfaces, brain-machine interface, physical computing and pervasive computing. The magazine even has a Hiroshi Ishii’s profile, the MIT Media Lab professor, precursor in several concepts in this area.

Concidence or not,  here is a recent lecture of John Underkoffler also from MIT Media Lab. The title is  ”The future of the UI”.

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Finally my installation “Frozen Poetry” on an exhibition in Belo Horizonte, Brasil.

FROZEN POETRY
Marginália Lab

The individual who, bearing an ice cube, freezes syllables building imprecise signs.

In a proposal permeated by ludic characteristics, Koji Pereira invites the visitors of his interactive installation Frozen Poetry to undergo a battle of small proportions against the internal rules of his computational system of creation of quasi-random poetry. Quasi- once the individual’s lack of control is only partial. In this game, trying to overcome the evolution of syllables – which tend to overlap each other rapidly – intending to enclose them into signs, the individual is at times successful, while at other occasions finds himself subject to an everlasting flux that gives place to the unpredictable manifestation of chance.

This ephemeral interface – the ice which slowly melts responding to touch with bare hands and with the projection surface – is the tool with which one writes his écritures; the utmost place for errors, mistakes, the space inhabited by imprecision is the same where randomness is nurtured. The yet-to-be-text escaping control, advancing subtly beyond the limits of the vernacular, presenting the visitor with short dada-inspired poetry as a result of his paradoxical endeavor in which at each moment one fights against and in favor of this system.

Read the full article

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User Experience Designer  Luke Wroblewski have published in his blog a gesture reference guide, a summary of almost all gestures implemented until today (PDF Version). Lukew’s guide is a great way to not reinvent the wheel, but at the same time it makes clear how there’s no consensus among softwares.

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This is a digital guitar running linux with SSH The guitar is MIDI compatible and it has a multitouch screen. This kind of toy was made in Australia and  seems  it will be for sale soon, at least this is what the official site says. The guitar has a 8.4” LCD with 800×600 resolution and a internal AMD x86 PC with 500MHZ! Let Björk hear about it…

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The coalition of agencies, productors, designers and developers created this awesome result. A giant 3D interactive projection, where public can interact with two blank screens and one multitouch table.

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