Us Artefactians regularly dabble in new user experiences outside of our daily client work that explore areas such as unfamiliar target audiences, new technologies, new UI mechanisms, or themes that spark our curiosity. As part of our experimentation platform, we recently added a shiny new multitouch display to our toolbox and were quickly inspired to set it up and start experimenting with it. Here’s what we did…
Musical Forest: an experiment in play and discovery
We have been doing a lot of work for a variety of kid age groups, so we decided to explore multitouch solutions for kids ages 3-5 years old for our first experiment with the new display. With this age group in mind, we designed and built a variety of features that helped facilitate “play” and “discovery” as the experience themes, invited kids to play, and asked them what they thought.
The experience
We set out to build a “Musical Forest” that included a variety of single-touch and multi-touch interactions. We wanted to focus on playful colors, sound and simple graphics that enticed our audience to play and discover what it can do.
As a result, we built a few main features:
A fruit tree that wiggled, popped, and enabled you to flick the fruit off of the tree.
Flowers that opened, closed, and encouraged you to “play” their petals like musical instruments
Background trees that allowed you to drag them around and discover the “fruit people” on them
Sound input, that allowed you to make the fruit fall off the trees if you increased the volume of your voice
Our learnings
Kids aren’t afraid to dive in
The kids that we interviewed were not afraid to dive in and start exploring the life-sized display from the get-go. Annet, one of the children we spoke to who is 4 years old, was excited at first glance and began to tap on the screen from the moment she saw it. She quickly started tapping every element that she could see with very limited hesitation.
Young kids don’t rely on multitouch
We originally set out to explore multitouch features such as two finger zoom. However, the kids who used our experiment never even attempted to use multitouch, so they never discovered these features. The only time multitouch was “technically” used was when multiple kids were using the system at the same time. Individually, however, they were interacting with the system using only 1 finger or their hand as a single touch point.
Kids love sound
Sound was used in a variety of ways in the experiment. One of the successes was using playful sounds as interaction feedback along with visual feedback to help the kids discover interactions. For example, when Annet tapped on a fruit element, it made a popping noise. She giggled and “popped” many fruit elements until she discovered that they could be dragged and thrown around.
The experiment also used the kids’ voice as input. The volume of their voices determined the size of the fruit. And, if the kids held their voice at a certain volume for a period of time, it would make all the fruit fall off the tree. This was wildly successful and one of the kids favorite features. In fact, they played with this feature throughout the entire session.
Kids are physical
Kids like to move around and use large physical gestures. During the interview, Annet would periodically stand up, then sit down, then stand up again. She also discovered that when she turned around, she could use her butt to “tap” on items and did this periodically throughout the interview.
Young kids like to learn from other kids
The youngest of the interviewees, Moritz, was 2 ½. At first, he was not as aggressive as the older kids in discovering what the system could do, but was very receptive to learning from them. For example, Annet would show Moritz how to use loud voices to make the fruit fall off the tree and she would show him how to make music with the flower petals. He would mimic her interactions, laugh, and enjoy the reaction. Ultimately, he was more apt to discover new things with Annet by his side showing him the ropes.
If you haven’t already been checkin’ up on us, then you might have missed a couple of updates on how things are doing with our internal project focusing on retail shopping experiences. We’ve wrapped up our research and concepting and are now making plans to take it a step further. Maybe a prototype? Maybe just a movie? We’ll keep you post. Until then, you can read up on our last few entries. If you have any comments or feedback, let us know. There’s been a lot of lessons learned from the project and we’re anxious to hear your thoughts too.
The #1 winner is: Barnes & Noble! This is great information if you were ever curious about leading brands in their respective industries. Check it out!
This might remind you of Microsoft’s Photosynth, but the concept is slightly different. Adobe blends images that are compositional, and semantically (tagged) related and stitches them into an endless canvas. The photos that are stitched together therefore don’t need to be of the same object in the way Photosynth was implemented. However, Photosynth does allow you to create 3D objects and pivot around it in space.
Infinite Images takes any collection of tagged images, not necessarily from the same location at all, and stitches them together in 3D by analyzing their composition and the semantics of their tags (“sky” is above “ground,” for example).
MINI Cooper has just released a new advertisement that uses AR technology. People can see a full 3D models of a MINI on their computer screen using a web cam and IE. (ActiveX required)
We are no strangers to touch based interactions, or pen-based either, so it’s great to see Johnny Lee and others continue pushing the development of the perfectly useful input method.
a new application that runs on Google Android - lets you view the world through Wikipedia-tinted glasses. Simply point your mobile device’s camera at your surroundings and Wikitude will display an augmented reality version of it on the screen - a version complete with information about the buildings and other landmarks you can see, sourced directly from Wikipedia!
We were recently visited by a student at University of Washington’s School of Art’s Design Studies program, Timothy Damon, who is currrently engaged in a design dialogue around user experience design methodologies and how they are put into practice. He’s particularly interested in how we (Artefact) integrate experimentation into the design process when designing complex software solutions with fast-paced and high-demand clients.
With tape recorder in hand, he spent an afternoon with us discussing our process, our platform for cultivating ideas, and our plans for the future. Some of the questions he asked included:
Where do the initial ideas come from? How do you cultivate them?
How does your experimental lab work integrate and influence the design process?
When/Where/How are these experimental projects created?
Are these experiments used to further client work?
Do you feel this process helps you improve the design processes when working with clients?
He then wrote an article about his visit that he used to share with his class and to generate dialogue around our approach and processes. Here’s Damon’s article resulting from his visit:
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Article written by Timothy Damon
Examining future possibilities
Walking into the workspace at Artefact, one of Seattle’s newest top-clout design firms, communicates a sense of focused excitement that usually comes in much smaller doses. Perhaps it’s the setting sun over Puget Sound combined with the attractive soft reflections of cinema sized Apple displays at each desk. Or maybe watching people bouncing from desk to desk crouching, pointing out items of interest and talking excitedly over projects on-screen that make the atmosphere incredibly inviting to someone interested in knowing what it’s like to innovate and create things that in turn make the people that use them excited on the exact same level. But the most interesting part of the work that is done here doesn’t even take place directly under a client’s watchful eye.
In helping develop and build new experiences in interaction design from Microsoft’s World Telescope application to websites that let a user navigate as though walking through a forest of product choices, the designers at Artefact simultaneously engage themselves in another world: this one. In other words, rather than place themselves in an inward-focused creative environment where outside exploration ends after researching competitor’s features and techniques and conducting some focus groups on a product, designers at Artefact choose to form active dialogue with the creative community. This is especially evident in the realm of DIY culture, where one can find some of the most incredible innovations waiting to be taken further and developed to (perhaps) useful ends. In choosing to keep a very active blog and working on and openly sharing and discussing experimental projects with the public, Artefact is hoping to put themselves in a favorable position when it comes to developing and applying new ideas and applications for everyone to experience in their work. This incredible gesture seems to be doing nothing but good for the small firm, allowing them to build an arsenal of useful tools and techniques that can in turn be worked directly into later client projects. This takes the time to focus on exploring new ideas away from the current paid project and allows more time for that project to develop fully while simultaneously allotting time for digressive ideas to have their place and be explored, rather than be lost to their rejection under paid design work. Effectively, Artefact has redesigned the Design process for themselves, and under the new system, ideas to be kept are never lost.
The woman spurring on the majority of Artefact’s experiments is Jennifer Darmour, one of the User Experience Designers at Artefact. Jennifer and her colleagues, along with Josh Hinds, who was also present to talk about the firm’s experiments in NUI’s (natural user interfaces) all have impressive and diverse training and goals in what they wish to accomplish. Bringing these distinct ideas together has made for beautiful, well thought out solutions in client projects and a series of incredibly forward-thinking experiments examining what the future of human interaction with computers may be. It is clear by the enthusiasm with which Jennifer and Josh present the methods of research and building prototypes here that Artefact is an exciting environment for creative minds to see their plans to fruition.
Experimentation in the design process
Luckily for the designers, Artefact’s clients demand unique and useful experiences that bring complex information (including the known universe itself in the case of World Telescope) and movement to order, and in a stimulating and meaningful way. Interaction design is a region of the discipline that requires an ongoing knowledge of both the latest software and hardware possibilities, even as they develop. Artefact has all this, and something a little extra, the realization that there are people developing these ideas all over the world, fashioning possible solutions and tools by way of open source software and public postings encouraging others to continue developing work that one person has taken as far as time or creative capacity permits.
DIY multitouch on the cheap
For example, in setting out to create a DIY multitouch table similar to Microsoft’s Surface project, designers poured over thousands of pages of web forums on the subject, enlisting the help of all the previously posted material to guide the build process of both a one dollar table consisting of nothing more than a sheet of glass, a cardboard box, a seven year old netcam, and a sheet of paper, and a one thousand dollar version housed in a wood frame utilizing more materials and allowing users to experiment with many more gestures at a small fraction of the price of a Microsoft Surface table. Sites such a Make Magazine and innovators such as Johnny Chung Lee (made famous for his work hacking Wii remotes to create new types of interactive interfaces) offer and are seen as a real source for ways to rework technology and use it to help navigate a problem.
This embrace of the DIY world represents an incredibly intelligent move on the part of Artefact. It is in this way that Artefact conducts its experimental work, cultivating previous ideas that designers wish to pursue, building dialogue around these ideas, and finally setting up projects to explore these ideas on a full-scale prototype level with surprisingly cheap and readily available technologies and materials.
Another example of exploration in natural user interfaces is Artefact’s “Body as a Mouse” project, featuring an image projected on a screen that be “navigated” by walking either closer or farther away from the screen, or walking left or right to pan the image. This was accomplished once again with the help of open source software and proximity sensors, which were calibrated to react within a range of movement determined by boundaries set within the software. Further experiments in this series feature the ability to draw in space with a light recognized by a computer, allowing users to create images on screen by motioning in thin air with the light. In the next step of this experiment, designers then explored the ability to manipulate drawn objects with another light using gestures similar to those already used in multitouch interfaces on Iphones and Macbooks.
"Light as Mouse" experiment
An arsenal of possibities for future problems
Not only does Artefact look to the future in terms of barely-discovered technologies and tools of discovery, but in order to see these experiments come alive, they conduct all of them independently of client work. Jennifer spoke of how Artefact designers budget time to work on ideas that otherwise wouldn’t get the attention they deserve while working within the time constraints of a paid project: “To carve out this experimental lab, it’s all (conducted) on our off hours which we don’t really get that much of, so it’s weekends and evenings and between client projects (that these experiments take place).” She went on to talk about how energizing and exciting it has been for everyone to actively participate in these projects, creating what they all refer to as a playground and an experimental platform where everyone can dive into innovative solutions around natural user interfaces. The level of commitment and passion oozes into the room as Josh and Jennifer speak over how long each project took, what problems they ran into along the way, and how rewarding it has been for each of those involved to exercise their creativity without feeling the burden of a timeline or the opinions of the person paying you to create a project for them. In implementing these experiments, Artefact is effectively giving themselves an arsenal or reservoir for possible solutions to future problems, and in doing this they’re simultaneously saving themselves time under paid work that can now be even more focused on the project at hand while giving themselves a selection of already-developed solutions that take far less time to adapt to a project than if they were being dreamt up and implemented then and there. This is innovation at it’s best, not only is the firm producing successful work, they are rethinking the entire process, designing it, organizing it in an even more efficient matter, making the economy of ideas in the firm substantially more efficient.
On another level, keeping up the practice of experimenting and prototyping is an excellent way to maintain a designer’s creative and productive stamina, along with helping everyone improve their skills on presenting prototypes to a client, which is another skill the company actively strives for. Bill Buxton, a well-known pioneer in the realm of natural interfaces and interaction design as a whole is also famous for his ability to communicate ideas more quickly, cheaply, and thoroughly than most would imagine possible in this business.
Artefact saw fit to have him come in and teach them all a thing or two about rapid prototyping, which may include miming how an interface would operate, quickly “hacking” items together to represent a completely new instrument and/or usage, or faking a movement or gesture within software by tilting a laptop while simultaneously moving the mouse on the side of the screen to get a desired effect of moving a map or manipulating an object onscreen. These skills are constantly maintained by the experimental process and once again directly effect the paid work by enabling effective ways to show a client how something will function without having to actually build it.
A greenhouse for sprouting design possibilities
Predictions for Artefact’s future are optimistic at the very least, the company has already taken cues from some of it’s experimental work in a web interface for Nau Clothing Company that is in many ways similar to the moving environment depicted in the Body as a Mouse experiment, but the future will undoubtedly produce a host of client work with influences and solutions directly spawned from the experiments. It may be hard to chart exactly how these make their way into final projects, but imagining scenarios in which there would have to be research done that even remotely relates to the work done in the experimental labs would reveal an idea of just how much time the company can possibly save in the future, and how far ahead they are in developing what may turn out to be the perfect solution for an incoming client. From both a design and business standpoint, Artefact is innovating and thinking ahead both in the physical development of projects and the very process by which these are created and cultivated. Coupling this with their direct connection to public via an extensive blog and even an internet TV cast, it is clear that those that work here are putting forth their best effort and actively thinking about what it means and what can be done to be on the cutting edge of the design world in terms of output and development of what will be next in their field, and then sharing the good news with anyone and asking for even more input! It is a truly impressive undertaking, and should see the young, yet already well-established firm on it’s way to becoming iconic in the design world and perhaps even in the mainstream. In a town where sustainability is of huge public interest, it’s no wonder that companies are taking the idea to the level of developing systems of sustainable idea cultivation. Imagine if you will, a world where no good idea is lost in the brainstorm, where instead they are stored and fed and grown for later use and eventually “planted” wherever they may be needed. This is Artefact, greenhouse for sprouting design possibilities.
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Timothy Damon is a student at University of Washington’s School of Art in the Design Studies program. His class, Design Case Studies, is led by Professor Dominic Muren and is currently investigating design firms around the country that are innovators and cultivators of new design processes.
Ivan Tihienko had a vision where the world was exactly like Second Life. Actually, his vision was really about designing a new interface that went beyond on screen displays. His final project at the Bezalel academy of Arts and Design is a life size projection of commands and contextual information, which can be initiated by hand or foot gestures. It’s quite nice to see it’s potential for way finding and gaming purposes. However, the keyboard part is still up in the air for me. I’m not sure I’d want the rest of the world see my emails to my mum about her trip to Barcelona, or if they even want to bother with that either. His work is still very inspiring and maybe we’ll see something like this someday!
Join us for our monthly IXDA meeting - hosted by Microsoft’s Office Labs on Microsoft’s main campus - Building 33.
This month’s topic is Lessons from Game Design
This is a chance to learn where the fields of interaction design and game design overlap. It’s a chance for IxD to learn more about how games challenge, reward, and engage players. We’ll hear how game designers use prototyping and sketching (Daniel Cook), how usability techniques are used to fine-tune casual game play (Mac Smith), and how narrative and storytelling immerse players in experiences (Mark Long).
Details
Thursday October 23, 2008 at 7:00pm
Microsoft Convention Center - Building 33
16070 NE 36th Way
Redmond, Washington 98052
This post has been long overdue, but we have good reason for it, which I’ll cover in a second. First and foremost, I’d like to share a couple thoughts with you on the things that Bill demonstrated to us that day that really resonated with the group: you can sell the design by mimicking the experience on the spot, and that the best way to know how something works is by making it yourself (even if someone else has done it). Together, these examples make a great case on the power of prototyping and experimentation as a way to understand things.
For the uninitiated, Bill Buxton has been in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) arena for some time exploring the various ways people may interact with software experiences through input methods like touch, pen, etc. In other words, he has helped advance the understanding of all things cooler than the mouse, and more.
Selling Design by Example
Here’s a scenario: You’re in a review meeting, and your client isn’t quite bought off on the idea yet. They didn’t quite understand what a “synchronous multi directional touch based media reconfigurator” was, but the idea sounds cool enough! So how do you get them to really get it the same way you do? Mimic the experience, or really, live prototype. A live prototype enables you as a communicator of ideas and insight to demonstrate the vision by having someone participate in an activity that resembles the concept. The example Buxton makes is by pretending you’re Charles Xavier and you can move the mouse by waving your hand . While they waved their arms in the air, you would move your mouse according to their gestures. Yes, it sounds a bit crude, but the aha! moment is completely worth it.
Another example would be demonstrating different ways of doing collaborative white boarding. Bill asked yours truly to stand on the other side of our opaque doors. We would both write with dry erase markers at the same time. Surprisingly, we did not conflict with each other while writing and ended up with a nice image of a man and his dog smoking a cigar. The idea here is that as other people join the session to collaborate, their shadows provide enough feedback to indicate their position. This reduces the uncertainty in where and how people will work together in a shared spac;e especially thinking about this in terms of remote collaboration.
Now, this isn’t something that you do as a planned activity, but a skill that you become familiar with incase you need that extra bit of push to get things in the right direction. The beauty of this is how low tech it can be and how easy it becomes to learn about an experience without having to do so much work up front. This concept leads into the next idea of learning by doing.
MAKE Experiences
This isn’t exactly a new lesson learned, but a great one to remember. In the business of designing new experiences, our role is to be experts in that space. Sometimes the best way to really understand how that might actually work out is by simulating it right in front of you. Think of this as a live prototype, except you are afforded a little more time to play things out and use resources that have qualities that make for a better analogy. Those tools are coming out in a grassroots fashion where the Wiimote and all inclusive touch enabling projectors are becoming affordable components to hack and build on. We no longer need to wait for some company to commercialize the technology. We can go to the store and pick up the pieces and learn about emerging technology by being a part of the invention.
Closing Thoughts
For the most part, he discussed touch input and technologies, which is quite relevant to our times today. As the greater population familiarize themselves with touch enabled software beyond just the ATM, it is important that we continue to experiment and learn best practices regarding the various applications they will be engaged in. Luckily, we are becoming more fluent in methods that enable us to get to answers much quicker, without the need to break the bank.
The visit really helped reinvigorate the inventor in all of us. Everyone needs to continue to play and make things that don’t really result in anything but an understanding about the intricacies of different experiences. There are inexplicable things that we gain by practicing with our other senses. So we want to thank you, Bill, again for talking to us and sharing your spirit of getting down and dirty. We’ve taken that drive to continue our work with Frontier projects and the nifty little things that are coming out of it (link to DIY table). Now you see why we’ve been so busy getting this post out!
by Jennifer Darmour, posted September 4th, 2009
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