Copenhagen – Leapfroglog

Week 152

This was the last week of my stay in Copenhagen. Coming Sunday it’s back to the Netherlands. As usual leaving feels bittersweet. There certainly things I’ll miss about being here, not in the least our lovely apartment in one of the city’s nicest neighborhoods. And the many great cafés. But there’s a lot to be said for being in Utrecht, too. I have so much stuff going on there, it got a bit tiring towards the end managing it all remotely.

So this week…

I went over to Malmö to meet with Dan Gärdenfors at TAT and with Jonas Löwgren at MEDEA. In both cases there is reason for follow-up; it looks like there might be a TAT-Hubbub concept video about pervasive play and mobile UIs on the horizon, and I might come back to MEDEA to do some teaching.
I had a marathon Skype session on wednesday. Talking to all my students who are now nervously prepping for their mid-terms. As well as sessions with Claudia and Karel in preparation of the urban games festival in Leidsche Rijn we’re assisting with.
I lectured (and ran a little playtest of an audience game I’ve been tinkering with) at CIID. Look for a full report and annotated slides at the Hubbub blog, soon.

And now, it’s time to do a few more touristy things and then pack, and head home. The next weeknote will be Dutch flavored again.

Week 149

I’m writing these notes on a train to Malmö for a change. I was there this wednesday and am back again to have a chat at Illusion Labs. I was put in touch with them by Hampus of The Astonishing Tribe, whom I visited on wednesday. TAT’s an interesting group, specialized in the design of innovative mobile UIs. Their Recognizr concept video made quite a splash in AR circles earlier this year. I once gave a lecture on playful UIs at their office and even though nothing concrete is in the works it would be interesting to collaborate some more on that topic some time.

On wednesday I also met up with my friends at InUse, whom I did some work with when I was last in Copenhagen. That project dealt with applications of multitouch in a real-estate project. Over a Lebanese buffet lunch Mijo and I mostly mused on what’s changed in UX consulting land the past few years and how that might develop into the future. We talked about ‘peak complexity’, the internet of things and strategies for designing deeply networked things. Good stuff.

To wrap up that day, I had a surprise meet-up with Karin of Ozma, (again thanks to the awesome connecting powers of Hampus). Ozma is a game design studio working very much in the same spirit as Hubbub, with a focus on “gaming beyond the screen”. It was very encouraging to discover a company that’s been successfully working in this space for the past four years. (And they’re not the only one, in Sweden alone there’s also Fabel, The Story Lab and Grul…) One of the things we talked about is a cool platform they’re developing for urban games that is not GPS-based, but runs entirely on SMS and is therefore very useful for working with target audiences who do not have access to high-end phones (i.e. teens and tweens).

That wednesday I headed back to Copenhagen, my mind suitably blown, as you can probably imagine.

…

Other than that I have been enjoying Socialsquare‘s hospitality on the Vesterbrogade. Martin, Magnus and I spent some time hashing out the details of the workshop we’ll be doing and we managed to narrow down the questions we’d like to answer to a manageable set. I’m keen on having part of this project’s output be shareable with the world; in what shape or form we have yet to determine.

My active involvement with Layar has gone on hold for the time being, but at the same time the first bits of my work for Layar are finding its way into the world. They’ve launched a new version of their app, which now supports paid content. (Android is out, iPhone should follow soon.) This was one of the first things I worked on for them, before moving on to stuff that’ll hopefully see the light of day somewhere over summer. Designing the paid content stuff involved dealing with a ton of dependencies on processes behind the scenes. It was an interesting challenge to make it as frictionless as possible. Plus, the mobile payment ecosystem is itself an interesting beast to deal with for a while. I also found myself designing for several mobile platforms at the same time, which can really mess with your head; both Android and iPhone have their own ‘grammar’ of interaction (or more precisely, one of them has something resembling a proper grammar, the other’s is more accurately described as a pidgin). So designing in parallel for both is a bit like speaking two languages at the same time. Confusing, even to a Dutchman.

All this, plus some more Skype calls with my HKU students (remind me to share some details on their work next time), another Skype session with the U-Turm group and the very final preparations for This happened – Utrecht #6 took up week 149.

Week 147

Well, the volcano did mess with my flight. Despite that, I am still writing this from an apartment on Birkegade in CPH, where I’ll be spending the coming 5-6 weeks. Here’s what my workspace looks like:

Traveling here took up the whole of wednesday. We went by train; Utrecht to Duisburg, Duisburg to Hamburg, Hamburg to Copenhagen. They put our train on a freaking boat for a bit. That was different.

So I’ve been settling in. Getting a bike, reconnecting to old haunts, that sort of thing (I was here for a year in 2007-2008).

Apart from that, I’ve been taking care of some last bits of work for Layar, doing some prep for This happened – Utrecht #6 (registration opens Monday!) and talking to my HKU students. I also had a first meeting with a group of MediaLAB Amsterdam students who are creating a playful urban projection for ISEA2010 in Dortmund.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a city to explore.

Week 146

Crazy, crazy week I am glad to have survived. But wait, it’s not done yet. Tomorrow (saturday) I’ll be running a workshop in Leidsche Rijn with local young folk, for Cultuur19. The aim is to design a little social game that’ll function as a viral marketing tactic for our upcoming urban games design workshop in the same district. This is a Hubbub mission, and I am glad to have the support of Karel who – besides cooking up crazy plans at FourceLabs – is an occasional agent of Hubbub.

This was my last week working on site with Layar because I’m heading to Copenhagen on sunday. I’ll be staying there for a few weeks, working there – for Layar still, possibly for Social Square – lecturing at CIID and apart from that just taking it a little slower. My apartment is around the corner from the Laundromat Café in Nørrebro so that should be no problem.

I was at Waag Society‘s beautiful Theatrum Anatomicum last wednesday to cohost a workshop on games and architecture as part of the Best Scene in Town project initiated by 7scenes. I presented three bold predictions for the future of games in the city. Look for a write-up of that one at the Hubbub blog soon. The teams came up with interesting concepts for games in Amsterdam and I enjoyed working with all of them.

Going back to the start of this week, I turned 30 on monday. A watershed moment of some sort I guess. Somewhat appropriately, we announced This happened – Utrecht #6 that day too. Check out the program, I am real pleased with our speakers.

Now let’s just hope that volcano doesn’t mess with my flight in sunday and the next note will be coming to you from lovely CPH.

Week 132

I’m taking up the challenge Matt Webb posted in his last weeknote of the year 2009 and will be posting weeknotes of my own here for the foreseeable future. You can expect stuff about design work I do at Hubbub, teaching at the Utrecht School of the Arts and perhaps bits about This happened and other side endeavors.

So this is week 132 of my freelance career. I started on July 1st 2007, which coincided with a move to Copenhagen (I’ve moved back to Utrecht since).

Most of this week is taken up by a workshop – titled Move It – I’m running together with Evert Hoogendoorn and Marinka Copier at the Utrecht School of the Arts. All first year students of the games and interaction courses are participating, around 130 in all. That’s a crazy number, it’s really taxing, but also a lot of fun. Lots of good vibes when we’re all in the same room. The assignment we’ve given them is to design a new sports experience. It should take place in the centre of Utrecht, and they should not only design the play of the sport, but also the experience of the audience, the referee, bookmaker, etc. We kicked off on monday,¹ today was open Q&A, tomorrow will be a mid-way review and on friday they’ll present the final game in the form of a three-minute video. There’ll be 24 videos in total, all posted to this Vimeo group. I’m really looking forward to the end results.

Other than that I’m hoping to get started properly with a consulting project I’ve codenamed Tako.² It’s about exploring opportunities for playful additions to the programs of some of Utrecht’s major cultural events. The project’s commissioned by the city of Utrecht. I’ll talk more about it once the work is underway.

What else… This being the new year, there’s plenty of receptions. Today I attended one at the Utrecht School of the Arts. Tomorrow I’ll be at the monthly lunch organised by the Dutch Game Garden³ which’ll probably involve some new year shenanigans.

I was also doing the obligatory financial admin that comes with the start of a new month, a new quarter and a new year (thank god there’s nothing special related to this being a new decade). Invoicing, that sort of thing.

Also, I sent out a message to some of my old friends in Copenhagen, since I’m planning a six-week stay there in spring. I’m hoping to do some work there. Have heard back from a few already, so that’s encouraging.

There’s also more than the usual amount of meetings to talk about potential new projects. All quite interesting and exciting, who knows what’ll come of those.

So that’s the first weeknote out of the way. It’s interesting how doing this increases my awareness of all the stuff that’s going on. It’s hard not to feel a little overwhelmed. I hope it’s of some interest to you though.

Onwards!

I ran a brief ideation session using a design game developed by Jussi Holopainen et al. at the Nokia Research Center. [↩]
I’ve gotten into the habit of naming new projects after Japanese seafood. [↩]
Which is where I have my studio. [↩]

Goodbye DK, Hello NL

And that was it. After exactly one year in Copenhagen I am back in Utrecht. I enjoyed my time in Denmark tremendously, it has proven to be a great place to start my new life as a freelance designer. Now I will continue my practice over here. Different city, same international outlook.

The final period in Copenhagen consisted mainly of me speaking at a lot of conferences. First there was The Web and Beyond, then came From Business to Buttons, NLGD Festival of Games and finally Reboot — I could not have wished for a better going-away party.

There is not much time to catch my breath, however. I have client projects happening throughout July and of course there is also plenty of unpacking and merging of the old and new life to be done. I hope to publish the NLGD and Reboot stuff shortly, but it might take me a while.

Now that I am back in the Netherlands, I can also move forward with some small plans I’ve had for some time: one being a local design event and the other a ‘different’ kind of office space. I am also still looking for a creative technologist to partner up with on ~~potential~~ future projects. If any of this piques your interest, do drop me a line.

Photo credits: Josef F. Stuefer.

Moving, speaking

It’s final days for me. In Copenhagen, that is. July 1 I will exchange this lovely city for my home town of Utrecht, the Netherlands. The plan is to continue work as a freelance interaction designer. So if you’re interested, but physical distance has been putting you off so far, get in touch.

Between now and then, most of my time will be spent at conferences. Here’s the rundown:

First up is From Business to Buttons, June 12-13 in Malmö, Sweden. My talk is titled More Than Useful. I will attempt to show that for a certain class of products, playfulness is a vital characteristic. The idea is to introduce the IxD crowd to some game design concepts.
The week after that I will be at the Festival of Games, June 18-20 in Utrecht, Netherlands. My presentation is titled Playing With Complexity. I will introduce the game design audience to some interaction design thinking and suggest data visualization might be an interesting area to team up on.
Last but not least is good old Reboot, 26-27 June in Copenhagen. I have submitted a proposal titled Playful Activism in the Real-Time City, which I hope will be selected to be on the program.¹

If you will be at any of these conferences, do drop me a line or say hello at the event itself.

If you’d like to see it too, don’t hesitate to vote it up. [↩]

Work with me in Copenhagen (or where-ever)

Now that I’m over three months into my stay in Copenhagen I thought it would be good to post a short update. Here are the facts, bullet-wise (with apologies to Mr. Tufte):

I have been in Copenhagen, Denmark since July 1^st 2007
Until now I have mostly been working on Playyoo, doing interaction and game design
I also presented on Playful IAs at the Euro IA Summit in Barcelona
No later than July 1^st 2008, I will return to Utrecht, the Netherlands
Yes, I intend to continue freelancing when I get back (I officially left Info.nl on October 1^st 2007)
I am available for freelance interaction design gigs that involve social media, mobile technology and/or gaming
You can also invite me to speak at your event or company, particularly on the topic of applying game design principles to the user experience of products and services

Oh and of course, if you happen to be in Copenhagen, don’t hesitate to drop me a line when you feel like going out for some drinks!