Notes from Knut

The Nobel Peace Center was a nice visit. Even if i had been there before it still is quite captivating. A new temporary exhibition regarding free speach, was quite stylish to observe. Rather low tech, but the computers and staging still gave a nice impression. The permanent exhibition is nice to watch and a few surprises was revealed this time too. With a more interaction design perspective veiw on it, the systems behind are more obvious, but they still generate a nice feel. But something that was interesting to note was how much they must have spent on the interactive content in the installation and how little of that was actually read. But on the other side that leaves us free to come back and explorer more of the content on a later stage.

Lecture by Jonathan Spiers Entrance elevator to a showroom for a cement factory! This one of the best lectures I've been to this year. From staging stories to enhance the room functions to coloring huge buildings, Spiers shows an exceptional feel for light, color and space. Please, if you have the opportunity go and see him show and tell. Somewhat paraphrased: Do not fill every space with light, a huge dark space can feel safe if you feel the walls. So light the boundaries not the space itself. Another paraphrase When you make a grand hall or an open space, the wanted reaction from the person walking into it is to look up. So please do not fill the ceiling with blinding down lights or he plaza with bright pole lights

by Prof. Ståle Stenslie, Khio He started in the early 90's with interactive installations. Then and now the pc is the base and metaphor for interacive work. Man-machine interfaces, and the dreams of them, goes a long way back. He works in the media art. A definition of interaction: "A Dialogue". Ståle says that everything you do triggers a response, even if it is lack of reaction, and that is a dialogue and therefor interaction. "You feel you are the cause, not the effect" Negroponte, MIT. Important differentiation from other art: The interactive artowrk is not fulfilled unless the viewer is actually engaging the artwork. Why interactivity: If you play tetris in your mind only, it takes 700 - 1250 ms to rotate the tetris bricks. Visually (in game) it takes only 150-450 ms to rotate the pieces to the right orientation. (Kirsh and Maglio 1994) It is also tools to think with. This is why we use computers. "But what is it good for?" CyberSM, 1993 (Masters

by Annelise Bothner-By, design and content group leader at Expology Their work is mainly focused on Experience- and Identity/Brand- exhibitions. Learning lab concept: 30 people participate in a 2 hour role playing game to learn about a theme. They have made these games for several customers such as: Aftenposten (newspaper), Coca- Cola and "Folketinget" (danish parliament). The role playing game has a physical installation that arrange the role play using sound, pda's, input and output devices to make the experience as complete as possible. She insists that the technology used is just the tool to set the rpg into play. The storyline and how it does the job through all aspects of the experience is their core asset. But since they also control the whole process, from hardware to software and through to the storytelling, design and implementation, they have the possibility to make complete projects. Experience exhibitions Annelise wants us to remember that this is social even

by Jørn Knutsen The picnic conference had a social network containing all the participants where all members also had physical rfid chips, the task was to build something that used this network and the rfid chips. The idea behind the project was to make something that took pictures. The project they made was "photobooth" that take pictures and loads them to various networks. The machine knows the name of those in the pictures by their rfid tags. The people you where with in the pictures are added to your contactlist as friends in the picnic network. The booth was programmed in processing and several scripts (phyton for rfid reading ++) on up to five different machines, too complicated to be replicated later. The screen inside the machine shows the flickr badges from the photo stream. The photobooth was quite successful because it was placed in an area where Comment by Jørn: The people did not care too much about using their rfid tag to get identified by the machine. The main

As a result of this terms "Visual Communication" course i updated my main site to be a place where i more frequently (hopefully) will post my work and experiments. http://www.bareknut.no/ It is not yet perfect but i'll try to use the site as a place to test and learn new stuff.

This is a snap from the recent Car Show in Oslo. This tail light on the Volvo was not shy. I like!

Lecture held by Are Halland Loosely inspired by the bible Are talks about seven important factors in IA. 1. Sin of Abstraction - The risk of going to far away from the content with flow charts and other abstractions. 2. Sin of Introvercy - Just looking at the homepage, and think all users will see that. 15% will never see anything but the content because of search engines. 3. Sin of Isolation - Put your information where your readers are. Not isolate to the homepage only (Facebook, communities etc. 4. Sin of Information Overload - Can't find the relevant information 5. Sin of navigation overload - (I.e. Yahoo mail- don't distract) 6. Sin of futility - Calls to action is needed to engage users and make the pages relevant. This builds business value, but also social value (List mania in Amazon). 7. Sin of Logo phobia - Don't be afraid of the text in the site. That's most likely the only thing the user really care for. Create bigger needles for people to find! How to desig

by Are Halland One definition: Organizing, Navigating and labelling content to enable usability and availability. Organizing Time: Typical stock charts, financial information. The Alphabet: i.e. phonebook Value, Value over time. Position, Location, geographic Maps, etc The above examples are called excact information. Ambigious information is another organizing method wich are less defined, but can sort information that are not absolute or excact. Tasks --> Websites that gives you infomation based on what you need to do in that context. Situations --> Depending on your situation you get the relevant information. Topic --> Web stores sorted by e.g. sport categories. Audience Metaphor Hybrids (Combinations of the above) Structures Hierarchy Facet Organic Hybrids Good IA is allowing people accessing information in different but suitable ways. Crash course in navigation These are the questions to answer: Where am i? Where can i go? How to get there? Commonly you have a global nav