2008 September Archive at CIID

Archive for September, 2008

Kill a polar bear?

Published by Dave Chiu
on September 25th, 2008
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Perhaps traumatizing to those who love polar bears, this visualization from the National Grid of your CO2 output has a rather dramatic effect on some digital versions of the animals.

Floe from the National Grid

The question is whether anyone sticks around for the tips on how to reduce your carbon footprint or if they’re more inclined to immediately turn off the computer and curl up in the fetal position.

Like any media, one should digest the information presented with an eye towards agendas and bias. After all, this site is produced by the National Grid.

So perhaps it’s not so surprising that while there’s a “buy more clothing made in the USA” (displayed for visitors from the US), options such as buying locally-produced food are notably absent, as are options for buying alternative fuels (such as electricity from wind power) and taking your residence off the grid through solar or wind.

It is perhaps a bit like the Energyville game developed by Chevron: while the information presented is supposedly non-biased, it’s hard to trust that information from such a key stakeholder is not skewed in some way. More to the point, it’s often the omissions which are most telling: the impact of policy, for one thing, or the geo-political context of the imaginary city. Measures like subsidies for new technologies such as wind or solar can help reduce their short-term cost, while federal regulation or guidelines may have a greater impact on growth and development than an individual city can effect.

But putting that discussion to one side, the larger issue is that this is not about energy or food or the economy or any number of single issues; rather, it is about all of them taken as a whole and their impacts on one another.

While it is nice to think that changing our lightbulbs will help the polar ice cap grow, in truth the situation is much more complicated. Those individual steps are important, but it will take a complex and integrated approach to solve this problem, not to mention a necessarily sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the problem. And while these games and visualizations take an important first step towards making the problem more understandable and within the grasp of individuals to impact, I’m waiting to see the next generation display more complex, comprehensive, and sophisticated approaches.

The Answer Machine

Published by Dave Chiu
on September 25th, 2008
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No, it’s not for telephones. Rather, it’s a vision of the future from 1964: a device that answers your questions when you’re doing your homework!

Broadband in the future: 1996

Published by Dave Chiu
on September 25th, 2008
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Check out this video from 1992 which outlines Australia Telecom’s vision for the future…broadband in 1996.

via Paleofuture

Having to explain broadband may seem a quaint concept in 2008, but consider that in 1992 the Internet as we know it (indeed, the World Wide Web) did not exist. Development of Mosaic, the web browser which introduced many to the Web, began in December of 1992, and its release in 1993 eventually precipitated the founding of Netscape.

Also of interest is this video of the first Internet Marketing Conference in 1994. You’ll hear interesting lines such as “What’s going to determine if the Internet is going to succeed or not is not technical issues, it’s going to be content issues…nobody goes to the movies to watch the technology of the movies, they go to the movies for the story” and “When we originally built Mosaic…we tried really hard NOT to invent anything new and we also tried not to solve any hard problems, which makes it a lot easier to get something done.”

Marc Andreesen (at the old age of 23!) also gives a talk in the above video, describing the history of the Mosaic browser and the development of the Internet. An interesting statistic is that even given the nascent state of the Web at the time, the use of Mosaic grew from 12 users in March 1993 to around 3 million in October of 1994. Sadly, it seems that even in 1994 the tyranny of PowerPoint was alive and well.

Flickr bikes

Published by Dave Chiu
on September 20th, 2008
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In a rather unexpected turn, Yahoo decided to hook a bicycle up to Flickr. Or, more specifically, several bicycles with cameras which take photos every 60 seconds and upload them to Flickr. Each photo is geotagged using GPS, and the whole setup is powered by solar panels on the back of the bike. Oh, and these bikes are located around the world, from San Francisco to Toronto to Copenhagen.

Lifehacker has a rather lengthy article with details on the construction and use of the setup, but this short video makes a nice intro:

What are purple pedals? @ Yahoo! Video

Additional videos detailing the development of the bike and highlighting components used in its construction are available on the Yahoo site Start Wearing Purple.

They’ve done a nice job of documenting the project, and even put together a user manual for the bike.

Anyone ridden one of these and can comment on the interaction design and usability aspects?

What defines interactive or new media art?

Published by Dave Chiu
on September 20th, 2008
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The Near Future Laboratory Top 15 Criteria That Define Interactive or New Media Art is the result of several years of research to develop, as the title indicates, criteria which defines interactive or new media art.

The results outline scenarios and criteria which most interaction designers can probably identify with (hopefully with a sense of humor).

Some particularly insightful observations:

14. It doesn’t work because you couldn’t get a hold of a 220-to-110 volt converter/110-to-220 volt converter/PAL-to-NTSC/NTSC-to-PAL scan converter/serial-to-usb adapter/”dongle” of any sort..and the town you’re in is simply not the kind of place that has/cares about such things

…

11. Your audience “interacts” by clapping/hooting/making bird calls/flapping their arms like a duck or waving their arms wildly while standing in front of a wall onto which is projected squiggly lines

Service Design Symposium - Speaker: Lavrans Løvlie

Published by Dave Chiu
on September 20th, 2008
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Lavrans Løvlie, co-founder of the London-based service design consultancy live|work, began his talk with a brief history of service design before focusing on ROI (Return On Investment) as his main subject. While he quipped that he normally talks about ROI only to non-designers, the the subject was quite topical after Mikkel Rasmussen’s presentation about the impact of design and business.

Framing Lavrans’ presentation was the live|work perspective that service design is both a value set and a skill set. The value set is that of applying their skills to make the world a better place. One example is their admittedly Utopian goal of producing what they call Service Envy by creating services which people people can use to tell other people about themselves, their values, and their identities.

Starting off with a little history of services, Lavrans observed that while product design was once about humanizing, it is now more about creating identity markers. So even as we experience a shift from products towards services, we lack a steward for humanizing them. Growth in enterprise systems (databases), communication technologies (paying your tax via SMS), and the internet (accessing information, collaboration), and a growing realization that we cannot keep producing and consuming things (that we must shift consumption to immaterial consumption), has not seen a matching growth in service productivity.

This lack of growth in service productivity is curious, considering how a single company likely provides customers with a number of different services—call centers, third-party services, web, print, marketing, products, people, mobile—yet doesn’t likely focus on the delivery of those services. Indeed, as one company described itself to live|work: “our organization is so complex that the only people who have a complete idea of our organization is the customer.” Sounds like an opportunity for service design!

Live|work have now built up a number of case studies and learnings from a variety of projects, such as their work with Streetcar, a UK-based car-sharing service. Their experience with Streetcar and other projects led them to develop Service Usability. Service Usability tests services, and has developed a method for testing quality across touch points. Based on servqual and usability tests on the web, Service Usability employs an SU Index to measure four qualities (proposition, experience, usability, accessibility) on a scale of zero to ten.

Using this SU Index, live|work look at issues which affect services, such as: the performance of touch points (the location of the car in a car-sharing scheme is a touch point, for example), the top ten things that prevent you from making money (can be some big things), and the top ten quick fixes that will impact on business.

Some of the lessons they’ve learned through live|work and Service Usability:

Make it a shared process - prevent people from stopping the process by making the change transparent or using a staged gateway process

Design for decisionmaking - help companies envision outcomes

Enable the organization to innovate - prototypes enable employees to experiment and change their environment

Launch and learn

Quality is a feed, not a project

Live|work also presented an analysis of their work with Streetcar through the lens of a triple bottom line analysis. Triple bottom line takes into account social and environmental performance in addition to standard economic metrics, and provides a more holistic view of business which encourages more sustainable behavior. Live|work uses triple bottom line analysis to put hard numbers with soft details, and analyzes both the benefits to customers and the company.

Some of the questions during the Q&A afterwards touched on scalability (there should be much more potential to scale in the service sector than the product sector), the business model of service design (think continual consultancy: industry is based on an industrial model, so it thinks in projects, not consultancy), and usability (accessibility deals with rules and regulations—”is it legal?”—whereas usability is about ease of use).

Next: Andrea Koerselman of IDEO

Anti-theft lunch bag

Published by Dave Chiu
on September 18th, 2008
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Simple and nefarious:

via lifehacker

Rock Concerts and LEDs

Published by Dave Chiu
on September 18th, 2008
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For their current tour, Radiohead decided to use an all-LED rig for stage lighting and effects after investigating their carbon footprint generated from both their touring and their fans’ travel. While this all-LED rig has technical and ecological benefits from reduced power requirements, it has also raised new questions about lighting presentation and the audience experience.

Specifically, LEDs look and behave differently from traditional lighting, so should bands attempt to recreate existing effects achieved with traditional lighting but with lower power requirements, or should they use LEDs to explore new and innovative effects?

Radiohead has been blogging about their progress in developing a more ecologically-aware rock concert, including an entry about their LED lighting innovations, and this question seems an open-ended one. Their set design uses a cube design for the LED lighting strips in conjunction with a video wall behind them, but it doesn’t seem like the LEDs are used for more than ambient lighting effects (I’m not a lighting designer, however).

At the same time, Nine Inch Nails has also been touring with an LED setup that has been pushing the boundaries of what stage lighting can achieve. This Wired piece covers their setup in-depth, along with a video (about halfway down the page) illustrating some of the effects implemented during their concerts. (Note, however, that Radiohead specifically implemented the LEDs for ecological reasons, while Nine Inch Nails seems to be more interested in the visual effects than the power savings.)

One of the most intriguing effects utilizes what they’ve dubbed stealth screens: a set of two semi-transparent screens which lower in front of the stage during the concert and work in conjunction with a screen behind the musicians. Using an array of sensors and cameras, the musicians can interact in real-time with the screens, which can reveal or occlude the stage depending on the displayed effects.

Here you can see the screens partially lowered:

And this is a sense of what they can achieve:

The view from behind the screens:

Some close-ups of the screens:

The screen works in conjunction with lasers, as the Wired article explains:

With the song “Only,” for instance, the front, convex screen starts out as solid static. On Reznor’s side of the display, a laser above him detects whenever he crosses a vertical plane paralleling the screen. On the floor, a piece of tape and two tiny LED lights let him know exactly where that plane is.

As Reznor intersects that plane with his hand or body, the laser tracks his X and Y coordinates. The “brain” box then tells the particles to spread out to a predetermined dispersal pattern. Reznor says: “Then it follows me around. If I leave the plane, it fills back in. If I push through, it comes back out.”

These effects are generated in real-time in response to the band members’ gestures and actions, with a result so seamless that the audience tends to think the whole presentation is choreographed! (You can see the effect described above at about 10:20 in the video on the Wired site—it’s quite dramatic.)

The Lab at Rockwell Group

Published by Dave Chiu
on September 15th, 2008
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Rockwell Group, based out of New York City, just launched a new website for their interaction design group The Lab at Rockwell Group. Headed by Tucker Viemeister, the lab features James Tichenor (formerly of Interaction Design Institute Ivrea) as New Media Lead.

Their most recent project had them in Venice for the Biennale, where they showed Hall of Fragments, an immersive environment that enables visitors to interact with sound and video fragments from films projected on two curved screens.

Venice Tests Montage from labatrockwell on Vimeo.

Other projects on the site include some nifty screens at the Sheraton Toronto, and a huggable pillow for DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS):

Huggable Pillow with Two People from labatrockwell on Vimeo.

Update: For a little more background on the Venice Biennale installation, check out this video:

Venice Biennale Documentary Excerpt from labatrockwell on Vimeo.

Hi-tech hitching

Published by Dave Chiu
on September 14th, 2008
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Wired has a bit about a company developing an iPhone application called Avego.

The application essentially enables virtual hitchhiking, whereas a handset user can tell Shared Transport where he or she wants to go, and a driver owning an iPhone 3G can use the application to accept or reject a ride request.

From there on, the application notifies a rider of when the driver is about to arrive via SMS. The rider then enters a unique pin code to prove his identity and authorize an electronic transaction (example: $3 for his share of the gas). And after the ride is over, the rider can even give the driver a star rating — so other riders don’t end up in a maniac’s car.

What’s nice about this application (if it is released and takes off) is the ad-hoc nature of the arrangements. Other services, such as GoLoco, require users to pre-arrange trips and requests through a website:

GoLoco members post their desired trips, specifying who among their circle of friends, neighbors, and colleagues is able to see them. When a match is made, the details of the trip are agreed to online (specific meeting place and time, destination, who is the driver, etc.).

The use of GoLoco to arrange ride sharing is free. Our system also allows members to share the costs of the trip, for which we charge a 10 percent transaction fee.

Once the trip begins, the passenger is charged for their share of the trip costs by moving funds from their GoLoco account to the driver’s GoLoco account.

While this sort of arrangement is convenient for longer-distance trips, such as returning to school in the fall, it makes similar ad-hoc travel a little onerous. Payment is optional, although any payments are supposed to be made through GoLoco (for which they take a percentage as transaction fee).

Another service which falls somewhere in between the previous two is Hitchsters, a site which allows users to split cab rides to and from airports. You can post your trip to the site, or you can find others who are already planning trips and share the ride with them. There are ground rules for how the ride should be split (60% paid by the first person getting out), but no guarantee that such rules will be followed.

Hitchsters is very honest about their current financial model (Q: How does hitchsters.com make money? A: We are trying to figure that out), but it’s been around for a while so it seems like something is working.

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