Social Buildings

Many buildings emit a cold exterior even though the people inside them are warm, and ironically, often feeling cut off from the rest of the world that feels cut off from them. It would be interesting trying to break down the building-wall by offering outsiders a feel for the insiders, without infringing on the insiders privacy.. and giving insiders a view of outsiders without being overly distracting.

Motion and/or infrared sensors could be used to detect movement both inside and outside and neon lights (or other lights/sounds/wind/etc??) could provide an abstract representation on the outside -- maybe with cartoonlike outlines or large pixelated reverberation. Similarly, pinwheels (credit to Hiroshi Ishii) or other ambient actuators could allow people on the inside to "feel" motion on the outside.

Squeezer as a Shared Artifact from the Policymakers to the Children

Similar to Deepti's idea of using the squeezer as a shared artifact from the children to the policymakers it might be possible to do it the other way too.

For example, footage of a famous policymaker (Al Gore or a philanthropist sports figure?) using the squeezer to watch a video clip could be used as an introduction to the squeezer for the children. This would both, entice them to use the squeezer, and highlight the importance of their task.

Along the same lines, it seems like uniquely and obviously identifying each squeezer might be a good idea. It could help highlight the unique role of each participant.

Using the Squeezer to Measure Policymakers Interest in Children's Documentaries

Similar in spirit to using common reference point to help share values, Deepti suggested that some policymakers might be willing to use the squeezer to record their reaction to the various documentaries. In addition to being valuable feedback, it might allow a more tangible connection between the policymaker and the children who made the film -- through a common squeezing device.

More than anything, I think this might have some ramifications for the aesthetics of the squeezing device.

Squeezable Film Editing

Based on previous IDM (Improved Decision Making) ideas of tagging-video and tangible-video-editing it might be possible to allow squeezable film tagging. This would involve users squeezing a squeezer to indicate their relative interest at any given time. For the IDM project, this would allow three advantages of:

1) Allowing the children to save video clips in a very time-conservative manner (the whole project is 4-5 days) -- and help keep them more engaged in watching the videos. Also, this allows preliminary editing to occur without a computer for each student.
2) Allowing the teacher to measure ongoing interest in a very non-obtrusive way and ask a specific student if they squeeze hard during some scene or be aware of sleeping non-squeezers.

Aggregate Process Artifact from the Squeezable UI Prototype for Film Learning/Making

Here are some of the highlights of our process that I haven't put in separate entries.

1) A crucial aspect of the Squeeze film editing model were the relationships teacher and student views. In order to capture this aspect in a single prototype, we built a meta-interface to allow users to switch back and forth between the teacher and student view.

2) Our Heuristic Evaluation revealed the following
i) There was a lot of confusion about the meta-interface. We modified this a bit visually and also focused more on explaining it to subsequent users. Because the meta-interface isn't testing the actual interaction we're interested in, we tried to keep it simple, but discrete from the rest of the prototype.
ii) The video playhead should be movable, aka allow scrubbing. We intended this, but its hard in flash.
iii) The "+{" aggregate icon was confusing. We shaded it darker for later testing and didn't get any more complaints/confusion (the aggregate display seems to explain itself).
iv) There needs to be squeeze-feedback in Student-mode. This was one of the stronger responses and we added it to the meta-interface for the final prototype.

3) In testing with Deepti, she suggested that the policymakers might be willing to use the squeezer too (she even thought it might even help enrich the experience for them). This led to the idea that the policymakers could even, through recorded video, teach the students how to use the squeezer. Both of these represent substantial revisions to our previous storyboard, which, in itself, represented multiple rounds of changes since our initial storyboard of tangible video editing.

4) Personally, I am very happy with our work during this stage. Among other things, I have seen that:
i) Scott and I work very well together
ii) Flash, despite its reputation, is not great for prototypes. At a certain complexity, it inhibits changes (b/c its so easy to break unrelated pieces, and so difficult to debug them) and therefore inhibits actual iterative prototyping.
iii) Given the nature of the project, its very difficult to actually do user-centered design. In our case, since the more different the children are from the western 1st world, arguably, the more important the documentary (since the policymakers will have less idea what life is like) -- we focused on the lowest common denominator.. a squeezer and a movie. Its been an interesting exercise, but in some ways it is only user-centered in one direction (we avoided dependencies, but did not leverage opportunities)

Squeezable Cameras?

With the rapid proliferation of squeezable interfaces.... :)

Both video and audio can be recorded very easily using a one-control interface.. is it possible that people might want the tactile thrill of squeezing their camera?

Hard to say.. but I'd be interested in trying it. There is a lot of video/audio functionality in newer phones, but it can be really cumbersome to use because its all packed into such a small device (even for young technophiles with good dexterity). Maybe there is another segment of the population that would love to just record-by-squeezing and then plug the recorder into their computer to hear/watch their recordings on a larger-format device later (esp with storage space an ever-diminishing concern)

Yogaballs as Mice

Using a mouse, even a nice one, is a limited-range/limited-muscle tedious effort. Manipulating the cursor by leaning different directions (or bouncing to double-click!) on your yogaball/seat might be a welcome break and a much more full-body experience... While it probably wouldn't be used all the time -- it could allow people to get into the flow more and maybe even think more physically when they're using the computer when they choose to use it.

Also, it would allow the user to leave both hands on the keyboard while moving the cursor -- mouse-keyboard commuting is a very common slowdown and physically aggravating factor.

Technical considerations:

From a functionality standpoint, the "yoga ball pointing device" would be most similar to the "pointing sticks" found on some laptops... where the computer moves the cursor according to the force, not location (eg: leaning farther over, moves the cursor faster)

There would probably have to be a way to engage/disengage the yoga ball -- otherwise inadvertant movements would move or "click" the cursor.

The Designer's Paradox

In a designer's utopia, we're completely freed from thinking about our tools because they are so well designed. But then, what ARE we supposed to think about? Designer's don't know -- thats for sure!

The point is simply that as a designer, you have to think about tools a lot so that others don't have to. But, in a twisted way, a designer hides the beautiful complexity of options that they themselves enjoy thoroughly.

Relatedly, a big part of a person's (even a non-designer's) pleasure in life might be the tools they choose and how they use them. Manual stick shifts are a good example of this. For these cases, the standards of design may need to be adjusted towards the playful (or other goal) rather than the simple.

Improvements on Macromedia Flash?

Existing problems with Flash include the following:

1) Extremely difficult to debug
2) Relatively high demands on end-users (have to install correct plugin/version)
3) GUI is extremely confusing
4) There are a huge number of entities and they are highly non-intuitive
5) Global namespace severely limits the size of potential projects and parallel development

All this combines to make a tool that has a fairly high threshold and an extremely low ceiling and that really isn't good for prototype-development at all. The whole point of developing prototypes is that you can change things quickly and easily -- and this is simply impossible for Flash projects of any reasonable size.

On the other hand, Flash is a "clip oriented" language and, in this sense, is good for developing small highly visual applications. An improvement would have to build on this strong point.

A improved system could:
1) Retain a clip-oriented aspect (vague -- needs more consideration)
2) Put all types under a single consistent object hierarchy
3) support non-global variables for larger/more-parallel projects
4) Allow optional stricter compling (like "use strict" in perl)
5) Output to javascript instead of .swf, allowing for easier access by end-users and easier/better integration with other website-components
6) A simplified GUI (vague -- needs more consideration)

Picture-Oriented Camera

Almost all digital cameras are focused on giving the user the most technical camera features like shutter/aperature/iso/flash and/or a large set of automatic shooting modes.

However, many people are overwhelmed by their cameras and don't know what the features are, much less how to use them. Basically, I propose, they are more interested in taking good pictures than learning about their feature-laden cameras.

Since the technical details of photography are only part of the equation, and auto-modes are fairly well advanced, I believe a picture-oriented (rather than featured-oriented) camera might be useful and more relevant than the evergrowing stack of technical features. It would "look" at the digital image and make suggestions and potentially highlight features in the frame to make the suggestions more clear.

A picture-oriented camera might make suggestions like:
1) The light source is behind the highlighted subject, you might consider moving it unless you want a silhouette.
2) The subject's (outlined) are small in the frame, you might move or zoom closer (this is one of the most common photographic mistakes)
3) The bright spot (outlined) is going to "burn" the photo (or a dark spot is going to blacken), you might move the frame.
4) You need more light to avoid blurring (there could even be sensor to measure the camera shake)
5) If you can rest the camera on something, you can lessen the blur.
6) Consider dividing up the key elements of the frame onto the highlighted marks ("rule of thirds")
7) Your flash will not reach the subject (outlined) consider moving closer.

It would probably be necessary to adjust the "comment level" of the camera (including turning off all comments). At a minimum, comments could be broken down into Lighting and Composition -- both of which are frequent components of bad photographs. And maybe more?

Similarly, a "suggester" would have to be closely calibrated with the limits of the camera. But, if successful, the results could be dramatic.

A big part of the challenge is to make the suggestions simple and useful, but not distracting or annoying. I'm going to consider this aspect more.

Progress on the Travelling Yuppie Problem?

With the ubiquity of infinitely growing TODO lists among busy professionals, we might be able to borrow from the field of action-planning to opportunistically allow people to be more efficient.

For example, if a person had the following items on their TODO list:
1) Return curtains to Home Depot
2) Drop off Jill and Bobby's wedding photos
3) Stop by Maz Auto to figure out why my windshield squeaks
4) Return Visual Thinking to Green Library by 3/1/2006
5) Check out the Wangechi Mutu exhibit at SFMOMA b/w 12/16/2005 and 4/2/2006

Then, the following sorts of queries could be run ->
1) I'll be free in San Francisco from 3 - 5pm today -- is there anything you (TODO) suggest?
A:
i) The SFMoma is open and you wanted to see the Wangechi Mutu exhibit
ii) Bobby and Jill live in SF and you need to drop off their wedding photos.
iii) There is a Maz auto at 3rd and Townsend, you wanted to get your windshield checked out.

2) I'm driving from San Jose to Stanford today, is there anything I should remember?
i) You need to return Visual Thinking to Green Library before 3/1/2006
ii) There is a Home Depot right off the 101, if you want to return your curtains

There are a lot of other kinds of queries that could be executed with similar knowledge (so-and-so is going on vacation, is there anything I need to accomplish with them? i need to do the following N things, what is the fastest way to accomplish them?)

But, minimally, as proposed, the system would require knowledge about:
1) time
2) space
3) people
4) commercial entities (store chains, etc)

Picturecodes

Idea: Using images that are both human and machine readable, physical links (Picturecodes) could be created from the "real" world into its virtual counterpart without being limited by the aesthetics of urls and barcodes.

Inspiration: The cooperative connection DV project is trying to connect buyers of skirts in a more intimate way with their Indian producers. One way might be to have a Picturecode of the producer or the village, etc that the consumer could scan using a camera(phone) and get linked into a producer's website.

Offshoots:

1. Uniqueness: The tags could be unique so that from the producer standpoint when a consumer scans in a tag, this information could be used for registration (avoid counterfeiting, customer preferences, etc)
   
2. Feedback: Once scanned, a consumer could provide feedback about the individual item. Because the items are hand-made they might even be able to make a custom order for a new item at minimally more cost (thus providing the consumer with a high level of service, the producer with "producer loyalty" and both with a stronger producer-consumer connection). Also, this would provide the producers with feedback in order to respond to the skirt market.
   
3. Motivation: As certain producers gain reputations for exceptional quality skirts, producers will be motivated to raise their quality. In addition to providing producers with a higher level of self-determination, it will make the cooperative connection skirts more competitive in the marketplace (where they are charging a premium price)
4. Aesthetic display: In the consumer store the Picturetag could be used for all sorts of interesting purposes -- for example, highlighting a link on a big "earth screen" between the producers location and the consumer's (maybe the link remains after the purchase, but fades over time)
   

Problems: Machine vision is tricky. It would be hard to use an imperceptible watermark.. more likely is a distinctive border or something like that.

Coffeehouse + Mass Transit - Driving

Very few things are more ubiquitous in the American morning routine than drinking coffee and driving to work. Maybe they could be combined and improved into a mobile coffeehouse?

People spend a lot of time and money on cars and coffee. The current reimbursement rate for gasoline is 48.5 cents, even on a commute as short as 10 miles + a cup of coffee ~= 10$

Add in wifi access and the ability to meet with people, and the proposition might be attractive.

Non-technically, I think a key aspect would be to recreate the warm ambience of a coffeeshop on a bus or train car. And, it is important to pick good routes.

Technically, a main challenge would be to have automated coffee generation in such a way that it doesn't offend the coffeehouse spirit (maybe a transparent coffee system that runs throughout the bus?). Also, automated payment and spill-proof cups would be necessary.

Tangible Video Frames

Building off of the tagging/thumbnail idea from yesterday and Scott Doorley's filmstrip idea.. maybe the tagged frames could be printed on cards to allow tangible manipulation of scenes by the children without any sort of computer interaction during the storyboarding phases.

Tagging and Thumbnailing Film Data

Problem: How do you simply tag and thumbnail film footage for future viewing and use?

Idea: Assuming a film is not useful until you've seen at least a part of it, you could have the user select one or more static frames to "tag" the film overall as they are watching it. These would be images that would remind the user of a memorable part of the movie and allow them to identify the movie from others (difficult if there are subsequent similar films/footage)

Offshoots: For video editing, it might further be useful to allow watchers to tag various scenes so that they can go back to them directly. Also, text tags could be used -- but this depends on literacy and introduces a language component (see entry about arabic numerals and cross-cultural references)

Inspiration: The "Improved Development Decision" project involves teenagers shooting footage to make 2 minute movies. According to Design Theory, in order to get good footage, one needs a lot of footage.. but, a lot of footage is hard to keep track of for editing purposes.

Earth as a Giant Eyeball

Human eyeballs and earth have similar colors (blue, green, brown, white) and they're both round. And they are both primarily sensors from an external standpoint. As a planet, our actuation (even our EM noise) is mostly limited to the boundaries of our atmosphere, but we sense all sorts of things from all over the universe.. in this way, the earth might be thought of as a huge eyeball floating in space -- a huge eyeball that is self-similar in shape and color with the eyeball of its most advanced population

I'm not exactly sure what problem this solves (maybe for burningman?), but it seems interesting.

Inspiration: Trying to align the policymaker's and children's interests for the "Improved Decision Making" project made me think about how our planet might seem to extra-terrestrials in order to gain some appreciation of how washington dc policymakers might seem to very poor children in the 3rd world

Ubiquity of Arabic Numerals Around the World

The relative ubiquity of arabic numerals can be an oasis in the desert of cross-cultural system design.

Problems: Its a tricky business. Without knowing the subtleties, you could be way off even if something makes sense.

Offshoots: Use other common references between cultures either implictly or explicitly. These could be movies, television, products, brands, sports, etc. For example, in order to align underprivileged Brazilian/Palestinian children with the goal of making movie to show to donors whats really going on in their lives .. a goal leveraging common references like "Make a movie about how your life is different than a television character?" could be used (Scott, Deepti and I identified this goal-alignment as a crucial issue for the project). Assuming that "television life" is something that both 3rd world children and 1st world donor's are roughly familiar with.

Inspiration: Tapan Parick's cs547 lecture and Deepti Rohatgi's Improved Decision Making DV project

Exploiting Common Reference Points in Physical Devices

Problem: International policy makers are responsible for helping people with whom they share very little in common with. "Improved Decision Making" is trying to enable children in the west bank create short videos about what concerns them.

Idea: To give children a doll/toy etc that they will (hopefully) care about.. and that records video/audio from the child-doll interaction so that later viewers can have a glimpse what its like to be (and cared about) by that child. The common reference point in this case would be the doll. Western policymakers might be able to see how other children's lives are different by relation to their interaction with the doll.

Problems: Privacy -- it should definitely be clear that it is also a recording device. Also, this could generate a lot of footage.

Offshoot Ideas: Other ways to leverage common experiences into a physical device? It seems like this might be a rich area. Maybe a heavy camera that encourages people to only record when something is really important to them? (potentially giving the viewer a sense of weight to the footage)

Inspiration: Deepti Rohatgi's "Improved Decision Making" DV project

Notes: With the recent Hamas victory in the Palestinian territories, this project is being moved to Brazil (and its also with teenagers, not young children -- Scott and I learned this in meeting with Deepti yesterday)

A comfortable way to read while lying down

Its really hard to read comfortably when you're injured. And, even for people who aren't injured, it can be exhausting/prohibitive to read while lying on their back.

There is at least one product for this purpose.

Problems: It can still be difficult to turn pages.

Offshoots: A lying down lcd-projection setup. (Where does the projector go?) This might change the desktop dynamic a little bit -- relaxed computing? This might also work really well for elderly people -- big projected screen and a very comfortable body position.

Inspiration: My own life.

Human Powered Entertainment

A stationary bicycle (or other exercise device) can easily produce enough power for many e- devices (eg TV)

Advantages:
1) Users stay in better shape (specifically cardio) while still enjoying their entertainment
2) Slightly less e- used
3) Potentially fewer attention deficit probs due to increased exercise so that even the entertainment part of the experience is improved.

Problems: For many people, watching TV is veg-time. Maybe an electronic credit could be stored up to still allow vegging?

Offshoots: A video game that actually responds to how hard you are pedalling/working.. escape horrible deaths by working harder :)

Inspiration: South Africa non-communicable disease project