Yes, Topobo is out, you can buy it!

Hayes Raffle designed the famous Topobo robotic system for kids during the course of his Master and PhD at MIT. He finally decided to produce it, so you can now get it for your home or school!

Video

What is it like to sculpt with motion? Topobo is the world's first construction toy with kinetic memory, the ability to record and playback physical motion. Snap together Passive (static) and Active (motorized) pieces into a creation, and with a press of a button and a flick of your wrist, you can teach your creation how to dance or walk. The same way you can learn how buildings stand by stacking up blocks, you can discover how animals walk by playing with Topobo.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Imagine a story. Create a book!

Orit Zuckerman a good friend of mine from the Media Lab --we worked together on a few cool projects-- now opened her company, Tikatok, that allows you (or your child) to create books based on her stories. You can also order the books made by the children in the community. Such a neat idea! Orit regularly organizes contests, so the company is now growing as a community of young writers. Tikatok also welcomes teachers, parents and libraries.

During winter break, Lauren showed me this beautiful video of this cute French girl, Capucine, telling the most creative story (no worries, it is translated in English). Imagine how such a child would do drawing, writing and telling her creations on a real book!
Enjoy watching this ultra cute video:



... you can also help the friends of Capucine in Mongolia design books on Orit's site ...

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Online surveys tools for social research

I am currently investigating social research to analyze people’s interaction with reactive systems. I often refer to the book: Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound: A Practical Handbook for Social Research by Martin W Bauer & George D. Gaskell that I recommend to be introduced to the broad range of techniques available for the systematic analysis of social data that is not numeric. It makes the key point that neither quantitative nor qualitative methods are interpretive and at the same time demonstrates once and for all that neither a constructivist perspective nor a qualitative approach needs to imply abandonment of rigor.

I wonder about questionnaires and online surveys. Software to generate online questionnaires could help survey a population with a set of pre-defined questions. One site, Zoomerang, helps with many kinds of surveys from the customer satisfaction survey to education and non-profit surveys. It seems to program your questions or suggest the best way to get the feedback you need. The system hosts your surveys to keep heavy survey traffic away from your main site, and to not influence your results with your personal host. If you have no time for running in organizing a clean survey, the system converts paper-and-pencil questionnaire into a high performance online survey for higher participation, faster response and easy analysis.

Every choice you make regarding materials, question delivery, and, of course, context, directly influence the attention and type of response that you’re going to get from a subject. Rethinking some of my previous survey work, and the availability of tools such as this, I wonder in which areas, if any, old-school pencil and paper would win out. For instance, in one recent study, I was interested in aspects of an individual’s personal music listening life. Questions were purposely open-ended to allow the subjects the flexibility of considering many different contexts of listening to support general self assessments like, “I consider myself expert in popular music.” In the moment, subjects would ask many different unexpected questions to relate their individual experiences under such global questions. “I grew up in the 60s. It’s completely part of my life, but not really popular today. Does that count?” Or, “I am expert in theory, composition, and music form. Does that theoretical knowledge make me expert despite that I don’t like popular music?” Space for these unpredictable questions was critical to getting an accurate picture of diverse forms of “expertise.” In the end, I wonder if an online survey system could leave a space open like many styles of survey need.

However, it seems that such online surveys tool could collect powerful feedback fast as well as provide you with advanced analytics, cross-tab features for in depth study, etc.. so probably the fastest and most reliable way to obtain quick data.

A stackable electric city vehicle

I had previously posted on cars that fly, swim or shrink. I mainly referred to the retractable scooter that Bill Mitchell showed us at the Media Lab Open House'08. It is an impressive piece of gear that I cannot wait to get!



However the city car is pretty neat as well ...


The City Car is designed by the smart cities group at MIT Media lab directed by Prof. Mitchell. The project is created by Ryan Chin, Wayne Higgins, Mitchell Joachim, Will Lark, Raul-David "Retro" Poblano, Peter Schmitt, Andres Sevtsuk and Franco Vairani at MIT.

The City Car is the coolest idea: a stackable electric city vehicle for use in dense urban areas! Vehicle Stacks will be placed throughout the city to create an urban transportation network that takes advantage of existing infrastructure such as subway and bus lines. By placing stacks in urban spaces and key points of convergence, the vehicle allows the citizens the flexibility to combine mass transit effectively with individualized mobility. The stack receives incoming vehicles and electrically charges them. Similar to luggage carts at the airport, users simply take the first fully charged vehicle at the front of the stack. The City car is NOT a replacement for personal vehicles, taxis, buses, or trucks; it is a NEW vehicle type that promotes a socially responsible and more effective means of urban mobility!

I looked at the process and strategy used by Will Lark, one of the researcher working on this project. He studies and constructs physical representations of architectural details of varying sizes and materials, then apply shape grammar rules for new geometry generation. His strategy is to use the software CATIA, a parametric modeling CAD program, used to design the complex geometry. The shapes are then fabricated through various media: 3D rapid prototyping, 2D rapid prototyping with 3D assembly, and full manual construction. Comparisons are then made between the automated and manual construction.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Biojewellery

The aim of Biojewellery is to strike up a range of relationships with an audience over the issues that surround biotechnology, tissue engineering in particular. The collaboration is between a core team of a bioengineer and two designers. By using an invasive medical procedure to procure cells the creators of Biojewellery are then manipulating these living organisms to produce designed objects.


A model of the ring using a combination of cow marrow-bone and etched silver. The inscription reads Ab Intra, "from within".

Tissue engineering is one element of scientific study, which is beginning to have a profound effect on how disease and physical disorders are treated. What are the implications of medical research and how do we introduce the issues surrounding them? Creative responses perform a critical function in terms of challenging/raising public awareness, whilst engaging with the technologies themselves to create new methods of producing work. Biojewellery uses the device of a recognizable social custom to open a debate about new medical technology.





Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Mini tech in fashion

The Masai dress!

Discovered via Stumbleupon, Studio 5050 makes really cool products: from a dress that generates musical patterns as the wearer moves, to the moi "a light to wear, a light to share!



Inspired by Masai wedding collars, this dress salutes both our global provenance and our desire to create our own soundtrack as we move in mysterious ways. With every step, strings of hand-formed silver beads that hung from the collar brush against conductive threads sewn into the dress, generating a series of sounds. A leisurely walk or a night at a cocktail party turns into an improvisational performance.



A long asymmetrical swoop in the back of the dress recalls Balenciaga’s famed wedding dress – an homage to a maestro that visually and aurally blends cultures, traditions and emotions. The dress comes in a luscious deep-sky blue silk jersey and white nourishing Sea-Tiva (75% cotton, 25% algae).

The company also design modules, a series of electronic building blocks for creating systems that sense and respond. The modules were originally created to help them rapidly develop new wearable applications but they now are available to the public to create any interaction design project!



Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Talk at Simon Fraser University

The Faculty of Business Administration at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, invites me to talk for the Anniversary Speaker Series: 3 Campuses, 3 Speakers, 3 Themes, 3 Important celebrating two significant milestones: 25 years as the Faculty of Business Administration and 40 years since the launch of Canada’s first Executive MBA.

Theme Innovation
When? May 2, 2008, 10:30am
Where? Simon Fraser University Surrey Campus, Westminster Savings Credit Union Theatre, Room 2600.
Sign up here! ($25, free for SFU students + Alumni)

Talk summary Cati Vaucelle, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab will present two recent projects developed for the Media Lab's Tangible Media Group focused on Gesture Object Interfaces.

At the Media Lab, the future is lived, not imagined. In a world where radical technology advances are taken for granted, we design technology for people to create a better future.The Lab comprises rigorous research and graduate degree programs, where traditional disciplines get checked at the door. Future-obsessed product designers, nanotechnologists, data-visualization experts, industry researchers, and pioneers of computer interfaces work side by side to tirelessly invent-and reinvent-how humans experience, and can be aided by, technology.

On May 2nd, come and explore innovative ways to design seamless interfaces between people, digital animation, and physical environments. Discover "tangible bits" which give physical form to digital information and computation. Learn about user interfaces that employ physical objects, surfaces, and spaces as tangible embodiments of digital information exploiting the human senses of touch and kinesthesia and analyze ambient media as reflections of digital activity at the periphery of human awareness.


Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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SMS pictures on a frame

For last Christmas my sister offered my grand ma a photo frame on which she can display digital pictures via usb upload/connection. It is a pretty cool idea, but my grand ma needs to constantly plug a usb key if she wants to update her pictures. Also she prefers the beauty of printed pictures rather than pictures on a "TV like frame".

It is interesting to see how printed pictures are important. They have a specific meaning. It is not about what the pictures represent, it is about holding the pictures in the hand, turn them and draw notes in the back, sliding them in a book, bringing it from places to places. During the war, my grand father used to send my grand ma pictures with his beautiful poems written in the back. They served a specific function with a letter.

Now that these digital frames invades the mass market, I wander what is left from the entire spectrum of photo-human relationship. I consider them being something that have little to do with the traditional picture. They conveniently randomly select pictures and display them.


The Vivien photoradio: They send picture emails. You get picture postcards.

One idea that I recently found, from interaction designer John Kestner who gave a talk today at Media Lab, is the photo digital frame that receives pictures from SMS. The designer repackaged the printer into a photo frame and its display is the out tray of the printer.

Vivien translates between generations. Vivien prints pictures with messages on the back from family and friends, placing them right into a photo frame. It is warmer and easier to maintain than current printers and requires no computer, receiving emails with pictures, subscribed photostreams and SMS messages through Wi-Fi.

On can print messages in the back of the picture."A Standalone device that receives picture emails, photocasts, and SMS messages from family and friends, and prints picture postcards into a photo frame." It is a good idea because it invites for a new relationship to the picture frame, here it creates a message with a surprise! Of course there should be some kind of filtering mechanism for spam SMS pictures.



Vivien photoradio also comes with Clark that provides a quick Internet connection to users without one. Nearby Vivien photoradios will begin receiving content!


Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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The Placebo Effect + Design Solutions

You are getting better day after day.

I discovered these placebo pills by Broadhong Design on Idealist. The idea is that the more you take the pills, the more the pills get smaller. Each pill has the same effect, the only thing that differs is their size. The psychological effect happens when progressively the tablet-taker transitions from bigger pills to smaller pills. The taker might feel a physiological (mostly psychological) change as in they are getting better as the tablet become smaller. According to the designers, such Placebo effect actually helps patients to recover from physical injuries and psychological trauma.

I also found on the designer' site these intriguing pill-candy. The concept is that each patient has a right on his/her pill information, effect and prescription. Here the pills are wrapped in candy's paper, so the patient can easily recognize the pill's name. Apparently, it also works as a quick way to know what kind of pills they missed from their prescription.



Still implicitly working on the emotional attachment to pills and pharmaceutical treatment, the design team worked on Kisses Pills. You give a present such as kisess pills to your lover who just caught a cold. He/she picks and chooses a kisses pill according to his/her symptom.

Labels: Pink for a nasty cold. Blue for a runny nose. Green for a sore throat. Finally, they can take away the bitterness of the medicine by eating a real chocolate wrapped in silver color!



Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Spam architecture

The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures. Created by Alex Dragulescu.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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