Mike: Some things have been "solved" over past 4 years - condensation of I/O board basically down to Arduino. Used to believe that everyone would standardize, now believes that the problems are too complex for standardization. What are the undercurrents of what's going on today? What still needs to be worked on?
[extended entry follows]
Sketching Product Experiences
showing people exactly what we do
fitting in with established processes
Smart Design is a product design company - mostly industrial design, not web
experiences is about form, function, time and emotion
separating sketching from prototyping
- in sketching, the design direction is not set; everything is disposable
- prototyping
potential timeline for projects
3 weeks to 1 years (with testing over 6months!)
ceci n'est pas Massimo Banzi!
talking about tinker.it
especially tensions between the design consultancy and academia
"I have to come up with a definition that makes people outside this room comfortable, that uses physical computing and interaction design without using those words, because they scare people with money"
working with jacks of all trades
go to daytum/com/tinker_it for more details
unfortunately they are best known in the UK for the stuff that doesn't make them any money, like Arduino or workshops they run at cost
they run the workshops so that people can understand what they do as a company
[shows "crappy videos"]
code.google.tinker
"the project that doesn't want to die": the Tinker Kit
www.tinkerkit.com
looking for collaborators on building documentation
"documentation is the bottleneck. it has nothing to do with engineering."
"it has to read like a book for kids. you want to inform them, but you don't want to scare the shit out of them"
I care about academia
- interaction design: how many programs are there, and how many little businesses exist, and what does that mean?
- are we completely nuts?
- where do the students go?
- are they creating businesses?
- why might students not be making their own businesses? is it too difficult? too scary?
- are we creating an industry, or just a set of academic bubbles?
- how are we selling this field to the outside world?
- "we never come in with the deck that says, 'this is what we do." instead comes in with sample ideas "this is far more than any web design company would need to do."
- what types of budgets -- tinker_it often deals with marketing, so it gets cut in a downturn. also R&D. Trying to make it seem more relevant to sales, which doesn't get cut.
- is this just the cream on top, a "Nice to have" -- until people see "what we do as innovation...I am not going to have a business in the next 5 years"
- are we supposed to be creating designers who are also engineers, or are we supposed to inform the designers enough so that they can have a conversation with an engineer "I look at code and I want to puke, but I know how to talk with Peter...and I have realistic expectations of what can be done because I've been staring at this stuff for years"
the goal: skills for the new century, not crutches
a BBC article asking whether we should be teaching programming to all kids
Inaudible computing
use more audio!
notes in photo and video
dealing with sampling resolution
using sensor data to create wave frequency diagrams
- light and temperature
inaudible phone
- sensor data to phone call
- using the vco into a mobile phone then to voip then you get signals as change of frequency
future work
doing more with audio algorithms, including distribution over radio
slides here
www.mobilelifecenter.org
www.sicsorg
living with robots and interactive companions
- robotic consumer products turned into pets with costumes
- how to program?
- physical language design -- controlling a robot by putting things on it so that the controllers are visible on the object and there is a close connection between the physical appearance of the object and the perceivable action of the object
- [relies on shared understanding of accessories as signifiers]
- use for debugging?
move it to mobile phones
- but HOW?
- physically connect something to a phone is hard
-- RFID isn't available to many people
-- bluetooth
-- infrared -- phones don't have infrared these days
-- cameras -- what if the phone can't see it?
-- touch/conductive stamps -- but how will it stay on?
-- USB -- but then you need special connections for each phone
-- modifying hardware is just not desirable
- but all phones have a microphone!
-- it's prevalent, cheap, and sound is human-readable (unlike RFIDs)
-- use something that is used to tune musical instruments, so sound could work as ID
-- so the object makes a sound, the sound is identified by the phone, and the software is updated
-- is this realistic? it feels a little unrealistic, but the problem of audio ID is a better one
-- something continuously listening on the phone? that's not realistic.
-- do you have to start special software? so what's the point then.
-- listen only at special times?
-- Ed suggests: maybe using the headphone jack as a connector
sketching musical interfaces
darwinist evolutionary metaphor of making viable new species of musical interfaces
: musical interface technology design space
designing CREATE USB Interface to facilitate teaching
using first PIC with USB -- so that "it can be whatever you want it to be"
boingboing
multimodal music stand
graphonic interface - capturing sketchy gestures
- a modified white board with 4 pens/eraser
- "pseudo-acoustic" musical interface
[this is where I started dealing with publication permissions and got distracted. more info in video]
wired uk, (private design practice) dangerous precedent
incentives
lots of cool new stuff (ie, synthetic biology, mmos, city-level interaction, etc)
"the spirit of the age" = matt jones' "get excited and make things" t-shirt
"the community" - people who you don't want to [scoop] you, or people who you want to buy things from you
but "the community" is made of lots of different kinds of people
Do we really want to incentivize other people to join our nice little club?
Maybe we do want to keep the mad people and idiots out.
Maybe we don't want encourage the marketers, and the hacks, and the standards bodies
Self-definition
So what is the group for? Powerful groups have a central tenet
Until there is a self-defined story, it's hard to recruit people
Having a problem, not a theme
"there is no problem in play," so it's hard to get people broadly interested
Having a shared history
physcomp/ubicomp doesn't have a shared history, a knowledge of past
"to the untutored idea, there is no way to tell the difference between 2009 and 2001. that's a bad thing."
the community should create a history of stuff so we know not to create old work
"it wouldn't do in any other field."
{Note from liz: This also part of the definitional problem that affects a lot of computer science -- in which the computation is no longer the object}
" a creation myth is necessary even if it's factually incorrect"
Defining the Win Condition
What does success concretely mean?
We can't move towards it if we don't know what it is
"Right now the physical computing world seems to be more about defining the journey than the destination"
And that should be declared explicitly
Ben's slides
car hacking - mp3car
zcorp 3D printer
fablab - learning to put together hardware
"making almost anything"-- except it wasn't as easy as it looked in the newspapers
"learn to teach, teach to learn"
- kids program - they first learn the technologies, then do projects, then teach other kids
scratch is for kids -- but there wasn't really a way to move from scratch to text-based programming
modkit
- an easy entry to programming sensors and actuators
- visual comparison of graphic ui and code
- compiled C code
- shows extensibility by demo'ing adding a Funnel I/O board quickly
discussion
how to make this work for more advanced learners?
how to fund it? maybe sell apps/modules along an iPhone mode
add comments -- automating the "what" so that the user can add the "why"
Interactive toy design in India
Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology
teaching physical computing in Inida
sourcing electronics
- electrical components are easy to get, cheap and readily available
- but you have to find the right supplier
- more complex components, like the Arduino, are almost impossible to find and quite expensive
reflections
- teaching the right thing -- inadvertently spent more time on technology than design
- low success rate - many prototypes didn't function
- high cost to students
relevance and roadhumps
- how relevant is physical computing in a place where 600-800 million live below the poverty line?
- with repeated power outages?
- with poor air quality?
so. sketching without the hardware
moving to conditions of play and flow
Kenny[!]* Graphical programming language for microcontrollers
enabling
- smooth transitions between desktop and the "little computer"
- and better debugging
represent structure of computation in code as data structures, rather than memory
what I did: write code that generates code
so you can untether the microcontroller but still program in max
demo:
things in blue on microcontroller
things in white on desktop
execution mode of Max is used to generate C
* All exclamation points mine. Dave doesn't really do exclamations.
interactivearchitecture.org
Cook: architecture as a series of happenings
Space syntax
architecture might be about "small, relatively dumb devices"
textile architecture that you inhabit
[ask Ruairi for more info on garden and animal pieces]
avoiding the master-slave model of communication
and more about things that are living in the world
enactive, bubbly, embodied interactions
sketching
- feedback - machines for recursive processes in which the human is part of the loop
scattered house - haque
architect stepping back and constructing framework, creating parameters in which people construct their own architecture and negotiate with each other.
embedded intelligence so that it can be a bit novel each time you visit
trying to create an architecture that if not continually surprising is occasionally surprising
performative ecologies
robotic performers competing for attention with (metaphorically speaking) peacock tails
success: leaving a piece of architecture and being excited to see how it's doing three months later
architects role not to design beginning, middle and end, but to help people define their own architecture
Slides here
designer's affordances
meaningful ecologies of objects, spaces and media that are
- embodied
- mythic
- productive
a bit in opposition to the idea of experience
the designer designs a productive system that allows the user to create their own experience
affordances for the designer
inspired by Michael Wolf
systems to support design work that are not all identical
what's interesting about designers
Phil's slides here
NetLab Toolkit
moving towards product development after sketching
"the one skill I think will be most important for the 21st century is the graceful negotiation of different protocols."
"resist looking for the uber-protocol"
Networked Objects, the class
why don't the embedded net projects jive with embedded net products
the problem is the Internet
- "comes with a lot of metaphorical baggage"
- we think of it is as a place, not a media
- in contrast, we think of our devices as ways to do things
- the network of objects is local, intimate, short, and many-to-many
open device design
- write open control APIs and publish them
- standard (or accessible) protocols
- hybrid open/closed
legal angle
- do we need to rethink warranties?
- for example, CHDK does not void the warranty of the Canon, because it doesn't permanently change the firmware
- so how do we modify warranties?
- flexible warranties: that allow companies to make a BEST EFFORT to restore the firmware
extensible firmware?
expose the firmware programming port
discussion:
do companies really need to do this? is it their problem if you're an idiot?
is it their responsibility to sell a device that cannot be wiped and returned to default?
limited access to programming -- like the Arduino -- you can program a lot of it, but you never touch the bootloader
peer to patent project
- community patent review
practical layers of openness (drawing on Phil Torrone)
- circuit design
- mechanical design
- component choice
- Firmware (binary or code)
- physical function API
- aesthetic standards
- interface standards
- encouraging warranty
- open patent
Tom's slides here
traditional notions of craft
handwork, tradition
Sennett: "...an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well."
craftmanship: everything you add needs to fit together
the problems with forgetting the hand
workshop enviroments and relationships between apprentice and master
motivation matters more than talent
tools and toolset
how to get to quality?
slides here
enactive interfaces
- including ambient, tangible
- learning enacted, embodied knowledge
enactive knowledge is acquired by the act of "doing"
everyday sound events as metaphors
"continuous sonic feedback improves enactive learning"
[look up publications on this project]
interaction design sketchbook
otto -- from gillian crampton-smith's project in venice
how buttons as inputs make us automate things
if you're trying to be impressive, you can't just do it bang-bang-bang
what does it take to make a good handle-like interface
creating styles of expression
3 day workshop - day of max-msp, day of sensors, day of plugging them in to max-msp
slides here
papercomp/ubipaper
mike migurski - walking papers
contribute to open street map
"paper where paper is best. the web where the web is best. and there's a path between the two"
papernet
"I want to be able to suck the data off the paper without my hands getting too dirty"
Newspaper Club -- trying to build a service for using excess capacity on printing presses to do short-run prints for everyone
wants an API for a newspaper printing press
russell: "we've broken your business models, and now we want your machines"
because newspapers have reach
"we're going to have to use big machines, and we're going to have to stick APIs in front of factories"
but how do you build tech support? or a logistics infrastructure? or a refund policy?
how to outsource the customer service?
reorienting outsourcing business processes for small users who can pay a small amount of money each month to get the scale
"$100 will get you dangerous -- an Ardunio and a soldering iron and a sensor"
"The lost art of sewing is now the bottleneck"
secret sauce for Sparkfun is the .1 inch header
Arduino for community
Scratch for code
[More photos on Flickr]
...describing the development of Tenori-On -- and he brought one to try out.
Prototyping designing and installing public installations
jason bruges studio
architects, designers, interaction designers, artists, etc
in person collaboration
DMX!
[This talk also mostly documented in photos. See Flickr set for more]
slides here
Mike says, "Go, Shigeru! The online IDE is totally the next wave."
[This talk mostly documented in photos - see the rest of the Flickr set for more info]
Connected Devices -- Made Difficult!
[I was a bit distracted during this talk...because I was writing mine.]
...but I think what's most important about it is the focus on locality: where, physically, the code is running and how the location of the code interacts with Internet availability in a world where one cannot always assume a reliable Internet connection.
craft and craftsmanship
- thinking about how "everything looks like a bar of soap"
- are we losing the cultural technology of good taste? will we have it in 50 years? will we be able to teach it to our children?
- using sketching to make objects with "digital guts" but a crafted outside
-- constraint: working with wood
-- inspired by ink wash drawings
-- and paper folding: working in series, repetition, comparison
-- and the "lovely stuff" of lead type -- patina makes it covetable, keepable
--- deliberately making patina: "it's real age, but time goes by faster at the bottom of rivers because of the stuff of rivers, the mud."
- using a laser cutter to sculpt and scratch 360g paper: transformations in and out of digital and analog, and what gets lost in the generations
so. getting to wood.
- starting by cutting wood and seeing what happens next.
- light gates in joinery
mini-conference: sensing and sensibility
what is a long term display?
fictitious object: watering a tree with conductive ink so that you get rings of conductive wood (an awesome fictional documentary on this starring Matt's uncle)
inspired by Bootleg Objects, Markus Wold and Markus Bader (2002)
- an appropriated Bang and Olufsen player from the 70s turned to digital media
technology skinning
- reuse existing objects as shells for new information appliances
- prolonging the relevance of a material form
- different from prototyping
-- these objects are one-offs, not preparatory for mass manufacture
x axis: reality
y axis: how things appear
maximum effect for minimum effort
architectural performance
- building performance (HVAC etc)
- performance of architecture
project: Harmless Advertisements (extragable.org)
- inspired by clockwork automata
vidproxy
"intentionally clunky"
Openness at IDEO
- bridging design professionals and open source community
- trying to open up prototyping tools as a way to create something open at a consulting company that sells design outcomes
-- using a network to keep tools viable, update them, and expand them
- the network is the tool
- IDEO Labs
-- a blog to share IDEO technology with the world
- what they learned
-- you have to put in the work
-- participation is not a given ... so chunk tasks out into tiny bits so that no one has to do too much
--- so you can open up just a small part of the project
--- easier here because they worked with an open source company or prototyping a participatory service
-- opening tools to keep them up to date works
-- working with Bug Labs to open up the whole project
- "the community doesn't come easy, or free" -- especially in a two-week project
- open communities are good for brutally honest feedback
- Facebook Big Conversations
-- it just keeps getting bigger because no one ever leaves and more people join
-- but it's no one's job to turn the conversation into concrete things, so it's hard to get actionable ideas from it
- are design firms unnecessary?
-- well...leveraging innovation networks for strong points within a typical project process
-- issues: feature creep, suppression of break thru ideas, loss of focus
LumiNet - luminet.cc
- inspired by organic computing
- wanted to use Arduino, but Arduino is
-- big
-- relatively expensive
-- so you can't give them away, and the expense tends to lead to a centralized network design with an Arduino master working with lots of dumb sensors
- they wanted wireless connections and intelligence in the nodes
- lots of parallel processing
- programming by infection
-- a special "payload" node is flashed, then it spreads
- using Bynase to send statistical message
- I/O w/ infrared LED and receiver to add new parameters dynamically
