Check out Kord Campbell’s killer rig, complete with four monitors, at least two computers, two keyboards, an iPhone and an iPad. Now, I don’t necessarily believe that multitasking is a bad thing, nor do I agree with Nicholas Carr and his assertion that the internet is ruining our ability to think. I do believe,

I’m really digging this story at the New York Times, about five neuroscientists who went on a rafting trip down the San Juan River, ostensibly to study the effects of disconnecting with the “digital” world. It sounds like the start of a joke, but it’s actually pretty neat. Mr. Strayer, the trip leade

I may be honing in on part of why I find the American West, not only the landscape but also its people and history, so interesting. And history not necessarily in the wars fought or the great leaders and historic influencers and such, but in the everyday sense. What did people, regular people, do out [...]

As one who loves beautiful, old, historic things, and as one who loves American city architecture from the early 1900s, and as one who lived in Oregon for five years, and as one who has a massive crush on Portland, and as one who loves books and needs to be pried from Powell’s with a [...]

My final semester of graduate school is now long over, I have spent the last few weeks immersed in the awesome culture that is Adaptive Path, and yet embodied interaction continues to dominate my thoughts. Today I have been reviewing my notes from the Hans and Umbach project, after using a terminal command to combine [...]

Hello all. A lot has happened since we last spoke. We now live in Berkeley, a great little town where the people seem to not like much of anything. I now work as an experience designer for Adaptive Path in their San Francisco office. It is truly awesome. We have our own unique culture. We [...]

Okay. It’s been awhile. I’ve taken some time off. From this, as well as from embodied interaction. But let’s get back at it. Embodied interaction, that is. I’ve had quite some time to decompress about this, take a pause and see what sort of ideas keep bubbling to the surface. And the results are not

We are done with graduate school. We are moving to San Francisco. We are road tripping across the country. We are currently in Moab, Utah. The best way to keep track of us is through Twitter. Or through Kate’s blog.

Last night I delivered my thesis presentation, effectively completing my master’s degree in human-computer interaction design. Over the last seven months I’ve been conducting a design exploration into the ways we find nature meaningful to us, and uncovering ways to enliven indoor environments with a sense of the

Last night I delivered my thesis presentation, effectively completing my master’s degree in human-computer interaction design. Over the last seven months I’ve been conducting a design exploration into the ways we find nature meaningful to us, and uncovering ways to enliven indoor environments with a sense of the

Our interests in embodied interaction started almost a year ago, as we spent the summer in San Francisco. Confronted by the overwhelming colors and textures of a real living-and-breathing (and, based on olfactory sensations, clearly excreting) city, we realized how malnourished our computer-mediated interactions were, compa

Through their research, Hans and Umbach have discovered that there is no shortage of brilliant work summarizing the primary concepts of embodied interaction. From Antle to Schiphorst, from Dourish to Hornecker, from Robertson to Sharlin to Lowgren to Fernaeus to Djajadiningrat to Fishkin, everyone seems to be reading the ri

My work with Hans and Umbach on physical computing and embodied interaction took an interesting turn recently, down a path I hadn’t anticipated when I set out to pursue this project. My initial goal with this independent study was to develop the skills necessary to work with electronics and physical computing as a pro

I’ve been working on my capstone project for two semesters now, trying to figure out a way to introduce a slice of the outdoor experience to the inside world. Playing, recreating and simply being outside is something that is extremely important to me, and based on conversations with my research participants, important

Hans and Umbach recently had a huge breakthrough that they wanted to share with you. A few weeks ago they built the Monski Pong example from Tom Igoe’s Making Things Talk book, substituting a few potentiometers for the arms of their non-existent Monski monkey (and non-existent flex sensors). They learned a lot in the

Hans and Umbach took some time out from their work to help me with my capstone project, where I’m trying to help people maintain a connection with the outdoors when they work inside for a living. In particular I’ve been studying how sunlight plays with indoor architectural spaces, and how the shapes of cast ligh

Our good friend Lorelei needed some electronics help the other day, so Hans and Umbach invited her over for a fun-filled Arduino Party. She’s prototyping a force-sensing coaster that encourages people to drink plenty of water throughout the day, and the first step towards that goal is getting a force sensor to communi

We have some sad news to report on the Hans and Umbach side of things. Umbach was soldering the other day, putting together our second Arduino Proto Shield from Adafruit, when he burned himself pretty bad on his soldering iron. Don’t worry, he’s a healer! You see, Umbach keeps his soldering iron to the left of

There’s been quite the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Apple iPad not supporting Flash. Personally, I welcome this new landscape of the web, where a future without Flash seems not only bright but possible indeed. That said, what is unfolding here is of considerable gravity, and will likely determine the future

Over winter break, Kate and I were fortunate enough to attend the British Advertising Awards at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. One commercial from Audi in particular really stuck with me, because of its clear reference to our highly sophisticated ability to navigate and interact with our physical surroundings. With

Phew, have we got a treat for ya’ll! Last night Hans was able to tame the wild beast that is Adobe Premiere Pro, and compiled some videos of Umbach (or was it Hans?) building some stuff with Arduino. First up, the boys soldered together an Arduino Proto Shield kit from Adafruit. You can witness their amazing [...]

Needless to say, Hans and Umbach are extremely excited about this new article in Wired magazine, which champions a trend of garage tinkerers and other DIYers acting in concert to bring the world its next generation of products. Just as the internet democratized digital publication, so will new prototyping technologies democ

I’ve been haphazardly collecting electronics since this past summer, so one of the first things I needed to do was survey all the stuff I have at my disposal and organize the heck out of it. This spread is already outdated, as my orders from Sparkfun and Adafruit arrived last week, but it still gives [...]

Last summer I began thinking about something that I referred to as “analog interactions”, those natural, in-the-world interactions we have with real, physical artifacts. My interest arose in response to a number of stimuli, one of which is the current trend towards smooth, glasslike capacitive touch screen devic

Tonight, Kate and I are playing a game. It is called the Don’t Drink the Bacon Grease game. The first person to drink the bacon grease loses the game. So far we’re both winning. But I think Kate might be pulling ahead.

Apologies to any Germans in the audience for brutalizing your beautiful native tongue.

It’s barely December, but I’m so sick and tired of this semester that I’m already working on next year. Kate was nice enough to get me Phaeton as an early Christmas present, and so I’ve been working on the art direction for my independent study next year: This is gonna be a fun one.

The $300 billion donated to charities last year cost the federal government more than $50 billion in lost tax revenue. Leave it to the New York Times to characterize charitable donations as a bad thing, because they reduce federal tax receipts.

The smart.fm iPhone app is now available in the App Store, and has been for a few weeks. Not only is it awesome, it is also free. Thanks to the smart.fm iPhone app, I’m finally learning all those stupid tiny states on the Eastern seaboard. Because I wouldn’t want to try to learn something more ambitious, [...]

Speaking of Adaptive Path, these were the awesome folks who took me under their wing for the summer: My eyes mist up just watching this video. I miss you guys!