Helping digital learning become physically interactive

When combining my interests for education and architecture, I started to think about how digital technologies were impacting on the teaching of subjects within our schools, and in particular, within maths.

Currently digital technologies and teaching maths fuse together mainly through web based, or at least screen based, maths tasks which are reliant upon the students maintaining interest in looking at a computer screen for long periods of time. This can become boring, especially for younger children who become fidgety!

On the other hand, however, classrooms are full of physical maths aids, such as abacus', movable clocks, counting blocks, etc.

What I'd like to look into is combining these two elements into a spatial, tangible learning experience, which uses digital technologies embedded in physical objects or environments to generate ideas and help the learning process. This could easily be translated into other subjects, such as English, science, geography, history, foreign languages, etc.

I'm sure there are precedents of this that have been looked into already and over the next few days, I'd like to look into any existing research that has been carried out.

So far I have found one learning proposal, suggested by Larissa Alexander at Stanford University, which talks about creating a series of blocks, which when linked together add up on a counter below and feed back the total number.

I like this idea, however I'd like to go further by looking into how children learn, and instead of returning a number straight away, creating a system which challenges the child into thinking about the answer of the task, before the real answer is declared.

I'd also like to make the spatial experience into one which is even more tangible and physical, perhaps even linking it into P.E. classes or full internal/external space designs.

Another quick blog post I stumbled across is one by UpsideLearning, which explains how digital technologies embodied in physical objects can aid learning and which digital technologies could be employed to do this.

Interactive Display Window Concept

This is something that I found that I thought might be interesting for Hannah and her shop fronts.

Conversational Space

My first blog post this week, Research Adjacencies looked at a method of sorting people with regards to using their tablet computers and research data but a question I want to then ask is how can this mediate the landscape around them? Do we want to have a space that can sense tension in our voice and then adjust the space accordingly or is this something we do manually?

A simple example of this can be seen in the computer game, The Sims where characters emotions and feelings are highlighted above their head with a simple symbol. Can this then be translated into spatial terms? If someone is having a heated debate then can the atmosphere change around them?This then brings rise to another question, can the architecture around us encourage conversations that are social and not just individual?

Two projects that I have found that seem to address this are:

1. ‘Bubbels’ by Michael Fox. This is a more abstract art installation however, the bubbles have the potential to change the space from an open space to allow lots of people to associate together or a series of smaller spaces.

2. ‘Hug’ by a group of students at the g-five imbedded interaction workshop. This project examines how busy spaces can be translated into mor private space by the architecture moving around them.

Also, can architecture represent certain atmospheres generated by the meeting of two people?

Research Adjacencies

“An interactive architecture environment can also provide a unique sense of space heightened by the constantly changing information exchanges in small or large groups.”

The above is an interesting quote from Interactive Architecture by Michael Fox and Miles Kemp that has inspired my blog posts this week.

This post really stems from a piece of software that Martyn is developing with a software engineer and adapting it to a different situation. The tablet is a fast growing device and provides a platform for people to store their life on. What I am interested in exploring is how the tablet can represent (research wise) the person and then how can this orientate them with other people and shape the environment around them. What I am proposing is that if everyone in a research group stores and reads there current papers on their tablet then a piece of software could search through these looking for key words. From these key words a database can be compiled and used to link people researching the same/similar topic together. Also, if certain clashes were known in a research field then these people could meet up to debate.

An interesting question that stems from these associations is to do with adjacencies of people. Can we have an environment that re-arranges itself to link certain people together (like the Boeing example that I talked about a few weeks ago ) creating a space in constant flux? Will this lead to a more productive research environment?

It’s all front.

Continuing to focus my ideas on the high street, today I have decided to look at the shop front. I find the shop front an interesting place to start because I believe it is one of the many large influences over our movement on the high street. The high street is essentially a massive shop shelf with all the products vying for our attention. The lure of a fantastic shop window can literally change the course of your direction.

The shop front strongly relates back to the seven seconds rule I have spoken about in a previous blog. At a glance the shop has to convince you that they have exactly what you need. They need to some up the entire shop in their display.

Creating the perfect shop front has become a profession within itself and it is usually the visual merchandising team that help create it. Visual merchandising has become such an important element in retailing that a team effort involving the senior management, architects, merchandising managers, buyers, the visual merchandising director, industrial designers, and staff is needed.

Selfridges are the Norman Foster of shop fronts with their windows becoming attractions in themselves.

This had me thinking about what the shop front may become in the future. Already when I am on certain websites adverts pop up that seem very much aimed at me and I’m sure they have information on my age, sex, location and even sometimes my name. What would happen in the future if the shop front would change depending on who’s looking at it?

This had me thinking about what my shop front would be like and so for a quick exercise I’ve designed my own personal shop window.

The shop’s name is my nick name given to me by some of my closest friends. The display consists of taramasalata and diet coke (my staple diet), a drawing board, a portfolio, a drawing of my friends, ‘Effy’ boots, boxing gloves, music headphones, disco ball, an urban sign, a ‘I heart north London’ t-shirt, cut off shorts, a pint and 90% student discount!

The question is, what would be in yours?

Where no one knows your name but everyone’s welcome.

After a manic week I thought I would quickly blog about where I think I would like to focus my project in preparation for my expressions of interest over Easter.

I would like to focus my attention on a particular place which is layered with different activities, architecture, economics, communities and so much more.

The one place all these different people share and still feel like they belong.

…..AND pretty much everyone in-between?........The Great British High Street.

It is recognised as one of, if not the, best in the world for fashion which relates to my earlier blog posts.

The British economy relies on us splashing out our well earned cash on it and we don’t let them down, spending billions each year.

The tapestry of life encompassed within it is fascinating and I believe it is the perfect setting for my research to take place whatever that may be and wherever that may take me.

Current Affairs

Tasked this week to come up with a post relating to an interaction more personal to me, I started thinking about how I spend my weekends - I like to go kayaking, with a club based out at Blyth within sight of a project Newcastle Universities Culture Lab put together last year.

"Current" is a simple premise, expressing the wind energy available on a coastal site as a sort of light show embodied within a series of beach huts. I like this installation, certainly more than I like the IDP designed beach huts themselves. With a history of wind generation on the site the installation gives a visual representation to the element and reacts in real time to changes.

Its a simple idea, I wondered weather we could do something similar to express human presence within buildings? Could we use piezo-electric devices to convert the vibrations from foot steps on a floor to power a visual or aural expression of the that persons movement within the building facade? Could we even take this notion further to map working relationships within an office or studio?

Atmospheres

An architectural domain that I am interested in is the creation of atmospheres, in particular by the use of light. Instantly, a building that caught my mind when thinking about this was the Dominus Winery by Herzog and de Meuron where light was manipulated to create dynamic spaces. The Dominus Winery consists of a gabion wall façade which is used to create a dappled light walkway around the perimeter of the building. As the position of the sun changes, so do the atmospheres of the spaces, animating them with interesting patterns of light and shadow. What I find most interesting about this example is the simplicity and modesty of the design. If the Dominus Winery was realised with more complexity then the same affect may not have occurred. However, this does not mean to say that complexity is a bad thing and in the right context could lead to equally interesting atmospheres. If you look at the work of Gaudi, form wise, the spaces that he crafts are very complex however they produce just as seductive atmospheres as that of the Dominus Winery.

All of this raises an interesting question for me, how can a person’s interactions affect and create atmospheres? I am not promoting the creation of spaces that alter atmospheres by playing a happy song when you are feeling down as that would be irritating. Rather, can architecture react to the way we feel? If we feel too hot, can the architecture shift and change to create a more comfortable environment, providing a more interesting approach to the somewhat beige approaches to sustainability that litter the architectural journals like BD. Alternatively, could these changes in atmosphere be representative of events and situations? You can now sculpt 3d models in grasshopper from Twitter feeds so, how can this then transform the space around us?

Stylus Interaction

I've had a very hectic week this week, but this post on engadget caught my eye, so I thought I'd upload it, even if I don't find time to upload anything else.

Microsoft researchers show off intuitive stylus, don't know how to hold a pencil

I'm not sure that this is the way I would think about stylus', it seems a bit unnecessary almost, and not very intuitive. Even a replaceable nib that the pen would recognise would perform the same function, and with a great deal less technology involved! But it seemed interesting research none the less. :-)

2D23D

I first came across this post on Zach Kron's Buildz blog well over a year ago, and short of anything to write about this week I find myself retuning to it. The post briefly demos some of the cool things that can be achieved by an API addition to Revit, mapping image data into 3D forms. Its nothing new, mesh modelling packages have been doing something similar for years, but I have been meaning to have a play with loading hand drawn sketches into the plug-in, and mapping them onto a basic grid.

Basically, I am interested to see if I could I generate a rough 3D model based purely on my doodles? Jennie wrote an article last week discussing how scanning your scribbles archives them, but doesn't really wrap them into a coherent workflow. With my tendency to use felt pens at the programmatic stage, I would love to see if I could get even simple massing models to jump into life on screen. This seems very straightforward, and coupled to into a graphics tablet I could see myself going through a lot of options very quickly, just doodling my thought process, in a fashion that is quite difficult to do in Revit normally, rearranging 3D components.

But could a little development work take the concept further? In the same way AutoCAD assigns different properties to different coloured lines, could a plug in read different colour pens differently? Could I even begin to mesh together sketches of plan and section into conceptual form?

Kinetic Parametric Interactions

The architect Herman Hertzberger spent a lot of his time dedicated to research about how flexibility can be worked into architecture. One notable example of this can be the Centrall Beheer offices where static objects (desks and tables etc…) were rearranged in a modular fashion to create variation.

Recently, I saw a more modern (all be it theoretical) example of this by the MIT Kinetic Design Group for a competition proposal for Boeing. Here the space can be reconfigured by sliding elements such as chairs, tables or wall partitions up and down the space, creating varying environments.

What this got me thinking about more was that in order to provide this type of flexibility in a space you need to first define a set of ‘parameters’ that can be manipulated for change to occur. A question that I then asked myself was whether it was possible for a person to then influence a 3d model in a parametric modelling software like Grasshopper by having their actions manipulate certain parameters. After I did some more research on this matter I found an open source software called UbiMash which aims at bridging the gap between parametric modelling software (i.e. GC, Grasshopper…), physical/hardware devices (i.e. Wii remote, Eye Toy…) and Online virtual data from sources like twitter.

These examples prompted me to think what sort of parameters could be used to modify a person’s space? Could the mapping of people’s mood influence the space around them to adapt to how they feel? This could be through a combination of twitter feeds searching for different emotions of people in a space. Furthermore, you could look at the way people are navigating about a space or a combination of these and many more. Alternatively, people could manipulate certain parameters on a tablet or their smartphone to quickly change a space around them?

Memory like a Goldfish.

This week, after being introduced to some of the established technology in culture lab and visiting the Maker Fair, I have been inspired to take a different approach for my next idea.

We were shown a device which acted as a memory trigger for people with Parkinson’s disease. This reminded me of a technique that a teacher told me about years ago which I still use to this day. Just before you fall to sleep you can sometimes get an idea or remember that there is something you have to do in the morning. To remind yourself of this thought in the morning, you should put your bedside lamp on its side or do something else irregular before you go to sleep. When you wake up and move to turn the light on, you see it is on it’s side this instantly acts as a memory trigger.

This led me on to thinking about an issue close to a lot of architects. A lot of people who tend to be creative have dyslexia. In some people dyslexia results in a poor short term memory and is one of the many reasons tasks like spelling is difficult. It doesn't matter how many times you read a word, like a lot of information, its in one ear out the other!

There are a couple hands in the architect studio that look like this.

When asking why people feel the need to do this, it is usually because the notes are a constant reminder to do the task in hand (pun intended), where as writing it on their phone or on a note is just not as effective.

This led me on to thinking whether there could be a jewellery piece that could be designed to help overcome this. Would it be possible to create a ring that could be programmed for a particular user to act as a memory trigger?

The Memory Goldfish.

One possible idea is to have a ring that that has the ability to be illuminated when a task is thought of and stay on until the user no longer needs this reminder and can turn it off. Different colours or different parts of the ring could represent different tasks.

I am fully aware that this might work……….or it might not!

Sorry scanner, you're too old skool...

Over the last week I’ve been thinking quite a lot about how designers, in particular Architects, digitize their work and the time that is lost in translating work from paper to pc.

The most common method of input is to scan in hand-drawn/painted images and then edit these using Photoshop, etc. But it can be a lengthy process and a large amount of the detail and dynamic range of the drawing is lost during scanning and by adjusting the contrast of the image in post production.

I’d like to look into this workflow and understand how to improve this design process, tapping into our natural capabilities for putting pen to paper and expressing our ideas, yet retaining the pros of digital manipulation and storage.

So far, the closest a designer can come to achieving this is through the use of graphics tablets, which range from surfaces that simply register a pen’s input, to those which include a screen – such as the Wacom Cintiq. The latter type, of course, enables a true sense of working directly onto the computer screen beneath your pen – but they are an expensive gadget that is rarely found amongst your average Architect.

Not only are they expensive, but I believe that until you can replicate the simplicity of working on a desk and sketching with all your drawing tools around you, then people are unlikely to move across to digital methods of input.

More recent technology developments in screens have produced e-ink type screens, such as the noteslate, which feel more like paper and are small enough to carry around with you.

The sketch below shows how I’d like to look into encompassing all the elements of drawing and architectural design exploration into a responsive, personalised desk.

I’d like to incorporate a variety of ideas in addition to a full desk screen – such as capacitive pen/brush input, ruler assistance, data transfer (photos, etc. from camera/mobile phone) and tracing capabilities. I can imagine the screen becoming a lightbox of sorts that would understand the input from a stylus even when there is a sheet of paper in the way, helping enable tracing straight into the computer. One could use it to hand draw, edit 2D & 3D cad and record hand written notes.

I appreciate these inputs are very complicated processes and the interface UI will be an important part of how such a desk would work, but a seamless surface which enables greater creative digital freedom would help plenty of architects pursue their ideas much more freely and eliminate the middle man!

Thoughts on the London Adaptive Architecture Workshop

I attended a workshop last week in London on “Inhabiting Adaptive Architecture”. The workshop was part of a Conference on Adaptive Architecture, which I wasn’t able to attend. These are a few thoughts based on the workshop.

What is Adaptive Architecture?

I certainly didn’t know before attending the workshop and I’m not necessarily any clearer now. One of the symptoms of the academic condition is to constantly search for definitions of terms and to constantly ‘problematize’ language use. A couple of the people I talked to (and who had attended the whole conference) were still seeking a definition. My sense was that Adaptive Architecture is a useful catch-all term to get a bunch of interesting people in one place. There is a sense to which Adaptive Architecture is a topic formed around computational systems but the group in the workshop seemed to come from a wider range of backgrounds including studies of, for example, adaptive functionality and flexible spaces. In terms of computation there seemed to be people interested in Interaction Design or perhaps Interactive Architecture (although I suspect that this topic title has been replaced by Adaptive Architecture because IA leads to the obvious question – isn’t all architecture interactive?). This seems like a good starting point:

http://www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/~hms/AdaptiveArchitecture.html

It’s also worth noting that the conference itself was structured into a four subthemes covering a wide range of topics including, transformable structures, dynamic facades, bio inspired materials and intelligent systems. I’d have liked to see the whole thing.

Smart? Intelligent? Adaptive?

Each member of the workshop was asked to give a short 2 min presentation. I chose to pose the question – How adaptive are ‘intelligent environments’? My concern is that in installations such as Culture Labs Ambient Kitchen, in order for activity to be understood, the users interaction in the kitchen must be controlled. Activities must take place in predictable locations and predictable ways. In the context of the Ambient Kitchen this ‘programming’ of space manifests itself by engendering certain ritual behaviors in the user. To recognize that someone is making a cup of tea, for example, it helps if they take the teabags out of the cupboard put them on the surface with the RFID tag reader embedded get the mug out of the cupboard and put the kettle on. The more systematic these actions are the better the kitchen is able to recognize the users intension. This is turns into an advantage in the ambient kitchen because its intended users are people with early stage dementia who deliberately practice ritual behaviors which reinforce everyday actions and help with someone who has lapses of memory. But is this adaptive – surely the opposite is true. Unfortunately in a half day workshop we didn’t get to this but I’ll throw the question out to the research group…discuss.

A Note on Methods

Finally I wanted to raise a question about methods for generating ideas in academic contexts. There is a question over how to initiate and structure conversation and ideas generation in workshops and the method adopted by the organizers of this one consisted of a number of short round table discussions on topics picked by the organizers using personas (descriptions of people and situations we may design for, i.e. John and Margret – a couple in there late 70s in sheltered accommodation….). Confronted by this I immediately did the annoying thing of challenging the methodology. This was, in hindsight, a fairly unhelpful thing to do. Given the same event to organize I would probably use the same technique and the discussion was interesting (in parts) but I wanted to get a bit polemical here:

I’ve been attending workshops on various topics for the past few years and over the next 3 months I will be attending 3 more. At fist I joined in with enthusiasm but I’m now overcome with queasiness the moment I walk in to a workshop room and see a stack of post-it notes and a flipchart. Brainstorming has migrated from management schools and creative departments of design consultancies to become a weapon of choice in research environments as a way of generating and capturing ideas and in some cases developing funded research. Here are my problems:

1. Many academics are really bad at collaborative discussion of this sort. I’ve now been stuck, on a number of occasions, with Professor types who sit with distain quietly as everyone around the table fumbles around with ideas and, at the end of the session, tells everyone what they should have been thinking. Sometimes they say something which, below the layer of arrogance, is insightful and relevant. However, their comments are rarely recorded because the groups is frankly rather offended by being told what to think.

2. To work properly brainstorming needs to be structured with particular questions and tasks. However, I often have a feeling that just as interesting conversation breaks out a pragmatist in the group halts it by saying something like: “Yes but I think we should get on with the SWOT Analysis now” or “Can we sum that up in three words?”. The resulting post-it covered spider diagram (or theme matrix…etc) is often a pale imitation of the conversation.

3. One characteristic that separates the development of academic ideas from, for example, the creative design process is that academic ideas are often slowly developed. They develop over time and with the benefit of extensive literature reviews and depth of knowledge. Academia is also critical, based on the testing of ideas through skeptical enquiry. Brainstorming in a limited time needs to be a positive experience – free of skepticism and open to ideas no matter how outlandish. However, although I’ve now been in plenty of brainstorms which have thrown up novel ideas, I’ve yet to come across any results which throw up really exiting and original research proposals and too many where the proposals and ideas have been dubiously founded.

Minority Rapport

Sitting in a bar in Edinburgh, I just purely by chance happened to catch a technology article on BBC News talking regarding using eye tracking as a method of computing input. The demonstrations talked about replacing the mouse with simply looking, but for some reason (possibly alcohol related), put me in the mind of the film Minority Report, and the scene with adverts jumping into Tom Cruise’s eye line trying to distract him from going about his business.

I found a few old articles relating to research done at Imperial College London, looking at practical applications, but I started thinking, what if this technology could work without users necessarily being aware of it? Architects are normally pretty bad at actually studying how people use their buildings, so what if we could map what people actually look at when they enter a space? The role that sound plays could be studied, do people look for a specific noise’s source? Do tactile surfaces draw their attention? In short could we learn to better exploit all of our building users senses to orient them within a space?

Continuing on, its a nice idea that buildings could react to an individual, making the user experience personal. A sort of truly interactive building that doesn’t need a user to necessarily understand what’s going on in order to exploit the advantages of the interaction.

Kinesthetic Interaction Space

Since our last meeting, I have been thinking a lot about what I would like to gain from this module and this project captures a lot of what I would like to get out of the module and what I aspire to achieve.

Digital Intimacy was a thesis project that sought, through a multi-sensory installation, to assist in the development of sensory integration in children with autism spectrum disorder. Both user interaction with the surface (detected by sensors on the surface) and movement of the users (detected by movement sensors located around the surface) are fed into an information bus which is then interpreted by a computer that produces visualisations based on the information fed into it. These visualisations are then projected onto the surface.

The student created everything for the full scale prototype:

1. The visualisations were programmed using Flash Actionscript programming.

2. Processing was used to program the sensors and the actuators.

3. The components were all made using rapid prototyping having been modelled in grasshopper to react with the parameters of the required curvature of the frame.

What I like about this project first of all is the craftsmanship in the prototype, both physically and in programming terms. The layers of detail and complexity on the final prototype are technically seductive and help provide an interesting prompt for interaction. I am also interested in the programming side of things and how the visualisations are produced.

I feel that I would be capable of crafting something to this quality however my only concern is the programming used for the creation of this installation. The student who did this had had lots of experience in programming before he started this project and since I have no prior experience in any programming language I am just conscious that this may be a barrier for what I want to achieve however I am willing to give it a try.

Life’s a Catwalk.

What its about: My first idea is to literality highlight my previous post. I would create an art installation that turned Newcastle high street into a digital catwalk! The pavement would light up as you walked over it and stay lit for a short amount of time leaving a trail of light behind you.

Opportunities: This piece would be all about acknowledging our day to day subconscious decisions and celebrate our differences. Maybe being briefly under a metaphorical spotlight as well as walking above a literal one, we will think about what we are saying to the world and what the world thinks back and if it even matters.

Problems: I’m not sure how much it would cost to embed my own paving slabs with LEDs and sensors temporarily replacing some of the pavement, but my guess is it would cost a lot! I’m not sure how the council would feel about my little idea either BUT I thought I’d suggest it to start me thinking and get the ball rolling.

Seven Seconds…….

There is a saying it takes only 7 seconds to make a first impression. This is a very short period of time and considering there is not much you can say or do in this time the assumption must be mostly an aesthetic one. This led me to think about how many times we judge and are judged in a single day.

Wanting to consider the impact of first impressions further I compared and contrasted different examples of architecture and fashion.

Primark Princess & Middlesbrough Aldi.

Now and again you can find a beauty but most of the time you can not hide the fact that this look is just cheap. Adding a diamanté or a curved element does not disguise the fact that this has been created at minimal cost.

Vintage Classic & Cologne Cathedral

Beautifully hand crafted and oozing with sophistication. These one off pieces took time to make and you can tell. They get better with age and never fail to take your breath away.

Eco warrior & BedZED

Congratulations. There was no child labour or melting of ice caps in this creation. Your conscience is clean. Problem is, to be honest, it just does not look good. A lot of the time style seems to be sacrificed when designing in a sustainable manner.

The Topman & the Kingsgate building

This looks good…..but I have seen it all before and it there seems to be clones popping up all over the place. The look just seems to be lacking in passion and soul.

The Fashionista & London Aquatic centre.

Designers at the top of their game, where money is not an issue and the pieces are instantly iconic. Constantly pushing boundaries of what is possible and creating pieces that are nothing short of impressive.

With the nature of opinion based information you may not agree with my impressions of these examples but if we all agreed life would be nothing but dull. Our landscape seems to be full of different styles and that’s what makes it so beautiful. This brings me to my first idea!