Every day, the millions of people that are connected to the internet confess their feelings and emotions to an unknown audience. It provides a forum where you can feel as though you are talking to no one yet speak your emotions like you could be heard by everyone. In 2006, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar created We Feel Fine, an interactive exploration of peoples feelings through blog posts. The application filters the plethora of information that is posted on blogs and shows you real time posts that relate to a specified emotion. It then gives different methods to visually search and sort through that information.
Yesterday I came across twistori(by Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs). Drawing on the same idea as We Feel Fine, twistori searches twitter posts and filters them by the emotion written in the post. The interface is pretty, and it is interesting to watch what people are saying for a while, but I find that the project lacks meaning. I maybe shouldn’t say that, I guess what I mean, is that I would like more meaning out of it.
Feedr is a concept I am working on. The name is a play on “News Reader” – just like a reader makes your favorite blogs and online news available from within one interface, feedr allows you to search newly blogged-about videos. The idea is that you enter a search word/term, and the software searches blog posts tagged with those words that include videos. What you get in the feedr player is a continuous stream of videos. There are controls to pause, skip ahead and back, and there is a link to the original video.
I am posting this to get some feedback on the idea. I want to keep the interface extremely minimal – the inspiration is a TV, but instead of a predetermined set of channels, you ‘zap’ by entering search terms, and the channels are ever changing – reflecting the current online trends and discussions. As soon as I get a working prototype up and running, I will post a link here.
Just over a year ago i first saw this video of Johnny Lee creating a multi-touch (touchless) interface using a Wii remote. Though I thought that the idea was neat and that Johnny was a genius, I kind of wrote it off as a follower of the muti-touch trend. A few months later I saw this video. This time Johnny is creating a fairly stunning head tracking interface, again using the Wii remote and a few parts. Once more I was thoroughly impressed with Mr. Lee’s innovation, but I still wasn’t really catching the “why” other than making some cool things happen with a Wiimote and a PC…until I saw his TED talk.
Johnny Lee is setting a new standard for hi-tech research, and he is doing so by making it available to everyone. Using a camcorder and YouTube, he is teaching the world how to create devices that are at the frontline of innovation. This can empower users of technology and fosters much stronger development of products. Rather than developing in a box, he is trying to make everyone a part of the process.
As you may notice we shifted things around a bit on you. Now no matter what your browser window size, intwo will still look good. And please re-size your fonts if you find the text too big or small. Enjoy!
Cati Vaucelle [blog, Interview], Researcher in the Tangible Media Group at SFU Media Lab, is scheduled for a talk at SFU Surrey, May 2nd at 10.30 a.m. Sign up here ($25, free for SFU students + Alumni). This is going to be a really interesting event!
Vaucelle proposes a new genre of human-computer interaction: Gesture Object Interfaces. Gestures promise the potential for a person to interact with technology using her entire body and spectrum of movement, rather than being limited by the ‘traditional’ human-computer interaction paradigm of keyboard and mouse.
The developing world is catching up with the industrialized world faster than most people realize. The idea of a clear division between poor and rich, and a great divide between them, is a concept of the past that has survived since the 1950’s. The reality is much more nuanced, something Swedish global health professor Hans Rosling demonstrates in this now classic TED talk.
The idea is good, but I am really impressed with the interaction design. He is limiting the searchability of the site, which some users could find as a deterrent. Putting the users in a cluster, though, increases the exploration of the content, and then, when you view a users playlist he is using semantic urls so that you know where you are and that you can bookmark back to that page. So many sites use proprietary bookmarking systems when all internet browsers already have bookmarking capabilities.
We have started working on a new look for intwo.ca. I know that you love it, but we will be moving away from the traditional wordpress theme… Check back soon!
Yesterday I attended a public lecture by Bill Moggridge, co-founder of IDEO and grandfather of interaction design, at Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver BC. Mr Moggridge designed the first laptop computer, the GRiD Compass in 1980, and is the author of the book Designing Interactions, a historical look at the evolution of the field of interaction design. The book comes with a DVD packed with interviews with people who have shaped the field, and it has a companion website.
The title of the talk was Design Thinking, and it was an introduction to the problem space interaction designers move in. He started with the example of phone services.
