NB: To continue to follow our progress with the Arduino please refer to the dedicated WordPress blog here: http://bauleban.aghillo.org/

So I’ve just got my hands on Oomlut’s Arduino starter kit and I’m going to try to log my progress. First impressions:

The case is a bit naff and there are components floating everywhere (there’s a glass-half-empty attitude). But its fantastic to get my hands on an Arduino at last. Windows XP doesn’t find the driver automatically but that isn’t unusual for XP. But if you follow the instructions on Arduino’s own website carefully: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Windows you shouldn’t have any trouble. Its simply a case of telling Windows where to look for the driver — which is amongst the files you download for the IDE.

There’s an awful lot of support out there for people who want to have a play with an Arduino board but don’t have previous experience of coding and/or electronics. Quite a few online crafting/electronic suppliers seem to have Arduino starter kits — so this is evidently a popular hobby.

Its exciting to get the “Blink” program running (Arduino’s version of “Hello World”), but because this board has a built in LED I haven’t had a chance to play with the components yet. First of all I’ve been changing the timings of the delay between LED blinks — baby steps first

The Arduino IDE is available for free and on first inspection seems intuitive and powerful. My understanding is that you write in Arduino code (which is based on C++), this is then converted into actual C++, which is then compiled and can be uploaded to the board.

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.

There’s some really nice experimental work going at Nihilogic integrating audio, HTML5 <canvas> and <audio> tags along with a javascript api which drives the graphics in real-time. The really interesting thing here is doing it in real-time, no pre-processing of the sound track is used. This is nice – it gives all sorts of possibilities to drive visualisations using live performance. However, it gets really interesting when we start thinking about using this to drive physical media as well as digital media. Dancing toys? Enhanced theatre performance? Adaptive architecture?

In the spirit of playfulness, DIY culture and ‘Making do’ I wondered last night what I could do with Eric Morecambe and his statue on Morecambe’s sea front. The joy that this statue brings to people is a wonder to see by the way – there’s always smiles and laughter around him. What to do though? Well, he’s sat out on the sea front 24 hours a day / 365 days a year so he clearly sees a lot of weather. So the obvious thing to do is let him have his say about it – find a suitable weather API (after playing with wunderground and google, I finally settled on yahoo), parse the weather data into a string, use the weather condition codes to generate comments, then send Eric’s thoughts on their way to the world via an automated tweet twice a day. Quite a fun thing to do with just an API, some PHP and a cron job. Feel free to follow Eric’s weather at www.twitter.com/ericsstatue

A response to a digital play brief aimed at teenagers and attempts to subvert mass consumerism. Teenagers want to both belong and to sit outside. As Quentin Crisp said – “the young always have the same problem – how to rebel and how to conform at the same time”. They want to distinguish themselves from the crowd, experiment with self-identity and develop new values for a new generation. What is the world’s current obsession? What do we seem most concerned about? It’s clearly economic growth. And our response to this? It seems we need to consume more products. Consume more products, keep buying, keep, in that dreadful phrase, ‘economically active’. What a marvellous opportunity to rebel – almost perfect! Simply stop buying so much stuff. Stop buying stuff. Stop it. Be proud of it and celebrate it.

The koppla bracelet (named after the Swedish for connect) symbolises this rebellion. A commitment to the five values of be active, connect, take notice, learn and give is rewarded through seeing your bracelet turn from its original colour through to pristine crystal. A symbolic transformation that connects you with a new way of living. Commit to these values and you will see a change in your life and it will be made visible to others through the koppla bracelet. It becomes a symbolic totem for a generation. The bracelet is not just symbolic, but functional as well. It incorporates a range of technologies to sense your location, sense your activities, provide communication and provide physical feedback.

These technologies are used as part of its first service offering, launched in connection with events surrounding the Cultural Olympiad. The koppla bracelet provides connection to the community of wearers and access to a special kind of music service. A service that reflects the five core values and enhances a musical experience – we give digital music a home, geo-locate it and make it only possible to listen to it when you’re actually in the location. Artists can decide to locate their music on a beach, on a mountain, anywhere where they think will enhance the musical experience and make it special again. Finally, we provide access to the koppla bracelet and technologies to 3^rd party service providers to enable wider development of digital play services that embody the five values of be active, connect, take notice, learn and give.

UX Honeycomb from Peter Morville

I had an interesting conversation the other day about sustaining the ubiquitous computing experience – prompted by the limited user experience provided by the augmented mobile browser Layar.  Layar provides graphical information overlays which are geo-located through the use of geo-data. They are then visible through android based phones such as the HTC Hero. Unfortunately, at the moment it seems as it has only novelty value and my colleague grew bored after half-an-hour of use.

This got me thinking about engaging user experiences. I’ve noticed myself that there are some websites, devices or applications I use once or a couple of times, then never use again. At other times, they seem to fit in with my short-term activities and are really useful resources. Indeed there are some that I would class as providing a sustained experience - i.e. an engaging experience that is more than a passing fad. As an example, I use my 5 years old Nokia mobile phone all the time for texting, checking email and even making phone calls. A slightly more complicated example is my use of Twitter, where it peaks around sporting events I’m interested in.

It seems to me that there are a few themes around the question of how we can make user experiences sustainable – perhaps it is related to content and how often it’s updated, perhaps it’s related to the overall aesthetics of the experience or maybe it’s to do with personal narratives and how will the experience fit into that?