After the analysis of “Visualizing techniques with plants”, we will explore interactions for human computer interaction (HCI) through plants. The objectives of this research are revealing technical approaches and which kind of interaction can be performed.
Interactions between humans and computer is usually implemented by sensors. In 2009 Dan Saffer defined a sensor for human computer interaction like this:
A sensor is typically an electrical or electronic component whose job is to detect changes in the environment [Saffer2009, page 13].
We are surrounded by plants and plants are able to sense changes in our environment. The increasing problem with our environment forces us to reconsider our usage of technology. Hybrid solutions between natural resources and our current technology is able to decrease our current environmental issues [ICC2007, pages 15-21]. For this reason, it is obvious to explore the plant abilities of sensing for HCI. The sensor belongs to the basic components of any gestural system, which is used in HCI applications [Saffer2009, page 13]. In our context we replace the common electronic sensor with a plant. An additional electronic circuit translates these bio signals into electronic computer-readable signals. Accordingly to this approach, the gestural system is completed again. Read more...
During my research on Human Plant Interfaces I figured out music and sound is a very often used expression for this kind of interaction. As far as I know John Lifton and Richard Lowenberg are one of the first artists that used plants for creating a soundscape. Their installation "Green Music", created for the much discussed movie "The Secret Life of Plants" (movie), uses the approach of bio sensing and converts the signals to synthesized sounds. The visitors can interact with the plants via touch for changing the pitch level of a sound. Read more...
Im ersten Teil der Making-Of Serie habe ich die Randbedingungen des Projektes vorgestellt und unser Verfahren mit Hilfe von MockUps die Struktur und den Inhalt unserer App zu definieren. In diesem Beitrag geht es um die visuelle Gestaltung, sprich das Grafik Design unserer Ap. Ein weiteres Thema sind die Ergebnisse unserer kleinen Feldstudie mit Freunden.
3. Eine Art Mischung von Corporate Design und Screen Design
Die Erstellung eines visuellen Gesicht war weniger ein technisches und gestalterisches Problem, es war eher ein Budgetproblem. An dieser Stelle mußten wir einen großen Spagat zwischen unseren Ansprüchen und den stark begrenzten Mitteln machen. Read more...
Seit Mitte/Ende Februar hat das Projekt wasfuttern.de das Licht der Welt erblickt. Mein frühiger Schulkollege Rusbeh kam vor ca. 1 Jahr auf mich zu mit seiner Antwort auf die alltägliche Frage "Was soll ich heute wo essen?". Jeder kennt sicherlich diese immer wieder auftretende Frage in der Mittagspause. In diesem Blogartikel gebe ich einen Einblick in unseren User-Centered Design Entstehungsprozess von wasfuttern.de.
Read more...
A small summary of my Twitter messages from February 2013- June 2013:
Read more...
Categories: Design, english, Games, Generative Art, Interaction, mobile, Programming, Technologie Tags: art, books, cool stuff, Design, flash, Games, inspiration, Interaction, interface design, physical computing, Programming, tools, tutorials, video, web
In my previous post I presented a text collage about the basics of botany. In this blog post I created again a text collage about the subdisciplines of botany for Interface Designer. In my opinion there only four really interesting subdisciplines: Plant perception, plant defense against herbivory, Ethnobotany, and Horticulture. Each subdiscipline has a short description (text collage from wikipedia) what it does and a comment of mine. In the comment I give an argument why I think this topic is important for a deeper research. So here it goes:
Read more...
As a teenager, I spent too much time on skates, and I did not get teacher message why I should spent time for education. For this reason, my knowledge of biology - especially of plants - is so fucking minor. However, sometimes you got fucked, and then you have to kick your ass by yourself. Still, I am a little lazy m***f***r so the result is more or less a text collage of wikipedia articles. Here it goes:
Definition of plants
Plants, focus is on green plants (Viridiplantae in Latin), are living organisms of the kingdom Plantae including such multicellular groups as flowering plants, conifers, ferns and mosses, as well as, depending on definition, the green algae, but not red or brown seaweeds like kelp, nor fungi or bacteria.
Read more...
A small summary of my Twitter messages from July 2012- January 2013:
Read more...
Categories: Allgemein, Design, english, Games, Generative Art, Interaction, mobile, Programming, Technologie Tags: books, Design, flash, flex, fotografie, game design, interface design, mobile, physical computing, Programming, research, tools, tutorials, web
Last semester I joined the Journal Club lecture at our University. I continued my research in gesture based interaction for screen-based environments. This little paper research was based on the question how the screen size influences the gesture design. In the end I created a short presentation about important conferences for gesture design, and summarized the results of 4 papers. Thanks to Martin Kaltenbrunner for his useful advices!
Furthermore, I found a bunch of very interesting papers for designing gestures in screen-based environments. I want to share these papers with you. You are welcome to add comments about the papers or recommend other nice projects! (use the tooltip for only reading the titles of the papers)
Read more...
The book Designing Interaction from Bill Moggridge was already published in 2006. Even it is quite old for a technology book the content is still valid. The first six chapters give a perfect history background of human-computer interaction. The evolution of input devices and the computer itself is very good explained. Also the original comments from the designers and engineers are very interesting to read. In the end the reader gets a very good introduction how and why the computer evolved as it is today. Even the described history is a strongly based on the authors view. The chapters Adopting Technology and Multisensory and Multimedia gives a nice introduction into tangible interaction. It also helps beginners to understand how to leave the desktop metaphor. The whole book describes very easily how product designer, industrial designer, psychologist and engineers working together for developing the new devices. The texts about their development and thinking processes gives a very good insight. The last chapters about The Internet, Futures and Alternatives Nows, and People and Prototypes are nice to read, but with some comments I can't agree. For this reason, the aspects of Emotional Design and Prototyping are little bit weak in my opinion. However, reading the first six chapters is very useful for human-computer interaction beginners. It makes their knowledge around the history of Interaction Design more stable. The last chapters are nice to read, but not very obligatory. Unfortunately, the multimedia CD of the book I never really checked. So I can't say if it is good or not. For professional interaction designer is almost nothing new in this book, so I can't recommend it for them.