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

A century of evolution between La Guerre des Boutons and Harry Potter

I'd like to share the notes I wrote about a fascinating French book:
De la Guerre des Boutons à Harry Pottter by Jean-Marie Gauthier and Roger Moukakou.

In this book, two psychiatrists connect the novel of Louis Pergaud, La Guerre des boutons (English: "War of the Buttons") written in 1906 with the best seller of Joanne K Rowling (1997-), Harry Potter. The authors present a century of evolution in the teenagers’ life: their space/time structure, their relationship to a group of peers, and their appropriation of the land. The authors analyze the progression from developing concrete skills (close to the ones of adults) to an imaginary virtual world. Based on these two influential novels, a repository for this evolution, they illustrate their clinical analysis with real life scenarios of teenagers.

VS

You can read on La Guerre des Boutons flyer: “Il y a des guerres qui durent des années, celle-ci doit se terminer avant le diner” which stands for “There are wars that last for years, this one needs to be over before diner”. For the ones who do not know this French novel, I am posting some screenshots from a movie interpretation of La Guerre des boutons made in 1962 by Yves Robert.

An excerpt from the movie can be found ->here<-

Notes from: De la Guerre des Boutons à Harry Pottter by Jean-Marie Gauthier and Roger Moukakou.

Essais anthropologiques

The authors observed that the ones who usually have difficulties to talk and show some reserve towards socialization, tends to spend a long period of time on internet for remote communication. With the computer, the relationship between distance and proximity, direct communication, corporeal and indirect, mediated is transformed. It is as if these teenagers privilege a communication in which the body is absent. The authors propose that this transformation induces difficulties in sharing and exchanging across generations and difficulties in the position that parents take place in the growth of their children.

The relationship to the body
- Rhythm of lives is different. We neglect the sun’s motion in our lives! Before the industrial revolution, a rhythmic life was imposed due to the constraints of working in the field, outside! Now we eat at unstable hours, find abnormal quantity of food anytime of the day, forgetting that meals can have a social function. The social function of meals is replaced by their nutritional function.

- The physical constraints related to transportation have been transformed. We walk less, thus transforming our relationship to time and space as well as our relationship to the body: feelings, feeling tired, cold/heat or being well.
At the time of “la guerre des boutons”, children were progressively learning how to build toys, hunting equipment, using the wheelbarrow under the grand father’s supervision! Now we can be a champion in Karate without moving a finger! The measure of each gesture (cause and effect) goes through an iterative process usually explored by gathering in locations & spaces.



The Land
Play is key for social & individual development, a way to measure personal skills in comparison to others at the same time than measuring one’s body, a necessary step imposed by the life as an adult.





Urban concentration has reduced the children’s possibility to gather outside. The space for play and collective experience is disappearing. Not only that but the parents themselves lost their everyday corporeal connection, their craftsmanship and their personal space. These transformations impact our ability to measure the consequences of our actions; this can explain a come back of the magical thought in a world where the relationship between causes and effects is more and more uncertain. Not only the quantity of available land has changed but also its quality has decreased. Before one could close his house with doors and windows, now it is completely impossible. The house walls not only did become porous, but the family remains in communication with the entire world through telecommunication, TV, internet, mobile phone… thus interrupting the paternal order of things!
Distinguishing between the inside and the outside world is harder (this relationship becomes more and more ambiguous). Distinguishing between private, individual, internal and external realities becomes very hard.

The Group
Children have a predisposition to form groups in which learning by imitation is very important. This helps children leave the exclusive parental relationship to enter a more complex form of socialization: creating an identity and functional skills. In La Guerre des Boutons one practices his skills by crating weapons for hunting while in Harry Potter to compete with one another the children use magical formulas.
In psychoanalysis, authors such as Leroi-Gourhan, Winnicott, Mendal, Montagner, Gibbs show the importance of a psychic construction that needs to connect to the outside world, necessarily going through gesture and object manipulation. Playing without using the body, without manipulating objects is very different.





Creating relationships between children is a considerable advantage as it allows children to realize early on the human’s fundamental destiny: a social being (De Waal, F. 2005). It also allows kids to find modes of learning outside of the parental relationship. The authors remark that we need to think of this child’s pleasure to group and learn in a group and reevaluate the quality of learning that can happen within the group. It is not impossible that behind this pleasure of the group, kids can rediscover values of solidarity probably essential to our humanity and that were still very present at the beginning of industrialization but that are disappearing.

With La Guerre des Boutons one would constitute a group that opposes itself to another one, but today individuals are pushed towards being identical. Solidarity as a value is the most compromised, while individuation is assimilated to the general identical. Consumer society can only live if it destroys values of sharing and solidarity benefiting individualization ...

Time and space
Important for rational thinking, time and space are constituted and function via intuition. These intuitive forms of representation are constructed progressively while the child uses his corporeal skills. Corporeal exercise has a direct influence on the essential cognitive functions (Gibs, Gauthier, Montagner).
With a computer, one can be in contact with the entire world without having moved from the parent's house. The computer is the perfect compromise between the teenager’s necessity to go outside to become independent and the necessity to keep the protection and security of the parent’s house.





While in the 20th century, kids were riskily gathering outside, creating groups, risking their identity confronting others, now kids can just stay home while contacting the external world, protected by their parents. According to the Oedipian complex, teenagers have to develop their personal lives outside of the family environment [Winnicott & Mendel], the computer seem to be the perfect compromise as children avoid the risks of the foreign while being closely connected to this outside world. The teenagers can also escape their fears related to their own body in comparison to the severe criticisms induced by co-located peers! The narcissistic image remains idealized. The teenagers will not quit their bedrooms and will remain dependent on their parents, because this context does not offer a way to move physically away from the family house.

Speech
Communication technologies modified our relationship to space and time and this cannot be left without consequences on the development of thoughts. Instead of confronting peers using a verbal exchange, communication is now guided with icons that one needs to only “clic” in order to be projected in the other side of the globe. The relationship to speech in which the exchange is contrary to the magical icon formula, is a relationship of time.
This modification of the general relationship to space/time can explain the modification of our potential to take time to share thoughts. Language is more and more stereotypical and univocal (close to the marketing discourse) which appears in the political speech today (Chomsky, 1986, 1998).
The dialog with the computer is a series of keywords and reveal the transformation of the structure and use of language in our occidental society. Harry Potter is truly a hero of our time!

Transmission
To separate themselves from their parents, children need to be a minimum aggressive to distant themselves. At the same time, children need to identify to their parents.
However, parents are questioning their role models and hesitate to propose them as references to their children. So the entire reproduction of behavior and models is questioned. Speed, technological progress and the fact that children possess higher skills in tech fields such as IT, all contributed to this change in the parental role. Harry Potter and his adventures confront us to tendencies and forces, that are modified both in the parental and social space.

The hunting land and the exploration space are restricted. It is now rather difficult to find resources outside of the parental home, parental home from which one of the two parent is usually absent. Grand parents are usually distant geographically. Living conditions have changed so much that there is an unbalanced between our human potentials and the environment in which we evolve. This can explain largely the developmental difficulties of the children. The authors question how socially we can address the educational needs of children considering that we cannot go back in time!
The conditions for education have changed because parents have changed. It happened before, but this time it happened extremely rapidly and the educational methods have not evolved as much. Harry Potter raises interesting questions on how the individual maturation of a teenager is a complex and uncertain process, because of the uncertainties that rest on the transmission mechanism across generations.
Most probably the teenagers need to rediscover the joy of living in a group, the values of solidarity and the belonging to a group of peers. Wouldn’t that be what these novels of youth are demanding from adults?

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

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 Fizzees: Physical Electronic Energisers

I came across the Fizzees (Physical Electronic Energisers) research project by Futurelab. Fizzees is a prototype project that enables young people to care for a 'digital pet' through their own physical actions. In order to nurture their digital pet, keep it healthy and grow, young people must themselves act in physically healthy ways!

The Fizzee comes in two parts – a wristwatch-style device where the pet resides, and an unobtrusive heart monitor which straps around the chest. A sensor in the monitor measures the wearer’s heart rate, and this data is sent to the Fizzee device, which houses an accelerometer to monitor movement.

I am not sure about the one-to-one mapping between a digital pet and a child. It also depends how the watch can be calibrated, and if there is a limit to the amount of activity! I understand why these devices could become popular especially after the Tamagotchis, and Neopets mania, but why don't we take it the other way around?

Wouldn't that be awesome to have a Fizzlazy(TM) with which the more you watch TV the more your digital pet would become fat and grumpy, and that eventually it will start reading comic books, play video games and sleep until 1pm!


Picture from the Fizzee's report. Download the brochure here.


Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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The sense of smell in interaction design

I came across the concept of a Scentsory phone by Nokia on Gadgettastic. The phone uses the human senses of sight, sound, touch and even smell for an ultimate multi-sensory experience. It could detect, transmit and emit smells, as well as radiate colors, lighting, and temperature from the caller’s environment. Its electronic nose works with highly sophisticated (i.e. unknown) sensors. The nose samples the odor of the caller’s environment and transmits this to the recipient electronically.


Nokia Scentory Phone


Smells' detection and re-creation is a fascinating topic today most probably because it is still very hard to achieve technically. Last year I started developing the Odora Storyteller, a smell collector. It encompasses the experience of the everyday collector and creates an associative memory of smells, places and objects. The prototype was conceived for children to collect samples from their environment. The children can reveal and create associative connection between smells, textures and visual components of elements that they gather. The collected elements are then used to create and recall stories. I also envisioned this for persons suffering from Alzheimer's disease. People with Alzheimer’s could benefit from associative memory between smell and souvenirs of places.

Apparently it could work due to "distinct genetic patterns that are associated with every odor, and it’s simply a matter of matching electrical harmonics with gene activity" sounds like the equipment involved in this affair would go beyond the portability of such device. Could the perception of a smell by electrical stimulation be technologically induced?


Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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New interaction design for mobile phones

Smartphone Battle by Bill Bagnall

Posted by Cati Vaucelle
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People and Prototypes

Paper prototyping—in very early, sketch-based prototypes like these, designers can still simulate the user experience (note the use of the smaller post-it to represent a pull-down menu), but ineffective solutions can simply be placed in the recycling bin.


Designing interactions is regularly offering chapters to download. Right now one of my favorite chapter, People and Prototypes, is up!


Posted by Cati Vaucelle
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Is this a land made for you and me?

Is this a land for you and me 1 by artist Paul Ramirez Jonas.

Upon entering the exhibition space the public encounters short bases each supporting a hand bell. All the hand bells together form a song. Meaning, for each note in the melody, there is a hand bell. In fact, the bases are a blow up of the song's score, cup up so that each note is isolated. The only notes that remain grouped are the chorus. Members of the public are invited to take one bell/note, take it along, and ring it as they see the show. On their way out, they would place the bell back on its pedestal. The song is thus fractured and dispersed in the space. There is a slim chance that the public, either by chance or through cooperation, could perform the melody.


Posted by Cati Vaucelle
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The subtle vibrations

Duncan Wilson created Otto with Manolis Kelaidis at the Royal College of Art.

OTTO (Greek for ‘ear’) is a device that makes hidden sounds audible. This is achieved via a thin polymer piezoelectric contact that senses weak vibrations and plays them as a sound through an integrated speaker. OTTO can be positioned on almost any surface through a combination of suction and magnets. By placing several units on different objects, one can select and create a new sonic experience and a form of ambient music appreciation, thereby utilising our space as a multidirectional audio platform.

Every object and surface in our environment has a whisper; subtle tremors and vibrations that are usually undetectable to the human ear, produced by the activity and movement of daily life. What if these sounds were audible? How would that change our aural awareness, perception of space and attitude towards objects? Would it be possible to ‘compose’ our own soundtrack using our walls and objects as a new form of instruments? Madsounds is a proposal for a different appreciation of our environment, space and objects by making it possible to identify, combine and manipulate these sounds.

More projects from the RCA.


Posted by Cati Vaucelle
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Breathing Spirulina

There is this place in Paris, Flood -58 rue de Chateaudun et 1 rue Danielle Casanova- where one can eat air made of Spirulina. Created by Mathieu Lehanneur, an aquarium rests in the centre of each area containing over 100 litres of Spirulina Platensis, an algae I have been eating since my teenage years. By photosynthesis, these microalgae produce pure oxygen. A fresh, living material, rich in proteins and with a taste resembling tofu, next time I am in Paris, I will have to try this place!




Posted by Cati Vaucelle
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An intelligent bar of soap!

The Bar of Soap, created by Michael Bove, Stacie Slotnick and Brandon Taylor at the MIT Media Laboratory, is a handheld device that recognizes how it is being held and adjusts its functionality accordingly. For instance if you want to make a phone call, just hold the bar of soap like a phone!

The device senses the pattern of touch and orientation when it is held, and reconfigures to become one of a variety of devices, such as phone, camera, remote control, PDA, or game machine. Pattern-recognition techniques allow the device to infer the user's intention based on grasp. We are now adding display surfaces across the entire device so that buttons and indicators can be created where needed for a particular mode.

A Poster with an alterable Structure

Jessica Nebel created this poster with an alterable structure that I discovered on Type for you. The poster displays tangible pixels as messages.“Pixel It” consists of two layers of paper. Cuts on the white outer layer allow the user to fold parts out and therefore create a "Pixel-Structure" by showing the colored layer underneath.

Toast messenger

Once upon a time, a morning, a child who would like to hang out with his friends and play Dungeons and Dragons instead of visiting his grand parents, well this toaster would do it. A subliminal request can be printed on the parents' toasts and the little gesture of preparing the breakfast will convince the parents that role playing games assure their child the development of a sense of otherness and care. I don't really know what designer Sasha Pure envisioned when developing this concept, but I believe there is a poetic and idealistic rationale behind it.

Chrono Shredder

The Chrono_Shredder is a device that makes past time tangible. It is a hybrid between calendar, clock and waste producing automaton. It has no on/off-button, thus it is unstoppable, just like time. It features the 365 days of the year represented on a paper-roll. The paper-roll is led through a hacked paper-shredder, which is programmed to use exactly 24 hours to shred one "day".

Designed by Susanna Hertrich the Chrono Shredder invents a near-future scenario, in which people have embraced human hibernation as common practice and efficient method to delay their natural ageing. The chrono_shredder is one product from a fictional series of products, which are developed under the umbrella of "memento vivere" (remember that you also have to live your life). Those products target at people with hibernation obsession.

Lifestyle in 2057

2057 EP1 The Body featured on Discovery Channel offers mixed information between current research explorations and fictional scenarios of our lifestyle in 2057.

It is a nice effort in considering what is being done in HCI and medical research which converges into everyday scenarios. Under its over dramatic tone, the examples are sometimes tacky and stereotypical. The show could have incorporated other important issues such as affordable cutting edge technological solutions for the rest of world.

This video is fun and accessible. I loved the transplantation of a human heart, heart that can be 3d printed! Presenting a vision for a future lifestyle, this video reminds me of the American Look (1958): America lifestyle in the 50's with its *idealistic* sense for design.

The SynchroMate

The SynchroMate fits snuggly in the palm of one's hand (...) it encourages serendipitous synchronous interaction by indicating when a message is being composed for you by a distant companion through gentle vibrations and pulsing concentric circles of lush colors on the display

SynchroMate: A Phatic Technology for Mediating Intimacy, by Martin R. Gibbs, Steve Howard, Frank Vetere, Marcus Bunyan (2006)

Abstract
By and large interaction design has been concerned with information exchange - technologies for the collection, processing and transmission of informational content. This design sketch discusses preliminary ideas about an alternative way to think about interactive technologies - phatic technologies - that are less concerned with capturing and communicating information and more about the establishment and maintenance of social connection. Drawing on insights and inspiration gleaned from a recent field-based study of the role of interactive technologies within intimate relationships we outline our preliminary ideas concerning technologies to support phatic interaction. Using materials collected during our fieldwork as design inspirations, we developed design sketches for phatic technologies intended to support playful connection between intimates. One of these sketches - SynchroMate - is presented. SynchroMate is a phatic technology designed to mediate intimacy by affording serendipitous synchronous exchanges.


Full case study

Kinetic vs electric toys

Odo by Sony

We change our habits and we design accordingly. In the era of socially responsible design, a new business model is emerging. Discovered on Idealist, Odo by Sony is a generation of toys that takes advantage of user-generated kinetic energy. As mentioned in Sustainable Day: "there are a lot of conceptual solar powered cell phone prototypes and hand cranked chargers popping up in response to the strong consumer interest in more environmentally responsible products but in general consumer electronics usually lag behind in the development of green alternatives."




Odo Spin N'Snap

In 2005, I co-designed Playpals, a set of figurines with their electronic accessories that provide children with a playful way to communicate between remote locations. In our first prototype, the figurines were activated using the child-generated kinetic energy. We tried to find a branch of alternative to electrical by using reverse motors.

Playpals movie

Gesture recognition to control home appliances

Interaction design through gesture recognition can be a bit tricky when it means interacting with a full set of home appliances. Distinguishing between intentional and unintentional gestures is probably the challenge as well as creating an artificial-gestural language strong enough to rely on.
I read a lot on the fact that using gesture is for "TV potatoes" while actually I find using gestures more "sporty". Indeed, one moves the entire hand and arm to control devices whereas a remote only works by pressing a button. The wii is a good example of semi-sport action while playing video games!

Now, seven simple hand gestures to switch your TV on

(...) The controller's built-in camera can recognize seven simple hand gestures and work with up to eight different gadgets around the home, reports The Daily Mail.

The all-seeing wave controller is the brainchild of Australian engineers Dr Prashan Premaratne and Quang Nguyen, who predict its availability on the market within three years.(...)

Its software recognises simple, deliberate hand gestures and then sends the appropriate signal to a universal remote control, designed to work with most makes of television, video recorder, DVD player, hi-fi and digital set-top box.
(...)

A clenched fist means "start", an outstretched hand with closed fingers means "power on", a thumbs-up sign means "up" and a sideways victory sign means "channel".

Crucially for anyone with small children, pets or gesticulating family members, the software can distinguish between real commands and unintentional gestures.

Excerpt of article by International reporter, July 2007.


Image from the Daily Mail

Sensor doll as a music expression device

Yonezawa, T., Clarkson, B., Yasumura, M., and Mase, K. 2001. Context-aware sensor-doll as a music expression device. In CHI '01 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Seattle, Washington, March 31 - April 05, 2001). CHI '01. ACM Press, New York, NY, 307-308.

Abstract We present a sensor-doll capable of music expression as a sympathetic communication device. The doll is equipped with a computer and various sensors such as a camera, microphone, accelerometer, and touch-sensitive sensors to recognize its own situation and the activities of the user. The doll has its own internal “mind” states reflecting different situated contexts. The user’s multi-modal interaction with the passive doll is translated into musical expressions that depend on the state of mind of the doll.

Paper