So the highlights of the day for us were…

The Lessons learned from theexpressiveweb.com – Mike Chambers

Mike gave a very good insight into the way any company (not just Adobe) should evaluate the launch of a site, be it successful or not.
Kicking off the talk with a quote, simply stating:

“Is HTML5 ready for prime time?”

And without ever actually giving a definitive answer to this, he seemed to allude that if you can use it, then why not?
His presentation not only gave a broad overview of some of the issue Adobe had to contend with when producing theexpressiveweb.com, but also their outcomes/recommendations as well as a list of resources they used.

Hand Covers Bruise – Joel Gethin Lewis

“If you can code you can create value out of nothing”

Joel Gethin Lewis one half of Hellicar & Lewis – http://www.hellicarandlewis.com/ gave possibly the most inspiring talk of the day.

The most powerful part of his talk focused on a project that he’s been working on for the last 4 years to help Autistic children – ReacTickles and Somantics. This opensource project was split into two halves, one side focused on the proven therapeutic effects that interactive software can have on autism, the other half focused on enabling and encouraging self expression.

Reacticles was an interactive installation utilising simple shapes and colours with noise detection. Some of the kids that normally were catatonic actually began to interacted and some even managed maintained eye contact, in some cases this proved to be very therapeutic and allow the kids to self-medicate and lower their doses.

Somanickles was in a similar vein to ReacTickles but much more playful. Joel was told that people effected by the condition struggle with self expression and that trying to encourage this behaviour would be nigh on impossible, but he belived that this was not the case and he was later proven right. In a series of videos shown towards the end of the talk, kids are seen actively engaging with the experiments on both an individual and collaborative level.

Meta Process: Making It up As I Go Along – Hilman Curtis

One of the last talks of the day was from Hillman Curtis – a truly inspiring character. Hillman’s talk was full of great insights, stories and advice, anyone unfamiliar with Hillman’s work and bio should make sure to look it up. http://hillmancurtis.com/about/

The main section of the talk focused around the creative process he defined 10 years ago in his book MTIV:Process, Practice and Inspiration for the New Media Designer (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Process-Inspiration-Practice-Media-Designer/dp/0735711658). Hillman reflected on the original 7 principles that were at the core of his process back then and went on to define 7 new principles which have formed from the re-invention of himself and his work.

And as per usual Seb Lee-Delisle blew everyone away with his interactive installation experiment, but we could probably write and entire post just on this session but we won’t bore you right now.

Be sure to check back tomorrow to see our highlights on day 3.

- Chris, Daniel, Jono & Luke

This years FOTB opener saw a break from the traditional Keynote, and was kicked off by various product managers within the Adobe teams. As much as some areas of the web community enjoy slating Adobe and some of their products (rightly so in some cases, but this is isn’t the post to get into that now) it’s always nice to see some of the new bits & bobs Adobe are planning.

The way they are helping the new ‘expressive web‘, along with the likes of Google, Microsoft et al, as well as helping too support and push forward new technologies and standards (such as CSS regions) is great to see, as are some of the new tools (Edge) and improvements to existing products (CSS3/HTML5 support in DW). Having heard about Adobe Edge, but never actually having seen it running (it brought a wry smile to our faces and that ‘oh crap this could be terrible in the wrong hands’ thought instantly flashed through our minds) the demo given on stage was relatively simple enough too suitably impress the audience with the ease at how simple animations could be achieved.

Overall it was a good kick off to the day, but it was maybe bogged down with a bit too much development for some of the sore design heads at this early hour.

Ideas to interface – Aarron Walter

“When you work for the man, you become so focussed on your day-to-day tasks; meeting clients; and urgent deadlines, we lose creative thinking”

The message from this is quite a important, you need to give yourself permission and make time to instigate independant project and get over the fear of faliure.

Aarron made reference to the fledgling idea which soon became Twitter. The original idea (stat.us) was developed around 2000 but Jack Dorsey decided the time wasn’t right so he put it on the shelf until 206 and well you know the rest.

“If you have a 1000 ideas in the shelf you will never fail.”

An important part of MailChimps UX process is ‘Sketchboarding’, these enable the team (and the rest of the company) to ideate quickly, incubate ideas on the walls and also to easily evaluate ideas with colleagues. It is important in this process to keep things pubilc so everyone can give opinons not matter what thier role

Sketchboards: A Technique for better & faster UX solutions – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVFTBj_BYy0

Tron GFX – GMunk

Gmunk – a motion graphics director, talking mainly about his involvement with some of the special effects and interface designs for the feature film TRON: Legacy.

Set up a team of 7 guys ranging from Graphic designers to Code artists. It was great to get an insight into the workflow of the team and the intricacy of the graphics that they were creating.

Josh Nimoy created a whole bunch of Graphic applications which allowed the guys to create complex and organic animations.

The overall design process was quite organic and backed up by a great reference library. He really stressed the importance of having a strong and wealthy bank of references for any creative projects.

The talk gave a great insight into the tremendous amount of detail that was put into the scenes for the film, each decision had been meticulously crafted and was backed up with reasonings for it looking or moving a certain way. The Solar Sailor sequence was a fine example of this: http://work.gmunk.com/#1190816/TRON-Solar-Sailor. Although just over two minutes in length the scene was crammed with smart particles systems and organic flowing forms.

Lettering is not Fonts – Jessica Hishche

Jessica’s talk centred mainly around her background and how she got into the world of lettering and fonts.

She gave an great overview of the lettering and type design industries, discussed why we’re all responsible for keeping specialized industries alive, showed a fair amount of pretty pictures, and cursed like a sailor.

It was a great talk and was delivered in a personal and very frank manner, helped along by a massive talent!

“Graphic designers don’t understand type design because if they did they wouldn’t complain about how expensive fonts are”

Keep your eyes posted for tomorrows highlights.

- Daniel, Luke, Chris & Jono

The introduction of mobile handsets many moons ago has changed the way we view web content. The switch was a slow and steady pace at first, with little capacity to produce rich content for mobile devices. The introduction of smart phones proved to be a turning point, but still its been a slow graduation into mobile device specific design and content.

The introduction of the app store and apps, specific to smart phones, not just apple but android and later windows phone 7 changed the way designers, UX architects and developers alike looked at the mobile content. The app store in particular has been the reason for businesses seeking an app for their brand or product. In most cases the option for a app is misguided and irrelevant to their business, but the pressure of ‘having an app’ has proved too strong.

Gradually we have seen businesses offering mobile versions of their web content. In the past 6 months this offering has increased ten fold.

In the past businesses were happy to serve web content in the same way as a desktop website, letting the mobile device shrink the existing layout to fit. With small screens and limited real estate for accessible content, it has become clear that the user wants easy access to the content they desire. Pinch and zoom, although an ingenious way to cope with desktop websites on a hand held device has become a chore, and an inconvenience.

Faster, snappier, and more easily accessible content is what the user wants. Click and scroll is how we are used to using websites, and this is how it should be on a mobile device. Click has been replaced with touch, and scroll with swipe. Pinch and zoom should not become a primary function when viewing rich web content.

So what does this mean for designers and developers?

Well first of all, more work. Great :). Yes it’s great that there will be no shortage of work for the industry. But at what cost?

Designing and developing mobile websites, takes time and as such will ultimately cost. Large companies should have no problem paying for a mobile offering, but smaller companies however might be stretched to find the budget for both. At the pace things are moving it won’t be long before we see the desktop website playing second fiddle to the mobile.

I have been involved in many mobile design and development projects, and from what I have seen so far, after a while the process becomes very linear, and can leave little room for creativity in design. Screen size on most current mobile devices (I am talking mobile phones here) are very small with the average around 320 x 640(iPhone). From this observation questions can be raised. Will the designer become bored of designing for mobile? If mobile becomes the primary medium for accessing web content, what room for creativity is there, without compromising usability?

Here at Code, being creative with mobile design and development is seen as a massive opportunity, and will require every discipline to think outside the realms of their regular website approach. The exploration into new and innovative ways to deliver mobile content is one that is both fast paced and exciting.

I think if you are a designer that also develops the HTML and CSS (front end) then you will have your work cut out with the multitude of handsets and rendering engines. If you are purely design, should you be worried of getting bored purely designing for mobile? Personally I think while mobile handsets are at the size they are the tablet will be your saviour, which poses the question… what purpose will the desktop website have? Will it become the designers playground?

We have not really seen such a dramatic shift in platforms for websites before, so who knows which way things will go, and what will become of the desktop website, but for now everything seems to be pointing to mobile.

Are you a designer / developer? What are your thoughts?

Andrew Brandwood

That was the response of most people when we (myself and Ste Brennan) said we were going on a physical computing course at Manchester’s MadLab in association with the region’s Omniversity. Robots were a small spec on the horizon compared to the level we dabbled, but it was fun and inspirational all the same.

The course was run by the Omniversity of Manchester and held at Manchester’s Digital community space MadLab, and was an introduction to Arduino and physical computing.

Attending the course was a real mix of people from all different backgrounds and walks of life. Among the attendees were art students, programmers and inventors alike. The course ran at a pace that was comfortable for everyone. It didn’t leave anyone behind, nor did it leave people sat waiting for the next step.

Getting started really took me back to school and electronics classes, with a plethora of wires, LED lights and resistors, which I immediately started sticking into my circuit board. This obviously (as it had done in school) returned no results. Nothing lit up, made a sound or even gave me (or my fellow attendees) an electric shock. At this point I thought I’d sit back and listen for a while.

We started off with an interesting and knowledgeable introduction to Arduino and its creators, along with a glimpse of the weird and whacky things people had been creating. After that we were all ready to go.

As I say, robots were a far cry from what we were about to embark on, but that did not detract from the sense of excitement and achievement we attained after managing to light up an LED on a physical circuit (Arduino) board with a few lines of code. The lights progressed on to two lights, and then on to physical controls to dim them, make them flash, and pretty much anything you can do with an LED, to be honest.

Arduino is a great technology to get into and the limits are pretty much endless with what you can do. Not only can you program something on a computer to have a physical reaction, you can flip it around and interact with a program called Processing.

With Processing you can introduce a physical action which in turns tells the computer to do something. As part of the course we also had a quick play with the Processing side, using analogue dials to bend and pitch sound frequencies through our computer speakers.

The Beginner’s Guide to Arduino and Physical Computing was an excellent course, the tutor was really helpful and knowledgable and I would recommend anyone who is even mildly interested in this sort of thing to look out for the next course and get involved. The guys at MadLab have a great space in the Norther Quarter and are more than accommodating.

The next course is on this Saturday (March 12th 2011). Get yourselves down there and be inspired.

http://madlab.org.uk/content/beginners-guide-to-arduino-and-physical-computing-2/

Links:

http://madlab.org.uk/
http://omniversity.madlab.org.uk/

Andrew Brandwood (Branny)

As everyone familiarises themselves with smart phones, touch screens and various interactive mediums which do not require a traditional user interface such as a mouse or keyboard. Technology providers are quickly establishing a ubiquitous standard for controlling, navigating and requesting actions with our finger tips. These gestures are practically the same on each device, bar a few minor differences in performance perhaps, but nonetheless the same gestures are used to interact and navigate with most applications and games.

Gestural technology in the Gaming arena is no new kid on the block – first implemented by the likes of Sony and Nintendo, with their respective consoles. Microsoft have now waged in with their version of gestural interfacing – The ‘Kinect’. In a nutshell the Kinect provides multiple users the ability to interact with the X-Box 360 without the need for a hand held device to accurately pin point their location in 3D space. Using an array of complex cameras and microphones the Kinect is able to recognize user’s faces, use a skeletal tracking system which can track up to 6 people – as well as 2 active users, each having 20 of their joints tracked at a cool 30/fps. The Kinect also boasts an impressive depth of field, tracking users up to 3.5m away from the sensor. According to Steve ‘The Ape‘ Ballmer – CEO of Microsoft, the Kinect has sold over 3 million more units than its originally modest projections of 5 million, almost double the sale of the Playstation’s counterpart ‘Move’ motion technology.

With the Kinect showing the potential to dominate the ‘Controller-less’ gaming market, hacking the Kinect has become the new black, so much so that Microsoft has unveiled that they will be creating its own binaries and drivers to enable third party developers to explore the capabilities and create new content for the Kinect on non X-Box 360 platforms. According to reghardware.com the SDKs should be released “in the coming months”. Unfortunately the SDKs will only be available on the Windows platform, though we can’t really blame Microsoft for being ‘choosey’ about what they will and won’t allow to run on their systems, unlike some turtleneck wearing people I could mention. At the moment this isn’t very good news for Mac developers – but that hasn’t been stopping us up to now.
There have been many ‘Kinect Hacks’ released recently here are some of my personal favorites:

These applications are effectively interpreting the raw data that the Kinect is seeing and making that data available through particular middle-wear to a wide range of programming languages. As an ActionScript3 developer there are a few choices of SDK and various types of interface; OpenKinect, FLKinect, and TuioKinect. I have played around on all three and found TuioKinect to be the easiest to set up and get going with for ‘Blob Tracking’ (Basic hand tracking). Yet it does have some draw backs, one being the user must be standing a certain distance from the sensor and is fairly limited in terms on gaining access to some of the Kinect’s motor features or microphone accessibility. This was disappointing as our concept would require a much more stable solution. Then I discovered OpenNI which probably the most extensive collection of  libraries – but be prepared for a long slog installing it on Mac OSX, as there are no Binaries available at the moment, but users are assured they are on the way. None-the-less OpenNI would provide me with the stability and speed which I would need to create a proof of concept for commercial viability of the Kinect.

After doing a few experiments with the Kinect’s and OpenNI depth measuring capabilities and seeing if the experiments I had created could effectively be used through that transparent stuff we call glass, particularly double glazing. A few experiments later, I discovered it works like a charm! So I began to focus the experimentation on more commercially viable experiments (rather than continuing to recreate arcade classics like Pong, Space Invaders and Breakout). These experiments on a basic level are aimed at promoting simple gestures to iterate through certain levels of information displayed on a rear projection screen or large scale monitor. The demo should give some idea of the viability of what gestural technology can offer to a commercial or retail environment.

A little bit about the technology used in the demo: The front end is built for Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) in pure AS3, using assets from a Flash’s shared library to make it look sexy and a little less Flex-like. I used the Flex’s socket classes to connect to a simple JavaScript socket server running locally on my machine. As for the middleware I decided to use a combination of OpenNI and slightly modified PrimeSense C++ application to produce the example. The modifications were fairly simple, but a little daunting to start with as C++ isn’t my first language or second, third, etc.. But using some examples and samples provided by Microsoft, I scraped together a bridge application to connect to a Node.js socket server. Now the Kinect was sending data through to the socket, which basically consisted of x, y and z coordinates in rapid succession. This only happens once the user has performed the initiation gesture.

Without a doubt the most challenging aspect of creating a gesture based UI for the general public to effectively engage with, is ‘ease of use’. With our little experiment being a relatively/totally unique user interface, we have to rely on user’s knowledge of current gestural technology on other devices in order to interact successfully with ours, minus an instruction manual. The standard gestures like “Pinch” to zoom, “Expand” –  to zoom out, “Swipe” left or right‚ could be used to navigate your way through content, and should be second nature to the majority of smart phone, iPad or next generation mice users. These are simply replicated by gesturing the hands in front of the display rather than on it.

Businesses which choose to utilise advertising or display information within its own commercial or retail space, will be notifying potential customers of their presence within this environment. These businesses can implement bespoke interactive experiences to suit their customer’s needs for information. Window real estate is a valuable commodity for many businesses, but is restricted to the size of their premises or windows within their premises. An interactive solution provides consumers with the ability to attain large amounts of information night or day, upon request.

A typical example of a suitable business looking to implement such technology would be an estate agent. Only displaying a few properties within each price band to entice a maximum range or potential buyers simply cannot address all of their customers needs. Using an interactive system such as this, potential buyers can ‘gesture’ through the entire back catalogue of properties, price ranges, and retrieve detailed information that a paper based or static digital solution just simply cannot provide. The basic concept behind the solution can be rolled out to pretty much every business with a window.

The Kinect is a powerful and complex bit of kit, but is rather limited in understanding its environment outside of the visual. This is something that is essential for commercial sales and with the addition of third party input devices, could create a intuitive sales devices;  A clothing retailer for example can tailor its digital advertising strategy based on the time of day or current weather trends. To start advertising umbrellas when it is raining, or bobble hats & mittens when it drops below 0 degrees C. This provides the retailer with an ‘intelligent’ salesman who never sleeps. These environmental considerations can all be taken into account when a user is interacting with a digital display. Yet these are not the only considerations that the system could be aware of. The user’s physical state could also change the information they are being shown. The Kinect can read exactly where you are in 3D space, this being said it could ‘virtually’ size you up and let you know roughly whether there is currently any stock in your size or make an informed decision on the colour scheme you are currently wearing and suggest garments with matching colours. As we demonstrated in the demo, users and businesses could take advantage of QR technology, for example a user has found something that they desire and want to order or get more detailed information on the product, but it is outside of opening hours. A QR code could be shown to the user which would provide them with a simple reference point or method of ordering the item.

Like any new technology there are some potential drawbacks to implementing something like this into a business advertising or sales strategy. The Kinect at the moment has the ability to support up to 6 users. Problems could arise supporting multiple users all trying to use the technology at once, this would be problematic and confusing as everyone walking past is going to want have a go. Yet this could be overcome by registering one user at a time, for example if a user stands in a certain spot. The system will be able to detect their presence and only react to their gestures. Windows would also need to be regularly cleaned or use self cleaning glass for the ideal installation. This can also be said for window displays using traditional (not modern) glazing as this will have a slight effect on user’s gesture recognition. There will also be a problem if there is condensation on glass or large amounts of moisture or rain on the glass – as this will block the effective view and range of the cameras. A potential solution, buy an awning! Minimum lighting levels was an issue which arose while testing the prototype. Minimum levels will need to be matched, or artificial lighting may need to be implemented if the effective 3.5m range is to be achievable in the pitch black.

Even without a legitimate SDK provided by Microsoft, the possibilities of hacking the Kinect to utilise its power for advanced user interactivity are immense, accessible and exciting. It is also intriguing, designing and prototyping interfaces for this not too distant technology. It is only a matter of time before we start seeing this type of installation on our high streets and we start living in ‘Minority Report’ style world – minus the creepy metal spider robots and precognitives.

- Jono

The event will include:

• Keynote lectures from the cream of the design & creative industry
• Roundtable discussion to develop greater collaboration between industry and academia
• An exhibition of the best graduate talent from universities in the north
• Portfolio surgeries for students
• Q&A session with panel from industry professionals and academics

As well as being asked to judge at the pre-private view (for various categories including, best idea, wow factor & best in show), we’ll also be giving one of the keynote lectures, have creatives running some of the portfolio surgeries and have a panel representative at the Q&A session.

If you would like to participate or find out more about the event, contact Jo Greenhalgh at j.greenhalgh@salford.ac.uk

Get it in your diaries – see you there!

—Wini

Advertising agencies have been quick to grab this bull by its exposed horns and use its captive audience to their advantage. Ads for Harley Davidson and Purina cat food (the latter is just a concept) are simple and static but users’ reactions to them seem to be positive (they are after all more visually pleasing than the likely alternative) while FCUK used Chatroulette very well as a tool to entice their customers into gaining free wares.

I’m certain this is just the tip of potential advertising in Chatroulette—recent ‘research’ sessions show many websites advertising through it in a manner akin to the Harley Davidson ad, but they seem to be peddling things probably not appropriate for this blog. This is quite crucial though—would brands want to be associated with the kind of content and the particular reputation that Chatroulette has garnered? FCUK’s tongue-in-cheek chat-up challenge fit perfectly with the ethos of Chatroulette and clearly appealed to its male customers but perhaps that’s the same reason why other brands have shied away.

Irrespective of a moral compass, there’s a big idea lurking within Chatroulette and I’ll keep hitting next until I find it.

—Ben

There were various group and individual tasks dotted throughout the day. For one of them we each had to write two random words and then quickly develop a product idea or something tangible out of them (we didn’t know this when we wrote the words).

I instinctively wrote elephant and then wrote car.

The phrase ‘an elephant never forgets’ aptly sprung to mind, so I quickly scribbled after it: ‘your car never forgets’—a personal to do list/reminder application integrated into your car (and phone etc) that starts when you turn on the ignition and tells you what you’ve got planned for the day. It’s a simple idea but I was quite happy with it, even though it didn’t get any further than that.

Oh yes—there was also an apple ominously waiting for me in my hotel room.

—Ben

The Project has been commissioned as a compliment to the national Looking Out research project to examine in detail current engagements between Creative Industries and Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s).

The proposed project took the first steps in gathering and analysing data by putting together a focus group consisting of a number of  industry professionals, (which I was privileged to be asked to be one of it’s representatives) – alongside key Academics from MMU with the main purpose to use the initial research as a starting point to discuss strategies for the development of the Design Professionals’ role within HE.

Many thanks to Paul Bason – Director of Creative Manchester, Marcus Lord – Business Development Manager at MMU, Liz Wheeldon-Wyatt - Senior Lecturer at MMU and Jonathan Hitchen - Programme Leader BA(hons) Design & Art Direction at MMU for the invitation and being such lovely hosts.

~Wini

~Wini