University of Washington students Kris Martin (Interaction Design), Jenny Kam (Industrial Design), Drew Bregel (Human-Computer Interaction & Design), Kayhan Atesci (iSchool), and Jennifer Milam (Applied Mathematics) received the Best Product Design Award for their project ‘post.it.nodes’, a new interaction design concept for contextual file management at the Microsoft Design Expo 2009 in Redmond on Tuesday, July 14.

Watch a video of the UW IxD post.it.notes presentation at the Design Expo’09 in Redmond (07-14-2009 – this is a preliminary handheld video – a link to the MS video will be posted here soon)

View photos from the Design Expo’09

post.it.notes video presentation (06/2009)
post.it.notes documentation

Post.it.nodes had originated in ART484 – Projects in Interaction Design during Spring Quarter 2009, taught by Prof. Axel Roesler in the Interaction Design concentration at the Division of Design, UW School of Art, and was one of seven projects that were the result of interdisciplinary design studio work – Projects in Interaction Design builds on an interdisciplinary team setting to provide design students with opportunities to explore interaction design development in a professional context and engage in collaborations with students from other human-computer interaction oriented departments on the UW campus. Georg Petschnigg from the MS Pioneer Studios served as project liason between Microsoft and the Interaction Design Concentration at the Division of Design. The class was sponsored by Microsoft Research.

The Design Expo is an invited design challenge as part of the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, a three-day conference and showcase for international academic research funded by Microsoft Research. This year’s Design Expo provided a forum around the theme ‘The Future of Work’ to showcase exceptional design process and ideas. Participating universities in the 2009 Design Expo were Carnegie Mellon University, School of Design; New York University, Interactive Telecommunications Program; Art Center College of Design, Product Design; University of Dundee, Product Design; Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; and Universidad Iberioamericana, Mexico City.

post.it.nodes

Post.it.nodes is an interactive system that aims to bring flow to work by bringing the relevant relationships between people, tasks and documents to the surface, thus enabling the users to center their interactions around people and goals, rather than devices and software applications. post.it.nodes was envisioned with significant inspiration from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s proposed psychological concept of flow.  

“the relative rarity of flow experiences is due, by definition, to the fact that in everyday life the opportunities for action are seldom evenly matched with our abilities to act.” 

Jenny Kam (Industrial Design)
Kris Martin (Interaction Design)
Kayhan Atesci (iSchool)
Drew Bregel (HCI/Design)
Jennifer Milam (Applied Mathematics)

post.it.notes video presentation (06/2009)
post.it.notes documentation

 

Carbon

Carbon is a concept mapping tool that aids creatives during the initial ideation stage of a project. Carbon combines the simplicity of analog mediums with the flexibility of digital mediums. Carbon was designed with emphasis placed on taking a minimal approach and to carefuly  maintain the simplicity of the application. Along with the product we made a website focused on teaching practitioners how each feature works. This takes the form of a Flash tutorial video in which the functions of Carbon are shown with mouse and key commands highlighted.

Drew Hamlin (Visual Communication Design)
Joey Flynn (Visual Communication Design)
Simon Bond (Visual Communication Design)

carbon presentation
carbon documentation

 

CoLab

In current meeting situations a user or a series of users may utilize a range of programs and systems to compile data, communicate with others, and conduct the physical meeting itself. By converging the various organizational and communication characteristics of a meeting into an accessible and organized format that functions in the 3 main phases of a meeting, the design allows for both a functional and symbolic representation of what a meeting is. Additionally, the system allows users to pool generated material (voice and text) in meetings to allow for a more open and free dialog to occur. 

Jason Germany (Industrial Design)
Amanda Fonville (iSchool)
Sarah de Atley (Linguistics)
Saul Aguilar (iSchool)
Xiang Ling (Visual Communication Design)

CoLab presentation
CoLab documentation

 

TEMPO

People in their daily lives, especially those who are working in dynamic and ever-changing work settings, do not plan their days by habit. In order to make daily performances better, it is suggested that planning in advance increases efficiency by 30-50%. However, the devices / facilities offered for planning / scheduling today are relatively complex and take more precious time from a busy work day. TEMPO is a device / system that allows users to input schedules, goals, and last-minute planning in a simple and quick manner, thereby increasing efficiency of workers and making everyday work appear less boring in the monotonous slew of activities.  TEMPO Increases efficiency by providing a system that encourages frequent scheduling and planning habits. TEMPO is a multi-platform widget that maps scheduled events to an easily accessible and interactive timeline. Scheduling routine activities with TEMPO is simple and intuitive activity for input and manipulation of tasks.

Michael Canfield (iSchool)
Thani Suchoknand (iSchool)
Kyoka Hinami (Industrial Design)
Ting Chun Chang (Industrial Design)

TEMPO presentation
TEMPO documentation

 
MOTIV

As the world economy globalizes and mobile networks expand to offer greater information services, some workers will face new challenges of physical distance. Whether the nature of a person’s work is collaborative, communicative, or transportative, the design of a new technology/device’s will affect a person’s ability to succeed. Already today, access to some technology is integral to some delivery and traveling organizer jobs. Jobs involving some mobility are on the rise, and so there is a need to for successful mobile design. MOTIVE is a smart phone based mobile application that assists teleworkers in manging scheduled on-site deliveries and contract work on the go.

Mathius Walsh (Industrial Design)
Kaylene Kau (Industrial Design)
Justin Wilbourne (iSchool)
Rick Chen (iSchool)

MOTIV presentation
MOTIV documentation

 

c-mail

C-mail is a transformation of the mail system that allows this form of communication to move into the future while retaining the qualities we have grown to love. It brings together the aspects of tangible communication, human interaction and technology by providing a facility to allow community interactions to happen. Letters are a form of communication that are more emotional and personal than a text message, or e-mail therefore the method should exemplify these qualities. C-mail places mail directly within the community. Hubs are located at centralized locations to facilitate the sending and receiving of mail. Our design integrates current forms of technology such as text notification and smart key access to revitalize the system. The c-mail spaces themselves are neutral areas to increase user comfort with the system, develop community flow through the space and enhance the overall design. 

Becca Weiss (Industrial Design)
Kristen Bale (Industrial Design
Naomi Tsukuda Doering (Industrial Design)
Mark Javante (iSchool)

c-mail presentation
c-mail documentation

 

enGauge

enGauge is a handheld feedback system for lectures or job training sessions that provides participants in the audience with an active realtime feedback loop between between instructor and class. enGage supports the adaptation of effective tempo and helps managing question and answer session during training or lectures. enGauge makes the classroom experience more valuable and effective. enGauge makes costly professional development more effective, to the benefit of the employee as well as the organization. 

Dana Badeen (Industrial Design)
Linda Le (iSchool)
Alex Poon (iSchool)
Blake Thomson (Computer Science)
Jerome Healey (Industrial Design)

enGauge presentation
enGauge documentation

Link to pdf of poster

Prof. Axel Roesler / Division of Design / UW School of Art, roesler@u.washington.edu

Georg Petschnigg / Microsoft Pioneer Studios, georgp@microsoft.com

Tuesdays + Thursdays 2:30-5:20, Art Building Room 236

This class is open to all UW HCI related majors, graduate and advanced undergraduate.

Context

Microsoft is providing a forum around the theme “The Future of Work” to showcase exceptional design process and ideas.  As part of a quarter long course, students are asked to design a user experience prototype, from which a selected project will be featured in a presentation at the 2009 Microsoft Faculty Summit July 12-14, 2008 in Redmond, Washington. The Design Expo creates a forum for encouraging “out of the box” thinking, by exploring students’ visions for the future of computing. Participating design programs this year are: Art Center, Product Design, Pasadena, CA; Carnegie Mellon, School of Design, Pittsburgh, PA; Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, China; Dundee, Innovative Product Design & Interactive Media Design, UK; Universidad Iberoameriana, Mexico City, Mexico; New York University, Interactive Telecommunications Program; and University of Washington, Division of Design.

Design Topic

The 2009 design challenge explores new ways of working. Today, fewer and fewer people have jobs that involve going to an office, working fulltime, for five or more years in the same company, with a team that also works in their hallway; yet many of our productivity tools and processes were designed when this was not yet the norm. How can our tools and services support new ways of working?  This includes: many different economic and cultural contexts, mobile and migrant workers, and part-time, micro-financed work. This design challenge can help with many aspects of “getting stuff done” from finding collaborators, to achieving results, building reputation, and helping others. 

Although new ways of working is a broad, universal topic, projects will be designed for the needs of a particular user group in a particular situation or culture.  Users groups may include: youth, elderly, office workers, different economic situations, a particular type of job (health, education, social services, computer industry, etc.) different roles (employer, worker, customer, collaborator, student), etc. 

Process

Students will develop and communicate their design by first studying the situation / context and describing the local culture and work environment. This will lead to an exploration of possible design responses (through scenarios, concepts, illustrations, and interface simulations/prototypes), and thinking beyond traditional software, to such solutions like  lightweight user interfaces for inputting (entering) and outputting (disseminating information) which integrate with everyday life.

Students will work on the theme in small interdisciplinary teams (2-6) during the spring 2009 quarter. Students will research a design problem, define a scenario, ideate design solutions, select one idea to prototype, and study the impact on real users.

Previous Design Expo projects can be viewed here:

Design Expo 2007:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/events/fs2007/presentations/14707/lecture.htm

Design Expo Presentations 2008 (scroll down to the Design Expo in the agenda)

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/events/fs2008/agenda_tue.aspx

*Video streaming requires Internet Explorer; does not work in Safari

Projects in Interaction Design – Microsoft Design Expo 2009: The Future of Work

The 2009 design challenge explores new ways of working. Today, fewer and fewer people have jobs that involve going to an office, working fulltime, for five or more years in the same company, with a team that also works in their hallway; yet many of our productivity tools and processes were designed when this was not yet the norm. How can our tools and services support new ways of working?  This includes: many different economic and cultural contexts, mobile and migrant workers, and part-time, micro-financed work. This design challenge can help with many aspects of “getting stuff done” from finding collaborators, to achieving results, building reputation, and helping others.