Our last Interaction Society blog is about artificial intelligence in toy (robotic) animals. By performing a case study on the dinosaur toy named Pleo, we try to answer question like: How do interactive pets do what they do? How far are we today with the development of artificial intelligence in small objects, and what are its uses? And more importantly: Is it good to have these creatures around?
Archive for the ‘Interaction Society’ Category
odyssey – An investigation into artificial animals
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009The real sCAPE
Friday, October 16th, 2009
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odyssey – The Efteling: creating a memorable experience
Friday, October 16th, 2009In today’s service economy, many companies simply wrap experiences around their traditional offerings to sell them better. To realize the full benefit of staging experiences, however, businesses must deliberately design engaging experiences that command a fee. This paper reports on a case study of the Efteling and how it is designed to create a memorable experience for all who dare to enter this World of Wonders. [1] ([#] refer to certain references made in the pdf version of the report. This is the blog version of the report: for a .pdf file, you can contact any member of group 2) (more…)
sCAPE – TamaTime
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
We set up the Interaction Society presentation this morning, because we had to present in the afternoon. Unfortunately, there was a way too small amount of time to research the topic of Tamagotchi to the core, so neither we nor the teachers were really satisfied by our conclusions. One of the main things we did realize is that there isn’t much needed to make a creature seem alive. People will get attached to the Tamagotchi because it seems dependant on the user and it grows to a certain character, as result of the quality of caretaking and because of the actions of the user. Like Tomasz pointed out, it stays interesting because there is always an uncertainty about how it will develop. The creatures we want in our lounge don’t have to look like a known animal, but they have to have some properties to let the user think that it deals with a living object. For instance, it has to change over time, like growing, and it will confirm the ‘living-idea’ even more when it seems dependant on the user.
Visualizing RFID – Immaterials: the ghost in the field
Thursday, October 15th, 2009This morning I stumbled across this very interesting article about an arttech project.
link: http://www.nearfield.org/2009/10/immaterials-the-ghost-in-the-field
This video (link below) is about exploring the spatial qualities of RFID, visualised through an RFID probe, long exposure photography and animation. It features Timo Arnall of the Touch project and Jack Schulze of BERG.
Immaterials: the ghost in the field from timo on Vimeo.
Group 2 – iConic. Emotional design in Apple products and branding
Thursday, October 8th, 2009For this assignment, we were asked to take a closer look at the iPhone, especially its appereance: why does the
iPhone appeal to so many people?
For this, we not only investigated the iPhone itself, but also the context in which it is placed/positioned. The
fact that Apple products seem to have all have the myth surrounding them, that they in fact are cultural
icons in this contemporary society, with which Apple can do nothing wrong.
This investigation is an analysis of the iPhone, by looking at its so called “emotional design”, in which the emotional reaction
of the user of the iPhone is analyzed. One version of the report is shown below (for a .pdf file, you can contact any member of group 2): (more…)
sCAPE – IX materials and iPhones
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009We started off with a lecture on the building blocks of interaction design. As engineers, architects and industrial designers we all use different materials to construct our designs. Interaction design requires insight in a different toolkit, so we discussed our lounge concepts with regard to i.a. motion, space, time, sounds and textures.
The rest of the day was spent working on the iPhone assignment for the Interaction Society course. We are making good progress but find it hard to relate this course to the rest of the courses, which all support the main lounge assignment in some way.
sCAPE – Lighting Prototypes; not to be taken lightly
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009Dear all,
I hereby want to thank all of you for the happy and inspiring times we had together, but after today’s work I really need to say goodbye: I quit.
Well, that was not far from what I thought after today. We have been working on the interactive lamp prototypes all day (so we did not have time to work on our Lounge concept) and split up in groups. Some of us were working on the balloon lamp (which seems to become quite as popular as the ecosystem idea) and others were working on the falling rain errr, lights. I was working on the living plant light a.k.a. bendable lamp (Inflexus Luminarium) together with a experienced coder.
We had some problems when we found out that one of the sensors on the prototype was not working. This was after we spent two hours on finding the right firmware and libraries for Arduino to communicate with MAX/MSP properly. In the end it turned out that the communication between the Arduino and MAX/MSP was working, but one of the sensor did not show any effect upon interacting with it.
Soo much for 6 hours of programming having a fully configurable Max patch when the sensors aren’t working. We should have gotten a Wizard of Oz prototype…..
We found out that we were not the only ones short on necesary materials for prototyping, the Blue Helmet army were also stuck in their campaign!
sCAPE – OV Chip
Friday, September 25th, 2009Yesterday we presented our analysis on the new OV chip card system. We discussed public perception, media coverage, tourist issues and advantages over existing systems.
- sCAPE
sCAPE – Twitter Essay
Thursday, September 10th, 2009TWITTER ANONYMOUS:
12-Step program to total Twitter addiction
An essay about Twitter usage and the dangers of excessive multitasking
– sCAPE
Editors:
Iris van Loon
Thomas Van Oekelen
As of June 2009, Twitter attracts over 27 million monthly users in the US alone, and millions of tweets are sent every day. Users are sharing news and information, passing along interesting articles and images. The Twitter platform is also a tool for self-promotion, and of course spam has found it’s way into the twittersphere. According to recent studies, Twitter is also heavily being used as replacement for instant messaging, allowing people to have short conversations in a less direct and invasive way. However, the bulk of all tweets is the so-called “pointless babble”. Almost half of all messages is of virtually no interest to anyone.
Still, people spend their time reading these messages, and those of all the others they follow. Always being online rapidly becomes addictive, and the fear to overlook an important or interesting tweet takes over. Once this happens, you are well under way to become a hard-core Twitter freak. Twitter becomes a task. Multi-tasking becomes a must.
