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Some background on multi-touch interfaces including a link to a history of multi-touch by Buxton. Curiously missing is Philips’ Entertaible (ugh).
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First in a four-part series on failure. Lamantia talks about his experiences as an entrepreneur and two ancient cultures that have faced failure with very different levels of success.
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Funny but spot-on piece by Andy Smith on how to (not) treat your web developers. Recognizable.
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Interesting (and fun) design brief on creating toys and games using RFID.
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Will the iPhone’s release *really* ‘change the game’? I’m looking forward to the first reports of people actually using it as a case to get UX higher on the agenda.
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Greenfield points to the iPhone as an example of how in experience design execution of the whole service ecology is of importance.
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Coates might have come into contact with the beginnings of an ARG around the Watchmen movie. Eager to see how this plays out.
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Schulze lists some of his favorite comics he’s a Warren Ellis fan, evidently.
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Recording of great presentation by Will Wright on the stuff he uses as a toolbox for designing games.
Author: Kars Alfrink
Designer turned design researcher. Postdoc at TU Delft. Exploring contestable AI.
links for 2007-07-11
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Ik ben benieuwd of men er in slaagt de verschillende scholen die heersen in de Nederlandse bureauwereld te verenigen. Via Ben.
Possibility spaces and algorithmic architectures
One of the concepts I plan on exploring in my talk at the Euro IA Summit in Barcelona is ‘possibility spaces’. It’s a term used by Will Wright to describe his view of what a game can be – a space that offers multiple routes and outcomes to its explorer. That idea maps nicely with one definition of play that Zimmerman and Salen offer in Rules of Play: ‘free movement within a rigid structure’. Some examples of possibility spaces created by Wright are the well-known games Sim City and The Sims.
I think the idea of possibility spaces can help IAs to get a firmer grip on ways to realize information spaces that are multi-dimensional and (to use a term put forward by Jesse James Garrett) algorithmic. Algorithmic architectures according to Garrett are created ‘on the fly’ based on a set of rules (algorithms) that get their input (ideally) from user behaviour. The example he uses to explain this concept is Amazon.
I’ve found myself in several projects recently that would have benefited from an algorithmic approach. The hard thing is to explain its charms to clients and to get a unified vision of what it means across to the design team. I believe games might be a useful analogy. What do you think?
links for 2007-07-05
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Interesting facial recognition technology that acts as a browser plugin. Via Almar.
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Robinson ponders on ways to handle common content styles.
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Counter-intuitive report from Jupiter on the effects of community on online sales.
links for 2007-07-04
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In depth article on the meaning of batto giri (drawing and cutting with a real sword) in Takeda Ryu Kobilza Ha.
links for 2007-07-03
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Spool says iPhone is the best case for experience design so far. I think so too but worry it’ll be interpreted wrongly as another win on features.
links for 2007-07-01
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First in a series of posts on the significance of Second Life. Part of a debate with Clay Shirky and Henry Jenkins.
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Elaborate write-up by Alper on a way to make your social network portable between services using open standards and formats.
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Interview with Matt Biddulph shining some light on where social travel service Dopplr is headed.
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First post of Clay Shirky’s part in the debate on Second Life’s significance, mainly zeroing in on the false statistics (aren’t they always) behind the hype.
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Descent piece on the current state of (US) location based services.
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More CSS typography goodness, this time on incremental leading; the ‘next level’ after baseline grids.
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Critique of Marinka Copiers thesis on the non-existence of a magic circle in massive multiplayer online games. I don’t agree with Marinka or Jörgen, I guess I should blog on that sometime soon.
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Timo reports on NFC developments around the world. It’s coming fast! (Or actually, it’s already here.)
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This seems to have stirred up quite a storm. Thought-provoking essay by Danah Boyd on the differences in audience of Facebook and MySpace.
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Merholz’s angle on experience design: the starting point for a product should not be features.
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First in a two part post with some useful pointers to things you should address when designing social sites.
Goodbye NL, hello DK
Less than a week from now I’ll exchange the lovely Netherlands for the equally lovely Denmark. I’m taking what you could call a working sabbatical. I’ll be freelancing from Copenhagen and have (pretty exciting) work lined up for the first three months. If you have a gig in social software, mobile or gaming and want to work with me from October onwards, get in touch.
Besides Copenhagen, you might be able to grab a hold of me in Brighton, where I’ll be attending dConstruct 2007 or Barcelona, where I’ll be speaking for the 3rd Euro IA Summit. Perhaps I’ll see you on the road?
Better travelling with Jet Lag Passport
With the attention given to travel lately (Dopplr springs to mind, as well as my own increased flight frequency this year) I thought I’d finally write up my experiences with a jet lag prevention technique called Jet Lag Passport.
I was planning my trip to Las Vegas earlier this year when I was approached by Daimon Sweeney. He invited me to check out this small booklet he’d written (sold on his website for 10.25 GBP) that described a pressure points and meditation routine aimed at syncing your biological clock to local time. Being a Fortean and martial artist, I saw no reason not to try it. I printed out the PDF he’d sent me for free (in exchange for a blog post if I liked it) and stashed in my carry-on bag. While taking off I took a look at it for the first time. The routine was easy to remember and takes up very little time. You repeat it for every two hours of flight.
Although it’s always hard to objectively say whether this stuff actually works (and to be honest I feel that’s beside the point) it worked for me. I had a short stay in Vegas (I arrived on Friday evening and left on Monday evening) and a long flight in comparison. I got into the rhythm of things on arrival effortlessly and had none of the weird sudden attacks of fatigue so typical of jet lag. This stuff may not be for everyone, perhaps an open mind and some experience with meditation (however small) is a prerequisite, but I’ll be sure to give it a try the next time I take one of these long flights.
Check out the booklet at Daimon’s website and who knows, if you promise to blog it, he’ll let you try it for free…
Slides and video of my Reboot 9.0 talk
So I’ve been busy uploading stuff. The slides to my Reboot 9.0 talk are up at SlideShare. I uploaded a video recorded by Iskander with his N70 to Vimeo. Finally, since SlideShare still doesn’t import the notes that go with the slides in PowerPoint, I’ve also put up a big PDF (almost 50 MB). Please refer to the notes in the PDF for all the Flickr photo credits too.
Slides
Video
Mobile Social Play @ Reboot 9.0 from Kaeru on Vimeo
Notes
- There’s a bit too much um-ing and ah-ing for my tastes. I need to do more practice, practice, practice before these things!
- This will be the last time I use Darth Vader as the opening slide, I promise.
- It’s too bad I didn’t have more time to go into the examples that go with the last part. Next time: less stage setting, more meat.
- Still, I had fun. :-) Thanks again to Thomas for having me, and all the cool people at Reboot for going easy on me.