The Faculty Blog @ IIT Institute of Design

Godrej's Magazine Change publishes Anijo Mathew's article "Are you ready for the information economy?"

Godrej's internal magazine Change publishes my article - "Are you ready for the information economy?". Read it here: http://issuu.com/godrej/docs/jan_2012/11.

ID student installations for the City of Chicago up and running

This semester my Interactive Media Workshop is working with the City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events to develop interactive placemaking probes for the City's 2012 Cultural Plan initiative. Three student teams in the class were asked to design interactive interventions, which will allow the common citizen to express their point of view about culture and engage with other citizens, both synchronously in place and asynchronously. The teams have conducted research, conceived, prototyped, and implemented  three different interactive prototypes located in cultural hubs around selected neighborhoods - one at the Old Town School of Folk Music, another in Pilsen/National Museum of Mexican Art, and the third at Chicago's City Hall. Over the next two weeks, the teams will monitor interaction to capture user information at these hubs. 

If you are in Chicago, please visit these sites and see the high quality installations that ID students have completed for the city and add to the research by participating. Here are some photos of the projects being set up/launching.

Note: PUSH is a mobile installation that is moving around the city. There will be an exhibit/event at the National Museum of Mexican Art when the devices come back - more information about this will be posted soon.

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The three teams are:

SkyWords (at the City Hall)
Lauren Braun, Kareem Hindi, Lee Lin, Jose Mello, Jaime Rivera

The City Listens (at the Old Town School of Folk Music)
Jorge Angarita, Paul Keck, Leticia Baiao, Jennifer Gzesh

Push (at Pilsen/National Museum of Mexican Art)
Janice Wong, Philipp Bohm, John Shin, Nathaniel Jiang

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ID student paper accepted to DIS2012

 

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A team of IIT Institute of Design graduate students (David Kodinsky, Tuduyen Annie Nguyen, Will Skelton, Parminder Kaur, Yu Yin) recently had their research paper accepted to the ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2012). DIS is a premier arena for designers, artists, psychologists, user experience researchers, systems engineers to come together, debate, and shape the future of interactive systems design and practice. As part of my Fall 2011 Communication Design Workshop, and supported by Santosh Basapur at Motorola Mobility, this student team designed and prototyped a public interactive installation at the Design Research Conference 2011 to explore the use of gaming in encourage philanthropic giving. The accepted paper was peer reviewed; out of 449 papers submitted, only 89 were accepted in a double blind review (less than 20%).

David Kodinsky (who starts at IA Collaborative this Fall), and Tuduyen Annie Nguyen will be presenting the paper at DIS2012 in June at Newcastle, UK. Please join us if you are planning to attend the conference.

Google celebrates Mies Van Der Rohe's 126th

Mies Van Der Rohe turns 126 years today Mar 27, 2012. So Google decided to celebrate his birthday with a Doodle of the iconic Crown Hall (home of the IIT School of Architecture, and the old home of IIT Institute of Design). Google Doodles are "the fun, surprising and sometimes spontaneous changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries and the lives of famous artists, pioneers and scientists". Doodles are important because of Google's reach. In the past, Doodles have helped bring media attention to sometimes forgotten but often important icons, events, and people. 

Patrick Whitney dreams for Steelcase

Steelcase is celebrating their 100 year anniversary by inviting 100 minds from around the world to dream 100 years into the future. ID's Dean Patrick Whitney is one of the dreamers. You can see his dream on Steelcase's 100.Steelcase website:

http://100.steelcase.com/mind/patrick-whitney/

 

Three reasons why the NYT Op-Ed by the RIAA CEO misrepresents democracy in the digital age

A new post on BGR [http://bit.ly/xUX9Od] points to a NYT Op-Ed by the CEO of RIAA claiming that the Google and Wikipedia misrepresented SOPA and PIPA. Google, Wikipedia, and many others joined together to present the TAKE ACTION initiative on January 18. 2012. This initiative represents a first in internet lobbying where the influence of internet users persuaded Congress to drop SOPA and Senate to drop PIPA. 

This new Op-Ed by Cary Sherman suggests that sites like Google and Wikipedia misrepresented SOPA and PIPA and the whole episode "[raises] questions about how the democratic process functions in the digital age". It goes so far as to suggest that "the television networks that actively supported SOPA and PIPA didn’t take advantage of their broadcast credibility to press their case. That’s partly because “old media” draws a line between “news” and “editorial.”". His point of view is based entirely on the premise that since it was coming from Google and Wikipedia, readers assumed it was appropriate.

All of this is very interesting to me because contrary to what Mr. Sherman suggests, the TAKE ACTION initiative is in fact democracy at its best in the digital age. Here are three reasons:

1) Mr. Sherman assumes I did not read about the bills. Wrong! What Google did exposed SOPA and PIPA to me. Then I used the resources of the digital age to read more about the bill. Only when I was clear about my position, did I "take action". Now I cannot assume everyone did this. But given my situation, I can only hope everyone did. In the same manner I can only hope that the supporters of the bill in the Senate and Congress did too when they took their initial and final position on the bills.

2) The ability to act or not act is the core aspect of a democracy. Google provided a opt-in platform to voice my concern for SOPA and PIPA. That's all it was - a platform. What makes the story work is that 7 million Americans responded and voiced their opinion. What if no one responded? What if no one felt this was an issue important enough for them to take action? Wouldn't the story play out differently today? The idea that when people act a certain way democracy turns into demagoguery only appeals to the person whose position was voted down.

3) Google and Wikipedia (and others not recognised in the article) did not coerce an action, they only suggested it. It is the people, the democracy that coerced the action. Those in the Senate and Congress did not have to listen to the initiative, they could have brushed it off...but they did. If SOPA and PIPA were as important to media space as Mr. Sherman suggests, why did the Senators and Congressmen act the way they did?

In any case, read the Op-Ed piece  and decide for yourself. Once you do that, make sure you also read the flood of comments which followed - not one (as far as I can see) in favour of the opinion. Let me know what you think...

The Next iPhone May Be Kind Of Boring Suggests Forbes But...

 via www.forbes.com

Okay - so I am not usually interested in iPhone rumours and predictions. Everyone has one and they are usually baseless . But here is one from Forbes: The next iPhone may actually not be that exciting - only a dual core processor, curved glass, NFC functionality (yawn!). BUT here is the interesting tidbit: it could work on ANY wireless carrier OR NONE AT ALL. Imagine walking into an Apple store, walking out with an iPhone5 and using it on any wireless carrier (since the phone has both CDMA and GSM radios). Or maybe you prefer to use it only through VoIP services. Now that is different.

Of course Apple is going to suggest that this is all new and innovative BUT don't forget that Google tried to bypass the wireless carriers with their NexusOne. The problem was that their initial offering worked only on TMobile and people don't really care for spending $500 bucks on a phone if you can't hold it in your hand.

Everything said and done, if this does indeed happen, it will be really exciting and game changing. Maybe not so much for the techies (yes! yes! the quad core iPhone should come out sometime in 2013) but for anyone who is interested in mobile strategy and business models.

ZeroZero

ZeroZero explores story-telling and sense of place at point 0, 0 on the Chicago city grid.
The ZeroZero installation has two embodiments: a physical one and a virtual one. ZeroZero’s physical embodiment was designed into the corner windows of the Sullivan Center. The window installation consists of a sculpture, an iconic world map, and instructions on the windows:

Team: Sally Wong, Elise Metzger, Brian Strawn, Joseph Shields, Eugene Limb.

UrbanForest37

UrbanForest37 is an interactive display located on Block 37 that facilitates conversation between pedestrians - http://www.urbanforest37.com/ 
The UrbanForest37 installation asks passersby to answer one of two questions – Thin Crust or Deep Dish? Sox or Cubs? O’Hare or Midway? The questions were designed to change out every 72 hours. The interaction model is simple – as you walk down the street you tap on the question you associate with. The tap is visualized as a leaf on a digital tree that grows with every answer. As more people answer the tree grows larger and larger – and the visualization allows passersby to see which question is getting more responses from people on the street.:

Team: Helen Tong, Na Rae Kim, Diana Cheng, Pinxia Ye, Farid Talhame.

WishState

WishState presents an AR installation where users can post wishes for the season.
When you get to the median on State Street, you can use your mobile device to leave a wish on the street. In addition, you can use the Layar app to see all the wishes people have left and "like" other people's wish. The wishes are also represented on the window of the Wit hotel:

Team: Lawrence Abrahamson, Cindy Coleman, Joohyun (Julia) Lyoo, Christopher Royer, Chao Su.