Current Trends in Gesture and Body Tracking Interfaces
Omek Interactive provides the most advanced tools for incorporating gesture recognition and full body tracking into your applications. We will talk about trends in gesture interface development—what are the challenges for developing gesture interfaces, and where is gesture being incorporated (TVs, games, digital signage, medical, museums, sports, home automation, etc.). We’ll discuss how to make your applications easier to use. We’ll talk about workflows to make developing applications more efficient in terms of time and cost. We’ll explain our gesture library and why having a set of predefined gestures allows you to develop rapidly and reduce your time to market. OMEK will demonstrate a system with gesture and body tracking.
About the Speaker
Joint PDX-UX/Dataviz/CHIFOO event
Details of this event to come.
About the Speaker
As soon as we know it we’ll post it online.
Sit up Straight! - How Wearable Technology can Support Healthy Living
Have you ever wanted to send a hug from far away, automatically track your daily activity, or have your clothing correct your posture? What if your insulin delivery went from being a plastic shot in your pocket to a beautiful ring on your finger? How ubiquitous can pervasive technology really be? We will look at the rapidly changing future of wearable technology where health and wellness companies are early adopters.
Wearable technology syncs with daily life so that we don’t simply think about our health when something hurts, but rather utilize the ever present technology to get and stay healthy. Notoriously unattractive medical devices are being slowly re-engineered into desirable artifacts to carry with pride. Janna will bring a working prototype and samples to interact with and discuss. With 20 years of experience in apparel and health related design, as well as 10 years working in technology, Janna brings a unique perspective of how these two seemingly disparate materials can continue to merge to create the ultimate user experience
About the Speaker
Janna Kimel is a CHIFOO member.
Sixth Annual CHI-Bowl Party
Time for some hands-on interactions with things with holes in them. Please join us at the Sixth Annual CHI-Bowl event to bowl a few games or just drink a beer and socialize. In addition to shoe rental and a couple rounds of bowling, there will be pizza and festive beverages. You won’t need to bowl a game to win one of our fabulous prizes.
Dig out that bowling shirt and dust off the ball: on Wednesday, August 3rd at 5 pm CHIFOO hits the lanes at Hollywood Bowl, 4030 NE Halsey Street right next to the Hollywood Transit Center.
Behavior Change Systems for Healthy Living
This panel will present the creation of Behavior Change Systems for healthy living by exploring the following three essential areas: (1) Theory—The Cognitive Psychology of Behavior Change, (2) Strategy—Systems Thinking Modeling (how you model ecosytems and values), and (3) Tactical—Examples of Behavior Change Systems (do’s/don’ts).
About the Panelists
John Weiss is Executive Creative Director of WebMD Health Services, and his work is guided by purpose, passion, simplicity, beauty, innovation, and surprise. He is responsible for crafting online experiences that change behavior and ultimately improve lives. John oversees all aspects of design across digital and traditional mediums within the organization. With over 13 years of experience in interactive and experience design, John has built and led high performing design teams as the Director of Experience Design at Waggener Edstrom, and Experience Director at Ascentium. Through smart design that empowered their audience and strengthened their brand, he has designed compelling work for clients such as BMW, Microsoft, U.S. Air Force, T-Mobile, Subaru, Amazon, Motorola, GE, Disney, Honda, and Intel. John founded FiveEdge Media in 2003, a Portland/Seattle-based Experience Design agency that conceived, prototyped, and designed innovative visually compelling application and experience designs with great attention to detail for over 28 clients which led to a successful acquisition in 2008. John is deeply passionate about creating authentic experiences that are truly meaningful—experiences that are rooted in elegant design, built with innovative technology, and create lasting relationships and shape the future.
Katey Deeney is Director of Experience Design at WebMD Health Services, and she has almost 15 years of experience designing effective, delightful solutions to complex user challenges. She has researched, evaluated, and designed mobile, software, and web interactions for brands including Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, and T-mobile. Her professional knowledge is complemented by advanced academic work; she earned her MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design and her MS from the University of Washington. As an educator, Katey has taught both design studios and lecture courses to graduate and undergraduate students. In addition, she has guest lectured for courses at the University of Washington in several academic departments, including the Information School, Human Centered Design & Engineering, and Communication in Digital Media.
Aaron Wasler is the Creative Director at WebMD and a multi-faceted designer whose work encompasses strategy, design, and technology. His projects have included the design of brand identity, catalogs, packaging, environments, exhibitions, interactive installations, websites, and user interfaces. Prior to joining WebMD, Aaron enjoyed various positions such as Design Director, SVP of Branding & Creative, Senior Art Director, and Senior Information Architect. Aaron has successfully built and led multi-disciplinary teams of varying sizes while creating award-winning work in a variety of design disciplines. During the last 15 years of his design practice and while working as a design educator, Aaron has developed new and innovative design research and methodologies. Most of all, Aaron is a passionate storyteller who truly believes in design thinking and the power of design to both inspire and inform. Aaron holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA in Design from Brigham Young University.
Beyond the Buzz…Feel the Game with ViviTouch™
Why do gamers who usually demand the most cutting edge technology still accept the primitive buzzing technologies that do not recreate the real feel of the game? They must have not yet experienced what ViviTouch can add to their gaming experience. ViviTouch enables a gamer to experience thousands of sensations in a versatile language of feedback in the palm of the hand. This allows game developers to change the way that their games interact with the gamer.
Marcus will present the exciting consumer reactions from the recent introduction of this technology to gamers and game developers. A case study of the Mophie Pulse gaming case that turns the iPod Touch into a gaming platform with a rumble experience that surpasses console controllers will also be presented. Marcus will introduce how game developers can enable gamers to truly experience ViviTouch for iOS, Android, and other platforms by using available design guides and SDKs.
User experience designers can use this innovative technology to communicate useful information through the sense of touch, such as who is calling or messaging, or enabling a user to feel different parts of their screen, to even potentially enable sightless typing on a touch screen. ViviTouch can become a new tool for user experience designers to integrate to create truly innovative user interfaces.
About the Speaker
Marcus Rosenthal is a Co-Founder of Artificial Muscle, Inc. (AMI) and is currently the Director of Strategic Alliances. He works closely with customers and partners to create innovative user experiences for mobile, gaming, audio, and other consumer applications with AMI’s ViviTouch Technology. Marcus pioneered many of the early material and process advancements of Electroactive Polymers (now called ViviTouch technology) that enabled commercialization. Prior to AMI, Marcus worked as a Research Engineer at SRI International on next-generation biomimetic robots that utilized Electroactive Polymers. Marcus has published 2 book chapters, 10 papers, and holds 5 patents on Electroactive Polymer technology. Marcus Rosenthal studied Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley.
Mobile as Analytics for Life
Julie is on an early morning training run. She has done some running over the last year, but this will be her first marathon. She doesn’t have a training partner, but a voice in her ear expertly nudges her on, while her mobile device records her pace, her route, and saves it to a training log in the cloud. A friend comments later on Facebook about her commitment, noting that he has trouble running so early in the morning.
Tryouts for the high school soccer team are in three months, but Steve is starting his training now. A device in the midsole of his shoe and in the soccer ball he uses measures direction and acceleration, and compares his data to his peers and to the pros. An app on his mobile device records his statistics, shows him where he is strong and where he is weak, and gives him a training program to elevate his game.
Analytics, the marriage of computer science and statistics, allows us to derive meaning from large sets of data. Historically it has been the domain of business strategy and marketing, used to zero in on patterns which enable strategists to forecast future market behavior and improve outcomes. New mobile technology allows users to collect their own data, connects them to the best science, and does so in a way that is personal, social, and highly targeted. The Nike+ Sensor records running performance, the Adidas miCoach Speed Cell measures multi-directional motion for sports training, the Withings scale and blood pressure monitor helps people monitor their health, and UP by Jawbone measures activity level, sleep cycles, and eating patterns.
How has user-centered design shaped the direction of these new technologies? In this presentation, Jeanne will explore the ways that people have integrated these devices into their lives and discuss whether the technology has followed through on the promise to improve health, performance, and lifestyle.
About the Speaker
Jeanne Turner is a passionate and versatile interaction designer who is dedicated to creating delightful experiences through greater understanding of user needs, goals, and motivations. After earning a BA in Computer Science with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction, she’s spent the past 7 years using her skills to build both mobile applications and web environments for clients including Ecotrust, Vanderbilt Owen School of Management, Tektronix, Harvard Business School, Starbucks, and Amazon. Jeanne is also an invaluable part of the Portland interaction design community, serving as the leader and co-leader of the local chapter of IxDA since May of 2008.
Home Energy Monitoring and Management Systems (HEMS)
Up to 57 million smart meters are expected to be deployed in the United States in the next two decades, which presents an unprecedented opportunity for greater visibility into home energy use. Smart meters themselves are not, however, customer-friendly portals, nor do they give utilities the option of communicating with their customers directly. This is where in-home displays (IHD), or the more comprehensive home energy monitoring and management systems (HEMS) come into play. Monitoring devices for the home, such as the Kill-a-Watt, have been around for more than a decade, but the first technologies on the market can be considered analog, at best. In the past several years, more mature HEMS have evolved which can give customers detailed information about every energy-using device in their home.
The most sophisticated HEMS, such as Tendril’s Connect platform, allow homeowners to control their lighting, appliances, and even electric vehicles remotely, truly transforming a home into a smart home. But, these systems are only just emerging on the market, and there is no road map for how utilities use them to communicate with customers. In this talk, Emily will discuss the evolution of these devices and what the latest technologies on the market are capable of, as well as how HEMS play a pivotal role in the evolution of the smart home.
About the Speaker
Emily Kemper is an Associate Member of the American Institute of Architects, and is the only public member of the Oregon Governor’s Board for Residential and Manufactured Structures. In her capacity at PECI, she is working to leverage emerging technology into existing and new residential energy efficiency program models, while advancing industry and public knowledge of energy efficiency in homes and buildings. Emily hails from Cincinnati, Ohio, and has a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and a Master’s degree in Building Science. Her current research includes home energy monitoring systems, saving energy through behavior change, and smart homes. Her hobbies include photography, blogging, and following Nissan LEAFs around Portland on her bike.
Security *IS* a Game: Using the Blender Game Engine for Security
SecViz.org is a great resource for security visualizations, but most suffer from a lack of interactivity. Completing kinectasploit for DEFCON19 made me realize the utility of game engines for interacting with security tools and security information. Jeff will start with a recap/encore performance of kinectasploit (http://p0wnlabs.com/defcon19), which uses gestures to drive a first-person shooter 3D game environment to break into computers on victim virtual machines. Then using the same technology, Jeff will walk through a couple scenes using standard corporate security data in a 3D, kinect-driven environment made possible by the blender game engine.
Kinect and gestures are two of the most prevalent game-changing technologies to affect user interfaces since the keyboard and mouse. Applying these tools to real-world data is challenging, fraught with pitfalls, and a heck of a lot of fun! Let’s discover the boundaries of current technology by pushing it until it fails!
About the Speaker
Information about Jeff Bryner to come.
Missing the Point: The Expanding World of Gestural Interaction
The paradigm of physical computing is well and truly here—sensors and microcontrollers are getting cheaper and more robust, and they are easily programmable. Long associated with gaming, these sensors are making their way into our everyday ‘utility’ devices. For example, think about the average smart phone: it likely contains a proximity sensor, an accelerometer/orientation sensor, an ambient light sensor, a gyroscopic sensor, and a moisture sensor. Cameras can recognize head motion and facial gestures; they can track body movements and compare them to motion models.
As these sensors become part of everyday interactive devices, we are ushering in new forms of gestural interaction, which is changing how we interact with digital experiences and data, and changing the nature of our computer-mediated communications. In this talk, Elizabeth will offer some observations and speculations on how the world of physical computing, broadly construed, is changing the way in which we interact with our devices, each other, and interactive digital experiences.
About the Speaker
Dr. Elizabeth Churchill is a Principal Research Scientist and manager of the Internet Experiences group at Yahoo! Research. Originally a psychologist by training, Elizabeth has focused throughout her career on understanding the ways in which people interact—whether their interactions are primarily face-to-face or are technologically mediated. She has published within the areas of theoretical and applied psychology, cognitive science, human-computer interaction, and computer-supported cooperative work. Elizabeth has a BSc in Experimental Psychology and a MSc in Knowledge Based Systems, both from the University of Sussex, and a PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Cambridge. She regularly teaches at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information. In 2010, she was recognized as a Distinguished Scientist by the Association for Computing Machinery. She is the current Vice President of the Association of Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SigCHI).
Designing Experience with Sound
The Haunted Garden is a sonic environment that participants control by their mere presence. It is a room that listens to the notes in your voice and uses them to compose music and change the color of the room. As the project progressed, further opportunities for control were implemented. An interactive kiosk gives users the ability to choose instruments and control sensitivity and reactivity parameters. The next step was to insert audio from other times and places by playing field recordings (e.g., baby yaks in Tibet, the 8-line in San Francisco), allowing the Haunted Garden to actively respond to the augmented sonic environments.
Simran will discuss the challenges of designing with sound, and how he developed “listening agents” who react and comment on sound in the environment. He will relate experiences—both as software developer and sound artist—and explore sound as a medium. Topics will include what is sound sculpture, what challenges were uncovered in creating it, whether the experience worked according to plan, the challenges in developing applications for these sorts of interactions, the unforeseen consequences resulting from initial forays into these kinds of devices, and how an interface based on sound might change how we relate to sound and sonic devices.
About the Speaker
Simran Gleason is an artist and professional nerd. He started drawing the day after getting a master’s degree in computer science (symbolic and heuristic computation) from Stanford and drifted through many media before arriving at his current focus: making algorithms that make music. Among his more successful installations is Haunted Garden, a room that listens to you, finds the notes in your conversation, and uses them to compose an ambient sound and lightscape. He also did the generative music and light algorithms for SWARM, a gaggle of open source someday-autonomous spherical robots. His work has been shown in galleries in San Francisco and Palo Alto, as well as installations at Maker Fair, Yuri’s Night, Coachella, and the special olympics of art: Burning Man. Kepler’s Orrery is his first iPhone app.
Design for First Person User Interfaces
Following in the tradition of Command Line, GUI, and NUI interface paradigms, first person interfaces continue to reduce the layers of abstraction between the digital and the real. With first person interfaces we can allow people to interact digitally with the real world as they are currently experiencing it. This allows people to navigate the space around them, augment their immediate surroundings, and interact with nearby objects, locations, or people.
First person interfaces enable people to interact with the real world through a set of “always on” sensors. Simply place a computing device in a specific location, near a specific object or person, and automatically get relevant output based on who you are, where you are, and who or what is near you.
The technology to make this happen is here today but these interfaces are in their infancy –they need design help. They need designers to care and focus on this class of software.
About the Speaker
Luke Wroblewski is an internationally recognized digital product design leader who has designed or contributed to software used by more than 700 million people worldwide.
Luke is currently Chief Design Officer and co-founder of a stealth start-up. He is also an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Benchmark Capital. Prior to this, Luke was the Chief Design Architect (VP) at Yahoo! Inc. where he worked on product alignment and forward-looking integrated customer experiences on the web, mobile, TV, and beyond.
Luke is the author of two popular web design books, Web Form Design and Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability. He has also authored many articles about digital product design and strategy. He is also a consistently top-rated speaker at conferences and companies around the world, and a co-founder and former Board member of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA).
Why It’s Time to Move Beyond the Usability Lab
Usability labs and similar settings have served us well for 30+ years of research and practical study of human interfaces. But it’s time to move beyond that and leverage the power of the web.
In the early days of computers, when users tended to be much more uniform, usability labs and their associated smaller numbers of study participants worked well. The internet, web, and proliferation of mobile devices have changed things. It’s hard to imagine someone who wouldn’t be a candidate user for the applications that many of us design and develop these days. We also know much more about what works and doesn’t work for users. Now, instead of being used to uncover major design issues, usability testing is often used to identify small design improvements that can make a big impact to a company’s bottom line.
Thomas will present case studies and discuss the pros and cons of some of the latest trends in usability testing, from “crowd-sourcing” to automated techniques for metric collection.
About the Speaker
Thomas S. Tullis., Ph.D., is Vice President of Usability & User Insight at Fidelity Investments. He joined Fidelity in 1993 and was instrumental in the development of the company’s usability team and a state-of-the-art Usability Lab. He received his B.A. from Rice University, M.A. in Experimental Psychology from New Mexico State University and Ph.D. in Engineering Psychology from Rice University.
With more than 30 years of experience in human-computer interface studies, Thomas has published over 35 papers and holds eight U.S. patents. Prior to Fidelity, he held positions at Canon Information Systems, McDonnell Douglas, Unisys Corporation, and Bell Laboratories. He is co-author (with Bill Albert) of the book Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics, and co-author (with Bill Albert and Donna Tedesco) of the new book Beyond the Usability Lab: Conducting Large-scale User Experience Studies. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Bentley University, where he teaches in the graduate program in Human Factors in Information Design.
Oct. 5 Meeting Notes taken by Andrew Sweany:
Great presentation last by Tom Tullis from Fidelity.
Some of the key takeaways I captured include:
- Interesting story about the value of using large scale online studies to make rather small design decisions (category label of Retirement & Guidance vs. Guidance & Retirement - the later was the winner
- Large online studies are good because users of technology are becoming more diverse
- polleverywhere.com is a fun little service - allows you to set up text based voting on multiple choice questions and see the results real time online. Tom posed several questions to the audience using it during his presentation
- The most surprising was a test of 4 different designs where variables were text only and different font/background colors, and images and text with different colors. Eye tracking heat map revealed very few users looked at the image at all and the most looked at was simple dark text on a white background (with a bolded box border)
- Mr Tullis likes usertesting.com for self moderated testing. Costs between $35 - $70 per participant, and the clips captured are the users screen and audio ‘think out loud’ type comments
- The most interesting remote unmoderated example was around Amazon’s Mechanical Turk where users work on Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs), usually for 5 or 10 cents at a pop. Basically the HITs appear to be like performing a single usability task.
- A new remote service called Loop 11 can be used for iPad testing
- At Fidelity they typically do an online study first to test 4 or 5 different designs, then follow up with a more traditional lab study to dive into the details, understand the ‘why’, etc.
- Have found that users (in his example, Fidelity employees) typically perform worse in the lab and generally give tasks/sites lower ratings than they do when performing the tasks at their desks
Thank you Andrew, for helping us document this meeting!
In Defense of Eye Candy
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Graphics, eye candy, sexy interfaces— while these aren’t as seemingly strategic as a mental model or BCG Matrix, it’s time to stand up for these misunderstood elements. Aesthetics play just as critical a role in business as picking the right server or insuring your data is accurate. But here’s the catch: it’s not about shiny buttons or gradient fades in and of themselves. Rather, it’s about “the psychological response to sensory stimulus.” It’s about people and how people respond to these elements.
If we truly care about making things work for people, then we should care about aesthetics, or the science of “how things are known via the senses.” And it’s much more than graphic design…Sights. Sounds. Smells. Motion. Aesthetics is concerned about all the senses. And it’s about how people respond to these elements (and not the elements themselves).
To understand so-called “eye-candy” in proper context, it’s critical that we stop focusing on particular design elements (rounded corners or drop shadows, anyone?), and instead look at the response that is triggered by these elements. We’ll do just this, looking at a variety of design details, focusing not on their stylistic qualities but rather the cognitive and affective responses these details elicit. In doing so, we’ll skim across a variety of research findings from the last decade that will both confirm and challenge many of our assumptions about design.
About the Speaker
Stephen P. Anderson is a speaker and consultant based out of Dallas, Texas. He spends unhealthy amounts of time thinking about design, psychology and leading “intrapreneurial” teams—topics he frequently speaks about at national and international events.
Stephen recently published the Mental Notes card deck, a tool to help businesses use psychology to design better experiences. He’s also writing a book on “Seductive Interactions” that will explore this topic of psychology and design in more detail.
Prior to venturing out on his own, Stephen spent more than a decade building and leading teams of information architects, interaction designers, and UI developers. He’s designed Web applications for businesses such as Nokia, Frito-Lay, Sabre Travel Network, and Chesapeake Energy, as well as a number of smaller technology startups.
Fifth Annual CHI-Bowl
It’s summertime in Portland at last!
Dig out that bowling shirt and dust off the ball: on Wednesday, August 3rd at 5 pm CHIFOO hits the lanes at Hollywood Bowl, 4030 NE Halsey Street right next to the Hollywood Transit Center. See a map.
Please join us at the Fifth Annual CHI-Bowl event to bowl a few games or just drink a beer and socialize. In addition to shoe rental and a couple rounds of bowling, there will be pizza and festive beverages. You won’t need to bowl a game to win one of our fabulous prizes—including two tablets donated by our sponsor WACOM—and special goodies.
CHIFOO members will get in free. Non-members and guests will pay $10 for this great entertainment package. Bring the family! For just $25, 1 adult guest and up to three children 17 or younger can bowl and party with us. Please bring friends and/or family, form a team, and bowl away. It’s the most interactive meeting of the year!
Ready to Bowl with CHIFOO? Please RSVP so we know you’re coming.
Not a CHIFOO member?
Now’s a great time to join and get the benefits of a full year’s worth of excellent programs in addition to a great bowling party for only $25! You can’t beat a deal like that. Join CHIFOO today.
Making an Innovation Space
Game-changing innovation is accomplished not by mastering devices, but by understanding how the present is already transforming our lives in ways we don’t yet comprehend. “The future is already here,” said novelist William Gibson. “It’s just not very evenly distributed.”
This talk will reveal local agency White Horse’s strategy for understanding and defining digital futures through the formation of a human-computer interaction lab. Will will discuss White Horse’s early vision for this venture, successes and roadblocks, and ultimately how it’s evolved into a physical space and an intellectual forum that stimulates new ways of thinking and makes sense of new conversations emerging between people and brands.
About the Speaker
Will Reese is a strategic anthropologist specializing in ethnographic and trends research for the design of interactive experiences. He has been working in the area for over 11 years and has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California. Will previously led a Consumer Insights and Trends group at Ziba Design, where his and his team’s discoveries drove the design of experiences that won awards such as the Red Dot Design Award, the AIGI Design Award, and the IDSA Gold Medal. Prior to that he was the head of ethnographic research at Design Science, helping global businesses develop new products and services in consumer, medical, and retail. He has worked with clients such as Baxter, Citi, GE, Kohler, Heinz, Honda, Intel, Johnson and Johnson, Logitech, Motorola, Nike, Nokia, Philips, Proctor & Gamble, RIM, T-Mobile, and Tektronix, to name a few. Will has helped design a vast array of products and services, from devices for robotic surgery, cardiac therapy, and emergency medical systems to home appliances, games, and retail environments. At White Horse, Will runs the Digital Future Group, which helps pioneering businesses to assess, select, and apply appropriate new technologies to their marketing initiatives to deepen their connection with consumers.
Will’s articles have appeared recently in The Journal of the Design Management Institute, Proceedings of The Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, and the book Creating Breakthrough Ideas: The Collaboration of Anthropologists and Designers in the Product Development Industry.