Need more juice? Get the full scoop here - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

See also
<a href="http://www.uva.co.uk/">United Visual Artists</a> at and <a href="http://www.chrisoshea.org/">Chris O'Shea</a> from <a href="http://www.pixelsumo.com">Pixel Sumo</a>.

Lets keep transitions natural. Lets let them remain casual. But don't let that stop us from creating stuff that is also beautiful, intricate and detailed. Just don't give the viewer a hard time figuring it out. It should just flow.

Consent
I'd say that the strongest]]> Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:44:10 -0700 http://virb.com/gautama/posts/text/805414 http://virb.com/gautama/posts/text/786410 If you're designing rich media sites, interfaces for devices and portals, real world bluetooth content messaging, and if we want to branch out and grow into a real entertainment brand of tomorrow - you'll soak up every aspect of these videos, whether you are designing the frontend, coding behind, advising strategy or spreading the word, this is for all of us.

Think human to human point and touch simple experiences that assist rather than get in the way. Think as far ahead as Star Wars tri-corders. And I think we'll see them in the next 10 to 15 years.

The concept that all your stuff is stored online, accessible anywhere, tapping into the online platform and fleet of software (with public APIs) rather than any traditional offline OS. But what happens when your connection dies? Are you left with a fancy plastic wafer?

Devices that use remote storage and applications is extremely valid, but I am sure some hybrid solutions will become the most successful.

Google's ambitions promise simplicity of experience, with apps we already know - which supports this approach.

Originally posted via Gizmodo. Enjoy.

The year beganwith announcements from Apple for their iPhone garnering the usual following and press coverage along with numerous unveilings from every other corner of the tech industry. In fact according to the Keller Fay Group and Nielson BuzzMetrics, the Apple iPhone was mentioned up to nine times for every mention of George Bush across the internet for over ten days following its announcement.

Today the planet is literally covered with screen devices from the very visible and common home screens - TVs, plasmas, computer LCDs; to screens on-the-go - phones, ipods, psps, portable video players, screens on trains, planes and cars; as well as display advertising everywhere - shops, stations, stadiums, outdoor. We can't escape them and most of us spend the larger part of our lives using them. Designing interfaces for screen devices that appear almost anywhere, fulfilling numerous purposes at the same time provides an almost universal and growing need for increasingly simple and natural ways of interaction that are forgiving and accommodating of anyone who may use them, in anyway they want.

Just getting past the post-New Year's slumber, Lorenzo spotted LG's Prada touch screen phone, ready to ship with an interface modeled in Flash. Late last year Elmer previewed a similar Flash menu running on his own Nokia. Designing interfaces with Flash for handheld devices will take us out of the dark ages in on-screen interfaces, historically - just image buttons changing state and calling up lists of further actions. Flash gives designers control over interfaces that offer the user flow and natural organic transitions between states. It puts the design back with the designers and liberates us from stuttering screen interfaces that have been co-opted by hardware limitations and telecom companies (who still don't get the internet).

Last week I was invited to deliver a course titled 'Design for Screen' at the University of Westminster's 'BA (Hons) Contemporary Media Practice' degree program in Harrow. Lecturing over two days to second-year students, we began with a morning of how to gatecrash a job in the industry, playing to our strengths and being passionate about what we love in our work, my own journey from uni to Holler, as well as showcasing some key Holler projects and a sneak peak at some new stuff, not yet seen. We swim within a diverse industry delivering communications and media to every segment of the world. Even an equally diverse body of students made up of film makers, writers, illustrators, and media designers who are rooted within the practice of developing well founded concept and evolving thought process, are not made fully aware of the scale and scope that their talent applies to, and thats exciting.

Design for screen is in itself just as diverse. During the first workshop the students were given sheets of paper and asked to fold them down to size appropriate to the screen they would design. Working in small groups they discussed the how, where and who of each device and put to paper designs that ranged from interactive DVR cinema, exhibit consoles and children's bubbly touch-screen TV to a pictographic-mobile interface, immersive goggles and a dreamcatcher concept of a ceiling mounted touch-screen device to capture and categorize the quickly disappearing fragments of last night's dream. I was generally impressed with the unanimous adoption of touch-screen interfaces throughout, but even more so with their embrace of simple finger point-and-drag interactions and the ease with which they took it for granted. And rightly so.

The students really brought it home as they naturally made intuitive choices in how we interact with screens, relate and experience them. They demonstrated scalable design ideas with simple transparent navigation. Day two and we were taking our paper-based designs to the screen. I delivered a basic Photoshop masterclass - preparing our digital canvas and covering technical basics that would allow us to get on with the creative design. The students were given the chance to present their work, field any questions or insights and above all, get a real good feeling for the industry they will become a part of: a media golden age passing just beneath our finger tips.

If you are a designer studying today, there is no doubt that you will graduate into the humble dawn of universal, simple and tangible touch screen interfaces (verbal interaction included of course). We talk of convergence and ubiquitous connections between all devices through any medium, but the real experience will connect with the user only through a fundamental rebirth of the interface. We've all seen the stunning TED talks multi-touch screen presentation of February 2006, and perhaps you've also followed Prada's Magic Mirror of a few years ago in New York. And what of HP's 'Making the computer personal again' TV ads or more recently (January 18th) - Nokia's quietly released concept films titled 'A view to the future'. The last two are pure gold.

Let's think natural, non-intrusive and extremely responsive intelligent design. Multi-touch has enormous potential and along with voice interaction will revolutionize and simplify the way we do almost anything. Its essentially back to the basics, and thats a good thing for all users. Today we use back-lit displays, electronic paper is not far off, and 3D holographics may soon emerge out of deep-end development and into our own day-to-day lives.

Usually we just see snapshot graphs of one moment in time, eg Aug 2006. Seeing how data and statistics grow and change over time gives us context to understand effects or look at what happened in that time period.

The power of the Transition
The moving graphs also show - transitions. Something we never see in statistical graphs. Transitions are very real-world, they allowidentifiable groups or individual objects to move from A to B. We observe movements and notice patterns. These patterns make sense and give us info to understand.

Most flash websites are all about the transition - one page loading and then growing into another. Phone interfaces will soon be all about transitions between states. An epic movie like 'Dr Zivago' or 'Grapes of Wrath' is all about transition (the people transition). In crouching tiger hidden dragon, the girl catches the cup before it hits the floor in one swift movement.

In none of these is our experience chopped up into segments, disjointed and compromised. In none of these experiences do we just see the highlights or before and after. Humans really understand things when we can see how the objects changed, how they moved and that informs us as to how they effect our environment (even global warming for example). The 'Transition' is crucial to our design in interfaces, in narratives, in navigation and probably most experiences in general and its extremely helpful to stringing separate ideas together, mapping movement and understand causes and the resulting effects.

The talk given by Rosling is also extremely ethical and contributive to dismissing a number of popular myths - 'who is rich?' and, 'how to beat poverty', for example.

Enjoy

If you like this stuff, be sure to check out the cracking site - Visual Complexity cataloging over 400 data visualizations.

A few Apple-esk thoughts for the day. The new OS X operating system is being delayed until October this year although the iPhone is still on track. Patents point to Apple integrating the iPhone in a much closer way to the whole Apple (so-called) media experience (sounds almost like Microsoft, but those are my words). They are making a strong point that the iPhone will be released on time (late June in the US), and its fair to say a lot rides on a successful delivery.

To be honest the iPhone does have an entire industry's worth of competition from the completely copied Chinese phone, to other touch phones like LG-Prada, to the usual Blackberries and upcoming innovation from Nokia, Sony with coop ventures by Google, Yahoo! and many others. Some have commented that the iPhone is definitely not multi-touch, but rather two-touch. But even so, what Apple excels at is a "quality release that we and our customers expect from us" with added benefits of their loyal user base, free press coverage on everything, brick and mortar flagship stores, Steve Jobs, and so on. The iPhone will be pricey, it will also be premium, and lets not doubt it will go mainstream similar to what the iPod Nano is to the original iPod. Take a look at the latest offer from iRiver to challenge the Nano or perhaps you'd just settle on a Sony Walkman W880 like I did with upto 8GB.

Apple TV is another extremely interesting platform. Granted competition here is equally bullish. Apple is late to the game, and they're really testing waters with the current release and allowing a wide range of hacks to play with what they have made, adding features like RSS, games, breaking the iTunes DRM, working with Slingshot and so on. A common theme between the iPhone and Apple TV is that they both run modified versions of OS X - and thats pretty powerful. Sure Microsoft does this, but they get in your head by publicizing their wide range of novel OS titles, rather than just getting on with the job and making it work, most of the time mis-identifying their home-user customers as being their own developers. Pardon the slag on their employment of over 61,500 staff worldwide - high in talent, low on clear vision that spearheads innovation. I'd rather be at Google.

What I'd really like to make clear is while the world is oohing over the iPhone, I'm pretty sure that it will become integrated in a way that is much closer than any of us perceive today. Where the iPod has driven wider awareness and adoption of the already sleek and effective Apple Mac range of computers amongst home users and consumers of a wide scale, the iPhone will probably play a similar role especially within the business world, currently in bed with the Blackberry phone and its Windows counterparts.

In the meantime the iPod earlier this week overtook Sony's original Walkman, Sony's Playstation and Nintendo's Gameboy as the product with the highest sales over the shortest time, selling their 100 millionth iPod in just five and a half years. Apple's stock is still hanging around $92, with one analyst pricing them at $200 per share, and if you have some spare cash, I still see it as a big opportunity for some longer term returns on investment.

Historically we associate 'geek' with computer nerds who may be struggling socially, possess above average intelligence and probably more than a few pet hobbies, just a tad too far outside mainstream culture for anyone else to easily relate to. But I'd like to introduce to you a slightly more refined and more modern notion of exactly what geek is, and sadly I would say that the computer geek has taken the cake over the past few decades and received glowing attention in this regard.

My dictionary defines a 'geek' as:
- an unfashionable or socially inept person.
- a carnival performer who does wild or disgusting acts. (origin)

or 'geeky' (the adjective) as:
- a person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest : a computer geek.

Wikipedia covers the subject in depth and with finer detail, leaning initially towards the technical bias the term inspires, but then broadening outwards declaring a geek as"one who is primarily motivated by passion".

I believe that geeks are the specialists and they should be celebrated. They are passionate and they are experts of what may have been in the past niche and rare. They love what they do, and they are fascinated by it. In times past, geeks suffered marginalization from the mainstream. Their passions were often in conflict with our blockbuster enthused monocular vision of our world and life. Sidelined and marginalized their sharply focused enthusiasms and passions gave way to the more general and generic.

Today we have the internet. We have social networks, we have search and we have the ability to easily target any idea, singular or shared and make a connection and then a community. These small communities resonate with shared passions and interests at their center around which people gravitate. Just as in any crowd, they have their core 1%, their surrounding involved, and the larger group of periphery onlookers. I'm definitely game for the geek, and any community from big fish like - The Bag Blog. These people are making up the most vibrant scene on the net with high quality, passion driven, experienced content, and surrounded each within their own distinct micro hysteria.

I know many geeks in every walk of life. In fact if you look inside you should be quite proud to notice the geek in you. Its very dear and special. Perhaps its an affinity amongst the earth, or the stars. Perhaps its animals or plants, or the way natural chemicals join and interact with each other. Perhaps its the historic landscapes or perhaps just portraits. Perhaps its the people in the portraits or the people in the magazines - the gossip from around town. Maybe its the world those people live in, or the worlds they use to live in. And maybe its also the virtual world where these ideas are right now going to travel through so they can arrive and arrange themselves in front of you, for your generous consideration.

I know my geeks from my nerds, and they should be celebrated in every walk of life. Who do you know?

If you want to know more, get in touch. This is just the tip of the iceberg.