This video made the tour around the blogs some months ago, but it’s still funny.
Premise is: “What would a real human interface look like?”
I like the spam mail in particular.
Hi from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.
I’ve been trying for a few days to write the blog post that sums up both the praise and criticism of Apple’s iPad. It’s really hard, seeing that so many talented people have already written extensively about it, and continue to do so. Don’t forget to follow my collection of articles and Twitter-favorites as well.
So far, my only comment on the iPad is this:
The platform is closed – and it doesn’t matter. There’s no Flash – and it doesn’t matter. It may lack this or that feature – and it doesn’t fucking matter.
It’s not made for me, and it’s not made for you. It’s made for the kids, the grannies and the people who are scared by the way computers work today.
Today, people compute, and the fact that we haven’t moved beyond that yet is absolutely beyond me. However, I think the iPad might be the first step towards a world, where the ones who want to tinker and hack away, are free to do so.
Then everybody else can start actually working with computers, not on them.
Thursday last week, Kristoffer and I attended our final exam at BA(im) where we presented and discussed our bachelor project on Digital Patina with our supervisor and a censor.
It went very well, and we both received the highest grades possible in the Danish school system: 12.
We set out on a mission to define what Digital Patina is. Initially we had the idea that we wanted to see if the physical idea of “wearing out” could be applied to the user interface of a test website for a generic vacuum cleaner. We created three websites that were identical in content, but offered three different patina scenarios:
The prograss was made in 10 steps, but we set up the site so we could mimick the effect of previous users already altering the size/color of the links, to see if our test users would pick up these signs as showing previous activity.
Digital Patina – shaping user behavior with activity patterns
Special thanks goes to Jane Mejdahl, Morten Just, Steffen T. Christensen, Anders Pollas, Kenneth Auchenberg, Aaron Bateman, Morten Kirckhoff, Britta Stougaard Mortensen and our 12 lovely testers.
First, watch the TED-talk about Siftables, then come back again:
What’s really intriguing about the Siftables-blocks is that at first, they seem pretty harmless and fun to use. The setup is easy (there is none), there are no premises that has to be met when you first start playing with them and it’s a fantastic way of interacting with a (lot of) computer(s).
Instead of having a crippled interaction model like the keyboard and mouse that works great when inputting text and pointing at objects on a screen, you just pick up the blocks and start playing around. Of course we also have the iPhone as an example of how human interaction with computers is changing (“tap is the new click”) and it works beautifully for that device. What makes Siftables so different to me, is that it’s you don’t point-and-click at all – in the last example where a young boy created his own story line, he connects the “Dog” and the “Cat”, and then they “talk” to each other. He doesn’t need any other object than two physical representations of the figures on the screen and then they act accordingly to his wishes.
The other interesting examples are the sound system, word game and calculator. Obviously, I find the sound system fascinating seeing that I am so interested in music, and I really hope I can get to play with that specific configuration at one point.
When it comes to the word game and the calculator, however, it becomes more interesting from a pedagogical point of view. You’ll train the vocabulary extensively by being forced into creating words at a rapid pace, and I can definitiely see the beneficial financial aspects of selling such a game to the wider masses.
Likewise, the calculator would be amazing to see a school class play around with. It makes mathematical challenges a social event that you can group around and solve in plenum – hopefully it will be available to educational institutions in a near future, so kids can become interested in mathematics from a young age and help each other out.
To sum up, the reason Siftables is a big deal is simply becuase it takes human-computer interaction to a whole new level, and I’m sure other people have made nice attempts at coming up with something as simple as this, but they have not succeeded in making it widely available. I really hope the team behind this has better luck with that.
Jeg synes lidt jeg skylder at forklare hvorfor denne blog agerer så meget som en legeplads som den gør lige for tiden, og jeg skal forsøge at holde det kort:
I 6./7. klasse fik jeg af min mor en computer. 166Mhz CPU, 4GB Harddisk, 32MB RAM – vi snakker topmodel! Det sørgelige hakkebræt blev endevendt adskillige gange og til sidst gik den helt kold (forstÃ¥eligt nok), men det var ikke spildte kræfter; én gang for alle blev jeg interesseret i computere.
Det var i Windows95-dagene (legede dog også lidt med 3.11, men ikke meget) og siden kom 98 og det stooooore spring til XP. Hele tiden irriterede det mig at det ikke rigtigt virkede som jeg gerne ville have det til at gøre, og da min gode ven Mathies køber en Mac i sommeren for to år siden er jeg ikke helt tilfreds, men efter noget snakken frem og tilbage finder jeg ud af at sådan en må jeg bare eje. Pengene er der til en Mac mini som lige var kommet frem på det tidspunkt, og siden har jeg ikke set mig tilbage.
Der er bare ved at ske et eller andet med det der internet som fascinerer mig mere og mere, og selvom OS X er mere end bare almindeligt fint, sÃ¥ kan det faktisk stort set ikke gøre noget som internettet ikke kan gøre – for mig!
For ikke sÃ¥ lang tid siden fandt jeg Fluid som gør at jeg kan browse et website i et seperat vindue og det dermed vil “opføre” sig som et selvstændigt program. Praktisk med Jaiku, Facebook, Gmail og alt det lignende i hvert sit vindue.
Hvordan vedkommer det så det her site? Jo, det gør det på den måde at når jeg spreder min aktivitet udover så mange sites, vil det også gå ud over det her.
De små daglige indlæg ligger nu på Jaiku eller Twitter, mine billeder på Flickr og små, skæve indslag på copyblokking.com (som faktisk desværre også bliver negligeret lige for tiden).
Desuden er jeg i færd med at kode frontenden til et søgbart, kommenterbart presenceværktøj (more info TBA indenfor overskuelig fremtid), finde ud af hvordan man kan opmuntre folk til vidensdeling i en organisation vha. microblogging samt at finde litteratur til det emne (for hvad er ‘viden’ egentligt nÃ¥r det kommer til stykket?).
Det blev langt – har du læst det hele, sÃ¥ tillykke til dig. HÃ¥ber stadigvæk at kunne skrive fantastiske posts om vores selvopfundne “conversion funnel”, om hvorfor XMPP er helt genialt og fremtidens værktøj samt en hel del mere om HCI/IA/IM og hvorfor min mobil bliver mere og mere en computer fremfor en telefon.