Category: Links

Alexander talks about the installation he designed for Picnic 08, called ikRun.

A conference I wish I had attended. Luckily the proceedings are up, and there are some good bits on emergent game play.

Sounds like an evening I would have liked to be at. The live sketching is something I’d like to try sometime at a talk…

“Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.” A project Mitchel Resnick is involved with.

Draw something, photograph it, and have it fabbed. Awesome service.

“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…

“Precipitate lets you search for and launch the information you have stored in the cloud from within Spotlight or Google Desktop for Mac.”

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.

“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.

“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).

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.

“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.”

“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.

“[…] 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.””

“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.

“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.

A long but rewarding piece by Mr. Armitage on Braid, the problems with criticising games, and more.

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.

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.

A repository of recorded LIFT talks. Lots of good stuff here.

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.

“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.”

The new best example of what can happen when you build sites for the web of data. This is an awesome Dopplr / Moo ‘intimacy’.

“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.