Graduation ceremony

Online Videos by Veoh.com


And this is the last post on Sønderblog. Thanks for reading!

Rune's new blog

Check out the blog of our course coordinator, Rune:

http://enur.blogspot.com/

1 more month

1 more month of ITPD!
Our last project at IT Product Design - the thesis project, is being wrapped up and polished for hand in. The deadline for handing in is 15th of May, and the presentations/defence is at the very end of May.

17 years of education coming to an end...

Sønderblog is not dead! :-)

I have spent the last 3 months in Oslo, collaborating with Fast Search & Transfer for my Masters thesis. (The company is working with search technology for the internet.) My internship is now over, and I am left with lots of data, a search interface prototype, and some fantastic memories from the friendly, helpful and extremely talented user experience/usability team at Fast. Thank you so much for all the help throughout the project!


Next up; put the thesis document together, thesis defence at the end of May, and then hopefully there will be a nice company out there hiring me. After spending 17 years straight at 5 different schools/universities, I'm ready to do something else ;-)

Here are some pictures from Oslo:

From the pier, hectic building activity.


Akershus fortress - in the middle of Oslo


Pedestrian street with the royal castle


Oslo town hall.


From King Haralds 70th birthday. A special ice sculputure was put outside the castle.

Winther is coming.... wednesday

UIST conference in Montreux, Switzerland

I was attending the UIST conference (User Interface Software and Technology) in Switzerland 15-18 October. Here are some pics:
 

Company visits in Copenhagen

10 ITPDs (Ida, Rebecca, Anders, Stephanie, Svenja, Anda, Flip, Yasin, Sebastian and Santas) went for company visits in Copenhagen.
The first company was People and Products, which is a small startup company started by two previous ITPD students. They were sharing and working together with 60 other people - the big group of people is called "Republiken".
The second company was Kraftvaerk which is working with interaction design and usability. Flip was the victim for testing out the usability lab.
Then we went over to the Danish design centre, which was a big joke. We paid entrance to get in, but we were kind of disappointed when we discovered that the building consists of a store, a cafe, and a small exhibition with around 20 items in total (most of them could be seen from the window anyway).

Copenhagen Living Lab

A familiy is needed for an experiment called the "Living lab" in Copenhagen.
The family will have all kinds of technology features; 1 Gb broadband, HD tv, everything automated, media center, etc etc.
Denmarks radio is sending out live video from the lab, just like a mini Truman-show.

The goal is to test new technology and how the users react.

Last summer day?

Kansei Engineering - visit from Tsukuba University

We had a visit from Japan today; SeungHee Lee from Tsukuba University and Masatoshi Hamanaka from Japanese Science and Technology Agency.

They were talking about:
Kansei Engineering

When a designer starts to design the form of a new product, she needs to integrate many demands and wishes that the prospective uses of the product may have. Not only technical and objective demands are important, but also aesthetic, emotional, and other experiential factors, some of which are hard or impossible to express objectively. In design practice, the designer has to balance between objective and subjective properties, between functional technology and emotional expressiveness, between information and inspiration. Design development by ‘Kansei Science’ or ‘Kansei engineering’ is a new approach which originated in these conditions.
When a design approach uses Kansei Engineering, we give our attention to the behaviors of people when they perceive images or objects including products, and study how their personal preferences or cultural bases work to their feelings.

Kansei and Creativity

This idea comes from a human science view point since the Kansei research is recently extended to interdisciplinary fields including medical and brain science. We introduce a study how Kansei works on design creativity through the experiments of brainwaves checked when people do various behaviors such as, reading books to understand paragraph, calculating geometric forms, appreciating products, doing tangible play and create new ideas. We found a tangible play has similar brainwaves when people create new ideas. It proved Kansei is related with tangible behavior.
And we also found brain function when people design a new thing using fMRI. The subjects were divided into two groups, design experienced and non design experienced. There was a distinguish differences between the two groups when they inspire new ideas.

They were showing a demo of:
Sound Scope Headphone based on Kansei Behavior

We introduce an interaction work based on users’ Kansei behavior (behave unconsciously by their willing upon the stimuli) which is willing to listen to a particular sound in the orchestra. Users will take the headphone and can pick up preferred sounds among the Instruments just behave naturally to look at the instrument.
We made the system started with headphone, programmed music and installation of Orchestra with lighting indication. We already have displayed this system at Interactive Tokyo 2005 and Media Art Festival in Tokyo. We found it gives so easy interface to young children and anyone. The goal of my research is to provide easy interfaces in design concerning individual Kansei.

HCI06 in London

I was attending the British HCI'06 conference, London, 10-12 September 2006. Pics:
 

Courses for the semester

The thesis is coming closer...

We have the following courses for the semester:

• User experience design
  Sketching, prototyping, simulating, video editing, user scenarios, evaluation.
  
• Interaction Research
  Exploring research; finding the right litterature, understanding differences between types of research, writing academic.
  
• Critical Reflection
  Exploring the field using anthropology methods. What tools to use, make field sketchbook, write research paper.

It's going to be an interesting semester!

New nationalities

Yay, the new ITPDs are here! Here are the trends :-)

Belgium (+1)
Brazil (0)
China (-3)
Denmark (-1)
Germany (-1)
Iceland (+1)
India (0)
Indionesia (-1)
Iran (-1)
Netherlands (+3)
Norway (0)
Rumenia (+1)
Thailand (-1)
USA (+1)

Bull riding

We had a fresh start today with introductions, introductions and introductions. Plus bull riding and barbeque!

Semester is over...

Have a nice summer everyone! :-)
This blog will be a little bit dead-ish until beginning of September.

Reboot8 in Copenhagen

Me and my colleagues from Kraftvaerk went to Reboot8, which was a two-day conference held in an old industrial hall (Kedelhallen) in Frederiksberg in Copenhagen, 1-2th of June. Topics presented and discussed includes blogging/dynamic web, senses, tagging/keywords, renaissance (which was the theme of the conference), technology demos, ruby on rails, co-creation and some other themes.
My camera battery died, so I only have a few pictures...

Happy birthday Anders!

Happy birthday, me! :-)

Presentation

We presented the report from our project today, User Systems design - a co-operation with Philips Research. Thanks to this premium gang for presenting on behalf of the class!

On interactive exhibitions...

The pictures show the exhibition titled "Multicolor Tide", held at Mexico City. The interesting part of this exhibition is that in order to see it, you have to inmerse yourself in the mood of it. How? You need a swinming suit, googles and the eagerness to jump in the swiming pool at enjoy the tour.

Studio video tour

I got a new camera, and I´m testing the video function... so... here is a tour of our studio:

Download movie - Compressed quicktime, 10.2 Mb

Our new web page

It´s not finished yet, but...

http://www.useus.dk/

Summer is here!

Exhibition at Alsion

We had an exhibition in the new school, presenting ourselves and the study. The attendance wasn't exactly as expected, but at least the exhibition was damn good. And Happy Birthday Stephanie!
Here are the pics:

CHI2006: photos

More photos here

CHI2006: papers, job fair and parties

It´s the 4th day of the conference, and today I have been blogging about 6 papers in the CHI blog.
3 of the papers were on software GUI design, and the 3 others were experience reports within healthcare (paediatric burns patients), a touchable plasma screen for communicating in a café and designing a GUI for airports. I also saw a session about how the XBOX 360 was designed - with a critique panel.
There was also a job fair, with major technology companies, book publishers, software companies and research institutions. Yes, I filled a bag full of brochures, toys, pens and snacks.
eBay and Intel were holding parties. Intel had an open wine bar, while eBay were more speculated - I actually had to talk to them to get more drink coupons :-)