Sunfleet

Siggraph 06: Collaboration tools & fun things

A quick and final post about SIGGRAPH, before all memories of it fade... Here is a run-down of some of the other interesting applications I enjoyed, some of which relate to collaboration:

• Shared Design Space: a collaborative, tabletop, augmented-reality application, for sharing documents, sketching, brainstorming, anything! It was amazingly intuitive and interesting to use. You interact with the tabletop with a pen which knows its exact position on the table from tiny grey dots on the projection screen's surface. Using the pen, you can draw, arrange photos, annotate digital content, and share screen views with others around the table. The pen is able to interact with any piece of this special dotted paper, so the interaction doesn't have to be only on screens, but can also be tangible objects such as physical "paint trays" that can act as toolbars would in a desktop app. They had a really nice implementation of pick & drop and translation and rotation of objects,. This is work done at Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences Digital Media and they have other interesting projects listed at their Office of Tomorrow website.

• Mixed Reality Interfaces: an application where digital contents are being easily controlled with tangible objects. For example, a 3D model of a car can be viewed on a screen from different angles and with different lighting through the manipulation of a toy car, a toy light source, and a toy camera that you move around a physical space. It was immediately very intuitive to use which I liked. This is a product designed by the company KOMMERZ in Austria.

• DanceDanceDance: a game like Dance Dance Revolution, but full body motion required. When playing, you see a silhouette of the position you should be in and then you see your own silhouette for comparison. The more poses you get right, the better you do. The dance moves are somewhat like Y-M-C-A and it was pretty fun to play. Thankfully, they set up their booth so that the person playing was in a relatively private corner of the convention floor, limiting the complete embarrassment factor. See a video of it in use at Siggraph. The research is being done in the Department of Computer Science & Information Engineering at National Taiwan University, but I can't find an official website. Here's an article in the New Scientist Tech

• Invisible, the Shadow Chaser: this is totally Ghostbusters. One person has a spotlight for searching for goblins and the other person wears a backpack with a vacuum hose for sucking up the goblins. It was totally fun and definitely a collaborative activity. This work is being done at the Image Processing Lab, Nara Institute of Science & Technology in Japan.

• Fabcell: a multi-colored fabric that changes colors when a current is sent through it. This fabric was amazing to watch, as it changed from black to red to orange to green to a vibrant blue. Its colors were like a mood ring's, transitioning towards blue as more current (or heat) was applied to it. This was developed at the Keio Univeristy Media Design Program in Japan.

Posted by Joan Dimicco in "User Experience"  | 

Nike+iPod Update

I'm still an enthusiastic user of the Nike+iPod Sport Kit and the nikeplus.com website.

Some updates:

• I had to recalibrate the device because it said my 3 mile run was 3.5 miles. After calibration on a track, it now says 3 miles is between 2.99 and 3.01 miles. Definitely accurate enough for me!

• The Flash website is "flashy" but I really wish I could get my data off of it so I could graph it the way I want to. That being said, it is really cool to be able to see my pace chart and a graph of all my runs so far, with lots of mouse-over details, all within seconds of plugging in my iPod.

• There is a section on the website for setting goals which is pretty inflexible. For example, I have two running goals right now: run 20 miles every week and run a half-marathon 8 weeks from now. I can't enter those goals in a reasonable way because all the goals have to be either 4, 8, 12, or 16 weeks to accomplish. But, again, that being said, it is cool that I can put as my goal 80 miles in 4 weeks and have the site keep me up to date on how I'm doing towards that goal.

• I've attached the widget to my Brooks running shoes with some velcro adhesive. But there's already a product you can buy to attach it and remove it more easily, the Marware's Sportsuit Sensor+ for iPod nano.

Above are some screenshots of my data. The first image is my last long run, the next is of my runs from the past 3 weeks, and the third shows an example of the mouse-over highlighting.

(If you are looking for a running goal, the Applefest Half-Marathon and Half-Marathon Relay is the most fun race I've ever participated in. I highly, highly recommend it.

Go Team Gelato! )

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Siggraph 06: Morphovision, a 3D image display system

When you walk up to this demo, you see a plexiglas box and inside there appears to be a 3D image of a house, rotating slowly around. Depending on which "mode" you select on a controller, the distortion to the shape of the house changes. Here are three pictures: the first is of the "haystack" visual effect and the next two are of the "zigzag" visual effect. The house image would slowly rotate, which partially explains the poor quality of my photography.

My first impression what that this was a 3D image of a house accomplished with multiple projections onto a blank surface. Totally wrong! Instead, it turns out that a single slight source, a strobe light, was being shown onto a physical model of a house that was spinning very fast. The pattern of the light alone created the visual effect. Here's a picture of the physical house (while stationary):

I took a video, which does a much better job capturing the effect, which I will try to post soon. In the meantime, here's an 360-view of the Morphovision demo, from 360VR.

This is a research project at NHK Science and Technical Research Laboratories and there is more information on Morphovision on the Siggraph website.

Update: apparently I'm not the only one blown away by this.

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Siggraph 06: Pharmaceuticals for the 21st Century

I attended one day of SIGGRAPH 2006 this week, to check out the latest in graphics. The most exciting portion of the conference (for me) was the Emerging Technologies area, where there were more exciting demos than one person can possibly digest in a day. A lot of the stuff was truly amazing to see (and feel). I had never attended SIGGRAPH before and the conference lived up to its reputation for being a showcase of creative and generally crazy technology.

I took a few pictures and a video of some of the things that caught my eye. First one the list, "Pharmaceuticals for the 21st Century." This was a satirical art installation making a comment about the advertising techniques of the pharma industry and the political climate of conformity in the US. Here's a photo of the artist's description and of two of the "ads" for drugs that will certainly make America a better place. ;)

Yes, I admit, this has nothing to do with "crazy" technology, but it caught my eye at the conference, so I'm blogging about it! Next up, something totally cool....

Posted by Joan Dimicco in "User Experience"  | 

Nike+iPod Sport Kit

The Nike+iPod Sport Kit was released last week and I'm officially addicted. This $30 gadget gets your iPod Nano to talk to a widget (aka an accelerometer) on your running shoe, and then the ipod talks to you, telling you how far you've gone. As you approach your workout goal (time or distance), it increases the frequency of updates, motivating you to pick up the pace. When you get home and plug your iPod into your computer, it syncs your workout with nikeplus.com's tracking program. It also syncs with nikerunning.com, the fully-featured training log web site that can track all sorts of workouts and fitness goals (so I definitely recommend using this site instead).

I discovered the best feature today when I finished my workout: a voice broke in said "Hi! This is Lance Armstrong and I want to congratulate you on breaking your personal record for the mile." Excellent!

For the music enthusiasts, the music integration is a little weak. The best it offers is that you can pick a "Power Song" and whenever you hold the center button down, it will play. It seems like a no brainer that it should figure out how long your power song is and start playing it that length of time before you are projected to finish your workout. This morning I tried to do this manually and, just as I was rounding the last bend of my run, I went from Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out of My Head" back to my significantly less motivating NPR's On The Media podcast. Oh well.

If you run and if you own a nano, I highly recommend picking up the sport kit! For more information and convincing reviews, check out the Engadget review roundup. The blogosphere has plenty of info on how to attach the widget to any pair of running shoes.

Posted by Joan Dimicco in "User Experience"  | 

Why is now the time for Web 2.0?

This question has been baffling me, ever since I figured out what Web 2.0 actually IS. Web 2.0 is basically anything interactive on the Internet. So technically Web 2.0 has been happening for at least 6 years, but the label "Web 2.0" is relatively new because corporations are only now becoming aware that the Internet is capable of being more than just a branding platform.

Here are some basic things I've figured out about Web 2.0 (ignore this post if you are already 2.0 savvy!):

Definition of a Web 2.0 application: a website that has "something to do with consumers, multimedia data types, social networking, RSS, AJAX drag and drop, some Flash, mashups, attitude and fuzzy business models." (source) Ok, that is pretty vague, with a heavy emphasis flashiness, but I've come to the conclusion that that is exactly the point of Web 2.0. Lots and lots of bloggers have done a great job of defining it, but this happens to be the definition that makes the most sense to me.

Examples of Web 2.0: it is almost easier to define what is through examples, many of which you are probably already aware. MySpace , YouTube, Podomatic, Flickr, Facebook, Google APIs, Yahoo 360, Imeem, Vox, Live, MSN Spaces, Dabble, Xanga, TagWorld , LinkedIn, Digg

The most interesting aspect of Web 2.0: I believe the most powerful and compelling aspect is what is being called the "architecture of participation." (Wikipedia not only is an example of this, but also has a definition of the phrase. :) When users provide the data that drives the applications, the applications become more intelligent, more compelling, and frankly, more exciting to use. One of the earliest examples of this type of collective intelligence is collaborative filtering. (That I was working with collaborative filtering researchers in 1999 is part of why I've been so confused about what the big deal is now.)

And finally, why NOW? I believe the reason the time is right for corporations to embrace this is that traditional software has failed to meet the needs of corporations. Companies doing work in this digital age need tools that are fast and flexible and do not force users to conform to pre-defined behaviors. Groupware became a dirty word in the collaboration software space because traditional groupware tools of the 80's and 90's limited and constrained the behavior of users. And in real life, groups (aka businesses) can't waste time accommodating to rigid software. Hence, Web 2.0 steps in with simple (in a lot of cases, VERY SIMPLE) tools like wikis and blogs, and workers everywhere embrace them because they can be appropriated to their needs, something the corporate-provided groupware tools cannot do.

HBS faculty member Andrew McAfee explains "why now" in more detail in his blog entry The Trends Underlying Enterprise 2.0. It boils down to 1) simple and free to use (thank you advertising business model!), 2) emergent structures (no pre-set taxonomies), and 3) the chaos of individual participators resulting in a new order (possible with the likes of tagging and RSS).

Posted by Joan Dimicco in "User Experience"  | 

Poll: What applications cause you the most pain?

What software and web applications do you use on a regular basis? To get your work done, to do simple tasks, to live your life, to keep up with things. And of those applications, which are the worst? Which are the ones that drive you crazy? We want to know!

In a lot of cases, you can figure out the exact sequence of pointing-and-clicking that can get your daily tasks done in the fastest way possible, but it shouldn't have to be so hard or so painful.

This is your invitation to complain away in the comments!

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Because you look at your umbrella more than you look out the window?

I'm not so sure about the usefulness of this digital umbrella handle. Sure, embedding context-sensitive, digital information into physical objects is cool, but how is looking at your umbrella handle easier than looking outside? I usually keep my umbrella hidden away and only bring it out when I've seen or heard the rain. Even when I'm in a windowless office, I still check the online weather more than my umbrella. I guess I would just have to change my habits and look at the device, not at the information sources. And consider an umbrella to be something to have on public display at all times. I suppose then it could be useful when it is not raining but is predicted to...

More information: a design project by Materious

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Back from CHI, Back to the Blogosphere (maybe?)

I just returned from attending CHI 2006 in Montreal. I've been to the conference many times before but I think this year was the most enjoyable. First of all, I'm no longer an anxiety-ridden PhD student! That makes every aspect of a conference more enjoyable. Second, the quality of the paper presenations was high and I enjoyed a lot of what I saw. I also presented a poster and attended a really fun workshop. Since the last time I attended (2002), there was a lot of new stuff. I'll post more about that once I've gotten my notes organized.

I ran into a "fan" of this blog (hi Tony!) and now that I'm aware we have one reader, I don't want to disappoint, so figured I should try to revive Sunfleet. We shall see...

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Soft Focus Webcams

We can adjust the lighting in our offices and we can photoshop our digital pics, both in an effort to make ourselves look a little better. Why not switch out our webcams so we look as good as possible over teleconference?

According to Cnet Asia, there are currently two cameras on the market that might help with this conundrum: the Elecom UCAM-E1W30TNWH and the Buffalo's BHC-35H03B. Both webcams work to beautify the user; the Elecom by providing real-time retouch techniques, while the Buffalo camera relies on flooding the user with a spotlight and adjusting the white balance. more

Dubbed "beauty cams" by CNet Asia's Mobile Ojisan, they promise to make the beauty-conscious look their best for the web camera. Both webcams claim the ability to make users look "fairer and more beautiful" on screen. more

I find this product idea both ridiculous and obvious. My first thought is, who would buy this product? My second thought is, since humans always wish to cover up imperfections with veneers of perfection, who wouldn't buy this product? I predict that within 5 years all webcams will make us look "more beautiful."

Via Shiny Shiny and Popgadget

Another factiod about Sunfleet: We have weekly meetings in front of a webcam.

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Cellphones are good for your health

A study at Yale Medical School found that mobile phones reduce hospital medical errors. Specifically, they determined that it is better for doctors to communicate with cellphones versus pagers. Via Engadget.

This makes a lot of sense: when a team is trying to communicate in a timely, efficient manner, it should use the richest communication medium available (Media Richness Theory, Daft & Lengel). Asynchronous pagers don't cut it!

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Can you program your VCR? Can your mother?

Yesterday I gave a talk at the MIT Symposium on Humans and Technology. The talk before mine was on the topic of simplifying our home technology experience.

Chuck Rich, founding member of MERL's Research Lab, spoke about DiamondHelp, a system for networking and interacting with your home appliances, from your DVD player, to your thermostat, to your washing machine. While the idea of networking these appliances is not new, MERL's contribution is their proposal that the interface to your appliances should support a collaborative dialogue between the user (you or your parent) and the system. While you operate and schedule your devices, you are also able to "chat" with the system about your task and ask questions about what options you have at each step of the interaction. I thought it was a reasonable, and definitely simplifying, approach to deal with our increasingly complex homes.

Chuck mentioned the following related research and development:

Universal Remote Console Consortium

Personica

Intelligence in Products Group, Delft University of Technology

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Processing

A useful programming tool I have used for the past couple years to build GUIs is called Processing.

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound. It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production.

It is also written in 100% pure Java, so functions as a Java package, once you are building a full-fledged Java applet or application. If you are interested in building "Flash-like" interfaces and want the heft of Java behind them, I highly recommend checking it out.

Posted by Joan Dimicco in "User Experience"  |  Comments[0]