Touch » Visual design

Visual representation of tangible interaction

Timo — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:31:22 +0000

In the design of the interactive elements of Sniff, Sara had to use visual diagramming as a way of exploring, understanding and prototyping with non-visual feedback such as sound and vibration (haptics).

Sara developed a speech bubble approach to annotating physical objects, so that they look like they are ‘saying’ the audio and haptic feedback.

The representation of sound and vibration uses waveforms, showing amplitude over time. Although this is quite limited, it seems to be a useful shorthand for communicating a small range of tangible feedback.

On this note, I’m getting increasingly interested in the use of speech bubbles in popular media.

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Magnetic Movie

Timo — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:29:43 +0000

In the same vein as the Bubbles of Radio work from last year, Magnetic Movie is a film that explores visible and audible manifestations of radio fields. The film is by Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt of Semiconductor and commissioned by Animate Projects that remains on the forefront of “exploring the relationship between art and animation”.

“Natural magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic, ever-changing geometries… Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?” The stills don’t do the pulsing, crackling, moving visuals justice, I highly recommend that you go and watch the film.

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Everyware icons (visualising ubicomp situations)

Timo — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 14:07:24 +0000

In December 2005 Adam Greenfield asked me to work with him on icon concepts for his book Everyware. Here is Adam’s description of his book:

“The age of ubiquitous computing is here: a computing without computers, where information processing has diffused into everyday life, and virtually disappeared from view. What does this mean to those of us who will be encountering it? How will it transform our lives? And how will we learn to make wise decisions about something so hard to see?”

The icons were for the section headers of the book, covering the ideas that Adam felt were important around making aspects of ubiquitous computing visible. These were the suggested themes:

Augmented-reality information is available in this location
This object has invisible qualities (could be almost identical with the last of these four)
Warning: sensor field
Information processing dissolving in behavior (i see this as bits flowing through a handshake)
Media surface

Network dead zone
I made a quick sketch that has some icons that are consistent with my earlier work on a graphic language for touch-based interactions. I’ve used the dashed line again to show borders and invisible geometry. Not all of these are successful, but I think they show some interesting directions for the future.

Click for a larger size image. Download as pdf.

I think in particular the Network dead zone, Warning: sensor field and this object has invisible qualities are particularly successful. The book used a set of icons inspired by these, you can see a selection on Flickr.
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2. The EU on the visibility of RFID The EU is conducting a new online consultancy on privacy,......