Touch

iPhone RFID: object-based media

2009-04-14T21:05:26Z

This is a prototype of an iPhone media player that uses physical objects to control media playback. It is based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) that triggers various iPhone interactions when in the range of a wireless tag embedded inside a physical object.

RFID is becoming more common in mobile phones (under the term Near Field Communication or NFC) from manufacturers such as Nokia. By looking at Apple’s patents we know that the technology is being considered for the iPhone. With the iPhone SDK 3.0 external hardware accessories can be accessed by iPhone software, so third party RFID or NFC readers are also possible.

So what kinds of applications would emerge if an iPhone had an NFC reader? Here we have prototyped a simple media player, which triggers the playback of content on the touch of a tag, and created a set of augmented objects that have relationships to different kinds of audiovisual content.

A lens for media

Compared to other mobile handsets the iPhone is a particularly media-friendly device, with a large, bright screen and high quality audiovisual playback. What if this screen could act as a ‘lens’ to content that resides in the world?

In a screen-based interface content may be buried many levels deep inside an information architecture. But in a physical RFID-driven interface a simple gesture can offer quick and direct access to content. Physical objects afford tangible manipulation that screens cannot, and this is great for playful products. Our Bowl prototype showed a natural blending of media consumption and playful activitiy in children, where media viewing became less passive and a more active experience.

Durrell Bishop has discussed these ideas in a more general way, what if objects were augmented with new properties, that can be perceived through an iPhone lens?

Media objects

In this demo, the objects have been chosen to physically or visually represent the content. There are some obvious relationships, such as the Moomin figure leading to a favourite episode of a Moomin animation. The less obvious relationships such as the wooden house leading to home videos were chosen because they just somehow felt right. In fact the exact relationship may be of secondary importance, as over time the behaviour of the physical and digital objects becomes known and transparent through exploration and repetition.

Some of the objects felt particularly satisfying. The Make Podcast object for instance—where touching the ‘geek’ plays the latest ‘Weekend project’— shows how an object can be used for exploring a dynamic stream of content.

Going further

This video prototype is basic and intended to open up for discussion and new exploration around the experience of media selection through physical objects. At the moment the interaction is a trigger, but what if the phone doesn’t just react as output but also as input to physical objects? How do we programme and manage our sets of media and applications in these objects?

Overall the demo points towards opportunities around the distribution of media through physical objects, it is an example of general ideas around an ‘internet of things’ or ‘spimes’ applied to the world of media. What opportunities would the distribution of RFID-embedded products open up in terms of media, gaming, services and marketing? What does this mean for the future of products?

Related things:

Bowl: Token-based media for children In spring ...
More RFID-based products A Dutch co...
Place and product-based collaborative filtering In March 2...

Sonmicro RFID Processing library

2009-04-02T17:27:08Z

Last year we made a Processing library for the Sonmicro SM130 RFID read/write module together with Jørn Knutsen and Tom Igoe. The SM130 is a little module that lets you read and write to Mifare RFID tags. The Sonmicro Processing library is a good and flexible tool for exploring RFID interactions. One of the things we have been doing with it is playing with the London Oyster card and writing messages to the memory on our office access-cards.

Tom recently used an updated version of this library in his RFID workshop at ETech 2009 and has written a series of thorough tutorials on his weblog. The tutorials covers the basics of the library and also shows how a SM130 can be used with an Arduino: Sonmicro RFID reader for Processing, Reading Mifare RFID tags, Writing to Mifare RFID tags, Arduino-based RFID reader and RFID to Web interface.

In a future post we will look more closely on the technicalities of designing behaviours with RFID readers, presenting our tools for both the Sonmicro SM130 and the Innovation ID12.

Related things:

RFID form factors As our int...
Making things talk Tom Igoe...

Wireless in the world

2009-03-16T21:59:49Z

An ongoing Touch theme is about making invisible wireless technologies visible, in order to better understand and communicate with and about them (see a Graphic Language for RFID, Dashed lines and Fictional radio spaces).

Right now I am sitting near fourteen objects sending and receiving radio signals, from Oyster cards to mobile phones and wireless routers in a multitude of overlapping and competing fields. Here we are creating communicative material that uses dashed-line abstractions to visualise the presence of wireless technologies in the everyday environment. What if we could see every field produced by an Oyster card or NFC enabled mobile phone for instance?

Using simple abstractions such as the dashed line and the kinds of visual language that we have previously proposed for RFID allow us to quickly communicate aspects such as the spatial properties of wireless technologies that are often overlooked. I’ve been using these images in presentations for a while, to sensitise designers and students to the spatial and embodied properties of RFID, Bluetooth and WIFI.

We are also experimenting with video, where the visualisations are part of an environment in a moving sequence. This is looking like a useful technique for making visual explanations of invisible materials.

Here are more images:

NFC phones and contactless cards.

NFC phones.

Wifi and bluetooth.

An NFC-enabled bus timetable.

An NFC-enabled ‘smart poster’.

An Oyster card reader and cards

Related things:

Nokia releases first mass-market NFC handset Nokia to...
Fictional radio-spaces In spring ...
Images of touch interfaces I’m ...

Touch at Kreative Oslo

2009-03-13T14:44:52Z

We recently had the chance to present Touch at the event Kreative Oslo 09 at DogA, the Norwegian Center for Design and Architecture. Kreative Oslo is a broad seminar that gathers the creative fields in Oslo, including art, design, research, commercial actors, cultural institutions etc.

Presenting Touch at a event like this is a good opportunity to provide a glimpse into ongoing design and research and a chance to communicate to a broader audience. The talk focused on design as an approach to RFID and how we can use design to understand, communicate and explore emerging technologies.

The presentation consists of condensed presentation of RFID from a technical and material perspective and goes on to describe various aspects of designing with RFID. In this presentation we use the Touch-projects Bowl and Sniff to illustrate the process of designing RFID products. The presentation is available on Slideshare.

Related things:

Tangible and Embedded Interaction 2009 We recentl...
Touch network building The Touch ...
Tangible Interactions – summer exhibition This wee...

From ubicomp to service design

2009-03-13T23:19:03Z

Mike Kuniavsky presented at ETech 2009 on the Dotted-Line World on the links between ubiquitous computing and service design, where subscription-based services are based on everyday objects.

(I’m a big fan of dotted or dashed lines, it’s a great visual trick for representing hidden things. Glad to see that Mike is taking up this language, we should develop it further!)

Here’s the description of the talk in full, the slides are available from slideshare and at Mike’s weblog:

Things have long had identifying marks, from silversmiths’ hallmarks to barcodes, but mating machine-readable identification with pervasive networking greatly increases the value of the marks.

For example, when a machine-readable identification method such as an RFID or a high-density visual code is combined with the wireless networking of a mobile phone, a new way of interacting with everyday objects is created. Once you have the capability uniquely identify anything immediately, you can attach meta information to it. Any meta-information. How much is this worth on eBay? Which of my friends has one? Will this go with my Mom’s china? Will it make me sick if I eat it? Was it made by children?

I call this digital representation as accessed through a unique ID, an object’s “information shadow” and I now see them attached to just about everything. Beyond getting meta information, however, lies an even more powerful concept: changing the physical object to a service, for which the thing you’re looking at is but a single instantiation of that agreement. It’s already happened to media, and to car-shared cars and shared bicycles in urban areas.

When this happens, the objects have to change at a fundamental level. They have to be designed differently and they have to be described and discussed differently. The “owner’s” relationship to the object changes. The very idea of ownership changes. The solid object grows a dotted line that is filled-in as-needed, when-needed, and with the features that are needed. This is not the same thing as renting or co-ownership, its anytime/anywhere nature-enabled by the underlying technology makes these new service objects fundamentally new.

Many recent products point in this direction, where objects such as the Amazon Kindle are useless without the service contract, where a Nabaztag/tag is an empty shell waiting for connection to a network full of personal information and social connections, and where NFC phones and RFID peripherals are just the touchpoints between the online and the offline.

Related things:

Everyware icons (visualising ubicomp situations) In Decembe...
Lightweight, parasitic services Touch and ...
Workshop: Near field interactions This is a ...

ikTag and RFID at ETech conferences

2009-03-12T23:41:57Z

Conferences make great places for relatively large scale testing grounds of new technologies, with their self-contained setting, physical venues, registered participants and impetus for social networking. Two years ago we built our RFID photo booth at Picnic 07, which was a huge success. Since then Mediamatic has run the experiment again and has been nominated for a SpinAward award for the emerging ikTag and Interactive Social RFID Games.

The ikTag is an extremely simple interface for social networks, both on and offline. Mediamatic developed the ikTag for people to do nice stuff with their online profile without sitting behind your computer. The ikTag is an innovative and cultural application of RFID technology.

Also, in the past few days, O’Reilly has launched an RFID system at Etech:

That’s why we are giving all of the attendees at ETech RFID tags that can be linked to their conference profiles. Activating your RFID tag and linking it to your profile will be completely opt-in, but with these tags you can interact with several projects we’ll have at the conference.

As we discovered with the Picnic photo booth, there are lots of interesting opportunities to be discovered when a physical tag is linked to a social network…

Related things:

The RFID photo booth At last ye...
Upcoming conferences There are ...
Photos and connections Our photo ...

RFID sniffer workshop

2009-03-12T14:14:29Z

Mediamatic is organising two RFID Sniffer workshops in Amsterdam on Friday March 27 or on Saturday April 4 2009. At this workshop you can assemble your own RFID Sniffer circuit with designer Marc Boon.

The RFID sniffer is a simple analog electronic circuit which can detect the presence of 13.56 MHz RFID tags. These tags are commonly used in all kinds of plastic cards like access badges, bank cards, library cards, loyalty cards and so on.

RFID is everywhere. Use the easy to build RFID sniffer to find out if objects are tagged. Also many other objects may carry RFID tags without you knowing it. Books, toys, and even clothing might be tagged. Carrying tagged objects with you can reveal your identity or whereabouts to anyone equipped with the appropiate tools to read RFID tags. The RFID sniffer helps you identify which objects are tagged, and which are not.

Looks like a great workshop! And the Sniffers are available to buy from here.

Related things:

Workshop: Near field interactions This is a ...
RFID & the internet of things Julian Ble...
Touch at Recalling RFID I will b...

Pling Plong

2009-03-11T11:36:43Z

Silje Softing’s project Pling Plong from last year’s Touch course is a soft pillow that plays back audiobooks based on the physical objects or books that are placed on it.

Silje writes:

“Pling Plong is a media player for stories and sounds, placed inside a pillow. It is designed for the home environment and is meant to stimulate children’s imagination and interest for books. Its low-tech appearance in form, material and its simple functions makes the pillow seem magical. The fact that you can lay your head on it makes the toy very calming and it is meant for relaxing play alone.”

Pling Plong is a simple but carefully crafted product, where everything from the textures of the fabric, to the graspability of the audiobook tokens to the sound design and audio levels have been explored and refined.

A video shows Silje’s experiments with characterful faces for the pillow, showing some of the exploration of different metaphors for RFID that are important aspects of making contactless interaction understandable and playful.

Pling Plong has been receiving a lot of attention online recently, being picked up by Trendhunter, Coolgadgetconcept, Yankodesign, Crecebebe, Talk2myshirt, Techviva, Ubergizmo, Weirdgizmos and more.

Some comments:

“The “low-tech appearance” should be given some stormy applause, because toys nowadays have nothing to do with the idea of play and having a good time.”

“We had our share on interactive pillow coverage like illuminated pillows or sound pillows but the Pling Plong pillow created by Silje Softing sticks out by it’s playful use of ’soft’ low tech to give an twist to the story telling for small children.”

“I hope that this will soon make its way to market and finally to our homes. I don’t have any kids but I’ll surely love a pillow that can sing to me!”

“Hurry up Silje Softing and find someone to manufacture this already! It could be the next big thing this holiday season.”

Silje’s weblog documents some of the making process, there are more photos of Pling Plong and a gallery making pictures here.

Related things:

Playful augmented products workshop Interactio...
Norwegian Design Council awards Sniff Sniff has ...
Touch. Or sight, smell, taste The domina...

Tangible and Embedded Interaction 2009

2009-02-22T22:15:49Z

We recently presented our paper Designing with RFID at the Tangible and Embedded Interaction conference in Cambridge UK. This presentation was part of a session on ‘enabling technologies and design techniques’. The presentation focused on how we look at the physical aspects of RFID form through design.

The full presentation is available on Slideshare and you can read more about the paper here.

Related things:

Designing with RFID In Designi...
Touch at Kreative Oslo We recentl...
Tangible Interactions – summer exhibition This wee...

Re/Touch: Inspiring touch-related interaction design

2009-03-06T11:35:29Z

One of the things that social and cultural research on touch attempts to grapple with is everything people are supposed to touch and not supposed to touch—and what we actually end up touching or not touching in any given situation. When I first saw Sameer D’Costa’s photo on Flickr, it reminded me of people’s desire to touch things that we aren’t supposed to, and I wondered what that might mean in terms of research.

A year later we’re excited to share the result of that wondering: re/touch, an online resource for designers and researchers interested in touch-based interactions and relations. As the action of touch is technologically mediated by both contactless interactions in the world and through multi-touch on screen, awareness and reflection on the richness of touch is becoming increasingly important.

The re/touch website

re/touch brings together hundreds of cross-cultural examples of social norms and values involving touch—all categorised according to actions related to touching.

A collection of quotes from ethnographic accounts written between the late 1800s and the present, re/touch encourages designers and researchers to explore how touch is used by people to relate to one another and the worlds in which we live.

You can browse the quotes to create design briefs, refine interaction scenarios or otherwise inspire you to think, make or do things touch-related.

About the project

We like to think of re/touch as a work-in-progress. So far, it contains almost five hundred quotes from dozens of cultural groups around the world, and we’re working to add more. As the collection grows, we expect the action tags to change as well, so over the next couple of months you may notice different words in the tag cloud. In the end, we anticipate having over one thousand quotes and more than fifty categories of touch-related action.

The re/touch website also includes some background information on the content, and we plan to publish a paper on the research methodology and some thoughts on collaborations between anthropology and design.

If you notice any database problems or errors, please leave a comment below and we’ll look into it. We’re also still working on the web design—including making the site work well and look good on the iPhone—so we’d certainly appreciate any feedback you might have along those lines as well.

Ultimately, we hope you’ll find this resource as interesting and inspiring as we do!

Related things:

Introducing touch as culture Hello. My...
Touch as culture This is a ...
Touch as interaction medium This is a ...

Designing with RFID

2009-02-19T14:50:10Z

In Designing with RFID we explore the potential for RFID objects in everyday contexts. Because RFID is a wireless, radio-based technology it is inherently invisible once embedded, and this raises issues around visibility and interaction. How does the addition of hidden interactive qualities influence the design of physical RFID objects? There is a need to develop tangible design qualities such as shape, materials, build quality and affordances for RFID-enabled objects.

In this process we explore ways in which RFID objects can be designed to balance various physical and digital qualities. This approach has illuminated opportunities and constraints in designing augmented objects that enriches the vocabulary around RFID for industrial and interaction designers where physical and visual material are essential elements.

RFID is most commonly used by consumers for ticketing, payments and access control. The design challenges in these contexts has concentrated on infrastructures and systems as opposed to the design of physical tokens. The design of these objects is limited to simple, mostly flat enclosures; cards, key-fobs or stickers.

The bare RFID tag itself does not offer significant meaning beyond its technical appearance. In order to create meaningful relationships towards these objects, RFID tags must be embedded in an object or signified by shape or sign. The physical design of most current RFID objects are limited to the form factors of the protective encapsulation of the tag. It remains at the simple level of encapsulation and packaging that does not yet address the wide range of physical possibilities for objects in everyday contexts.

Product review

To understand the ways that RFID tags have been designed into consumer products, we conducted a product review that documents the physical aspects of RFID products from around the world. This has been a process of reflection on existing industrial and consumer products that includes a range of cards, keyfobs and tokens, the Mattel Hyperscan games console, Star Wars Commtech figures, Brio Network, Violet Ztamps and other RFID peripherals.

The product review shows many uses for RFID but limited exploration of design qualities such as materials, shape, size, construction, manufacture, build quality, affordance or metaphors. But the potential for RFID in consumer products is significant, given the inexpensive hardware of RFID systems and the opportunity to enable digital interactions with even the simplest of objects. The technical properties of RFID, such as the batteryless tags which allow for cheap and maintenance free operation are perhaps the most significant opportunity for playful products and toys.

Form experiments

The intention for this series of experiments was to gain a rich working knowledge of the kinds of design qualities that RFID objects may embody. We used an explorative design approach to the physical aspects of RFID and this involved a process of prototyping, where physical RFID objects were built and evaluated in the Bowl environment. Through a sketching process we developed an understanding of the relationships between physical forms and tags. Form-explorations were then used to visualise findings, to generate further models and to examine surface qualities.

This approach has illuminated opportunities and constraints in designing physical RFID objects that now need to be translated into patterns and models that are useful for interaction and industrial design. See the full paper below for more detail around the objects, sketches and models.

Literal associations

The interactions and gestures that have been learned over time for such objects as dolls, toys, chesspieces, microphones, shower heads, telephones, flashlights, magnifying glasses, spraycans, screwdrivers, hammers, kitchen utensils, stamps, and handles, with gestures like stirring, pointing, poking, drawing and shaking are useful starting points for imagining RFID objects and interactions.

Two very distinct kinds of gestures emerged from our workshops and experiments with the Bowl and Orooni Table interfaces. These gestures are pick and place (eg. moving a chess piece) and grab and point (eg. waving a wand).

A form vocabulary for RFID

Designing new gestures, taxonomies of form and affordances specifically for RFID will come only from designing a new set of objects, with their own elements and properties. Through the process of designing new RFID objects we uncovered properties such as direction, balance, similarity and geometry. Here we see some of the variations and abstractions around the elements of RFID form. This is the beginning of a form vocabulary for RFID including balance, similarity, direction and multi-direction.

Through introducing RFID as an element that influences the shape of physical products, we begin to design an inspirational or generative set of forms for RFID-enabled objects. They effectively communicate the physical aspects of the design findings and help us to evaluate and refine a vocabulary of forms.

Conclusions

As the internet of things emerges as an increasingly important discourse within research and consumer products, the design of the RFID things themselves needs to be addressed. Our practice-driven approach involving products, models, objects and visualisations has resulted in a vision for an ‘internet of things’ that places designed things in the centre.

A hands-on approach has allowed a re-evaluation of RFID technology through the lens of design, and communication of this in design-focused language. Through a process of making, evaluation and communicating a number of artefacts and an emergent design vocabulary is being built, that talks to the needs and concerns of interaction and industrial designers.

These making, sketching and visualisation processes may also be important for the design of emerging technologies in general. With the increasing implementation of networked and interactive technology in consumer electronics, aspects of digital and physical design will increasingly need to be addressed by both industrial and interaction designers. Physical design is a critical part of the way in which tangible technologies are experienced, and by allowing design processes to guide product development we are able to approach emerging technology in a plausible and understandable way.

Full paper

‘Designing with RFID’ is being presented at Tangible & Embedded Interaction 2009 in Cambridge UK.

The paper contains a full account of the product review, the sketching, making and modelling, and conclusions around the design for RFID objects. The paper from the Tangible and Embedded Interaction conference will be available at the ACM digital library. You can also download the full PDF here.

Related things:

Tangible and Embedded Interaction 2009 We recentl...
RFID and unique physical form Lisa Smith...
Playful augmented products This is a ...

Playful augmented products workshop

2009-02-16T15:13:59Z

Interaction Design students at the Oslo School of Architecture & Design participated in a three-day Touch workshop where the brief was to design a playful, exploratory or characterful RFID interface. The emphasis of this workshop was on exploring the relationship between material, tactile properties of physical objects and digital interaction through RFID and required material experiments made to a high level.

This video shows some of the student’s process, starting with a conceptual session where ideas were sketched on paper and enacted through props. A process of making followed in the wood, plastics and clay workshops where the products took shape. Finally the products are presented as experience prototypes.

Le Chef by Marius and Bilal. A product designed for the kitchen that ‘licks’ various ingredients and suggests recipes.

Poke a pig by Kjetil and Erik. A wooden pig that plays different sounds to different types of attention: a hand for petting, an apple for feeding, etc.

Star pillows by Elisa and Ane. Explored soft materials and audiovisual content for relaxing.

Musicology by Ingrid and Silje. Explored modular shapes and objects for playing playlists from last.fm.

Mood cup by Miray and Ruben. Personalised (or customisable) cups that play back different playlists from last.fm.

Musicframes by Astrid and Stine. A wall of photos each linked to a music file that has personal meaning connected to the photo.

The farm by Karin and Brynjar. An ‘Interactive storytelling space for children’ where animals crossing a river trigger sounds or audiobook content.

Related things:

Playful augmented products This is a ...
More RFID-based products A Dutch co...
Teaching Touch II For the ...

Touch. Or sight, smell, taste

2009-02-13T16:28:41Z

The dominant metaphor for RFID interaction is touch where the gesture of touching or the contact between two objects is seen as a suitable model for near field interactions. However touch may be a limiting metaphor for RFID interfaces, in that it doesn’t suggest the possible range of interactions that RFID affords.

Three recent Touch projects suggest different senses as metaphors for physical RFID interaction:

Silje Søftings Pling Plong project uses an eye as the ‘reader’ of audiobook tokens.

Bilal Chaudhry & Marius Johansen’s project Le Chef uses a huge tongue giving the appearance that the chef character is tasting the food tokens that are placed on it.

Sara Johansson’s Sniff project uses the nose of a toy dog as the reader, giving the impression that the dog is sniffing token objects.

Are these other human senses more successful than touch in creating the right kind of metaphors for RFID interaction? Can we use human senses as metaphors to create a richer design space for RFID, or does the inspiration have to come from somewhere else?

Related things:

Re/Touch: Inspiring touch-related interaction design One of t...
Sniff wins prize for ‘Design for all’ Sara Johan...
Touch as interaction medium This is a ...

Playful augmented products

2009-02-13T14:10:34Z

This is a design brief, one of many themes that the Touch project is investigating. It extends an older brief Playful RFID with an emphasis on exploring material and experience prototyping.

Last week Interaction Design students at the Oslo School of Architecture & Design participated in a Touch workshop where the brief was to design a playful, exploratory or characterful RFID interface. The emphasis of this workshop was on exploring the relationship between digital interaction through RFID and the material properties of physical objects.

The brief

This week we will be working with a technology called Radio Frequency IDentification or RFID. RFID is exciting for industrial and interaction designers because it is a cheap and simple technology that allows us to build quite advanced gestural and tangible interfaces. When an RFID tag is in the range of an RFID reader (usually about 10cm) it communicates a tiny amount of information, a simple short code that lets the computer know that it is present. This is usually used to identify an object, person or animal, for instance to open a door, to find the owner of a lost pet, to pay for a ticket, or to know if a product that is passing out of a shop door has been paid for.

RFID tags are tiny, fairly cheap and don’t require a battery. They can be embedded inside all sorts of materials easily and without much effort. RFID readers are also small and flat, enabling them to be embedded easily below surfaces such as wood, concrete or plastics. The only physical limitations are metal and water, which absorb radio signals and stop RFID systems from working effectively.

Designing playful RFID

You will design a physical interface that involves a reader, a few tags and a Tikitag application.

Industrial and interaction designer’s haven’t been working with RFID for very long. So RFID systems are usually dull and lifeless, with ordinary plastic or paper tags and flat plastic readers. There needs to be more experimentation with the physical aspects of RFID interfaces in applications such as toys, appliances and domestic interfaces. There may be great playful applications of the technology that have not yet been explored.

You must design the physical relationship between the tag, the reader and the resulting action. Your objects must be finished with quality and material choices that match the intended use and context of the application (such as waterproof plastics for the bathroom or turned wood for the coffeetable).

Methods

You will each choose a different application from our list of Tikitag applications. Sketch out ten ways in which the tags and the reader in that application should look, feel and behave. What kind of approach is most suitable? Should it be characterful, understated, loud? What other kinds of objects should it reference? List out the kind of materials that would be suitable for such an application.

Design one set of tags and a reader for your application. Think about size, shape, durability, surface texture, and the relationship between the reader and the tag. How do the objects relate to each other? How do the objects and the reader fit together? What metaphors and associations can you draw upon, are they like keys, do they encourage swiping, caressing, tickling? How will a user manipulate the objects? Will they have to place them in certain positions or sequences to achieve different results?

Advertising contactless technology

2008-11-06T23:38:37Z

This spot advertises the new contactless barclaycard that uses RFID technology to make contactless payments.

The ad was made by BBH London with creative director Pete Bradly (more info and making of videos). Interesting to see a one minute commercial explain touch/contactless technology.

No related posts.

RFID and physical social networks

2008-09-30T15:57:15Z

Poken is offering a physical networking platform, with physical, RFID-based objects that plug into a PC via USB (where have we heard that before?)

A Poken is a connected business card, when you meet people you want to connect to, you touch their ‘poken’ and get added to their Open Social network.

Just tap your poken to theirs, activating Poken’s wireless technology. The poken “high-four” lets you share your online social network profile(s) instantly. At any computer with web access the poken hand pulls out of the body, revealing a USB connector. Insert the poken USB connector into the computer’s USB port to upload your new contacts to the Poken web database.

They have a few interactions that are intended to deal with different social situations, I wonder how they came up with these ‘modes’:

“If you simply touch your poken to another poken without having pressed the palm button, your “Normal” identity is shared. ‘Discreet’ mode requires a double- click of the poken palm. This mode allows you to poken without actually sharing your profile, if you have selected the ‘Ghost’ option or to share a limited profile of your choosing. To be as discreet as possible there is no visible lighting effect. You can, however, check for a little green light that will afterwards flash inside the poken by removing the poken body from the hand. A lengthy press (more than two seconds) of the palm button of your poken will make the hand glow different colors for ten (10) seconds.”

So they are attempting to create culture around the product, of ‘high fours’, ‘light shows’ and discreet ‘ghosting’. But behaviours in social life are so sensitive and context dependent—particularly around the exchange of contact information—it’s hard to see how they will be able to influence them through software or hardware. On the other hand, these limited behaviours might just take off like Tamagotchi or Lighter.

While it’s good that they are taking an open approach to managing contacts (using Open Social and an API), where they can plug into almost any other social network platform, the physical interface presents much harder problems. There is an enormous effort to reach the critical point at which cluster effects can take place, and many users will feel the full brunt of the ‘first fax machine’ problem.

We are currently spoilt by abundant network connectivity, compressing time and space. But the traditional limitations of the physical world such as scarcity and distance affect all physically situated interfaces, and design approaches that deal with these limitations will increasingly be needed.

Related things:

RFID peripherals Plug and p...
Thoughts on Nokia’s NFC developments On April 1...
RFID and unique physical form Lisa Smith...

More RFID-based products

2008-09-30T15:59:55Z

A Dutch company, Swinxs is developing a physical RFID-based console with RFID wristbands for children. They claim to be encouraging physical activities and ‘stimulating imagination’.

The console includes versions of Tag, multiple Quiz games, Hide and Seek and Charades. The base-station connects to the internet for uploading scores and downloading content.

The movie on their home page demonstrates some of the simple game mechanics.

It seems that many of the games are about measurement, tracking and timing of otherwise person-to-person negotiated activities. In this way the product becomes more about tagging people and measuring their activity, particuarly when combined with the wristband attached to the body rather than tagged objects.

This might sound insignificant, but the difference between tagged objects and tagged people is quite pertinent, particularly as this is intended as a playful, learning environment for children. The kinds of learnings that are achieved through a digital system that tracks you rather than the objects you manipulate could be very different.

Related things:

RFID peripherals Plug and p...
iPhone RFID: object-based media This is a ...
Playful augmented products workshop Interactio...

Internet of Things booklet

2008-10-03T19:51:30Z

Rob van Kranenburg is creating what looks like an interesting critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID:

“The Internet of Things is the second issue in the series of Network Notebooks. Rob van Kranenburg examines what impact RFID, and other systems, will have on our cities and our wider society.”

Edit The book is now available as both a free booklet and downloadable PDF.

Related things:

RFID & the internet of things Julian Ble...
Rob van Kranenburg at ‘How I learned to love RFID’ On the 20t...
Alternative RFID infrastructures This is a ...

Touch

iPhone RFID: object-based media

A lens for media

Media objects

Going further

Related things:

Sonmicro RFID Processing library

Related things:

Wireless in the world

Related things:

Touch at Kreative Oslo

Related things:

From ubicomp to service design

Related things:

ikTag and RFID at ETech conferences

Related things:

RFID sniffer workshop

Related things:

Pling Plong

Related things:

Tangible and Embedded Interaction 2009

Related things:

Re/Touch: Inspiring touch-related interaction design

The re/touch website

About the project

Related things:

Designing with RFID

Product review

Form experiments

Literal associations

A form vocabulary for RFID

Conclusions

Full paper

Related things:

Playful augmented products workshop

Related things:

Touch. Or sight, smell, taste

Related things:

Playful augmented products

The brief

Designing playful RFID

Methods

References

Previous ‘Touch’ student prototypes

Related things:

Advertising contactless technology

RFID and physical social networks

Related things:

More RFID-based products

Related things:

Internet of Things booklet

Related things: