Amanda J. Parkes

Designing kinetic interactions for organic user interfaces

Considering the future of kinetic design in user interfaces.

Topobo in the wild: longitudinal evaluations of educators appropriating a tangible interface

What issues arise when designing and deploying tangibles for learning in long term evaluations? This paper reports on a series of studies in which the Topobo system, a 3D tangible construction kit with the ability to record and playback motion, was provided to educators and designers to use over extended periods of time in the context of their day-to-day work. Tangibles for learning - like all educational materials - must be evaluated in relation both to the student and the teacher, but most studies of tangibles for learning focus on the student as user. Here, we focus on the conception of the educator, and their use of the tangible interface in the absence of an inventor or HCI researcher. The results of this study identify design and pedagogical issues that arise in response to distribution of a tangible for learning in different educational environments.

Bosu: a physical programmable design tool for transformability with soft mechanics

Physical transformability is emerging as an important element of interaction design as advances in material science and computational control give rise to new possibilities in actuated products and kinetic environments. However, this transition also produces a new range of design problems-how do we visualize, imagine, and design the physical processes of transformation? This paper presents Bosu, a design tool offering kinetic memory---the ability to record and play back motion in 3-D space---for soft materials. It is used for motion prototyping and digitally augmented form finding, combining dynamic modeling with coincident sensing and actuation to create transformable structures. Evaluation from a workshop with architects and interaction, product, and fashion designers is presented discussing the ramifications of physically programming motion with a new soft materiality, moving toward new ideas in body mimesis and material construction for kinetic design.

Senspectra: a computationally augmented physical modeling toolkit for sensing and visualization of structural strain

We present Senspectra, a computationally augmented physical modeling toolkit designed for sensing and visualization of structural strain. Senspectra seeks to explore a new direction in computational materiality, incorporating the material quality of malleable elements of an interface into its digital control structure. The system functions as a decentralized sensor network consisting of nodes, embedded with computational capabilities and a full spectrum LED, and flexible joints. Each joint functions as an omnidirectional bend sensing mechanism to sense and communicate mechanical strain between neighboring nodes. Using Senspectra, a user incrementally assembles and refines a physical 3D model of discrete elements with a real-time visualization of structural strain. While the Senspectra infrastructure provides a flexible modular sensor network platform, its primary application derives from the need to couple physical modeling techniques utilized in architecture and design disciplines with systems for structural engineering analysis. This offers direct manipulation augmented with visual feedback for an intuitive approach to physical real-time finite element analysis, particularly for organic forms.

Future craft: how digital media is transforming product design

The open and collective traditions of the interaction community have created new opportunities for product designers to engage in the social issues around industrial production. This paper introduces Future Craft, a design methodology which applies emerging digital tools and processes to product design toward new objects that are socially and environmentally sustainable. We present the results of teaching the Future Craft curriculum at the MIT Media Lab including principal themes of public, local and personal design, resources, assignments and student work. Novel ethnographic methods are discussed with relevance to informing the design of physical products. We aim to create a dialogue around these themes for the product design and HCI communities.

Kinetic sketchup: motion prototyping in the tangible design process

Physical malleability is emerging as an important element of interaction design as advances in material science and computational control give rise to new possibilities in actuated products and transformable environments. However, this transition also produces a new range of design problems-how do we visualize, imagine, and design the physical processes of transformation? We must create tools for intuitive motion investigation to train and develop our motions sensibilities in 3D space, moving towards interfaces that makes sketching with motion as easy as drawing with paper and pencil? This paper presents Kinetic Sketchup, an approach to a design language for motion prototyping featuring a series of actuated physically programmable modules which investigate the rich interplay of mechanical, behavioral and material design parameters which motion enables.

Glume: exploring materiality in a soft augmented modular modeling system

We introduce Glume, a modular scalable building system with the physical immediacy of a soft and malleable material. The Glume system consists of soft and translucent augmented modules, which communicate capacitively to their neighbors to determine a network topology and are responsive to human touch. Glume explores a unique area of augmented building materials by combining a discrete internal structure with a soft and organic material quality to relax the rigidity of structure and form in previous tangible building block approaches. We envision Glume as a tool for constructing and manipulating models, visualizations and simulations of organically based three dimensional data sets.

Virtual Guilds: Collective Intelligence and the Future of Craft

Abstract The apprentice model is making a resurgence through online craft communities or virtual guilds. These groups are growing through the mainstreaming of computer-controlled manufacturing and the democratic sales channels of the internet. Similar to open-source software communities, virtual guilds have a pioneering role in championing new technologies, often with only niche applications. The future success of these virtual guilds will depend on a careful balance of access to commercial media and focus on socially relevant issues.

Physical interventions in a location based cultural narrative: a case study of embedded media in public space installations

The majority of large scale media embedded into public spaces clashes with the existing architectural and cultural characteristics of an environments. This paper discusses the challenge to overcome this phenomenon through the design of new embedded artifacts which tie interactive media elements into existing physical properties of an environment, whether material, spatial, cultural, or social, to fluidly mesh and compliment a shared public space. Design challenges and guidelines are explored through the presentation of two experimental installations developed by the authors- the Algorithmic Topiary and Thermochromic Laundry Line. The site specific installations were created as physical interventions as part of the History Unwired Project, a mobile device based walking tour in the Castello neighborhood of Venice, Italy, and were intended to bring attention and dynamism to the physical and ephemeral elements of the environments which the tour describes.

Home, work, (play)

The first two segments of a three part series, these shorts were developed for Microsoft Volume Studios. Designed as purely inspirational pieces, to explore in a poetic narrative way how certain developing technologies could begin to blend and augment our daily lives.