Thoughts on dConstruct
Last week was dConstruct here in Brighton, which I found to be a mix of interesting, inspiring and frustrating; but, above all, entertaining. The topic for the day was "Designing for the Future" and varied from a very high level dreamer's view of what could be, a look at how sci-fi has influenced interface design and vice-versa, to a very practical look at what can be done now in different media.
The speaking highlights for me were Russell Davies's talk on bringing the digital world to the physical realm and August de los Reyes's comparison of university and corporate life and brief discussion of the design of the windows key.
The real highlights for me were outside the conference room in amongst the bluster of the promotional area and book stores. There I got a chance to have a play with the Microsoft Surface and to talk with Richard about FriiSpray.
The Surface is a multi-user, multi-touch computer table produced by Microsoft. Mutli-touch technology is something I'm interested in, particularly with the open source reactable software available. My first attempts at developing a multi-touch interface used a Wiimote controller and a couple of IR pens built by Robbie. Youtube has a video of the multi-touch gallery I built and I'll post about it properly soon.
Richard's FriiSpray takes a very similar approach, using an IR light within a spray can to add graffiti to any image projected onto a screen. FriiSpray uses a Wiimote controller as a receiver for the IR light and has the added bonus of sending the resulting image to a flickr account for anyone to view.
What was really interesting, and funny to watch, was people's usage of FriiSpray. At a conference about interface development, where augmented reality and "juicy" interfaces were discussed and phrases like "cybernetic synesthesia" were bandied around, outside was a perfect example of a tactile interface which exactly modelled its real world origins. When the IR spray can didn't work, the user shook the can! Exactly as if they were using a real can and graffitiing a wall. And as a bonus, Richard had observed this in the past and added ball bearings to the cans so they even sounded authentic!
All in all an inspiring day at dConstruct, but frustrating as I'm not currently doing anything similar. Thanks to everyone who talked and to Clearleft for organising it.