2009-04-23

Connected people user experiences, MIT

Bill Moggridge, Founder IDEO, MIT September 23, 2009
Bill Moggridge's presentation entitled Contexts for design in a connected world was a catalog of examples. He opened it with a statement on design " it is about people, environment and the world in which we live".

He illustrated differences in people with the example of an early mobile payment system at a vending machine in Japan. It showed a user respectful of machines and happy to fiddle and push keypads. Japanese are trained to this during their long commute to work, but they would not talk much. Oppositely, he said Americans would enjoy phone conversations or voice-activated applications while driving their car.

The social environment is changing too : "in the the previous century, we designed things, in the current century we design for health". "Architects were designing buildings and now they design social interaction spaces". And we now look at social impact around the world. For example IDEO designed tools to help design for those "at the bottom of the pyramid" (the less developed world). These tools are available on-line, the work was sponsored by the Gates foundation.

He commented on designing for sustainability: "that used to be about materials but now about it is about designing lifestyles". We looked at a video of Tangible Earth, an interactive digital globe designed by Shin-ichi Takemura to visualize global warming and other changes occurring in real-time or in the future on the planet.


Space, people and prototypes
  • Space : "you cannot live in a Dilbert's cubicle and cooperate". Ideo's project spaces are informal stickies, photographs dedicated to project. Cafes areas, brainstorms
  • People : understanding people and insight on potential products. IDEO has summarized 51 methods for analyzing people interactions on a deck of cards. One of them : observation is key
    - Look : have teams stay when it is happening, like a fly on the wall
    - Ask : foreign correspondents around the world provide 24 hours response
    - Try : get people to try prototypes "wear thick glove when using phones in cold weather"
  • Prototypes, how to build them ?
  • Shop , build mechanics, build electronic lab
  • Screen design with Adobe Flash and CS Director
  • Use even simpler mock-ups
  • Enact situation with improvised theatrical behavior

  • The theme of the presentation was very similar to stories in Bill Moggridge's book "Designing interaction" where he introduces 40 case-studies from designers, describing the evolution from inspiration to products.

    2009-04-06

    Cameraphone applications, Zurich

    Mobile Monday Switzerland at ETHZ, April 6, 2009
    Christine Perey, of Perey Research introduced the subject by explaining that with the installed base of camera phones, voice/SMS are more the only. Some application examples include :
    • Mobile phone to capture meta-data around images.
    • Mobile augmented reality (AR) which is the world plus what you want to know about it.
    • MIT Media Lab SixthSense wearable projection computer project
    Juha Laurila from Nokia research center in Lausanne gave an introduction on their work in mobile augmented reality. As a result of camera phones penetration, Nokia is the de-facto largest camera manufacturer in the world. They see it as magic lenses to annotate the view of the world. Sensors such as GPS, compass, accelerometer information to pictures.

    One example is 3D vision of Helsinki. Nokia Image Space allows users to upload Geo-tagged photos with a strong community aspect. The technology consists of a mobile client for photo capture/upload and a browser to review experience. Nokia Image Space is one demonstration of tagged photos with a strong community aspect.

    Another mobile augmented reality based on image recognition. For example a tourist can get information on public building by taking a picture. It can also help land mark navigation - the same way human use to say : "turn left after the church".

    Daniel Wagner from Graz University of Technology showed numerous demos of how a mobile phone can provide a virtual view on the real world. Numerous augmented reality projects have been developed in software on ARM chips and can now be implemented with accelerators on mobile phones. The industry is entering the commercial phase and there is investment for that. The future looks good he says. Some of their demos show the tracking of objects with feature recognition (these include “Invisible Train” and “Virtuoso” projects).

    Herbert Bay, CEO of Kooaba
    Kooaba helps connect the real world (for example a picture of the ETH building) with the web (a list of landmarks or information sources). The mobile service is available live now with a database of a few million objects (Media covers, cinema posters, landmark buildings, magazine pages are well recognized). Snapping a picture of an object is enough to learn all about it. The system recognizes objects in still pictures and links the user directly to web content or other digital services. Some of the challenges are scalability and implementation on cloud computing resources. Herbert also demonstrated recognition of moving pictures.

    Roger Fischer,CEO and co-founder of Kaywa
    Roger explained how the initial 2D codes success in Japan (since 2003) is progressing to Europe. In Japan QR codes are pervasive from food to entertainment, transport applications. However, there is still a large fragmentation of code standards, QR codes, Data matrix, Aztec Code, Datamatrix, EZcode, QR Code, Semacode, MaxiCode, Optaretc..
    Kaywa is providing solutions and services for campaigns with codes for major brands in Switzerland and across Europe. “DokoDare: Places, People, Me,” is a location-based mobile service based on QR Codes.
    Roger gave some examples of adoption of the technologies :
    Handset Manufacturers
    • Nokia : Datamatrix, QR Code
    • Japanese Handsets/Asus (Taiwan): QR Code
    • Google Android: QR Code, EAN
    Organizations
    • IATA: QR Code, Datamatrix, Aztec
    • GS1: EAN, Datamatrix, QR Code
    • OMA: Datamatrix, QR Code

    Mindaugas Stonys, Convision
    He gave an insight on development and production launch of mobile products based on BeeTagg honeycomb technology. Here's my own beetag logo on the left. Connvision developed a real-time reader for QR-Codes, BeeTaggs and Datamatrix. He showed applications in the media industry : Aftonbladet is Sweden's largest newspaper, 120'000 Swedish users downloaded the BeeTagg reader in 6 months and 2.8 million know about it). Mindaugas indicated prerequisites for monetization of 2D-code applications :
    1. multi-platform
    2. flexible pricing
    3. branding


    For further pointers on mobile AR, check Florian Michahelles blog and video playlist.