FastCompany recently posted a insightful analysis, definitely worth a read, of the challenges the auto industry faces as they work to embrace consumer electronics and other ditigal trends. The title begins “Cars Are Horrible Mobile Tech Devices…” and details the root of the problem:

“Fast as they they may go, automobiles are some of the slowest-moving mobile devices in the industry, plagued by fragmented software ecosystems, unwelcoming development environments, and old-world product cycles.”

Last year, Near Future Laboratory did a great post entitled The Interaction & Interface Design Car Wreck that gave some examples of awful interface design in current and upcoming cars. And a report that “Ford cars dropped from 5th to 23rd in JD Power’s customer satisfaction survey primarily due to a complex and hard to use in-car digital UI” is an urgent call to action.

The industry works at moving forward,  obviously aware of customer needs, but having to work within the confines of their bureaucracies, histories, structures.

My previous job was at DesignworksUSA, a BMW Group company. One project that the studio was involved in was a collaboration with the BMW i design team on the interface experience of the i3 and i8 concept cars, as well as the BMW Vision ConnectedDrive showcar. The projects were big, and involved a lot of very smart and talented people.

I’d love to share more details and insights but, to avoid any potential violation of confidential information, I’ll just post a couple glimpses at these without any additional commentary. But… I will say that I believe that BMW has an incredible design team, and their attention to detail is unsurpassed.

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I’m only just starting to go through the site and all the places it links to. For example, course DES 03448: The Mixed-Reality City is using Zeega, a tool that the lab is also developing for creating interactive documentaries, open archives and inventing new forms of storytelling. There’s a worth-following blog. And they’re one of six finalists as part of the Beta Sprint competition of the Digital Public Library of America.

There’s definitely an academic orientation to it all — so some of the work may not seem immediately applicable. But that’s what makes the design research so important… it asks questions that we sometimes forget to ask. I want to know more!

The Obliteration Room

A couple months ago, while in Paris, I saw a fascinating exhibition of work by Yayoi Kusama. Much of her work has a hallucinatory quality — of obliteration and making things (especially herself) disappear. And it was her dot-room and light installations that I thought were particularly beautiful and amazing.

Dining room

Lights room

She recently completed an installation at the Queensland Art Gallery entitled The Obliterated Room. It’s a a very simple interaction (and without any technology — so maybe it doesn’t really belong on this blog?) where visitors apply colored dot stickers to a white-painted room. I love the way the audience’s participation builds the work, initially showing the contributions and personalities of the individual participants, until eventually it’s an abstract, otherworldly, space.

The Obliteration Room (part-way obliterated)

The museum has also created an interactive game for kids based on the piece. It’s not really noteworthy, but it is the closest this post will get to the digital

Obliteration game

(Link via Creative Review.)

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I recently posted a link about research leading to creating a real-world holodeck. So it was interesting to discover these three films, created for Sony, which showed another technique for creating immersive experiences.

Sony’s “trick” is to use projection mapping — which normally looks best from just a single static view point. They made the environment more flexible by attaching a PlayStation Move to the camera, so that as the camera moved, the projection adjusted accordingly. Probably for the person in these films, things looked a bit distorted, but the next step could be to attach the Move to the viewer, rather than the camera. In that case, it really would feel like you’re in the film.

More info on Great films fill rooms.

(Link via Rubbishcorp and Berg.)

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Digital Natives
 

I love the idea of annotation. To be able to add layers of history and interpretations and notes and all sorts of other layers onto a text (or image, or video, or whatever). It’s a great way show sources to ideas, or links to other thoughts. The challenge, always, is giving access to these annotations in a way that’s natural, doesn’t let you loose your place in the original core, and helps you understand the relationships between all the elements. (Right now I’m thinking about footnotes in books, or appendices in books, which can be more a burden and distraction — as it’s so hard to keep the context of where you came from in your mind.)

Lines, a really interesting project from The Cafe Society, is an examination of this situation. Lines is based on writing techniques used in medieval times where they used empty areas on a page, around the source text, to make their annotations. They’ve built a tool that lets you build fairly complex relationships between a wide range of ideas and sources. And it looks beautiful.

But as I watch their videos I get a little confused about what this tool actually offers. This may be because there is an emphasis on the features of the tool, rather than the bigger ideas. And many of their examples aren’t in English. But there’s something there which is exciting, and full of potential. It’s worth investigating further — and that’s on my to-do list. And I’d love to see how a set of “lines” might connect to other sets — to show relationships between different sources, and spark serendipitous discovery.

(Link via CreativeApplications.net.)

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I’ve heard the term digital native a lot, and the idea of them — kids that have grown up with digital technology and for whom it’s a natural part of the world. But there’s a even stronger implication: that they understand it so deeply that they view the world fundamentally different than non-natives.

This video (linked in a post full of great links by Chris O’Shea) really brought that idea to life.

Fascinating and terrifying.

Chris also linked to an interesting article, reimagining interactive TV, where the author writes about his daughter and her confusion that she can’t drag content from her TV to her bed. The expectation that digital and the real world are fluid.

This video (via TechCrunch) from Microsoft Research shows that researchers are actually working on technolgy that could make such a scenario possible — a kind of holodeck merged with the real world.

Super exciting and cool.

Where will all this lead? To me, it’s a reminder that what we feed these digital natives will influence the world they choose to build. We have an opportunity to create the new metaphors of interaction, and ways of thinking about (and interacting with) content, that can change the world. Let’s not pander to kids with dumb digital experiences — let’s teach them right.

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How do you search for something if you don’t have the words to describe it? What are alternate ways to search besides the ubiquitous text box?

There are a variety of tools that let you search based on an image. Google Googles lets you use the camera on your mobile phone to do a search for the object it recognizes in the image. Amazon provides similar search functionality to search through its product inventory. Google image search lets you upload an image (or images) to use as your search. And the results can be refined by adding text keywords. It’s pretty cool.

Searching based on an uploaded image

Refining the search with a keyword

Franz Enzenhofer’s hack adds a drawing interface on top of it. You do a rough sketch, and the program sends the image to Google image search — which then shows you images that match what you just drew.

But these are still searches for images. What about searching for other types of things — less tangible than an image, perhaps emotional or temporal?

Paul Lamere recently built a really cool hack that lets you search for music by drawing a picture of it. It’s rough (it was built in less than a day), but the idea is awesome: you draw a loudness profile that you’re interested in, and the tool returns songs that match it (as well as a more accurate profile of what’s available in its database). It’s a way of asking “what songs start soft gradually build?” or “what song starts with a bang and goes out with a whimper?” This is definitely something I want for my music library!

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Night Bright

Two interesting wall-sized interactive experiences… one charming, one kinda terrifying.

Night Bright is a new installation by Design I/O. The experience, designed for children, let users explore a nighttime forest, as if moving through it. The system adapts to their movements, and creatures in the forrest hide or come forward in response. It’s charming and engaging — and looks like a great way to help kids understand the unique rhythms of the natural forrest.

Boo! on the other hand, is just plain creepy. In its environment, zombies react to visitors’ presence. Zombies are approaching their victim — but only move forward if visitors turn away or don’t look. Otherwise there’s the feeling that they’re watching you, waiting for your next move.

Just watching the video of Boo! is enough for me. If I had a choice I’d prefer the night forest. But both, in their own way, are fascinating engaging, and educational, experiences.

(Both links via CreativeApplications.Net.)

Boo!

Boo!

Night Bright

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A couple recent discoveries about teaching programming.

First, an [older but still] interesting post on Learning to Think Like A Programmer and why it’s important.

Next is Codecademy, a really simple, but engaging site, that introduces basic programming concepts in a step-by-step interactive manner. It’s like having a tutor sit with you as you go through the foundational exercises.

And lastly, the nuts, but maybe-it-really-is-important, book HTML for Babies !

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Almost five years ago, Stefan Bucher started his Daily Monster project. It was a simple beginning — every day he’d post a video in which he would create a monster based on an ink splot. Since then he’s built a mini-empire out of it (in addition to all the amazing stuff he does). His most recent creation is an iPad and iPhone app that lets users create their own monsters.

Stefan started his design career as a print designer, so I thought it’d be interesting to find out what it was like for him to create an interactive piece…

Stefan: Working on the interface of the app was a completely different challenge from what I normally do. It was both fascinating and frustrating to see people struggle with designs that I thought were crystal clear. But I learned a ton from the process.

Luckily I had the help of my intrepid developer Dominik Wei-Fieg of Ars Subtilior. To say that he went above and beyond is an understatement. I’ve had issues working with developers before where we just never quite got on the same wave length, be it on the technical or aesthetic level, or simply on matters of business etiquette. In fact, that’s what stalled the initial web version of the Monster Maker, and the first app alpha. I’m not an easy client, but Dominik has been amazing throughout. His ideas and ingenuity of execution made this app so much better and so much more fun than I ever thought it could be.

Development sketches.

Q: A stalled version?

The project started as a web app that never even saw a beta, because of a flaky developer. It lingered for easily two years. It took my getting an iPhone to think, “Hang on! This is MUCH better for playing this game than the web.” The prototype had a lot of the basic ideas in place, and quite a few of the elements survived, but boy, am I glad it didn’t launch then.

The stalled web-based version.

Q: What makes this app different from your traditional way of creating monsters?

I love just being able to move things around, and change my mind a dozen times. Can’t do that on paper. That said, my favorite part of the app is that you can actually pose for a photo with the Monsters. I didn’t expect it to be as ridiculously fun as it is. And it takes the experience to a whole other level.

The thing that’s most interesting to me is just to create an experience that’s as close to drawing your own Monsters as possible, and that’s really fun and personal.

I remember, a couple years ago at the launch party for his monster book, he let guests customize a giant monster and pose with it. It’s great to see Stefan continue to evolve his monster world.

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