created 2004-05-08 18:46:33

(Up to: The Desktop Metaphor Functionally Focused Interfaces Interfaces )

Notes from a Human-Centred Technology Open Day, 6th May 2004

HCT

[http://www.informatics.susx.ac.uk/research/hct/]

comprising of...

The Interact Lab

[http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/interact/]

and...

The Ideas Lab

[http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/ideas/]

Things I saw...

Homework

[http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/ideas/homework.htm]

A hybrid of Windows XP, Josephine, electronic white boards and tablet PCs to encourage children to interact within a learning environment. Features included Macromedia Director-driven multimedia (video playback to introduce/leave each section of the lesson), and the ability for each tablet PC (one per child) to send info to be displayed on the main server/white board (e.g. to collect everyone's different answers on one screen). I think (judging from the homepage) that the final idea is to advance the dissemination of this technology, i.e. tablet PCs can be taken home, and video can be pumped out to set-top boxes, to encourage remote and distributed working. Someone also mentioned that teachers would be able to /tailor/ the content being used, and drawn in from a "content repository", to the particular lesson/class/children.

Thoughts:

• Interesting that the use of technology /could/ encourage smaller group sizes. Perhaps general interaction (with whatever technology) does that to some extent anyway.
• I like the idea of giving the teacher more power and flexibility over lessons, especially if what I've heard of the current education system is true.
• At least in the classroom, is it more interactive than using non-technical props at all? Is multimedia a necessarily good/better way of getting children to engage? I guess that may depend on the culture and level of the children. But why not, say, employ more storytelling techniques, or some such?
• How does it overlap with remote/distributed training/working in professional workplaces? Can the same principles be applied?

Dynamo

[http://www.dynamo-interactive.com/] (link no longer working) [http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/interact/projects/dynamo.htm]

Had seen this on Nooface a few months previously, and thought it looked interesting, so wanted to see it in the digital flesh. It consists of two large widescreen monitors linked horizontally, and anyone "hooked in" with a pointing device gets a pointer on the workspace. USB devices are automatically added to the workspace to, and become "public devices" by default, that anyone can access. As a newcomer with family photos still on my USB pendrive, this was quite unnerving ;) You can "register" a device to make it lockable and private. There are facilities to share data in devices called "parcels", as well as to fence off private areas of the screen that you can give access to any other users (called "carving").

Thoughts:

• Pretty interesting concept when you're used to single-user desktops, and at times it felt a little like a multi-player game of Chu-Chu Rocket. I think it may take a little time to get used to - who owns what is determined by colours, and there are a few interface nuances to pick up on (e.g. everything is drag-n-drop - to open a file, I had to use the mouse scroll wheel to choose it, then drag and drop the file's icon on to an empty bit of desktop.)
• For some reason, I was expecting the ability to drag and drop things from your own private desktop, e.g. on your laptop, to the "public space", but it was all on one desktop.
• Expect a free .exe download soon...? (Watch this space)

Equator - Digital Toy Technology

[http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/interact/projects/equator.htm]

OK, I had a look at some of this :) but missed some of the more "interactive" projects (see below). These were new ways to implement technoogy so that the technology is not an issue - important for kids, but also for much of the general populace, IMHO. (See similar point regarding 'Homework'.)

The best one for me was a tube and a button hooked up to small boxes. When you blew into the tube, an animated balloon on the laptop screen inflated, and when you pressed the button (or clapped, in a quiet room), it exploded, and a random (or perhaps influenced by the balloon's size at time of bursting) animation would then play - anything from a pile of poo being displayed, to a dog dancing to the tune of "Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds" (which is what attracted me to it in the first place ;)

Many of the other toys ("experimental interactive interfaces" :) used RFID tags as triggers, and it was good to see RFID being used in places other than corporate/governmental tracking devices :) Alas, many of them were just "on show", and we couldn't see them in action.

One of these was a pair of large cubes, each with a different colour on each side. When arranged together, with two colours facing up (although, I assume, the RFIDs were facing down), a screen would display the colour obtained when mixing the two on the dice (e.g. when black and white selected, the screen is grey). There was also some work on "tangible interfaces", i.e. things you can pick up and play with that produce a (possibly on-screen) result, rather than using traditional computer pointers/devices.

The Hunting of the Snark

[http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/interact/projects/Equator/snark.htm]

This looked interesting, but there were only some notes about it, and no live demonstration. A variety of technologies, including RFIDs and motion-sensing jackets, are combined to allow children to explore a number of "simulated" environments, with audio/visual feedback according to what they do. For instance, they can throw different objects in a fake pond, and get feedback telling them if the Snark likes the object or not.

RFIDs

Another interesting use of RFID tags was to embed them in beermat-size cards. These cards could be found near their respective projects around the room, so that anyone could pick one up, take it over to a PC and place it on a RFID reader, at which point a video for the project on the card would be played. Nice contextual business-card-like functionality, I thought, and could easily be extended to, say, be combined with a personal RFID tag to send project notes, media, etc to an e-mail account or web page to be accessed after the conference.

Giving "properties" to otherwise-inanimate and mundane objects seems quite intriguing and now, quite easy too. I think that if I let my imagination run for a bit, there could be some interesting ideas in there...

Creativity

This is more "ongoing research" than a particular, tangible project. Tom Hamilton is investigating the relationship between "technology and "creativity" - 2 equally vague sentiments? ;) Or, as he says... "looking at how technology can be used to enhance individual and group creativity in the arts, sciences and social politics". We started off in a small group working out what creativity is, followed by examples of creativity, and how it gets encouraged/smothered in different organisations. At this point, Richard Cupidi joined us, and the discussion turned towards a greater realm concerned with how we use technology. I wish I could remember everything that was said, as we were stood there for about an hour in the end, and it was all extremely interesting.

Tom seems to be coming from the point of view, which closely mirrors mine, that through a wave of "new" technology, we are more perhaps more able to influence progres of society "for the better", by inducing creativity and invention, and by drawing more and more on diversity and differing ways of looking at the world. I am now curious about the way in which we use technology from here on, versus the way that we've used technology in the past - is there anything fundamentally different? Isn't the culture that so many of us are now trying to draw us away from via technology a culture that is built on new technology anyway - IMHO, ever since the industrial revolution. Perhaps there's a tendency towards decentralisation as the technology supports it and becomes ubiquitious. Richard made the point that the telephone was the first piece of communications tecbnology to offer a truly "revolutionary" mechanism, and believes that user-centric voice-based technology are where the future is at.

At the end of it, I think we'd decided that creativity a) can't be measured b) loses something when it's "contained" (by measuring it, turning it into science, etc) c) leaves behind (or "creates", heh) artifacts that can be seen. I think this sounds like the Tao to me - the creative force behind everything. Indeed, when it came to "the most creative thing you've ever seen", natural processes and spiritual beliefs seem to be up there - moreso than books, songs, paintings, etc.

The whole thing was rather useful and extremely interesting, and I hope I get the chance to discuss it further with them in future.

Extreme Programming

I spent some time talking to Sallyann Bryant, who is involved in the Crusade project, and also does a lot of things with extreme programming, which I know a smidgeon about. Interesting to hear about the different ways that different people approach XP, and the types of discussion that emerge according to who's paired up (novice + experienced, novice + novice, experienced + experienced) - 2 novices will tend to make more suggestions, whereas 2 experienced XPers will tend to explain the things more. There is also an assumption by novices that, because they are good programmers, they are therefore also good to work in an XP environment, although this may not necessarily be the case at all.

Also, in an open office environment, common behaviour is to not work alone anyway, but rather conversations and working groups tend to form "naturally", through people overhearing others' conversations, and joining in because they may know the answer. XP may be seen to "battle" against this natural grouping, although there are obviously pros and cons to both. But, I decided, XP shouldn't be seen as pairing individuals to improve efficiency, but rather sectioning off two people withing a larger, less formal group.

Things I Didn't Get to See Properly

• Equator's Ambient Wood project, which took RFIDs out into the wilderness. But I'm not sure what they did with them.
• Crusade - this is the best, most insane acronym I've ever seen, and is about how we debug software. Shame I didn't get to see it, really.
• Riddles - using simple jokes and puns to improve children's understanding of language
• InTouch - this was in collaboration with my old home Victoria Real from a few years ago, and looked like it could have been interesting, but the interesting stuff didn't seem to be on display. it seems to take two projects into account - firstly a social network management interface, and secondly the use of voice transmission in multi-player games. The latter didn't seem to find anything I couldn't have predicted ("Talking ... is a very important aid to collaboration in team games."). I didn't see anything about the first project unfortunately (although it may have been on a laptop...), and they had an X-Box set up to demonstrate the second.
• eScience
• eSpace
• Smile

...and probably some others that I've forgotten...

People I Met And Got Talking To And Who Were All Extremely Lovely and Interesting

• Tom Hamilton
• Richard Cupidi
• Rowanne Fleck
• Sallyann Bryant
• Harry Brignull

I place them here so that if I ever meet them again, I can remember their name, or something. They may also find the fact that their name is on an anonymously-signed website quite disturbing, so I provide this link here which may or may not help.