Category: Research

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Interaction design Research Visualisation

Inspiring reads, July 15th through July 21st

Creative Kinect hacking – By reducing the technical entry point, the Kinect has levelled the playing field and allowed a lot more creative experiments to surface

New Design Practices for Touch-free Interactions – Touch-free gestures and Natural Language Interaction (NLI) are bleeding into the computing mainstream

7 Killer User Interface Designs For Gestures – Pull, unfold, rotate, push, slide, pinch

zSpaceHolographic Display – Tracking points embedded in the glasses frames to follow the orientation of your face to the screen

17 Great Wireframing Tools for Web Designers

The 15 best tools for data visualisation

Categories
Design processes Interaction design Research Visualisation

Inspiring reads, June 25th through June 28th

Sketchnotes from DIS2012 – Great work by Mie Nørgaard brings selected talks from DIS 2012 to life

Future Interactions – NordiCHI 2012 workshop on critical design approaches to explore urban data transactions

Aesthetics Reloaded – Conference on the aesthetics of digital technologies in Aarhus, December 11-13.

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Design processes Interaction design Publications Research

Reflective Design Documentation

One of the crucial aspects of conducting interaction design research is the establishment of reliable and structured ways of capturing and documenting the data generated by the research, so that it can be subjected to analysis and reflection. Documentation may serve the double role of supporting reflection, thereby serving as a source of insight, and providing evidence that supports the insight gained. Given the inherent complexities of design, this process of capturing and documenting design projects can be daunting, especially since there are few resources and tools developed for this particular purpose.

During the past couple of years, my colleagues and I have developed and employed a system designed for the specific purpose of documenting design projects and prompting reflection about design events, called the Project Reflection Tool (PRT). Kim Halskov and I have written a paper entitled Reflective Design Documentation about the insights from our use of this system, and I’m currently at the Designing Interactive Systems conference in Newcastle to give a talk about the paper. The paper is available for download here, and I’ve attached the slides from my talk below:

Categories
Architecture Design processes Event Interaction design Research Visualisation

Call for Papers: Media Architecture Biennale 2012

Building on the successful event in Vienna 2010, Media Architecture Biennale 2012 brings together artists, practitioners and researchers from academia and industry in the ongoing exploration of the meeting between architecture and digital media. The 2012 Biennale comprises an academic conference track, exhibitions, and industry sessions, as well as a full day of workshops. Our vision is to provide an excellent forum for debate and knowledge exchange; to offer a unique opportunity that brings together the best minds and organizations; and to highlight state-of-the-art and experimental research in media architecture.

THEME: PARTICIPATION
The design of media architecture invites encounters between people, the built environment, and digital media. It opens up rich opportunities for new forms of participation through dialogue and engagement. As an emerging field, diverse perspectives are coming together in media architecture, and the challenges are as abundant as the opportunities. At the conference, we explore “participation” as a core value of media architecture. In this context, participation may occur in the initial design stages of media architecture, e.g. as different practitioners, stakeholders and potential audiences take part in shaping future media architecture; it may occur when media architecture is realized and people experience and interact with it, e.g. when public spaces and urban environments and the practices they shape are influenced by elements of media architecture; it may also occur as new platforms give rise to new opportunities for shaping systems and surroundings.

TOPICS
We consider media architecture as an inclusive term that encompasses encounters and intersections between digital technologies and our physical surroundings. In this respect, we invite papers that present and discuss novel contributions to media architecture both on a practical and theoretical level and that further our understanding of the field through case studies, design approaches, and best practices. We expect contributions to critically explore a wide range of topics including, but not limited to:
– Case Studies of Specific Projects
– Future Trends and Prototypes
– Media Facades and Urban Displays
– Interaction Techniques and Interfaces
– Social and Cultural Aspects of Media Architecture
– Historical Perspectives on the Intersection between Media and the Built Environment
– Design Processes and Methods
– Participatory City Planning and Developing Urban Media Environments
– Participatory Architecture
– Spatial Locative Media
– Development and Design of Content for Specific Contexts

MORE INFO
Read more about submission details, important dates etc. in the full call for papers (PDF). There’s more info to be found on the Biennale’s official home on the web, on Twitter (#mab2012) and on Facebook.

Categories
Architecture Event Interaction design Research

Media Architecture Biennale 2012 in Aarhus

Great news: In November, my colleagues and I will host the Media Architecture Biennale 2012 in Aarhus. The Biennale brings together artists, academia and industry in the exploration of the meeting between architecture and digital media. The design of media architecture invites, shapes and creates encounters between people and the built environment, and digital media open up rich opportunities for dialog and engaging experiences.

As an emerging field, many perspectives are still coming together, and the challenges are as abundant as the opportunities. Public space and urban environments are increasingly shaped by elements of media architecture.

The vision of the Media Architecture Biennale is to provide an excellent forum for awareness, discussion and solutions; to bring together the best minds and organizations; and to present to the each other and the world the state-of-the-art of media architecture.

This year, we will extend the existing format with an academic conference track, new exhibition, awards and industry sessions, as well as a full day of workshops. We have a great crew organizing the Biennale; I’ll be heading the academic track as program chair alongside Ava Fatah from The Bartlett and we’re really excited about shaping this part of the Biennale. There’s more info to be found on the Biennale’s official home on the web, on Twitter (#mab2012) and on Facebook.

Hope to see you there!

Categories
Design processes Interaction design Research

Workshop: Supporting Reflection in and on Design

Prototyping digital tools for collaborative design.

At the upcoming Designing Interactive Systems conference, held in Newcastle in June, I’m arranging a workshop in collaboration with professors Kim Halskov and Steve Harrison. The goal of the workshop is to advance the practical and theoretical understanding of documenting and reflecting on design processes. During design processes, tons of information comes into play, including sources of inspiration brought in to the creative process, design concepts created by desigerns, key decisions on how to move forward, user feedback, sketches, prototypes, and lots more. We wish to explore how design processes that extend over longer periods of time, weeks to several months, can be captured and documented, for instance through the use of collaborative web systems, how this data can be analysed, and what types of research insights such work can yield. In addition to discussing these issues during the workshop, it is the goals of the workshop is to establish a community of researchers and designers with a special interest in capturing and mapping design processes.

The workshop will be held on June 12th, if you wish to participate please visit the dedicated workshop website and send us your submission before March 5th.

Categories
Architecture Interaction design Publications Research

Challenges of Participation in Large-Scale Public Projects

Being able to travel the world and meet like-minded peers is one of the great benefits of working as a researcher. At the moment, I’m in Australia to present my work at two conferences, the Participatory Design Conference (PDC) in Sydney and the OZCHI Conference in Brisbane.

Today, I am presenting my research on the challenges of working with participation as a central driver in large-scale public projects. I take my offset in the ongoing Mediaspace project in Aarhus, which is the development of a new shared building for the municipal library and citizens service department. The field of participatory design has traditionally addressed the development of interactive systems on a relatively small scale, so the Mediaspace project holds a number of interesting findings for this research field. This concerns both the variety of stakeholders in the project, the new methods and technologies that have been developed in the project in order to involve and engage people in the development of the new library, and the ways in which new technologies transforms the role of the library in society.

I’ve made my work on this project available in three ways: you can download the preliminary version of the paper; you can download the manuscript for my presentation, or you can view the slideshow below.

Categories
Interaction design Publications Research

Peepholes as means of engagement in interaction design

I’m currently at the Nordes conference in Oslo. It’s quite a hectic event for me this year since I have to give three presentations. One of these is about the paper Peepholes as means of engagement in interaction design (.pdf), co-authored with Christian Dindler.

By peepholes, we refer to aspects of interactive artifacts and environments that utilize the tension between what is hidden and what is revealed to foster engagement. As a foundation for discussing the qualities of peepholes, we outline a pragmatist perspective on engagement in the paper. This perspective emphasizes the reciprocal relation between people, technology, and environment. From this perspective, we then explore the concept of peepholes as an example of a concrete means of engagement on the basis of a number of interactive installations, including two of our own design cases.

Here are the slides from yesterdays presentation of the paper:

Categories
Publications Research

Video and slides from PhD defense

I defended my PhD dissertation, Designing Engaging Interactive Environments: A Pragmatist Perspective on June 25th 2009. Below I have embedded a video of my talk at the defense – you can skip the introduction and formalities and jump to 2:50 for the main presentation. The slides are not very clear on the video, so these are embedded as a slidecast below the video.
If you don’t feel like watching the proceedings, you can also download the manuscript for my presentation (.pdf) to read alongside the slides.
[fve]http://vimeo.com/6244929[/fve]

Categories
Architecture Interaction design Research

Presentation: Experience in Interaction Design

Experience in Interaction Design on Prezi

Two weeks ago, I gave a talk on Experience in Interaction Design at an information and media studies research seminar. The talk sketches out the various ways in which the concept of experience is approached in interaction design. In particular, i emphasize the pragmatist perspective on experience that i build upon in my own work. This is followed by a discussion on the challenges and potentials of working with experiential aspects in real-life design projects, e.g. Aarhus by Light, Climate on the Wall and Warsaw MoMA.

I have been trying out alternatives to Powerpoint as a presentation tool, and I stumbled upon the magnificent and elegant Prezi. The embedded presentation above should give you the gist of things: Prezi basically gives you an infinite canvas on which you structure your content. You can then draw out paths on the canvas when building presentations and zoom through these when giving a talk. Do try out the full-screen option!