Leisa Reichelt (disambiguity.com) - Ambient Intimacy
Posted by rmp at 13:18 5th Oct 2007
Leisa presents an enjoyable voyage through cognitive psychology and the social network scene. Makes me wish I'd taken more of the psych options as part of my computer science degree.
ref: http://graphpaper.com/
Personal information bandwidth & learning speed has increased.
New, lightweight yet extremely powerful means of communication represent ambient intimacy - a personal social platform. This isn't one to one messaging or one to the masses broadcasting, it's pushing messages into a defined area (multicast if you will). It represents the creation of a techno-social system beyond personal interaction - a more continuous interpersonal awareness.
In his book, "Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language", Dunbar describes how better social understanding leads to evolutionary growth of brains, improvement of language and better flexibility when competing for shared resources (food, sex etc.).
This intercommunication is largely a phatic expressiveness for virtual spaces.
In linguistics a phatic expression is one whose only function is to perform a social task.
The phrase "continual partial friendship" coined by David Weinberger describes the almost permanent interconnectedness and friendship users feel when part of a collective virtual community built on these sorts of communication media.
"It's not about being poked and prodded, it's about exposing more surface area for others to connect with" - Johnnie Moore
New media (mobile 'phones, the internet) overcome geographical dislocation.
But it's often a love/hate thing (ref: http://twitter.com/ ) and can also cause problems with cognitive dissonance with false human interaction. Interacting virtually the subconsciousness is devoid of its usual cues - facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, resulting in unnatural stress.
The other problem associated is information overload - "infomania dents IQ more than marijuana"
- anticipated reciprocity
- reputation
- sense of efficacy
- identification with a group
ref: tom coates' presentation on social software
It has been noted that a social networks' pooled knowledge makes the whole network grow smarter. I'd personally take this further and suggest that any open data, social or otherwise but particularly in scientific contexts, makes the network grow smarter. ref: PLoS
As developers we need to support ambient intimacy. Applications need to be sympathetic to the fact that we as people are easily distracted. They need to be undemanding but intrusive enough to increase awareness of events.
- keep it lightweight
- stay out of the way
- open your API
- portable social networks
- use the periphery - antithesis of classical interface development/design
- allow for time-shifting
ref: twitterific
(0 comments)
Psyphi Blog v5
interactivity experiments
Posted by rmp at 23:08 26th Mar 2008
For a few months now I've been watching utterly compelling and inspirational HCI things like these: . I know most of them are a bit dated now, in fact from as far back as 2006, but they're still jaw-droppingly awesome.
So in a fit of inspiration and weekend project madness and frustration at the clumsiness of a regular touch-screen LCD I've been picking up things from Ebay and fishing around in my boxes of knackered electronics to find components suitable for assembling one or two of these sorts of devices.
There are two types of these interactive interfaces - the JCL-style wiimote-based ones which use bright sources of infrared, either transmitted or reflected and the bluetooth Nintendo controller; and the second is the Jeff Han / Perceptive_Pixel -style of frustrated total internal reflection or FTIR where infrared is reflected out of a planar surface and is picked up by a camera similar to the one in the wiimote.
Anyway, costs so far:
Wiimote: ~£28; old infrared remote control for filters & LEDs: free;
Philips bSure XG2 projector: ~£180; Philips SPC900NC: ~£30; 4.3mm CCTV lens (no IR filter): ~$12
I've been having trouble making the bluetooth pairing for the wiimote work correctly under OSX 10.3.9 - I think it's about time I had the laptop upgraded - it's work's after all. I think that should fix it for OSX, but I have had some success - this evening under Ubuntu with the Bluez_stack and libwiimote I've been able to capture events from the wiimote including spots using the IR camera. I've also been successful using camstream with the SPC900NC and CCTV lens to capture spots from working TV remotes, both directly and reflected from a wall - it's surprisingly effective!
More to come - next with the wiimote interface I need to build my whiteboard-marker battery-driven IR LED pen. Next with the FTIR display I need to experiment with a few different types of perspex and rear-reflection material. I *really* want to be able to perform pattern recognition similar to the reactable and I don't think tracing paper will work for rear-projection. Knowing next to nothing about plastics technology I think I'd like to try frosted acrylic first, or maybe just finely-sanded regular acrylic. Ebay here I come again!
(0 comments)
So in a fit of inspiration and weekend project madness and frustration at the clumsiness of a regular touch-screen LCD I've been picking up things from Ebay and fishing around in my boxes of knackered electronics to find components suitable for assembling one or two of these sorts of devices.
There are two types of these interactive interfaces - the JCL-style wiimote-based ones which use bright sources of infrared, either transmitted or reflected and the bluetooth Nintendo controller; and the second is the Jeff Han / Perceptive_Pixel -style of frustrated total internal reflection or FTIR where infrared is reflected out of a planar surface and is picked up by a camera similar to the one in the wiimote.
Anyway, costs so far:
Wiimote: ~£28; old infrared remote control for filters & LEDs: free;
Philips bSure XG2 projector: ~£180; Philips SPC900NC: ~£30; 4.3mm CCTV lens (no IR filter): ~$12
I've been having trouble making the bluetooth pairing for the wiimote work correctly under OSX 10.3.9 - I think it's about time I had the laptop upgraded - it's work's after all. I think that should fix it for OSX, but I have had some success - this evening under Ubuntu with the Bluez_stack and libwiimote I've been able to capture events from the wiimote including spots using the IR camera. I've also been successful using camstream with the SPC900NC and CCTV lens to capture spots from working TV remotes, both directly and reflected from a wall - it's surprisingly effective!
More to come - next with the wiimote interface I need to build my whiteboard-marker battery-driven IR LED pen. Next with the FTIR display I need to experiment with a few different types of perspex and rear-reflection material. I *really* want to be able to perform pattern recognition similar to the reactable and I don't think tracing paper will work for rear-projection. Knowing next to nothing about plastics technology I think I'd like to try frosted acrylic first, or maybe just finely-sanded regular acrylic. Ebay here I come again!
(0 comments)
Infrared Pen MkI
Posted by rmp at 00:06 2nd Apr 2008
So, this evening, not wanting to spend more time on the computer (having been on it all day for day 2 of DB's Rails course) I spent my time honing my long-unused soldering skills and constructing the first revision of my infrared marker pen for the JCL-special Wiimote Whiteboard.
The raw materials:
Close-up of the LEDs I'm removing:
The finished article:
Close-up of switch detail:
Activated under the IR-sensitive digital camera:
I must say it's turned out ok. I didn't have any spare small switches so went for a bit of wire with enough springiness in it. On the opposite side of the makeshift switch is a retaining screw for holding the batteries in. I'm using two old AAA batteries (actually running about 2.4V according to the meter) and no resistor in series. The LED hasn't burnt out yet!
To stop the pen switching on when not in use I slip a bit of electrical tape between the contacts. Obviously you can't tell when it's on unless you put in another, perhaps miniature, indicator visible LED.
It all fits together quite nicely though the retaining screw is too close for the batteries and has forced the back end out a bit - that's easy to fix.
As I'm of course after multitouch I'll be building the MkII pen soon with the other recovered LED!
(0 comments)
The raw materials:
Close-up of the LEDs I'm removing:
The finished article:
Close-up of switch detail:
Activated under the IR-sensitive digital camera:
I must say it's turned out ok. I didn't have any spare small switches so went for a bit of wire with enough springiness in it. On the opposite side of the makeshift switch is a retaining screw for holding the batteries in. I'm using two old AAA batteries (actually running about 2.4V according to the meter) and no resistor in series. The LED hasn't burnt out yet!
To stop the pen switching on when not in use I slip a bit of electrical tape between the contacts. Obviously you can't tell when it's on unless you put in another, perhaps miniature, indicator visible LED.
It all fits together quite nicely though the retaining screw is too close for the batteries and has forced the back end out a bit - that's easy to fix.
As I'm of course after multitouch I'll be building the MkII pen soon with the other recovered LED!
(0 comments)
Atom
