This is the connected world, a journal by Gene Becker of Lightning Laboratories focusing on the confluence of ubiquitous computing, augmented reality, social media & the internet of things.
As promised during my talk at ARE2010, I’m launching a new project called the Ubiquitous Media Studio, a.k.a. @ubistudio. The idea is to gather an open network of technologists, artists, experience designers, social scientists and other interested folks, to explore the question “If the world is our platform, then what is our creative medium?” I’m provisionally calling this notion “ubiquitous media”, building on initial research I did in this area several years back. The idea is also very much inspired and influenced by my friends at the most excellent Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol England, who you should know as well. So what is ubiquitous media? I don’t know exactly, thus the exploration. But it seems to me that its outlines can be sensed in the choppy confluence of ubicomp, social networks, augmented reality, physical computing, personal sensing, transmedia and urban systems. It’s like that ancient parable of the blind monks trying to describe an elephant; the parts all feel very weird and different, and we’re trying to catch a glimpse of the future in its entirety. When you look through an AR magic lens, ubiquitous media is in there. When your kid went crazy over the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh story-game universes, it was in there too. When you snap your Nike+ sensor into your running shoe, you’re soaking in it. When you go on a soundwalk or play a mediascape, there’s more than a bit of ubiquitous media in the experience.
Anyway, we are going to investigate this, with the goals of learning new creative tools and applying them in creative projects. And “we” includes you. If you’re in the Bay Area and you think you might be interested, just jump right in! We’re having a little get-together in Palo Alto:
@ubistudio: Ubiquitous Media Studio #1
Thursday July 22, 2010 5:30-8:30PM
Venue: The Institute for the Future
Details & RSVP: http://meetup.com/ubistudio
I hope you’ll join us. You can also stay connected through @ubistudio on Twitter, and a soon-to-be-more-than-a-placeholder website at ubistudio.org.
Here are the slides I presented during my talk at ARE2010, the first Augmented Reality Event on June 3, 2010 in Santa Clara. Many thanks to all who attended, asked questions and gave feedback. For interested Bay Area folks, I will be organizing some face to face gatherings of the Ubiquitous Media Studio to explore the ideas raised here. The first one will be in July; follow @ubistudio on Twitter for further details.
ARE2010 – the Augmented Reality Event – is just around the corner on June 2-3. In case you missed the memo, this is going to be an outstanding conference! I’ll be giving a deep dive talk on Experience Design for AR, expanding on what I presented at Web2Expo earlier this month. More importantly, there will be over 80 great speakers from the AR world, including keynotes by los luminarios Bruce Sterling, Will Wright, Jesse Schell and Blaise Aguera. Don’t miss this, seriously. And when you register, use this ARE2010 special discount code: E195 to get the full 2 days for just $195. It’s a freakin’ bargain, folks. Be there.
Mobile augmented reality adds digital overlays and interactivity to the physical world using the sensors and display of your smartphone. Design of mobile AR experiences is complex and takes us well beyond the browser-based web. This session will give you a mix of practical knowledge and new ideas for creating AR experiences, drawing from web design, 3D graphics, games, architecture and stagecraft.
The next generation of mobile augmented reality applications will go well beyond simply overlaying points of interest, floating post-its and 3D models on the video display of your phone. Mobile AR is becoming a sophisticated medium for immersive games, situated storytelling, large-scale visualization, and artistic expression. The combination of physical presence, visual and audio media, sensor datastreams and social environments blended together with web services offers tremendous new creative possibilities. However, the design challenges of creating engaging, exciting and compelling experiences are quite significant.
Research on the design of technology-mediated experiences has shown that compelling experiences often involve a mixture of physical and mental challenge or self-expression, a sense of drama, sensory stimulation, and social interaction. These elements can give us a physical “buzz” by activating the release of adrenaline, endorphins and related neurochemicals.
Mobile AR puts us “where the action is”—in motion through the physical world, surrounded by other people, in a stimulating environment. AR applications additionally provide challenges, stories, information and communication. Factors that AR experience designers need to consider include:
Goals of the AR experience
Users’ cognitive model of the system
Physical environment and context of the experience
Social context of the experience
Design of interaction models and experience mechanics
Story, goals and outcomes
Immersion and flow
Design of visual and audio assets
Non-player characters (“AIs”)
Tracking and analytics
Technical capabilities and limitations of the AR system
Managing the production process (designing an AR experience has much in common with producing a movie on location)
Should be fun, ping me if you’re going to be at the conference!
Next week I’ll be at the Emerging Communications conference, eComm 2010 in San Francisco, and would love to connect if you are going. The organizers have pulled together an impressive roster of speakers in a rapid-fire single track format that will undoubtedly feel like a three day firehose of ideas. Of course I’m very interested in the AR-heavy Wednesday lineup, but am also looking forward to seeing folks like John Hagel, Ge Wang and Debbie Estrin. Ping me if you’re there, and keep an eye out for digital film geek @endurablegoods who will no doubt be wielding weapons of mass digitization.
Earlier this week I spoke on the Augmented Reality: Entertainment Meets Ubiquitous Computing panel at the National Association of Broadcasters conference. In my intro talk I stated that AR should be thought of as the intersection of two separate trends: the augmentation of human capabilities through technology, and the digitization of the physical world of people, places and things. I named these trends ‘augmented humanity’ and ‘enspirited reality’. My slides for the panel (cc-by-nc):
My fellow panelists (photo) came from diverse perspectives and included Joe Garlington from Disney Imagineering, Bruno Uzzan from Total Immersion, Chetan Damani of Acrossair, and Rebecca Allen, director of Nokia’s Hollywood research lab; the estimable Seth Shapiro moderated the discussion. Garlington showed video clips from several of Disney’s mixed reality theme park projects, Bruno wowed the crowd with his familiar K’NEX demo, Chetan showed off one of the acrossair apps live on iPhone, and Rebecca Allen screened an extended clip from NRC’s Westwood Experience mobile storytelling project. Overall I think the discussion was well-received, even if the topic was a bit fast-forward for the largely broadcast-focused attendees.
Augmented reality enthusiasts and developers got the shaft (again) from Apple when the iPad launched without an integrated camera, thus becoming a dead platform for AR purposes. Well it looks like the little computer company on the other side of Hwy 280 might pull a little auggie magic out of their hat, just in time for the AR summer of love in Silicon Valley. HP has been teasing their forthcoming Slate for a few months, and they just posted another video clip that clearly shows live video from a forward-facing camera. We already know the slate will run Windows 7, and we have heard public rumblings about Android from various quarters, so it’s likely to be reasonably developer-friendly.
With the horsepower to run object recognition and tracking plus high quality 3D graphics, the Slate will definitely blur the line between webcam AR and mobile AR experiences. You know all those marker-based AR toys that feel so gimmicky when you have to use them in front of a PC with a webcam? I guarantee they are going to seem 1000% cooler when you pull out your Magic Internet Magnifying Glass and look through it into an alternate universe. And if the Slate ends up shipping with a GPS and digital compass, just watch all the mobile AR guys scrambling to learn Win7 and Silverlight. Oh yeah SLAR toolkit dude, better get a bigger server ;-)
Game designer and CMU ETC professor Jesse Schell gave this creative and mesmerizing talk at DICE 2010 that you pretty much need to watch. He starts with the unexpected success of Facebook games, the Wii and Webkins; segues into describing the ways that games are reaching out into the physical world; and moves on to observations about game mechanisms appearing in everything from TV shows to cars. Finally, he launches into a wild extrapolation of what happens when every aspect of the world is instrumented and every action you take in your life has gameplay elements and scoring mechanisms. It’s a vision that’s more than a little dystopian, kind of like the panopticon with points, but I think you’ll find it bracing and thought provoking. Watch for the sly iPad joke around 17:00 ;-)
So what is ubiquitous media? I don’t know exactly, thus the exploration. But it seems to me that its outlines can be sensed in the choppy confluence of ubicomp, social networks, augmented reality, physical computing, personal sensing, transmedia and urban systems. It’s like that ancient parable of the blind monks trying to describe an elephant; the parts all feel very weird and different, and we’re trying to catch a glimpse of the future in its entirety. When you look through an AR magic lens, ubiquitous media is in there. When your kid went crazy over the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh story-game universes, it was in there too. When you snap your Nike+ sensor into your running shoe, you’re soaking in it. When you go on a soundwalk or play a mediascape, there’s more than a bit of ubiquitous media in the experience.
