Interesting work done by one of the master students. [Report, PDF, 2.5M]

SCD2, Decentralized.

SCD1, centralized.

Abstract: Technology is moving to the background and interoperability between devices increases. The handles for users to explore, make and break connections between devices seem to disappear inoverly complex menu structures displayed on small screens. Two prototypes have been developed that introduce a tangible approach towards exploring, making and breaking connections between devices in the living room. One provides a centralized approach (SCD1), the other a decentralized approach (SCD2). Industrial Design students and graduates(N=12) have performed tasks and were asked to explain and grade one out of three methods: SCD1 (image 1), SCD2 (image 2) and bluetooth pairing.Findings suggest that users are better able to project their mental model of how the system works on SCD2 and that atangible solution is not necessarily a better one.

[PDF, 2M] Share your context

Summary of the report:

Share your context

Non face‐to‐face communication of social and emotional experiences between people happens nowadays through phone or other media like email, IM (Instant Message), webcam and other virtual communities such as Second Life. Share experiences, express creativity and maintain easily contacts have made these virtual worlds very popular for millions of Internet users. To support the communication in these worlds emoticons are often used. This form of context is a combination of different states (physical, information, social and emotional), which help the receivers too understand the received information right.

To explore new opportunities, using context as well virtual worlds, the project was divided in three iterations of 3, 5 and 8 weeks. During these iterations different possibilities were explored and different prototypes were build. Although that after the first two iterations the target group was changed into grandchildren and grandparents, the information gathered during these iterations was still useful for the development of the final product.

The first iteration, done in three weeks, was about exploring the project theme and get more familiar with the idea of contextual information exchange and how others perceive this context. The idea of helping the students of the TU/e in their development as a designer was chosen. To make this possible, a tangible object (An abstract 3D representation of the main TU/e building) was designed. The object provides information about the activities in the different spaces of the ID environment and which space is interesting for the student’s development. Connected to the digital learning environment of ID‐compass, where the students can upload their personal development plan (PDP), the device is able to show the students which space is interesting for their development. To inform the student where to be, the device uses pulsating colours. The different colours represent the different spaces. After evaluating requirements were set for the second iteration.

For the second iteration, the design case of the client was used, which is based on the relationship between elderly and their adult children (Elderly – 65+, Adult 30 – 50). It’s obvious that ageing brings physical and cognitive problems, which makes elderly a vulnerable target group. There are different types of elderly. Some are very active and have a busy social life while others are lonely. Also there are elderly who are very interested in the development of technology while others are more conservative. But in all cases the contact is very important and especially with the family. To get more insight in the relation between the target groups, interviews were held. The information, gathered from these interviews, showed that both parties mention that they have a positive relationship and regular contact with each other. The common ground for this contact is the exchange of information about their activities and their wellbeing. An interesting outcome was that most elderly would not want to be more involved in the life of their children due to privacy while the children would have a safer feeling if they were more involved in their parents life, because the vulnerability of their parents.

Requirements, like, the product should work intuitive, the product has to be functional, the product has to fit in the environment of the user and the product should respect the privacy of the users, were generated from the iteration and interviews and taken into the development of the product. Eventually a “morphing clock” was designed. Why a clock? A clock is original designed to indicate time, so people know in which hour of the day they live. Link the morphing shapes to the time and the users of the clock can easily interpret the context given by the clock. The concept contains two clocks that are placed by the elder and adult and informs each other about critical events. With respect to the privacy there is chosen to show only critical events. To measure these certain “critical events”, the clocks scan the environment for changes in the loudness of sounds. Although the clock constantly monitors the environment, it only sends information when a certain loudness border is exceeded. The different shapes, which are generated by the frequency, loudness and duration of the event, appear on the side of the clock. To create a playful interaction these shapes will appear at randomly places. To indicate when an event has taken place, LED’s light up at the specific time of the event. Twenty‐four hours after the last event, the shape of the clock will slowly transform again to its original round shape.

The clock is also linked to a virtual world and in this case to SecondLife (SL). The virtual clock is representations of original one are synchronize, so the two clocks have identically shapes when an event takes place. Users of SL. are able to check the morphing clock form every place in the world when they have access to a computer with an Internet connection. The clock in SL. is able to record the critical events. When people want to know more about a certain event they can choose to login in SL. and get more detailed information about the specific event. Eventually this product was evaluated. An important conclusion is that this product probably wont be used in combination with SL, which means that the client can’t use this product for his design case.

During the final iteration an alternative for SecondLife was found. Although the chosen alternative is also a social network, the environment is much more synoptic. There is chosen to use the Dutch ‘Hyves’ network. Hyves has ten million users with an average age of 27. Although the average is 27, research shows that these kind of social networks are most popular with children between the ages 17 – 24. Therefore there is chosen to set the design case into improving the relation between grandparent and grandchild.

Grandchildren see their grandparents average two times a month. This provides more opportunities in comparison with the target group elder ‐ adult. Although the relation between grandparent and grandchild differs from elder and adult, the reasons for contacting are the same. Only now the challenge was to find an opportunity that blurs the generation gap between grandchild and grandparent. A questionnaire showed that the amount of conversation items is low between them. This causes that grandchildren find having contact two times a month enough, while the grandparents want to see them as much as possible.

News about our visit on the website of Jiangnan University:

• http://www.sodcn.com/detail.asp?n_id=441 (Click here for Google translation)
• http://xinwen.jiangnan.edu.cn/xyzl/2010/0622/5559.html (Click here for Google translation)

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Dance, robot!

Yesterday I managed a one-day workshop on dichotomies in designing distributed systems, for 25 master students in the class “Designing for Systems”. The dichotomies addressed were standalone/distributed, centralized control/decentralized control, and process-/product-oriented design, as well as a hidden agenda for the conflicts between standards and implementations. In this workshop I wanted the student to “experience” the dichotomies Instead of me telling the story.

Two types of distributed systems were focused on, client/server and peer to peer. Students were divided into four groups, one working on C/S, two on P2P and another on standardization of data and communication. They are briefed and quickly pushed into hands-on work to make a few AdMoVeo robots to dance together, in a distributed setting.

The workshop worked out quite well in terms of its designed goals, and actually it was beyond my expectations – I did not expect that robots would really dance together, but at the end of the day, all the teams managed to show something, at least partially working. One of the other things surprised me was the difficulties they had in creating and parsing XML documents, which was suggested for saving time from standardizing the data and message formats. I could have made some partially working code snippets to reduce the load.

Interested to see what the workshop is about?  Here is the description. Also see the reflections from the students.

Read the part about AdMoveo or you may want to have a look at all these inventions.

Semantic Connections

For the EU project SOFIA (Smart Objects For Intelligent Applications), Bram van der Vlist and Gerrit Niezen created a demonstrator for one of the use cases: semantic connections. “The demonstrator consists of a set of devices; surround sound-set, mobile mp3 players, an ambient lighting system and interaction device(s). The interaction device is a tile-like interactive object that allows for both exploration of the Smart Space in terms of connections and manipulation of these connections and information/data streams. Coloured LED lighting and light dynamics visualize the connections and connection possibilities between the various devices. By means of putting devices close to one of the four sides of the tile, a user can check if there is a connection and if not if a connection is possible. By simply picking up the tile, and shaking it a user can make or break the connection between the devices present at the interaction tile.”

More at www.sofia.id.tue.nl

LightAndThePerceptionOfCleanliness (PDF, 379KB)

That's me.

I am Jun Hu. In case you are wondering, Hu is my family name. But being a Chinese, I can’t help being more pleased if someone call me hujun /who june/ instead of Jun Hu. But after many years of explaining about my 5 letter names, I am OK with any composition of Jun and Hu or even Ju and Hun.  I am from Jiangsu Province, the southeast of china, where the Yangtze River opens to the sea.

I started my university life as a Math student who was more interested in computer science. Graduated with a bachelor degree in Computational Mathematics, I taught myself programming and worked for an oil exploration company and then a construction machinery company, with qualified titles of Senior Programmer and System Analyst. For 6 years, I was working on digital signal processing algorithms and software packages, management information systems and networks, and computer aid design systems. In 1996, I decided to go back to the university to refactor my knowledge on computer science so that I could “make things better”. During the 3-year study, I also worked as a research assistant for professors and a team leader of a group of programmers. Among several other projects, a system for facial reconstruction from a skull and a 3D visualization system for virtual medical operations were my favorite. The final work for the Master’s degree,Content-based Retrieval of a Medical Image Database, used images to search similar images in a huge database. The result was promising and it had been used by the doctors in a hospital happily ever after.

However when I finished my computer science study, I found the most important was not just to make things better, but to make people’s life easier. So I moved to Holland in 1999, and joined the 2-year postmaster program User-system Interaction here in TU/e. My final project, Distributed Interfaces for a Time-based Media Application, was done at Philips Research. As the best from the USI program that year, this project was nominated for the OCE prize, although it did not make to the top prize at the end. I was so interested in interactive media that I decided to continue the research as a PhD project, focusing on the design of the software architecture for distritributed interactive media, especially for home environments.

I started teaching at ID in 2003. Since then I had been involved in project and competency coaching. I am now a researcher in the designed intelligence group, and a tutor for Master students in the Intelligent Spaces track. I am giving two assignments “Object Oriented Animals” and “Gooey: Soft and Sticky”, and running a master’s module “Formal Specification in Action”.

Aside from my professional life, I am a relatively good Chinese calligrapher, inheriting some calligraphing genes from my father. I don’t have much taste of music, but I do like Jazz and Blues very much, and hate Urban and Hiphop stuff. Digital photographing is also a lot of fun for me. I sometimes pretend to be a professional table-tennis player, if there is no one really professional around.

WifiBlock

As a result of the Master class “LEGO beyond toys”, Sjef Franse, one of our master students, created a lego brick “WifiBlock” that connects the NXT to the Internet. The complete hardware and software design is described in his report:

connectLegoNXTtoInternet