The RFID sniffer is a simple analog electronic circuit which can detect the presence of 13.56 MHz RFID tags. These tags are commonly used in all kinds of plastic cards like access badges, bank cards, library cards, loyalty cards and so on.

RFID is everywhere. Use the easy to build RFID sniffer to find out if objects are tagged. Also many other objects may carry RFID tags without you knowing it. Books, toys, and even clothing might be tagged. Carrying tagged objects with you can reveal your identity or whereabouts to anyone equipped with the appropiate tools to read RFID tags. The RFID sniffer helps you identify which objects are tagged, and which are not.

Looks like a great workshop! And the Sniffers are available to buy from here.

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This video shows some of the student’s process, starting with a conceptual session where ideas were sketched on paper and enacted through props. A process of making followed in the wood, plastics and clay workshops where the products took shape. Finally the products are presented as experience prototypes.

Le Chef by Marius and Bilal. A product designed for the kitchen that ‘licks’ various ingredients and suggests recipes.

Poke a pig by Kjetil and Erik. A wooden pig that plays different sounds to different types of attention: a hand for petting, an apple for feeding, etc.

Star pillows by Elisa and Ane. Explored soft materials and audiovisual content for relaxing.

Musicology by Ingrid and Silje. Explored modular shapes and objects for playing playlists from last.fm.

Mood cup by Miray and Ruben. Personalised (or customisable) cups that play back different playlists from last.fm.

Musicframes by Astrid and Stine. A wall of photos each linked to a music file that has personal meaning connected to the photo.

The farm by Karin and Brynjar. An ‘Interactive storytelling space for children’ where animals crossing a river trigger sounds or audiobook content.

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Last week Interaction Design students at the Oslo School of Architecture & Design participated in a Touch workshop where the brief was to design a playful, exploratory or characterful RFID interface. The emphasis of this workshop was on exploring the relationship between digital interaction through RFID and the material properties of physical objects.

The brief

This week we will be working with a technology called Radio Frequency IDentification or RFID. RFID is exciting for industrial and interaction designers because it is a cheap and simple technology that allows us to build quite advanced gestural and tangible interfaces. When an RFID tag is in the range of an RFID reader (usually about 10cm) it communicates a tiny amount of information, a simple short code that lets the computer know that it is present. This is usually used to identify an object, person or animal, for instance to open a door, to find the owner of a lost pet, to pay for a ticket, or to know if a product that is passing out of a shop door has been paid for.

RFID tags are tiny, fairly cheap and don’t require a battery. They can be embedded inside all sorts of materials easily and without much effort. RFID readers are also small and flat, enabling them to be embedded easily below surfaces such as wood, concrete or plastics. The only physical limitations are metal and water, which absorb radio signals and stop RFID systems from working effectively.

Designing playful RFID

You will design a physical interface that involves a reader, a few tags and a Tikitag application.

Industrial and interaction designer’s haven’t been working with RFID for very long. So RFID systems are usually dull and lifeless, with ordinary plastic or paper tags and flat plastic readers. There needs to be more experimentation with the physical aspects of RFID interfaces in applications such as toys, appliances and domestic interfaces. There may be great playful applications of the technology that have not yet been explored.

You must design the physical relationship between the tag, the reader and the resulting action. Your objects must be finished with quality and material choices that match the intended use and context of the application (such as waterproof plastics for the bathroom or turned wood for the coffeetable).

Methods

You will each choose a different application from our list of Tikitag applications. Sketch out ten ways in which the tags and the reader in that application should look, feel and behave. What kind of approach is most suitable? Should it be characterful, understated, loud? What other kinds of objects should it reference? List out the kind of materials that would be suitable for such an application.

Design one set of tags and a reader for your application. Think about size, shape, durability, surface texture, and the relationship between the reader and the tag. How do the objects relate to each other? How do the objects and the reader fit together? What metaphors and associations can you draw upon, are they like keys, do they encourage swiping, caressing, tickling? How will a user manipulate the objects? Will they have to place them in certain positions or sequences to achieve different results?

References

Bowl: Token based media for children

Designing with RFID

RFID peripherals

RFID and unique physical form

Images of touch interfaces

Previous ‘Touch’ student prototypes

Qubi – Tangible colour game

Hairfid

Storytelling pillow

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One of the aims of the Mediamatic workshop was to experiment with ubiquitous technology for social and playful purposes. Every participant in Picnic was issued with an RFID tag that could be used by various installations around the conference venue. As a controlled setting this was a very interesting environment to experiment with RFID technology in use, and in particular to experiment with physical interactions in online social networks.

One of the participants on the first day. Photo by Anne Helmond.

The photo booth team consisted of Timo Arnall, Anne Helmond, Jorn Knutsen and Einar Sneve Martinussen. We wanted to create something that brought people together both in a physical activity and in an online social network. Initially we described it like this:

A photo booth that encourages people to take photos of themselves with others. By waving multiple tags over a touchpoint inside the booth, a photo is taken, a connection is made and pictures are added to the Picnic website.

We built the booth in three days, with many design iterations, and ended up with a large white box with a picnic-themed grassy interior that allowed up to about 10 people to have their photo taken at once.

Inside there was an RFID reader, a camera and a screen that would show what was being recorded, as well as showing a countdown for picture taking. Outside a large LCD screen showed recent and random pictures from the booth, encouraging participation. By touching your tag to a reader outside, you could see pictures of yourself.

Over the course of the three-day event the photo-booth was extremely popular and resulted in literally thousands of pictures and social connections.

Physical interactions manipulate the network

Every attendee’s RFID tag contained a link to their profile within the Picnic network site (their tags were registered and connected at the registration desk). This profile contained their name and any descriptions or tags that they had decided to include, we also had access to their contact details and payment information if we had chosen to do so. When the photo booth detected their tag, it could look them up in the Picnic social network, get their details and manipulate their profiles.

Left: Inside the booth. Right: Tags on the RFID touchpoint.

The booth attracted curious attendees, who looked at the photos playing on the outside. When they walked into the booth, and touched their tag to a ‘touchpoint’ their name would appear on a screen and a countdown would start. If others then touched their tags within this countdown they would also have their names appear in the photo. People who had their photo taken together would have a connection created between them on the Picnic network site.

On the web the Picnic network showed the pictures from the booth with the names of all the people that had been photographed together. People’s profiles included the photos of them and their connections. This was a different and new way of exploring the network and seeing the connections that had been made.

Photos from the booth were also uploaded to Flickr and tagged with the people’s first name (see for example all the photos taken of me and the tag cloud of the names and IDs of people who used the booth most).

This realtime Flickr stream appeared on the outside of the booth, where people stood around watching their recent creations, as well as seeing random photos where they or their friends appeared.

Physical proximity

With around two thousand tagged attendees this was a great opportunity to design for and study the application of social networks in physical space, and to better understand the relationship between physical interactions and the resulting effects in online spaces. The way in which the photo booth took elements of a digital network and made it manipulable in a physical context was very interesting to us.

We were interested in the details of the interactions between people, their tags and readers. In practice RFID is a relatively mundane technology, it doesn’t flash or beep or cry out for attention when it’s encased in plastic packaging. It is also very limited technically: the read-ranges are typically so low that we require people to ‘touch’ their tags to the readers.

Without explicit instruction or ‘attractor loops’ the booth worked through certain ‘gestures’ that were socially learned; people observed and then participated. The activity of ‘touching’ actually brought people—who perhaps had only recently met—into very close physical proximity. This strangely intimate setting, combined with the activity of negotiating, framing and posing for a group photo provided a space for new connections to be formed, and existing relationships to be reinforced.

The attendees also became familiar with RFID interactions over time, and once they had experienced one kind of interaction, wanted to try more. Other RFID-based installations, in particular the free-beer-machine was a very low-threshold introduction to RFID interaction with a very high-degree of motivation… This benefited us all by lowering the threshold to participation.

Playing with controversial technology

With a single touch of a tag to a reader, we could have initiated many different actions within the Picnic network site; we had access to names, profiles, contact information including addresses and phone numbers and even perhaps payment information. But we chose fairly simple events: displaying people’s first name, updating the relationships between people, and relating photos to profiles.

However given that we had access to this data, we were very surprised that nobody questioned the fact that the booth knew their name. We expected there to be questions of privacy and security and perhaps some resentment towards the ease with which the booth accessed data. It seemed that the gesture and the resulting feedback was so natural that there didn’t seem to be anything scary about a name appearing on screen, in fact people assumed that somehow the RFID tag contained the information, the network wasn’t seen as part of the interaction. This shows how readily emerging technologies can be accepted without question, and how their implications remain obscure under the surface of an engaging experience.

Low-threshold interactions with social media

Conferences are a relatively constrained setting where there is an impetus to connect with people and social networks that expand, shift and change over the course of a few days. Social networks in this controlled space have many different qualities to the ones experienced in everyday life. So installations such as the photo booth must be designed to play with the existing social fabric and activities of the conference environment.

There are many different ways in which technology can intervene in these settings, something Clay Shirky has called situated software. Whereas most online social networks require users to explicitly state relationships to each other such as ‘friend’, ‘contact’ or ‘follower’ with these physically-based interactions the connection is much more implicit and less formal.

A simple physical gesture—touching some tags together at the same time—is all it takes to create a connection. Browsing through the Picnic network after having used the booth for a few days was an entirely new experience; the network was more random and chaotic, but because it had emerged from physical, social proximity there is a richer texture to the network than one built through explicit selection. Growing an online social network through these kinds of low-threshold physical interactions seems like a interesting pattern that we might see more of in the future.

More photos from the booth and of the booth.

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The workshop was initiated by the Digital Methods Initiative that specialises in online research methods:

“The Digital Methods Initiative is a contribution to doing research into the “natively digital”. [...] How does one do research online? What are the new objects of study, and how do they alter pre-existing methods? [...] Which digital methods innovate with and also critically display the recommender culture that is at the heart of new media information environments?”

They have developed a very extensive set of tools that can be used to scrape, crawl and otherwise interrogate online data:

”[A] set of allied tools and independent modules have been made to extend the research into the blogosphere, online newssphere, discussion lists and forums, folksonomies as well as search engine behavior. These tools include scripts to scrape web, blog, news, image and social bookmarking search engines, as well as simple analytical machines that output data sets as well as graphical visualizations.”

The workshop resulted in five visualisations:

The Substantive Composition of RFID According to Folksonomy and the Web

This project asked the question: “which issue language is significantly associated with RFID?” by looking at both del.icio.us tags and Google results.

More…

Wikipedia Anonymous Authorship Cartogram

This project simply asks: “Where do anonymous Wikipedia edits for RFID originate” by using a specialised Wikipedia edit scraper.

More…

Drama in Search Space: RFID and Arphid Queries Over Time

This project looks at the relative rankings of sites in Google over time, to find when and what issues emerged or disappeared.

More…

RFID Imagery: ‘Wet’ and ‘Dry’ Associations Compared

This project asks “Is RFID in its imagery (according to Google Images) largely associated with technonature or technoculture” by visually analysing the results of Google image searches.

More…

Issue Packaging on the Web: Style Sheets for RFID Sites by Site Type

Looking at the colors and styles on RFID-related websites and trying to cluster them. What patterns emerge?

More…

It’s fantastic to have such visual material emerging from a one-day workshop. All of these visualisations feel like they would benefit from some dynamic or interactive elements: representing some variable in time for instance, so that we could see shifts and changes in the landscape.

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Here I am presenting at Recalling RFID (photo by Anne Helmond). I talked about the ways in which Touch is exploring RFID interactions from a design perspective. In particular I looked at the physicality of RFID readers and tags and the ways in which we can visualise RFID fields and applications.

Here is my presentation from the conference, with notes on each slide.

Download presentation: RFID as material in design [pdf]

Anne has a great summary, and there are more notes on the talk here and here.

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Recalling RFID was exceptionally successful at creating a space where diverse viewpoints on RFID were expressed, shared and debated. The level of understanding of the issues from all sides was very high. This resulted in a measured sense of agreement, rather than opposition. I found this rather refreshing and even managed to concentrate through lengthy discussions of privacy, security, freedom and control.

Here are my raw notes from the first day conference.

Rob van Kranenberg: intro

You cannot see RFID unless you have an opinion on the ways in which smart / ubiquitous environments work. RFID is like the glue that sticks all these things together.

Today there are many diverse viewpoints: pro, against, and people attempting to re-write the map of RFID.

Christian van ‘t Hof: RFID and police investigation

RFID is digitalising public space: we use rfid in daily life, for transactions, identifying, etc. Every time we access these public everyday services there is some registering of your action: time, date, place, and in many cases, your personal details.

Leaving digital footprints on public transport (most people choose personalised cards, so your data is being linked to your actions). As soon as this data is collected, you can start to profile, pattern match, etc.: all of the stuff that is possible with data mining.

Public support for using personal travel data is very high: over 70% support using the chip card to track suspects.

Is exploring how RFID works in practice, legal issues, etc. Moving towards total internet of ubiquitous network society. Rathenau instituut: www.rathenau.nl

RFID is an enabling technology: there are many other ID technologies. And it depends how much you trust data-mining technologies: costs a lot of money, throws up a lot of results, and means that there is a lack of human resources to follow up on leads.

Melanie Rieback: Security and privacy in RFID: the RFID virus.

History: IFF systems, using radar and modulating signals to change the signals of planes.

Auto-ID labs were the first to publish papers on RFID privacy and security.
The RSA blocker tag was one of the first.
Problems: unauthorised tag reading (most tags are not secure), eavesdropping, tracking, tag cloning, denial of service (breaking tags)

RFID malware. RFID is not just a new barcode, it’s the low-end of computing!

There are three kinds of malware: exploits (buffer overflows, code injection, sequel), RFID worms, RFID viruses (getting them to replicate).

The RFID guardian is like a firewall for RFID: a tool for testing RFID deployment. A handheld device for personal RFID privacy management: portable, battery-powered, 2-way communications (can be a reader or imitate a tag, up to 16 tags)

It allows auditing of RFID usage: who is using what and when, are they tracking in the way they say? It allows us to manage keys: we can kill, enable tags, etc. It can also create access control for RFID, do we want to allow reading or writing of tags.

Stephan J. Engberg: Priway.com

Identity management: RFID is one of the largest problems for identity management. The locks on their RFID tags can lock down a tag so that it doesn’t communicate, doesn’t give up any kind of identifyable data.

Defeatism, fatalism. Is individual sovereignty doomed?
Stephan is a constructivist: making and solving things.

We cannot use physical paradigms from the 60’s for digital space.

How to design devices that don’t leak information: zeroleak™
Why are we not starting to secure RFID?
Semantic resolution: dealing with knowledge about others to determine whether transactions should take place.
What should we do when things go wrong?

About transferring control to you. Collaborative mechanisms, where we have control and interfaces for the technology.

Rafi Haladjian: Violet

Why do teddy-bears speak? To add-value to a commoditised teddy-bear.

The vision of the smart house has so many barriers: high costs, not appealing, no fun factor, complex, proprietary technologies, consumers losing control.

How do we get from the Flintstones to the Jetsons with ubiquitous computing? What’s important is in the middle. The process shapes the way things go.

Violet wants to make affordable (€20-200) objects that are one-at-a-time buying decisions. Fun and interpersonal communication are as powerful as usefulness.

Some intentions for Violet:

• Design matters
• Simple
• New image of technology
• Use open standards, explot existing contents, interoperate with existing devices
• Empower the user

• Build a community to help build the brand and make killer apps.

  An anthropomorphic rabbit that you can deal with on an emotive level. Nabaztag was interfaced only through a computer, but Nabaztag/tag offers a spontaneous, direct relationship.

  Why a rabbit? Rabbits multiply, rabbits are trojan horses (monty python), etc.

  Going beyond the rabbit:
  Ztamps: RFID tags that you can define yourself. To allow users the same control over RFID as the big guys. A collaboration between Nabaztag + Gallimard Jeunesse to make physical audiobooks.

  Mentions the interesting photographer Peter Menzel: material world taking photos of household belongings.

  Wouter Schilpzand: RFID in Japan

  The Japanese market is relatively homogenous and convenience driven, new products get lapped up, good for RFID adoption.

  It’s not just Suica: lots of loyalty cards too.

  Suica has 13 million transactions a day. It was introduced to cut costs, it was developed to improve services.

  Next step is integrating smart cards into mobile felica. 80% of new mobile phones have felica. Since 2004. More than 10 million users and 120 different handsets.

  These are mainly used for paying for things, collecting coca-cola points. Mainly used for small payments or loyalty cards.

  Felica adds something very powerful to this smart card system: the internet. It allows more information than a smart card: more services, and value added stuff.

  Children tracking service: active RFID tags that track kids. “peace of mind” and a sense of control, allows parents to have this feeling (scary). But children started sharing codes and seeing where each other are (cool).
  Ken Sakamura: driving user-applications of RFID in Japan.

  A vision is developing in Japan: that everything will be connected and there is a convergence of networks: everything will be internet based. And RFID is expected to play a major role in this vision.

  Willem Velthoven: social RFID in libraries

  The public library: all the books are tagged, everybody is tagged.
  The ‘lendomat’ scans the books, confirms the books, and prints a receipt.
  Nice interface: replacing people.
  RFID is an update to their barcode system.

  Katherine Albrecht

  The RFID industry has used the comparison to barcodes to their advantage: it seems safe if it’s just a barcode. But unlike barcodes RFID has unique IDs, which differentiates between individual items.

  

  The very contentious Hitachi mu chip does have an integrated antennae but only an extremely short read range (the one the size of a grain of sand).

  What about increased exposure to EMF and the safety of it?

  Some other RFID-like technologies: Inkode : chipless tags and conductive ink used as antennae: printed technology, EnOcean: powering devices through vibrations.

  The scariest company at the moment: Checkpoint systems: they do retail anti-theft technology which in itself is ok, but they have a service called sourcetagging: where they work with suppliers and sources to deeply embed unique RFID chips into products, inside the mouldings, the fabrics, the plastics, etc.

  Even with a short read range, the technology can be used to be invasive. If we put a ubiquitous computing network around us, then we are creating a space for surveillance and control that we may not want. No matter how much privacy or limits we put into the technology, someone will find a way to exploit it.

  All consumer use of RFID should be stopped – dead – right now, so we don’t have to try to clean up a huge ubiquitous mess.

  Bart Schermer

  Picturing the internet from a utopian or dystopian perspective can be very extreme. Argues that RFID is the same. It is easy to create dystopian scenario and more fun, but we shouldn’t create a debate based just on possible misuse or abuse.

  RFID can be used to surreptitiously gather personal data, etc. But that it is not in the interest of business to do so.

  Reasons why companies won’t surreptitiously gather data:

• They are in violation of the law: data protection directive
* Using personal data for other purposes than they have been gathered is a violation
• Surreptiously monitoring and following people is a criminal offence

• Targeted advertising without prior permission from consumers is also a violation of the data protection directive.

  Privacy is very difficult and context sensitive. Privacy is a means to maintain economic equality between consumers and companies.

  Consumers are overwhelmingly in favour of using RFID for law-enforcement: valuing convenience, price and speed over privacy (even if they say different).

  Therefore the single biggest threat to privacy is you. (Big brother awards)

  Consumers must always be made aware of how, where and when RFID is used.
  Should be made more aware of the importance of privacy

  Conclusions

• Use RFID in a responsible manner: privacy is good business sense
• Provide benefits not only to themselves but to consumers
• Provide openness and transparency about the use of RFID

• Create tools for the protection of privacy (PETs, RFID guardians, logo systems)

  Working towards a mandatory logo system for RFID in the Netherlands

  Discussion between Katherine Albrecht and Bart Schermer

  KA:
  With ubiquitous networks such as RFID it’s so difficult to find violations; what was read, by who, when, what info, etc. with who was it shared? Who has a backend connection with this card, and this ID? i.e. who knows who I am.
  The problem with ubiquitous technology is that enforcement is virtually impossible. So prevention is better than the cure.

  BS: we need more critical consumers, who can create backlashes for companies.
  People are becoming very open with their data: Facebook et al doesn’t give strong indications and people don’t realise that the data may leak from one container to another.

  KA: The technology is not inherently malevolent but some technologies invite abuse.
  When you see something like RFID you see that history is flowing towards collecting more data and more control. If that is where the money and R&D is flowing then we shouldn’t be surprised if RFID ends up in the same place.

  BS: You can’t stop technology, particularly if it has so many benefits. Technology will work out for the best: take the example of the internet. Stop the dictator rather than stop the technology that enables the dictator.

  KA: developing networks that forget. When does the forgetting occur? Negotiating the kind of databases and timings and permissions. Look at existing technologies that are problematic and look at solving them.

  More

  More notes here and here. Photos at Flickr.

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/10/recalling-rfid/feed 0 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/10/touch-at-recalling-rfid http://www.nearfield.org/2007/10/touch-at-recalling-rfid#comments Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:07:21 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/10/touch-at-recalling-rfid

  I will be presenting at Recalling RFID in Amsterdam on Friday 19 and Saturday 20 October 2007. The programme includes ‘presentations and debates on RFID and digital connectivity scenarios with speakers from the industry, researchers, artists, privacy advocates, programmers and consultants.’

  “It’s in travel documents, building passes, pet animals, clothing stores, libraries, public pools, theme parks and prisons… and yet only a few of us know what RFID is. RFID (radio frequency identification) uses radio waves to identify people, animals or objects carrying encoded microchips. For government and industry, RFID signifies economic innovation, while for the futurist it marks the next stage in digital connectivity. RFID’s pervasiveness will only increase in the years to come, forcing shifts in perceptions of the public sphere and private domain.”

  “Alongside the promise RFID brings, there are implications for security, individual privacy and beyond. If it was not already clear, RFID clues us in to the fact that in digital networks, there is no forgetting or memory loss. As such, RFID lends itself both to optimism and fear, forming a microcosm through which a collective, ambivalent relationship to technology is put on display. Recalling RFID centers around this ‘invisible’ technology with a public seminar, workshops and a smart opera. The program brings together distinctive conceptions of RFID and its uses, reconfiguring discourses as dialogue.”

  Hope to see you there!

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/10/touch-at-recalling-rfid/feed 0 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/09/photos-and-connections http://www.nearfield.org/2007/09/photos-and-connections#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:31:18 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/09/photos-and-connections Our photo booth is now up and running in the Extraction Hall East at Picnic 07. It is a very conceptually simple ‘photo booth that knows your name’.

  

  Physically it’s a large enclosure that takes pictures of participants, when they touch their RFID tags to a spot inside the booth. The photos get uploaded to Flickr and connections between the people being photographed are made within the Picnic website.

  The photos are displayed on the outside, where participants can touch another point and see the photos that they have taken of themselves.

  It’s interesting to see the development of the photos from the late-night hacking sessions through the elation of the first trial runs to the mass usage. Now we’re at 200 photos in 3 hours.

  

  Come and see us, we’re running until Saturday.

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/09/photos-and-connections/feed 4 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/09/touch-at-picnic-07 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/09/touch-at-picnic-07#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:12:23 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/09/touch-at-picnic-07 We are at the Picnic 07 conference in Amsterdam, where we are participating in the Mediamatic RFID hackers camp.

  

  There are six projects using RFID to track, entertain, frighten and socialise the 1500 or so participants, who have all been tagged with RFID keychains.

  You can follow the progress at the Mediamatic weblog and come visit us in Extraction Hall East!

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/09/touch-at-picnic-07/feed 0 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/hackers-camp-picnic-07 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/hackers-camp-picnic-07#comments Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:36:38 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/hackers-camp-picnic-07

  Mediamatic is organising a Physical computing hackers camp in September. The workshop is for designers and hackers to put physical computing ideas into practice with lots of users. The workshop takes place just before Picnic 07.

  “A great opportunity to try out your physical computing fantasies with a large number of live-stock. Mediamatic will be providing a variety of resources with which the campers can build the projects including input and output gear that can be hooked up to RFID, Bluetooth, WiFi and the other hard- and software available on the site.”

  The exciting thing from our perspective is the opportunity to have a large potential audience for the workshop, each Picnic 07 attendee will get an RFID badge. There is an opportunity to create interactive, playful, social applications with RFID technology for around 2000 festival attendees.

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  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/07/hackers-camp-picnic-07/feed 1 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/06/mirw-2007 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/06/mirw-2007#comments Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:32:24 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/06/mirw-2007

  A new workshop on Mobile Interaction with the Real World is taking place at Mobile HCI in Singapore this September.

  Following the success of Mobile Interaction with the Real World; at MobileHCI 2006, we would like to continue this workshop as a forum that concentrates on mobile interactions with real world objects. Among the questions that come up in this area of research are:
  • Which kinds of interactions with the real world exist?
  • What technologies can be used to implement mobile interaction with the real world?
  • How can real world objects and services be described?
  • How should systems and services for this kind of mobile interactions be designed?
  • What should these user interfaces look like?
  • What does the interaction design and usability look like for mobile interaction with physical objects?
  • Can these interfaces be generated automatically?
  • Should real world services be defined in a standardized way (e.g. with semantic web services)?
  • How can real world objects be associated with new services?
  • Which issues concerning privacy and security arise from this new kind of mobile interaction?

  Last year’s workshop succeeded in bringing together like-minded researchers in the areas of physical hyperlinks, Near Field Communication and mobile technology.

  The deadline for submissions of workshop papers is 29 June 2007.

  Related things:

  1. MIRW 2006 The workshop Mobile Interaction with the Real World (MIRW 2006)......
  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/06/mirw-2007/feed 3 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/05/hybrid-world-lab-slides http://www.nearfield.org/2007/05/hybrid-world-lab-slides#comments Fri, 11 May 2007 09:54:30 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/05/hybrid-world-lab-slides

  This week at the Hybrid World Lab at Mediamatic I have given five presentations related to NFC, physical, tangible, social interactions and design methodology.

  Here are the slides for each of those presentations. They are PDF files.

  Designing between things, places and people
  An introduction to some of my work and current work in the Touch project. Looks at the design briefs or research questions around RFID and NFC.

  Introduction to NFC phones
  A quick introduction to NFC phones and their applications.

  Physical hyperlink technology
  An overview of physical hyperlinking technologies and some spatial annotation projects.

  Tangible and social media & Mobile social software
  An overview of some tangible and mobile social software projects.

  Context, scenarios and prototyping
  Some ideas, directions and guidelines for making ‘hybrid world applications’. The importance of choosing context, people, places, things and situations.

  Nicolas Nova’s slides are here.

  Related things:

  1. Hybrid World Lab I’m pleased to announce that we will be involved in......
  2. Hybrids: The social web in the physical world The Touch project has a new exhibition in collaboration with......
  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/05/hybrid-world-lab-slides/feed 2 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/04/teaching-touch http://www.nearfield.org/2007/04/teaching-touch#comments Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:52:11 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/04/teaching-touch This spring we have an MA interaction design course dedicated to the Touch research project at AHO called ‘Tangible interactions’. On this course there are 10 students, mainly with an industrial and interaction design background. So far we have had workshops from Tom Igoe on networked objects and Anne Galloway on anthropology and ethnographic method.

  There have been lectures from Lavrans Løvlie from LiveWork, Paal Smith-Meyer from Lego Mindstorms, Anders Hansen from Sony Ericsson, Petter Brandtzæg from Sintef, Michael Link from Opera on the Nintendo Wii, Jørn Hansen from Oslo Sporveier on RFID ticketing and Odd-Wiking Rahlff from UiO on 2D barcodes.

  

  The students are currently working on prototypes of services, toys, applications, visuals and critical design projects related to NFC, RFID and radio. Some of their progress can be seen on the project weblogs: Katarina Kjelland, Knut-Jørgen V Rishaug, Sara Johansson, Markus Utomo, Einar Sneve Martinussen, Øyvind Østmo, André Granly, David Vågenes, Ingeborg Marie Dehs Thomas and Una Bjerkan Heimstad.

  The course ends in June with an exhibition at AHO, so expect more details then.

  Related things:

  1. Teaching Touch II For the second year we are teaching an MA interaction......
  2. Tangible Interactions – summer exhibition This week the the MA interaction design course Tangible Interactions......
  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/04/teaching-touch/feed 6 http://www.nearfield.org/2007/03/hybrid-world-lab http://www.nearfield.org/2007/03/hybrid-world-lab#comments Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:54:22 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2007/03/hybrid-world-lab

  I’m pleased to announce that we will be involved in the Hybrid World Lab at Mediamatic in Amsterdam from 7 – 11 May 2007:

  Mediamatic organizes a new workshop in which the participants develop prototypes for hybrid world media applications. Where the virtual world and the physical world used to be quite separated realms of reality, they are quickly becoming two faces of the same hybrid coin. This workshop investigates the increasingly intimate fusion of digital and physical space from the perspective of a media maker.

  The workshop is an intense process in which the participants explore the possibilities of the physical world as interface to online media: location based media, everyday objects as media interfaces, urban screens, and cultural application of RFID technology.

  Every morning lectures and lessons bring in new perspectives, project presentations and introductions to the hands-on workshop tools. Every afternoon the participants work on their own workshop projects. In 5 workshop days every participant will develop a prototype of a hybrid world media project, assisted by outstanding international trainers and lectures and technical assistants. The workshop closes with a public presentation in which the issues are discussed and the results are shown.

  Sign up here.

  Related things:

  1. Hybrid World Lab slides This week at the Hybrid World Lab at Mediamatic I......
  2. Mobile Interaction with the Real World My short position paper “A graphic language for touch-based interactions”......
  3. Hybrids: The social web in the physical world The Touch project has a new exhibition in collaboration with......
  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2007/03/hybrid-world-lab/feed 1 http://www.nearfield.org/2006/11/from-workshopping-to-designing http://www.nearfield.org/2006/11/from-workshopping-to-designing#comments Fri, 24 Nov 2006 10:08:19 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2006/11/from-workshopping-to-designing This autumn we have run the Near field interactions workshop at Nordichi, the RFID hacking workshop at AHO both of which resulted in many product ideas and early prototypes. The project has also been part of workshops such as MIRW at Mobile HCI.

  Many people have been passing through Oslo including Adam Greenfield and Bruce Sterling both giving great lectures and running a student workshop at AHO. The project has also started to work with Bengler, Schulze & Webb and Anne Galloway on various research strands.

  There is a lot to write up and summarise, so I’m travelling to London for the next ten days to immerse myself in writing and design work, and to set up further workshops in specific areas.

  We finally managed to fit in some design work this week, on a range of NFC products that we will prototype over the next few months.

  

  More on this soon.

  No related posts.

  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2006/11/from-workshopping-to-designing/feed 0 http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/rfid-hacking-workshop http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/rfid-hacking-workshop#comments Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:37:04 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/rfid-hacking-workshop

  So this week Touch is running an informal workshop where we are looking at the materiality of RFID, potentials in Radio Frequency and EMF, and building simple interactions and services using the technology.

  With us this week are Matt and Jack of Schulze & Webb, Even, Simen and Alex from Bengler, and Matt Karau (formerly Media Lab Europe).

  So far we have uncovered two very interesting directions for quick prototyping and hardware hacking. More updates soon.

  Related things:

  1. From workshopping to designing This autumn we have run the Near field interactions workshop......
  2. Nordichi workshop papers Update The papers are available to download as PDF. A......
  3. Workshop: Near field interactions This is a call for proposals for a workshop on......
  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/rfid-hacking-workshop/feed 5 http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/post-nearfield-interactions-workshop http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/post-nearfield-interactions-workshop#comments Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:32:43 +0000 Timo http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/post-nearfield-interactions-workshop

  More photos at Flickr

  Last weekend’s workshop was intense and productive, everybody brought a great deal of knowledge and enthusiasm which made the two days extremely exciting. Both Nicolas and Julian have already posted some notes and thoughts about the two days, and we shall write up a report of the event soon.

  So far there are three talks online:

  Ulla-Maaria Mutanen
  Chris Heathcote
  Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino

  And the submitted papers are now available to download as a pdf.

  This is the place to leave a link to your presentation if it’s online, please send it to us otherwise. Many thanks to everyone!

  Related things:

  1. Nordichi workshop papers Update The papers are available to download as PDF. A......
  2. Workshop: Near field interactions This is a call for proposals for a workshop on......
  3. Tangible Interactions – summer exhibition This week the the MA interaction design course Tangible Interactions......
  ]]> http://www.nearfield.org/2006/10/post-nearfield-interactions-workshop/feed 3