Lalya Gaye

Mobile music technology: report on an emerging community

The new field of mobile music emerges at the intersection of ubiquitous computing, portable audio technology and NIME. We have held a series of international workshop on this topic with leading projects and speakers, in order to establish a community and stimulate the development of the field. In this report, we define mobile music, and map out the field by reporting on the workshop series and accounting for the state-of-the-art.

Design for hackability

Design for hackability encourages designers and non-designers to critically and creatively explore interactivity, technology and media - to reclaim authorship and ownership of technologies and the social and cultural worlds in which we live. Hackability implies more than customization or adaptation - it calls for redefinition. In a world where technologies are increasingly mobile and invisible, designing for hackability means allowing and encouraging people to make technologies be what they want them to be. It cultivates reciprocity between users and designers and supports transparency and graceful responses to unanticipated uses. Before entering into a broader discussion with the audience, panelists will discuss tensions between people and artifacts, technology and play, the creative use of readily available resources, subverting traditional functions and uses of networks, and the everyday realities of corporate design practice. These discussions will be used to generate a design for hackability manifesto to guide further explorations in designing interactive systems.

Context photography: modifying the digital camera into a new creative tool

Context photography consists of capturing context when taking a picture, by sensing physical input in addition to light and representing it visually in real time. By developing this concept, we explore alternative potentials of digital cameras as everyday creative tools. We have developed two prototypes and tested them in user workshops. Based on the results of this process, we present implications of such modifications of underlying characteristics of a still camera.

More than meets the eye: an exploratory study of context photography

In context photography, sensors gather real-time context information, which visually affects a photograph as it is taken. We have implemented a prototype running on standard camera phones. It uses sound and movement as context information and a set of custom-made computer graphics effects which affect images in real time. To investigate how people would receive the concept, we conducted an exploratory user study with seven participants using context cameras for a six-week period. The study provided insights into how such a camera is perceived and used, revealing the emergence of new goals, expectations, aesthetics and practice in taking pictures.

Total recall: in-place viewing of captured whiteboard annotations

Total Recall introduces a new way to view captured whiteboard annotations. To digitize drawings we used a modified commercial system. However, instead of displaying the annotations on a separate computer screen, Total Recall shows the annotations at the place on the board where they were actually made. The user holds a hand-held computer to the board and moves it to reveal the desirable portion of the captured annotations. By using ultra-sonic positioning and optimized graphics, we achieve a high frame-rate (30 fps), allowing for very smooth panning and interaction. We argue that this way of viewing captured whiteboard annotations is more natural and intuitive than current desktop-based systems.

Beyond participation: empowerment, control and ownership in youth-led collaborative design

We describe a collaborative design project with a group of young people in which an interactive educational information pack for teenagers was implemented. Instead of just providing input to a design project, the young people initiated, controlled and partially implemented the project themselves, with the support of an interdisciplinary research team. Here we present this approach to participatory design research, describe the design process and show that initiative, control, and hands-on engagement in youth-led collaborative design, can bring to the young people a strong sense of ownership and empowerment.

A flexible 3d sound system for interactive applications

We have developed a 3D sound system for headphones that allows real-time sound source and user displacement in a virtual acoustic environment. Because of a flexible design that uses different sets of pre-selected, physically modeled filters, the complexity level of simulation can be chosen, making the system adaptable both to available CPU power and to application requirements. No extensive signal processing knowledge is required in order to select the appropriate simulation complexity. A preliminary evaluation involving 4 users showed that the system provides a satisfying localization of sounds and users (even with limited memory and CPU power) while also giving access to low-level control over simulation complexity.

Social inclusion through the digital economy: digital creative engagement and youth-led innovation

SIDE is a UK-based research project investigating the social benefits of digital technologies for marginalized social groups. The Creative Media Group works in particular with creative practices and young people, with a twofold research focus: the fostering of engagement through digital creativity, and the support of youth-led innovation with digital technologies. This paper describes the aims and objectives of the Creative Media Group in the SIDE project, as well as the first few months of its research.

Co-production and Co-creation: Creative Practice in Social Inclusion

We apply techniques drawn from interactive media art in fieldwork for social inclusion. Advanced mobile media and grassroots DIY techniques are used to bring creative practice with digital media into community based outreach work. We use these techniques in a participatory context that encourages the co-production of cultural output. We triangulate across artistic practice, technology engineering, and the social sciences to leverage methods from digital media art practice in contexts that result in social innovation.

Bringing context to the foreground: designing for creative engagement in a novel still camera application

Sensor-based interaction has enabled a variety of new creative practices. With ubiquitous computing, designing for creative user experience with sensor-based devices benefits from new opportunities as well as new challenges. We propose a design approach where surrounding context information is brought to the foreground to become a resource for interaction, available at hand and in real time to the users. We illustrate this approach with our project context photography as a design case. Context photography consists of taking still pictures that capture not only incoming light but also some of the additional context surrounding the scene, with real-time context information visually affecting the pictures as they are taken. Based on the design and use of our context camera prototypes, this paper brings insight into implications of our approach to the design of sensor-based ubiquitous computing systems for creative purposes.