Yiibu has made available a wonderful little presentation about the design of mobile games.
“Design for play, quiet contemplation, exploration, discovery, suspense, laughter, friendship, joy…(remember boredom, stress, fatigue, personalization, control, play—everyone’s personal time is different)”
Link: Creating ‘Casual’ Games, Content and Applications for the (Mobile) Long Tail (yiibu.com, PDF, via)
“Women in technology & culture : An in-progress list of women researchers, designers & artists working in pervasive computing-related fields.”
Link: Women researchers, designers & artists working in pervasive computing-related fields (purselipsquarejaw.org)
A collection of papers and presentations from a conference workshop on pervasive computing.
“Mobile devices have become a pervasive part of our everyday lives. People have mobile phones, smartphones and PDAs which they take with them almost everywhere. So far these mobile devices have been mostly used for phone calls, writing short messages and organizer functionalities. Today we see that the development of context-aware services for mobile phones which often take the user, her situation and location into account.
“But why not use these devices for interactions with the real world, as a mediator between the virtual and the user’s world? While certain research domains within the fields of mobile applications and services advance at an amazing speed (e.g. context-aware services on mobile devices, using sensors in mobile phones), the areas of pervasive mobile user interfaces, mobile devices as interaction devices, mobile devices for interactions with the physical world and user experiences in this field are still rather limited.”
Link: Mobile Devices as Pervasive User Interfaces and Interaction Devices (lmu.de)
Motorola has pulled the curtains off the MotoFone, a product I’ve had the privilege of working on with a great team of people. It’s a bold project: connecting the unconnected in developing countries, and it’s very exciting to see it so close to shipping. I really hope that it can make a difference to people’s lives.
Link: MotoFone (motorola.com)
“‘Connecting people. Disconnecting people. Reconnecting people.’ analyses how people cope with being in touch 24/7 and how personal time and space are defined in a context where availability is always expected. It starts off with a description of the existing behaviors, personal strategies and complaints, to conclude with a proposal for alternative solutions oriented to help users to define personal boundaries and quality time periods.”
Link: Connecting people. Disconnecting people. Reconnecting people. (ana-c-amorim.com, 7.8MB PDF)
Cityware is a research program in the UK.
“The goal of Cityware is to develop theory, principles, tools and techniques for the design, implementation and evaluation of city-scale pervasive systems as integral facets of the urban landscape. While architecture has shaped the built environment to satisfy urban dwellers aesthetically and to accommodate their functional needs such as face-to-face interactions and travel, pervasive systems shape electronically mediated interactions in urban space, including use of both fixed and mobile displays and wireless communication.”
Link: Cityware – Urban Design and Pervasive Systems (cityware.org.uk)
Google’s developed a system for listening to your television and serving up relevant content. What if my mobile devices had the capability to listen in on what was happening around me?
“A team from Google Research has developed a prototype system that uses a home computer’s internal microphone to listen to the ambient audio in a room, determine what is being watched on TV and offer web-based supplemental information, services and shopping contextual to each program being watched. It’s strange, but it sounds like it works and people might really like it. There’s no indication yet whether or when this could be available as a service.”
Link: Google Research prototypes ambient audio contextual content (techcrunch.com)
“Many of these issues are about solving the complexity problem: enabling lots of different features for lots of different users in lots of different cultures. Will tomorrow’s intuitive interfaces use RFID to allow us to interact with our environment in a more tangible manner, in a way similar to how people in cities like London or Helsinki already use touch-cards to pay for public transport? Probably. Will they have speech-to-text and text-to-speech functionality to enable varied, fast, and context-sensitive input and output? Probably. Will they use motion sensors to allow us to input data in new ways, using movement rather than key presses? Possibly. Will they have different modes, allowing users to prioritise different things depending on context (work / entertainment / personal / social / static / mobile)? Maybe. Will they require a clear understanding of user needs and behaviour in order to be successful? Definitely.”
Link: Mobile user interfaces – its time for a new paradigm (the3gportal.com)
“If you are old fashioned enough to call these devices “phones,” Nokia people will politely correct you. They are multimedia computers, which offer features and picture quality to rival digital cameras or camcorders, and music quality to challenge an iPod. And because they can connect to the Internet you can check e-mail, download songs, or even update your blog while on the go. (Thought the world already had enough blogs? Think again.)”
Link: Nokia Puts Your Digital Life in Your Hand (businessweek.com)
A review of the book Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing.
“McCullough introduces a set of typologies for pervasive computing products. Types are “generative design abstractions”, which “unite periphery, passivity, phenomenology, adaptability, affordance, facility, appropriateness, and scale.” Although that sounds overwhelming, consider a simple urban architectural type: the sidewalk cafe, which probably suggests to you not just some formal requirements, but some social patterns, behavioral etiquette, and may trigger some memories of experiences. This is embodiment at work. In the middle section of the book, McCullough explores a set of “situated types” for pervasive computing at length, along with ten technological “functions” that form pervasive computing systems (such as “sensors detect action”). The types read something like a cross between Alexander’s architectural design patterns and interaction design scenarios, and are the most exciting section of the book. It would be a productive exercise to use the ten functions to brainstorm ideas for pervasive computing within the types.”
Link: Review of Malcolm McCullough’s ‘Digital Ground’ (hoytowell.com)
Podcast of a discussion panel from SXSW ‘06.
“A library of music that might have once filled an entire room can now be stored on an MP3 player smaller than a deck of playing cards. New chip technologies and improved memory capabilities are enabling music players and a host of gadgets to decrease in size while simultaneously increasing in functionality. This session explores the next wave of innovation while also examining the cultural impact of such changes.”
Link: Smaller, Faster, Lighter (download 29.5MB MP3, sxsw.com)
Jan Chipchase’s blog is a wonderful source of visual and written inspiration. Working for User Exerperience research group at Nokia, Jan posts pithy and interesting stuff (such as this photograph of a trishaw driver in Lhasa using a RAZR).
(photograph from janchipchase.com – Unexpecting the Expected)
Link: future perfect (janchipchase.com)
Published by Gabriel White.