UserZen

This is an announcement of an upcoming event from a message sent to me by Dan Saffer. I can’t say enough good things about Mr Saffer as well as his Kicker Studio. They are always on the cutting edge of touch and gesture interfaces.

Kicker Studio is happy to announce Device Design Day: a one-day conference for professionals who design consumer electronics, appliances, mobile devices, and objects with embedded technology. The event will take place on August 20, 2010 in San Francisco.

Device Design Day brings together visual, interaction, and industrial designers for a high-quality experience and expert content that is a mix of practical and inspirational from some of the best speakers and thinkers in (and outside) the field.

Featured speakers and talk topics include:

Stuart Karten, “User-driven Innovation”
Kim Goodwin, “Convergent Products, Convergent Process”
Mike Kuniavsky, “Information as a Material”
Julian Bleeker, “Design Fiction Goes from Props to Prototypes”
And more!

This first-of-its-kind event takes place at the whimsical Zeum, San Francisco’s Children’s Museum. Registration is $249, and includes breakfast, lunch, and a cocktail reception in Zeum’s Roundabout Room after the event. The reception will turn into Kicker Studio’s Second Anniversary Party, complete with karaoke in Zeum’s Music Production Lab.

Register on the Device Design Day site at http://devicedesignday.com/register/

Register by August 1 and be entered in a chance to win an iPad!

Several years ago, I found TED and started watching amazing 18 minute videos of people changing the world.

One of the most amazing videos I saw

(and posted) was of Pattie Maes of MIT’s Media Labs showing what her graduate student, Pranav Mistry, had created; a 6th Sense hardware that was cobbled together from existing technology, along with a software program that allowed you to have a mobile virtual multi-touch gestural interface that was a predecessor of the augmented reality applications we have seen developing for the smartphones over the last few years.

I went to check in on the program out of curiosity. They are now calling it the Wear Ur World (WUW)

I want to create several of these. I mean, take a look at the demonstration that Pranav Mistry did more recently in TED India.

Doesn’t it look cool?

So he mentioned he wanted to make it open source, but I was not able to find it. Possibly waiting until it can be improved a bit. I don’t know, but if it is out there, I would love to hear where.

More information about Pranav’s ideas, motivations and details of the project are available in an interview he did with TED

You can also find his papers and other ideas on his website.

http://www.pranavmistry.com/

Ted continues to be cutting edge and exciting.

The idea of having pertinent, semantically appropriate information literally at your fingertips in the moments you need it to make a decision about your next action is what we really want. This technology could make it happen. Its called Sixth Sense and is being developed by Fluid Interfaces (formally Ambient Intelligence) at the MIT Media Lab.

Touch and gestural interfaces are great, but this takes your Microsoft table idea and makes it mobile. It can be anywhere, including on the surface of the people, places and products you are interacting with. The usability of this technology looks like it could be completely intuitive and easy, which is what will make it adoptable by the general public.

The video of Dr. Pattie Maes presenting at TED is the best way to understand what they are working on and how it will apply to your daily life.