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Draw something, photograph it, and have it fabbed. Awesome service.
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“Dark Room Sex Game is an award-winning multiplayer, erotic rhythm game without any visuals, played only by audio and haptic cues.” Those nasty, nasty Danes…
Month: September 2008
links for 2008-09-25
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“Precipitate lets you search for and launch the information you have stored in the cloud from within Spotlight or Google Desktop for Mac.”
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The best social video site around is now offering sample data that can be used for live data visualizations (what they call “toys”). If they like your toy, they’ll hook it up to the real live data stream.
links for 2008-09-24
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“I knocked together a Twitter bot called Low Flying Rocks, that scrapes data out of the NASA NEO database, twittering whenever a rock passes within 0.2 AU of the Earth” A nice complement to the Tower Bridge Twitter bot by the other Tom.
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“Ins(table) is an interactive installation that explores the possibilities of the visualization of speech and conversations.” The best interaction design project at this year’s HKU graduation expo. Some nice dataviz here, plus the table itself is an aesthetically pleasing object (something you don’t see too often in interactive furniture).
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By far the most impressive game that was on show at this year’s HKU graduation expo. Offering a very nice balance between structured and open-ended play, lush graphics and superb technical execution. The research that went into this (on the paidia-ludus continuum) is worth checking out too.
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“1. It makes little sense to talk about »visual aesthetics« as an isolated modality. 2. The genre determines the aesthetic qualities. 3. Aesthetic is not equal to good, pleasant, pretty or nice. 4. Aesthetic experience is connected with intellectual deliberation as much as with immediate, »visceral« response. 5. We need holistic, interpretative approaches to dealing with aesthetics in interaction design.”
Teaching design for mobile social play
Last week, the group project I am coaching at the Utrecht School of the Arts kicked off. The project is part of the school’s master of arts program. The group consists of ten students with very different backgrounds, ranging from game design & development to audio design, as well as arts management, media studies, and more. Their assignment is to come up with a number of concepts for games that incorporate mobile phones, social interactions, audio and the web. Nokia Research Center has commissioned the project, and Jussi Holopainen, game design researcher and co-author of Patterns in Game Design, is the client. In the project brief there is a strong emphasis on sketching and prototyping, and disciplined documentation of the design process. The students are working full time on the project and it will run for around 4 months.
I am very happy with the opportunity to coach this group. It’s a new challenge for me as a teacher – moving away from teaching theory and into the area of facilitation. I am also looking forward to seeing what the students will come up with, of course, as the domain they are working in overlaps hugely with my interests. So far, working with Jussi has proven to be very inspirational, so I am getting something out of it as a designer too.
links for 2008-09-19
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“90 Mobiles in 90 days. For the 90 days following today, June 20, 2008, I’m going to think about, sketch, draw, and prototype ideas about mobile design and post them here. Like folks recovering from any addiction, I don’t know what is at the end of these 90 days. I’m just gonna commit to thinking about it every day for 90 days and have faith that something good will be on the other side.” Very American, but an interesting project nonetheless.
links for 2008-09-18
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“[…] interfaces can’t be intuitive, since they are the behavior side of programs and programs can’t intuit anything. When someone is asking for an intuitive interface, what they are really asking for is an interface that they, themselves, can intuit easily. They are really saying, “I want something I find intuitive.””
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“Our theory says that change that doesn’t widen the Knowledge Gap will be embraced, while change that does will be resisted.” Jared Spool on how to evolve an app’s design without ticking people off.
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“Droog Design and Scott Burnham have assembled a team of some of the most innovative designers and architects from around the world to create 13 newly designed interventions, tools, toys and objects that are temporarily placed along a route on the central IJ-riverfront in Amsterdam.” This starts today, must visit it for sure.
links for 2008-09-17
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A long but rewarding piece by Mr. Armitage on Braid, the problems with criticising games, and more.
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My comment on Matt’s write-up of dConstruct has turned into a kind of mini-review of Aleks Krotoski’s (very enjoyable) presentation. Might as well link to it here, for those interested.
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I for one loved Jeremy’s talk at this year’s dConstruct, even though at first I thought he was headed in the exact opposite direction of what I hold as ‘true’ about “the system of the world”. Imagine my joy when towards the end he said the following: “I think it’s important to remember that, while it just isn’t possible to design a complex system like a social network, it is perfectly reasonable to design good initial conditions to nurture the growth of a scale-free small world network. We are no longer creating static artefacts like pages, we are creating frameworks within which people can interact with one another and create connections.” Yes, yes, yes.
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A repository of recorded LIFT talks. Lots of good stuff here.
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More commercial RFID kits are seeing the light of day. Here’s another one, consisting of tags, a reader and some kind of programming environment. Interesting, but I’m afraid I found the video on their site horrible.
links for 2008-09-14
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“the central feature of the club is the dance floor designed by Studio Roosegaarde, with basic concept by TU Delft Industrieel Ontwerpen. Composed of modules made from recycled PVC and glass, the dance floor is a complex moveable surface that converts the kinetic energy from dancers into electricity, which is then used to power the floor lighting. Creating a direct relationship between the dancer and his or her actions, a light metre indicates the amount of energy generated and the LED lighting in the floor becomes more green the more you dance.”
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The new best example of what can happen when you build sites for the web of data. This is an awesome Dopplr / Moo ‘intimacy’.
Download my travel-time map
I am a bit nervous about doing this, but since several people asked, here goes: You can now download the travel-time map of the Netherlands I made in Processing. I have exported applications for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. Each download includes the source files, but not the data file. For that, you will need to head to Alper’s site (he’s the guy who pulled the data from 9292 and ANWB). I hope you’ll enjoy playing around with this, or learn something from the way it was put together.
Some notes, in no particular order:
- Please remember I am not a programmer. The vast majority of this sketch was put together from bits and pieces of code I found in books and online. I have tried to credit all the sources in the code. The full write-up I posted earlier should point you to all the sources too. In short; all the good bits are by other people, the bad code is mine. But who cares, it’s the end-result that counts (at least for me).
- Related to the previous point is the fact that I cannot figure out under which license (if any) to release this. So the usual CC by-nc-sa license applies, as far as I’m concerned.
- If this breaks your computer, offends you, makes you cry, or eats your kittens, do not come knocking. This is provided as is, no warranties whatsoever, etc.
- Why am I nervous? Probably because for me the point of the whole exercise was the process, not the outcome.
- I can’t think of anything else. Have fun.
links for 2008-09-12
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“For me, a piece of A3 paper and a few big pens are all I need – ideas, connections, words and sketches, emphasis and decisions can flow freely without having to do battle with someone else’s idea of how my mind should be mapped and organised. I’m all for typing initial thoughts up later, but the initial splat has to come out analogue. Even after I’ve typed stuff, I then print it out and scribble all over it again afterwards.” Ben Blench on creative software, with an unexpected detour into Nick Cave country.