20:20 Vision

Last night I went along to view a discussion being held at Sensation in Dundee as part of the Dundee Science Festival taking place this week.

It included a series of talks from a number of researchers who had come from all over the UK, who each had 20 slides, and 20 seconds per slide, to present their thoughts on the role that technology will have on our digital future.

Some speakers chose to pick a single project whereas others gave a quick overview of their background and research focus using highlights from a number of projects. There were some really great ideas being brought forward, particularly in regards to how technology can create relationships and act as a bridge between people and communities.

Often in the media we see a vision that depicts digital technology creating a divide and alienating people from society, and so it was invigorating to see a group that were on the whole using technology to bring people together and solve these issues.

Lalya Gaye and Joëlle Bitton, both from the Culture Lab at Newcastle University, illustrated the work that they had partaken within the SiDE project. It was interesting to see how they were using craft and creativity to tackle social exclusion by teaching people about digital technology and the benefits that it can bring.

It was also fascinating to see the work from Chris Speed and Simone O'Callaghan, who were applying stories through QR codes to traditional artifacts, which in it's own way was also connecting people and places.

Lastly, I found the talk from Mike Chantler to be particularly engaging. Although he was talking about textures and their visual attributes, which had the potential to be a fairly mundane topic, the passion and enthusiasm he showed for the topic grabbed everyone's attention and made it just as appealing. Hopefully I can take this into all the presentations I do in the future.

Mobile interaction

I've been looking into what I would like to cover for my essay in DE, as well as thinking about areas of interest for my third semester project.

Generally I have been looking at mobile interaction, and I've been trying to look at it from a variety of angles. Jan Chipchase's presentation Where's The Phone? for Nokia was quite useful, as it shows how the research methods produced specific observations. I found the conclusion notable;

"The last 10 years have been about converging more functionality onto a single device - instant messaging, radio, television, music, cameras and so on. Each feature creates new modalities of use and can subtly or drastically change carrying and interaction styles. How does having a camera change how a device is carried? Or access to mobile banking?

We are rapidly moving to the point where, due to miniaturization, flexible components and economies of scale, it maymake sense to de-converge functionality on the phone. Hypothetically, if you took all the features on a phone today and distributed them around the body, clothes and in other carried objects, where might these functions be carried, accessed? And why?"

This notion would seem to contrast to what Intel Research are suggesting with their Carry Small, Live Large Research Program. This says to me that they are proposing that phones will get smaller with more platforms converged within them.

I feel that it could go either way. What I think is important is that they are both looking at how people interact with the devices, as well as looking at contexts and environments.

The web in the world

I had a brief look at a presentation by Timo Arnall called The web in the world. He describes how emerging technologies are impacting on mobile platforms and concentrates on "ideas around presence, location, context awareness, peripheral interaction as well as haptics and tangible interfaces".

Arnall's work can also be seen here and here, with some interesting insights into design and research.