This interactive installation was developed by German graphic design student Tristan Hohne as a graduation project for the University of Applied Sciences, Dortmund.
Open source software Reactivision was used to call up the corresponding animation for display on the LED. The book itself features fiducials without their black borders. The black ring makes the fiducials complete, adding the missing black border to it, which then makes it recognisable for the camera starting to trigger the animation events. Without this ring, the event would be wanting to start all the time and then maybe with lots of errors. Great, simple and very efficient idea how to give the power of interaction to the user.
Have a look how the story of the book interacts with the animation on the table.
It was just a question of time until someone takes the term of the touchscreen further. Silke Hilsing created an impressive real tangible/haptical touchscreen, which really provides sensations for four of the five senses: Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch. Smell is missing and if you think even further: Balance, Acceleration, Temperature, Pain, …
Impress merges the functionality of touch-screen displays with a stretchable surface made of foam. The result is a display that allows users to manipulate visual data by applying pressure and shaping a physical object.
Real-time graphics are projected onto a screen consisting of a block of foam that lies on top of several force sensors. When a user presses down on the surface the sensors determine the location of the pressure and alters the projection accordingly.
Several different applications have been developed, including a system that adjusts the pitch of sounds according to the applied pressure on its visual representation. Another application lets users manipulate and sculpt a simple 3D object by varying the pressure on different parts.
What I also find amazing, is the fact that Silke is coming up with something great in a domain that’s usually occupied by men. Respect!
Some friends of mine experiment with textiles and technology. It would be great to have some more research and projects on this matter.
An article called “The designers doing a 360″ which features designs and designers using the form of the circle and the sphere, can be found in the March ‘09 edition of the computer arts magazin.
Of course I had to have a look at it and althought I appreciate the feature of the circle and its powerful ability to give an easy overview over complex information contexts, I quite frankly found it very lame and out of date. Already in September ‘08 “Die Gestalten” published a book called “Data Flow”, which already featured most of the works the computer arts magazin now features in the “Output Section” that deals with “design trends, the hottest illustrations and the best new work from around the world” (?!).
I’m not talking about the featured work, which is great and features one of my alltime favourite information design groups called “Catalogtree” from the Netherlands. I just wished the editor of this article would have done some better research, showing some recent stuff and what’s really going on with the circles used as information graphics and interactive information graphics.
Quick sidenote on another project I’m working on. Another collaboration with multitouch-hard- and software wizzard Johannes Luderschmidt, which is an interactive case-scenario tool for the police of the state of Hessen in Germany called Vispol. It was originally concepted and developed as a masterstudy by Johannes but is now a full-grown software for instant use on multitouch able surfaces. I created the design concept for this has-to-be-very-functional software and developed all the designs. And yes, it’s all circles again. Believe me, it was the best suitable form for this use.
What you can see now is a movie about Vispol 1.0, but we’re already working on a design update, which will feature a much better contrast and signal colours. You can see all details about it on our collaborative website www.visactible.com.
Finally another cut movie with the aim to show the functionality of the Digital Volvelles 2.0 application a little bit better. Hopefully there will be soon an online mouse-version to try it out.
Recently I came across a white paper of Alessandro Valli, Director of Natural interaction at iO. It was exciting to read it, as it’s exactly what I’m trying to achieve with the Digital Volvelles 2.0.
Like Alessandro Valli I think about interaction as something intuitive that follows human perception rather than letting them artificially learn new ways to perceive and act. He argues that people naturally communicate through gestures, expressions and movements.
Interactive information designers should engage the users into a natural dialogue with other users, information or objects. Designers and technologists translate complexity into simplicity. As Alessandro Valli states in his white paper: ”The key assumption here is that people are meant to interact with technology as they are used to interact with the real world in everyday life, as evolution and education taught them to do”.
Another term I came across is “CALM TECHNOLOGY”, which aims to reduce the stress of information overload by letting the user select what information is at the center of their attention and what information is peripheral. I couldn’t describe better what Digital Volvelles is about! The term was coined by Mark Weiser, chief technologist, and John Seeley Brown, director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Lab. Xerox Park and its members were really way ahead of everyone and everything. They thought, that calm technology won’t only relax the user but by moving the unneeded information to the edge of the interface, allow more information to exist there, ready for selection when needed.
Exactly what we need with the ever growing common and fluent knowledge.
A new book has been published by “Die Gestalten Verlag” called “Data Flow” (9 Sep 2008). Its content deals with the visualisation of information in graphic design and the first topic of the book features the potential of circles as dataspheres. An older book that has pointed out the potential of wheels as a relevant model for modern interactive design even better is “Reinventing the Wheel” by Jessica Helfand (around 2002). Both books are very recommended sources for any information/interaction designer.
Finally I’m able to put some filmmaterial online. We’ve filmed the way you interact with the Volvelles on the touchscreen-table in a proper way too, but still have to cut and finalize it. So in the meantime you can see this quick-and-dirty made version. We are also working on a mouseclickable version for the web so everyone can experience the new retrieval interface and its system behind it. Stay tuned.
Posted by Melanie 
Posted by Melanie 
Posted by Melanie 
Melanie
Johannes