Listning Post

Listening Post is an art installation that culls text fragments in real time from thousands of unrestricted Internet chat rooms, bulletin boards and other public forums. The texts are read (or sung) by a voice synthesizer, and simultaneously displayed across a suspended grid of more than two hundred small electronic screens.

Listening Post cycles through a series of six movements, each a different arrangement of visual, aural, and musical elements, each with it's own data processing logic.

Dissociating the communication from its conventional on-screen presence, Listening Post is a visual and sonic response to the content, magnitude, and immediacy of virtual communication.

Concept cars from MIT

Mitchell Joachim is a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Architecture: Computation Group). Prior to MIT, he completed two master’s degree programs; at Harvard University (MAUD) and Columbia University (M.Arch). Currently he is a researcher at the Media Lab Smart Cities Group, collaborating with his advisor William J. Mitchell on the General Motors/ Frank O. Gehry Concept Car.
Follow the link to find out some amazing concept cars from Mitchell.

Digi wall

Digiwall looks like a traditional climbing-wall but it’s actually a computer game you climb upon.

Every climbing-hold is equipped with a sensor that registers hands and feet. In that way Digiwall can keep track on where on the wall the climber or climbers are. This opens up for a large number of games, exercises and competitions of various kinds.

Digiwall is also a musical instrument. The climbing-holds act as keys on a keyboard and music is played according to your climbing. The grips can be lit up from the inside and behind the wall there is a large hi-fi system. Together this gives a climbing-wall with new possibilities. In games, competitions, for practicing co-operation and for music creativity the experience intensifies with help from the music and the sound. The built-in lights in the holds show you the way and rules for competition.

Beating the Devil's Advocate !!

Are you a Cross-Pollinator? Do you work with a Hurdler? Or a Storyteller? These are just a few of the roles that Tom Kelley, author of the bestselling Art of Innovation, suggests that people can play in an organization to foster innovation and new ideas—and fend off creativity-stifling naysayers. Inspired by the roles that Tom has seen emerge at IDEO, the leading design firm where Kelley is general manager, The Ten Faces of Innovation is filled with engaging stories of how businesses have used innovation and design thinking to transform customer experience.

Also look at http://www.thoughtlessacts.com/

Interesting though-less thinking by IDEO.
Thoughtless acts is a book by Jane Fulton Suri and IDEO that invites you to notice the subtle and amusing ways that people react to the world around them. These thoughtless acts reveal how people behave in a world not always perfectly tailored to their nedds and demonstrate the kind of real-world observational approach that can inspire designers and anyone involved in creative endeavors.

Yahoo !! WIDGETS

I am in love with the widgets. I remember at NID we developed some sort of widget/desktop application, where I had explored the scenario of advertising agency where user has an option of looking at various accounts handled by him and hours spend on them. The user could also allocating time to various project accounts and sending the hour sheet to the accounts department for the billing purposes...etc...etc. Dr. Vinod Vidwans was the guide for the project.

I remember Jerry's calendar project...
Coming back to YAHOO !!
Visit the widget gallery- Good collection of widgets to brighten your desktop and manage your digital life.

Navigating from left, right or top?

I am at the verge of finishing one of the client projects where I was involved as Interaction Designer to carryout User Research / System Design / User Interface Design. The project was extensive and helped me to build my knowledge base of how to fuel research findings into product development cycle.
While developing user interface I came across many unwanted circumstances. I designed the interface keeping all the navigation on the left side of the screen to make it intuitive and avoid any visual clutter to the screen. I was not very well prepared when my respected client asked me to put all the navigations and controls on the right…

So I though of preparing myself for next presentation where I could present some facts and figures about the basic principals of UI design and some research findings that can support my UI thought. J


Eye track was a very good resource as far as above issues are concerned. Comment if you know any better.

www.poynterextra.org

`Designed in India' welcome 2006

THE Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion is all set to roll out the National Design Policy as a new-year gift to Indian designers in January 2006. As per the policy, those products coming under its ambit will require to meet certain minimum quality parameters before using the `Designed in India' label in the world market.

"The National Design Policy will be announced in January. Merely coming out with a policy statement will not suffice, as it will have to be followed up with implementation. Among other things, the `Designed in India' label will have to be linked with a certain quality specification," Mr N.N. Prasad, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, said.

The attempt would be to position `Designed in India' as a label that assures quality and utility. This could be in conjunction with other labels - `Made in India' and `Served from India'.A mechanism will be worked out for creating a brand image for Indian designs through the award of an `India Design Mark' that satisfy certain criteria such as appeal, centricity, ergonomic features, safety and environment findings.

The tenure of the design policy will be three years and the Government is planning to come with a second design policy by that time.

3rd BW-NID Design Excellence Award 2005

The Third BW-NID Design Excellence Awards were announced on 3 December 2005 . A grand and glittering ceremony at Uppal's Orchid marked the evening as participants, guests and celebrities braved Delhi 's chill to be part of the fiesta. This year, the awards celebrate excellence in consumer product design, a key aspect that makes products more desirable to the end consumer, boosts sales and plays a vital role in fuelling the growth of the economy.

The jury selected the winners from over a hundred entries from both multinationals and Indian companies. A number of lesser-known Indian companies, with their innovative products and commitment to design, emerged winners. Vignettes from the glittering evening.

I am in

The new intruder has entered this blog.

Dave Werners Portfolio !!

A teaser video release before actual portfoliio....
Portfolio by Dave Werner: " Different kind of design portfolio " :)

Imaginative way to showcase your design port.

Interactive Sound Installation at CSM

Passers by become participants on the South Bank

Arlete Castelo and Melissa Mongiat students of the Creative Practice for Narrative Environments MA at Central St Martins, UAL, have created an exciting interactive sound installation that is changing the atmosphere of Hungerford Terrace and keeping the spirit of 'Education at the Royal Festival Hall' alive while it is closed for refurbishment.

Spiritual FIAT:

Being born in a city that celebrates shopping, Dubai born Indian artist Raj needed a break. “My exposure to Art and Design had always been from a commercial angle”, explains Raj,” so the Omkara project was a way for me to break away express myself.”

We nodded with sympathy and decided to be polite:

Sensory: So Raj, what’s the Omkara’s journey?
Raj: The Omkara was an attempt to produce an ‘improvised installation art piece’ that attained meaning and personality as time progressed. On a very philosophical level, it is very much like life where one grows up to becomes who he is because of both foreseen and unforeseen circumstances imposed upon him.

Sensory: Yes but it’s a car..
Raj: The word Omkara actually comes from the Holy Hindu bible BHAGWAD GITA and means – ’ the vehicle to cross the ocean of life ’ Crossing this ocean is the journey one must undertake in a lifetime and henceforth encounter the three basic elements of mortality – creation, preservation and destruction.

Sensory: So the car is the metaphor and it would go through the three basic elements of mortality?
Raj: Exactly.

Sensory: On your website, you’ve said that Omkara is far from over and that you had planned on driving it from the United Arab Emirates to India. Is that part of the destruction and preservation phase? And how’s it coming along?
Raj: It’s not coming along at all… I’ve been very caught up trying to earn money for bread at the moment…. but the Omkara will be revived someday and it will set off on another journey soon. A journey not so extravagant maybe – but possibly unique enough to lower a few windows and invite a few honks!

Sensory: How’s the reaction been so far?
Raj: 60% awe, 25% scepticism, 10% ridicule, 4.5% vindication and 0.5% publicity. While some made fun of the entire project and thought that I was perhaps ‘trying too hard’ to make a point, many others were fascinated by the very scale and process undertaken to complete the project and the mythological concept embedded within. However, it was exceptionally hard to find a media outlet/gallery to exhibit the piece in this country as ‘the Omkara’ was considered a piece too controversial for an islamic country.


Sensory: Didn’t anyone mention that the car reminded them of those Indian art cabs on steroids?
Raj: Heh.. No, no one except for you..I guess they would have if I had alloy wheels, carbon fire roofing, Monster truck wheels and big ass exhausts.
Sensory: So what’s the car doing these days given that you’ve temporarily sold yourself to the big man?
Raj: Well… On the eve of 2004, a couple of them drunk labourers tried to do a little exploring around the shipyard.. And voila they found a painted car (much to their amazement) and realized that the most obvious thing to do when one finds a multicoloured painted car is to get on top of it and dance like a madman of course!! – the roof caved in ;(

Sensory: Ouch.
Raj: Yeah, the car sits solitary. Tires flat, wrapped in grey, dusty and rusting – perhaps hibernating / transiting a subconscious stage before the beginning of yet another life. Another Journey.

Source: sensoryimpact

Blowing Windows:

Blowing "Windows" subverts our preconceptions of the static electronic screen.
The user of the hose can clear their cluttered desktop or breeze icons to new positions. By blowing in one end and angling the other they can control the position and direction of movement of items on the screen.
What's best (or worst!) is that another person fanning, someone rushing by or a gust of wind can also affect the display.
At one end of the duct a wireless microphone senses the user's blow and measures its intensity. At the other end, two tilt switches sense the angle it is held at. This information is sent wirelessly to a stamp chip microcontroller, then to the computer where the icons move accordingly, with the file size and strength of the wind dictating the speed of movement: large files drag their weight while small ones fly across the desktop.
Video.

BAD Boys BAD Boys.
Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain
By GARY RIVLINSAN FRANCISCO,

Aug. 23 - For years, Silicon Valley hungered for a company mighty enough to best Microsoft. Now it has one such contender: the phenomenally successful Google.But instead of embracing Google as one of their own, many in Silicon Valley are skittish about its size and power. They fret that the very strengths that made Google a search-engine phenomenon are distancing it from the entrepreneurial culture that produced it - and even transforming it into a threat.A year after the company went public, those inside Google are learning the hard way what it means to be the top dog inside a culture accustomed to pulling for the underdog. And they are facing a hometown crowd that generally rebels against anything that smacks of corporate behavior.Nowadays, when venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and technologists gather in Silicon Valley, they often find themselves grousing about Google, complaining about everything from a hoarding of top engineers to its treatment of partners and potential partners. The word arrogant is frequently used.The news last week that Google plans to sell an additional 14 million shares of stock, adding $4 billion to its current cash reserves of $3 billion, will only provide more reasons to gripe."I've definitely been picking up on the resentment," said Max Levchin, a founder of PayPal, the online payment service now owned by eBay. "They're a big company now, doing things people didn't expect them to do."Mr. Levchin, who last year founded a multimedia company in San Francisco called Slide, said Google "still has a long wick of good will to burn off," but he added, "I'm surprised at how fast the company's reputation is changing."It was not that long ago that Google reigned here as the upstart computer company that could do no wrong. Now some working in the technology field are starting to draw comparisons between Google and Microsoft, the company in Redmond, Wash., that Silicon Valley loves most to hate.Bill Gates certainly sees similarities between Google and his own company. This spring, in an interview with Fortune, Mr. Gates, Microsoft's chairman, said that Google was "more like us than anyone else we have ever competed with."Google's success has already spurred Microsoft to develop its own Internet search engine (a project code-named Underdog), but Google has legions of engineers banging away on a range of projects of its own that, if successful, could dislodge Microsoft from the pre-eminent spot it has enjoyed since the early 1980's.Of course, Silicon Valley has had past pretenders to the throne. Netscape, which went public 10 years ago this month, and its Web browser, Navigator, were supposed to fell Microsoft - but it is Netscape that is no longer in business. And while Google is riding high, those closely following the company caution that it is hardly invincible; an inflated stock price, a desire to compete in too many sectors simultaneously or simple hubris might cause it to stumble, they say. Even Microsoft, after all, has had legal troubles.Still, similarities between Google and Microsoft are evident to local entrepreneurs including Steven I. Lurie, who worked at Microsoft between 1993 and 1999 but now lives in San Francisco, and Joe Kraus, a founder of the 1990's search firm Excite."There's that same 'think big' attitude about markets and opportunities," said Mr. Lurie, who has visited the Google campus in Mountain View many times to see friends who work there. "Maybe you can call it arrogance, but there's that same sense that they can do anything and get into any area and dominate."To place Google in context, Mr. Kraus offered a brief history lesson. In the 1990's, he said, I.B.M. was widely perceived in Silicon Valley as a "gentle giant" that was easy to partner with while Microsoft was perceived as an "extraordinarily fearsome, competitive company wanting to be in as many businesses as possible and with the engineering talent capable of implementing effectively anything."Now, in the view of Mr. Kraus, "Microsoft is becoming I.B.M. and Google is becoming Microsoft." Mr. Kraus is the chief executive and a founder of JotSpot, a Silicon Valley start-up hoping to sell blogging and other self-publishing tools to corporations.Just as Microsoft has been seen over the years as an aggressive, deep-pocketed competitor for talent, Internet start-ups in Silicon Valley complain that virtually every time they try to recruit a well-regarded computer programmer, that person is already contemplating an offer from Google."Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did," said Reid Hoffman, the founder of two Internet ventures, including LinkedIn, a business networking Web site popular among Silicon Valley's digerati. "It's largely that they're hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they're working on so many different things. It's harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now."Google, Mr. Hoffman said, has caused "across the board a 25 to 50 percent salary inflation for engineers in Silicon Valley" - or at least those in a position to weigh competing offers. A sought-after computer programmer can now expect to make more than $150,000 a year.David C. Drummond, vice president for corporate development at Google, acknowledged that the company was "very competitive" in its pursuit of talent, but added: "We're very sensitive to how everybody is perceiving us. We think the Silicon Valley ecosystem is critical for Google's success."Google is also making it more difficult for some start-ups to raise funds. In the second half of the 1990's, entrepreneurs frequently complained that the specter of Microsoft hung over their every conversation with venture capitalists. Today, they say the same about Google."When I meet with venture capitalists, or if I'm engaged in a conversation about going into partnership with someone, inevitably the question is, 'Why couldn't Google do what you're doing?' " said Craig Donato, the founder and chief executive of Oodle, a site for searching online classified listings more quickly."The answer is, 'They could, and they're probably thinking about it, but they can't do everything and do it well,' " Mr. Donato said. "Or at least I'm hoping they can't."Google has already added free e-mail, mapping, news aggregation and digital-photo management to its offerings, bringing it into competition in each case with two or more rivals. On Wednesday, it will announce plans for an instant-messaging system. And its plans for a new stock issue are fueling speculation that it is preparing to enter any number of other markets, from services for mobile phone users to an online payment service that would compete with PayPal.Add to that list an Internet-based phone system and several products that would be directly aimed at Microsoft, including a Google browser and a software offering that would compete with Microsoft Office."If there's a perception that we're exploring lots of different areas, some of which might not be directly related to our core area of search, that's true," said Mr. Drummond, the Google vice president. "It's part of our DNA to be always innovating and exploring lots of different areas."Yet so driven has Google been in its pursuit of new markets that at least a few in Silicon Valley are using an epithet to taunt Google that people here once reserved for Microsoft: "The Borg," a reference to an army of creatures in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" that took over civilization after civilization with machinelike precision.Perhaps an anti-Google reaction was to be expected, given the glowing press the company has enjoyed for several years. Or maybe the carping and complaining is the inevitable reaction to a company so successful that it cannot help stomping on toes, even if accidentally."Hubris is an issue at every one of these Silicon Valley companies that are successful," said Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal who has invested in roughly 15 Internet start-ups in recent years. "I don't know if it's any worse at Google than it's been at other highly successful technology companies."Aggressiveness is another signal trait among successful companies like Google - something those in parts of the media world are starting to learn.Google recently announced that it would not talk to any reporter from CNETNews.com, a technology news Web site, until July 2006, after a reporter for the site wrote an article raising privacy questions about the information Google collects about individuals.The company also provoked the ire of many within the blogging world - not to mention snarky comments in Silicon Valley from those thinking Google was behaving like an old-line company that doesn't get it - when earlier this year it fired a new employee who had joked online that the free meals, the on-site gym and all the other perks were a clever ploy to keep people at their desks longer."Google is at that inflection point where it's starting to act like an establishment company, and Silicon Valley is a rebel culture," said Gautam Godhwani, a founder and chief executive at Simply Hired, an online employment site.Microsoft, of course, has its hold on the Windows world - and a market capitalization almost four times Google's. By contrast, switching to a new search engine is as easy as calling up another Web page - if a new company is able to do to Google what Google did to some of the earliest leaders of search, including AltaVista and Excite.For the moment, at least, Google is aiming for that most coveted position in technology: a platform that, like Microsoft's operating system, is so popular that outside software developers write programs, and Web developers build new Google-related services, that render the Google home page indispensable to the personal computer ecosystem."In the day, you'd hear that Microsoft was the evil empire, especially in Silicon Valley," said Brian Lent, the president of Medio Systems, a start-up in Seattle working on mobile-phone-based search. "Google is the new evil empire, because they're in such a powerful position in terms of control. They have potential monopolistic control over access to information."Mr. Lent, who worked closely with Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, when all three were Ph.D. students at Stanford University, helped introduce Mr. Brin and Mr. Page to one of the company's earliest investors."I like and respect the Google guys," Mr. Lent said, "but let's just say that their ultimate aim seems to me to be, 'One Google under Google, for which it stands.' "

Leave the PIGs alone. :)
What a obsession !! Tattoo a PIG.

As CNN reports, a Belgian artist in China is giving pigs tattoos of mermaids, roses, cherubs, and the Louis Vuitton logo.The pigs get sedatives before they go under the needle and are carefully raised until their natural deaths. The artist has been inspired by China's rampant piracy of everything from DVDs to Paris's latest fashions (i.e., the LV logo).Video cameras will allow collectors (who may purchase the post-mortem pigskin art) or anyone else to watch the tattooed pigs cavort and sleep live on the Internet, a program dubbed "Pig Brother".

Usability Matters Competition:

UMO is holding a competition for identifying a Bad Design as part of or activities towards the World Usability Day. The entries will be exhibited on 3rd November 2005 on the World Usability Day.
Participation is open to everybody from every country in the world, and from any background- designers and design sensitive consumers!

The UMO - International Cartoon Contest is held by UsabilityMatters.Org towards the World Usability Day. All the awarded and qualified cartoons will be exhibited on 3rd November 2005 on the World Usability Day.
Participation is open to all cartoonists from every country in the world.

FLOATING NUMBERS:

“10 + 5 = God. The power of signs” – the title of the special exhibition in the Jewish Museum which commissioned ART+COM to produce the “floating.numbers” project.
The central element in this exhibition is a 9-metre long interactive table with a mass of numbers flowing in a continuum on its surface. Individual digits appear randomly at the surface of this stream of numbers and, once touched by a visitor, surrender their secret in text, pictures, films and animation.
The significance of the numbers materialises from the various perspectives of science, religion, art or one’s outlook on everyday life.
A large-scale projection system and a touch-sensitive table surface form the elements of this media installation. Visitors’ exploration of the world of numbers is a fascinating hands-on experience.
The project is a cooperation between ART+COM (concept ans realisation) and Hürlimann + Lepp Ausstellungen (idea and content).
P.S. "08/15" is one of the hundred numbers explained in the exhibition. If something is "08/15", it is mass production and boring. This term, which originated in WW I, used to denote the first machine gun produced according to industrial standards.

Marcel Wanders designs electronics for HE

Marcel Wanders designed a line of home entertainment products for Holland Electro. Start with the microwave/TV screen hybrid, and move to the mp3 player, wireless speakers, transmitter, etc. All have reptilian texturing (if you like that kinda thing) and the site features the gear posed with various animals . The products will debut at the IFA in Berlin.

A Definition of Interaction Design

Ohdannyboy says:: Last month, I started a discussion on the interaction designers list that continued on and on and on. Until it became another discussion about the definition of interaction design. I thought since it was forbidden to discuss it there, I would put down my thoughts here in a coherent manner and offer up my definition of interaction design.
Interaction design is the art of facilitating or instigating interactions between humans (or their agents), mediated by products. By interactions, I mostly mean communication, either one-on-one (a telephone call), one-to-many (blogs), or many-to-many (the stock market). The products an interaction designer creates can be digital or analog, physical or incorporeal or some combination thereof.

Interaction design is concerned with the behavior of products, with how products work. A lot of an interaction designer's time will be spent defining these behaviors, but the designer should never forget that the goal is to facilitate interactions between humans. To me, it's not about interaction with a product (that's industrial design) or interaction with a computer (that's human-computer interaction). It's about making connections between people.

Since behaviors and mediums are always changing, the discipline of IxD shouldn't align itself to any of these in particular. The rise of digital devices and the internet created a greater need for the discipline and many, many new opportunities for interaction designers. But it isn't the only place for our talents; analog situations can use our talents too, to create things like work flows and systems of use. As the internet and digital devices become more and more ubiquitous, interaction design will be involved in nearly every aspect of our lives.

Focusing on the behavior of products as our reason for being, is, to me, missing the forest for the trees. Perhaps I'm an idealist, but I certainly hope interaction design is more than just optimizing machine behaviors. To me, it's about a lot more than that. It's making things pleasurable to use, affecting emotions. It's about asking not only how should this work, but why : Should this be done at all? Will it affect people's lives in a positive way?

When we get right down to it, and past the nearly-automatic response of "meeting user goals," the larger, big-picture goal of interaction design should be to create things that make people's lives better, that make us all more connected to each other.

Thanks Danny.

BOOTBAG: steal the idea :)

Yes, this is a handbag. A good concept and great visualization to comeup with such non functional product. :(

Fuck it !!

Blogger getting over my head. This is the third blog space i am making, with my previous ones i messed us something that i can access them anymore. (lost password and ?? )

This is final one. DESIGN GENE. :)