Finally we have thesis symposium this weekend!
I am showing my piece TEBLE at 65 Fifth Avenue, continuing tomorrow.
I’m standing by my piece all day with other installation pieces.
http://www.vimeo.com/5826768MFADT Symposium
May 3rd, 2009Precedents:04 Rich Gold
November 20th, 2008Precedents:03 Interactive Whiteboards
November 18th, 2008Hitevision Interactive board at CeBIT 2007
Smart Board by SMART Technology
Experiments:03 Explain with Your Hands
November 11th, 2008I started asking my classmates to use only their hands to explain what they’re explaining to me, and capture their hand motions in video format. For example, my friend Hsiang Ju was explaining ideas on her thesis, Eduardo was explaining finger tracking from Zach’s class. I just realized how much we use our hands when explaining something. I never paid attention to their gestures or hand movements visually.
There are three videos for now, and I had them use their hands in 3 different ways: just hands, hands on a chair as a table, and pens on a white board. Topics were all class-related, which I did not set up but they brought up to me. (like we often express and exchange ideas in daily routine on 10th floor of Parsons)
Precedents:02
November 11th, 2008The SMART Table – multitouch for kids education
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Viddler video. Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Viddler video. Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Viddler video.
Precedents:01
November 5th, 2008
Experiment:02 Expressive hands
November 4th, 2008I was talking with my good friend Hsiang Ju, who is also a MFA DT student working on a thesis project. She asked me to listen to a collection of her ideas and started writing them down on a piece of paper. This kind of discussion happens often among MFADT 2nd year thesis students.
As an experiment, I asked her to use her hands and fingers on the chair to describe her ideas, instead of using a pen and paper. There was a chair in between us. She first started drawing with her fingers on the chair (faking), and also showed some gestures, including opening a book, closing a notebook, drawing, writing, erasing the drawing, turning the drawing to me, and moving the drawing. Her gestures were mostly drawing-based. I threw a question to her; “What would be an interesting feature if you have a multi-touch device in front of us right now?” and her answer was; “I think drawing would be interesting enough.”
This experiment was very different from the first experiment where I asked users to follow the actions that I required. In this rough experiment with Hsiang, the content of actions was created by the user rather than forced by me. In Experiment:01, I wanted to see what kinds of gestures could come out of specific situations or words. In Experiment:02, I gave more freedom to the user to express her own thinking process through a given environment. What was more intriguing to me was how she described her thoughts with a given environment (hands + chair) and how I obtained the outcome of the interaction.
Our sitting position was another crucial aspect. We were sitting over one chair, which gave both of us the same platform for a discussion. Ted’s screen logic is relevant to this composition in a way that the chair was the screen in this case. In the screen logic theory, the center of screen is the most freely used space. In this case with a chair between us, the surface area of the chair became the center of the screen. There were no outer spaces. The center was the interface itself.
Both of us still had a sense of direction (right to Hsiang was lef to me), however, the interface in between us broke the sense of directions when Hsiang turned her drawing towards me.
In this case, there were only two users: Hsiang and me. However, in general, square shaped interface allows four users in nature of its shape. Circle shaped interface will probably allow many more than four, depending on the size of it. Therefore, multi-user based interface design will require more focus on its size, shape and placement, because those aspects will interfere with how many users can be involved at the same time and their physical perspectives will change depends on that.
Conversation:01 Interface perspective
November 4th, 2008I sat down with Ted Byfield to talk about multitouch-based interfaces, which was actually very eye-opening. He visually explained the concepts of “screen logic,” including model/modeless interface and screen perspectives. When we face a computer screen, we already have cognitive understanding of how to interact with it. However, Ted demonstrated to me how our physical and cultural behaviors are characterizing our use of screen, ie. left-handed, right-handed, left-right reading, right-left reading, etc. In one to one communication between a human and a computer, our hands and eyes are trained to act certain ways.
For example, the drawing above (based on what Ted demonstrated) shows how dense some areas are used on screen. Generally, the center of screen is the most frequently and freely used space. Right-handed people may use right side on screen more, compared to left-handers. We generally read top to bottom. Moreover, those who are trained to read right to left may move their eyes in that way. The red diagram at the end shows combinations of these three so that the top right has a heavy weight as well as the center.
Screen logic shouldn’t be as simple as I described, however this way of observation brought me a new perspective on interface design. This whole thing was eye-opening introduction from Ted.
What became even more interesting was the moment he tilted the laptop screen 180 degrees and turned it flat on the table towards me. At that moment, the right-left relationship is reversed. What is left to him is what is right to me. What is top to him is what is bottom to me. It proved to me that when the interface is flat in front of multiple users, there are no more directions on screen.
Experiment:01 Directed touch
October 30th, 2008Description:
There were three stages of experiments. In the first stage, I called out a set of random numbers and asked the user to touch the corresponding circles on the map at the same time. I specified that they could use both hands and any fingers. In the second stage, I asked the user to throw out a crumpled paper, which was lightly taped on the surface of the acrylic box. This time, the definition of the crumpled paper was “something in your way.” And then, I had the user try to do the same action on the acrylic surface. In the last stage, I asked the user to do the same action but I explained the crumpled paper was “your bad memory” this time. All of these were recorded and saved as video documentation, captured from the bottom of the acrylic box.
Tools:
In this experiment, I user the following equipments. 1. one acrylic box, 2. illustrated 10th floor map with 20 numbered circles (printed on a transparent sticker sheet pasted on the box), 3. web camera connected to mac, and 4. crumpled paper.
The users participated:
1. Joe, 1st year MFADT
2. Conway, 1st year MFADT
3. Leanne, 2nd year MFADT
4. Eduardo, 2nd year MFADT
5. Alesandro
6. Katie, 2nd year MFADT
7. Maral, 2nd year MFADT
Purpose:
The purpose of the experiment was to observe how people move their fingers to do a certain action based on given requirements. In the first stage, the requirement was to touch corresponding numbered circles at the same time. In the second stage, the given action was “throw out something in your way.” In the last one, it was “throw out your bad memory.” I wanted to compare how they react to more general object and something that has meaning, which were an onstacle and a memory. Especially for the third part, my intention was to test out if one given word could generate a corresponding gesture.
Results:
For the first part of it, there was a tendency in general that they used one touch if they could. For example, when I said the number 2+3, the touch would be sequence of 2 and then 3. When more numbers were called at the same time, such as 3+14+12+9+8, then it requires more than two fingers or one hand. The problem with this one was that it took some time for the users to realize where the called numbers were on the surface, which created a delay as they were trying to touch the set of numbers at the same time. For the next iteration of this particular experiment, I should change numbers to colors, which will possibly make it easier for users’ eyes to grasp the colors called right away.
For the second and third part, It seemed easy for the users to throw a crumpled paper. It was harder to explain why the crumpled paper was “something in your way” or “bad memory.” From the observation, there was a difference in the user’s actions between the reactions on two given situations. When I said please throw out “your memory,” then they stopped for a second, which seemed like a memory rewind, and then most of them throw it out more softly. However, the gestures that I witnessed were primarily two kinds; slap the paper aside with one hand or grab it with five figers. In order not to confuse the users, I should actually have a digital object projected so that they can visually recognize it and have a better understanding of what I ask users to do.
Book: Graphic Diagrams by Herdeg
October 20th, 2008
40-mile-high section through the atmosphere, indicating the characteristics of the various layers (spheres)
Visual components in each layer illustrates different data is interesting.
Left: Map of the city of Berne and the locations of its museums. Four colors. Right: Network of Trans-Europ-Express trains. Routes in red on olive
Left: The use of circle shows the density of elements. Right: There are un-highlighted and highlighted circles. Also, the white spot, color subtraction from the rest of the map stands out to indicate hotspot, focus, or user selection.
Section of a map showing a guide pattern for the subdivision into residential, commercial and public service areas, etc.
Color patterns are intriguing.
This is a part of The Plan for New York City, a monumental six-volume collection of facts, data and planning proposals, abounding in well-designed charts and maps, of which space permits us to show but a few.
Color patterns and boldness of lines which divides sections on the map.
COMMENTS:
Old books are very attractive. I’ve always loved Saul Bass.. then why am I doing interactive stuff? Well, this kind of graphics get me thinking the reasonings of using digital representations and interactive components. Currently, for my project’s sake, its so crucial to ask myself as a designer: why digital? why touch? why multi-touch?? In other words, what are the interesting options that digital touch-device can give?
For these graphical representations of space, designers had to extract essential information from the data that they had, and visualize it on a piece of paper. Traditional thinking is, essential information on one layer. Once they had it right, and then turn it into production and then distribute in a physical manner.
Lets think about digital representations of them. With a networked world, we can duplicate the same representation and distribute it to many many people, who do not have access to physical manifestation of the representation, a printed material. Furthermore, digital tools allows us to create a movement of visual and data elements. Motion is something that 2-d cannot achieve, and real-time data input and output as well.
I will go back to my first semester at Parsons where I came up with my own definition of “Interface”. 
so now I have to think about the meaning of using “touch” as an “interface” to trigger some kind of information. write that in the next post. think think!