October 17, 2011 - In Present
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…
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October 12, 2011 - In Future
This new ad from IBM, promoting their Smarter Healthcare initiative is more idea communication than interface. But, it’s nicely suggestive of the complexity of information that doctors and patients need to deal with. And it’s a teaser for the potential of IBM’s Watson in the health care space. As a side note, sorry for the infrequency of postings here lately. I’ve recently switched jobs, and so things have been unusually busy. Hopefully I’ll be posting…
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September 23, 2011 - In Present
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!…
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September 1, 2011 - In Future
The blog Huds and Guis has put together three great video montages of UI design from the 2001 film Final Fantasy. The film may not be all that great, but these UI sequences are a lot of fun to watch. Definitely UI candy! It’s an interesting collection of holographic displays, globes and spheres, small detailed text, and projections. Like many film UIs, the designs are pretty abstract — they’re gestures to help advance the story….
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August 31, 2011 - In Future, Quick
Nike, as part of their Jumpman campaign has created a series of commercials called Dominate Another Day, or D3. And the really cool new blog, Huds and Guis, has posted some background information as well as all six videos. Head-up displays, augmented reality, and transparent screens; They aren’t the deepest fantasy UIs, but they’re still fun.
August 26, 2011 - In Present, Quick
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 !
August 24, 2011 - In Present
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…
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August 22, 2011 - In Present
Greg Tran’s recent thesis at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, entitled Mediating Mediums, is a fascinating study looking at the cross section between augmented reality and architecture. Specifically he’s interested in moving augmented reality from the digital to the material — so that the augmentation is, essentially, “real.” That’s probably way too much of a simplification, so I asked him to talk a bit about what he’s doing. Architecture has historically been a medium…
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August 18, 2011 - In Past
One of my favorite pieces at the Cooper Hewitt 2006 National Design Triennial was ”SnowWorld.” It was beautiful, absorbing, and other-worldly. The basic concept and execution are pretty simple… Wearing VR goggles, you fly through a snowy landscape and throw snowballs at woolly mammoths and penguins, while listening to Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” But the purpose of the piece is to help relieve pain of burn victims, by distracting them from the reality of actual treatment….
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August 4, 2011 - In Present
I love thinking about ways to make recorded music more engaging — more interactive. And I’ve posted before about ways to make music interactive — including modern sites like 3 Dreams of Black, more fluid experiences which border on synaesthesia, playful conducting for kids, and old-school music cd-roms. So it was really cool to stumble across Motiv, Russ Maschmeyer’s recent thesis project at SVA. It looks full of potential to change how we experience music….
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