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Ubiquitous Coffee

Nov 20, ’11 9:48 PM

Recently I’ve noticed a trend in future visioning videos, ones that attempt to visually describe some kind of future technology enabling and meeting the needs of an increasingly connected and technological society.  It’s a trend that would seem to be designed to appease the future shock in an assumed audience.  It works to help transport a viewer from the present into this new scenario, by placing cues and similar elements to mentally and emotionally tie the two together.  I’ve seen this cropping up in a few different places, and I think it’s worth giving name to.  For the moment, I’m going to simply call it ubiquitous coffee (or ubicof).

from Microsoft’s recent Productivity Future Vision.

From Berg London’s Media Surfaces: The Journey video sketch.

From Berg London’s Media Surfaces: Incidental Media video sketch.

From Microsoft’s Future Vision 2019 video.

From a compilation of Microsoft and Cisco future visioning videos.

Don’t get me wrong, coffee has been consumed for more than 500 years now, so it’s not unlikely to be around in another 10 years or so.  I think the technique at play here is – “look at this futuristic place with new technology, but don’t be too worried, we all still drink lots of coffee”.  A way of tempering future shock with some present-day cultural symbols.  Not very deep, but at the surface level, effective.

Watching all of these augmented media visioning videos is actually quite depressing, the sheer banality and similarity of ideas present (not to mention the prominence of hand-waving and non-meaningful touch gestures) really set the bar low for the future of technology and information interfaces.

So much of what’s shown is either possible today, only a small step in a slightly different direction for the emergence of new technologies.  The major tech companies (RIM, MS, Nokia, IBM, Cisco) seem to spend countless hours telling us what the future could look like, and it’s honestly not very inspiring.  Not to parade the success of Apple, but their vision looks a lot more like this;

Familiar, no? It’s what’s available today. Tested, iterated, prototyped and designed to within an inch of its’ life.  A real device, that will change the way we think about the future.  I expect I’ll follow this post in 6-12 months or so, when RIM, IBM and Cisco decide to copy the reality of Apple with their own “visions” of the future.

But more to the point, the field of research into Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) is so much more rich and interesting, full of design complexity and real world challenges that at least excite the mind.  This glass-half-full future (which ironically is half filled with glass interfaces) just doesn’t sit well with me.  We can do so much better.

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notes on public space, adam greenfield

Nov 18, ’11 3:20 PM

Below is the full video of an Adam Greenfield talk given at Innovation Dublin earlier this year.  It’s full of real-world examples of what Adam (would no longer) call ubiquitous computing.  It’s an interesting and productive exploration of the implications of these devices in the public realm.

A few things popped out, which I’ve hastily jotted below;

The thing that really bothers me.. [about advertising which analyses visual attention using web cams and analytical software] is that I regard it as nothing less than the theft of value from public space.  There will be people moving throgh the background that do not attend to the content on the screen, that do not want to attend to the content on the screen, that want to have nothing to do with the screen.  And they are providing value for the advertiser whether they know it or not.  As a matter of fact, whether you’re aware that the screen is doing this or not, whether anybody’s asked you for your consent or not (and believe me, they don’t ask for your consent), information is being gathered from you, without your awareness, that’s of commercial value to somebody else.  And that value is never returned to the public.

[a series of cameras installed in Wellington upon approval of public referendum] were installed, and then something really interesting happened.  the year after that a new back-end management…new software became available for those cameras, and this one permitted facial recognition.  And so, the cameras, the same physical objects, that had been primarily beneficial and had used for the advancement of everybody collectively before, now began to be used by the police to manage… subjects of interest moving through the downtown area.

This was a radical transformation of the capability of the device but it was never put to a public referendum.

Even I, who have argued that there should be democratic accountability over these systems.  If you know or if you’re familiar with anything about software development you know that we now live in what’s called a ‘nightly build‘ culture, which is to say that the capability of new software advances on a very fast clock speed.  new versions are released all the time and are pushed to users… are you going to have a referendum every week?

~

we can move against the capture of public space by private interst and towards a fabric of freely discoverable, addressable, query able and scriptable urban resources that we could all of us as citizens and as members of a community use, to bring the entire way that we city, the entire way that we do place a lot closer to our aspirations and ambitions for it, to a place where the right to the city is meaningfully underwritten by the design of the public space and the things in it.  And towards a revitalised manifestation of the public sphere: the place where democracy happens and is seen to happen.

Adam Greenfield, @ Science Gallery 2011, via Bashford

Definitely food for thought.

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hope and worry, balanced

Nov 18, ’11 2:02 PM

If you can keep hope and worry balanced, they will drive a project forward the same way your two legs drive a bicycle forward. In the first phase of the two-cycle innovation engine, you work furiously on some problem, inspired by your confidence that you’ll be able to solve it. In the second phase, you look at what you’ve done in the cold light of morning, and see all its flaws very clearly. But as long as your critical spirit doesn’t outweigh your hope, you’ll be able to look at your admittedly incomplete system, and think, how hard can it be to get the rest of the way?, thereby continuing the cycle.

- Paul Graham, Being Popular (2001), via worrydream.

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a brief rant on the future of interaction design

Nov 17, ’11 10:47 PM

The whole essay is well worth a read, and it definitely has some salient points to make.  I wouldn’t say I agree completely with the notion that all we have today is pictures under glass but it certainly is the main gist of the (rather lame) future vision product videos coming from the likes of RIM and Microsoft.   Bret managed to articulate exactly what it was that I didn’t like about these videos — they’re not visionary at all, they’re just small extensions on the things we can already do today.

This image is just great:

It really hammers home the point about feedback, expression in interface and the limitations of the current raft of technology.  A few years back I was working in the interactivation lab at UTS with the ever expressive Bert Bongers.  Bert’s work is focussed on making computers/buildings/instruments/the world more expressive, and it’s well worth diving into.

Are we really going to accept an Interface Of The Future that is less expressive than a sandwich?

- Bret Victor

Well played, sir.

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As noted elsewhere #4

Nov 5, ’11 12:40 PM

A bit of a round-up then, of a few interesting stores and ideas floating about on the web.

First up is Dan Harmon, the creator of a remarkably funny oddball sitcom called Community, who uses a technique called embryonic circles to plot out and resolve story arcs for the characters.

The circles is a neat story-mapping tool, and can be entered/exited at any point. We’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling, or at least the qualities needed to tell one of the many archetypal stories available, it’s very interesting to see the mental mapping of someone behind the scenes.

A different kind of mapping is being done at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.  Seb Chan has posted some of the initial findings from a few technologies in place in the museum (building on a powerhouse iOS app, a free wifi service and wifi scanners), which can generate heat maps of the building showing the density of electronic devices in each space.

We spotted a write-up on the history of travelling libraries, which has this little gem of insight, from a 1930′s Illinois teacher;

As I watched the children it struck me with force: you cannot measure the value of the bookmobile in dollars and cents, any more than you can measure the value of a new scientific discovery, or a new system of philosophy, or the life of a good man or woman. These good, new, attractive, interesting books that the little ones were picking out for the first time and the eager smart minds — they would fuse, strike, fire, open a new vista, and bring deeper ambition and greater awareness to life and people.

Filip also featured this processing experiment on Creativeapplications.net, it’s a map manipulation tool, which allows an openstreetmap set of tiles to be manipulated to reflect a person’s memory of place.  The process is as follows; 1. visit place.  2. draw map of place.  3. manipulate actual map, based on mental map.  It’s a great experiment into visualising mental models, and gets me thinking about situationist architectural manifestos.  Great stuff.  The video which shows it in action is also pretty neat.

Nest also did the internet rounds last week, I think it’s a beautiful attempt to improve an important home interface — although from a sustainability point of view I’d like to see something which encourages users to think about their energy consumption more, not less.  Having said that, it is gorgeous.  Just look at those reflections..

I absolutely love this animation by Richard Swarbrick, featured on The Fox is Black.  It’s sublime, the perfect combination of physical beauty and a classic animation style.  Well worth checking out the video (after the jump).

And finally, the ever interesting Bobulate gave us this;

Want to remember an experience? Don’t move.

That’s overstating it, but a new study shows that just walking through a doorway creates what’s called a “new memory episode,” which makes it difficult to remember the experience in the previous room:

[M]emory performance was poorer after travelling through an open doorway, compared with covering the same distance within the same room. “Walking through doorways serves as an event boundary, thereby initiating the updating of one’s event model [i.e. the creation of a new episode in memory]” the researchers said.
Apparently, there can be these sort of episode markers — “a while later” — in stories as well.

Curious what episode markers mark our digital spaces.

Hope you all have a great week ahead, see you on the other side..

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design decisions & ambiguity

Nov 1, ’11 2:56 AM

Daring Fireball on Android hardware buttons;

Looks like they’re trying to fix this starting with the Galaxy Nexus by eliminating the hardware buttons but drawing them on-screen in the OS. Presumably, a future API revision could allow for apps that don’t need these buttons. Anyway, agree with his criticism of these two buttons completely. The Back button taking me somewhere unexpected was perhaps my single-biggest complaint both times I tested an Android phone.

I agree, the designed ambiguity of the ‘back’ button is infuriating, mostly in the android app I created myself!  I’m no programmer, I’m much more of a hacker (which doesn’t help either), but I’m never clear as a user when to hit the home button or the back button (or both).  Home sometimes doesn’t kill an app — why?

Even better though, it goes on to outline a key difference between the apple and google design models;

The other lesson: the importance of getting things right, from the outset. If you’re designing just an app, you can fix many design errors later; if you’re designing an app platform, though, it’s hard to fix system-wide design errors without breaking existing apps.

This doesn’t mean get it right the first time, every time.  It means you should only go to market when you’ve tested your product so thoroughly (iterating over and over again) and can say with complete certainty that not shipping it now is not good enough.

Constantly shipping unfinished, beta software products fools you into thinking you can do the same with hardware.  Unfinished software thinking, applied to hardware, will only result in long term grief (especially if you’re relying on OEMs to provide your hardware for you).

I can only point to the iPod/iTunes experience and years of testing that allowed Apple to say, with certainty, that this v1 product was ready to be released. Google, on the other hand, only had google.com and a long running suite of software products to go by.  Big difference.

 

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iOS 5 imposes minor feature limitations on iPhone 3GS, 3G owners still bitter

Oct 29, ’11 4:32 AM

iOS 5 imposes minor feature limitations on iPhone 3GS, 3G owners still bitter

via Engadget.

Still bitter.

Take a look at this Android OS update chart for comparison — the iPhone 3G was released just over 3 years ago, and now has been dropped for OS updates and support.  They’re still functional, just not with the new iOS.  By comparison, the Google Nexus One is no longer supported for the OS updates, and it was released just last year!  The full chart is a sad story, I for one own an use an android handset, it’s a paltry UX with fragmented app store, little or no documentation for what my version of android (and flavour, for that matter) offers and how I might upgrade should I choose to.  I recall an old line from Steve Jobs on Android (a little off topic now), about how Android forced the user to solve these small problems themselves, and that Apple felt the best user experience would be reached by Apple taking the role of systems integrator.

I’m all for it.  As a user — I want to forget more and focus on the things I care about.  Getting my work done, getting in contact with loved ones, keeping my things in order — the usual things.  Which mix of hardware/software am I on?  With Android I have no idea!   The tools at my disposal are so poorly designed it almost doesn’t even matter.

 

 

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shut up and ship

Oct 29, ’11 3:59 AM

I came across this post on Binary Bonsai earlier today, mainly focussing on Microsoft Office’s new Vision video (see below).  Michael’s response is fairly gentle, nudging MS and noting how far from reality the future visioning tends to be

The latest is the Productivity Future Vision from the Office division, which like all their videos, looks great (and probably would interact horrible in a real-world scenario):

I suspect these videos are made not only by outside agencies (if you know different, let me know), but entirely by graphic designers who dream about interaction design, but never had to realize their ideas in the real world.

I’m feeling much less generous when looking at this finely crafted, shiny vision piece.  It’s clear that MS has an eye to the future potential of technologies like touch, tablets and the ‘big data’, but it’s so far removed from the reality of what they’re actually producing.  Frank mentioned to me the other day something that’s worth noting here — Apple doesn’t create concept videos for future products.  They don’t make ambitious future vision style images of the future — they just make great products that people can use today.  The magic of it is that these products push us a great deal towards a different future, but they don’t bother trying to impress us with their vision, rather they do everything possible to impress us with what their vision has lead them to create.

It’s a world apart, the two approaches.  Shut up and ship, Microsoft.  If this is the future, create it.  We’ll love you for it, but not if you never bother following through with this vision.

On another note, I have to say the similarities between this vision and the amazing work BERG London have been producing in the last few years is striking.  Here’s a few BERG visioning pieces that have, in my view, been quite influential in shaping the future of products and interaction.  Well done, lads.

 

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Writing to Remember

Oct 28, ’11 11:19 AM

Are you also a writer? If so, don’t rely on someone else’s meeting notes. The value isn’t in the notes, it’s in the process of writing them down. You can only do that for yourself.

via Happy Cog

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our simple vision

Oct 24, ’11 2:57 AM

Our simple vision at Intel, is that we’re going to add a billion people to the internet by 2015.  Going from 1.5 bn to 2.5 bn people.  So you take that, combined with those 15 bn devices [predicted to be connected to the internet by 2015] and our vision is basically to connect everyone to everything, and that’s before you even talk about machine to machine.

Kirk Skaugen, head of Intel’s Architecture Group @ Web 2.0

Via liveable places

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