Designing Supple Systems

Aging Technologies - experiential design sketches

2010-11-25T05:04:00.000-08:00

The basic idea of these sketches is that they are careful implementations of a very precise experience. They are not complete implementations of a full system, which is why we call them sketches. These sketches or implemented experiences are such that they can be applied in many different ways. What makes them different from other sources of design inspiration is that they are grounded in the digital material, they are possible to implement and they work in harmony with the digital material. But not only that, they are design ideas that spur from combinations of the characteristics of the digital materials and the characteristics of aging. We argue they are design ideas that would not have happened if it were not for the specific combination, between one of the digital materials and the concept of aging and change over time. These sketches embody how some activity changes and age over time.

Aging Technologies - Our first experiential sketch

2010-11-25T04:27:00.000-08:00

Walk my shoes is an experiential design sketch where we by using only RF (radio frequency) can detect the rhythm of walking. By using RSSI (received signal strength indication) we are capable to detect very subtle steps or movements, movement that would not be possible to detect with a pedometer or accelerometer. While walking the user returns feedback in the form of sounds, sounds that aims to give her the impression that she is walking in water or on top of snow, just to take to examples of sounds we have tested with this sketch. The sketch is such that it follows the rhythm of the user but at the same time it also pushes her to walk in harmony with the specific sound.

Sketching on details of aging

2010-11-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

What we now are doing is that we are sketching on a few of our ideas from the random words session. We are not so much trying to implement the ideas as working on the details of implementing the aspect of aging in these ideas. What we focus on is the experiential feel in the implemented sketch.

For example Jordi is working on the second idea from bellow. What he is doing though is that he is using his experiences of working with radio signal strength in order to capture the rhythm of walking.

What we aim for are careful implementations that we can use to feel the way when we now are formulating our more overall design that will be the end result of this explorative process...

The Random Words Session

2010-11-03T05:59:00.000-07:00

To generate ideas we choose to use the random words method, which is a brainstorming method were three piles with various focus, such as technologies, places and emotions, are created.

In our session we put the bits in one pile, various aspects of aging in another and specific moments from the wise-dates in another.

This generated a range of ideas, here a few examples:

1. Religion + BluePete + Tea

A "thought of the day" that gets passed on by like minded people, so

that no preaching is involved but rather sharing between like minded

people. As is goes on, it is changed to something else *hot to cold,

weak to strong).

2. Physical Activities + Pressure Sensor + Shoes

A pressure sensor would be attached to shoes to give feedback to the

walker. This feedback would be the pace and the style of walking of

another person, perhaps a senior who would walk slower, with smaller

steps, and for longer. "Far is as good as fast". "Walk a mile in

someone else's shoes". Would give the ability to share the experience

and share the appreciation of the walk. Perhaps go one step further

and share the walking route of someone else.

3. Easy to Use + BTScore+ Matches

Finding the things that we may think are useless but grow important

over time. Turn it into something useful. Not perfect but easily

available. A system that has been alive a long time is more

important.

4. Comfortable in own Skin + TopoCom + Apple

A rumor mill or gossip circle to spread little tidbits. This gossip

could be true stories, stories they make up about themselves, or

altered gossip as it gets spread. Similar to whisper down the alley

or broken telephone. At an advanced age, they will be comfortable in

their own skin and enjoy talking about themselves and others.

Wise dates

2010-11-03T05:54:00.000-07:00

In order to get to know the wise we have been on three 'wise-dates'. A wise-date takes place in someone's home and is a playful, open moment where we listen carefully and have a nice time with a lot of writing, drawing, maybe photos and recordings. At the end of these dates we show some of the bits and if the person/persons like to they can play around with these for awhile. This just to see reactions and ways to handle this pretty abstract tech sketches.

The Wise

2010-11-03T05:37:00.000-07:00

After the Inspirational Bits workshop we conducted an internal workshop aimed at finding the specific focus for the second iteration.

A topic we found greatly interesting was aging and the elderly users, but not so much from the perspective of aiding this user group, which we found as the most common approach, as in finding out who these users really are, what they like doing, their life story and so forth and how we could use this as our inspirational source together with the bits.

We decided to call them 'the wise'.

Inspirational Bits workshop

2010-11-03T05:25:00.000-07:00

August the 30th and August the 31th fellow colleagues in the Mobile Life Centre and SICS as well as industrial partners were invited to a hands on workshop were we presented them all the Inspirational Bits we built during April, May and June. Approximately 20 engineers and designers took part from both research and industry.

Here a summary of this workshop and the bits from designer Anna Karlsson, BORIS design studio, www.borisdesignstudio.com:

When I first heard about inspirational bits and got the question to join the workshop I pictured myself as being a kid in a candy store! Easy accessible technology, a short cut for me as a designer (and the rest of the team) to fully understand the potential of a material (technology). And I was not disappointed!

I experienced the bits to be quite different to each other and therefore saw a reason to categorize them. A categorization of the inspirational bits would help me and others decide what category of bits should be used in what project, or phase of the project.

Core Bits - “Give it to me in one sentence or 3 secs”

These are bits that can be described in one sentence or quickly grasped in three seconds. An example of a core bit is the oversized mechanical model of the accelerometer.

This approach is similar to a design method where you establish the very basics of things as a way to inspire innovation. It is similar to the task of designing a chair where one had to explain what a chair is in one sentence, a sentence that really grasps the concept of a chair. One such sentence could be: “A horizontal plane big enough for one person to sit”. This explanation opens up for innovation rather than frames you in an idea of what a chair is. The core bits as I see them are about explaining technology in that very same way and thus opening up for innovation.

Educational Bits - “Explain it to me, I am an idiot”

The core characteristic of these bits is learning. The educational bits are about explaining the basics of a technology. The fewer aspects of the material you highlight the better and the easier it is to grasp the bit. There should be no value vis-à-vis a final design when creating an educational bit. An example of an educational bit is the diZe. The level of complexity in this bit is low, but fairly quickly you understand how the material works.

Boundary Bits - “Show me the Limits”

When creating a boundary bit you should focus on highlighting a downside of the technology. The boundary bits are about breaking pre-defined ideas about a material and to start a discussion in the group. An example of a bit that helps me explore the boundaries of a technology is the RadioSound bit.

The boundary bits are similar to the educational bits as the defining characteristic is learning. The boundary bits are powerful in the way that the whole team gets a full understanding of the limitations of a material before proceeding with a design conceptualization. Another great advantage of the boundary bits is the time that could be saved in the development process of a new service or product: “show me the limits so that I can avoid traps.”

Beyond Bits - “Turn the limitation into a feature”

The last of my four categories is called “beyond bits”. This category is very creative and can trigger a lot of spin-off ideas. The beyond bits tackles limitations in a material and turns them into features. A good example here is the Gymkhana bit.

To summarize the first three categories, they are all about understanding a technology, here refereed to as the material. These bits should be built and explained by those who know the material well. The fourth category is slightly different and could be used as the subsequent phase, after presenting bits in the first three categories. The beyond bits could work as a good kickoff in the concept design phase in a development project where the developers get together with the rest of the team to take things one step further. The beyond bits are about making use of the things the design team all learnt from the earlier bits.

The inspirational bits approach is mostly about play; it is a positive way to approach a technology. During the play you will learn certain things about the material and the learnings are something you will bring with you to the next step. Keeping the bits intact could though have the opposite effect for the design team, the team can get stuck on the initial ideas and not be able to move on to the next step. It is therefore important as I see it to point out that after experiencing the bits they should be broken down into their basic material parts; these are what you can use as the foundation for innovation.

The inspirational bits approach is a good way to start a complex project, it helps the team to get a better idea of the material’s properties, possibilities and limitations and it also lays the ground for more equal discussions within the group. This is maybe one of the most important aspects you can get from using the inspirational bits approach.

The inspirational bits can also help the design process to become less linear. By integrating construction and production at the start of product development, this cross-disciplinary way of working creates a common platform of knowledge for the whole team.

In between build fests

2010-05-11T04:12:00.000-07:00

Marcus in action of demolishing a computer in his search for materials, in this case in search for a speaker

Inspirational Bits

2010-05-06T07:16:00.001-07:00

What we're doing in the second iteration of the Supple project is to look closer at our design material, computer technology, and how we better can come to share the possibilities and characteristics of this material with all members of a design team and this earlier in a design process. For this we are working on a method we call Inspirational Bits.

In August/September we will use the bits that we are now working on as inspiration for the design of a second supple system.

Second Build Fest

2010-05-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

Now we have our first proper bits.

Jordi's Comparison bits and Niklas' accelerometer bit NoisyTobias

Katjas rfid twister game

and Marcus audioalization of radio

First proper build fest for the second iteration of the Supple project

2010-04-29T07:44:00.000-07:00

And what a start...

Jordi is trying to make us feel the difference in sensitivity between a complete hardware solution and a solution supported by software. When he is done he argues we will feel the difference between smooth and a step like movement.

Niklas had us play with an accelerometer and made us aware of how it is more suitable for fluent movements than trying to use it for more iconic gestures. By playing with it in Niklas set up we also understood more about noise and the various parameters in an accelerometer and what they can give us.

Marcus talked about interference and how he was working on a system that will let us hear, touch and physically create interference ourselves. This to make us better understand and "see" the radio waves.

Katja had translated the numbers of rfid tags into words and we got to play around with the random sentences various rfid tags could create.

We also talked about what really makes a bit inspirational and how there is a difference between inspirational bits in general and the more specific supple inspirational bits we are trying to find. But how we probably will have to find some of the more general kind too in order to find the bits that really presents the supple aspects of our materials.

Very much looking forward to next weeks build fest!

LEGA@Liljevalchs

2010-02-09T03:22:00.000-08:00

LEGAn är nu igång på Liljevalchs Vårsalong. Nedan så kan du se vilka dagar som LEGAn kommer att finnas tillgänglig. Grupper av besökare kan boka LEGAn kl 11, 13, 15 samt tisdagar och torsdagar även kl 17.
Du bokar LEGAn genom att sända ett mail där du anger önskat datum och tid till jarmo@mobilelifecentre.org. Om inga bokningar finns så går det även bra att låna dem av oss på plats. Nedan ser du när LEGA finns tillgänglig och hittills bokade tider.

OBS! LEGA är en forskningsprototyp. Om det går för sig skulle vi därför vilja videofilma er när ni använder Legan för att lära oss mer om både hur ni uppfattar den och hur vi kan förbättra den. Vi skulle även vilja ställa lite frågor till er efteråt eller be er vara med på andra utvärderingsaktiviteter. Materialet kommer att användas internt i vår forskning på Mobile Life (www.mobile-life.org), ett forskningscenter som bedriver forskning kring framtidens mobila teknik och dess användning. Om ni har frågor om utvärderingen eller forskningen så kan ni kontakta projektledaren jarmo@mobilelifecentre.org.

Design days at Liljevalchs

2009-09-07T05:54:00.000-07:00

During five days (13-14th and 24-26th) in August the project organized a design workshop at Liljevalchs art gallery. The architect of the whole workshop was Petra Sundström who did a tremendous job of putting together an interesting agenda. The workshop had two purposes. First it marked the conclusion of the projects initial efforts to educate team members about each other’s disciplines. Having previously learnt about hardware design and sensor network programming the time had now come to interaction design. Secondly it was the start of the design process for the projects first prototype, dubbed ArtSense, which is scheduled to be shown at Liljevalchs in 2010. The first two days focused on introducing various methods for design work, while the last three days had a stronger focus on developing prototype ideas for ArtSense. Over five days participants went all the way from analysing data from the studies performed during the spring to an implemented prototype that was tested by visitors to Liljevalchs. In total the workshop was extremely successful producing over 35 prototype ideas through random words, enacting 15 of those through bodystorming, refining and selecing 3 ideas using the six thinking hats method, lo-fi prototyping those using non-computational materials such as styrofoam and cardboard, and finally rapid prototyping the ideas using computational materials and evaluating the resulting systems in-situ at Liljevalchs. Throughout this process a close relationship was maintained to the intended users: visitors to Liljevalchs. Ideas and prototypes were regularly subjected to the scrutiny of visitors which helped to weed out bugs and mould ideas. Particpants also lived their own designs through excercises in method acting where they e.g. were instructed to to use prototypes in angry, happy, slow or quick ways. This was helpful in bringing forth the supple qualites of prototypes and make them available for discussion.

Another outcome of the design workshop is the beginnings of a rapid prototyping kit for supple systems. While preparing for the design days we started investigating building blocks for rapid prototyping of supple systems. Such building blocks are necessary for early testing of ideas without having to build a system from scratch. Rather than developing blocks completely from scratch we decided to start with existing hardware and software components and modify those to suit our needs. Currently the kit consists of Sentilla JCreate sensor nodes running the Contiki operating system and various Phidgets (sensors and actuators) that can be plugged into the JCreate nodes. A driver to make the Phidgets and Contiki communicate has been developed and will be added to the Contiki distribution. The kit was first used during the design days and will continue to develop over the projects life time.

Observation studies at Liljevalchs

2009-06-25T01:44:00.000-07:00

In August the project will start designing a supple prototype that will be used by groups of visitors to Liljevalchs, an art gallery located in Stockholm. In preparation for that task two project members, Tove Jaensson and Jakob Tholander, have conducted observation studies at the gallery. During Liljevalchs Vårsalong, an annual exhibition at the gallery, they recruited several groups that participated in the study. All groups agreed to let us record their exhibition visit using both wireless microphones and video cameras. This resulted in several hours worth of recordings that have subsequently been transcribed and analysed.

The purpose of the study is to gain some insights about what people are typically doing during a vårsalongen visit, but also to find interesting episodes in peoples exhibition visits that can serve as inspiration for design ideas. Our focus is on investigating co-experience in groups rather than the art experience itself although the two are interconnected. Issues of interest are for instance, how people come to mutual understanding of artworks, how group members direct each others attention to interesting pieces, or how they take turns looking at pieces that only allow one viewer at a time.

The study material will be an important inspiration and starting point for the design work that begins with a design workshop on the 13th of August. During the workshop the study will be presented but participants will also analyse some recordings on their own to learn how to do interaction analysis. This exercise is a step towards accomplishing one of the projects goals: building interdisciplinary understanding of the challenges associated with developing supple systems.

Contiki tutorial, May 26

2009-05-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

On the 26th of May the project organized a Contiki programming tutorial where participants were introduced to the mysteries of sensor network programming. The tutorial was the second in a series of events aiming to build cross disciplinary understanding of the challenges associated with creating supple systems. The tutorial was held by Adam Dunkels from the Networked Embedded Systems (NES) group at SICS. It started with an overview of what sensor networks are, what they are used for, some of the problems associated with developing them, and what Contiki can do to overcome those problems. Contiki is an operating system for networked embedded systems and wireless sensor networks developed by Adam and his colleagues. It is highly efficient and is used in numerous applications and contexts worldwide. Contiki provides solutions to common problems, e.g. short battery life-time, encountered when developing battery powered wireless sensor networks through the use of techniques such as power saving MAC protocols. Based on the somewhat counter intuitive observation that listening for radio transmissions in sensor networks, is more expensive than transmitting radio, power saving MAC protocols can regulate the amount of time that the radio transceiver in sensor nodes spend listening for radio transmissions in clever ways.

Adam's introduction also dispelled a number of other common misconceptions about wireless communication, e.g. that it can be thought of in terms of direct links between nodes, or that transmissions from nodes reach out circularly from the source. Instead the reality of wireless communication is instead non-uniform and non-symmetric. Transmissions do not spread evenly out from the source due to e.g obstacles, nor is it certain that a node that has received a transmission from another node actually has a route back to the sender. For project members that are not familiar with the peculiarities of radio communication those were valuable lessons for the future. Radio communication is definitely an aspect that has to be taken into consideration in the projects future designs. It may even be fruitful to think of radio as a design material in its own right.

After the introduction we moved on to a hands on session where we installed the instant-contiki development environment and stepped through some examples illustrating how to program sensor nodes using contiki. In particular we focused on how to make nodes talk to each other using unicast, broadcast, and mesh communication. This all turned out to be easy enough and could be accomplished with just a few lines of code. By the end of the tutorial we had all gone through several examples and learnt enough to be able to take our first solo steps in the land of wireless sensor networks and embedded systems programming.

Overall participants were surprised that using contiki was as easy as it was. They shouldn't be, as one of the design goals of contiki is to demystify the process of programming wireless sensor networks, allowing developers to use the same languages, tools, and constructs that they are used to. When developing prototypes in the supple project working with contiki will definitely make our lives easier.

Installing instant-contiki on OS X

2009-05-29T18:04:00.000-07:00

During the Contiki tutorial we used Instant Contiki a development environment that contains all tools that are required to compile and run Contiki, packaged as a VMWare Virtual Machine image. Using the free VMWare Player PC users can boot the Instant Contiki environment (a Ubuntu linux installation with all the necessary tools) and immediately start developing their contiki applications. Currently there is no free VMWare Player for OS X meaning that unless you own a VMWare Fusion licence Mac users will have to look for other options to get the Instant Contiki environment running. In this post we will step through the process of setting up Instant Contiki for Parallels Desktop 4.0 and a future one will show how to set it up for VirtualBox. The former is a commercial application while the latter is a free alternative. Regardless of which VM software you choose your first order of business is to download the Instant Contiki archive from http://www.sics.se/contiki/instant-contiki.html . Once the download is complete unpack the archive in a location of your choice.

Parallels Desktop 4.0

To use the Instant Contiki environment in Parallels all you have to do is to convert the VMWare image to a Paralells image.

To do this start Parallels and run the parallels transporter which can be found under File -> Run Paralells Transporter.

When asked to choose Migration mode stay with the default (express) mode which works fine unless you have specific wishes about how your VM should be configure.

Choose the "Virtual Machine" option in the Migration Source Type dialog.

Choose "Entire virtual machine" unless you only wish to convert a disk image and hook it into an existing virtual machine that you have.

The virtual machine definition that you want to convert is in the "instant-contiki.vmx" file. Browse to the location where you unpacked the Instant Contiki archive and choose it. Continue the conversion process when that is done.

The conversion process will take a few minutes but once it is done you are ready to start Instant Contiki! Your newly converted VM will be added to your list of Virtual Machines. From there you can start it like any other VM you have.

When the VM has booted you have a full linux installation and all necessary Contiki tools available. For more information about how to use those please refer to the Contiki site. Note that the Username/Password for logging on to the linux installation is user/user.

Installing instant-contiki on OS X, part 2

2009-05-29T08:14:00.000-07:00

In contrast to Parallels, setting instant contiki up for use with VirtualBox does not require you to convert the virtual machine image. It does however require you to set up a virtual machine that can run it. As for Parallels your first order of business should be to download the instant contiki bundle and unpack it in a location of your choice.

VirtualBox

After starting VirtualBox click new to create a virtual machine for your instant contiki environment. In the following step just click next to continue to set up of the VM.

Give your VM a name, here I named it Instant contiki, and set the operating system to Linux and the version to Ubuntu. In the following step stay with the suggested default value for VM memory (384 MB in my case).

Choose use existing hard disk and click on the folder icon to the right of the drop down box to bring up the virtual media manager.

In the media manager click Add and navigate to the instant-contiki.vmdk file in the directory where you unpacked the instant contiki bundle. Once you are done your new virtual drive should appear in the list. Choose it and click the Select button. This brings you back to the Virtual Hard Disk dialog where you just click next to continue.

Your VM is now configured and you are shown a summary of the settings that you have made. Click Finish to add it to the list of Virtual Machines. From the list you can start your instant contiki VM by selecting it and clicking the start button in the toolbar.

Sometime during the startup process this dialog, which explains how to get your mouse pointer back from the VM, is displayed. By default this is done by pressing the left command button but to avoid frustration be sure to take note of how to do it.

Now you have your instant contiki environment up and running and can start developing software. Note that the username/password for the linux installation is user/user. To learn more about how to use the environment or contiki pleaser refer to the Contiki site.

First hardware bootcamp

2009-05-19T04:12:00.000-07:00

During May we have planned for a series of events intended to educate partners about challenges within the different disciplines involved in the project. The first of these events is the hardware bootcamp that is actually going to run twice to accommodate all participants. The bootcamp is a four day event - organized by Prof. Mark Smith at Wireless@KTH - during which participants learn circuit board design in a hands-on fashion. Starting with a schematic of the board that they create themselves using the Eagle tool, participants work their way through routing, CAM processing, milling, and finally soldering of their boards.

A board schematic and first stages of routing

Completed routing and milling of a board

Eight participants took part in the first hardware bootcamp, 8 -9 and 11 - 12 May. During these four days Mark did a fantastic job of demystifying the process of creating circuit boards. Evidence of this is that the bootcamp so far boasts a 100% success rate: none of the completed boards has spectacularly burst into flames or even malfunctioned beyond repair! Moreover participants showed a great amount of creativity in designing their boards. Examples include Fredrik Österlind's face shaped board, Annelie Schwanecke's circular one, Claus Weymann's asymmetrically rounded one, and Marcus Lundén's elegantly elongated one.

Fredrik's face shaped board ready to go and Annelie soldering her round board.

The bootcamp was fun, but it was also very informative. After four days particpants without a background in electrical engineering left with a sense of being much better equipped to understand the challenge of designing supple systems from a hardware perspective. Once we start designing our next prototype that understandig will be very important.

Project kick-off 6th of March!

2009-05-19T02:13:00.000-07:00

On the 6th of March the project partners came together for a day of activities intended to get the project going. The day was a mix of presentations and hands on experiences of supple systems that the partners had developed or were in the process of developing. In addition we were very pleased to have Associate Professor Katherine Isbister from New York University's Polytechnic Institute with us on the kick-off, to give a talk on What is this thing called suppleness? We also had talks by Adam Dunkels from the Networked and Embedded Systems group at SICS on software related challenges posed by supple systems, by Prof. Mark Smith from Wireless@KTH on hardware related challenges, and by Jarmo Laaksolahti and Prof. Kristina Höök from the Involve group at SICS on design and evaluation related challenges. Last but not least Tove Jaensson and Jakob Tholander from the Mobile Life Centre presented some background and ideas for future work on a system called FriendSense.

In between talks there were two sessions where participants had a chance to get some hands on experience of supple systems such as Affective Health and FriendSense.

The affective health system

We also had the opportunity to experience some of Katherine Isbister's supple game designs for the Nintendo WII console. The Wriggle game, where you wear a knitted cap fitted with a WII controller, was particularly popular. In this game you move your head and body in various ways to control your game character and perform actions within the game. Participants agreed that the experience of playing the game is truly unique and definitely supple.

Two participant's preparing for the Wriggle game!

All in all it was an eventful and interesting day that provided a good starting point for the project.

What is the Designing Supple Systems project about?

2009-05-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

This project explores the concept of supple systems and how to design them. A supple system is a device that combines custom-built hardware, sensor technology, and wireless communication, to interact with end-users and create a physical, emotional, and highly involving interaction.

Supple systems rely on subtle signals; rich human communication and interpretation strategies such as emotion, social ritual, nonverbal communication, and kinesthetic engagement; and emergent dynamics, to provide engaging moment-to-moment experiences. There are two main factors driving the evolution of supple systems. One is the rapid growth of leisure and entertainment use of technologies and the other is the commercial availability of sensor technology for tracking human expression which has lead to an increasing number of systems attempting to use such technology to provide compelling experiences. Successful examples of existing supple systems include the Nintendo WII and Apples iPhone. Designing and building supple systems is challenging because it is an unfamiliar “material” for interaction designers but also because it requires a wide range of competencies. The quality of an experience arises in interaction between users and systems. This interaction is in turn affected by a systems hardware as well as its software, and how well they work together. Even seemingly simple artefacts, such as pulse-meters, require holistic design of specialized hardware, specialized software, and specialized user interfaces to be successful. Each factor is equally important: a problem concerning any one of them can ruin an otherwise great experience.

In this project, we aim to develop a process for rapid, integrated, development of supple systems. We will focus our efforts on building so-called life-style applications, mobile systems that are tightly integrated into our every-day lives, as their often advanced use of technology highlights the challenges for future applications of supple systems – be it in factories, vehicles, or applications on our mobile phones. The systems developed within the project will explore new materials, such as fabric or paper, integrated with sensors and wireless technologies.