So my affection for emerging technologies has continued, especially considering the Boxee post I recently read via Richard Ting’s blog (Flytip) and the NY Times. Avner Ronen (Founder + CEO of Boxee) seems to have the vision right.
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Category: DesignForEmergingPlatforms
Instructor: Richard Ting
Zune is the new social music listening experience, Last.fm scrobbles your music library, Nokia devices come with unlimited music for a year, Nutsie lets you sling your iTunes library to your mobile phone, Netflix movies will be streamed directly into LG HDTVs, and Hulu is serving up fresh TV programming directly into your web browser. Suffice it to say, media consumption habits are being disrupted and enhanced by emerging technologies everyday. As designers living in this hyper-connected world, we are well positioned to dream up digital experiences that were never before possible. This course explores the unique aspects of designing experiences for emerging media platforms which require special attention given to ubiquity, accessibility, and social connectivity. Students in this course are challenged to re-define the future of the digital music listening experience in the first half of the semester, and then challenged to re-define the future of interactive tv on the web and/or mobile for their end of semester presentations. The class follows a rigorous design methodology that teaches students how to go from idea to conceptual prototype. Students work in small project teams of 3-5. Weekly classes are divided in two sections; the first to discuss topics relevant to emerging media design such as next generation user interface design, social media theory, open API development, mobile technologies, and multi-channel content distribution. Following each week’s topic, students are expected to present their project updates with open class discussion in the form of critique sessions. Students are expected to prototype a final project so prior experience with basic electronics, physical computing, web programming, and prototyping software (Adobe Flash is helpful, but not required.) The final project requires a working prototype with supporting design documentation. Executives from the advertising, media, and consumer electronics industries are invited to class to provide guest critiques and to speak about future trends within Emerging Media.
There’s a belief that life in New York is a race, more so than in other parts of the country and the world. I sense that …yea for sure, but I’m actually more inclined to support the idea that belief is a matter of perspective, and perspective should be semi-controllable, hopefully to a healthy level. Last night, I stepped back and puffed on a nice cigar (old men do that at least once a year right) and reflected by watching my entire flickr photostream. Today, my perspective is loaded — honestly, it’s overloaded and fuzzy as hell. For me, moving forward is crucial, but keeping up a rapid pace seems increasingly difficult and decreasingly significant. As I begin the final lap at ITP and start to see how being 30 might look, anxiety is saying “hello there” … I wonder if I need to shift into turbo mode, focus on well-being and balance, or something completely different. I’m pretty sure I just need some air, a great meal, or a tough workout.
Anyway, on a practical note, I’ve generated some names for the projects I’m currently persuing.
- clinq.tv (metal sound in reference to coins/slots for an online tv watching and betting experience) [emerging + flash]
- plexinko (it’s a “bean machine, plinko, quincunx” thing made of plexi, metal, pegs, and marbles) [crafting]
- hear mirror (i’m gaining insight / perspective on myself through the sounds of my voice) [rest of]
- bubble-up (it’s literal in that bubbles are going upward in the game, but also a play on meetup cause players are connecting through bubble blowing) [liveweb + flash]
For next semester, I’m thinking of thesis, another class, and an internship…(RGA? BAM? Frog? Schematic? IDEO?…hrmm)
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CLINQ.tv progress
The progress of our social, online-tv watching experience has come along really well in the last two weeks. We’ve received some great feedback from Richard, the class, and a guest critic from BlockBuster (Dari). At this point, the wireframes and initial designs of Clinq are mainly fleshed out. This week, we will fine tune our concepts and layouts, and then begin to build a prototype using Adobe Flash. Here’s a glimpse (pdf).
Hulya, HyeJin, Sanjay and I met today to pull our user research and initial thoughts together. We have a few primary concepts:
-skype meets stadium / living room
-sitcom groups go online
-tv betting (wild)
and I have here my stream of thought / notes below as well.
we like the built-in functionality of skype. we recognize that netflix, hulu, cbs, are doing most everything already. a facebook app could make sense for the social aspect of the project, but it’s been overdone perhaps and could be very difficult. we want to sortof combine remotely connecting couch potatoes while giving users more control. creating a following is another train of thought. answers to what we can do while watching include tv/movie trivia, polling viewers, trash talking, linguistic mashups. working with movies, sitcoms, sports, news might or might not matter in terms of the scope of our design / concept. in terms of groups, we have people gathering in cinemas for movies, fans gathering to watch sports in bars and in stadiums, but not really people getting connected while watching sitcoms in their living rooms. the mobile consideration doesnt seem to be one we want to deal with at this stage.
Team Carmello had another meeting yesterday. In short, we re-assigned the 4 buttons on our iPhone app, chose a color palette, and are pulling together the finalized user journey. The rating system was a tangent topic that consumed too much of our conversation in my opinion, but all members have offered great contributions overall. A team as large as 5 members could use a management structure from the start, but I feel we’ve done pretty well keeping our dynamic positive and productive. However, at this point, it seems the more we discuss, the more confused the project becomes, so we have divided the remaining work between us and will meet probably one more time to discuss the presentation plan. Ok Monday, we’ll see you soon.
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CellFish: Group Update
The midterm project in short is ongoing and team-oriented, focused on developing a social, mobile, music sharing experience. Our progress at this point is viewable on our shared powerpoint presentation in progress.
Long Live the User (Persona): Talking with Steve Mulder – “With personas, the right kinds of details matter, and they typically involve goals, behaviors, and attitudes…the whole point is to see real people as our users and not focus on ourselves.”
The Origin of Personas – “The users fell into three distinct groups, clearly differentiated by their goals, tasks, and skill levels. Had I been creating the software myself, I would have role-played those users as I had with Ruby and SuperProject, but in this case I had to describe those user models to the Sagent team. So I created Chuck, Cynthia, and Rob. These three were the first true, Goal-Directed, personas…design tools for me and communication tools for the entire construction team was obvious and significant…but a complete “How-to” on personas has yet to be written.”
Developing User Personas – “The intent behind a user persona is to create a shared vocabulary for yourself and your team when discussing design questions and decisions.”
An introduction to user journeys – Primary needs, need states, time-based journey with hooks (calls to action).
User Journey Mapping – “The ideal journey for each typical scenario is used to prioritise features and content on each page to assist the user in reaching their goal as quickly as possible, and these priorities are translated into the wireframes…it is important to create the ideal journeys with a multidisciplinary team to ensure all angles are covered.”
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8tracks.com
“On 8tracks, people can do two things: listen to a mix, or create a mix. Listeners can search for a mix by artist or genre, stream it in a legal, radio-style manner, and follow others who make compelling mixes. DJs upload MP3s or select tracks from the 8tracks library to craft a playlist, add context with description and art, and publish their mix on 8tracks.com and a personal webpage…8tracks believes handcrafted music programming trumps algorithms. Think radio in the 1970s, mixtapes in the 1980s, and DJ culture of the 1990s through today. DJs share their talent in taste making, providing exposure for artists. Listeners get a unique blend of word-of-mouth sharing and radio programming — long the trusted means for music discovery — on a global scale. Founded in 2006 by David Porter, ex-GM at Live365, 8tracks was created by a small team (CEO, designer, 5 developers) in NYC and SF.”
This site is really light and in its early stages, which I appreciate. David Porter follows popular music sharing sites and includes some nice charts and statistics on his blog. I’ve been using 8tracks for a couple days so far with no major complaints.
It feels pretty good when puzzle pieces seem in place. Looking up at the full moon last night reminded me that we’re not so big and important as we tend to imagine. But of course we have significance in our environments, and we have a lot of control of what we do in and with our lives. Tis hard to keep perspective sometimes when things are extremely bad, or good. Natural reminders are nice I suppose, as long as we recognize them from time to time.
As I exited the train this morning/afternoon, it occurred to me that a pattern has begun developing with my classes this semester. The assignment for Rest of You this week is to look at myself or some sorta biorhythm (?) I produce, and try to think of or use it in a meaningful way; meanwhile, get Arduino up and running with a sensor. The one for Flash is to create an animation as an splash screen for any project using motion/shape tweens, etc. The task in Crafting with Data is to log some data using a program already provided, and like Rest of You, use the Arduino. While I was unsure if I would have the time or energy to take Flash, I now feel that taking the 2 credit course is the perfect solution to my inability to improve my Flash skills over the summer. It will motivate me and support my skillsets in other classes and beyond. My initial hesitation to buy new pComp supplies has been comforted since I’m using the items in two classes already. Also, Liveweb and Design for Emerging Platforms are going to overlap for sure, and will benefit from the Flash lessons as well. I plan to attend Red’s class tonight, as I’ve heard the speaker should be relevant to Rest of You. Hopefully it’s inspiring. Hopefully collaborative projects will begin gaining strength. Hopefully I will remember to eat well, exercise, and share myself.