David Roedl | Human-Computer Interaction Design

I recently came across this link for Resondr, which I think is a very creative and engaging interactive experience. While I’m not that interested in branding and marketing myself, I think the tangible immediacy of camera-based user control offers potential for a wide variety of delightful and expressive applications. What’s even more interesting to me is that this exact concept was explored by my team during our theme park design project last year.

As I remarked in my last post, seeing a concept independently replicated by someone else is a common experience, but one that inevitably provokes some reactions. In addition to feeling validated in my thinking (and a bit jealous that I couldn’t capitalize on the idea ;) , I am also caused to reflect on my creative development in the past year. It occurs to me that one year ago, upon seeing such a technology, I would have said to myself, “wow thats cool. how the hell do people think of such creative stuff?” And here I am today, looking and saying to myself, “yes thats cool. I thought of that too!”. I don’t mean this as to rest on my laurels and suggest that I’ve achieved some visionary abilities. Rather I just want to reflect on the process which enhances one’s creativity so that I can better continue to do so.

Coincidentally, a first-year student recently brought up this issue on one of the I541 blogs. I reproduce my comments here just so that I won’t forget these insights:

I felt exactly the same way at the beginning of the program. I always considered myself far more analytic than creative. I was the guy who questioned and shot ideas down rather than generating wild new concepts. Man, has a lot changed for me since then! While I still don’t consider myself any kind of artistic visionary, I now have a lot of confidence in my potential for imagination and creativity.

Reflecting on that change, one of biggest assets is as you noted: working with peers. Not only can their creativity be a source of inspiration, but learning to collaborate on really hard problems will seriously challenge you to step out of your comfortable habits and ways of thinking. On that note I would strongly encourage you to be a facilitator on one of the later projects. I found that being forced to lead a group in a creative process is a great way to pull some creativity out of yourself.

Another asset is what Marty has emphasized for project two: constraints. Counter to intuition, constraints really do enhance imagination. Why? Simply because under contraints, imagination is the only way achieve your design goals. This is where your analytic, or ‘devil’s advocate’ tendency can be of service. When you’re never satisfied with any idea, it propels you to keep trying, generating concept after concept until you’ve found a great one.

Of course there’s also time to suspend all analysis and criticism. Exercises like brainstorming are good for this, where ideas are repidly generated and no one is allowed to criticize.

In a conceptual design for this year’s CHI competition, our team targeted an available but yet uncommon technology: windshield-projected head-up-displays. The crux of our design was to present real-time data that would influence driver behavior. The behavior we were interested in was not some occasional task, but rather the constant, and largely unconscious pattern of braking and acceleration which greatly effects fuel economy. So in order to intervene we needed the driver to give frequent, if not constant, awareness to our display.

Safety being a huge concern, we chose to implement our interface on a head-up display, projected onto the windshield. Such displays are always available in the driver’s peripheral vision and thus have been proven to minimize the amount of time a driver takes their eyes away from the road. So far they’ve been utilized commercially in limited application, such as speedometers and fuel guages.

Many questioned our choice to use this technology, with concerns about the feasibility and practicality. We were confident, however, that it was the most appropriate form to deliver the information. And it appears we’re not the only ones betting on the benefits. Microsoft has just recently applied for a patent for an adaptive heads-up user interface for automobiles . Read more about it here.

As we say in design, ideas are cheap, its execution that counts. Well seeing your design ideas duplicated by a major company is a nice validation of your thinking ability. I’m just looking forward to the day when I’m able to put some money behind my ideas, and execute ;)

I recently wrapped up the semester in style by attending my first ACM SIGCHI conference. CHI is considered the premier conference for HCI and this years event in San Jose exceeded all my expectations. With over 2500 attendees from all over the world representing both industry and academy, it was a rather circus-like experience–yet extremely interesting to see just how diverse and multidisciplinary the field is. Continue »