Pervasive Media Studio Residency

It's been pretty quiet around the Ad Lab recently, and generally that means that either I've been very lazy or very busy. It's definately the latter.

Since the last post, I was invited (in August 2012) to become a hot-desk resident of the wonderful Pervasive Media Studio (PMS) in Bristol, which has allowed me to formalise my creative technology work while being surrounded by some very interesting people and projects. You can see my studio profile here.

Since starting at the PMS I've begun an exciting collaboration with their resident artists, which I'll report on in another post. I've also given a public talk as part of their 'lunch time talk' series, detailing some of my work in medical haptics alongside the origami foxes, Dada and Milk Pixel. You can read the write up of the talk here.

UbiComp 2011 Best Paper Prize

This week a paper on the Haptic Lotus was awarded Best Paper prize at the prestigious Ubiquitous Computing conference (UbiComp) in China. There were over 300 papers presented at the conference so we (the authors) are very happy about this.

The paper "Haptic Reassurance in the Pitch Black for an Immersive Theatre Experience" was presented by my collaborator Janet van der Linden of the Open University. It may be downloaded here.

Here is a video of the talk by Janet.

View more videos from ubicomp2011

Designing in the Wild Talk

I've only just discovered this online talk by Haptic Lotus collaborator Prof. Yvonne Rogers, despite it being given at Stanford University in February 2011. The talk discusses interface design in unstructured settings, as opposed to typical laboratory settings.

"Abstract: (February 25, 2011) Yvonne Rogers discusses how "designing in the wild" is causing a new rise in discoveries and a new direction in computer science. She illustrates how these discoveries can be achieved along without the tensions and challenges that can arise when giving up control."

Yvonne's description of The Question (which featured the Haptic Lotus) is presented at around 42:00

http://www.talkminer.com/viewtalk.jsp?videoid=0t3gYfZMpKg&q=

Much of my past and current research has been based on concepts that originated at Stanford, so it is nice to know that my own work is making its way back there in some form.