Which part of this bear encountered yesterday at MIT Medialab is close to the Uncanny Valley? The bear-head-shaped face? The way it looks down? the fur-like body parts? or the explosive body wiring? Is the furry part more uncanny than the head?

Some other intriguing examples of apparent infrastructures in Cambridge (USA): the different sorts of cable wiring. Different boxes, different providers. Sometimes even boxes are removed, leaving only the wiring.

Quick talk at MIT Medialab this afternoon, during the “tangible interfaces” course of Hiroshi Ishii. It’s called “Tangible@home“. The presentation is a very brief overview of the work I am pursuing in terms of UX research. After a quick description of the devices I am interested in and methods I use (mostly ethnography-inspired), I described 5 research issues or usage patterns.

Thanks J*B for the invitation.

In “The Evolution of Game Controllers and Control Schemes and their Effect on their games“, Alastair H. Cummings interestingly traces the history of video-game controllers. A good read in conjunction with my earlier post about this very topic. What is relevant in that paper is the second part of the issue: how the evolutions of game controller schemes is reflected in the game play, what is the mutual relationship between both. See for example:

“The first controllers were made of whatever was available to the scientists in their electronics labs and the games were equally simple. Highly simplified versions of sporting activities such as table tennis, shooting galleries and space shooters. With the creation of the gamepad games became more complicated. Games didn’t have to be simple concepts, although the gameplay was still limited by the computing power of the era. 2D platform games took players on long journeys with them in control of simple movement of their characters. With 3D came the analogue stick, providing players with a way to guide their characters around their new 3D environment. The latest consoles let players perform the actions that they want their characters to perform and they can become part of the game more than ever before.
(…)
Finally there is the purely functional purpose of the PC control schemes. Whilst reflecting little on the actual actions taken in the game, the simple control schemes can become second nature to players, to give them a feeling of immersion on par with the best novelty controller. Despite this it can be seen that there has been minimal development on new types of games on the PC, these control schemes work, and so these games are the only ones that will be played.“

Why do I blog this? interesting material for current project about tangible interfaces. There would be something to write about the evolution of game controllers, which were the forces that shaped them and how it influenced the whole game design. This paper only begin to deal this issue and I’d find intriguing to know how the schemes had been chosen and discussed by a broad range of actors (developers, game designers, etc.) in the design process per se. From my experience, I realized how much power developers in game studio had on the Wii controllers scheme decision, simply because some game designers were not really able to understand how the device worked. Things used to be different with old-school pads.

As seen in Montreal last week, a pun made of the arrival of the recent iphone.

An interesting pattern I’ve found here last week during my ventures in contemporary cities: when attribute of a city are transfered in another.

2 examples: the one above shows the famous entrance to the Paris subway system by Hector Guimard. Except that this nice organic and artnouveau artifact is located in Montreal and not in Paris. In this case, it was actually given by RATP (the parisian transport company) to the Montreal metro in 1967, made out pieces of demolished Guimards from Paris metro stations.

The second example is simply this street box that contains electrical and phone wiring on the streets of Geneva: it has basically been wrapped with something that makes it look like a badly-ripped off from the red telephone box designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

Why do I blog this? curiously observing the meme-like transfer of shapes/colors of items from one city to another. Perhaps this is a representation of post-modernity.

Each time I go to north america, I am struck by how infrastructures are more apparent than in continental europe (= home). Pipes, tubes, sprinklers look simply more present to me, perhaps because they’re made more visible through colorful signage.

See for example this gas tubes in Montreal:

Or these nice tubes on a wall:

This lovely yellow tube to refuel indoor heating systems is also stunning:

A favorite in MTL is the “siamoises”, these dual sprinklers which often comes with this intriguing signs (way up because it needs to be visible when there is snow):

Another favorite is certainly this kind of huge tape in san diego:

Why do I blog this? simply this helps to frame and understand the large technical systems of our urban environments. What I find interesting here in this made-visible process is the fact that it reflects how buildings are “process” with flows coming in and flows coming out.

First comment, it can be understood as “tag” in the graffiti sense but also in the geotag meaning (i.e. linking content such as text/music/pictures to geographical data). Although it’s not a common practice in cities, it’s intriguing to see such warning from a possible near future. I’m not sure geotagging will spread but I find pertinent to see how creating such warning include that technology-mediated practice in a sort of “design fiction” narrative: it actually reveals the possibilities and let people (who understands it), wonder about what can be the proper usage.

Second comment, as Timo would say: “it’s also serif font on a black background”.

Currently at Design Engaged 2008 in Montreal, where I gave a presentation called “inflated deflated futures” about a phenomenon that fascinates me: failed futures and the underlying causes for mistaken predictions and visions for the future. You can find the slides and notes of my talk in slideshare. Julian addressed similar issues in his Design Fiction presentation.

The talk was, sort of, a structured rant against failed futures. I tried to collect some examples of “failed futures” (which correspond to failed products) as well the causes of these issues. What I mean by failure is generally the lack of adoption for a great idea, more or less feasible technically speaking.

It sorts of echoes with this kind of weak signal I found at the airport in Amsterdam:

Indications of numbers of participants + gender compositions of scenes with basic representations (no other species from the animal kingdom).

Love that icon, seen at the airport in Geneva. That yawning character is intended to attract the ‘user’ and invite him/her to touch the screen.

This well-known internet meme of Jesus or Mary on a toast struck me as particularly relevant while reading Brains in a vat by Hilary Putnam:

“An ant is crawling on a patch of sand. As it crawls, it traces a line in the sand. By pure chance the line that it traces curves and recrosses itself in such a way that it ends up looking like a recognizable caricature of Winston Churchill. Has the ant traced a picture of Winston Churchill, a picture that depicts Churchill? Most people would say, on a little reflection, that it has not. The ant, after all, has never seen Churchill, Or even a picture of Churchill, arid it had no intention of depicting Churchill. It simply traced a line (and even that was unintentional), a line that we can ’see as’ a picture of Churchill.
(…)
We can express this by saying that the line is not ‘in itself’ a representation1 of anything rather than anything else. Similarity (of a certain very complicated sort) to the features of Winston Churchill is not sufficient to make something represent or refer to Churchill. Nor is it necessary
(…)
So it may seem that what is necessary for representation, or what is mainly necessary for representation, is intention.

Why do I blog this? reading pdf scattered on my desktop at the airport, waiting for my flight to Montreal, always a good time to think about such abstract matters. That topic, related to apophenia is always intriguing to nail down.

Different occurrences of sidewalk employed as a game platform, from European cities (Geneva, Lyon, Paris, Rotterdam)

Quite a typology we have here with hop-scotch, tic-tac-toe, table to count point in whatever game, etc. What I’ve put here are only games that use the surface, for the use of shape, see this blogpost about skateboarding structures.

Surely a recommendation to have a look at what is under your foot in contemporary cities. And definitely of interest for people interested in urban computing? Why, simply to show how space is appropriated by a certain class of users and how simple they employ basic tools to create a playful environment. In the examples I chose here, there’s only one instance where the sidewalk structure has been designed with a game purpose (the first one, in Rotterdam), there is room for both designed surface and people’s appropriation. What role technology can play in this? perhaps mobile, touch and communication technologies can enable to expand the chalks, which seem to be the main tool used so far.

In “What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, And Design”, Peter-Paul Verbeek writes that:

“Things, in short, disclose a world. (…) But that this is so, according to Heidegger, generally appears only when a handy or ready to hand tool or piece of equipment breaks down. When this happens, the tool suddenly demands attention for itself. The reliable dealings we are used to having with the tool are ruptured, and instead of withdrawing from our attention the tool suddenly forces itself upon us. Someone sits at a word processor focused on the text at hand and all of a sudden the computer freezes. The trustworthy world that developed around the computer – the open book, the keyboard, the screen, the cup of coffee; in short, the entire mutually referring network that Heidegger calls a world – is abruptly destroyed. The computer changes from being one of the handy or ready-to-hand that shape this world to what Heidegger calls something vorhanden: ‘objectively present’ in the newer translation, or ‘present-at-hand’ in the older. Its transparency is transformed into opacity.
(…)
Only when it starts up again and everything works without a hitch is the world that was destroyed again restored.“

Why do I blog this? accumulating notes and insights about issues regarding people’s experience of infrastructure for a project about electricity and the internet of things. The topic of breakings and failures is of course a long-time favorite, somehow linked to my fascination towards breakdowns. Beyond this, what I find important here is how to take that sort of unexpected issue into account in the design process, as well as investigating the range of people’s reaction. Having a sort of typology (failures reactions) can be a good start.

An intriguing example of location-based annotation. This red brick inserted in the pavement on Rue de la République in Lyon (France) indicates that former french president Sadi Carnot had been assassinated here on June 25th, 1894. The sort of things that people want to replicate online, but it generally lacks the elegance of the “brick” as en urban element well inserted into its context.