http://www.acid.net.au/ News from ACID, the world of interaction and user experience design, and related topics. en Mon, 30 Mar 2009 03:43:00 +1000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss webmaster@acid.net.au (Jason Pickersgill) webmaster@acid.net.au (Jason Pickersgill) RSS 1440 http://www.acid.net.au/images/feed-icon.png http://www.acid.net.au/ http://johnnyholland.org/2009/11/03/the-social-life-of-visualization-part-3-interpretation/ n our previous article on Johnny we outlined the second stage of The Social Life of Visualization, which was the capture stage. If you missed reading it, it dealt with creating an interface that allowed a user to upload a piece of data, create a visualization that expressed an idea about the underlying dataset, and provide the visualization with an identity so that it can exist within an object-centred social network. This allows other people to join in discussions around it. In this article we outline the philosophies and design implications of the interpretation phases such as the notion of sensemaking. We also outline how people can use a data visualization as an interface to explore and make realizations about their data using interactive techniques like sliders and annotations as they go. http://bx.businessweek.com/interaction-design/view?url=http%3A%2F%2Fc.moreover.com%2Fclick%2Fhere.pl%3Fr2295830125%26f%3D9791 Recent D-School Grads. Graduates of interdisciplinary design programs are putting their skills to work as innovation consultants, researchers, and corporate strategists. Here are 21 design thinkers out to change the world. http://bx.businessweek.com/interaction-design/view?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kickerstudio.com%2Fblog%2F2009%2F08%2Fdesigning-for-interaction-creating-innovative-applications-and-devices%2F Designing for Interaction: Creating Innovative Applications and Devices - Second Edition out now. The second edition contains new chapters on Design Strategy; Design Research Analysis; Brainstorming and Design Principles; and Prototyping and Development. http://bx.businessweek.com/interaction-design/view?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bridging-the-gap.com%2Fhow-to-create-a-user-interface-specification%2F A long, long time ago while working on a web-based product, a colleague of mine came up with this idea of writing a user interface or screen specification. The purpose of this specification is to detail out the rules behind a specific page. Sure, this is more “implementation” than “requirements” but the fact is when you are building a complex web application (and, I imagine, any complex application) the way a specific page is laid out and, just as important, what data elements belong where, is very important. http://bx.businessweek.com/interaction-design/view?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.business-strategy-innovation.com%2F2009%2F09%2Fdesign-thinking-for-your-writing.html William Bostick over at Core77 wrote a terrific post called "How (Not) To Write Like a Designer." Design thinking is how I prefer to think about my style of problem solving. I'm not alone...IDEO and Stanford's D School coined the term, and Tim Brown's blog is all about it. But what I liked about this particular post was that it talked about writing as design. In other words, writing as designer thinking and problem solving. And anything that reads, "...you work with contraints to find elegant solutions to complex problems..." is sure to catch my eye. http://bx.businessweek.com/interaction-design/view?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smashingmagazine.com%2F2009%2F06%2F23%2F10-ui-design-patterns-you-should-be-paying-attention-to%2F Design patterns were first described in the 1960s by Christopher Alexander, an architect who noticed that many things in our lives happen according to patterns. He adapted his observations to his work and published many findings on the topic. Since then, design patterns have found their place in many areas of our lives, and can be found in the design and development of user interfaces as well. http://bx.businessweek.com/interaction-design/view?url=http%3A%2F%2Firevolution.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F06%2F10%2Fpart-5-data-visualization-and-interactive-interface-design%2F This is Part 5 of 7 of the highlights from “Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics.” Please see this post for an introduction to the study and access to the other 6 parts.. http://gigaom.com/2009/03/28/pushbutton-open-source-flash-game-engine/ When it comes to gaming, the most popular platform isn't the Nintendo Wii, but Flash, the interactive browser plugin that now boasts 99 percent market penetration on nearly a billion PCs. (Flash game advertising network Mochi Media currently counts 100 million players across its system alone.) That huge audience has led to a lot of games, but most of them are rudimentary at best, the product of amateur enthusiasts working with limited resources. Now there's PushButton, a Flash game engine from a team of seasoned game developers that's free, open source, and associated with an innovative revenue model that should help spur its adoption. http://jjg.net/ia/memphis/ Transcript of the closing plenary address delivered March 22, 2009 at ASIS&T IA Summit 2009 in Memphis, Tennessee. http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=1758&tag=nl.e019 If you're looking for evidence that technology investments can make a difference in your company's success, a survey made available by The Economist Intelligence Unit (and underwritten by Oracle) may help supply you with some ammunition for your argument. http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-1035_11-282421.html?tag=nl.e019 This week, the world's largest professionals-only game industry event, the 2009 Game Developers Conference, is attracting thousands of programmers, artists, producers, game designers, and developers. http://gigaom.com/2009/03/26/java-coming-soon-to-googles-app-engine/ Google will soon announce comprehensive support for the Java programming language on its Google App Engine (GAE) offering. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=102859 Are you a "digital collaborator," "ambivalent networker," or "drifting surfer?" Those are among the types of Internet users defined in a new Pew Research Center study that finds the mobile Web is playing a growing role in peoples' digital lives. http://gigaom.com/2009/03/24/investors-say-theres-still-money-to-be-made-in-games/ Traditional game publishing is no different than newspaper publishing, Gus Tai of Trinity Ventures said at a panel discussion held at the GamesBeat conference today in San Francisco. They are broken from a content standpoint, and they are broken from a distribution standpoint. It is the companies willing to step in and disrupt the status quo that Tai and his fellow venture capitalists want to invest in. http://gigaom.com/2009/03/24/can-onlive-really-overturn-the-gaming-industry/ Today everyone who follows the gaming industry is talking about OnLive, an upcoming service incubated by Rearden, the venture company of Web TV Founder Steve Perlman. The system, which streams high-end video games to pretty much any PC, Mac, or TV with a broadband connection, was set to be officially unveiled tonight during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, but was pushed out earlier after the embargo on it was broken last night. But can it really turn the gaming industry upside down, the way so many are predicting? http://www.coroflot.com/creativeseeds/2009/03/five_things_interaction_design.asp Shoddy economic future be damned; the past couple of years have been a rollicking time for Interaction Design. A brief attempt at summarizing the poorly-understood field on Creative Seeds last year began with the words "Hot, hot, hot," and things don't seem to be slowing down much, even as the job market as a whole collapses all around. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html This demo - from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry - was the buzz of TED. It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine "Minority Report" and then some. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/stefan_sagmeister_shares_happy_design.html Graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister takes the audience on a whimsical journey through moments of his life that made him happy - and notes how many of these moments have to do with good design. http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2009/id20090318_786470.htm?chan=innovation_innovation+%2B+design_top+stories In a Q&A, user experience director Irene Au explains how Google can manage design and consistency in its traditionally bottom-up culture. http://www.rethink-wireless.com/?article_id=1166 User experience. It is a broad and sometimes ambiguous term. To-date, the mobile industry has typically employed it to describe the graphical user interface (UI) of an application or device. However, despite the increasing frequency with which it is cited by the mobile business, user experience is something rather more complex than the way a product looks. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10199072-56.html To kick off its Mix conference, Microsoft went deep into its bench to find a speaker that could connect with the crowd of Web developers. Rather than start with a product pitch, Microsoft began the event with a speech from Bill Buxton, a computing pioneer who these days focuses on design for Microsoft research. http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/03/departing_googl.html Douglas Bowman, Visual Design Lead at Google, has decided to leave Google for an undisclosed opportunity. In a farewell note posted on his blog, he takes a swing at Google's data-centric, engineer-driven culture. http://www.mail-archive.com/spectre@mikrolisten.de/msg04695.html The symposium 'Positions in flux: On the changing role of the artist and institution in the networked society' will center on some of the major parameters for the current and future development of contemporary art. In particular it will reflect on the aspect of cultural sustainability of art projects, art and technology initiatives and art curating. Date: Friday, May 8th, 2009. Venue: Trouw Amsterdam Wibautstraat 131, Amsterdam. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/science/16visuals.html?_r=3 A new map of knowledge has been assembled by scientists at the research library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It is based on electronic data searches in which users moved from one journal to another, thus establishing associations between them. http://strukt.com/2009/struktable/ The Struktable is an interactive installation built by Strukt to develop multi-touch applications. It can be rented for events or permanent installations with custom software developed for individual needs. http://futureapplicationslab.blogspot.com/2009/03/postodoc-position-available.html A number of postdoctoral positions are available at the Interaction Design and Innovation Lab at SICS, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. The lab is closely associated with Mobile Life, a research centre at Stockholm University in cooperation with the telecom industry. http://www.artima.com/articles/dci_vision.html Object-oriented programming was supposed to unify the perspectives of the programmer and the end user in computer code: a boon both to usability and program comprehension. While objects capture structure well, they fail to capture system action. DCI is a vision to capture the end user cognitive model of roles and interactions between them. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd569755.aspx If you are designing a UI, you should consider creating personas to guide you. Personas are one of the basic tools of User Experience (UX) design. A persona is a description of a fictional person representing a user segment of the software you are developing. Of course, the word "fictional" applies to the person not the description; that should be as grounded in reality as possible. http://blogs.zdnet.com/collaboration/?p=431 Here we are again in another commercial nuclear winter - last time it was predominantly a tech bust, this time tech will be the engine that pulls us out of the recession. http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=1025 Justin James offers a roundup of Microsoft's major announcements from Mix 09, which include information about Internet Explorer 8, ASP.NET MVC 1.0, Silverlight 3 Beta 1, Expression Blend 3, WebPI, Azure, and .NET RIA Services. http://library.ixda.org/node/3 Robert Fabricant talks about Interaction Design as a practice beyond just computing technology. He gives examples of Interaction Design as far back as ancient history, all the way to a humanitarian project underway today. He shows that Interaction Design's primary medium is behavior, extending far past the high technology world into the realm of human behavior and relationships. http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://1237336901641&section=newsletter The Australian Information Industry Association has penned an open letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd requesting a "technology first" view of infrastructure investments related to the $42 billion economic stimulus package. http://www.misaustralia.com/multimedia/leadership.aspx?vidID=5733&catID=1&subCatID=0 Elaine Lennox, IBM vice president for dynamic infrastructure, discusses which industries can use smart infrastructure to create jobs, why some CIOs see the downturn as an opportunity and what the world can do with its 30 billion RFID tags. http://gigaom.com/2009/03/16/how-to-make-money-from-iphone-games/ Last year, a small Mac game developer called Pangea Software ported one of its titles to Apple's iPhone. Pangea's Brian Greenstone didn't expect to make much from the iPhone version of its arcade-style game Enigmo; he expected that the company might sell 10,000-20,000 units over its lifetime. It sold that amount in a single day, and from July 2008 to January 2009, it sold a total of 810,000 copies, earning a profit of $1.5 million, even after Apple took its 30 percent cut. http://www.army.mil/-news/2009/03/10/18020-immersive-technology-melds-hollywood-warrior-training/ Training technology development in California has demonstrated the possibility of having Soldiers walk through virtual environments that contain both real-world objects and simulated characters. http://almostdaniel.com/2009/03/15/journey-to-the-center-of-design/ It's time to retire the dogma of user-centered design. Instead, we should focus on informed design and build a reward system based on informed measurements: vision, feedback, and culture (three core UX attributes). http://computingforsustainability.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/visualising-sustainability/ How to convey the essence of sustainability in a few sketched lines? I'm wading through the net and my bookshelves to find examples of the genre. I'm looking for schematics of the notion of sustainability itself rather than the underlying science - greenhouse, carbon, meso climate process, ground water, etc for which there are a zillion diagrams. http://www.javascriptworkshop.com/2009/03/15/interview-with-chris-heilmann/ Christian Heilmann is an author of books such as Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax: From Novice to Professional and Web Development Solutions: Ajax, APIs, Libraries, and Hosted Services Made Easy, speaks all around world as an International Developer Evangelist for Yahoo!, and is an all around Web guru. http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/wanted-needed-ux There is plenty of hype about "Collaboration 2.0" at the moment, but the bugle is being blown too loudly, too soon. Take, for instance, the Enterprise Collaboration Panel at last year's Office 2.0 Conference. Most of the discussion was really about communication rather than collaboration, with only a hint that beyond forming a social network ("putting the water cooler inside the computer") there was still a lack of software that actually helped groups of people get the work done. What's missing from the discussion is any formulation of what the process of collaboration entails; there's no model from which collaborative applications could arise. If we can figure out a model then we in the UX community should be able to make a significant contribution to it. http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/3d-games-with-canvas-and-raycasting-part-2/ This is my second article about creating Wolfenstein-like games with JavaScript, DOM and HTML 5 canvas. In this article I'm first going to improve on the codebase I've already built, optimizing the rendering process to gain better performance and making the collision detection between the player and the walls better. http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/creating-pseudo-3d-games-with-html-5-can-1/ With the increase in browser performance in recent times it has become easier to implement games in JavaScript beyond simple games like Tic-Tac-Toe. We no longer need to use Flash to do cool effects and, with the advent of the HTML5 Canvas element, creating snazzy looking web games and dynamic graphics is easier than ever before. http://designreviver.com/tips/10-things-they-dont-teach-you-in-design-school/ I had a great time in design school, I was constantly learning and surrounded by lots of like minded people. However, after five years of freelancing as a graphic designer, I've learned many new things. The following list is the top ten things that I had to learn the hard way. http://www.billbuxton.com/ Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, has made uncountable contributions to the fields of human-computer interaction, computer graphics and the application of technology to design, filmmaking and music. He is a relentless advocate for innovation, design, and - especially - the appropriate consideration of human values, capacity, and culture in the conception, implementation, and use of new products and technologies. http://www.strategist.org.uk/technology/sxsw-2009-derek-powacek-designing-for-the-wisom-of-crowds/ People are often dumb, so how can crowds be wise? James Surowiecki laid the groundwork in his book, "The Wisdom of Crowds." In this solo presentation, Derek Powazek will apply those ideas to the web, concentrating on how to design websites that empower people to work together to create something truly awesome. http://gigaom.com/2009/03/13/at-sxsw-location-awareness-is-the-new-black/ The annual SXSW Festival is on, and this year I am surprised by the number of location-aware mobile services being launched in Austin, Texas, many of them for Apple's iPhone. http://gigaom.com/2009/03/11/for-virtual-startups-vc-funds-are-aplenty/ If there is an economic crisis, then it isn't impacting any of the startups making virtual goods, online games or virtual worlds. In just the last month alone, three companies have raised mega-millions from venture capitalists. http://www.abc.net.au/tv/seriousgames/ Screen Australia and ABC TV have partnered in an initiative to support the development of three games and the production of one game. http://www.v21.com.au/ AIMIA Victoria's inaugural annual conference View 21: The New Business of Media aims to enable Victorian businesses to capitalise on the constant redefinition of content and delivery; advertising and entertainment; consumer and creator; platforms and services. V21 positions itself at the intersection of communication, content and technology. It identifies the challenges of the coming decade, draws on the lessons of the past decade and offers businesses strategies for survival and success. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/theelementsofsocialarchitecture A List Apart presents a shortened and edited excerpt from the second edition of "Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web". http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/02/deconstructing-analysis-techniques/ Analysis is that oft-glossed over, but extremely important step in the research process that sits between observation (data gathering) and our design insights or recommendations. In many respects, analysis is crucial to realizing the value of our research since good analysis can salvage something from bad research, but the converse is not so true. This is where the literature tends to fall a little silent, jumping over the analysis techniques straight to a discussion of how best to document and communicate the findings from analysis. This article seeks to begin to redress that imbalance by breaking down the analysis black box into its major sub-techniques. http://searchengineland.com/dr-teena-moody-chatting-about-our-brains-on-google-16728 UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior is is conducting a number of interesting fMRI studies looking at the impact of technology on our neural networks, including how internet searching activates different parts of the brain. http://earth2tech.com/2009/03/08/green-social-network-startups-tap-competition-to-fight-climate-change/ Can the power of social networks on the web be leveraged effectively to fight climate change? That's a question a lot of companies - from startups to Yahoo to Facebook - are wondering, and it's still very unclear. But the uncertainty isn't stopping young firms like Carbonrally and Climate Culture from working on new deals and projects that leverage competition to encourage users to cut energy consumption and fight climate change. http://www.news.qut.edu.au/cgi-bin/WebObjects/News.woa/wa/goNewsPage?newsEventID=25075 QUT research is set to receive another boost following the announcement of 15 new fellowships under the Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellowship program. http://www.dustinkirk.com/2009/03/06/actuated-workbench/ The Actuated Workbench uses a bed of electromagnets to control physical objects placed on top of it. First published in 2002 by Gian Pangaro, Dan Maynes-Aminzade, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii, development was continued. Dan (aka Monzy) has released a more recent video demonstrating the improvements made as well as some interesting new interaction possibilities. http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20091003-18894.html Newspapers will wither and perhaps die, unless they become online media platforms, a survey of the next generation of journalists has found. http://www.theuxbookmark.com/2009/03/usability-engineering/using-the-rite-method-to-improve-products/ This paper defines and evaluates a method that some practitioners are using but has not been formally discussed or defined. The method leads to a high ratio of problems found to fixes made and then empirically verifies the efficacy of the fixes. We call it the Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation method - or RITE method. Application to the tutorial of a popular game, Age of Empires II, shows this method to be highly effective in terms of finding and fixing problems and generating positive industry reviews for the tutorial. http://www.conetrees.com/2009/03/linkblog/siftables-the-toy-blocks-that-think/ Siftables are independent, compact devices with sensing, graphical display, and wireless communication. They can be physically manipulated as a group to interact with digital information and media. Siftables provides a new platform and OS on which to implement tangible, visual and mobile applications. http://matthewjetthall.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!AB717FCA4BD8D45F!845.entry Technology provides us with the means to better our condition and explore whatever boundary we chose to challenge. The foundation upon which all technology application rests is learning. Before we can apply technology, we must learn it. Before we can learn, we must be able to find someone to teach. Enabling a teacher and a student to connect in ways that permit the successful dissemination or creation of knowledge and its retention remains the cornerstone of all human endeavors. http://visualthinkmap.blogspot.com/2009/03/visualisation-magazine-volume-2-circles.html This magazine collates some of the most creative and innovative visualisation of information that try to simplify the complex. Volume 2 is based around circles. http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2009/03/06/uxmoney-2/ For anyone designing for consumer finance - banking, investing, billpay, money management tools, insurance providers or any business selling "savings" as a value proposition - here are some design principles you can employ to make saving a little easier for us all. http://user-experience.ning.com/ Resources and discussions to design better interfaces for the web. http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Business_Technology/Application_Management/Six_ways_to_make_Web_20_work_2294 Technologies known collectively as Web 2.0 have spread widely among consumers over the past five years. Social-networking Web sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, now attract more than 100 million visitors a month. As the popularity of Web 2.0 has grown, companies have noted the intense consumer engagement and creativity surrounding these technologies. Many organizations, keen to harness Web 2.0 internally, are experimenting with the tools or deploying them on a trial basis. http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2009/id2009034_766385.htm Knowing the wants of your customers is more important than out-innovating your competitors. http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/ethnography-primer Great design always connects with people. Designers inspire, provoke, validate, entertain and provide utility for people. To truly connect, designers need to have compassion and empathy for their audiences. Designers need to understand the relationship between what they produce and the meaning their product has for others. And they need to observe the people they are designing for in their own environments. AIGA, in collaboration with Cheskin, has produced a simple and straight-forward primer introducing the crucial role that ethnography plays in designing. http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://20090305000030900276&section=newsletter The next time bushfires rage through the Australian countryside, it may be bloggers and Twitterers, not just government officials, providing up-to-the-minute information needed to fight the blazes. http://gigaom.com/2009/03/04/ex-googlers-launch-likaholix-a-curated-web-startup/ Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan, both ex-Googlers, today announced the launch of their startup, Likaholix, which lets you curate things you like on the web. You sign up, create a profile and bookmark your likes - books, movies, things, places, hotels and anything you fancy. Sounds simple enough, right? But since these are both Googlers, they are using search under the hood to make relevant recommendations based on the people, topics and items you like. http://gigaom.com/2009/03/04/twitter-vs-facebook-real-time-web/ Facebook today announced several (and somewhat big) changes to their homepage/newsfeed, as well as the removal of most distinctions between public pages and profiles. These changes are an attempt to take on Twitter, which Facebook failed to acquire late last year. Facebook has always been the proponent of a more interactive web, but the growing popularity of Twitter has shifted the focus from mere interactivity to a more real-time web. http://gigaom.com/2009/03/05/7-ways-to-cut-fuel-consumption-with-it/ Let's face it: The next-generation of transportation, governed by electric vehicles and biofuels, will take years to reach average users. What can we do in the meantime? Look to the tools created by information technology - cell phones, software, online mapping tools, social networks - to help drivers cut fuel consumption and carbon emissions. On March 24, in San Francisco, we'll be featuring some of these ideas at our Green:Net conference, but in the meantime, we've pulled together these seven IT tools that you can use to conserve fuel and fight global warming. http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/02/patterns-in-ux-research.php One of the key objectives of user research is to identify themes or threads that are common across participants. These patterns help us to turn our data into insights about the underlying forces at work, influencing user behavior. http://gigaom.com/2009/03/02/where-in-the-world-is-innovation/ This Innovation Heat Map crafted by McKinsey and the World Economic Forum maps innovation across the planet. http://www.ghostinthepixel.com/?p=199 Dieter Rams' severely austere ethos as a designer -- pure functionalism and anti-style, anti-waste, the sacredness of the object and its utility, nothing more or less. http://videos.techielife.com/sonys-creative-technology-3d-television/video-online/2009/02/28 One of Sony's latests creative technologies- 3D Television. Video... http://www.dexigner.com/design_news/nissan-interaction-design-team-interior-design-research-vehicle.html It is almost painful to watch Nissan designer Naoki Yamamoto get out of a test car. To understand the challenges aging drivers face, the 39-year-old interaction specialist is encased in a proprietary "aging suit" that gives him the mobility and faculties of a driver twice his age. "Sure, it's uncomfortable," Yamamoto says, "but to really understand a problem you have to feel it in your bones." http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3638/switch-tasking-toward-the-future-at-webwise If you're used to the decorum of a big academic conference -- the Modern Language Association's annual confab, for instance -- the atmosphere at last week's WebWise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital Age comes as a bit of a shock. No more furtive tapping away at your laptop in the dark corners of meeting rooms. Laptops are not only tolerated at WebWise, they're practically mandatory. http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2009/03/ethnographic-research-a-key-to-strategy/ar/1 Corporate ethnography isn't just for innovation anymore. It's central to gaining a full understanding of your customers and the business itself. The ethnographic work at my company, Intel, and other firms now informs functions such as strategy and long-range planning. http://www.experientia.com/blog/carlo-ratti-dan-hill-and-anne-galloway-on-the-long-here-at-lift/ As half of the world is now living in cities, it's undeniable that the recombination of our physical environment through technological advancements will lead to unexpected changes, problems but also new opportunities. Carlo Ratti, Dan Hill and Anne Galloway discussed how our relationship to space will change through various new technologies and examine the main challenges of this field. http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-1035_11-273694.html?tag=nl.e019 As part of his talk at Wharton Business School on Friday, Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's business division, is showing a video about the workplace of the future. He'll also step back and talk about how the precursors to many of the technologies shown in the video exist today in Microsoft Research labs. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126956.600-cellphones-tap-wisdom-of-the-crowds.html David, a Masai herdsman from Kisumu in Kenya, answers a call on his cellphone. After listening to the message, he repeats a short phrase in his Masai dialect. He then listens to another short message, and repeats the new phrase. After 30 minutes, he ends the call, having earned enough for a week's worth of personal cellphone airtime. http://changewaves.socialtechnologies.com/home/2008/2/14/st-in-the-news-the-workplace-in-2020.html Will Americans (and presumably Australians) still be commuting mega miles to get to work 10, 15, or 20 years from now? http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-1035_11-272514.html?tag=nl.e101 Berti - which stands for Bristol Elumotion Robotic Torso 1 - can produce numerous humanlike gestures as it speaks, and in so doing creates the impression of a conversation. http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/25/technology/tech_anthropologists.fortune/ Technology and culture blend in new ways in a global society powered by cell phones and PCs, and the big tech firms like Intel, IBM, HP, Motorola and Microsoft are employing social scientists to better understand consumers and workplaces, and to challenge their assumptions. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_ways_social_media_will_change_in_2009.php "Social media" was the term du jour in 2008. Consumers, companies, and marketers were all talking about it. We have social media gurus, social media startups, social media books, and social media firms. It is now common practice among corporations to hire social media strategists, assign community managers, and launch social media campaigns, all designed to tap into the power of social media. http://gigaom.com/2009/02/25/the-mobile-web-is-for-fun-and-the-pc-web-is-for-everything-else/ The mobile web and the PC web may not be all that different, but data out today from comScore implies that the users are. Numbers released by the group suggest that those spending the least amount of time in front of their PCs are 30 percent more likely to surf on their mobiles. http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-1035_11-272668.html?tag=nl.e019 With its annual TechFest, Microsoft gives its researchers the opportunity to show off what they have cooking in the lab to employees in other business units in a science fair setting. http://gigaom.com/2009/02/24/instantaction-puts-3d-gaming-into-web-browsers/ InstantAction today officially unveiled its technology platform, which purportedly makes it possible to play any video game in a web browser. Not just 2D casual games, but hardcore 3D games with high-end graphics that would otherwise require a next-gen game console, or a huge client install on the PC. http://gigaom.com/2009/02/24/hear-how-software-helped-california-save-energy/ You've probably all heard that California has aggressively cut energy consumption through energy efficiency programs. After all, the state has saved a good $56 billion in electricity costs over the last 30 years. And in the next decade the state is aiming to cut carbon emissions down to 1990 levels. What has helped and will help those energy reduction plans? Software and digital tools that can smarten up energy use in buildings and across a smart grid. http://gigaom.com/2009/02/23/chipmakers-hope-widgets-bring-the-web-to-tv/ Broadcom said today that it would make sure content from Chumby, a nascent widget syndication effort for televisions, would run on its chips. It's one of a handful of integration deals Broadcom has inked with software vendors to port their content to its chips. As broadband reaches more devices, deals between chipmakers and software vendors like these are becoming increasingly important. http://www.davidroedl.com/2009/02/23/user-centered-internet-policy/ As a new President takes office, the online world is full of speculation about the future of Internet policy in America. Hopes are high, given that President Obama is considered to the most tech-savvy political candidate to date; in fact many are touting him as the first politician to really get the nature of web 2.0. A recent memo from John Horrigan of the PEW Internet project offers Obama some thought-provoking suggestions for technology policy that are motivated by an interesting analysis of the evolution of internet use. http://www.centernetworks.com/structured-social-media Facebook and other social networks are much more structured than Twitter, status updates, and short-form messaging. From a UI and user experience perspective, these tools bring a lot of order and organization to user actions and interactions. That has the benefit of limiting noise and of creating a lot of different sub-system of user actions. http://gigaom.com/2009/02/18/when-it-comes-to-social-networks-uptime-doesnt-matter/ Users of social networks choose where to spend their time based on factors entirely outside of those such as uptime and reliability, according to report issued Tuesday by Pingdom, a service that tracks web site uptime and optimization for companies. Not that such things aren't important - after all, a social network isn't going to be of much use if people can't log in or use the features. But the Pingdom report shows that when it comes right down to it, those things don't matter nearly as much as one might think. http://minister.innovation.gov.au/Carr/Pages/$17MCENTRETOBOOSTCREATIVEINDUSTRIES.aspx A $17 million Creative Industries Innovation Centre will provide free hands-on assistance to small and medium businesses in the creative sector to boost their productivity and realise their potential for wealth and job creation. The national centre, hosted by the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), was launched today by Innovation Minister, Senator Kim Carr, and Arts Minister, Peter Garrett. http://gigaom.com/2009/02/15/no-stopping-the-mobile-internet/ According to a survey of 50,000 wireless customers in the U.S. and five major Western European mobile markets, nearly 71 percent of wireless users are likely to use some kind of wireless data services. These countries collectively have about 200 million mobile data users and more than half expect to increase their mobile data usage. The survey was conducted by Nielsen on behalf of telecom equipment maker, Tellabs. http://gigaom.com/2009/02/15/mwc-intel-takes-on-the-mobile-internet-device/ After success with its low-power Atom processor in netbooks, Intel is embracing the mobile Internet device, with the chip giant expected to announce at this year's Mobile World Congress a planned MID with LG Electronics that will include 3G voice capabilities. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/12/computer-games-eu-study Children who spend hours every day on their Playstation or Xbox video consoles may not be rotting their brains, as many parents fear. A report from the European parliament concluded yesterday that computer games are good for children and teach them essential life skills. http://www.britishcouncil.org/au-educationuk-scholarships-postgraduate-landerer.htm The Landerer Arts Scholarship offers outstanding post-graduate students a substantial contribution to the costs study in the UK. Applications are welcomed from a wide range of creative fields. Apply before 27 March 2009. http://technikundwissen.zsi.at/?p=108 The Call for Papers for the 9th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies at Graz, Austria. http://interactiondesign.sva.edu/blog/entry/requested_reading_recommendations/ A list of recommended readings for the SVA's new MFA in Interaction Design program. http://visualthinkmap.blogspot.com/2009/02/internet-histo-graphic.html 'History of the internet' is an animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to file-sharing, from arpanet to internet. The clip shows a brief overview of this history and shall animate to go on discovering the history of the internet. http://www.cooper.com/journal/2009/02/interaction_design_for_startups.html inviteme.to is an early stage startup that allows people to coordinate offline social activities with their friends. Founder Andrew Hoag, tired of organizing the 'goat rodeo' preceding any event with his friends, found a niche desperately in need of attention, and decided to do something about it. http://www.fibre2fashion.com/industry-article/17/1671/integrating-textiles-with-electronic-systems1.asp Against the current climate of multi-disciplinary design collaboration traditional textile constructions are merging with new technologies. http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=30459 Technology advances at lightning speed and while the industry may relish the developments that emerge, researchers are concerned about preserving access to digital material and protecting our cultural heritage. The KEEP ('Keeping emulation environments portable') project, funded under Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to the tune of EUR 3.15 million, aims to develop tools that will facilitate universal access to our increasingly digitised cultural heritage. http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=17&artnum=1&issue=20090213 Picture yourself in a meeting in California, waiting to hear about your company's progress in Japan. No one in the room will deliver that report, nor will it come from a speakerphone or video screen. Someone dims the lights and a 3-D image of the Tokyo sales manager appears - and discusses the latest earnings. http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/servlet/event.showcfp?eventid=4877&copyownerid=2 The 7th Creativity and Cognition Conference (CC09) embraces the broad theme of Everyday Creativity. This year the conference will be held at the Berkeley Art Museum (CA, USA), and asks: How do we enable everyone to enjoy their creative potential? How do our creative activities differ? What do they have in common? What languages can we use to talk to each other? How do shared languages support collective action? How can we incubate innovation? How do we enrich the creative experience? What encourages participation in everyday creativity? http://www.asktog.com/columns/075AppleFlatlandPart1.html Appleland is becoming progressively flatter and, at the same time, less usable. Apple has released a series of revolutionary products over the last several years, from System X to the iPhone. All represent Herculean software efforts. With such marked changes, one can expect that early releases will tend toward the primitive. Over time, users can expect missing functionality to fill in. For the most part, this has occurred and will continue to do so, with even highly-sophisticated features appearing, such as copy and paste. Filling in obvious features, however, is only one aspect of software evolution. Equally important is keeping up with the users. The beginner today will be the expert of tomorrow. The user with 200 photos today will be the user with 2000 a year from now. The user with 10 songs today will be the user with 100 songs six months from now. The user with one or two extra apps on the iPhone will be the user with 100 apps three months from now. http://www.ixda.fi/2009/02/16/sustainable-design-in-the-2nd-ixda-meetup/ The second ever IxDA Helsinki meetup was held on Jan 29th at Nolla. 30 visitors listed Janne Korhonen from Seos, a company focused on sustainable innovation, giving a demystifying presentation on sustainable design. http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=45588&hilite= T3, the UK's premier gadget magazine, has created its vision of the ultimate mobile phone: The 01 Phone, in conjunction with leading UK product and interaction design consultancy, TheAlloy. http://inmagicinc.blogspot.com/2009/02/building-business-case-for-social.html The fact that times are tough is not news to anyone these days. From the boardroom to the mailroom, people from all walks of life are impacted by current conditions. Specifically, CIOs and other information professionals must make difficult choices about spending priorities. In most cases, the only projects that get consideration are those that affect the top line (or revenues), directly reduce costs and improve organizational efficiencies, or address risk management. http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/report-from-china-user-centered-design-as-a-good-business-approach.html During the economic slowdown, more and more companies find it hard to challenge the traditional way of doing business. Some organizations understand the importance of design and innovation but Very Few see the true value of user-centered design and usability as a good business approach. Looking at the Chinese context, the strategy and philosophy of top successful local companies is changing. http://www.gravity7.com/blog/media/2009/02/social-medias-first-law-user-centric.html The first law of social interaction design is the law of user centric design. The user centricity of social media is obvious. Social media are voluntary, and they mean to their users what their users put in and take out of them. Users are interested users, not needy or obliged users. Even users who can claim to have goals and objectives are motivated to participate, contribute, even just read and lurk, because they want to. Compelling social media do not compel users - users become compelled, for whatever short or long-term interest it is that compels them. http://earth2tech.com/2009/02/09/google-jumps-into-organizing-smart-meter-energy-data/ Google's got its hands all over the world's information - search terms, email, IM, book content - but now the search engine giant wants to organize your personal energy data, too. http://gigaom.com/2009/02/10/how-mobile-will-reach-the-exabyte-age-by-2012/ Cisco today released the latest iteration of its Visual Networking Index, and forecast that mobile traffic worldwide would reach more than one exabyte per month by 2012. To put that in perspective, the wired web transferred that much data as of 2004, more than three decades after the first email was sent. The mobile web will reach this milestone 18 years after the first text message was sent. http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=1011 Speaking to a BBC reporter at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates predicted that the current economic downturn is going to last several years, but he also struck a confident tone about the development of technology and science as well as the potential of capitalism to foster innovation and opportunity that will help the world recover from its current problems. http://www.newburyportnews.com/punews/local_story_034230934.html Students in Anthony Beatrice's Music Production I class may soon be making music with people from across the world. Beatrice, the director of Instrumental Music and Music Technology at the middle and high schools, is collaborating with Dr. Alex Ruthmann of UMass-Lowell to introduce his students to a new online software program called Jam2Jam. Based in Australia, Jam2Jam allows students to manipulate audio and visuals to create multi-media compositions. The program is designed to give even those students with limited musical backgrounds performance experience, as well as the social dimension of live ensemble playing. "The Jam2Jam project brings together Pentucket students with students in the UK, Sweden and Australia. There are already recorded 'jams' from those sites online, but right now, you are the only school in the U.S. participating in the pilot," Ruthmann said. "Students will be split into groups with a computer that has Jam2Jam preloaded on it," Beatrice said. "You have this mystery computer that has new software on it, you don't know what it can do ... explore it, come back and tell us what you found, what are the possibilities ... ?" he'll ask the class. The program allows computers in the same network to communicate, then expand to schools internationally, so students from across the globe can come together in the spirit of creative collaboration to make music. For more information, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y08fTYdiJGA. http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/02/live-at-interaction09-day-4/ Day 4 wrap-up from Interaction 09 by Jeroen van Geel http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/02/live-at-interaction09-day-3/ Day 3 wrap-up from Interaction 09 by Jeroen van Geel http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/02/live-at-interaction09-day-2/ Day 2 wrap-up from Interaction 09 by Jeroen van Geel http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/02/live-at-interaction09-day-1/ Day 1 wrap-up from Interaction 09 by Jeroen van Geel http://www.core77.com/blog/events/interaction_09_behavior_as_the_medium_and_the_search_for_ixd_rockstars_12578.asp A pair of keynotes framed Saturday's sessions in Vancouver, both calls to action to the IxD community, but in very distinct ways. http://www.slideshare.net/dansaffer/carpe-diem-attention-awareness-and-interaction-design-2009?type=presentation Slides from the keynote address to Interaction 09 by Dan Saffer (KickIt). http://www.uie.com/articles/web_anatomy_frameworks/ There are two problems that seem to reappear at the beginning of every web application design project. First, the task of translating a high-level understanding of an application's goals into low-level design details can be a brutal experience. Second, we want to design highly usable and self-evident applications so our customers can be effective, but we also want to devise innovative, compelling, and exciting interactions to dazzle our users and make waves in the market. http://theontarion.ca/viewarticle.php?id_pag=2212 The way things are shaping up, the commercialization of university research may end up being the most important debate that never happened. http://gigaom.com/2009/02/07/the-brave-new-world-of-open-source-game-design/ When Acclaim Games publicly unveiled its Rockfree project, a free-to-play, web-based riff on the rhythm genre, last November, it did something unusual. It invited gamers to play an early version of the game so they could weigh in on the project as it was being developed. http://www.sciencealert.com.au/features/20090402-18765-2.html Human resources are central to achieving sustainability and human capital is the most valuable component of economic wealth, accounting for more than 75 per cent of the total asset base of high-income nations. The recent CSIRO report, 'Growing the green collar economy', commissioned by the Dusseldorp Skills Forum, shows that transitioning to a low-carbon economy will require not only emissions-mitigation and adaptation strategies by business and the community, but a 'green skills' revolution in the Australian workforce. http://gigaom.com/2009/02/04/web-apps-suck-at-service/ PCMag today has a nice article geared toward consumers looking to store their information in the cloud, asking cloud providers to answer eight questions that boil down to where is my data and how safe is it. Most of us already have our photos on Flickr and Picasa, and others are using cloud-based web apps such as Gmail, but I bet few of us actually know where that data is stored (question 1) or have a way to get help when things go down (question 2). http://gigaom.com/2009/02/04/with-latitude-google-fires-another-shot-at-mobile-operators/ Earlier today, Google unveiled Latitude, a nifty little application for your smartphone (as long as it's not an iPhone) that lets your friends locate you, and you them, on a map. In fact, Latitude is the result of a much bigger battle between Google and the mobile operators, of which location-based services are but one small part. http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=12200 Just in case you have ever wanted to know your friends' precise movements - every location, every right turn, every trip to Starbucks - Google has launched Latitude, a new feature for Google Maps that runs on your PC and mobile device. Latitude is more evidence that social networking tools will increasingly be layered on top of existing apps. http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://20090205000030802761&section=newsletter The federal government's $42 billion stimulus package has had a lukewarm reception from the information and communications technology industry. Despite the $47 million in funding already on the table for the national broadband network (NBN), key figures in the sector expressed disappointment yesterday that the package, aimed at providing an immediate boost to the economy, eschewed investments in new technologies that could provide longer-term benefits. http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/networking/?p=904 Patents by Microsoft and Apple are giving us a glimpse into the future of smartphone technology. It looks like desktops and notebooks may go the way of the dinosaur. Find out why. http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2009/01/19/daily9.html The Mayo Clinic wasn't sure what to expect from social media when it gave it a test run four years ago. Things like iPods, MySpace and blogs had exploded onto the social scene, and businesses were looking to cash in. But the health care industry had other considerations, and more rules to play by. http://academicearth.org/ Academic Earth is building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world's leading scholars. http://julioterrany.blogspot.com/2009/01/sensor-citizens-and-participatory.html Until recently sensors had been used primarily by governments and businesses to monitor and report on the physical world. For the most part, sensors were fixed devices, often referred to as nodes, under centralized control and requiring special hardware that was both inflexible and expensive. Steep declines in the cost of mobile devices such as cell phones, and sensor technologies have enabled the emergence of a phenomenon called "participatory sensing". Coined by UCLA professor Jeff Burke, this term refers to the "ability of individuals to act as sensor nodes and come together with other people in order to form sensor networks." This approach to urban sensing is decentralized and grassroots in nature and opens up new possibilities for people to participate in both art and science. http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-content/oreilly-explores-rich-interactive-design-003845.php Among growing trends in web design, rich interaction is at the top of the list. Creating a rich, interactive user experience doesn't happen overnight. Not only does it require strategy, but it also demands skills with web technologies like Ajax and Flash. With these becoming more popular, the face of the web is changing. On Tuesday, February 3 at 10 a.m. EST, O'Reilly presents a 60-minute, free webcast focusing on interaction design - specifically, rich interaction design on the Web. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/layoffs_send_people_and_knowledge_packing.php The scale of layoffs over the past few weeks is unprecedented. The impact on these people who have been shown the door and on the companies that have let them go will linger for years to come. Besides the emotional damage that occurs when people are forced out, there is a tangible cost to companies when knowledge and experience walk out the door. One of the few ways to address the problem is to adopt collaborative tools and processes that capture the information companies need to be able to thrive. http://www.nbcchicago.com/health/tips_info/Virtual-Therapy-for-PTSD.html A Chicago area hospital has unveiled a new virtual reality program designed to help American military personnel with post traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. The program uses video-game type graphics to depict war-zone attacks and explosions in Iraq. http://www.virtualchaos.co.uk/blog/2009/01/30/designing-innovation-networks-on-lifes-origins-and-evolution/ Highly innovative organizations face a constant challenge to process a flood of good ideas, both generated by employees and submitted from outside. In the wake of Google's Tenth Birthday Competition, this talk describes how innovation networks apply principles found in life's origins and evolution to "processing innovation." Debates about how novelty emerged in the origin of life and its evolution toward complexity demand revising assumptions that we've taken for granted. Steven Jay Gould said that "Darwinism" misrepresents Darwin. A more complete interpretation of Darwin's theory of evolution could inspire new problem-solving methods with a range of practical applications, from multi-agent systems able to learn and improve their performance to cross-disciplinary decision support systems designed to address environmental sustainability challenges. Objective. To discuss nine principles of innovation networks and the problem-solving method they support. http://weblog.infoworld.com/stratdev/archives/2009/02/quince_explores.html User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) designers have a new, free Web tool to use at quince.infragistics.com. Brought to you by the control vendor Infragistics, Quince is a Silverlight-based site that organizes about a hundred common user interface patterns into a highly usable site. The Quince site builds on work by Jenifer Tidwell and others aimed at describing interface and interaction design with a pattern language. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=223 At this point it's more than clear that 2009 will be a challenging year for a great many businesses. The good news is that most enterprises actually have a fair number of compelling options right now if they are willing to think outside the box. While some might look at the social aspects of things like Web 2.0 as marginal subjects when things get tough, nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to the deeper implications of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. Many of the more transformational aspects of the 2.0 era now have extensive groundwork laid for them, are available in genuinely enterprise-ready solutions/pilots, and many have just been waiting for the right situation; the driving need for businesses to change and transform in the face of radically different business conditions. http://gigaom.com/2009/01/30/7-timeless-web-memes/ Sure there are the flashy memes tied to poorly translated video games, 80s pop singers and bad dancing, but there are also serious topics of conversations that pop up online over and over - and over - again. Maybe they're not Internet memes in the Wikipedia sense, but they are cultural ideas that live and exist because of the web. Below we offer a crash course on seven of them, complete with summaries and links. http://gigaom.com/2009/01/21/virtual-world-money-in-08-targeted-kids-kids-wallets/ A total of $594 million was invested in 63 Virtual Worlds in 2008, according to Austin-based trade show company Virtual Worlds Management. That may seem like a lot, but that's down from the more than $1.4 billion in 2007 (their estimate), a figure that was hugely skewed by Disney's purchase of kid's world Club Penguin for nearly $700 million. While there weren't any acquisitions of that size in 2008, much of last year's investment also went into worlds aimed at kids and teens, which continue to enjoy enormous audience growth. (The largest, Habbo, is almost as popular as World of Warcraft, and profitable with far less development costs.) http://www.wittysparks.com/2009/01/24/10-sources-to-know-more-about-user-experience/ WittySparks have compiled a list of top 10 user experience sites which you may like to check out to understand the far reaching important effects of User Experience. http://new.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/01/design-research-methods-for-experience-design.php There is a trend among some in the UX community to take the U out of UX and refer to our discipline simply as experience design. One reason for this change in terminology is that it lets us talk about a specific target audience in terms that resonate with business stakeholders more than the generic term user, for example, customer experience, patient experience, or member experience. The other reason for using the term experience design rather than user experience design is that it recognizes the fact that most customer interactions are multifaceted and complex and include all aspects of a customer's interaction with a company or other organizational entity, including its people, services, and products. http://www.designingforhumans.com/idsa/2009/01/ergonomics-for-interaction-designers-part-1.html This series of articles from Rob Tannen at Designing for Humans discusses how a knowledge of ergonomics can be increasingly helpful to people working in interaction design. http://www.themobilecity.nl/2009/01/23/review-portable-objects-in-three-global-cities-by-mimi-ito-et-al/ Mimi Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Ken Anderson have an interesting chapter in the edited volume by Rich Ling & Scott Campbell (2009) "The reconstruction of space and time: mobile communication practices" which recently came out. The chapter is called "Portable Objects in Three Global Cities: The Personalization of Urban Places." The authors explore how people use portable objects to 'interface' with urban space and locations. http://gypsycamp.net/knowledge-creation-for-the-innovative-market.html In today's dynamic and fast-changing business landscape, it has been said that the one certain source of lasting competitive advantage is knowledge. Successful companies are invariably those that consistently create new knowledge, disseminate it widely throughout the organization, and quickly embody it in new methodologies, services and products. http://www.thecreativeleadershipforum.com/creative-leadership-news/2009/1/16/the-next-step-in-open-innovation.html The creation of knowledge, products, and services by online communities of companies and consumers is still in its earliest stages. Who knows where it will lead? For most companies, innovation is a proprietary activity conducted largely inside the organization in a series of closely managed steps. Over the last decade, however, a few consumer product, fashion, and technology businesses have been opening up the product-development process to new ideas hatched outside their walls-from suppliers, independent inventors, and university labs. http://www.acid.net.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=106&Itemid=171 Secret Sauce IP Ventures has been granted rights to commercialise mobile learning software developed at the Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID). http://www.usability.com.au/resources/web2_tools.cfm The findings of a recent survey by Roger Hudson from Web Usability into the use of Web 2.0 tools, which suggest that a far smaller percentage of the general community use Web 2.0 tools than we sometimes expect, and those who do use them, do so much less often. http://mashable.com/2009/01/09/user-experience-design/ Whitney Hess is an independent user experience designer, writer and consultant based in New York City. She authors the blog Pleasure and Pain. "When I tell people that I am a user experience designer, I usually get a blank stare. I try to follow it up quickly by saying that I make stuff easy and pleasurable to use. That's the repeatable one-liner, but it's a gross oversimplification and isn't doing me any favors. The term "user experience" or UX has been getting a lot of play, but many businesses are confused about what it actually is and how crucial it is to their success. I asked some of the most influential and widely respected practitioners in UX what they consider to be the biggest misperceptions of what we do. The result is a top 10 list to debunk the myths. Read it, learn it, live it." http://chartingthelabyrinths.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/are-digital-natives-a-myth-or-reality-students%E2%80%99-use-of-technologies-for-learning/ This paper outlines the findings of a study investigating the extent and nature of use of digital technologies by undergraduate students in Social Work and Engineering, in two British universities. The study involved a questionnaire survey of students (n=160) followed by in-depth interviews with students (n=8) and lecturers and support staff (n=8) in both institutions. Firstly, the findings suggest that students use a limited range of technologies for both learning and socialisation. For learning, mainly established ICTs are used- institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as media sharing tools and social networking sites. Secondly, the findings point to a low level of use of and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies. Thirdly, the study did not find evidence to support the claims regarding students adopting radically different patterns of knowledge creation and sharing suggested by some previous studies. http://gramconsulting.com/2008/12/enterprise-20-learning-and-performance/ It's fascinating to watch technical innovations grow in use from early adopters to the point where they 'tip' into mass acceptance. This is certainly the case for Web 2.0 applications. Seemingly overnight, web based social media and collaborative tools are everywhere. The new Web 2.0 applications have provided a powerful vehicle for our most human of needs: to communicate, share and socialize with our peers. Blogs, wikis, photo sharing, and communities of all types allow you to post, comment, share, and categorize (tag) content in ways that the broadcast era of the web (Web 1.0) simply couldn't do. http://www.anecdote.com.au/whitepapers.php?wpid=15 Today we face an entirely new environment for innovation and getting things done. The days of the lone genius quietly toiling away in pursuit of that Eureka moment to revolutionise an industry are all but over. We are now in the days of asking and listening to our customers and working with them in our innovation cycles. Innovation demands collaboration. So does production. In the past we could focus on a single task in an assembly-line fashion, handing our completed activity to the next person who would in turn do the same, until the job was finished. Now the jobs change fast, requiring learning new skills rather than merely repeating the old. We have to seek out people who have other pieces of the puzzle and work with them to tackle increasingly complex issues at a much faster pace. http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/164/story/701497.html Get ready for a lot more ways to catch a movie. Hollywood studios and tech companies are rolling out a host of innovations that will change the way we experience films at home and in theaters. http://gigaom.com/2008/12/14/how-can-casual-game-startups-survive-recessions-winter/ This year we watched a tremendous amount of money go into casual web game startups, many or most of which heavily depend on advertising as a revenue stream. As we're all too painfully aware, however, when the economy turns sour, advertising budgets are among the first things to get slashed. So how will these companies survive through the coming quarters, until the economy stabilizes? http://www.radian6.com/blog/99/interview-with-dell%E2%80%99s-bob-pearson-%E2%80%93-social-media-becomes-more-important-in-a-recession/ Video interview with Bob Pearson, VP Communities & Conversations, on Dell's use of social media and the importance of social media in an economic recession. http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=690 Google is becoming a major driver of network enabled application innovation and Web security research. Will its Native Client project be a game changing addition to available Internet technologies, or just another ActiveX? http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20081112-18569-2.html A report released 10 December by the AIHW sets out the gold standard for general practice reporting on primary health care. The report, "Review and evaluation of Australian information about primary health care; a focus on general practice", finds that ideally, general practice data should link every prescription, procedure, test or other treatment option to a diagnosis or symptom pattern, and, over time, to overall outcomes for the patient. http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://20081210000030628304&section=newsletter Victorian energy distributors United Energy Distribution and Jemena have plans worth about $345 million to install smart electricity meters in hundreds of thousands of homes in the state over the next four years. http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Innovation/Innovation_lessons_from_the_1930s_2266 Can the business practices of the 1930s yield useful lessons for executives setting priorities in today's uncertain and evolving environment? For investments to promote innovation, the answer may be yes. http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=11149 Autodesk tools aim to help designers conceptualize projects on a computer before starting the costly (and energy-intense) production process. ZDNet correspondent Sumi Das takes a tour of Autodesk's new design gallery in San Francisco, where exhibits ranging from church models to chair designs illustrate how its customers are reducing their carbon footprint. Das also talks to John Kennedy, senior manager at the Green Building Studio, who demonstrates how architects are able to measure solar, thermal, and airflow effects on building performance early in the design process. http://www.smh.com.au/news/digital-life/home-entertainment/articles/nokia-takes-a-stab-at-home-automation/2008/12/04/1228257196311.html You're halfway to work and remember with a jolt that you left the iron on. A quick glance at your BlackBerry confirms your fears, and then asks if you would like to turn the appliance off. Few of us enjoy this level of control over our beloved household appliances but Nokia's latest vision to build a mobile platform just for them may change all of that. http://www.interactiondesign.se/blog/2008/12/animata/ Animata is an open-source, real-time interactive animation tool developed by Kitchen Budapest designed to create animations, interactive background projections for concerts, theatre and dance performances. http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23675 Chris Dede knows a thing or two about emerging interactive media, immersive interfaces and the impact that both concepts are having on the educational field. Dede, who is presenting his views on both topics at the upcoming FETC 2009 conference in Florida, gives a preview of what attendees can expect from the sessions. http://www.thedahlpod.com/eblog/2008/12/06/how-do-you-design/ Hugh Dubberly from Dubberly Design Studios is writing a book called How Do You Design?, which examines design processes that they have collected over the years. The premise is that, "Everyone designs. The teacher arranging desks for a discussion. The entrepreneur planning a business. The team building a rocket." If you want to check it out, the book is in "beta" and you can not only download a PDF for free, but you can also add to the book by submitting your own processes or others that you have found. http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/3DTeleconferencing/ Paul Debevec, a research associate professor at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies, has helped develop a holographic videoconferencing system just like the fictional one depicted in recent Star Wars films. He demonstrated the science-fiction inspired system - which uses off-the-shelf video projectors and a fast-spinning mirror to create the illusion of a 3-D image - at the Army Science Conference this week. http://www.scup.org/blog/scuplinks/2008/12/transforming-research-knowledge.html How can planners best take account of, and align with, recent and prospective changes in the patterns, cadences, and pace of the processes through which new knowledge is created, shared, experienced, and valued by faculty, researchers, and other scholars? Thanks to those changes, planners have significant opportunities not only to help their faculty exploit the benefits of new academic advances, but also to introduce complementary advances in planning that make it easier to monitor the competition and external environment, focus administrative efforts accordingly, and identify relevant and affordable research opportunities to improve their planning processes and decision making. http://www.worldinternetproject.net/ For the first time, the World Internet Project will release its global findings on the impact of online technology -- a five-continent collaboration creating an international picture of change produced by the Internet. The World Internet Project Report includes new findings about how the Internet is used and how it affects a variety of beliefs, attitudes, and behavior around the world. http://chumby.on.net/competition/ Internode has launched a competition for Australians to develop locally-flavoured software for chumby, an internet device that streams the Internet to anywhere in your home. The competition closes on January 9. http://news.aol.com/article/is-einstein-the-last-great-genius/270036?icid=100214839x1214345195x1200974885 Australia's Academic and Research Network (AARNet) announced it is working with senior health professionals and Victorian universities to help educate occupational therapists around the state on working with Indigenous clients and communities. This event is a new initiative by AARNet where it has opened its high-definition National Video Conferencing Service (NVCS) to health educators and practitioners. http://news.aol.com/article/is-einstein-the-last-great-genius/270036?icid=100214839x1214345195x1200974885 Major breakthroughs in science have historically been the province of individuals, not institutes. Galileo and Copernicus, Edison and Einstein, toiling away in lonely labs or pondering the cosmos in private studies. But in recent decades - especially since the Soviet success in launching the Sputnik satellite in 1957 - the trend has been to create massive institutions that foster more collaboration and garner big chunks of funding. http://www.socialmedian.com/story/1859315/the-distributed-social-networking-puzzle-putting-pieces-together Distributed social networking - where users can connect their profile, friends and other data across multiple sites - is still a relatively new concept and not fully developed. There are plenty of companies and projects vying to be a major piece of the distributed social networking puzzle. The big Internet companies have initiatives such as OpenSocial (Google), Facebook Connect, MySpace Data Availability, Yahoo! Open Strategy. http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2008/11/people-powered-internet.html On today's Internet, algorithms rule. But a handful of startups are using large-scale human participation to offer online services that computers alone can't deliver. Can human judgment scale with the Web? http://www.zurb.com/article/155/user-experience-design-does-not-exist If you were to ask 100 people how their experience was on amazon.com, you'd probably get 50 different answers. And if we we're to believe that there is such a thing as user experience design, a team of designers would have been responsible for designing all those experiences. http://www.zurb.com/article/153/12-traits-of-a-great-interaction-designer ZURB's Brian Zmijewski lists his great interaction design traits. http://www.hydrapinion.com/index.php/work/2008/12/01/how-facebook-is-becoming-the-hottest-new Facebook's legion of fans has long known the power of the site when it comes to tracking people down, but now businesses are cottoning on to the concept ... with interesting results. http://gigaom.com/2008/11/30/social-webs-big-question-federate-or-aggregate/ Inventor and tech philosopher Dave Winer Twittered tonight that federation is the hot thing, pointing to a New York Times article about Facebook Connect. And just like that, he touched upon the third rail of our increasingly social web. The big question facing the social web depends on the direction it needs to take. A sharp increase in the number of web services and social networks has many of us yearning for a single sign-on, which has led to the idea of 'federation.' On the flip side, we also want one place to manage our diverse web services in one place - in other words, aggregation. These two diametrically opposed views of how we are going to come to grips with our social web are going to face an intense debate until consumers vote with their clicks. http://productivitygames.blogspot.com/2008/11/theory-y-meets-generation-y.html Julian Birkinshaw and Stuart Crainer look at a Microsoft team that is changing the way it works by incorporating the interests of its young employees to increase creativity and productivity. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bill_joy_muses_on_what_s_next.html Technologist, futurist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems Bill Joy talks about several big worries for humanity -- and several big hopes in the fields of health, education and future tech. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/13/15-useful-project-management-tools/ There is a huge variety of project management applications out there. Most are general purpose apps, not aimed at any one industry. But there is a growing number of project management apps aimed specifically at one industry or another. Applications geared to creative types are becoming more readily available, and some of the offerings are really quite good. http://gigaom.com/2008/11/10/imvu-music-opens-think-itunes-for-avatars/ We've already seen video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band dramatically change the way music is sold and marketed. Will virtual worlds bring about even more transformation? http://gigaom.com/2008/11/10/intel-hopes-for-healthy-growth-in-medical-devices/ If mobile Internet devices don't work out, Intel is also making inroads in the personal health market. The chipmaker today launched a patient monitoring device and online interface to connect doctors and their patients remotely. This is an industry Intel has targeted for years, but because of a host of reasons, a market where the company has never gained much traction. http://www.chriskhalil.com/2008/11/17/web-30-user-experience-and-intelligent-user-interfaces/ If Web 2.0 was all about fostering social interconnectivity, then the loosely termed Web 3.0, appears to be about the intelligent web. It's about, amongst other things, contextually aware user interfaces (UI's), hyperconnectivity, the semantic web and intelligent agents. http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/11/19/nokia-design-curtis-tech-wire-cx_ew_1120nokia.html The Finnish phone maker's chief designer discusses his inspirations and what's next. http://facebook3d.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/3d-information-visualisation-an-historical-perspective/ This paper gives an overview over the use of 3D Visualisation of digital information and the historic background of perspective in that field. It was written by Theodor G Wyeld and it was presented in the Ninth International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV'05). http://technology-nuggets.blogspot.com/2008/11/knowledge-management-spiral.html Knowledge can be tacit (also known as, implicit) or explicit. There are various theories of knowledge capture, and the toughest challenge ever remains to capture tacit knowledge. After years of research and analysis, scientists created Knowledge Spiral which highlights different modes of knowledge capture. This spiral is applicable for knowledge management practices of various organizations too. http://transground.blogspot.com/2008/11/grand-challenge-for-hci-growing.html In a study from the Pew Institute we get numbers on things we all have suspected: people have problems setting up their new technological artifacts. http://rhizome.org/announce/view/52391 The Two-Thousand + NINE Symposium invites researchers from fields as diverse as music, architecture, design, philosophy, dance or technology to address the interface between creative practice and user-led content in new media. http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/v9i42_schrage.html It is November 2008 and much of the globe is in the throes of recession. Innovation is on many minds. We need new products and new services generating new value for our customers and our companies. It is more important than ever to innovate. The problem is that our collective success rate is abysmal -- 4% according to Business Week in August 2005. As we set out on new innovation initiatives, it is a good time to reflect on the illusions that drag our success rates so low. One illusion is that is innovation is a novel ideal or product, another is that those who spend more on R&D get more innovation, and another is that innovation is about great inventions. Michael Schrage of MIT has been challenging these illusions for a long time. He discussed them with Ubiquity editor John Gehl in February 2006. Now is the perfect time to reflect again on what Michael has to say to us about innovation. http://www.sciencealert.com.au/features/20081111-18424-3.html As the number of people with a stake in academic research and opinion has multiplied, alternatives to traditional peer review have started to emerge. The claims to exclusive expertise made by academic peers are now less sustainable than they were in the past. The massive growth of the internet has changed the rules. A global network of debate and discussion has proliferated. Academics cannot escape the interactive reach of Web 2.0. http://www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20081311-18438-2.html With the proportion of those aged over 65 in Australia doubling, and those over 85 quadrupling in the next 50 years the increasing burden of chronic disease will present a huge challenge to health services worldwide. Already more than 75 per cent of the national health budget is spent on the management of chronic disease, within a health care sector historically more aligned to the management of infections and injury. http://enzoaronica.blogspot.com/2008/11/virtual-reality-hdr-photogrammetry-at.html Leah D'Emilio learns about a whole new approach to visual effects in film. Dr. Paul Debevec, innovator of HDR photography and creator of Photogrammetry used in "The Matrix," takes us through USC's Institute for Creative Technologies. http://idlemode.com/2008/11/14/design-for-convergence-mobile-phone-as-universal-remote/ Five Design Considerations for Mobile Phone as Universal Remote Control. http://visualthinkmap.blogspot.com/2008/11/cartographic-knowledge.html Screenshots taken from ATLAS, the application that's being developed 'to explore the possibilities of the application of a cartographic metaphor to the realms of knowledge', sort of thinking with maps (cartographic cognition), a form of visual thinking. http://campaignprojects.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/a-unified-approach-to-visual-and-interaction-design/ At the end of the day, as designers, we want to look for a set of attributes that tells a comprehensive story that resonates with both stakeholders and users, and has a healthy amount of tension which will be productive for exploring and establishing boundaries. http://brown2020.com/2008/11/innovation-and-human-centered-design-applied-to-home-health-monitoring/ Great design starts with empathy for human needs, and great designers gain their insights by immersing themselves in the world and looking at challenges through the eyes of their users. That is the philosophy of IDEO, one the most innovative and successful design firms in the world. http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2008/11/an-unsuitable-match-social-media-and-user-centred-design/ The defining characteristic of social media is a revolutionary undermining of the distinction between producers and consumers of media. Instead of producing content, social media services merely facilitate user interaction. Given this, one would have thought that the tenets of User-Centred Design (UCD) would be highly pertinent to the design of social media. http://www.industrialdesignserved.com/Gallery/jive-social-networking-for-your-gran_/94301 jive is a proof of concept for a new communication device. Jive was created as part of Ben Arent's product design degree. Jive is a range of 3 products that were designed to get elderly technophobes connected to their friends and family. http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20082011-18466-2.html Women board directors may help improve sustainable performance, according to new Curtin University of Technology research. http://blogs.smh.com.au/business/executivestyle/innovator/archives/2008/11/how_to_measure.html Is there a mystical faith in innovation strategies? Do business owners and managers believe that drives to innovate will pay off somehow, even if they can't actually see the returns from previous attempts? http://racer.x.iabc.com/tag/social-media/ Probably the best, most succinct answer to the question "why social media?" you'll ever see... http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=31122 Changing conception of cities, economies and universities... http://blogs.zdnet.com/collaboration/?p=155 Every so often you come across a web application that is a game changer: the utility of browser plugin reframeit is a hugely powerful adjunct to your use of the entire web. The video above demonstrates marking up the transcript of a political speech with associated facts and links using reframeit that will be associated with specific areas of that content for as long as you want them to be. http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=899343 Kodak aims to foster innovation in a casual work environment http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/459/161 The notion of interaction design has become an indispensable aspect in any new product design and development, especially for those products with embedded information technologies ... New technologies such as the Internet and mobile phone networks have changed the way people live and work. Such technological changes are taking place in the social and cultural landscapes of our daily life, and are fundamentally affecting many aspects of our lives. http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/will-android-redefine-mobile-user-experience/2008-10-24 The first Android-based handset hit the market this week when T-Mobile USA released the hotly-anticipated G1--however, insiders are now buzzing about the next wave of Android devices, specifically Motorola's forthcoming mobile social networking-themed phone. http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2008/10/26/when-techno-fashion-goes-mainstream/ Two designers from Europe are in the forefront of a new kind of technology that you wear. Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz founded the company CuteCircuit in 2004 and are now designing clothing that does more than look good. For example, the Hug Shirt can let someone give you a long-distance squeeze and the M-Dress is a cell phone that you wear. http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2008/10/21/research-based-suggestions-for-the-digital-storytelling-process/ PrimaryAccess is a free online digital documentary maker designed for social studies instruction. This presentation will provide a quick introduction to PrimaryAccess and then describe some of the research on its use in classrooms, focusing on students' learning outcomes. The presentation concludes with recommendations for teaching with PrimaryAccess. http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/gadgets_and_gaming/article5010488.ece Video games might once have been considered a hobby for pale, sweaty teenage boys but they have now been accepted by the political and artistic establishment as a cultural phenomenon worthy of its own festival.