Philip van Allen

I’ll be speaking about The New Ecology of Things and our NET Lab tools at the flashbelt conference that runs from June 8th to June 11th, 2008 in Minneapolis, MN. This conference focuses on the in-depth issues of designing and developing real interactive applications. Sessions range from experience design from Motion Theory’s perspective, to animation design, sound design, developing in Adobe’s AIR, programming in processing, physical computing, to working with the Papervision3D library in Flash.

On April 25th 2008, Anne Burdick (MDP Department Chair), Nik Hafermaas (Dean of Communication Design @ Art Center) and I gave a talk at the USC Interactive Media Arts and Practice Program to discuss the MDP’s New Ecology of Things research initiative. This talk was webcast, and the web recording of it can be seen on Adobe’s education site.

American Honda and George P. Johnson have donated one of their Oracle Multi-touch Tables to the Media Design Program. We now have it permanently in our graduate studio where it is available for faculty and students to develop new applications. In particular, we’re interested in exploring how large sets of text and image content can be explored in a collaborative way with multiple users.

How can we make computational design and code understandable to design students, and how can they define the designer’s role in regard to coding? I was recently explaining to a student the importance of timing when a project responds to a user - a difference in milliseconds can make a big impact. We were also talking about how designing and developing code requires a different way of thinking and abstraction compared to visual design. In interactive design, the 4th dimension of time and the definition of behavior in code is very different from the see-it-all gestalt one can get from looking at and refining a 2D visual design.

I think the way to go is to cast it in terms of designing behavior.  There are many principles and concepts of designing interesting, rich, meaningful behavior that I think could be developed, some of which is instantiated in code, other aspects in the mechanical design (the turning of a doorknob or the page of a book for example), and others in the conceptual design.  This shift to behavior design as an overarching concept that encompasses computation may make it more interesting and relevant to designers.

The Media Design Program’s new transmedia publication, The New Ecology of Things, is complete. The book, website, poster and mobile phone content address the design and educational issues related to ubiquitous computing and is an ecology of essays, glossary, forum, interactive works, video, and a short story by Bruce Sterling. You can order the book here: The New Ecology of Things (NET).

My visit to the Maker Faire was briefly covered on coolhunting.com

I’ll be at the Maker Faire this weekend (May 19th & 20th 2007) demoing the new version of the NET Connect software. This software allows designers to create interactive objects and spaces projects without programming, using the familiar enviroment of Flash. I’ll be in a booth with Moto Development, and we’ll also be showing re.moto, an open-source wireless sensor system. For more info on NET Connect, see the website:

newecologyofthings.net/netconnect/

See you at the show!

Demo Video, More video on YouTube, Official Acura Oracle Website

The Acura Oracle project was initiated by MDP alumni Nikolai Cornell at George P. Johnson for the Acura stand at the international auto shows (including Detroit, Chicago, New York, and LA). I participated as a consultant in the initial creative brainstorming and technical definition. Bringing in Moto Development to create the multi-touch technology and optics, I coordinated Moto with the creative team, advised on interaction issues, and developed test projects to explore different interaction possibilities.

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Yesterday my Uncle James Van Allen died in Iowa City, Iowa at the age of 91. He leaves an amazing legacy as a space scientist, having discovered the Van Allen Radiation Belts through experiments starting with a scientific package on Explorer 1, the first US space flight in 1958. Following this work, he and his group at the University of Iowa continued to have major experiments on robotic space flights, participating in the Voyager, Pioneer, and many other spacecraft. He was also a vocal opponent of human spaceflight, arguing (rightly I think) that putting people into space was a waste of resources when the exploration of space could be done better and more efficiently by machines.

An article about him: Daily Iowan

On a personal note, I visited my family in Iowa a year ago and stayed at my Uncle Jim’s house. At the time, I was working on the Infiniti Interactive Mirror project and could not remember enough trig to work out some of the math needed for the sensor system. Almost as a joke, I drew up a description of the problem and left it on his dining room table before I went out for the day to visit other relatives. When I arrived home that night, he had not only written out the solution, but (ever the teacher), diagramed all of the geometry and math he used to arrive at the final equation, complete with examples. Not only was it kind of amazing to have a world famous astrophysicist help with the project, it was a small way to reconnect with my late Father, who worked with Uncle Jim during WWII on the invention of the proximity fuse at Johns Hopkins University.

I will remember him as a thoughtful and kind man whose passion for science and the pursuit of knowledge will always be an inspiration.

An installation for Infiniti at the International Auto Shows, the Infiniti Interactive Mirror is a 3 screen interface that uses mirrored glass and rear projection to create a seamless large screen touch interface. George P. Johnson created the project with Nikolai Cornell (MDP alum, basing the project on his thesis project) as creative director. Nikolai worked with The Designory, MindFlood, and my company Commotion. 

On this project, I designed and built the sensor system that detects a person’s hand position in front of a flat surface without any sensors on the sides of the display or behind the user. In addition, I provided interactive consulting on the project.
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