A number of events and communities supporting and facilitating this culture have appeared recently. As an example, Maker Faires now take place in many countries; originating in the USA, the first one in the UK took place at the Newcastle Science Fair in 2009 and was repeated this year, more recently there has been a series of events across Africa. Other examples include the interactive design community forming around the open-source microprocessor Arduino and the Processing visualisation language, events such as Hackerspaces and Dorkbots and groups like the Manchester based Madlab. It has also captured the interest of the literary world through Makers, a novel written by Cory Doctorow. This also fits with a culture around such activities as high-low technology at MIT, the re-emergence of Craft as a social and economic force, Fablabs and in design and fashion hacking.

I’m really interested in how this can support local sustainable (in the broadest sense) development – particularly in integrating traditional craft skills with digital technology skills. This is partly inspired by some thinking around the Bauhaus movement – in particular their ethos of design principles for mass production. However, in this case the design principles would be about taking into account local issues such as local needs, availability of materials, facilities and capabilities. Bauleban perhaps…

In Norman’s view of interface design the notion of affordance was used alongside conceptual models and conventions to aid a designer. However, as interest in affordances grew he became concerned that discussion about them in hci circles was wandering further and further away from his original intention. Norman has expressed his dissatisfaction on this and distinguishes conceptual models, real affordances, perceived affordances, constraints and conventions.
Conceptual models provide the logic for how an interface works and provide a base for reasoning about possible actions in an interface. Real affordances are all the affordances that physically exist, but may not actually provide access to a designer’s intention. Perceived affordances are those that the designer has managed to make readily accessible and understandable to the user of the interface. Constraints exist in physical and logical form – an example of a physical constraint would be where a section of a monitor does not provide cursor feedback so it’s clear that no actions are possible in that areas. A logical constraint allows reasoning to be made about possibilities for example where a user is asked to click on five locations, but only four are visible. The user knows logically that another location must exist and can look for it using, e.g., scroll bars. Scroll bars are in turn examples of cultural conventions which have become to be accepted within communities. They are understood precisely because of their ubiquitous nature which has developed over time.

Norman is very clear on his wish to see these different aspects of interface design clearly separated out to help analysis and subsequent design. It is clear how an individual designer’s role can be much stronger in the development of intended perceived affordances of a product (they can have direct influence on this) whilst it is more difficult to change cultural constraints (at least in the short term).

The Hit Me Interactive Lamp was designed by Carnegie Mellon students Henry Julier, Justin Rheinfrank, Amanda Ip, and Michael Cruz-Restrepo. It responds directly to different touches. If finger tips are pressed on the lamp then this is reflected through individual leds lighting up and a corresponding pattern appearing. If the palm of a hand is placed over the lamp then it responds with a diffuse glow. The lamp also responds to the length of time it is touched – so quick touches result in lights flashing, prolonged touching ensures the lamp stays on.

These paper robots were designed by Greg Saul from Carnegie Mellon and Victoria University of Wellington. They make use of special materials called ‘Shape-Memory-Alloys’ for actuators, gold leaf printed circuits and embedded microchips for intelligence and can be programmed to respond to light, sound or on-line chat. Their designer was interested in ‘using new technologies, materials and information channels to create systems instead of designs or perhaps more accurately designs that are a dialogue between the user and the designer with computer program as mediation’.

These examples are interesting and embody, in simple ways, the types of knowledge and skills that are required in this area.

We held our first workshop on Tuesday around the general theme of emotive physicality. What do we mean by this? Well, there’s a sense that physical products can engage and affect us in ways that are different to digital media. Can we make use of these possibilities and provide experiences that seem more natural, more intuitive and maybe more fun? This is what we’ll be looking at over the next few months and the workshop allowed us to kick start the whole process.

As part of our collaborative approach, we were honoured to have both Taylor Nuttall from Folly and Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino from Tinker working with us for the day. They are both truly inspirational.

So, how did it all work out? Well, in the spirit of DIY culture and just ‘making stuff’ the initial warm-up session felt like you’d just entered a primary school classroom, but with less tears. This was surprising; to be honest I’d been expecting more tears. After the ‘getting to know us all’ session with card, felt, scissors, glue, string and balsa wood we then proceeded into the next sessions armed with only post-it notes for support. Stripped bare, we brainstormed ideas around data and data sources, connections and transformations, and finally physical realisations of these data sources and associated transformations.

There were a few novel interpretations of what data would be useful – ‘confusion’ was identified, along with a ‘busyness’ indicator. A cluster of ideas developed around ‘emotional states’, specifically asking the question about capturing the emotional states not of individuals, but of groups, such as an audience. The prize for the most inventive transformation must surely go to the inspired choice of ‘magic’. This struck me as a wholly appropriate way to think about transformations and maybe even interaction design in general. Interaction that has a sense of wonderment about it may be interesting indeed.

Final concept realisations were developed in the heady atmosphere of both the post-it notes and the contents of the craft boxes. Carnage ensued and fun was had by all as teams were rather naughtily swapped at half-time and inherited another team’s half-baked ideas. The physical models produced included adaptive architectures, connected gardens, handbags that dripped e-pheromones, and an interventionist God. What more can I say?

The day was rounded off in rather fine style with fizz and cake. I believe we may have judged the concepts too and awarded a rather special prize.

For me, this was the beginning of a journey. Collaboration, to work well, has to be based upon trust, building of relationships and of mutual interest (and passion) across a broad topic area rather than short-term specific questions. For those interested in forms of collaboration with Universities I can recommend reading Knowledge Exchange and Universities and Business produced by the Centre for Business Research.

One thing that clearly jumped out to me personally was the Renaissance nature of this developing field. It’s clearly post-disciplinary; skills and expertise are required in a wide variety of areas across art, design, engineering, and computing. We also need to both incorporate and synthesise theoretical approaches to help us understand and support these type of interactive experiences.

A final word – it’s likely that we’ll be running more of these workshops, focusing more on practical skills covering, e.g., arduino, processing and rapid-prototyping techniques. If you’re interested in these or in broader collaboration, please do get in touch.

A great video from Grant Davis and great soundtrack too! I love this – we really, really, need to get this going in the UK…