The official CIID/DKDS Pilot Year project galleries are finally up! This is the place where all projects made throughout the year will be collected.

Ouch. This stuff actually happened before Christmas... I'm not that good at updating regularly. I'll be back soon with a post about the TUI course we just finished, and hopefully that will make this site a bit more up-to-date. Well, the last week before Christmas was dedicated to "Skills Upgrade"-courses. The class was split in two, one half was working with James Tichenor and Joshua Walton from Rockwell Group, on different proposals for interactive installations for SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. The other half (which I was part of) worked with games and computer vision which was taught by Yaniv Steiner.

We spent the week experimenting with different small things within the field of computer vision. The first project we did, was the game "Style Wars" - a reaction game, where you use your hand as the game controller. The game is very simple: you and your opponent face each other like in a classic western duel. When you hear a specific bang-sound, it's all about being fastest to draw your gun (gun = pointing hand). If you react too early (before the right sound), you lose. The name "Style Wars" doesn't really make much sense - but the reason for the name is, that in the game, one player has the role of a flamenco-dude, the other player is a hip-hopper. I am assuming that it's common knowledge that flamenco-dancers and hip-hoppers don't get along very well.

Dave Mellis captured me and Erlend dueling in the video above. After making "Style Wars" which was based on simple Flash-motion tracking, we moved on to reacTIVision, where we made our own lo-fi reactable with a standard camcorder, a window and a desklamp. We used the table for testing and having fun with both Flash and Processing.org. One of the applications were a "body-mixer", that made it possible to build your own custom CIID student (or freak) by mixing the legs, torsos and heads from all of us. The controls were three "dials" with fiducials underneath.

I uploaded some pics from the skills upgrade on Flickr - you should check them out if you want to see some of the other cool stuff people made, like the Dancing Game, for instance... The thumbnails are here:

The second part of our GUI class was about interactive data visualisation. Again, we had an outstanding external teacher: Shawn Allen from Stamen Design in San Francisco. Along with Shawn we also had our own CIID genious David Mellis to help us with the ActionScript3 programming. We started using FlexBuilder, but quickly realised that it would be easier for the beginners to start using Flash as the environment instead. I already knew a bit of AS3 and Flash, so for me the two weeks were about upgrading my skills in this field, staying in the context of data visualisation. We started using XML data from UN Data, which is an enormous source of information on almost anything. I started digging into data about alcohol consumption per capita for a wide range of countries, and came up with a small application that will let you filter, sort and highlight countries based on either country name or consumption. The app is just a quick one, so it's probably buggy and hard to use, but at least I got around handling XML data in Flash. Click the screenshot below, to try the application. [caption id="attachment_258" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Screenshot of the data visualisation of alcohol consumption per capita"] [/caption]  The second week, I started exploring other data formats than XML. I went with a set of datafiles in CSV-format from the Danish Statistics Bank. Here the main task was to parse and combine different files into one dataset, so that I could use it for a visualisation. The data i worked with, was about the number of fatal bike accidents in Denmark for the last ten years. Actually I was surprised to see how relatively low the numbers were, compared to the amount of cyclists here in the country. Again, usability was not my main focus, and I know there could be done a lot in this field, so please bear with me. Here my main focus lied in using layout organizers, which is why you will find three buttons, each representing a different layout. [caption id="attachment_261" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Screenshot from the data visualisation of bike accidents. Beware of the bugs!"] [/caption] Click the part of Denmark you want to see the statistics for, and you will get a graphical representation of the fatal accidents. Red bikes are women, black are men. Mouse over a bike to see limited details on the accident. Btw: For some reason the swf runs fine in the external Flash player, but acts a bit strange in the embedded browser player. Do you know why?

After having spent time with the elderly, we started thinking in concepts that could improve the life of the elderly. We had the honour of having Niels Clausen-Stuck as guest teacher for the first two weeks of our GUI design module, where he, along with Alex from CIID, helped us through the whole design process. A process looking a lot like the good old ISO13407 which I am quite familiar with after having studied product development at DTU for 5 years. Well, this post is not going to be about design processes (though it's a topic that I'm very interested in). After having visited the elderly, we found out that they are no longer interested in creating and sharing new memories, they are more interested in re-living old memories, with people that can help them filling in the gaps and completing their stories from the past. But it's not always easy to find people at your own age that you can actually do this with, as almost 85% of the residents on the old folks homes have dementia to some degree. And as the course was about graphical user interfaces, we also had to create some kind of device. After lots of thinking and another visit to Plejehjemmet Aftensol, we decided to develop a "time machine". Well, not a time machine in the traditional sense, but at least something that would help you think back in time.

We decided to build a radio, that could go back in time. Instead of having a frequency scale, this radio has a time scale. Turn the knob back to the year you would like to get refreshed, and the radio will start playing content from that period. If you only want to listen to specific types of content, there is a knob for selecting that, e.g. news, radio-theater or classical music. I won't go into the details of the UI, but we put a lot of thought into arranging the buttons and the graphical layout of the screen, to be as intuitive as possible. As this mock-up was developed in the second iteration, it is still very early - unfortunately we didn't have time to take it to the elderly to evaluate it.

Technically speaking the radio is just a device with a wifi connection, and access to digitalised radio archives, e.g. from Danmarks Radio or BBC. The interface is kept "old-fashioned" on purpose, to keep a higher level of familiarity to the user. Our philosophy was, that this concept is a radio and therefore it should look and feel like a radio. Not a computer or streaming mp3-player. Electronics-wise the mock-up (or hardware sketch) was built using Flash, Arduino (+ potmeters), a hacked Nokia speaker and an Asus Eee 901, all put into a cabinet covered with sheets of paper with a wood texture printed on them. The picture below is showing the radio when it's not covered by the fake table.

In general the GUI class resulted in some really nice models, considering we had very short time for the projects. Take a look at some of the other mock-ups in my Flickr photostream. If you don't want to go to Flickr, the photos from the exhibition (and some from the process) can also be found here.

No mom and dad, I'm not referring to you. I'm talking about last week's CIID course, which was about user research. We spent two half days visiting nursing homes in Copenhagen, which was both a very interesting and scary experience. Not that the nursing homes are bad (at least not as bad as the rumors say) what really scared me was to see how sick and tired everybody is at such a home. Especially the people suffering from dementia. I had never experienced people with dementia before, and I must say that it is an illness that is much worse than I thought. Especially for the relatives to the sick person. [caption id="attachment_209" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Our group (Sara, Nunzia, Sid, Mimi and me) at the nursing home Aftensol, interviewing the manager. Unfortunately Mimi is hidden behind Sid."] [/caption] After having visited the homes, we spent the rest of the time analysing and interpreting the data we collected. My group came to an interesting conclusion (among others); that the meaning of friendship changes over time. By that we mean, that when people are young(er) we get friends to socialise with and among other things create and share new experiences with. When you get old enough to move into a nursing home, you know that your life is probably soon to end. You stop looking for new friends in the "traditional" sense and instead you start reflecting over your life and the experiences you had. Instead of having friends to create new experiences and memories with, you need friends to re-live the past with. The carers and families can come listen to the stories from the past while you re-tell them, but it is not the same as talking to someone that actually remembers the past and can help you completing your stories and memories. Fill out the gaps, so to speak. This was a very quick and superficial description, but essentially the point all my jabbering is that elderly people need empathy instead of only sympathy. They also need sympathy from family and carers, but empathy is even more important. But how do we facilitate that, when up to 85% of the residents in the nursing homes are suffering from dementia? That's what the next couple of weeks will bring. I didn't take any pictures last week, so I've posted one that our supervisor Oren Horev from ReD Associates took of our group instead.

It's been a long time. I know. To make it up to you, I promise to write two posts today. One about the progress at CIID, and then this one. So what will this post contain? Lots of awesomeness! Not in the sense of great writing or the recipe for the world's best cookies, no. That's too boring. Instead I will post a YouTube video by The Hives, it's the song "Won't be long" and it is just one of many many extremely cool songs by The Hives. Enjoy! I will.

The second week of the physical computing course ended with a small exhibition/presentation where we had the honour of having Bill Verplank as part of the external crit group. The second week was dedicated to developing a small concept and building a working prototype. The brief that Gwen gave us said:

Home automation and the internet of things enable our intelligent objects to silently communicate amongst themselves at faster and higher degrees of autonomy. This requires less and less interaction and relationship with the user. These trends also create and depend on cycles of replacement and upgrading, leading to the rapid discarding of old objects. Our project will challenge these behaviors of passivity and obsolescence by exploring and adapting the cultural, physical, and psychological user interfaces that reside in the objects we have given up on or replaced. How can new interactions with and between our old objects create more meaningful, engaging, and thoughtful relationships with contemporary situations, needs, and desires? As more and more behaviors and interactions get packed into smaller and smarter objects, what are the physical gestures and interactions we threw away with "outdated" technology that could add logic, humanity, and meaning to our daily lives or specific situations. Please find old objects and re-imagine their functionality: the way they interact with either another object, other objects, people, or the computer in new and relevant ways.

The result of that brief ended up in many different projects, ranging from games to physical products and public installations. Our project dealt with how technology makes our lives more efficient, but at the same time steal more time from us. We wanted to create a product that would facilitate break time in the otherwise hectic workday at the office. The project was called "Rock is the new swivel" and basically combines a rocking chair, Gilbert O'Sullivan and a coffee machine. Sounds strange? I'll explain the project in more detail in the beginning of next week when we have a video ready. Meanwhile, check out the pictures from the exhibition (thanks to Ashwin by the way - he helped me by taking a lot of the pics).

Two weeks ago we started the physical computing class. The course was based on learning how to use the Arduino board as well as different basic electronic components, accelerometers, ultra sound distance sensors, servo motors and different analog sensors - our teachers in electronics and Arduino were David Mellis and Massimo Banzi, and Gwendolyn Floyd helped us with the inspiration and conceptual level. The Arduino board is probably the easiest microcontroller board to get started with, it has a large online community around it and everything is open source - that makes it really easy to get help, instructions or inspiration on how to use it. The topic wasn't new to me - I have been working with both Arduino (which is Atmel based) and PIC processors before and know a bit about electronics and programming, but it was great to spend some time letting my inner geek loose. In the end of the first week we did some mini-projects, where the focus was on communication between two Arduino boards (via serial). I worked with Jason from Taiwan on two small rubber robots, one was sensing motion and the other one was reacting to what the first one experienced. The following video show the bots, it doesn't really do them justice, but at least it gives an impression of their behavior. In the video it looks like they are physically connected, but actually they are not. I was impressed with how quickly people actually got to use the Arduinos - even people that never tried either electronics or microprocessor programming before, created fairly complex interactive contraptions in only one week. Below is a bunch of pictures from the first week - notice how our class room rather quickly turned into a room filled with small robots, electronic junk, tools, sketches on crumpled paper and empty coffee cups. Second week it got even better. By the way, the latest issue of Wired had an interesting article on Arduino and Massimo.

Here comes an update - only a week late! The second foundations course was a short 1-week course in video prototyping. Video prototyping is about sketching a product or service concept using video as the medium - the outcome is not a polished video, but a video showing and explaining the overall features of the service in short time. The course covered the process from storyboarding and making props to shooting and editing using basic tools (like iMovie). This video was shot and edited in 2 days. Before that an even more low fidelity and low resolution version was made. The video prototype is about the "KeyLess" service, a concept that the whole class worked with (it was open for interpretation). KeyLess is basically a service for people who often forget or lose their keys - just call Keyless, and you will have a set of spare keys within 30 minutes. As the video is not an ad, but a concept description, you will also see shots of the verification process at the KeyLess office as well as agreeing on a meeting place (in this case Trianglen). It took some effort convincing the 7-Eleven girl to be in our movie, but besides that everything went smooth.

The last two weeks have been really great! I've learned a lot, and I have found myself a new field of interest: Computational Design. The exhibition went well, and I think it is a nice way of ending a course. Tomorrow we'll start the video scenario course, looking very much forward to that one too! Here's some of the pictures I took during the exhibition. You can also go directly to my photostream at Flickr.