“The iCarteTM is a Near Field Communication (NFC) / Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Reader, designed to provide NFC two-way communication, RFID read/write and contactless payment capability for the iPhone. NFC and RFID tag information can be written and read by the iCarteTM and communicated to the iPhone or to any Computer with a USB port. iCarteTM has an embedded smart-chip that can be configured as debit, credit, pre-paid and loyalty cards, for secure contactless transactions. iCarteTM can also read NFC Smart Posters, download or upload electronic coupons, tickets or receipts. iCarteTM is ideal for iPhone users who want to use their iPhones for fast and secure contactless payments, transit payments, loyalty rewards, checking balances, top-up, discovering new services from smart posters or kiosks and exchanging information with other NFC phones. Business iPhone users can use the iCarteTM for commercial applications such as asset tracking, document tracking, healthcare, security and access control.”

I’ve also heard rumours that Core RFID is about to have a reader available for the iPhone, and we’ll flag that up here as soon as we hear anything more.

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The ‘Radiogenic’

Dunne & Raby introduce the idea of ‘Hertzian space’ in Design Noir and Hertzian Tales where they describe a landscape of electronic products creating a “new, invisible but physical environment”.

In Tunable cities they map the radio signals from domestic equipment such as babycoms and begin to examine the “role of electronic products in the aesthetic inhabitation of a rapidly dematerialising, ubiquitous and intelligent environment.” Here there are visualisations of radio fields as bright red spaces overlaid on the streets of Chiswick, London.

Although their work specifically avoided issues around making the invisible visible or visualising radio, it explored the “links between the material and the immaterial that lead to new aesthetic possibilities for life in an electromagnetic environment”.

“It might seem strange to write about radio, a long-established medium, when discussion today centres on cyberspace, virtual reality, networks, smart materials and other electronic tehcnologies. But radio, meaning part of the electromagnetic spectrum is fundamental to electronics. Objects not only “dematerialise” into software in response to minituarisation and replacement by services but literally dematerialise into radiation. All electronic products are hybrids of radiation and matter. [...] Whereas cyberspace is a metaphor that spatialises what happens in computers distributed around the world, radio space is actual and physical, even though our senses detect only a tiny part of it.”

As Matt Jones points out, they go on to coin the term “radiogenic” to describe objects that:

“function as unwitting interfaces between the abstract space of electromagnetism and the material cultures of everyday life, revealing unexpected points of contact between them.”

The Faraday chair offers a slightly more nuanced ‘visualisation’ of the boundaries of electromagnetic waves through a physical object. These works operate by visualising and making tangible the boundaries between electromagnetic phenomena, and as such, serve to highlight and create discourse around the issue of radio in emerging products and systems

Celebrating the magic of remote action

The language used to describe RFID interaction includes closeness, touch, proximity and pointing but there are few explorations of the way that RFID systems shape the gestural and tangible aspects of this interaction. Within Human Computer Interaction (HCI) there is some discussion of the spatial aspects of sensor technologies. For instance Ailisto et al (2003) discuss the ways that RFID creates contactless interactions on mobile phones: “Physical selection may be based on proximity or pointing. In the case of proximity, the selection is activated by bringing the activating device, e.g. a smart phone, close to the target device.”.

In the Touch project we have experimented with the spatial aspects of RFID interaction, developing a tacit design knowledge of the technology over time. At an early RFID hacking workshop with BERG/Schulze & Webb we experimented with playful interactions that involved “the magic of remote action” where invisible interactions triggered events in the world.

This is something we went on to explore in much more detail in the film Nearness, where the relationship between proximity and physical interaction is explored in detail.

In projects like the Graphic language for touch we have begun to find ways of representing invisible radio as a tangible design material in a functional setting.

And in her project the Bubbles of Radio (that emerged from our Fields and Seams brief) Ingeborg Marie Dehs Thomas imagined and visualised many fictional representations of radio fields including Bluetooth and RFID. These drawings provide a playful starting point for the discussion of our relationship to radio fields and the possibilities they open up for interaction.

Exploring and experiencing waves

The political, social and phenomenological aspects of the electromagnetic spectrum are a recurring theme within contemporary media art practice. For instance the exhibition Waves at RIXC tuned in to artistic engagements with the electro-magnetic spectrum and suggested that “artists should take control of the very principles and materiality of the ‘network waves’.”

A common practice is to translate radio space into an audible, sonic experience. In projects like ætherspace, Aeriology, Electroprobes and in many RFID projects some kind of probe that senses radio and offers audible output is held or attached to the body. The experience is then about being mobile, moving through and probing the world to discover how the lanscape and patterns of radio changes through space.

Then there are a number of visual, interactive visualisation projects such as the Wifi camera, the sightseeing telescope that reveals open wifi networks in urban space and the Free Network Visible Network project. In most cases the visual representations of the radio waves are merged and overlaid into optical or video backgrounds of the physical world, in a kind of ‘augmented reality’ genre.

In Edge Town by Ben Hooker and Shona Kitchen visual approaches are used to explore the ways in which we can “design interfaces with the flows of electronic data that run through our cities so that they can be experienced as an enriching complement to other, more ‘earthly’ phenomena.” Their garden-like visualisations represent the desire to turn these invisible flows into something more tangible. In another architectural approach, Pedro Sepulveda-Sandoval proposes the demarcation of public areas that are free of mobile phone signals, using the visual language of yellow/black warning tape.

Artists Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt visualised many kinds of fields in Magnetic Movie, where the fields are seen animated as crackling, pulsing and swirling waves that uncomfortably inhabit physical spaces. This animation reinforced by a strong soundtrack that crackles in time with the motion is one of the most engaging and compelling visualisations of radio fields that we have seen.

Spatial and seamful sensors

For engineers and scientists, accurately modelling and visualising invisible radio fields, and engaging in antenna measurement is a difficult task, if not almost a ‘black art’. Using specialist robotic equipment and slowly measuring the intensity of radio signals at various points in space, it is possible to build up a three dimensional map of a radio field. There are also specialist 3D simulation tools that create models of radio fields and their interactions with physical material. These tools are mainly used to optimise the design of radio antennae, probe and problem-solve radio interference problems in electronic equipment and to assess safety issues with human exposure to radio systems.

In a paper called The spatial character of sensor technology Reeves et al (2006) describe the importance of understanding seams and spatiality in sensor-based systems. Although they concentrate on ‘torch-based’ interactions, their concerns are relevant for other sensor technologies:

“We are primarily concerned with the way in which seams between devices create a particular spatial character for the location in which they are deployed. This spatial character of seams derives from the use of spatially-embedded sensor technologies (e.g., GPS, Wifi, etc.) which are particularly prevalent in ubiquitous computing. Sensor technology plays a fundamental part in the creation of seams, and thus the character of the space in which such technology is deployed. The main issue, then, is how interactive and ubiquitous system design may appropriately address this essential spatiality.”

There is also a discussion of the ‘seamful’ character of many ubiquitous technologies.

Chalmers and Galani (2001) describes the ways in which “wireless networks have distinct physical characteristics such as a tendency to be absorbed by metal, water and other conductive materials, and a pattern of coverage that makes for a limited area of usable network connectivity.” They suggest that there may be a method or conceptual process of ‘seamful design’ that builds upon the way that “people accommodate and take advantage of seams and heterogeneity, in and through the process of interaction.”

“We critique the ‘disappearance’ mentioned by Weiser as a goal for ubicomp, and Dourish’s ‘embodied interaction’ approach to HCI, suggesting that these design ideals may be unachievable or incomplete because they underemphasise the interdependence of ‘invisible’ non-rationalising interaction and focused rationalising interaction within ongoing activity.”

There is something in this ‘seamful design’ process that may help us to understand of the way that we deal with the invisible aspects of radio-based interaction, and the ways that mental models are built out of these systems.

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Hat tip towards The way things go, that Honda commercial and Pythagora Switch.

Some photos.

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

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

A lens for media

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

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

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

Media objects

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

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

Going further

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

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

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This week the the MA interaction design course Tangible Interactions is having its summer exhibition at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. The students have been focusing on designing interactions with RFID technology. This years exhibition includes games, token-based media, transactions, wayshowing, a story-telling pillow, ‘twittering’ things and more.

The exhibition is a part of AHO Works.

• 9-12 June 2008 09:00-18:00 in the AHO library (map)
• Official opening 11 June 17:00
• @ Underskog
• Tangible Interactions course blog

• AHO Interaction design Flickr group

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Bowl is a project by Einar Sneve Martinussen, Jørn Knutsen and Timo Arnall and investigated two design briefs: RFID and the everyday and Playful RFID. The concept, technicalities, process and results are described in detail in the paper at the end of this post, read on for a summary.

Simple access to media

The Bowl is a simple media player that can be used by people of all ages, particularly young children. A bowl sits on the living room table and range of physical objects can be placed within it. When an object is placed in the bowl related media is played back on the TV.

For example a physical Moomin character like Little My will play a sequence from the Moomin cartoon where she is featured. Through this simple interface, Bowl encourages new, engaging and playful activities around the media experience.

Background

The project draws on a long history of research into ‘tangible interfaces’ for media (some examples). But it is distinct from other projects in that it applies the idea of tangible manipulation of media to the very specific context of the home. It also disregards complex editing, browsing or manipulation of media in favour of providing simple interactions that work for young children.

There are very few products which allow access to media in a way that can be used by children younger than four. Although it might be argued that children under four shouldn’t have access to media, there is no doubt that they do and in fact there is an enormous amount of content designed exclusively for this audience (see Teletubbies).

Existing media interfaces are overly complex, allow access to unsuitable content and encourage extended viewing habits. By creating a space for physical and playful engagement where screen-media is only a part of the experience, the Bowl intends to create constrained but self-directed activities that are not only passive, lean-back experiences.

Testing

Einar’s daughter, Anna – who features as our main user in this project – was 2 years old at the start of the project. We saw an opportunity here to design, evaluate and iterate an interface aimed particularly at children of that age.

The prototype has been developed through an extensive user-driven process where the product was tested and developed in-situ. The interface has been refined and the content re-edited as we learnt about problems and opportunities through a series of tests.

A standard platform was built very early in the project, from which many bowls and tokens could be evaluated. It was important for this set-up to be lightweight and dynamic so that important interaction parameters could be tweaked and altered. The early prototype was constructed in wood from a simple 2×4 with existing bowls as the interface. This allowed rapid modifications to the setup and although not aesthetically pleasing, didn’t disrupt the home environment or introduce any explicit new ‘gadget’ to the living room.

Through the development of the physical prototype the technical possibilities and challenges were rapidly discovered. Interestingly many technical limitations inherent in the RFID system that we used for prototyping turned out to be non-issues. Some of these limitations actually turned out to be opportunities in the interaction design of the interface. See the paper below for more details.

Conclusions

This study has been rich in both the details of physical interactions and conceptual possibilities. We have come a long way towards realising a suitable home media interface for children, using everyday objects and containers. The interaction is simple, natural and works seamlessly as a media experience. The interface can be immediately satisfying without guidance or instruction. As a simple interface rather than a ‘gadget’, it doesn’t depend on changing media infrastructures, standards or platforms. We have designed it as a ‘front-end’ that can be adapted to any kind of home-media system, thus its requirements are likely to stay the same over the lifetime of it’s use and even be adaptable to future technologies.

The initial planning involved five user-test tasks but due to the richness of the process, we ended up conducting about ten discrete topics and twenty different tests. We regard this sustained, rich access to relevant people and contexts and essential part of developing new interactive products.

One of our goals was to examine the effects of the changing role of digital technology and content in the home as a result of new interfaces. The long-term testing has offered us an insight into this changing television-based experience. We see increasing connection between playing and watching and more physical activity around media usage.

Further work

Beyond this testing process we are in the process of building the next prototype. It has been designed as a durable product that fits within the home context by using standard components and high quality materials.

Here the project is being extended to look at how it might be turned into a product. How it might be ‘shelf explanatory’ and how it might relate to existing media products and services.

More about Bowl

Einar has posted more pictures and information about his design case study presentation at DUX 07 including an annotated PDF of his very accessible presentation.

This paper contains a full account of the background, the design process, the testing, technicalities and a discussion of the results. The paper from ‘Designing For User Experiences’ in the Proceedings of the 2007 conference on Designing for User eXperiences are available at the ACM digital library. You can also download the full PDF here.

See more student work from the Touch project.

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