emily conrad

What it is:
The PWMer is a kit that allows electronics enthusiast to rapidly construct an interactive project made of up to 100s of LEDs, each with the ability to dynamically change it’s brightness independently of the other LEDS. PWM, or Pulse Width Modulation, is the term for making a digital component fade in and out, in the same way the light on a Macintosh computer “breathes” (more about PWM here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation). In addition to LEDs, other outputs besides could include servo motors, DC motion control systems or for that matter any IC that takes a PWM signal. This kit offers 100+ PWM outputs.

The PWMer is designed with five analog inputs and nine digital I/O to be used with sensors, switches, or other ICs. So, for example, your installation will trigger or change functions when it’s dark, when a certain temperature is reached, when someone walks in front of it, when it gets twittered about, and so on. The options are wide open.

Kit includes step by step instructions, circuit board, Atmega 328 (Arduino bootloaded), TLC 5940, resistors, capacitors, diodes, terminal blocks (for sixteen outputs), three test LEDs.

Things to keep in mind:
• The PWMer uses the TLC 5940, which allows for 16 PWM outputs.
• TLC5940 standalone boards are sold separately. These boards can be easily connected to the PWMer for more outputs.
• Our boards can be connected using a DB9 serial cable (Male>Female) connector, which can be purchased with your board(s).
• You will need Arduino Duemilanove board, the downloaded TLC5940 library, a soldering iron, and some soldering skills to get the PWMer up and running.
• Also available as an Arduino shield for rapid prototyping.
Why:
Currently most microcontrollers only allow you to PWM a few pins independently. The PWMer includes a chip specifically for PWM capability, the TLC5940, that allows the user to easily PWM 100+ pins independently. This dramatically changes the electronics landscape. I often hear students and professionals asking “How can I power up to XXX LEDs? They must PWM!” Usually it’s for a lighting display or an installation that needs to have a strong impact, something a lot of lights programmed in animation can produce. It is now a lot easier to create these possibilities.

Contact hello at emilyconrad dot com for more details or to pre-order. Available in September.

This September the New York Public Library is celebrating the New York Harbor Quadricentennial (400 years!) with an exhibit of rarely seen maps, atlases, and cartographical delights of all kinds. Including an animated overlay of the shoreline in Google Earth. The exhibit Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-2009 opens September 25th.

Where: D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall (First Floor)
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788

“September 2009 marks 400 years since Henry Hudson sailed into New York Harbor and up the Hudson River, almost to what is now Albany, performing detailed reconnaissance of the Hudson Valley region. Other explorers passed by the outwardly hidden harbor, but did not linger long enough to fully realize the commercial, nautical, strategic, or colonial value of the region. Once the explorers returned to Europe, their strategic information was passed on to authorities. Some data was kept secret, but much was handed over to map makers, engraved on copper, printed on handmade paper, distributed to individuals and coffee-houses (the news centers of the day), and pored over by dreamers, investors, and potential settlers in the “new land.””

I’m a little late to the party on this one, but Schematic (a company I worked for during 2007 & 2008) is developing a muultitouch screen for the Cannes film festival (I’m guessing 2010 since the 2009 festival has passed). The video is impressive, particularly in demonstrating the use of multitouch and RFID. They are calling it a “Touchwall” and my guess is that the interactivity is intended to be used by more than one or two people at once. The video shows two people, pretty much working together, so I wonder how this would behave with two or more people working (or playing) independently? Schematic is known for their great UX, so I’m sure this was thought through, but it’s still tough to deploy.

This is also on of those hyper-rational projects that just makes sense. Of course we’ll have huge multitouch screens in the future. And I like that this is one of the first iterations. It will undoubtedly be a paradigm shift, but perhaps unlikely, to use a multitouch wall instead of a paper subway map pasted to a wall in the station. Some may argue we have access to the same information on our phones, in a decentralized, accessible place. It’ll be interesting to see which paradigm is stronger, the experiential or the practical. Both have their own advantages, but this is one decision designers can’t make.

I thought this was impressive- reMap (bestario.org) displays and organizes the entire encyclopedia of visualizations from visualcomplexity.com.

What’s so great about this site is the filtering behavior initiated from the tag nav at the bottom of the page. No tag cloud! Great solution. But you have to point your mouse to the bottom in order to trigger this function. Also, points for having each step it’s own URL, easy to backtrack and email a specific link. Well done.

By the by,infosthetics reports that, VisualComplexity is so impressive, that its author, Manuel Lima, is nominated by Creativity magazine as “one of the 50 most creative and influential minds of 2009″, while he also was chosen as a speaker at TEDGlobal2009.

My daughter is not one to typically sit down and watch a show for twenty minutes, nor am I one to encourage it. So when we were at Sea World San Diego last week and the in-laws wanted to see the Shamu show (sentimentally titled Believe!), I was a little skeptical. We went in and sat down as a video began to play on four screens above the whale pool. By now it was noon and a bright sunny day. I couldn’t believe how great the LED screens looked! Especially since I was always told LED screens are generally no good, and nothing works in direct sunlight. The assumptions were all wrong.

The show went on, and my daughter was singing and clapping without abandon. I watched the screens, and when they tilted it was a cue that something cute was going to happen, and when they dropped completely to the side, it gave room for the killer whales to jump from the backstage to frontstage. And it all worked really well together. And when I panned across the audience, everyone was so excited. Of course the whales are the center of the show, but the technology they used help to tell the story better, and create much more of an emotional impact. (Photos by Brian Bennett, as I kept my camera dry).

When I came back to NYC I researched the screens a little bit and found out a company called Act One Communications had made the screens. They have a quick little video on their site that somewhat explains their “Virtual Pixel Technology”. Which is essentially offering RGB pixels in a grid as instead of clustering them. The former offers a smoother image contour instead of pixelation that is common in LED screens, as shown here:

If it really is as simple as it sounds, it makes me think there’s so many more advancements we can make with LED screen, especially if we add Z-space and start showing video in 3-D.

An article from A List Apart that goes in depth about the importance of order and traditional aesthetics in web design. Great read that emphasizes the positive impact and trust gained from users when a site is attractive.

“A body of web user experience research shows that website users are powerfully influenced by aesthetics, and that positive perceptions of order, beauty, novelty, and creativity increase the user’s confidence in a site’s trustworthiness and usability. Recent design writing and interface research illustrate how visual design and user research can work together to create better user experiences on the web: experiences that balance the practicalities of navigation with aesthetic interfaces that delight the eye and brain. In short: there’s lots of evidence that beauty enhances usability.”

(Wouldn’t be complete without a diagram….)

The visceral (“gut”) processing level reacts quickly to appearances. It’s the visceral reaction to web pages that researchers measure when they detect reaction times as fast as 50 milliseconds. It’s crucial to understand that these instant good/bad visceral-level affective responses are largely unconscious: it can take seconds or minutes to become consciously aware of your first, visceral reaction to a stimulus—particularly a stimulus as complex as a web page.

Behavioral-level processing involves the more familiar aspects of usability: it responds to the feel of using the site, the functionality, the understandability of the structure and navigation, and the overall physical performance of the site. At this level, users are consciously aware of their attitudes toward the behavior of the system, and their reactions (pleasure, for example, or frustration) play out over seconds and minutes as users interact with a site. It’s at this behavioral level that techniques such as eyetracking are most powerful and trustworthy, because they offer detailed moment-by-moment evidence of what users consciously decided to look at and do to fulfill a given task.

Reflective processing of reactions is the most complex level, and typically involves a user’s personal sense of a site’s beauty, meaning, cultural context, and immediate usefulness. Reflective processing often triggers memories and encourages pragmatic judgments about the overall aesthetic worth and value of what a user sees. Eyetracking and traffic logs are irrelevant at this level, but user interviews can give you insight into your user’s reflective judgments.

In my family, we’ve had our eye out for the new Junior Tag Reader from Leapfrog since it came out in January. I’m often impressed with the design and capabilities of LeapFrog’s products, especially after such a wildly successful experience with Learn and Groove . I got that hideous thing at my babyshower and was so inclined to return it, but my mother discouraged me. Turns out to be my daughter’s favorite toy to this day. But now that she is starting to outgrow it, we’re happy to move forward too.

The Tag Reader is a book companion that can be tapped or dragged over pages to have the image or text be spoken outloud. It reinforces language skills in children and gets them excited about reading, at least in theory. We thought we’d test it out for ourselves.

How it works:
The Twitter version (Thanks @andrewmiller): “They use the Anoto pattern of tiny dots tracked by the pen’s camera. each combo is unique, so the pen knows which “page” it’s in”.

Also known as Digital Ink, the paper has these tiny 2-Dimensional bar codes (like mini QR codes) that are visible to the naked eye, but indecipherable. Each image or text has it’s own unique code that the pen reads. So it’s like a scanner at the grocery store, or even something like a phone reading a QR code, which makes me think this will all doable through mobile someday.

The Interaction:
Blue is fascinated with the pen, it’s white and bright green with two buttons. It even has two rubber nubs on top that look kind of like eyes. At first all she wanted to do was turn the pen on and off because it makes fun sounds. Buttons and fun sounds can entertain her for a good while, and did until I showed her what she’s “supposed” to do (lost points there).

Books and pens don’t mix in her mind, this is pretty much how we’ve trained her. So she didn’t immediately grasp it. And with books, she likes to quickly point and touch an image and say what it is, or even better what sound it makes, over and over (rib-bit, rib-bit, rib-bit). So she carried over this behavior and used the pen as a pointer to quickly tap the image. And it spoke, so she didn’t immediately. It was like watching her learn a new language pattern. But she quickly got the hang of it and then charged off to something else next.

I’m curious to watch her grow into this new toy. If she’ll have the patience to listen to it, and do more hovering over the pages and less jabbing with it. The book we got (there’s only a handful of them available, and the pen can only hold the information for 5 books) was Dora, so it alternates between Spanish and English. This was confusing to her because there’s no visual cue explaining that the pen is spaking about the same object. For example if the page could respond to the pen by outlining the mango, Blue might better understand the mango is being described in two ways.

And one thing that I don’t understand is why we have to listen to the anonymous and often annoying voices, why can’t I just record myself or other people familiar to Blue? I’ve been doing a lot of this sort of prototyping on my own . It just makes sense to supply this sort of capability in a flawless interface, which btw the website that you have to log into to initiate the Junior Tag reader is not. The more toys I play with, the wider the market seems to grow.

Tomorrow we have a plane ride and will see how it goes. I know at this point I’ve gotten more fun out of the Reader than she has, so hopefully that will change.

I had the good fortune of heading to the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston last week. For me, the word “enterprise” has always been one of those slippery words that can mean many of a thing, but in this case it specifically refers to innovative large companies. Enterprise 2.0 is the term used for the various suites of tools being developed to help with knowledge management, collaboration, and efficiency within corporations. The suites of tools have varying ranges of social media, document management, and governance. Most Fortune 500 companies have Sharepoint or some other giant software (Documentum, Lotus) already in place. This presents a challenging but interesting dilemma for start ups (Thoughtfarmer, Box.net, SocialText) whose software is more nimble and arguably more adept. They claim there is no point in trying to “dance with the elephant” when it’s possible for more people to use cheaper and better software than at any point in history. Still at the end of the day, the challenge remains for executives and managers to figure out how to leverage more of the desirable parts of technology.

The good news was apparent- the execs and managers don’t have to figure it out alone. The common factor of all the winning software tools was usability. I heard this over and over, from Gentry Underwood of IDEO discussing their internal collaboration software to Amy Vickers of Razorfish discussing how she customized Sharepoint. The Executives who spoke would often refer to the need for people-centric software, and the need for level of granularity between a completely shut system (think banning Facebook, Twitter, and other informal ways to communicate), and one that is completely open. So how can companies can keep the desirable aspects of technology, like building a participatory culture, receiving information when and where you need it, connecting people and sharing knowledge, while deterring the undesirable like data leaks and security issues? I saw this as a challenge for designers, developers, usability experts- how can we better design the front end of these software tools to create social space and collaboration around knowledge topics, while also promoting the level of efficiency and security prioritized by the enterprise?

A few solutions came up around the front-end design. The first from Gentry Underwood of IDEO. He walked through IDEO’s internal collaboration website. He mentioned they had tried at least 25 different tools before landing on the right one. Here’s the five principles for designing collaborative tools that work:

• Build pointers to people
Connect people, because most of the valuable information doesn’t get shared in digital space. It’s often too contextual and tacit. Focus on the people the people, not rote knowledge. Earlier at the conference I heard that 80% of a company’s knowledge is in people’s heads. This number is likely inflated because it’s truly impossible to gauge, but the point is well taken.

• Reward individual participation
It’s simple, offer recognition of good work, let other employees know what their peers are working on, and encourage the next step up. What are they working towards? HR needs to be included in this discussion.

• Demand intuitive interfaces
There is a lot of talk about adoption vs friction, and some of the things that IDEO found that increased friction was the need for specific programming languages (like the wiki), navigation was not automatic or intuitive, too much training is required. Basically an integrated system has to be created that brings content together. And most importantly, designers have to make something that fits into the organization, not something the organization has to fit into.

• Take the road more traveled
The software should be part of a habit, and feed into other habitual areas (email, for example). Experiment with putting up screens showing employee’s faces, comments, and thoughts in spaces where all employees can see (lobby, kitchen, etc.). Integrate social media in to workflows.

• Iterate early and often
I’ve definitely heard this a lot lately. The point is to try an iterative cycle, try out new things, put them out there and build out the ones that take off. He gives the example of Pocket God, an iPhone app that’s been successful for some time now because it iterates every week, there’s a new feature all the time. It’s an example of a game that’s tuned into something more.

The software they developed was on the Thoughtfarmer platform, and for reference looks like this (It’s the only public screengrab I could find):

Another set of solutions was offered in a workshop by Dion Hinchcliffe, Founder & CTO, Editor-in-Chief of the Web 2.0 Journal, Hinchcliffe & Company. He had his SLATES advice to offer:

SLATES
• Search is very important. You need to discover information. (The failure of intranets is that they do not make it easier to find information.)

• Links are need to put information in context. They allow you to move back and forth between content.

• Authorship is important to allow everyone with access to the platform and identify them when they contribute content.

• Tags allow us to apply our perspective to the content. You should also be able to see what other people thinks about that item of content.

• Extensions mine patterns and user activity. “You may also be interested in . . . .” Amazon is one of the best examples of this. The cure for too much information is more information.

• Signals make information easier to consume. Signals push out updates of new information. It shows you the flow and not just the artifact.
There seemed to be hundreds of speakers, and the most interesting of them discussed the challenges their organizations faced and the steps they’re taking to tackle and solve them. In short, the topics I heard most about or found most interesting I’ve bulleted out here:
• Bottom up, not Top Down
• The enterprise needs to recognize the 360º person
• The tools we use should be like a rearview mirror, you don’t need to slow down to use them
• 80% of a company’s knowledge is in people’s heads
• 1/3 of our time is spent looking for relevant information
• People need to know, and want to know what their colleagues are working on
• Let natural selection take place, there are lots of options, but we need to understand what’s surviving (Facebook, not Friendster)
• People are broadcast stations. We need to work with that.

Also I have attached the Enterprise 2.0 tag clouds to share the other hot topics.

I think we all knew it was only a matter of time before a major electronics company would come up with a female targeted site, but what’s interesting here is the marketing and art direction Dell decided on. And it’s got a lot of people, men and women alike, a little irritated.

What could they have done better? Well the reviews and content both appear to be fake. Adding to the fluffiness and xoxo Susie Creamcheese feeling is the set of generic tips,
“1. Get organized: Sites like lifeorganizers.com give you tips on everything from organizing your home office to planning your next vacation.”

I’d rather an in depth “Hey, so this is the best way to set up a wireless printer.” Or a more objective look at how this would work for my needs.

If the content was more supported by the community, like the reviews, the selection, the criteria for why it’s being featured, it might not come off as so abrasive. But instead there’s a pedantic air that they are trying to conceal through the design. Truth is, this is going to be hard for Dell to pull off because it’s so obviously self serving, and a lack of product diversity supports this. Would you like this Dell computer in pink bubbles or green plaid? I want to see more nuts and bolts, more of the details that translate into benefits or drawbacks for me. Not just the benefits. This is one of the sites that you look at and can’t help but to imagine the whiteboard meetings.

[caption id="attachment_90" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Regular Site"][/caption]

Google maps caught a photo of my pop mowing the lawn during a Street View trek in Granville, Ohio. My mom always thought he spent a lot of time out there mowing the grass, guess it finally got documented! We determine they came by on July 9th, 2007- almost two full years before they released the images.