Synopsis

“In his student flat in Colchester, Jack Howe is staring intently into his computer screen. He is picking the team for Ebbsfleet United’s FA Trophy Semi-Final match against Aldershot . Around the world 35,000 other fans are doing the same thing, because together, they own and manage the football club. If distributed networks of people can run complex organisations such as football clubs, what else can they do? Us Now takes a look at how this type of participation could transform the way that countries are governed. It tells the stories of the online networks whose radical self-organising structures threaten to change the fabric of government forever. Us Now follows the fate of Ebbsfleet United, a football club owned and run by its fans; Zopa, a bank in which everyone is the manager; and Couch Surfing, a vast online network whose members share their homes with strangers. The founding principles of these projects — transparency, self-selection, open participation — are coming closer and closer to the mainstream of our social and political lives. Us Now describes this transition and confronts politicians George Osborne and Ed Milliband with the possibilities for participative government as described by Don Tapscott and Clay Shirky amongst others.”

CONTRIBUTORS: Don Tapscott, Ed Miliband, William Heath, Martin Sticksl, Lee Bryant, Tom Steinberg, Charles Leadbeater, George Osborne, Saul Albert, Mikey Weinkove, Sunny Hundal, Sophia Parker, JP Rangaswami, Paul Miller, Becky Hogge, Matthew Taylor, MT Rainy, Giles Andrews, Clay Shirky, Paul Miller, Sane Kelly, Liam Daish

- Kyle

The Brief

To successfully enhance the visitor experience within a museum environment, that has particular emphasis on solving navigation and learning issues. Other constraints that are considered include interpretation, interaction and contribution.

Where to start?

Before initially sketching ideas (in the end I had roughly 30) I thought it would be a good starting point (in a high level way) to look at existing forms of navigation within a museum environment.

Here is a quick outline of my observations;

This image really got my brain cells thinking, together with research into looking at the best forms of learning in this environment (cooperatively or solitary) I started producing ideas. In my case I never produce great design concepts straight away (well when I’m sitting at my desk anyway). I find designing is an iterative process consistently building on smaller ideas and sometimes even merging ideas together that gets you to the end product. That’s why I find sketching so important, it does not matter how wacky an idea is, just get it down on paper! 

The Museum Guide Metaphor

Your own personal virtual guide;

Advantages

Media rich, using sound and video (gives a platform). Doesn’t require the user to watch the display. Removes any social connotations, from having a real person. Guides and supports learning allowing you to roam, but also plan a root. Allows exploration. Allows learning through interactivity > Speaking to you, taking the interactive quiz > Future research for home (different outlets for learning). Quiz > Scoreboard – Where did I come? Respectful form of learning (man in a coat). It was designed for any portable device not necessarily a mobile phone.

Disadvantages

Single user device, Requires the user to wear headphones,  Will it annoy? – Microsoft paperclip syndrome. 

A mobile communication device (bring ya’ own)

Use your personal device to interact with the environment;

Advantages

Provides further information to what currently exists in the environment. Allows exploration. Good platform for navigation. Interactive aspect with friends, leave notes and comments (contribution). Find friends and family on the map. Allows learning, it just doesn’t simply present information. Interactively, playing games using the mobile device. Make learning fun and enjoyable.

Disadvantages

Small display and reduces oral communication between visitors.

The Magic Lens (Augmented Reality)

Imagine your looking through an empty picture frame;

Advantages

Allows interactive learning, it just doesn’t simply present information. – A platform for playing videos and audio. Allows contribution through discussing artwork/pieces. All this content is virtual no need to alter the museum environment. The user gets the device when they attend, they aren’t required to bring additional hardware. Allows 2 types of navigation, but also a platform to see more about places.

Disadvantages

Requires the user to keep pointing the device. Requires users to wear headphones

Conclusion

In the end the Museum Guide system was chosen. What do you think of it? Was it the right choice? – Looking back you may find some of these sketches ambiguous, as they were part of a presentation, some information is missing but I hope there enough there to understand the main concepts. The advantages and disadvantages are quickly copied notes from my notebook so hopefully you can understand them too.

- Kyle

So, is this new iPod Nano? Who knows but it did get me thinking. Last year the iPod user interface got a fresh new update (see second image above). On the supposedly new Nano the screen is much longer, but doesn’t look as wide as the fat 3g Nano from last year (which could be a issue for the UI on the new device). The longer screen is definitely for watching for watching movies in landscape mode (for some strange reason Apple likes us to physically change the way we hold the device, depending on what task we are performing). By the way, how big are accelerometers? because I could certainly see them making an appearance in this device.

We will know tonight.

- Kyle 

Ok, here are some of my requirements:  

• 3G
• VOIP (Free Internet calls – Maybe this will come from a 3rd party app and not Apple)
• Sleeker design
• Video recording capabilities
• Voice recording capabilities
• MMS (I don’t think this is currently possible on the existing model)
• Bigger memory capacity
• Flash and higher quality camera.
• I disagree with them adding a keyboard like it suggests in the article

What’s on your list?

-Kyle

Lets see how things go…

-Kyle

• You have a pre-release version of SP1 and need to uninstall it before installing SP1
• You already have it. To determine if you already have SP1 installed, Open the Start Menu, right click on Computer and left click on Properties.
• We released SP1 in these 5 languages: English, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese. If you have any other language installed, SP1 will not yet be offered to you. (You might not even know if you have an additional language installed! Check the Language control panel to see what languages you have installed)
• Back in February we announced that we’d be using Windows Update to help make the update as seamless as possible for our users. Windows Update will detect drivers that we know may be problematic when updating to SP1 and will not offer the service pack until an update has been installed.

Its only the last point that I don’t comply with, never mind I guess I have some waiting to do…

Its just sitting there now on my desktop, I just want to click!

-Kyle

You couldn’t redesign the mouse, they just have… 

-Kyle

Watch the demo;

Very Impressed, although I’m sure I’ve seen this before and skipped over it.

Maybe it was Lifehacker?

-Kyle

Since the BBC iPlayer has been updated I been a big fan and a regular user, I just love watching the shows when I want to watch them. Therefore the news that they’ll soon be serving up content to Apple’s iPhone and Touch is a welcomed add on. Now I’ve been hard on the iPlayer in the past, especially the old program which was terrible and clunky to use, but this newer in browser player is certainly pushing all the right buttons. Although I do wonder how many users actually download the television shows and not choose to steam them instantly. I understand the argument for downloading videos, but seriously who can be bothered ? 

-Kyle 

Components
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E4500 processor (2.20GHz, 800MHz, 2MB cache)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium – English
1Yr Basic Warranty – Next Business Day Included – No Upgrade Selected
Monitor Not included
2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
1.0TB (7200RPM) SATA Dual Hard Drives (2X500GB)
Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100
16x DVD +/- RW Drive
Dell™ Entry Quietkey USB Keyboard – UK/Irish (QWERTY)
Dell 2 Button USB Optical Mouse

Its worth that price for a home server.

-Kyle