Category: Links

Monobanda, a studio that is also based in the Dutch Game Garden (where I have my office) goes out to the main city square of Utrecht each Friday at 12:00 PM to play. They often make up the rules to their games as they go along. This is a blog where they post videos of the sessions.

I cannot help but love what people have been putting together for Russell’s speculative modelling thing.

Ton shares some preliminary results from a project aimed at opening up government data sources to the public.

Jeroen Bennink reports on an Amsterdam UX Cocktail Hour I helped organize and also presented at. The majority of the evening consisted of a sketching workshop. I did a brief presentation on the virtues of sketching, and talked about a recent project where we used sketching with great results.

“Siftables aims to enable people to interact with information and media in physical, natural ways that approach interactions with physical objects in our everyday lives.”

An interview with Kathleen Alfano, director of research for Fisher Price. Gives some good insight into the company’s view on the value of play.

Teaser trailer for in interesting-looking documentary film on play in public space, featuring some fine parkour & free running.

“A plugin that allows the user to select SketchUp faces and export the oulines of these faces to a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file.” Handy for when I make my next trip to the local fablab.

Dutch games review magazine Hoogspel went out of business in 2000. This is where they explain why (in Dutch). An interesting read that uncovers some of the questionable practices prevalent in the games industry of today.

A crazy Dutchman one can be proud of. Theo Jansen builds autonomous beach animals using mainly electrical tubing.

Bas zooms in on one aspect of a presentation at the last This happened – Utrecht (in Dutch): Irene van Peer’s remarks about the failure of many Western products to truly fulfil the needs of people in developing countries.

Adrian Hon on what it takes to be a chess master and an awesome Street Fighter match. Interesting parallels here.

Iskander compares the discourse at a recent Club of Amsterdam event on the future of creative agencies with the one at This happened – Utrecht #2. (In Dutch.) I think there are many viable approaches to design, of which people-centred design is but one. Something I found most interesting at the Club of Amsterdam event was the talk about vertical design disciplines (such as graphic design and architecture) and the need for us to look for horizontals. Often IxD has been positioned as another vertical discipline, but I think it is more of a horizontal approach to design that cuts across domains. It is exactly this that I’m trying to show with This happened.

Joe Lamantia shares some of the thinking behind the online service that accompanies Dutch PS3 game Killzone 2.

“There are a lot of web design blogs out there, and many of them explain interaction design principles incorrectly and make broad assumptions about why they should be applied. Designers who know better shouldn’t let this happen, and should at least attempt to enlighten the audience.” Kaufman dives into the wonderful world of modality. IMHO, the web is stateless, and therefore is no place for modal dialogues.

The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design has opened admissions for their year-long graduate programme starting in September 2009. Check them out.

Alper reports on the Q&A sessions at This happened – Utrecht #2. We asked him to do this, and I must say I am not disappointed with the result. This post is a good reflection of what was discussed during the evening. (In Dutch.)

“Find me a single profession, no matter how old, that doesn’t have these same variations, tensions and spectrums of interest or philosophical approach. If it’s a living, thriving profession, it’ll have all these things. It’s just that some have been around long enough to have a reified image of stasis.” Few prolific IAs that I know are as articulate and lucid about the relationships between user experience professionals as Hinton is. The guy makes sense.

Tom reports on an idea floating around the S&W studio – a service for ‘endless notebooks’. Makes me want to try my hand at some bookbinding myself…

Alper announces his attendance of the past This happened – Utrecht #2. Soon he’ll post a summary of the Q&As (a little experiment we’re doing to see if we can up the quality of the event’s documentation even further).

Utrecht-based web agency Rhinofly reports on This happened – Utrecht #2 (in Dutch): “Ik vond het een toffe en inspirerende sessie. Een mix van mensen uit het veld, gevestigde ontwerpers, commerciële bedrijven en studenten spreken openlijk over hun methodes en ideeën en zetten je aan het denken. Dus: volgende keer weer? Jazeker!”