USC IMD:

Mobile media week at UCLA

UCLA's mobile media series continues tomorrow and through the weekend with some very cool speakers, symposia and workshops. On Thursday 11/12 Area/Code's Kevin Slavin will be speaking at 6:00PM, followed by a day-long symposium on Friday 11/13 organized by Casey Reas featuring luminaries including Slavin, Julian Bleecker, Mark Hansen, Ian Bogost, Robin Hunicke, John Underkoffler, Erkki Huhtamo, Machiko Kusahara and many more! Saturday 11/14 is devoted to a series of low-cost workshops on using Python, Arduino, and the iPhone SDK.

Jordan Weisman at UCLA tomorrow 6:00PM

UCLA Design|Media Arts' Mobile Media Lecture Series continues tomorrow at 6:00PM with expanded storyteller and ARG designer Jordan Weisman. From the UCLA website: "Jordan has been the creative force behind a number of entertainment companies, including his newest venture, Smith & Tinker (connected toys), FASA Corporation (roleplaying games), Virtual World Entertainment (networked virtual reality entertainment) acquired by the Disney Family, FASA Interactive (PC games, including the MechWarrior franchise) acquired by Microsoft, WizKids (collectible games) acquired by Topps Inc., and 42 Entertainment (alternate reality gaming). During his career, Jordan has created some of the largest and longest-lasting franchises in the gaming industry, including BattleTech/MechWarrior, Shadowrun and Crimson Skies."

Virtual Reality Goggles with a Google Phone

These guys use an an HTC Magic running the built in Google Street View and a box to make themselves a primitive pair of VR goggles....minus the whole 3D part.

Wellness Partners Pilot Study Now Recruiting!

Wellness Partners is a collaborative research project about exercise habits and perceived wellness designed by the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Keck School of Medicine, and School of Social Work. The study is coordinated through a partnership with USC's Center for Work & Family Life.

You are invited to help us test a newly developed intervention by participating in very brief activities via the Internet and/or mobile phone over the period of 10 weeks. We will also be taking in-person physical measurements (height and weight) and asking you to answer questions online.

As a token of our appreciation, you may receive up to $45 for participating in the study.

Your participation is voluntary and any information collected during the study will be kept confidential.

Support for this study is provided by a grant from the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

If you have additional questions please read the
Frequently Asked Questions

If you are interested, please email:
WPSTUDY-L@USC.EDU
Phone: 310-933-6648

Sensecam goes commercial

Lifelogging has been a constant interest for many of us in IMD and there are a few posts around the blog such as here and here. More recently, Professor Mark Bolas did some research with Microsoft on their prototype Sensecam. Here's an update on a new commercial version by UK company Vicon (via New Scientist):

New camera promises to capture your whole life

13:10 16 October 2009 by Kurt Kleiner

A camera you can wear as a pendant to record every moment of your life will soon be launched by a UK-based firm.
Originally invented to help jog the memories of people with Alzheimer's disease, it might one day be used by consumers to create "lifelogs" that archive their entire lives.
Worn on a cord around the neck, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1-gigabyte memory.
The ViconRevue was originally developed as the SenseCam by Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, for researchers studying Alzheimer's and other dementias. Studies showed that reviewing the events of the day using SenseCam photos could help some people improve long-term recall.

CTIN 492L Experimental Game Topics "Health & Interactive Media"

(following Peter Brinson's example, I am shamelessly promoting my class)

Preliminary Syllabus Outline*

draft syllabus

CTIN492L - Experimental Game Topics (TTh 5-6.50pm - with serious coffee break...)
Instructor: Marientina Gotsis

Overview. This course will prepare students for designing interactive media-based health “interventions”, such as sensor-based games on mobile platforms. We will review priority health areas in the US health system, as well as emerging markets and technologies, key topics in public health, behavior, neuroscience and social networks. Students will be mentored through project case studies in focused areas (e.g., obesity, autism, cancer, rehabilitation). Students will be given the opportunity to generate ideas, design and playtest paper and digital prototypes in their area of interest, as well as randomly picked topics during lab exercises. Assignments will be individual and group-based.

Goal. The goal of the course is to increase student awareness of healthcare challenges from individuals to groups and communities, cultivate design empathy from multiple perspectives (consumer, patient, health professional, designer, engineer) and foster a spirit of understanding toward collaborative design. Whereas pure entertainment may focus more on the player experience rather than the message, health interactives require equal consideration to both user/player and message. Students will be challenged to think beyond pure entertainment and understand holistic issues of design that take into account the user/players’ overall mental and physical health, environmental factors, social networks, and scalability issues, as well as the economics that govern healthcare issues. Students will be required to communicate issues based on their diverse perspectives in order to help identify stakeholder interests in health interactives.

Structure. The class will spend the initial part of the semester understanding key concepts, reviewing current literature and evaluating prior art in this area. The class will also cover basic skills in prototyping, playtesting, study design and evaluation. The class will create a series of small prototype exercises from which to draw ideas and experience for individual and group projects. During the final half of the semester, the class will work together in groups to design, playtest, and produce, one or more class projects depending on class size and expertise.

NO PREREQUISITES REQUIRED.
BOTH GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATES ELIGIBLE FOR CREDIT.

* The course will be quite different from last year - focused more on hands on design and critique/discussion with an eclectic readings list reviewing special topics in design, health, behavior, technology, and interactive media including games (no book). Many thanks to the students who helped us pilot this class last semester. Suggestions very welcome so long as you're honest but nice :)

Ringo

Holographic Interface - round interface - Ringo from Ivan Tihienko on Vimeo.

"this short feature demonstrates the simple of the possibilities of having the holographic shadow (?) instead of a pda or a cell phone, or a computer for that matter."

noha takes the Van Alen Institute

Hey y'all.
It's been awhile and I've missed you.

This spring, I stumbled into the Van Alen Institute, a funded organization in NYC that explores projects on the borders of art and architecture. By the end of the summer, I had ended up as the primary interactive designer of two of the Van Alen's three summer fellowship projects. It was truly great working with architects - highly skilled, educated and creative people - and being able to provide a perspective and skill set that their projects would otherwise not have.

The Projects

The Aurora Project

An amazingly ambitious work of interactive archisculpture wherein every piece was designed in some form of CAD and cut on a laser cutter. Each item is custom, hand made, and based on buoy data from the Arctic. There are 24 IR distance sensors placed around the perimeter of the field, which are tied to LEDs embedded in the base of the sculpture, and cold cathode tubes extruding from its top. As participants approach the sculpture, the LEDs dim and the CCTs brighten, to simulate the experience of the Arctic melting as more humans pay attention to it, releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. I designed and soldered the circuits that power the electronics, and designed the Arduino software that provides the interaction.

Museum of the Phantom City

A walking tour through unbuilt architectural proposals for the "other futures" that could have happened in NYC, had visionary architects gotten their way. There are many documented proposals from big-name architects that were a bit too forward thinking for their time, from a 19th century pneumatic subway to a Bucky dome over all of lower Manhattan. This project, a combination of iPhone app, scavenger hunt and website, is a location-based walking tour through all of these. I did all of the iPhone programming, and much of the user experience design. This project marks my first published iPhone app.

ok!
I hope this is informative to those wondering what IMD students do when they graduate.
<3 U, IMD.
/noha

Game Treatment: Viz

"Players who install the Viz application on their phone can expect an ambient 'always on' play experience that exists within the flow of their everyday lives. Players engage with Viz when they have spare moments in public spaces..."

Here's the link to my casual mobile augmented reality game treatment:

http://remotedevice.net/projects/viz/

Cabulous: Find and Track Cabs Near You

Check this mobile app out, especially if you are in the San Francisco area!
You can currently get on the list for a private beta invite.

Cabulous and Find my Friend Presentation from John Wolpert on Vimeo.

This is a project I was able to work on thanks to an introduction by the USC Stevens Institute. Best Buy Corporate had set up an innovation program and I was lucky enough to get invited to create some location aware concepts for their connected personal navigation device. A few months later, the project was spun off into a separate company and now it's ready for some beta testers.

Sign up here.