After the success of the Urban Sketchlab at the HotHouse symposium in July, we decided to bring our re-purposed architects table, projector, custom infrared pen and Wii remotes to Web Directions South. Our aim was to provide an enjoyable sketching experience that allowed users to reflect on both the presenters and content at the conference.

Sketchlab iteration 2 saw a dramatic improvement in the detail and mechanics of the tool as we incorporated learnings from previous experiences and simplified user interactions. We extended the pen on paper metaphor to every interaction throughout the application and gave the pen one sole function – to draw.

Sketchlab was swamped by many excited and technically curious users, particularly on the first day. Users responded well, and the quantity and quality of the results speak for themselves. Many got ideas about setting up open source interactive whiteboards in their homes, schools and offices.

Web Directions overall was an inspiring event. Big picture thinkers (including our own chief eskimo Dave Gravina), designers and developers challenged and inspired the web community in subjects as diverse as data visualisation, social change, the future of the book and geo-location. The digital innovators already embracing the web’s newest open technologies (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and SVG) shared their toolkits and expertise and demonstrated that the Australian web community can move forward without leaving users behind.

Thanks to the Digital Eskimo Sketchlab team (Dave Gravina, Diana Mounter, myself and Damian Simpkins), and Chris Fox for his latest round of physical improvements to the table. We should also mention Processing and Wiimote Whiteboard, the open source technologies used to create the Sketchlab.

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It’s not often that you can bundle OpenSource, co-design, prototyping, art, sustainable living, and some Nintendo wii remotes into one project. That’s exactly what we ended up doing however in a recent collaboration with UNSW’s National Institute of Experimental Arts (NIEA) for the HotHouse Symposium at the Opera House.

With the concept behind HotHouse so in tune with our values (being sustainable citizens and as designers) we quickly found ourselves partnering with NIEA to create the Urban Sketch Lab— a digital sketching tool which attendees used to express ideas about re-designing urban space. Images of well-known sites around Sydney were projected onto a digital drawing table which could then be sketched over using an infra-red pen. The sketches were then uploaded to the event site and linked with the profiles of attendees so that people could continue to discuss and share their sketches.

Developing the concept

Creating the Sketch Lab from concept to completion was a collaborative process. In the early stages we brainstormed ideas with our designers and programmers, workshopped ideas with NIEA staff, artists and curators, and in the early stages, even brainstormed ideas with a visiting artist and computer science pHD candidate from Holland. Around the same time one of our developers had been testing out an open source program that allows you to use wii remotes to turn any surface into an interactive whiteboard. So we started to explore ideas using this technology and an open source programming language called Processing to develop the interface. These tools were used in our final version of the installation – further  growing our already high appreciation and support for the open source community.

Prototyping

With a short timeline to design and develop the interface and build the table, we created a prototype using spare wood, parts of other tables, our bathroom mirror (!) and, amongst other strange things, a sheet of humble tracing paper. Our first infra-red pen was actually made using a glue stick. This large contraption attracted a lot of attention around the studio which also gave us a good opportunity to gather some early user feedback from fellow eskimos.

Setting up a simple prototype proved invaluable, not just from the lessons we learned on the user interface but it also proved incredibly useful when we began to collaborate with an industrial artist to build the physical table. Early on in the conception phase we were keen to work with Chris Fox a friend of the eskimos and exceptional sculptural artist. Chris immediately got what we were aiming to do with the Sketch Lab concept and took measurements and schematic information directly from the prototype. Most of the basic setup used for the prototype was maintained in the final version for the event (which utilised an old architects drawing table heavily customised for our purposes) even down to the use of tracing paper (between perspex screens) to create a surface that would reflect the projection.

User experience

The HotHouse launch event was the first time we could put the full setup together. We’d tested the software, the table, and pen prototypes, but due to the short timeline we were unable to test the final versions of each component altogether. This was a bit nerve-wracking but also a fascinating experience from a usability perspective. Observing how different people used the tool first hand gave us important user feedback. Many event attendees also had their own ideas about how the Sketch Lab could be improved or used in different contexts.

The installation generated a lot of interest online too from those unable to attend as we posted images on flickr. We’re pleased to say we are continuing to develop the Sketch Lab and the insights gained from this first-hand user feedback will be used to inform how we re-purpose it for the upcoming Web Directions conference in October.

Thanks to Chris Fox and the Digital Eskimo team that collaborated to bring this project together: Nathan McGinness, Scott Nolan, Ozan Onay, Jeremy Epstein, Duncan Underwood, and David Gravina.

Related posts:

1. Urban Sketch Lab
2. Taking sketch notes online at Web Directions
3. We have entered the experimental age

For those of you whose first language is English rather than binary: Drupal is a software product called a Content Management System (CMS for short). It’s used to power dynamic web sites with features such as blogging, media integration and community participation. Digital Eskimo has been using Drupal for several years, and we’re proud to support Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and its largely volunteer community. In terms of ethics and philosophy, Drupal is closely aligned with Digital Eskimo. We’ve launched several successful Drupal sites recently, including our “experiment full of experiments” live local.

Quick wrap of my favourite presentations this weekend:

• Liz Henry: Abandonment Issues. First talk of the conference, and in my opinion the best. Liz came out here all the way from the USA, to discuss with us the cold hard fact that Drupal sites need to be maintained, often for a very long time, and that developers often don’t stick around for terribly long at all to do so.
• Angie Byron (webchick): Drupal 7. D7’s mega-enthusiastic lead developer (especially visiting from Canada) gave us a terrific demo of the highlights of the upcoming new version, which is currently in alpha. Angie also invited us all round to her place last night for a hackfest, where I learned how to write about 2% of a core SimpleTest.
• Chris Burgess: doesn’t play nicely. Just when I thought there was nothing new to hear about Drupal module development gotchas, this talk (which rapidly expanded into a facilitated discussion) clearly summarised some issues that Drupal coders experience far too much, and talk about far too little.
• Giuseppe Maxia: Blaming the unknown. Database guru Giuseppe’s talk was more of a general coding talk than a Drupal-specific talk. His basic message hit home to everyone: “it’s always your fault”. We always blame first what we least understand. Honest, upfront, and very informative.

I also gave a quick lightning talk, in which I gave a demo of the Migrate module, which (of late) I’ve been working with extensively here at Digital Eskimo. I’ll be blogging in geekier detail about the conference on GreenAsh — I’ll post the link in the comments (below) when it’s written.

Related posts:

1. DrupalCon DC: reporting back

(Image courtesy of uBookworm)

If you hang out for any amount of time at the Digital Eskimo studio, you’ll discover that the people who work here are interested in a fascinating array of things.

Have a seat on the couch and chat to someone and you may end up talking about iPhone apps, British comedy, Drupal conferences, Australian indie bands, cultural theory, motorbikes, zombies, or something that I’ve somehow left off that comprehensive list.

Those numerous interests often serve as the inspiration for cool ideas that emerge from Digital Eskimo. But this website divulges very little about the quirks and affections of Digital Eskimo’s staff, save for the fleeting glimpse provided by our compelling, eloquent biographies. Until now.

Distinct from this blog, which offers up a range of more company focussed news, analysis and opinion, is All Things Considered, a free-form blog that collects the things that inspire, amuse, enrage and confuse us. Everyone in the studio can contribute. Some of the posts are highly relevant to the practice of design, while others are much less so.

All Things Considered is built on Tumblr, an elegant little web application made for quickly sharing snippets of thought, quotes, videos and pictures. We have great appreciation for Tumblr’s user experience, and the fact that the look and feel is fully customisable – the visual design is an in-house job.

Think of All Things Considered as an evolving record of the studio’s collective online stream-of-consciousness. And think of it also as a further example of our belief in transparency: we want you to know more about who we are. So dive in, and, of course, talk to us. Feel free to comment, share and reblog whenever you want.

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There is a movement afoot globally for governments to provide open access to their public data, so that organisations and citizens may create meaning and value from these often huge but inaccessible data sources. It’s part of what is being called “Gov 2.0″. After following the movement in the UK through initiatives such as Show Us a Better Way, and in the US with heavy support from the Obama administration, it’s been taking off in Australia with the launch of the Government 2.0 Taskforce and their Mashup Australia competition. We’re right behind this because opening up data allows us to expose information to uncover truths, provide valuable services, and promote transparency and accountability in government – the very lifeblood of a working democracy (along with great Design of course!).

To show what can be done when a UX focussed design agency gets its mitts on government data we entered the Mashup Australia competition and built Get Stimulated. The website is a quick and dirty prototype (done in under 150 hours!) that allows Australians to quickly see how funding from the government’s Economic Stimulus Plan is being spent in their local area. With 6.4 million dollars of your money being spent around the county, wouldn’t you like to see how your local area has been stimulated?

Mashup Australia

Mashup Australia is a competition launched by the Government 2.0 Taskforce to provide a practical demonstration of the benefits that open access to Australian public sector information can provide. The contest will showcase how something as simple as, for example, the locations of government services or census data, can deliver benefits to the research, commercial and community sectors – and to citizens at large.

The majority of the site was built over just one weekend at the Open Australia Hackfest “Mashup Australia” edition, at the Google headquarters in Darling Harbour, an event to get people together to build mashups with government datasets. Similar events were run in Melbourne and Canberra, including the all night GovHack. The fact that people spent their weekends and stayed up well past 4 am to finish their projects shows just how hungry citizens are to work with government to provide value from these datasets.

Open Access and Open Formats

Open access means access on terms and in formats that permit and enable use and reuse. For example, making datasets available under a Creative Commons license rather than the standard “all rights reserved” copyright.

Making datasets open access and available in open formats (such as RDF, XML or KML), makes it easier for others to use and “mashup” data to build applications and visualisations. There is already a lot of public data published online, but often in unfriendly formats, not many people would enjoy scrolling through 4,000 rows of an excel spreadsheet!

Opening up government data creates an opportunity for others to make that data more meaningful to all.

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The Indigenous Stock Exchange and the great Indigenous website swindle

It was a pleasure to hear Professor Peter Botsman and Rob Chewying share their insights and experiences at our most recent DE Talk.

Professor Peter Botsman, a groundbreaking academic, public policy leader, and a core member of the Indigenous Stock Exchange (ISX), introduced us to an urgent issue: companies that are selling utterly useless websites to Indigenous communities, misleading and scamming aspiring business people. He also, along with Rob Chewying, founder of Chewying’s Lawn and Horticulture, a for profit social business providing lawn and horticulture services in the Shoalhaven region, introduced us to the Indigenous Stock Exchange (ISX), a free market for listing Indigenous business ideas, products, investment opportunities and people.

To view the video from this event, please click here.

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What a night was had! If you didn’t arrive by bike to the event, by the end of the night you were certainly making wild promises to drag your’s out of the garage.

The Alexandria Hotel was host to September greenUps, with hundreds of cycling enthusiasts turning up for a social drink.

There was a lot of bike talk, and also a lot of new connections made between unlikely contenders. This is what greenUps aims to facilitate and we’re pleased with the excited and open vibe participants keep on generating every month.

There was a collection of Sydney’s sexiest bikes on display, Tim Longhurst entertained and enthused us with his “town bike”, and the crew behind the Sydney Bicycle Film Festival screened some tempting highlights. Dave Gravina also announced Digital Eskimo’s free bike parking and repair station, located in the garage for all to use!

We thank the City of Sydney for their generosity and support for organising the free bike valet, special guest speakers, an information stall and the fantastic giveaway prize of a new bike. Thanks also to Nutcase for the funky bike helmet door prize!

Please join us for the next green drinks on the first Tuesday in October.

More information: http://greenups.net

RSVP: info@greenups.net

Related posts:

1. A ride thru Oz at September greenUps
2. Bicycle parking and repair station opens
3. Bike Fleet and Repair Shop

Visionarium, Dennis Del Favero, Neil Brown, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel, Matthew McGinity 2007

Digital Eskimo will partner with UNSW’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) and the College of Fine Arts (COFA) to create a web presence to provide potential students with information about the multidisciplinary media course offerings at UNSW.

The project, commissioned by the International Office, will provide local and global students with the information and inspiration they need to consider the various media degree programs offered by UNSW.  We look forward to developing a design that showcases the high calibre of COFA, FASS, and it’s graduates.

Related posts:

1. Join the media revolution at UNSW
2. UNSW International
3. UNSW International

Discuss the importance of creative thinking at ‘Eat Green Design’ on August 12

Eat Green Design is a 12 day festival of sustainable design breakfasts, dinners and seminars. Tickets are still available to enjoy an amazing three-course meal (by Jared Ingersoll of Danks St Depot) in a unique, custom-built sustainable setting.

We invite you to hear Liane Rossler (Co-founder, designer and director of Dinosaur Designs), Phil Stubbs (Producer, The Environment Show) and Dave Gravina (Director of Digital Eskimo) discuss: ‘The Importance of Creative Thinking’

“With so many barriers to a sustainable future, what the world needs now is creative thinking – to get around the hurdles and  inspire others to jump onboard. Three speakers will talk about their own experience in product and communication design, who and what inspires them, and the importance of creativity for GreenUps – the rapidly growing green social network they’ve helped organise in Sydney.”

When: August 12, 6pm-9pm
Cost: $110 per head
Where: Powerhouse Museum, 500 Harris Street, Ultimo
Bookings Essential

More information: Eat Green Design Website

Related posts:

1. Green drinking to inspire green thinking
2. ‘How green is your business?’ SMH.com.au August 2008

It was a pleasure to hear Sherre DeLys and Kate Gauld from Pool share their insights and experiences at our most recent DE Talk.

Click on the video above for highlights of the talk.

Pool is emerging after a year of experimentation (it launched in August 2008) and its great to see that all kinds of possibilities are being explored and collaborative efforts are coming to fruition. Pool is allowing the creative community to connect and explore new ways of collaborating with each other and with the ABC.

Working within a less than ideal framework and with a limited budget, Sherre and Kate are leveraging ABC archives into the public domain, setting up projects with Radio National shows – 360, The Night Air, Sound Quality and Bush Telegraph, and cracking open ways to revitalise tired radio formats to find out what listeners would like to hear.

In the Pool you can use ABC archival commons material, engage in direct conversation with Radio National presenters and upload your original new material for others to enjoy and give feedback, amongst many other functions that are yet to be fully explored. POOL has engaged some unexpected parties to license their work as creative commons material – the Sydney Symphony Orchestra are planning to release some 30-second recordings to Creative Commons to drop into the Pool for all to use.

Kate and Sherre explained their current focus on education and research to forge partnerships with universities. This is important to assist universities incorporate curriculum material for the ‘social media producer’ role developing within digital media. They are looking at approaching the most active of Pool users to become site moderators might be picked from (for more on this topic read Digital Eskimo’s White Paper on the role of seeding in social design).

Pool and ACiD (Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design) are partnering in ongoing research into the impact of the creative commons license on traditional media, and helping people dive into the rich amount of material in the cultural commons. The site has formed a special community – it’s friendly and supportive, and the contribution of the user is not for the ABC’s taking – it’s about sharing rather than harvesting content. The discussion turned many times to what conditions might prove to be the tipping point where the Pool community takes hold and begins self-seeding.

Pool showed us what’s happening on the cutting edge of this user-generated project, and while raising uncertainties and debates that continue to brew – Digital Eskimo feels privileged to have been able to facilitate the discussion.

Related posts:

1. DE Talks jumps into the POOL on July 23