Inspired: D3 Talk - Tom Chi

A little more than 2 weeks have passed and I'm still reflecting on and playing out Tom Chi's D3 Rapid Prototyping X talk. It was a really wonderful way to start this year's D3 conference.

When he started speaking, Tom seemed a tad distracted. It seems that he was still thinking about what Jennifer and Jody had talked about in their opening remarks. "Local - social - mobile aren't fads. Things have always been that way, we're just getting technology that allows us to explore that." And then he was back to telling about rapid prototyping - Google X style. As the experience lead of Google X, the R&D team at Google that has brought us intriguing prototypes such as the self-driving car and Google Goggles, Tom showed us how his team works.

RAPID PROTOTYPING X

"How long do you think it would take to create a physical prototype for Google Goggles?" The crowd guessed a few days, weeks, months. Throwing an image up on the screen - he comments, "1 hour." Then he showed how his prototype, created from a Netbook, Pico projector, coat hanger, and screen from a sheet projector actually does provide the EXPERIENCE of seeing additions to reality through a layover lens. This is not about the final form and version. This is about creating an experience that can then be tested and tweaked - as quickly as possible. The rest of the day was used for multiple experiments in software and input to the system. Could they create a finger mouse? Could they use any surface to control the interface?

Then he moved to an image of Tom Cruise in front of the gestural interface from Minority Report. Throwing a slide up on-screen which shows a coat hanger above a whiteboard, with an input he created out of chopsticks, a binder clip, pen and presentation clicker. Using this 45-minute prototype he was off and experimenting with gestures and software that changes its response to how you move your hands - pointing to select, grabbing an email. By fast prototyping in this way you're learning things that you can't learn any other way. As the creator of the prototype you experiment and use it in the ways that make sense to you. You create new rules and gestures.

Then when you invite others in to play, you learn even more as you watch them interacting. See how they do a small flick when you thought a grand gesture was a better way to move through pictures. Watch them as they begin to slow down and rub their shoulders. Ask them what's going on - their shoulders are sore. Eventually the team figured out that if you keep gestures below the heart and in the "batting box" that you can use them all day. Above the heart creates soreness and fatigue to the muscles. All this from a 45-minute prototype and tons of experiments with it over a single day.

The main point of this - get to as real an experience as you can as soon as possible. You're going to learn the lesson at some point anyway, so why not learn it now?

Moving back to Google Goggles he showed pictures of some of the multitude of different forms that others had created for this type of device. As they began looking at the final form of the product the team followed the same process and created a single line of modeling wire that would hold the experiments to the face. Then they carefully cut and measured pieces of clay to match the exact weight of some of the components they were thinking of using for the device. This allowed them to wrap the pieces around the wire in as many ways and combinations as they could come up with. They discovered when testing weight, balance and comfort of wear that putting the heaviest weight behind the ear allowed the highest comfort because it used the ear as a fulcrum rather than the bridge of the nose.

"And we were already aware of how strong the ears are...<small grin> but that was a different experiment."

"Don't get dazzled by technological frameworks. Ask yourself what is the most basic question we're trying to answer. What are you trying to learn? How can I get to something to test that in an hour or less?"

RATE-BASED GOALS

Moving on to the theory behind the practice he showed how bringing down the time to create your prototypes maximizes the rate of learning. He points out that increasing the total number of experiments you do, increases your overall chance at success. Since we tend to fill the time we expect a task to take - think it'll take 4 months, takes 4 months - we can work toward high-speed prototypes by unhooking ourselves from fit and finish expectations. His team uses rate-based goals to maximize and constrain this process.

Don't guess. Learn.

He points out that while we're really good at the actual development of our products, we really aren't very practiced at the entry to the process - the research phase. So often we jump to the end point - the possible outcomes of "what our product could be" - talking and guessing as to what it could be. Then the most senior person in the room chooses what they think the best option will be and we go and start prototyping.

We're physical beings. So work in that medium.

This is backwards. Outcome-based goals assume that you already know what you're making. Don't spend time talking, sketching or creating words to describe the possibilities. It's about building - and learning from that. With fast prototyping research phase at the front of your process you can explore a much larger range of possibility, much more quickly, with a more accurate read of the market that the product will launch into or disrupt. It's important to note that this is not about what it looks like, it really is about getting the correct FEEL as quickly as we can.

On Google Goggles, rate-based goal was to produce 15 hardware prototypes a week for 10 weeks.

Don't fail. Learn.

He feels that the idea of "failing faster" isn't the point. You can fail without learning and learn without failing. Rather than shaming each other for supposed failures, tell the team about the tiny percentage that did work so that we can learn together and move forward with that knowledge. Know what directions that you aren't going to pursue but keep doing variants on the prototypes that are heading in good directions. This is not a free-for-all. It's important to discriminate and determine which of the experiments are answering your questions and providing the learning you need.

On the Google X team, each Friday they show what worked and what didn't from the 15 experiments. Magical or "that has to be in the product" moments were starred. Then they planned for what experiments would be continued or new directions they wanted to try. Some weeks this would produce 40 or more stars. At the end of the 10 weeks there were hundreds of stars or important learnings from the process. The team then begins "constellating" by creating groupings or constellations of features and experiences that would make for a coherent, desirable product. Stepping back to look at the constellations, a decision is made on which to pursue and the development phase begins.

Benefits of Rate-based goals

1. Simple way to measure progress
2. Immediately actionable - no more waiting
3. Allows you evaluate experiments faster
4. When you can evaluate faster, you can experiment faster

Try ludicrous things. Don't need to spending time arguing about what "shouldn't" do. Since we've lowered the cost in terms of time, let's do it and experience it together. Can lead to happy accidents and new directions, or at least a few more possible outcomes that won't be used.

Definitely need to set a limit on when you will stop this process because of the nature of this type of creativity. Each pass only increases the creativity and speed of the team. At some point you need to stop and get to the next phase - getting your product produced and out into the world.

A question from the audience was about what he was looking for in the people on his team when he was working to accomplish things like 15 prototypes a week. He said he likes to look for Pi shaped people who have good generalist tendencies but also have a deeper knowledge of at least one right-brain and one left-brain skillset. This way they could pull on both sides to do some of the work needed in balancing creativity with real-world editing of their efforts. Nice to have people that can do that internally rather than needing to get that kind of validation from outside via committee. He's also seen partnerships of people to form this kind of a type of loop work really well.

Another question was about documentation. He felt that you needed to stay with communicating the "feel" of the feature and product rather than the specs of what it should be. Just as a composer creates, putting notes on the page to help recall the path that was traveled, so a prototype is the communication of what needs to be built. If there is guessing as to the intention in that process then it becomes something else. There's a disconnect in learning from one stage to the next. Better to let the person listen to the composer playing the piece - communicating via experience "this is what I want." We want to do the same. "This works, do it like this."

Personal shifts

This was a timely talk for me. As I struggle to find work that fits, there's an obvious "problem" that requires experimentation and doing in my life. Tom was quick to point out that this type of process works across everything in our lives. i agree. Currently, I'm in the midst of a 3 week design portfolio research process. I plan on using my learning from creating 5 or more prototypes a week to create a class that allows others to prototype their own portfolios. This is perfect for a hybrid Skillshare class and I look forward to learning together. Did you notice the amazing amount of energy and focus in that little waterfall of doing? So powerful.

Already this process is shaking out tons of bad habits. I've become a thinker rather than a doer in the past few years. It feels amazing to simply move back into trying things and seeing what happens. I promise to report back on my learning in a future post.

Rapid Prototyping X by Tom Chi from Kicker Studio on Vimeo.

Device Design Day 2012

When you're an independent consultant designing for devices and non-web interfaces it can sometimes feel as if you're swimming upstream as those around you talk web and computer interactions. That's why I was delighted when 3 years ago Kicker Studio began hosting Device Design Day (D3), a 1-day interaction, industrial and product design conference.

Hosted the past 2 years at the wonderful Art Institute building on Chestnut Street, the day is filled with short, intense talks from people across the year's theme.

Natural User Interfaces

Jennifer Bove and Judy Medich of Kicker Studios started the day off by talking about this year's theme - natural user interface development. Natural in this case is equated with "human" interactions. While these types of interactions are often talked about in relation to multitouch environments, this year's conference would move into reality-based interactions as well.

What are these interfaces attempting to do? They're working to detect and make sense of touch, voice, and movement. They are starting to appear in our clothes, doorknobs and glasses as well as on our mobile devices. Time for computers to learn the human interface and "speak human."

Fast Prototyping X
The talks for the day started off with a bang as Tom Chi the experience lead of the Google X team that brought us innovations such as the self-driving car, Google Goggles and interior maps. His talk was on Rapid Prototyping of the X team variety - definitely not what most of us think of as fast prototyping. I was so inspired by this talk that I'll post my notes with some pictures to tell you how this particular topic has shifted my entire way of working in the past 3 weeks.

Eye, Tanya
Next Tanya Vlach told us about her very personal and powerful Eye, Tanya project . After an accident left her without an eye, Tanya, inspired by I, Robot she began experiments to turn her eye into a robot. She created a Kickstarter project and in the midst of her journey was confronted by and began investigating the deep fear of tech and the body in our culture. She showed examples of 7 of 9, Ghost in the Shell, Aeon Flux and asked whether she was now part commodity. Is she for our entertainment because of what she is doing? Her exploration continues as she works with leading scientists to create interfaces between her brain and eye.

Implicit Interaction
Then Chris Noessel and Stefan Klocek from Cooper gave us a tour through the conversations that they're having about HOW to talk about the devices and interactions that we're working on now. They point out that people are good at people. Children are really learning about how to be people and interact with other people. 

Tne talk then went on to show how current computers are far from being good at people. For instance, computers don't have a way to parse deeper context when we trigger and stop their automatic behaviors. The door to your car auto unlocks regardless of whether you're going to the car or simply putting out the trash. They don't understand paralinguistics - gesture, tone, irony. Flow-based interactions are intriguing as we seek to flow from one device to another. In this arena things like tribal agreements, dialects and customs can hang up the interactions. It is however fun to contemplate where we want to head as computers do become better at people.

Lunch was catered and gave everyone the chance to enjoy the awesome view of the bay from the top decks as well as to enjoy, interact with and chat with the creators of the robots in the Robot Petting Zoo.

Design Meets Science
In the afternoon we had 2 more talks before breaking into workshops and panels. I enjoyed Alan Rorie's attempt to convince us that we should get comfy talking to scientists because from their point of view we're designing things for brains & the nervous system. This makes a scientist's research into the why behind haptics, tactile interfacing, eye movement, language process, visual attention and gesture planning a great resource for inspiring our design work - if you talk to them.

While I thought his view of the mindset of the scientist was a bit unrealistic - process oriented, forward thinking, uses intuition/hunch/luck to guide where to go but reality to come to conclusions - there was some merit to the similarities in process. The knowledge that he felt that scientists had to offer was about how the brain functions (neurobiology) and generates behavior. He encouraged designers to understand the sub-fields: Behavioral (Decision-making), Perceptual (sensory systems), and Cognitive (attention) that could be explored for use in their designs.

In particular he gave us great advice on searching for research content around the type of work you're doing and contacting the authors. Finding the right keywords is the hardest part. He suggests pairing a search term in quotes with keywords such as Google scholar, Pubmed, or review paper to find papers. As you find relevant content you can mine them for references and contact information. If you can't get access - try typing the title along with filetype:pdf into the search field. If that still doesn't work, then contact the author directly to see if you can get a copy of the research. Be sure to let them know how interested you are in their work.

Designing Robots That Get Things Done
Next up, Matt Powers gave a fun talk that showed where robotics is right now. He pointed out that entertainment has given us a really unrealistic expectations of how robots can work. "It's maddeningly difficult to get a robot to recognize a human much less prevent themselves from hurting one." And thus, the shift in focus in the robotics world from embodied cognition that can deal with messy reality to creating intelligent machines that using statistical inference can make concrete predictions. Thus the emphasis is on creating robots to do jobs that people don't or can't do. Since the robot cannot operate without interaction from people - super capable robot but can't read your mind - we still have to tell what to do and when. His favorite depiction of robots in the movies is Wall-E. "They got a lot right with robots that specialize in a single task."

Workshop: Prototyping Natural Interactions Using Arduino and Immersion's Neutrino
When the groups broke into panels and workshops, I thought it would be most fun to do some hands on. When we arrived we found a stuffed animal, an Arduino board and a haptic (vibrational) output. After a short intro those pieces were joined by an Immersion Neutrino board to provide us with a platform that had preprogrammed haptic feedback options and a pick of sensors. My team chose the tilt sensor and created a quick story about a narcoleptic cow that would fall asleep, fall down and begin to snore. We programmed the snoring, did surgery on our cow to add sensor and later the haptic feedback. We were so involved we missed cocktail hour but it was fun to get a chance to collaborate and play.

 

I particularly appreciated talking with Immersion's Product Manager David Birnbaum, who showed me some great UI examples on Android. Now I know what kind of development I need to start on the Android side. Developing standard UI holds no appeal - but for haptic interfaces - I'm happy to climb over the development hurdles.

The rest of the evening was a party for Kicker Studios with great drinks, amazing food from the food trucks outside and a fun group of folks to hang with. Another excellent year for D3. I look forward to next year!

DIY: Workshop Weekend in Oakland

Workshop Weekend is a stunning conglomeration of DIY workshops that was started by brothers J.D. and Gil Zamifirescu in Oakland to create the kind of learning experiences that they grew up with to help them explore their passion for technology and electronics. In the DIY and Maker spirit they've created a profoundly dynamic and welcoming community of teachers and life-long learners of every age.

I went to my first Workshop Weekend in July. The range of classes was stunning and the entire weekend, less materials fees for some workshops was $30 - for as many classes as you wanted to take! Stunning value and great for people with kids or those explore new directions. They reported that more than 650 hours of hands-on learning took place across downtown Oakland, with 135 participants from age 6 to 69.

In the fall you can find the Workshop Weekend moving out across the SF Bay Area. Currently there are 2 weekends scheduled: 

• October 6 & 7, 2012, in Santa Cruz, in partnership with the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History
• November 10 & 11, 2012, in downtown Oakland

I'm definitely going to try more classes, volunteer and maybe even teach a class or two.

MY EXPERIENCE

I was only able to take 2 courses on Saturday this year because of other commitments for this weekend. I LOVED the 2 that I picked.

Wearable Electronics: LED Wristband

The first of the classes I picked was a wearable technology workshop taught by my old friend Grace Kim. I've interviewed Grace several times over the years for artfuture - The Soft Electric/Sessile Bag and Felted Skirt with Light Pocket. I love her mix of fashion and technology and her amazing skill at teaching you the intricacies of soft circuits and electronics step-by-step.

When we came into the beautiful workshop room (a conference room in the Comrade building in downtown Oakland), Grace had everything we needed set up for us. She showed us some of the components and then we were off and building based on both her wonderful instructions and reassuring presence as each of us struggled with either sewing or electronic elements.

There's nothing quite as satisfying as getting the LED to light up as Grace explains positive and negative connections and how they light up the LED.

Now on to the sewing portion of our fun as we follow the awesome directions and dive right in.

After sewing in a copper strip for the snaps to interact with and complete the circuit to turn on the LEDs, we then sewed in the battery, ground strip and positive strip. Then we added LED lights through the outer felt layer and used conductive thread to make the long ends connect to the correct strip.

Once completed, it did indeed light up for me. Yea!

Learning to Solder

It's been awhile since I've had to solder so I decided to take an entry level soldering workshop. We had 2 great teachers - Rolf Widenfelt and Miloh Alexander to guide us through the basics of soldering.

There were 3 possible projects we could choose - a scrolling animation, a game or a LED nametag. I chose the scrolling animation project. They threw us right in and off we went. The instructions for my project could have used pictures but overall all the teachers and TA's were right in there with us. With 12 people of all ages, we were a challenging crew. By then end though it was hugely satisfying to realize I hadn't lost my skills and that I can go on to solder to my hearts content on some of my bigger projects.

I can't encourage you enough to go to the Workshop Weekend site and find one near you. If you have a DIY passion of your own, then definitely get in there and teach a workshop.

Maker Faire 2012 - Experiences

I wanted to write a separate post about a few other experiences that really inspired me at this year's Maker Faire here in the SF Bay Area. I know that you'll get to experience some of these at the other events as well - if so, make sure you go and find them! I'm already plotting how I might participate in next year's fun by creating something along these lines. THAT is exactly what Maker Faire is about - get inspired and then try it out yourself.

Pat Marsh and Matt Franks - frog design - 3D Light Trikes
It's amazing what these Makers accomplished both on their own and with some of the other talented folks at frog design. They really embody the Maker spirit and provided a whole lot of folks with a powerful in person experience. It's not often you get to experience a ride like this outside of an amusement park. This is a fun inside look at exactly how they built this cool experience from the ground up in just a few months.

Ken Murphy - A History of the Sky and Panoramic Time Lapse
What I loved most about Ken's installation was the way it was an oasis in the midst of the noisy chaos of Fiesta Hall. Just a few minutes hanging out on the blow up couches he brought, watching his fun and amazing experience, left me feeling refreshed and ready for more.

Robotgrrl - Robobrrds
A crowd favorite in the past, I was really happy to get a chance to talk with Erin aka Robogrrl about her new Robobrrds projects for this year's Maker Faire. What I actually got was a tour through the whole progression of experiments and a peek into the future as well. Be sure to watch this one for some good cues on approaching your own projects.

Erik Johnson - PersonaLED
We've had a chance to follow Erik's work for the past couple of years. To learn more about his awesome hand-crafted, wearable and programmable LED squares, watch the artfuture interview from last year. This year Erik brought a giant LED and some other fun visual aids to educate us on how LEDs can create 4 different colors with only a single LED. He also quietly brought along a cool "fire wall" piece that you catch a glimpse of on the wall behind the booth. Can't wait until he starts making those in a size I can buy (hint, hint).

O Yeah Toys
I'm always amazed by the creativity and sometimes sheer stubborness that all of these Makers show in their pursuit of their projects. I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of my favorite craft and displays that I didn't get an interview with this year. This year there were close to 100,000 people at Maker Faire and the fairgrounds were bursting at the seams. I can get fairly overwhelmed by all the noise and hubbub so I made a habit of visiting the O Yeah Toys booth a few times a day.

Surrounded by all manner of mathematically pleasing shapes, patterns and dragons I enjoyed talking with the proprietors and watching the world go by. I also watched in some horror at the treatment their light pillar trees received at the hands of both adult and child Maker Faire attendees. While that brought to mind the end of civilization - they way they interacted with one and all was good instruction for me on dealing with people gone numb and unkind from overstimulation and habit.

This is the kind of business that inspires me right to the ground. Their amazing structures and beautiful toys are definitely the kind of thing that we should and do support until they thrive. Rock on Stan and O Yeah Toys! I'm getting that interview next year - and we're gonna talk about how you make mathematics beautiful and in the world!