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Hinton’s closing plenary for this year’s IA Summit. I thought he was the best speaker in ’07 and it seems he might have been again this year (had I been there). Very necessary roundup of what IA should be focussing on. Less milkshake, more Chunky Monkey!
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Found via Tom Armitage. I agree the 1st three points are very applicable outside of game design: focus on people, on what they do, and describe this in terms of a language (nouns, verbs, adjectives…)
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Notes of Buxton’s keynote for CHI 2008. I particularly like the bits on the long nose of innovation and ethics and design and everything really. Read it.
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Helpful reminder to not be shy about sharing ideas: “The worst thing that will happen if you share your idea, is that someone (or a whole bunch of people) will criticize it. The good news about that concern: That’s when it truly gets exciting.”
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Alexandra wonders wether ubicomp’s biggest stumbling block might be its obscurity. Won’t people want to be able to point to where computing is embedded? Perhaps—we used to be concerned about where electricity was embedded but this has eroded too.
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Finally got around to watching Mr. Jones’s talk at the IxDA’s Interaction 08. A fun romp through many of the preoccupations he’s blogged about lately, including science fact and fiction, ‘agile’ design and development and (personal) informatics.
Author: Kars Alfrink
Designer turned design researcher. Postdoc at TU Delft. Exploring contestable AI.
links for 2008-04-16
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Editorial by Thomas Burg on Playyoo.
Blank banners — see me speak at TWAB 2008
In 1966 Provo took to the streets of Amsterdam with blank protest banners.1 The use of rousing slogans had been outlawed by the city’s mayor. The ‘protesters’ were arrested. Provo achieved their goal of making the authorities look silly by playing at protesting.
They took existing rules and decided to play within them, to see how far they could push the limits of those rules. They were not allowed to use actual slogans, so they decided to use unwritten banners. They made use of the ambiguous nature of play: They were protesting, but at the same time not protesting. There were no forbidden slogans on their banners, but at the same time, the slogans were ever so present through their absence.
The police were not willing to take on Provo’s ludic attitude. They refused to step into their magic circle and play at opposing them. In stead they broke the rules, arrested them for real, and by doing so, lost—at least in the public’s eye.
This example—and hopefully a few others—I will discuss at The Web and Beyond 2008: Mobility. In 20 minutes or so, I hope to inspire designers to think about what the near future’s blank banners could be. My session is titled ‘Mobile components for playful cultural resistance’ (an unwieldy title in desperate need of improvement) and will probably be in Dutch.
The conference is organised by Chi Nederland and will take place May 22 in the beautiful Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. Keynote speakers include Ben Cerveny, Jyri Engeström and Adam Greenfield. It looks like this will be a very special conference indeed.
Image source: Gramschap.
- Provo was a Dutch counterculture movement in the mid-1960s that focused on provoking violent responses from authorities using non-violent bait. Read more about them at Wikipedia. [↩]
links for 2008-04-10
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Archived for reference – Bleecker’s presentation at Reboot 9.0: “It is possible to create an adjunct form of computing that resonates truly human, playful, life-affirming sensibilities.”
links for 2008-04-09
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“The project named Scottie researches the possibilities of using information and communication technology to create virtual immediacy between long-stay absentees and their primary social contact group.”
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A mobile phone made only from “upcycled” materials—nothing new.
links for 2008-04-08
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“roBlocks are 40mm plastic cubes with magnetic connectors, just pick them up and start building! Using just the blocks, you can create smart robots which sense, plan, and act.”
links for 2008-03-15
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Packet Garden captures information about how you use the internet and uses this stored information to grow a private world you can later explore.
Jalan Jalan — 3 weeks of travel
Having successfully finished the last of my client work by the end of the week, it is now time to start packing. I’ll be vacationing in Asia for the next three weeks and will be back on April 7.
Those that follow me on Dopplr will already have an idea of my itinerary: Hong Kong, Java (Jakarta and Surabaya), Bali and probably Flores and Komodo. Kalimantan has sadly proven to be a bit too hard to get to on a budget.
This’ll be my third visit to Indonesia and as always I’m looking forward to it—what’s not to love about a country filled with friendly people, rich culture and awesome food?
I’m also planning to do quite a bit of this:
If you’d like to keep in touch, your best bets are my Twitter and Jaiku streams (and possibly Flickr for the occasional mobile snapshot).
Normal blogging service will resume when I return. See you on the other side!
links for 2008-03-10
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Alexandra reports on This happened 3. Would love to attend one of these some day.
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3 toys designed to augment children’s senses and change their relationship to the environment. Via Alexandra.
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“…a family of large scale, modular play elements that children can use separately or together in any combination, creating a dynamic, exciting playscape, where they can have fun, explore and learn.” Via Alexandra.
links for 2008-03-09
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A plant that Twitters when it needs water? Oh yes. The onslaught of blogjects continues.