Jeevan Kalanithi's Presentation at eComm 2009

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Ok - so where are we in mobile computing right now, and where are we going? I’m first going to cast this problem in terms of technology and Moore’s law, then in terms of design, and then show some work my colleagues and I have put together to try and answer this question.

In doing so, I want to make an argument for a new kind of mobile computing, and a new kind of human computer interface.

Here’s where we are. A mobile computer, pretty powerful, a real OS, does a lot of good stuff, with a UI that is not just a kludge of the desktop GUI.

It’s about the size of a chocolate bar, and that about as small as we can get a device of this capability.

So: what happens when computers go from the size of a candy bar --

-- to the size of a cookie?

how do we design for this inevitable shift in computing - a shift that is, of course, inherently a shift toward a new kind of mobile computing?

But let me back up a little. Is there any reason to go smaller, other than because we can? What about cookie size computers is better for us, as humans?

This is an internet cafe, i believe in south korea.

i don’t like this scene.

Fundamentally, the desktop interface gives us one hundred-and-one buttons and a single fingertip -- the mouse cursor -- to manipulate our information world, and one display to represent it.
It limits our movement, and most important, draws us out of the physical world and into a screen.

Mobile phones just take this problem public. One screen, taking us out of our physical space.

Let’s diagram it out. PCs and phones provide a narrow channel between the world of digital information and the one we live in.

How can we get information into our world, on our terms? Are there interfaces out there that can do this? are there interfaces that can more effectively bring digital information into our world and let us manipulate it on our terms?

I think the cookie scale computer might provide a means to this new interface. But how do we design for them?

My colleague and friend David Merrill and I gave this a shot and I want to show that work with the rest of my talk.

Let me switch up my metaphor from cookies to something similarly sized - wooden blocks. Remember when you were a kid, playing with blocks?

As you figured out how to reach and grasp, to pick them up and move them around, you were actually learning to think and solve problems by understanding and manipulating spatial relationships.

In fact, spatial reasoning is deeply connected to the way we understand a lot of our world

Even abstract thought is full of metaphor that comes from spatial reasoning: “we’re far from an agreement, they’re close friends, this project is the peak of perfection.”

- So we started to wonder: what if you could reach out and grasp information physically, with both hands, moving it and arranging it with your body, and in doing so, take advantage of that skill set that you already have from your childhood?

- With small enough computers, this seemed possible. We began to explore this possibility with a project we call Siftables.

- In a nut-shell, Siftables are interactive computers the size of a cookie. They can be moved around by hand. They can sense each other, they can sense their motion, they have a screen and a wireless radio, and they can run all kinds of different applications.

Siftables represent a much richer ecosystem of tools for manipulating digital content, and when collections of these tools can recognize each other, can sense the way they are being moved, can display information graphically and communicate wirelessly, we can begin to explore a bunch of new and fun interaction possibilities.

One of the first things we realized is that we can start using everyday gestures on data --

-- like pouring a color the way we would pour a liquid.

- In this example we have red, blue and green buckets, and we can pour color from them into the middle Siftable to mix the colors.

- if we overshoot, we can pour a little bit back into the original bucket

- I think there are great possibilities for education -- like language, math and logic games where you want to give people the ability to different combinations and possibilities, and to see the results immediately.

- This is a simple equation-maker application; the user is constructing the fibonacci sequence..

- Here is a word-finding game that we made that is something like a cross between scrabble or boggle

- in each round, letters get assigned randomly to the tiles, and the program checks against a dictionary as you try to put words together

- when you get a word, the screens show you that you’re right, and it plays a sound

- after 30 seconds or so, the round is up -- the letters re-shuffle and off you go again

Here are some kids who came on a field trip to the Media Lab, trying out the word finding game.

- now one interesting property of an application like this is that people get it immediately.
(mention
- when people try out this game, my directions are always very simple: I just say: make words, and they know exactly what to do

here are some more folks trying it out...

- This is an interactive cartoon application designed to teach language skills to children.

This is Felix.

- By picking siftables up off the table, Felix can bring new characters into the scene (here you can see that he has brought the sun out, making it daytime)

Now he’s brought a tractor into the scene.

- Then by shaking siftables and putting them next to each other, he can make the characters interact, building his own narrative around the events.
- It’s an open-ended story, allowing the Felix here to decide what happens.

The last example I’ll show today is a music sequencing and live performance tool Dave built.

You can inject these sounds into a sequence into a pattern you like. You stick the sound by just bumping a sample siftable into a sequence siftable.

There are effects you can control live, like reverb and filter - you attach it to a sound and tilt to adjust

Finally there are overall effects like volume and tempo that apply to the whole sequence.

We start by putting lead into the sequence...
Extend it - and add a bass line --
We put percussion in --
And now we add a filter to the drum and control it live
You can speed up the sequence by tilting the tempo siftable
We attach the filter to the bass for some more expression
You can rearrange the sequence while it plays, trying out new possibilities on the fly, and improvising
Finally you can fade the whole sequence out, by tilting the volume siftable to the left.

Ok that’s the last example I have time for - I hope Siftables, and these interaction examples, show the possibilities of cookie scale computers, and get you all excited about new directions in wireless and mobile interactions.

Most important, I hope we are showing that these new interaction possibilities will allow us to design interactive tools that bring information into our world, on our terms.

Thanks very much. Siftables was developed by David Merrill and I along with many others at the MIT Media Lab; we are continuing this work here in San Francisco at Taco Lab.