Sweden

Sweden

onsdag 13 januari 2010

Guest speakers

The guest speaker that we saw from TED.com, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was one of the most interseting lectures. I really liked his talk about flow and extacy, and how we are getting into a flow when we are creating. To get into a flow you normally got a high grade of skills and a high grade of challanges. Another interesting guest speaker was Don Tapscott talking about how the new generation of kids are able to multitask and do several things at the same time in a new way that the older generations can’t handle. Tapscott had an idea that the kids in the new generation are workning so much with computers and doing so many things at teh same time that their brains looks differently and are working in a different way than their parents brains are working - and this due to their computer skills.

About the two literature seminars

The second literature seminar was much more inspiering and stimulating than the first. Most due to the articles in the second compendium but also because that the hole group, at the second seminar, had a better dicussion and better thoughts and reflections (on their notes that we hade to put up on the white board). I liked the concept with the beehives.

Some of the articles in the first seminar were a bit too old like the last one from 1991 (18 years) about future workshops. Today we say “brainstorming” instead of “future workshops”.
Another article that a felt were unnecessary and a bit too much were the last one in the compendium that we had for the second seminar. The one about Urban probes(encountering our emerging urban atmospheres) I do believe that the authors concern about the personal wireless digital tools and mobile devices are quite exaggerated, and I do not see how these tools will work against and be any obstacles of time and space.

The second seminar had much better articles and I liked Don Normans (surprised? =) ) about the Invisible computer; “We are analog beings trapped in a digital world, and the worst part is, we did it ourselves”. Even if the first article in that compendium was a bit too old, I agree with the basic concept that calm technology are playing a importent part in our information overload twenty-first century. The problem is not all the information, the problem is the wrong information and that we need to select the right and relevant information to be able to perform our tasks.
The third article about the future and ubiqitous computing was inspiring and fun, but the authors seem to have a somewhat unrealistic view of the future and put too much faith and trust in the future will solve our everyday problems.

Our final meeting

Yeaterday we had our final team meeting about our digital dinner concept. We are more or less finished, but we don’t know how to put up videos. It would be fun to be able to do that...a picture says more than thousand words...but a video can tell a hole story...
Does anyone know how to do this?

Bottle Bank Arcade

I do not know if you remember that Erik Wallin recomended us to see the movie on youtube ”pianotrappan” from rolighetsteorin.se
They have done a new movie now..
Check it out:
Bottle Bank Arcade from TheFuntheory.com
Fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSiHjMU-MUo

Some great blogs about or related to interaction design

Som great blogs about or related to interaction design that might inspire:
http://www.odannyboy.com/blog/
http://interactiondesign.wordpress.com/
http://www.interactiondesignblog.com/
http://www.nikilambropoulos.com/

and of course Don Norman's site:
http://www.jnd.org/

Paper about creativity of everyday design

This is an interesting, compact paper about the idea of designing systems in use, that gives you a good opening for great and attractive discussions.
The authors in this article are looking at the sustainability in interaction design by reframing concepts of the user identity and the use. They are suggesting a new identity for the creative user and an alternative view of end-users, and taking up everyday design, design artifacts through design-in-use in ways that lead to the sustainable actions of renewal, reuse and invention. The authors advocate that designers reconsider the life cycle of artifacts to include design-in-use as a critical factor:
  • Design-in-use is highly creative making a user unpredictable in the best sense of the word.
  • Design artifacts are resources for further creativity.
  • Design-in-use qualities emerge over time.
http://elainehuang.com/CHI-2009/p15-wakkary.pdf

lördag 9 januari 2010

Check out this interesting site

http://uxnet.org/

This is a useful website were you easily are able to be updated on news in the user experience area. It is a community and a network for people interested in user experience, interaction design and you will find a lot of inspiration regarding this area.

And this movie, if you got some time =) Might inspire
http://www.slideshare.net/nickf/user-experience-best-practices