During their design case project, four User System Interaction students from Eindhoven University of Technology (Sophia Atzeni, Annemiek van Drunen, Aljosja Jacobs, and Dirk Verhagen) have designed a brainstorming application for our multi-touch wall made by SOCO Amsterdam. Below they briefly describe their project and the results.
“On assignment for Future Workspaces we have looked into how to improve collaborative moments for knowledge workers using multi-touch technology. One of the most promising collaborative activities that could be improved was brainstorming. An interactive system already offers many advantages, and especially during the idea clustering phase the advantages of multi-touch can be leveraged. We have developed such a brainstorming application in collaboration with knowledge workers and validated the concept using focus groups.
With our application we try to bring a good deal more fun to the brainstorming process by providing brainstorm participants with interactive games. These games bring participants to the multi touch wall, and also release some of the tensions associated with selecting ‘winning’ ideas. Next to that, we also made large improvements on the clustering process. We feel it is important to be able to freely try different clusterings, and be able to play around during this phase. Using intuitive gestures, and using a ’bubble’ metaphor, brainstorm participants are able to create, move, remove, resize, rearrange, undo and relate clusters and ideas. During the entire brainstorm we support structuring the discussion with a ‘compare idea’ tool so participants can backtrack decisions and their rationale.
Are you curious to see how this all works together to support an entire brainstorming session, from creation of ideas to the selection of them? Then please, check out our movie prototype below. We welcome any comments you might have.”
Within Future Workspaces, Jennifer Curtis conducted a study of mobile workers in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Professional Doctorate in Engineering in the area of User-System Interaction from Eindhoven University of Technology. Her findings are summarized in this post. The complete project report can be found here, and corresponding presentation here.
The two main goals of Jennifer’s project were to: (1) Identify the consequences and challenges of mobile work – particularly with respect one’s ability to stay up-to-date (i.e., in sync) and connected (i.e., in touch) with his or her distant colleagues; and, (2) come up with potential design solutions to address these challenges.
In a previous post about the Future Workspaces Concept Game we have described how individials can be inspired by the concepts in the game and how it can help them think about how they want to live and work in the future.
When the Concept Game is played by more people in an organization, it can help that organization determine what aspects of future ways of working are important for the people in that organization. The Concept Game can be played in a workshop of 8 to 10 people. In the workshop, people first select their own favourite and not favourite concepts. Secondly, the choices are explained and discussed by the group. Finally, a coherent view is created on what issues and opportunities of future ways of working are most important for the organization. You can download a flyer about the Future Workspaces Concept Game Workshop here.
During the Future Workspaces project day we also introduced a social networking concept called ‘Borrelpraat’. Borrelpraat is a prototype of a social networking tool that can be used at networking events. Participants have a tag on their badge with which they can indicate their position (using RFID technology). Furthermore, they indicated their interests at registration. On a swipe of their badge their location and interests are visualized on a big screen. These interests are matched with other participants at that location to stimulate conversations. Due to the use of standard Web 2.0 and RFID technology, Borrelpraat is easy to extend. Below is a short movie (in dutch) that shows the working of this prototype
We tested this prototype at the future workspaces project day. The participants of this day reacted enthusiastically, which resulted in approximately 100 swipes of badges within the hour. We are going to explore this way of social interaction more and extend this concept. If you are interested please feel free to contact us.
Within Future Workspaces, many concept ideas have been developed. The Concept Pool page on this website shows some of them. To inspire knowledge workers and to gain more insight into what concepts or concept areas appeal to them, we have created the Concept Game.
The physical version of the Concept Game can be played individually or in a workshop. It is also possible to play the Concept Game online.
Click here to start playing the Concept Game online. You will be asked to select your favourite and least favourite concept ideas. Please also tell us why you have selected these concepts and submit your choices. It will help us to focus our future plans and concept development.
The online version of the Concept Game was developed by Steven Haveman.
Buzzcuit is a concept that is positioned in the concept area ‘Have a break’. Have a break focuses on the cutting edge of leisure, informal gathering and work.
In an information-saturated world, where people work at different locations, there is a need for an easy and more social way to keep office workers updated and better aware of surrounding activities. Coffee breaks are a good moment to do exactly this. This is why we developed Buzzcuit.
Buzzcuit is a large touch screen that is placed in a coffee corner at work. Buzzcuit was designed to provide co-workers with inspiring information and to get them to know each other a little better. Buzzcuit displays a constant flow of messages, or ‘buzz’. You can find ‘buzz’ in different categories, such as people, projects, twitter streams and RSS feeds. Buzz is linked to each other and to external news feeds.
By touching the buzz, you can zoom in on a message and see more information and links to related information.
A prototype of Buzzcuit was placed at the Rabobank last week. Already, people are starting to use Buzzcuit. We will evaluate the use of Buzzcuit at the Rabobank in a few weeks.
Buzzcuit was based on the Vista concept developed by Lucy Gunawan, Qarin Hjortzberg-Nordlund, Xu Sun, Nele Van den Ende, Marcin Wichar and Aga Matysiak.
We also developed our Concept Game into an application that can run on a Microsoft Surface Table .
The Game works in a similar way to the online version. A player can enlarge cards, turn them around and sort them to select the concepts he or she likes best and the one that he or she likes the least.
Subsequently, some questions are asked about the concepts. The answers can be given by using a slider. We chose this solution because sliding a bar on a surface table is much easier than having to use a virtual keyboard to type answers. Finally, the player can submit his or her choices and feedback to the Future Workspaces team.
The video below shows how the Concept Game for MS Surface Table can be played. The game now runs at the Surface Table at the Rabobank.
This week we started to experiment with the Combine & Create application for the MS Surface table. The application allows two people to combine slides from two personal folders into one new presentation and subsequently receive the result in their inbox. It illustrates some of the possibilities of the Surface table: for instance, as you drag slides from the folders on the shared working area you can “staple” them (i.e., connect them) using a black pawn. This interplay of virtual and physical objects is an interesting topic for further research.
While much of the existing applications for the MS Surface table focus on communication with customers, Combine & Create provides an example of how the table can support knowledge work as well. Especially for working with visuals, or visual information, from different perspectives such an application could prove useful.
The coming weeks we will experiment with the application at the Rabobank, gather user feedback and evaluate this application. We’ll keep you posted on the results.
We are currently working on concepts in four concept areas, named ‘Nomadic Working’, ‘Decision Making’, ‘Have a break’ and ‘Co-creation’. This post is dedicated to the last area, Co-creation. Within this area we have generated ideas on how people can work together using multitouch surfaces. Part of this work is done in collaboration with SoCo. A large multi-touch wall is currently under development and we are eager to start developing the right tools that can help people to work together more efficiently. The scenarios (and comics) presented here illustrate our first ideas about how such tools could work.
To inspire knowledge workers and to gain more insight into what concepts or concept areas appeal to them, we have created The Concept Game. This game can be played individually or in a workshop with a group of people.
In a 
Buzzcuit is a concept that is positioned in the concept area ‘Have a break’. Have a break focuses on the cutting edge of leisure, informal gathering and work.
We also developed our Concept Game into an application that can run on a 
This week we started to experiment with the Combine & Create application for the 
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