iX Design Weblog

More ideas

• Have a list on a big plasma screen in a main office and online where people can list tasks for themselves and others to get done, with due dates and times. Tasks would be arranged chronologically by due date. It would probably work best in a boss-employee type environment. Each task could have a checkbox for the person to check when he has finished the task. The completed tasks would either go away after a certain amount of time or after the boss acknowledges their completion.
  • Can also allow people to login and add on their own personal to-do lists (errands to run, etc) that only they would see
  • Maybe it could work with PDAs, too
• Have a workplace blog where people can list stuff they don't want to bug the boss about but the boss might possibly want to know. During free moments, boss can check the blog.
  • Maybe this idea could be combined with the idea above

More Links

Here's a few more projects we may be able to build from...

• iTable: by Karen Grant of Stanford's CS department, part of the iRoom. It's a more casual way of interacting with a computer, on a horizontal surface (table).
• eBeam:Those pens that everyone uses. They're used for the Lightboxes in the iLoft, as well as in Websters, the iTable, etc. etc.
• Operational Transformation in Real-Time: This is a website that *hopefully* should explain how multi-user interfaces like Hydrawork.
• iSync: It's software from Apple that lets you 'sync' your palm, cellphone, iPod, Mac, and online account
• Lifestreams: This is a way of organizing computer files more intuitively, kind of like a blog

From Joanna's Conversation with her mom (Property Manager, runs high-rise office buildings)

• Telling someone to take care of something, but something else comes up and it is considered more important and is completed before the initial task. (Urgency vs. Importance)
• People do not share important info b/c they don't know it's important or they forget
• Computers freeze and crash for unknown reasons.
• Net Meeting: way for central offices to contact all managers to explain something specific. Everyone dials in with phone and computer. Take over computer and show exactly what you're doing. Sometimes they allow managers to talk, other times not. Difficult to ask questions during the talk to clarify points, end up confused for most of the stuff. Everyone gets held up if one person has a technical difficulty.
• Clients call pager and not cell (even though the cellphone is preferred method of contacting her).

Ubiquitous Computing Links

Here's some cool links to consider (mostly relating to Ubiquitous Computing):

• Stanford Interactive Workspaces
• Ubiquitous Computing Environment for Engineering Services
• UbiComp (from Xerox)
• Mark Weiser (Stanford Memorium Website): Guy from Xerox/Stanford who pretty much is the "father" of Ubiquitous Computing.
• Something that actually explains Zombie Board
• UC Berkeley: Designer Outpost(Courtesy of Joanna)

Joanna's Initial Ideas

Here are some initial Ideas. After each one I've put categories it relates to in italics. At the end is a list of all the categories.

• A way to know who is writing at the whiteboard iStuff, IDing people
• A way to make blogs more like webs than lines Organization/presesntation of info, bloggystuff (ease of groupwork)
• Make a Hydra with no moderator bloggystuff, ease of groupwork
• In Sparrow ~ Have a system to prioritize what gets posted prominently, taking into account who is posting, how recently it was posted, how frequently people click on it, etc.

  This idea relates to the problem: Online message boards get really messy. Could solve this if we trust people to post under proper categories Organization/presentation of info, ease of groupwork, bloggystuff

• Problem of persistence in activity oriented online communities, such as AIM or online games (backgammon, etc): I want to be able to leave messages for people when they get back online. So, going with the whole whiteboard thing, when I log on to the whiteboard messages could pop up. Persistence, person-to-person communication
• Have your pen/whiteboard marker know your handwriting so others (or you) can then change the font to something legible. Also makes it easier to search whiteboard entries or copy what was written into a document Compatibility of technologies, ease of groupwork, handwriting, ID-ing people
• Force people to participate in discussions somehow ease of groupwork
• Have a plasma screen that can slide and move in and out so you can follow along your design process like a blog, changing the level of detail. Could have 2 screens up for group work bloggystuff, ease of groupwork
• Give everyone in a meeting a button (iStuff? Icon on a laptop?) they can push discreetly to say “I think we’re on a tangent; I vote we move on”. When 2/3 or whatever agree, a signal pops up telling everyone it’s time to move on ease of groupwork, iStuff
• An iStuff (iDog??) that lets you turn off an overhead light from your bed. So you don’t have to walk back into bed in the dark random iStuff


• Speech recognition stuff to take notes so no one gets stuck transcribing and not participating ease of groupwork
• Glasses that provide extra information. Could be useful in a meeting, so you know everybody’s name even though you just met them IDing people, ease of groupwork
• Some way of projecting images with mirrors or something so where the image appears to be is just air. Then you can reach in and navigate spatially organization/presentation of info
• If ¾ of the people in a meeting turn over iDogs, the meeting moderator gets doused in water balloons iStuff, ease of groupwork
• A paper like Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, & Prongs’ that shows the location of all Marguerite Buses. Or your best friends or colleagues or whatever random, IDing stuff, having paper that does cool stuff
• A paper that works like AIM so parents can communicate with kids or kids can pretend to be taking notes in class but really writing notes to each other paper that does cool stuff, person-to-person communication
• On an airplane, have the TV projection in front come in different layers. Put on different glasses to watch different movies random
• Turn the iLoft into a replica of the Great Hall from Harry P improving our physical space
• A way to forward email that doesn’t have the POP3 business person-to-person communication
• Make the iLoft look more homey and feel cushier improving physical space
• Store bikes high up in the iLoft improving physical space
• Have wireless stuff in the table and connections in the middle for non-wireless stuff. Need to get power somehow, too. Doesn’t seem easily doable in a moveable table tables, improving physical space, ease of groupwork

Categories:

• IDing people and things
• iStuff
• improving physical space
• person-to-person communication
• ease of groupwork
• tables
• having paper that does cool stuff
• handwriting
• organization/presentation of info
• compatibility of technologies
• bloggystuff
• persistence

Benchmarking: Online BB and Blogs

Uses for Online Bulliten Boards:

• "Wants and Wishes": use as a marketplace for exchange
  Examples: SU Market Newsgroup, Shell Collectors, International Trade, Begging
• Compile common information from a broad spectrum of people (such as "where are the best camping spots?")
  Example: Melbourne Bushwalkers Bulliten Board , Kids Crafts
• Information/News Groups
  Example: Slashdot

Another weird thing... I've seen advertisements for internet porn sorts of stuff mysteriously popping up on pubilc message boards (such as GreenNet). GreenNet also serves as an example of a rather disorganized message board with many different unrelated posts in the same location.
It also should be noted that these are usually centered around a common interest and are less likely to show up ad hoc. The general difference between a bulliten board and a blog is, although bulliten boards may have moderators, there is no single person who can post main entries and everyone else can comment. Everyone has equal access to the data (hence the sketchy entries like those on GreenNet).

Blogging

Maintained by usually one user, who puts in entries. Anyone can submit comments, but they have to pertian to one of the existing posts. Various practical uses include:

• Personal Journals: Maintained by individuals about their everyday lives so that their friends/family can keep up with them despite distance and expensive long-distance phone rates
  Examples:LiveJournal, Stanford's CGI Access


• Columnists/Personalities: "keep up" with your favorite online celebrities.
  Example:Dave Barry's Blog

Also, we should add categories for the following Design Stages:

Needfinding
Benchmarking
Concept Design
Prototyping
Working Device
Documentation

... well, that's the steps we're taking, although perhaps not all need to be documented

Objective

Our official objective for the summer:

"To assist effective group communication in inderect circumstances where not everyone is immediately present."

It'll probably change a bit over the summer, but it's a good start.

Yay!

-L.

Moving In

Came to CDR today to actually start moving stuff into our office (which the four of us Undergrads will be sharing with Becky. Rather tight quarters, but I think we'll work out okay. It's more like a place to call "home" and not necessarily a place where we will be restricted to work.) Talked with Monica and Wendy about the project; we went over the list again with Monica, but before that Wendy went over the whole design process that she's expecting us to go through over the summer. Monica took it down in a notebook and we brainstormed a few initial ideas on where to go from here, hopefully I can get the process down in my own logbook and perhaps up on this blog. We're thinking perhaps we should have one username/login to update from, although I like multiple users, since then we can "search" by username and see what we've done or what one person said and the like.

-L.

Initial Ideas

Went to CDR today and, instead of moving furniture and setting up the Undergrad Work Room, ended up talking to Wendy instead about different projects and ideas. We noticed that a lot of them were related to iStuff (which I included links to last time), although some are only partially-related (like the research board). But first, here's a list of the ideas that I recorded at the Design X meeting last time, somewhat sorted into a somewhat-logical order.

Display/Interaction

• Minority Report gloves


• WSN/Onomy wall- physical project timeline

Lightbox redesign: holders and trays, activity light

• interactive research board (superwhiteboard, pulling stuff from past, template, clustering, annotating posters)Mounting posters-- research wall. Preserving the posters. --> putting stuff up in the iLoft


• Notification portals

iStuff:

• iStuff: pens- embedding functionality (that trigger other actions, special pens for brainstorming, sketching, action item markers, scheduling)

-Video Conf. (toys, football)

• Physical pen redesign (other pens, tilting (tracking), pressure sensitivity, recharging)

Location Tracking

• Location tracking lightboxes


• Advisor tracker (tranq gun, subdermal implant)

Other/ I-don't-understand-it

Note passing

Indexing (sketches, like image search)

box cars (4th floor wallenberg)

Nasa camera rednx

We also talked about setting up our project's webspace (a site where we have a description of the project, pictures of the people and names, etc.) and something called Sparrow which is an experimental thing from Xerox that CDR is borrowing that lets you update/contribute to a website. This would allow outside people (mostly the CDR grad/doc/post-doc students) to add comments on our stuff. This reminded me of this blog, which kind of does the same thing (although it's more of my take on the project and is there partially for my own benefit as a virtual means of taking notes). I'm thinking perhaps a good idea would be to give the other undergrads access to this blog and let them contribute to it too, since then you'd get a multi-faceted view of everything. Then again, perhaps this would be better set-up if CDR had a cgi account that we could use instead of using my personal account.. we'll see. She also recommended I start up a Log Book, which sounds like a good idea as well. (Ah, before the days of laptops when you drew on paper instead of inputting text. Although I must say, I tend to write more freely when I'm in front of a computer since my hands can generally keep up better with my train of thought.)

-L.

In the beginning...

This blog was created to track my design process through the summer of 2003, when I'll be working in CDR on my own design project. Considering that a lot of what people are interested in these days is tracking the design process, I figure this would be useful to me to look back on my progress, and thanks to its public-status it would also be useful to anyone else who would like to review my design process.

I went and talked to Wendy last week about different ideas on what to work on this summer. One that stood out to me was iStuff, an aspect of the iSpace project. Basically I'd be looking at different physical objects which are either input or output to the room's system of multiple-user computer system. It's kind of neat since it's redefining what we've traditionally come to accept as input methods to computers (predominantly mouse and keyboard) and looking at different ways to interact with computers and have computers interact with us that isn't necessarily on a 2-D level.

Some of the concerns I've been thinking about are the whole idea of taking something in the 3D world and having it help people navigate in a virtual world (which is traditionally shown to the world via 2D display or images). There are other input/output options that need to be explored (and that have already been explored by other researchers working on iStuff) like sound, force, movement, etc. which are ways humans interact with our environment (but not necessarily our computers).

I've not yet started in on working on a definite 'research question' or topic yet, I'm still at the stage where I'm getting familiar with different resources that are out there... here's some idea of the links I've been checking out...

Stanford University Interactivity Lab : The iSpace project, in general. Since iStuff is a related research project, it's under "projects" and then "iStuff". It has links to a lot of rather helpful publications (especially as I'm first getting acquainted with the topic).

iStuff: Physical Devices for Ubiquitous Computing : A webpage for the actiona iStuff project, and a good way to catch up on what iStuff research has been like since Day One. It's a great resource for what iStuff is all about (especially the research question, helps define what exactly the point of it all is), as well as tracking their design process (the brainstorms that they have posted online with the chart is great).

There's plenty more out there, I've just yet to find it... hopefully I'll find a more specific niche I can fit into in the coming days...

-L.