Project kick-off 6th of March!

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.