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 project featured on FastCo Design

Francesca Passoni and Cristina Cook's project, GoKey, completed as part of Prof. Martin Thaler's Product Design Workshop in Fall 2011 has been featured on FastCo Design. They launched their project on Kickstarter this week and are looking to garner $10000 worth of support.

Google's Project Glass vs. Nokia's Future Vision; why Google has it right...

By now, you must have seen Google's Project Glass video showing the future of wearable AR technology. As expected the blogosphere is abuzz with excitement, scepticism, and mockery of the concept. Some are even calling Nokia one of the first in augmented reality glasses, take this Giz post for example - "I Liked The Google Glasses Video Better In 2009 When Nokia Made It". Wearable AR has been around for many many years. See this Atlantic article which talks about MIT Media Lab technology that is 13 years old showing wearables. In fact the cyborg Steve Mann [who I have seen in person in 2002] has been wearing AR glasses for years before Nokia or Google envisioned it. ID Professor Tom MacTavish remembers a time when he met Steve Mann at a conference - once he recognised who Tom was, he pulled out a log of the last time they had met, using that as a way to start the conversation. Tom felt unequipped to match this sort of augmentation of human memory!

What makes Project Glass [the right way to say it] compelling is that it uses mature voice recognition technology, real location based prompts, and contextual computing to describe its concept. This is no longer science fiction, nor does it reside purely in engineering labs' future vision videos. This is real technology that will be on the street soon. Google co-founder Sergey Brin was seen wearing one of these at a recent event. Sure Google may mess it up, maybe their actual product may not be that compelling. But by doing it first, Google paves the way for future designers and engineers to come up with technology that will work. Wearables is where AR will shine in the future, and Google is on the right path...

[posted first on www.anijomathew.posterous.com]

 

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. 

Coke Freestyle, social vending machines should curate drink mashups.

Yesterday, I was at the Pei Wei diner in Chicago. It was an interesting outing, mostly because I finally got to use Coke's new Freestyle vending machines. If you do not know what Coke's new Freestyle vending machines are, head over to Coke Freestyle to learn more. I, for one, was super excited!

While I was at my table (craftily chosen next to the vending machines), I did a little informal user observation study. Of course, people were amazed by the features of the new machine. Most people would spend a few minutes exploring their options. One couple talked about the options with each other before choosing their drink. But here is the kicker - not one person (in about 10-12 people who used it during my short observation period) explored mixing different drinks. The whole point of this new machine is that you can mix and mashup drinks. All the people I saw went through the choices and then picked one drink, and then walked away.

Granted this was not a rigorous study by any means, but it led to me asking why...I think by providing people with so many choices, I think Coke is confusing people more than helping them. So what do they do? They default to known preferences, something they are used to.

Here is a thought - what if Coke curated some drink choices? Maybe even get some of their brand ambassadors to endorse drink mashups. This way one option would be to choose your own mashup, another would be select something a celebrity has endorsed. Then have a story page connected to each mashup, so that people can brag about them:
"Oh what are you having?"
"I am having an Oprah Winfrey mix, the one she drank at the Oscars"

Better yet connect the Freestyle to social media, so that users can like or dislike mashups, tweet their drink mix, or bring up favourite mixes of their friends. Pepsi is trying to do this somewhat with their Social Vending Machines, but does not go all the way.

In a world of free information, curation and the ability to curate for others will be the key to long term engagement. The Coke Freestye is a great idea but it stops one step short.

Coke, are you listening?

[posted first on www.anijomathew.posterous.com]

 

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/

 

India Immersion Program Presentation at ID

 

In December 2011, nine students from the IIT Institute of Design traveled to India on a three week program organized by ID and Godrej&Boyce Ltd. During these three weeks, they worked on a strategic project with nine executives and the VP of Innovation from Godrej&Boyce. They were part of new pilot program at ID called the India Immersion Program. 

On Tuesday, March 20, 2012, join the presentation and discussion as Navroze Godrej, the students from the India Immersion Program, and I talked about our experiences during this program as well as the effect of this program on ID and future Immersion programs at ID.

Prototyping for the City of Chicago

This semester my workshop is working with the City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) to help with the planning of the City's 2012 Cultural Plan. The 2012 Chicago Cultural Plan will provide insights on how to elevate the City as a global destination for creativity, innovation and excellence in the arts. The focus of the project will be to further build on Chicago’s vast cultural assets and vibrant community, established through the collaborative partnerships formed with the public and private sectors and civic community. Public engagement will play a key role in shaping Chicago’s cultural future.

Three student teams from the workshop will conduct user research, design, and deploy three placemaking prototypes in cultural hubs in selected neighborhoods, one at the Old Town School of Folk Music, another at the National Museum of Mexican Art/Pilsen neighbourhood, and the third at City Hall. The teams will deploy these prototypes in April-May, 2012 as well as monitor the prototypes to capture user information at these hubs. At the end of the project, these experiential located and portable prototypes will help DCASE augment traditional forms of research by listening to the voice of a larger diversity of Chicagoans as they move through their everyday lives.

Here are some pics from the mid term review of these prototypes. Keep in mind that these are still works in progress, and may or may not resemble the final installs. In these pictures you can see Jewel Malone, the Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Affairs; Julie Burros the Director of Cultural Planning; Ann Hickey, Director of Program Development; and Juana Guzman, the Vice President of the National Museum of Mexican Art.

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