mercurious » Information-Design

Updates to Academic Site

mercurious — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:50:56 +0000

No recent posts as we focus on Professorial site

It has been awhile since posting to mercurious. However, we’ve been hard at work updating our academic site. This site now documents recent student work:

It also now features a commercial work samples page that highlights an eight-year career in the interactive media industry. Perhaps the most interesting additions include ancient works from the vault, some almost a decade old.

In fact, getting this site together in this manner has been long overdue.

» New and improved professorial site on parsons.edu

Work-in-Progress: WordPress Touch Theme

mercurious — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:32:25 +0000

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

Packing Lite: A Mobile Media Interface Design Primer

mercurious — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 02:52:20 +0000

Article Published on Adobe Developer Center Introducing Design Principles for Flash Lite

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

Memex, The Dawn of Informatics

mercurious — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:53:49 +0000

“AS WE MAY THINK” BY DR. VANNEVAR BUSH

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.

Lecture: The Origins of Interactive Media

mercurious — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:30:41 +0000

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)

Project: Olympic Mobile Visitors Guide

mercurious — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:00:20 +0000

A Mobile Media Design Project

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.