Recently, there has been a real emergence of what may broadly be called ‘maker culture’, incorporating diverse activities such as open-source hardware, data visualisation, design hacking, interactive products and art installations.

A number of events and communities supporting and facilitating this culture have appeared recently. As an example, Maker Faires now take place in many countries; originating in the USA, the first one in the UK took place at the Newcastle Science Fair in 2009 and was repeated this year, more recently there has been a series of events across Africa. Other examples include the interactive design community forming around the open-source microprocessor Arduino and the Processing visualisation language, events such as Hackerspaces and Dorkbots and groups like the Manchester based Madlab. It has also captured the interest of the literary world through Makers, a novel written by Cory Doctorow. This also fits with a culture around such activities as high-low technology at MIT, the re-emergence of Craft as a social and economic force, Fablabs and in design and fashion hacking.

I’m really interested in how this can support local sustainable (in the broadest sense) development – particularly in integrating traditional craft skills with digital technology skills. This is partly inspired by some thinking around the Bauhaus movement – in particular their ethos of design principles for mass production. However, in this case the design principles would be about taking into account local issues such as local needs, availability of materials, facilities and capabilities. Bauleban perhaps…

Affordance theory was originally developed by James Gibson, a psychologist interested in perception. Affordances were originally defined as ‘action possibilities’ between an animal and its environment. Specifically, the term affordance (clues in the environment) was used to indicate an action possibility that was sensed in an immediate, direct way with no sensory processing required.

As an example of this construct, a slide control or push button would, it is claimed, be directly understandable and require sensory processing. Affordances always exist as a relationship between an organism and its environment. Whilst looking to scramble up a steep, grassy slope trees afford grip to haul you up, rocks afford grip to propel. They also have to be usable, affordances do not exist if they cannot by physically used through lack of height for example. This notion of direct, immediate access to the ‘meaning’ of an affordance without sensory processing is obviously appealing to designers of products. It was popularised in human computer interface circles after Donald Norman used the concepts in Psychology of Everyday Things.

In Norman’s view of interface design the notion of affordance was used alongside conceptual models and conventions to aid a designer. However, as interest in affordances grew he became concerned that discussion about them in hci circles was wandering further and further away from his original intention. Norman has expressed his dissatisfaction on this and distinguishes conceptual models, real affordances, perceived affordances, constraints and conventions.

Conceptual models provide the logic for how an interface works and provide a base for reasoning about possible actions in an interface. Real affordances are all the affordances that physically exist, but may not actually provide access to a designer’s intention. Perceived affordances are those that the designer has managed to make readily accessible and understandable to the user of the interface. Constraints exist in physical and logical form – an example of a physical constraint would be where a section of a monitor does not provide cursor feedback so it’s clear that no actions are possible in that areas. A logical constraint allows reasoning to be made about possibilities for example where a user is asked to click on five locations, but only four are visible. The user knows logically that another location must exist and can look for it using, e.g., scroll bars. Scroll bars are in turn examples of cultural conventions which have become to be accepted within communities. They are understood precisely because of their ubiquitous nature which has developed over time.

Norman is very clear on his wish to see these different aspects of interface design clearly separated out to help analysis and subsequent design. It is clear how an individual designer’s role can be much stronger in the development of intended perceived affordances of a product (they can have direct influence on this) whilst it is more difficult to change cultural constraints (at least in the short term).

When one thinks of traditional interaction with computing technology the vision that tends to be immediately conjured-up is that of a typical personal computer. A box containing all the essential digital technologies such as processor, memory and hard disk; a graphical screen for display, the visual output, perhaps speakers for audio output; for input the traditional image is that of keyboard and mouse. Interaction takes place though key presses, through button presses using the mouse, and output takes place through the screen and speakers as previously mentioned.
However, interactions do not need to be like that. In the world of tangible interaction effort has been made to connect digital data with physical representations so that control of any underlying data is effected through direct manipulation of physical objects. It is a world where computer scientist meets product designer; where artists meet robotics experts. This is an area where cross-disciplinary skills will be required in abundance.
This need to work across discipline boundaries, to integrate different skills, is highlighted in Baskinger & Gross 2010 where the authors point out that ‘Tangible interaction practitioners, researchers, and educators integrate knowledge from many areas. They draw upon traditional design, engineering, computing, and robotics in a mashup of skills and methods—thinking and making in physical form, electronics, and code’. This phrase is particularly noteworthy as it identifies the types of skills, working practices and perhaps challenges that are sure to emerge as a possible new discipline takes shape.

The Hit Me Interactive Lamp was designed by Carnegie Mellon students Henry Julier, Justin Rheinfrank, Amanda Ip, and Michael Cruz-Restrepo. It responds directly to different touches. If finger tips are pressed on the lamp then this is reflected through individual leds lighting up and a corresponding pattern appearing. If the palm of a hand is placed over the lamp then it responds with a diffuse glow. The lamp also responds to the length of time it is touched – so quick touches result in lights flashing, prolonged touching ensures the lamp stays on.

These paper robots were designed by Greg Saul from Carnegie Mellon and Victoria University of Wellington. They make use of special materials called ‘Shape-Memory-Alloys’ for actuators, gold leaf printed circuits and embedded microchips for intelligence and can be programmed to respond to light, sound or on-line chat. Their designer was interested in ‘using new technologies, materials and information channels to create systems instead of designs or perhaps more accurately designs that are a dialogue between the user and the designer with computer program as mediation’.

These examples are interesting and embody, in simple ways, the types of knowledge and skills that are required in this area.

Collaboration is a coat of many colours – it exists in many forms and for many ends. It can be fun, it can be exciting, it can be extremely hard work and it can take you outside of your comfort zone. In its very best form it gives everyone involved a chance to learn something, to produce something meaningful and not just merely contribute from their own single perspective. HighWire’s strap line ‘creating innovative people for radical change’ doesn’t quite capture the collaborative nature of much of our work and of our thinking. But it’s there, it’s definitely there.

We held our first workshop on Tuesday around the general theme of emotive physicality. What do we mean by this? Well, there’s a sense that physical products can engage and affect us in ways that are different to digital media. Can we make use of these possibilities and provide experiences that seem more natural, more intuitive and maybe more fun? This is what we’ll be looking at over the next few months and the workshop allowed us to kick start the whole process.

As part of our collaborative approach, we were honoured to have both Taylor Nuttall from Folly and Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino from Tinker working with us for the day. They are both truly inspirational.

So, how did it all work out? Well, in the spirit of DIY culture and just ‘making stuff’ the initial warm-up session felt like you’d just entered a primary school classroom, but with less tears. This was surprising; to be honest I’d been expecting more tears. After the ‘getting to know us all’ session with card, felt, scissors, glue, string and balsa wood we then proceeded into the next sessions armed with only post-it notes for support. Stripped bare, we brainstormed ideas around data and data sources, connections and transformations, and finally physical realisations of these data sources and associated transformations.

There were a few novel interpretations of what data would be useful – ‘confusion’ was identified, along with a ‘busyness’ indicator. A cluster of ideas developed around ‘emotional states’, specifically asking the question about capturing the emotional states not of individuals, but of groups, such as an audience. The prize for the most inventive transformation must surely go to the inspired choice of ‘magic’. This struck me as a wholly appropriate way to think about transformations and maybe even interaction design in general. Interaction that has a sense of wonderment about it may be interesting indeed.

Final concept realisations were developed in the heady atmosphere of both the post-it notes and the contents of the craft boxes. Carnage ensued and fun was had by all as teams were rather naughtily swapped at half-time and inherited another team’s half-baked ideas. The physical models produced included adaptive architectures, connected gardens, handbags that dripped e-pheromones, and an interventionist God. What more can I say?

The day was rounded off in rather fine style with fizz and cake. I believe we may have judged the concepts too and awarded a rather special prize.

For me, this was the beginning of a journey. Collaboration, to work well, has to be based upon trust, building of relationships and of mutual interest (and passion) across a broad topic area rather than short-term specific questions. For those interested in forms of collaboration with Universities I can recommend reading Knowledge Exchange and Universities and Business produced by the Centre for Business Research.

One thing that clearly jumped out to me personally was the Renaissance nature of this developing field. It’s clearly post-disciplinary; skills and expertise are required in a wide variety of areas across art, design, engineering, and computing. We also need to both incorporate and synthesise theoretical approaches to help us understand and support these type of interactive experiences.

A final word – it’s likely that we’ll be running more of these workshops, focusing more on practical skills covering, e.g., arduino, processing and rapid-prototyping techniques. If you’re interested in these or in broader collaboration, please do get in touch.

HighWire attended FutureEverything this week. FutureEverything ‘… is an art, technology and social innovation organisation that runs year-round innovation labs and an annual festival of art, music and ideas – bringing the future into the present.’

With music and presentations from a wide variety of musicians, researchers, professionals and artists choosing between FutureEverything events to attend was extremely difficult. Situated in the Contact Gallery, Oxford Road, Manchester, the first event we attended was the Open Data: Moving the Immovable panel discussion. Introduced by Sarah Hartley of The Guardian William Perrin opened with his views on how to ‘get data out of large public bureaucracies. With four methods entitled The Bulldozer , The Ferret, The Avalance and The Extraterrestrial method delegates were presented with a number of examples where previously immovable data was either extracted, scraped or freed from large bureaucracies and used in socially important ways.

Following was James Darling of RewiredState who despite technology challenges imparted two useful notes ‘government is bad at computers, let us show you how it is done’ and ‘ask forgiveness not permission’.

Jordan Hatcher a lawyer, academic, and entrepreneur working on Intellectual Property and Internet law issues in the UK and worldwide presented next on ownership in relation to databases. Suggesting three approaches, ‘Ask for Licence’ ‘Copyright as absolute’ and ‘Infringe’, and suggested that databases be presented under ‘Public Domain Licences, Attribution Database Licence or Open Database Licence’. In choosing a licence he suggests that those responsible for the database should consider the reasons behind why they are opening the data.

Finally Eimear Coleman of Barnet Council posed the question of ‘Why are organisations so resistant?’ and suggested a move from the current system of ‘new public management’ to ‘communicative governance’ and to achieve such a movement a ‘fundamental culture change is necessary’. In otherwords there is a need to shift from ‘data ownership mindsets to data custodians’. Highlighting the concern of risk adverse organisations Eimear suggests that strategies must bear in mind the concerns of those involved and at risk of spin. The ‘speedy zealots vs de publik sektor’.

HighWire recently held an Ideas Workshop with Alex Deschamps-Sonsino CEO of Tinker London. The workshop was the first of a coming series of workshops related to an emerging HighWire project involving Richard Wood, Graham Dean, Natasha Carolan & Marcia Smith. This project is focused on (broadly speaking) physical computing, interaction design, physicalisation of data and emotive and persuasive design.

The day was pitched as an ideas factory, to encourage idea generation, exploration of the domains of interest and networking between the relevant disciplines. Given our ongoing dedication to playfulness the day was designed to entertain and inspire each participant. With guests including Folly CEO Taylor Nuttall, Imagination Lancaster and the Computing and Management schools in Lancaster we started the day by creating teams through drawing keys out of bowl at random, a starting point which set up a playful and provocative atmosphere.

Graham Dean a fellow HighWire student has brought life to Eric Morcambe’s statue in Morcambe Bay. By providing contextual information gathered from APIs about local Morcambe weather and writing code to construct tweets in the first person to make it more lifelike Graham has enabled Eric, or rather Eric’s statue to tweet about the weather. Richard Wood of HighWire has also created a tweet stream from Islambard Kingdom Brunel.

Onotate is an app allowing users to annotate web design mock-ups but Onotate decided to investigate how we might (annotate) Onotate the world.

Imagine we could express our mood or feelings about things we see in the real world, whether it be liking that morning coffee or disliking your boring desk at work (obviously you will think of more exciting things) slap a coloured sticky on it and proclaim your feeling towards it – Onotate it!

How it  works?

Participants onotate the world using the sticky notes, photograph (geo tagged) and tweet with corresponding hash tags and the image and location is marked on the Onotate world map.

I love the idea behind this, a ‘web enhanced democracy of sorts’.  Now, how do I stick these on a politicians forehead?

For your chance to participate visit Onotate