On Teaching Mobile Application Design at Parsons

Dr. Dobb’s Journal, legendary software design publication, published our phone interview on its web portal yesterday on the subject of teaching mobile media design at Parsons Communication Design & Technology. John Dorsey, the editor of Dr. Dobb’s, offered probing questions that got at the nature of the program, the challenges of teaching Flash for application design, and how various tools and platforms can fit together in a technology curriculum at the service of the arts. This is all very interesting when you consider Dr. Dobb’s target audience, clearly hard-core coders and application developers. It’s a good sign when engineer-types are starting to take what’s going on in art and design schools more seriously. These distinctions are very much starting to blur.

» Interview

Space Time Play — Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level

» Book Website (spacetimeplay.org)
» Table of Contents (PDF)
» Introduction (PDF)

Available to the US in November 2007 from Birkhäuser and edited by Friedrich von Borries, Steffen P. Walz, Matthias Böttger, Space Time Play — Computer Games, Architecture and Urbansim: The Next Level offers readers 62 concise essays and interviews interspersed between 64 game, film and science-fiction book reviews, and 48 game research projects, all brilliantly organized into 5 ascending levels, sequenced into topics that build upon the theory of the editors, that video gaming has come of age as one of society’s most crucial and influential cultural artifacts. Richly illustrated and well populated with important and influential theorists, designers and academics, Space Time Play multi-tasks as a scholarly tome, coffee table guide to gaming, and manual of pop culture memes driven by gaming industry.

Steffen Walz, friend and editor of the collection, generously sent me an advance copy, and I’m thrilled to share the news of this exciting addition the growing library of scholarly treatments of gaming on culture, art, media and urbanism. The text is especially unusual in the way it will appeal to gamers and scholars alike, exemplifying how the subject matter is no longer relegated to fringe discussions of gaming’s profound influence on contemporary humanity. Every reader will find at least one game review that resonates within him or herself, whether it’s Katie Salen’s perfectly worded analysis of Alexey Pajitnov’s timeless classic Tetris or the de-mystification of the first alternate reality games (ARGs) to emerge such as EA’s Majestic reviewed by Kurt Squire, or The Beast reviewed by Dave Szulborkski, used by Spielberg to promote A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Readers will enjoy remembering classics such as Asterioids through Jesper Juul’s reframing it as a “forgotten futurism” or considering if SimCity informs and influences notions of urban planning and governance or simply reveals itself as simulated simulation.

Levels 1 and 2 situate the history of computer games as interactive play spaces and connect these basic ideas to the framework of the Ludic Metropolis, or City of Play. Along with the physical representations of space in video gaming, the urbanist modes of exchange and social intercourse are examined with many specific game and research projects. In the end, we discover how narrative environments like World of Warcraft shape identities through an interconnection of an architecture of play, socially immersive design, and timeless storytelling.

In Level 3, Ubitquitous Games: Enchanting Places, Buildings, Cities and Landscapes, the Ludic City is crafted as an actual real-life play space, broken out of the computer console, but no doubt influenced by its tendencies, parameters and tools. Examples like geocaching, locative games, ARG advertising, augmented realities, mobile media, Parkour, and others evoke an idea of gaming within true social space, the city as a game board, and the separations between game and life fully blurred.

In Level 4, Serious Fun: Utilizing Game Elements for Architectural Design and Urban Planning, the Ludic City is envisioned as a proving ground and design tool. Architects and urban planners, embracing the organic, player driven models of gaming, employ its modes towards generative and evaluative instances of complexity management and design research. Here especially, the editors posit the newly respected role of game technologies for the social causes of urbanism and design towards the common good. Skeptics of the value of gaming will certainly be challenged in this chapter, their views perhaps not resistant to the well articulated examples of how game design and technologies have already proven their value off the living room couch.

In the final chapter, Level 5, Faites Vos Jeux: Games Between Utopia and Dystopia, the editors collect examples of how games and war play an uneasy partnership on the battlefield for hearts and minds across societies, present and future-minded. This chapter also examines virtual economies, such as the Chinese Gold Miners of World of Warcraft, and in-game advertising’s rise to importance.

The book begins and ends with references to Spacewar!, the very first recorded instance of a video game design, a creation of MIT students in 1962 for the PDP-1, the first device with a graphic monitor, instantiating the language and context of video gaming for many years to come. In reflecting upon how quickly computer games have infiltrated the collective and individualized societies of yesterday, today and tomorrow, we cannot help but imagine their inevitability in the human condition and the importance of play, time and space.

Verdict: An indispensable addition to the library of any interaction designer, game designer, social theorist, architect, urban planner, futurist, student or scholar, casual or fanatical gamer.

Web Ink for Mobile Media Curriculum

Adobe published a case study on my work with students at Parsons Communication Design & Technology in the area of mobile media design.

Mobile Touch Screen WordPress Theme In The Works

In response to the proliferating importance of portable touch-screen interfaces, we have started the design and development of a WordPress theme for iPhone and iPod Touch devices. The theme will make your WordPress site look and behave like a native application, taking advantage of the special requirements of a touch-screen, flick-and-slide scroll interface minimizing zoom-pinching, all using Joe Hewitt’s iUI JavaScript and CSS library.

The project is currently in a pre-alpha release state. We have released an early alpha, with a distant dream publish it to the official WordPress theme site. Anyone who is interested in helping to test and develop the concept should contact us by email. Let it be known that we are not the first to attempt a WordPress iUI theme, although we are working a more comprehensive implementation than what Justin Barkhuff has already achieved while on his year-long honeymoon!

» Try WordPress Touch pre-alpha on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

If the Touch theme does not appear right away, keep trying, by refreshing or revisiting this link. For some reason, the cookie that tells WordPress to use this theme isn’t registering correctly.

Release Notes

• You can simulate the experience by viewing the Touch theme without an iPhone or iPod Touch by using Safari 3.1 or the Webkit nightly build, the iPhoney simulator, or the official iPhone simulator as part of the SDK.
• Viewing this theme in other browsers will probably yield unpredictable and undesirable results.
• Your browser will remember your theme choice in a cookie. To reset back to the standard theme, choose Preferences > Theme > Desktop within the Touch theme main menu.
• As stated above, if you don’t succeed in triggering the WordPress Touch theme to appear, be persistent. This is an known issue to be resolved. It has something to do with the theme switcher plugin I’m using.

Design Goals

• Optimize WordPress consumption for the WebKit touchscreen user-interface model — in progress
• Focus on mobile use-cases, to allow a quick consume, easy lookups — in progress
• Employ best practices for iPhone and iPod Touch interface design conventions — in progress
• Allow options for auto-detection, user-selection and return to standard desktop views — in progess
• Introduce glossy icons for menus, with preference to disable — to do
• Introduce auto-resizing thumbnail management and disabling LightBox photo gallery features — to do

Specula-palooza

Risking iPhone coverage overexposure, today we ponder one of the most interesting questions about the future of Flash, iPhone and web standards. Despite assurances by Uncle Walt that Apple and Adobe are hard at work on a Flash Player for iPhone, plenty of naysayers, skeptics, and player-haters have voiced strong speculations that Flash will never appear on the iPhone for strategic, practical and technical reasons. A quick scan of comments on various iPhone related entries across the web reveals an almost universal plea amongst everyday users indicating that a dearly missed feature from Mobile Safari is the presence of a mainstream multimedia plugin. In fact, the world’s most popular piece of software in history, is well known to be absent from iPhone.¹

Mobilizing the Means of Production

Those who have written about why iPhone should not have a Flash Player don’t mask their agendas. These voices are usually programmers and developers who have always been hostile to Flash, mostly because it threatens their grip on the means of production, by bringing software and interface design to the masses. Indeed, we’ve seen the worst and the best of the web, as a result. Furthermore, because Flash has always been a mainstream, populist, albeit proprietary media format, it has been deployed for reach and ease of creation, rather than robust performance. When imagining a Flash Player for iPhone, its high-octane thirst for processor cycles does not bode well for battery life.

Monopolizing Web Standards

The second significant argument against iPhone Flash is Apple’s strategy to deploy its WebKit “web standards” platform for all third-party application development. Indeed, the recently redesigned Apple.com site has reduced its use of Flash significantly, in favor of JavaScript and browser based features, so-called AJAX. The argument goes that Apple doesn’t want to forsake its influence on the consumer-level interface design market by inserting Adobe’s trojan horse into the battlefield.² This perspective does make a lot of sense, but leaves out a tremendous amount of nuance, that we’ll investigate here.

A Muted Voice

The assumption that web standards based technology, such as JavaScript, can wholly replace Flash functionality is only somewhat true, especially on iPhone.³ Certainly, the support of JavaScript and its embrace by the web developer community over the past three to five years has changed the face of the web, earning the popular title of version 2.0. However, Flash offers some essential multimedia capabilities that JavaScript alone cannot yet offer. This includes audio support. It’s no coincidence that Bejeweled for iPhone is mute. Especially considering that many iPhone users may have stereo headsets plugged in during use, there are unimaginable uses for audio based applications, especially when combined with locative media technologies. Imagine a sort of audiopedia. The differences don’t start and end with audio support, however. Even Apple’s newly touted Web Gallery feature, part of a .Mac subscription with the iLife personal media suite needs to use Flash for its carousel photo browsing interface.⁴ Indeed, only the Flash Player offers the multimedia engine to manipulate the images as a responsive interface with the reach required on this consumer grade product.

I Want My MTV

Certainly, the most common deployment of Flash Player on the web recently is for web video. It was almost shocking to watch the FLV video format surpass RealPlayer, Windows Media and QuickTime as the most important, influential web video format, in what seemed like a matter of months, with much thanks to YouTube and others. A recent Adobe Flash Player 9 public beta featured H.264 video support, which seems part of its strategy to preserve the dominance of Flash video, especially as Apple and Google migrate towards this non-Flash based video standard. However, until the myriad of embedded SWF FLV players on perhaps billions of web pages get updated to auto-detect the client and deliver the appropriate video by codec, the web will still appear to be littered with missing plugins on Mobile Safari.

Assumptions and Speculations

Let’s proceed with the assumption that Walt Mossberg was correct, and indeed, Apple and Adobe have reached an agreement to release Flash Player iPhone in some manifestation, at some time. Of course, he could be blindly speculating like the rest of us, just running on the fact that it feels crazy for Flash not to be there. But, let’s hope he’s as well-connected and respected as they say he is.⁵ There are several scenarios for the future of Flash iPhone, which should only contribute to the over-saturated discourse by further complicating the biased opinions with an understanding of Adobe’s perspective, previously, and conveniently left out of the discussion.

A Straight Port of Flash Player 9

In this scenario, Adobe compiles the current version of the desktop Flash Player 9 for the ARM processor of iPhone. This scenario would allow all of the existing web-based Flash content to function within Mobile Safari. Authors who create content in ActionScript 3 would enjoy a noticeable improvement of performance and energy efficiency on the iPhone, since this type of content would play in the more recent Flash Virtual Machine, a marked improvement over previous runtime environments, across Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. However, the vast majority of Flash content on the web right now was created in ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0, and so does not take advantage of the improvements to the runtime. Indeed, the skeptics are correct when they assume that running web pages with Flash content, even animated banners, would put an unfortunate drain on the battery.However, what’s crucially missing from a simple straight-on port of Flash Player 9 for iPhone is a substantial confrontation with the multi-touch interface. This is likely the deal-breaker for this scenario. Although, ActionScript and Flash button symbols might offer some means of developing and designing for the iPhone’s multi-touch interface, it’s more than likely that despite the best efforts of Flash coders, the existing means to respond to mouse-based interactions will fall short of the requirements needed to respond to multi-touch. Gestures like pinch, tap-zoom, and flick are difficult to imagine as ActionScript events. Indeed, Adobe probably needs to reckon with the reality that ActionScript needs a true multi-touch API. This could be one of the many reasons why we can only assume that iPhone Flash is in development now, and may be for quite some time, especially based on Apple’s delay in releasing an official iPhone SDK.

Probability: Very Low

Flash Player 10

Looking into 2008, perhaps third or fourth quarter, we have to assume that Adobe will continue to release improved versions of the Flash Player. Version 10 is likely to provide Adobe with the required release cycle needed to fully contend with Apple’s native iPhone application API and SDK release schedule. It’s much more likely that ActionScript libraries will be written that allow true response to the multi-touch gestures, such as pinching, flicking and zoom-tapping. It’s really difficult to imagine a Flash Player on iPhone without this crucial ActionScript API.Furthermore, this allows Adobe to potentially release new versions of the Flash and Flex authoring tools that will compile in Flash Player 10, and subsequently, support a runtime environment that is tuned to the needs of the ARM architecture and precious battery life. It’s been frustrating to read the Flash iPhone haters and their blatant neglect for Adobe’s expertise in the area of building a Flash Player for mobile devices. There has simply been no mention of the possibility of Flash Lite for iPhone.

Probability: Medium

Flash Lite 2.1

Flash Lite is a very special version of the Flash Player for mobile devices, such as Symbian Series 60, Windows Mobile and others. It is not the Flash Player that typically sits in an embedded browser, like the vast majority of Flash content out there. Instead, Flash Lite content exists as standalone, full-screen, mobile applications, or more appropriate mobile media implementations such as a standby screens, wallpapers, screen-savers, and even the device’s native UI.Not only is Flash Lite compiled to the particular device, and so is limited by its processing and memory capabilities, but it also has proven to be very energy efficient, accordingly. Indeed, authors must specifically design and code for Flash Lite. It is in no way, a conversion from desktop Flash content. In this manner, designers and developers alike, are rightly forced to contend with the requirements of mobile media, in terms of interface, content and use-case considerations.It’s possible that Adobe could port Flash Lite to iPhone instead of the expected desktop Flash Player. In this regard, Flash Player would exists as a widget on the SpringBoard home-screen of iPhone, and not as a Mobile Safari plugin. Although it would not fix countless broken plugins in pages that use Flash Player, it would offer mobile media design opportunities for Flash on iPhone. Specifically, Flash Lite already offers APIs to interact with mobile phone specific features, such as triggering the vibrate, detecting battery life, and cell network signal strength. These capabilities are not offered on the desktop version of Flash Player, and may or may not be available in Apple’s official native iPhone application API or SDK. Only time will tell.In this scenario, Flash Lite becomes an avenue for designers and developers familiar with Adobe’s toolsets to create applications that exist as standalone native experiences, rather than embedded modules of Mobile Safari. In many ways, this supports the special needs of mobile media more appropriately than simply making the familiar Flash just work. Imagining a port of Flash Lite for iPhone could mean the opening of a vast market for native iPhone widget applications, designed by designers, and not restricted to hard-core Objective C programmers. Indeed, this is a threatening prospect for those that are eager to carve out a niche in iPhone application development. However, Flash Lite 2.1 probably does not offer the means to react to multi-touch gestures like pinch, flick and tap-zoom, and so it’s probably not the version we will eventually see.

Probability: Low

Flash Lite 3

Just as the desktop Flash Player is constantly updated, the mobile Flash Lite player is also expected to be evolving. It is said, that a forthcoming version of the Flash Lite player, perhaps 3, will bridge the gap between the embedded browser Flash content and the standalone mobile specific Flash Lite content.⁶ In other words, Flash Lite 3 could play not just in the mobile device’s web browser, but could also run within its native operating system environment. This jives with Adobe’s efforts to seed the use of Flash outside of the browser and distribute a desktop based native runtime, called AIR, the Adobe Integrated Runtime. In addition, a Flash Lite 3 would address the concerns of a multi-touch API, and the required energy efficiencies for battery life, memory usage and processor cycling, as well as provide ActionScript to trigger mobile device specific features intrinsic to Flash Lite.In this case, Flash would exist in two manifestations on iPhone: as standalone native applications on the SpringBoard home screen, and as a Mobile Safari plugin, playing the usual desktop based content. This gives developers, designers and end-users the best of all worlds. Flash content can be created with mobile use in mind, considering the unique user interface and energy efficiency required. Everyday users will enjoy not only the full multimedia web they’ve grown accustomed to on the desktop, but also will enjoy a market of native mobile applications that arguably, the Objective C programmers of the world, simply cannot singlehandedly service.

Probability: Medium-High

Conclusions

Flash will appear on iPhone eventually. There is no doubt that Adobe will roadmap this device into its strategy for Flash Player, Flash Lite, or both.Yes, there are significant performance, interface and user considerations that must be addressed as Flash appears on iPhone. Adobe has already demonstrated an accomplished ability to service the mobile media market. It’s only a matter of when, and what form iPhone Flash takes as it appears beneath our beloved glass multi-touch screens.One can only imagine the pressure Adobe’s product planners are putting on its Flash Player team to fit iPhone into the needs of the short-term and long-term strategy. In the short term, Adobe needs to get Flash on iPhone within the next three to six months to capture the required developer and designer audience, and compete with the ascendancy of Mobile Safari and native iPhone applications. In the long term, Adobe needs to get it right, and release a iPhone Flash Player that addresses the specific needs of both mobile media and the vast legacy of desktop Flash content out there. A premature release could spell long term disaster for Flash, as it needs to compete with the rapidly expanding Open Source and Web Standards movement. We haven’t mentioned Microsoft’s entry into the web media space with its recently launched Silverlight platform, but until we stumble upon a site that actually uses it, it’s irrelevant.Although there are many who would like Flash to just go away, because it’s not open source, not free, and tends to be used to bombard us with annoying banner ads and horrible interface design models, Flash is not going away anytime soon. However, how Apple and Adobe navigate the uncharted territory of merging mobile and desktop user experiences along with multi-touch interfaces, will certainly determine the relevance of Flash in the years to come.

Footnotes

1. See Adobe statistics on Flash Player downloads.
2. See Roughly Drafted’s analysis.
3. See A List Apart’s analysis.
4. See Cabel Sasser’s Twitter which claims dibs on this observation.
5. See the profile of Walt Mossberg in the New Yorker.
6. Speculative, but based on reliable, but undisclosed interactions with Adobe. Also, see Bill Perry’s entry on the subject.

Read Packing Lite: A mobile media interface design primer on Adobe’s Developer Center to get my perspective how to adapt to directional-pad based devices in Flash Lite. I detail the process of transferring SWF files to Nokia Series 60 devices and analyze a 4-way menu example from Adobe’s Content Developer Kit (CDK).

» Packing Lite on Adobe.com

Article to be published on Adobe Developer Center

Packing Lite: Getting Started Designing Interfaces for Mobile Media

I wrote an article/tutorial for Adobe’s Developer Center to be published at the end of August covering how to get started designing interfaces in Flash Lite on Nokia Series 60 devices. It details how to get equipped for mobile media design using Flash and the Flash Lite platform, install Flash Lite content on Nokia S60 phones with Bluetooth or Nokia’s PC Suite, discusses the unique interface design challenges, and looks at an example, highlighting the issues.

Stay tuned, as I’ll be sure to post the link to the article when it goes live. Article pushed live at 5 PM PST, August 17, 2007←

For the uninitiated, Processing→ is an open interactive media platform published on free software license via MIT by Casey Reas→ and Ben Fry→. Originally created as a learning tool, it is maturing through a Beta phase currently while winning tremendous support within the academic and design community. It appears to be emerging as the [tag]Sketchpad[/tag]↔ of the future. Sutherland→ would be so proud of his fellow alumni.

• Download Sample Chapters→ in PDF
• MIT Press→

For those in-the-know, this MIT Press release, Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists will be noticed on August 24, 2007. A substantial amount of the book is available in PDF format now. The free preview certainly suggests how tremendous and definitive this text is going to be. Take a peak at this inspiring passage from the introduction. It begins by describing the world view of Processing and the philosophy about software it epitomizes:

Software is a unique medium with unique qualities
Concepts and emotions that are not possible to express in other media may be expressed in this medium. Software requires its own terminology and discourse and should not be evaluated in relation to prior media such as film, photography, and painting. History shows that technologies such as oil paint, cameras, and film have changed artistic practice and discourse, and while we do not claim that new technologies improve art, we do feel they enable different forms of communication and expression. Software holds a unique position among artistic media because of its ability to produce dynamic forms, process gestures, define behavior, simulate natural systems, and integrate other media including sound, image, and text. (p. 1)

The introduction continues on to beautifully frame the pursuit of aesthetics through software. The free preview includes not only complete Table of Contents and Index, but also a very solid introduction to Processing and some of fundamental concepts. It’s enough material to function as an ideal free resource for getting started, while also leaves you thirsting for more.

Indeed, a more comprehensive review is forthcoming.

Adobe Integrated Runtime demonstrated by Big Spaceship.

This afternoon, Joshua Hirsch and Jamie Kosoy from Big Spaceship, here in Brooklyn, presented Building Adobe AIR Applications with Flash CS3 on the Adobe Connect presentation service. They did an excellent job of introducing the new capabilities of Adobe’s new desktop application delivery platform. In particular, they focused on how Flash CS3 can be used to compile AIR programs. Although still in Beta, AIR remains un-implemented in Flash CS3. The online seminar walked us through the tricky process of configuring for AIR development and introduce us to the command-line tools required to build and test AIR projects. However, Grant Skinner apparently has an extension set for Flash CS3 that assists with this process as we await Adobe’s full integration into the Publish Settings of Flash CS3. The links and notes of the presentation are posted here for reference. This post is likely to be updated and fleshed out as I process and try things out myself.

What is AIR?

AIR brings Flash and other web formats to desktop standalone applications. We should start to see more ‘downloadables’ once this catches on. Probably the best way to figure out AIR is to look at some examples on Adobe Labs→I’ve been a fan of kuler→ ever since I started following the Adobe Labs, and discovered Apollo, the codename for AIR. This is a great example of how being able to break out of the browser will encourage creative technology to engage with us more deeply.

Presentation Links

How to get started with AIR and Flash CS3

• Presentation Event Details
• About Adobe AIR
• AIR Developer FAQ
• Download AIR SDK
• Download FLEX Builder
• ActionScript 3.0 Language Reference
• Get the Flash Debug Player
• Get FlashTracer extension for Firefox
• Get Grant Skinner’s AIR Panel for CS3
• Big Spaceship’s Lab

Raw Notes from the Presentation

Here are the raw notes from the presentation. I’ll try to decipher them into more sense once I get my head around it all myself.

 airglobal.swc locations: MAC:    /Applications/Adobe Flex Builder 3/sdks/moxie/frameworks/libs/air/airglobal.swc PC:      Program Files/Adobe Flex Builder 3/sdks/moxie/frameworks/libs/air/airglobal.swc move and rename to MAC:    /Applications/Adobe Flash CS3/Configuration/ActionScript 3.0/Classes/playerglobal.swc PC:      Program Files/Adobe Flash CS3/Configuration/ActionScript 3.0/Classes/playerglobal.swc (you should make a backup of your old playerglobal.swc) AIR SDK: MAC:    Place all files in /Users/[you]/ PC:      Place files whereever you want. (I use c:AIR_SDK) Set environment variables: Right click "My Computer" Hit Properties. Go to the "Advanced" tab Click "Environment Variables" In "System Variables", under Path add path you put the sdk. If there is no Path var, you can add it. ADL syntax: adl myApp.xml Flash Tracer: After installing extension, Tools --> FlashTracer Click "Options" in the bottom right of the AddOn. PC Path MUST be: C:Documents and Settings[YOU]Application DataMacromediaFlash PlayerLogsflashlog.txt Mac Path MUST be: Hard Drive:Users:[YOU]:Library:Preferences:Macromedia:Flash Player:Logs:flashlog.txt If no Logs directory or flashlog.txt file is missing, you need to add them. ADT syntax: adt -package myAirFile.air myApp.xml foo.swf bar.swf icons videos etc

Originally published in the Atlantic Monthly→, “As We May Think→” (July, 1945), a member of the Manhattan Project proposes the [tag]Memex[/tag]↔, a sort of microfilm-based knowledge desk. Many consider the Memex to be the pre-digital precursor to the idea of the Web and Internet as we know it today. It may reflect the dawn of the information age.

I am constantly referring to the Memex in my [tag]lectures[/tag]↔ and research as a significant historical precedent to modern informatics, information design, hypertext and interactive media.

A diagram depicting “Computing’s Family Tree”◊ sources the Memex at the root of all modern operating systems. See also Dr. Ivan Sutherland’s [tag]Sketchpad[/tag]↔ for the world’s first interactive computer graphics system.

Links

• Original article, Atlantic Monthly→
• “As We May Think”, Wikipedia→
• ‘Memex,’ Wikipedia→
• ‘Informatics,’ Wikipedia→

See Also

Lecture: The Origins of Interactive Media ↑

As a professor of media design at Parsons The New School for Design, I was invited on Chinese grant funds to teach a month-long intensive design workshop at the Art and Design Academy at Tsinghua University in Beijing as part of China’s recent national initiative to embrace Western modes of thinking and educational approaches. Tsinghua is one of China’s most prestigious and perhaps well-funded institutions, often compared to MIT as a bastion of brainy, competitive, but brilliant national minds. Judging by the newly opened art academy building designed by American architectural firm, 70 million RMB (US$ 9.3 million) is a small price to pay for a world-class design education facility. Indeed, compared to our cramped quarters at Parsons, somewhat scattered throughout real-estate challenged Greenwich Village, I was afflicted with space lust as I wandered, upon arrival, through a dizzying maze of studios, workspaces, classrooms, offices, galleries, art supply and book stores. The academy even sports a Starbucks-style coffee shop where baristas pull lattes for a fraction of the cost of our all-too-familiar daily grandé. The more I discovered about the Tsinghua Art and Design academy, the more I appreciated how the university, and by-proxy, the Chinese government, invests heavily in the importance of a Westernized (or maybe Globalized) higher learning design education. At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if America’s investment in our own creative capital could measure up. The last time I checked back home, primary and secondary art education was being eviscerated in favor of test prep education, art college enrollments were flat and the national mood was generally complacent and decadent. Clearly, being here, it is understood that China’s globalizing ambitions imagine itself someday becoming the world’s creative agency, and not just its factory.

This idea is underscored when considering the process of designing many of the identity systems for China’s current national obsession: preparing for the 2008 Olympiad, as it extends its unique culture, language and hospitality to the rest of the world. Typically in the West, design products, such as a visual identity system, are outsourced to a private design agency, through an arduous and competitive design bid process. Rather than become the mother client for its homegrown but nascent design firm industry, China tapped its own universities, in keeping with its deeply historical respect for scholars. Instead of farming out the work to lowest bidding, but hottest design and branding firm, the Beijing Olympic Committee ‘hired’ its own university design professors to create for the Olympics 2008. In particular, the official mascots of Beijing 2008 were conceived and born in these shiny new halls of the Art and Design Academy under the direction of Professor Wu, a high-ranking member of the Party. Although, somewhat insipidly and overly cute by Western standards, the set of five mascots cleverly epitomize cultural memes of China, symbolize aspects of the Olympic spirit, the elements of nature, and even form a language pun in Mandarin, when their names are properly sequenced. They are unmistakably an inside job. Until the court of public opinion meets next summer along with merchandising sales and media ratings, the verdict is out on Fuwa, the Five Friendlies.
During my workshop with a group of 23 second-year Tsinghua Art Academy undergraduates, I easily encountered their reputation to be hard working, competitive, and brilliant. However, I also confirmed some of the stereotypes originating from preconceived notions about Chinese students. These students lacked some of the core conceptual capabilities notable in their Parsons counterparts, especially the ability to think critically and innovate rather than absorb and merely emulate. They also seemed to suffer from an obsession with cute character culture, an influential import from neighbors Japan and Korea.

I knew that I was brought here to broaden their perspectives, and export not only my practical experience working in the New York City interactive design industry, but also to engender an appreciation for original thinking, true creativity, and help them discover more sophisticated design frameworks that extend beyond character artwork. At the same time, I knew that it would be senseless to attempt re-education in my own Maoist ‘Cute Cultural Revolution’ and repress their love for all that is cuddly in favor of an American style hyper-pragmatism as I critiqued their design forms and motifs. Instead, I would need to devise a means to hybridize the decidedly modern but Eastern compulsion to express profound concepts through a cartoon character, with our decidedly post-modern Western fixation with design models that valorize a purity of form in a luxuriously ironic package. Perhaps, the Beijing Olympics offered the ideal opportunity to combine these two perspectives as subject matter for a design project well suited to nurture the advancement of both my Tsinghua students and my own at Parsons. My statistically insignificant dent in the trade deficit with China during this month of export — the precious resource of American ingenuity — would need to return another kind of investment. This exchange had to reinforce my understanding of what needed to be imported back to Parsons in hope of contributing towards preserving, if not reinvigorating, our own national endeavor to lead the world in idea creation.

There’s a giant generation of Chinese artists and designers starting to emerge into the global creative economy. Former Red Guards and victims of the Cultural Revolution, alike, raised these young minds. They possess a passion to succeed where their parents did not, perhaps could not. The US must acknowledge this newly emerging Red Studio in the anticipation of a marketplace of ideas and economies that will only become more intertwined with Chinese-American interests and competition. After the closing ceremonies of Beijing 2008 conclude, and the torch extinguishes, incalculable tons of unpurchased Five Friendlies Olympic junk will probably be land-filled or ‘donated’ to Africa. It may seem a colossal waste of resources on cuteness, but China’s Red Studio will enjoy having penned history’s greatest Olympic mascot, and perhaps most merchandised state sponsored character design.

See Also

Project: Olympic Mobile Visitors Guide ↑

Impressions.

Although Gizmodo→ is recommending that those who haven’t already early-adopted should wait for the first software update, the iPhone is a stunning achievement. Really the only salient reason offered by Gizmodo for waiting applies to users who constantly MMS and/or SMS to multiple recipients. Despite owning many phones capable of both these features, we must admit that we rarely, if ever, use these features. Otherwise, the iPhone offers a feature set where we find ourselves using it instead of our laptop, perhaps because the elegance of the multi-touch interface makes the conventional OS seem blasé by comparison. Or, maybe it’s that we truly enjoy the personal nature of using the device, and marvel at its ability to overcome the limitations of the screen size, input methods and network capabilities.

Problems.

Update, August 2, 2007: iPhone Sofware Update 1.0.1 delivers the goods→ 

Unresolved issues that are real disappointments.

1. Issue Resolved→  The iPhone Car Bluetooth interface is not working well with my Audi A3 factory Bluetooth integration. Although it pairs beautifully and offers a terrific integration with the navigation system’s interface, the Bluetooth connection does not remain connected, and periodically drops and inconsistently reconnects. Perhaps the polling frequency of the Bluetooth software implementation needs to be adjusted in the forthcoming software updates to more reliably maintain the headset profile connection?
2. Issue Resolved→ The iPod Car integration kit is not working. This extremely expensive, official dealer-installed accessory that allows an iPod connected through the glove box to offer audio playback through the factory unit and charging does not seem compatible with the iPhone. The compatibility warning appears, suggesting the Airplane Mode to be activated. In either setting, the audio does not playback through the system. It is reduced to an inconvenient car charger. This is perhaps our greatest disappointment and we do hope that Apple improves compatibility with various Dock Connector accessories in the future updates.
3. I hate to write about this, but indeed, my first iPhone was a lemon. It froze, crashed and resisted the restore process. AppleCare customer service and my local Apple Retail store offered stellar customer service, however, and gladly replaced my unit, without much hassle. The replaced unit runs flawlessly, and clearly, there was a hardware issue, probably a faulty NAND RAM unit with my first one.

Wish List.

The Top Ten features that we’d love to see in the forthcoming software updates.

1. Junk Mail filter. It’s a shame that junk mail filters have truly become an essential aspect to any usable email client, and anyone who uses a standard POP or IMAP account can attest to the difficulty of using the iPhone email client without spam filtering.
2. Improved Bluetooth implementation. We’re talking full A2DP wireless stereo headset support, more aggressive polling to maintain headset or car kit connections, and full disk mode access via Bluetooth. Basically, a non-crippled, optimized implementation, and that’s not too much to ask.
3. Improved Dock Connector accessory compatibility. Obviously, Apple is worried about the interference caused by the AT&T cellular network frequencies. You’ve heard that distinctive ‘dih-dih-dih-dih’ that interferes with speakers nearby your phone as a call comes in. It would be better if you could accept this interference and enable full compatibility mode for legacy dock connector devices.
4. Disk Mode. You should be able to mount the iPhone as a USB drive and through Bluetooth to exchange files. This should also enable the file based editing of wallpapers and ringtones. In addition, manual media management should be allowed through drag-and-drop control in iTunes, as supported in iPod connections.
5. iChat. Surely, AT&T strong-armed Apple into not including iChat on the initial 1.0 release to swindle customers into opting for biggest SMS account features. It’s no coincidence that even the most expensive plans limit text messaging to 200 per month. However, an iChat client offered by Apple is badly needed.
6. Games. The multi-touch interface, motion sensors and brilliant screen are begging for games. You simply need something to enjoy on this device while you’re in the subway or in other network dead-zones. Not to mention, games are, uh, well, fun.
7. Nike+ compatibility. The Nike Plus system should work on the iPhone. It is not recognized as a compatible accessory.
8. Dock Remote Control. This is perhaps the most elaborate request, that will likely be enabled by a third-party and then absorbed by Apple into a Leopard upgrade release. We’re talking an SMS interface on your laptop/desktop, call control with caller ID, brightness/backlight control, iTunes remote access (so you can play off your iPhone instead of off your main device), and the ability to configure certain settings.
9. iSync Bluetooth synchronization support for Contacts, Calendars, Notes, non-media data. Obviously, Bluetooth is too slow to sync media files. But that feature could be achieved over WiFi, as is implemented on the Apple TV product.
10. iTunes Music Store. We’d like to buy music, movies, TV shows, games and subscribe to Podcasts directly on the device. Maybe it would only work while on a WiFi network until the 3G iPhone arrives, someday.

The Origins of Interactive Media.

交互式多媒体的起源

A brief examination of two influential American scientists who pioneered the idea of interactive information systems and graphics. Dr. Vannevar Bush, The Memex↑ and Dr. Ivan Sutherland, Sketchpad↑. Their research accomplishments resonate through every aspect of modern computing. A lecture given on Thursday, June 21, 2007, 13:30, Room B413 at the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University.Sponsored by Information Art & Design in collaboration with Communication Design & Technology, Parsons The New School for Design.

Lecture downloads available below.

Lecture Images

Lecture Downloads

» Download Lecture PDF↓ (6.5 MB)

» Download Lecture PowerPoint with QuickTime video ZIP ↓ (135 MB)

» Download Lecture Poster PDF ↓ (780 KB)

» View Lecture SWF in a Popup Flash Player → (20 MB)

See Also

• Memex, The Dawn of Informatics↑
• Sketchpad, The World’s First↑

A collaboration between the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing and Communication Design and Technology, Parsons The New School for Design

Objective

Develop a design prototype to present to the Art and Design Academy and BOCOG proposing an interactive Mobile Visitors Guide for the 2008 Beijing Olympiad. Comprising of a desktop web product and a downloadable mobile media component, the Mobile Visitors Guide will offer travelers to Beijing helpful information about Olympic events, venues, the visual identity system, transportation, language assistance, and the unique and vibrant culture of China. In particular, the mobile component offers visitors a useful electronic assistant to navigate the city and manage culture shock and language barriers.

Goals

The workshop students (RedStudio) will present prototypes and design documents suggesting and demonstrating how this product might be further defined and developed. The short timeframe (three weeks) will not allow the creation of a fully functional product, but we hope that it inspires further study and development.

Solution

Adobe Flash technology offers the best platform to rapidly design and prototype the Beijing Olympics Mobile Visitors Guide. Using Flash Player to deploy the desktop web feature prototype and Flash Lite to deploy the mobile media prototype on Nokia Series 60 handsets, the students will easily integrate design and content across delivery mechanisms for a unified and integrated user experience.

Mobile Media Enabling World Class Hospitality

Everyone knows that the Chinese are famous for great hospitality, and preparing for the 2008 Summer Olympics is no exception. However, the rapid pace of development and the intricacy of the Chinese language and culture creates
barriers for visitors to enjoy their experience in Beijing. Now that most people carry a mobile phone or laptop when they travel, the Mobile Visitors Guide solves common problems for foreigners to help them communicate across languages, discover the delights of the city, manage its challenges, and more easily find their way around.

An Essential Companion

In the New China, driven by high technology and media innovations, visitors to the Olympics Beijing 2008 should enjoy digital services to help them make the most of their time here, whether on their laptop or mobile phone. Consider these modules:

• Find your way. Visually link event schedules to venue locations and find your way by subway, taxi, bicycle or walking.
• Keep score. Follow sports events by medal counts, in real-time, as winners are announced.
• Communicate. Blaze through the language barrier with common translations for useful phrases and situations on your mobile. Get pinyin transliterations, hanzi characters and audio pronunciations. Point your way out of a tricky situation using Chinese characters on your mobile’s screen. Hand over your mobile and let the Beijinger listen to your needs.
• Participate in China’s Cultural Olympics at the National Art Museum of China and use a mobile phone in an experimental large-scale group interaction within the gallery spaces.
• Explore and discover the Old Beijing and take a guided tour through the famous hutongs, an intricate maze of traditional culture and cuisine.
• Meet the Five Friendlies. The Fuwa have a great life story and getting acquainted with them will help you better enjoy their intricate symbolism which elegantly evokes the many layers of Chinese language and culture, not to mention the universal spirit of the Olympics.

Conclusion

This project prototype was presented to the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University on June 20, 2007. Relevant industry critics from Nokia and Microsoft R&D laboratories in Beijing attended the presentation.

Presentation Photos

See also

Red Studio: Teaching Design at Tsinghua↑