Study-a-Day : Update
Starting today, I’ll be doing an interactive study a day. (Click for full screen). They will be the visual and interactive expression of various thoughts and ideas I have while I digest reading material. In addition there will be a brief snip about mental hiccup(s) they come from.
NOTE: There is a bug in Google Chrome on Mac that prevents the hiding the cursor! I HIGHLY recommend viewing it in another browser.
As computation is formless, I always figured I might have to pick some form arbitrarily to work with. I typically use a “black square” in my presentation examples, but in doing actual work I’ve dealt with the cursor. For one, It’s a little more interesting. Secondly, it’s as fundamental as a symbolic form as you’ll find in screen interaction. Lastly, it’s something everyone is intimately familiar with; we have a lot of pre-defined ideas about what it represents and how it behaves; Deconstructing it should be fun and hopefully insightful. I’ve also worked with it before.
I’ve made no decision to limit my explorations to the cursor as of yet though.
Today’s study looks at very simple mapping. I’m convinced that fascinating interaction can result from combinations of simple manipulation. Changing the mapping on a cursor’s position — but keeping it linear in general — is pretty stale however, especially if you just want to look at one study at a time.
One thing I hate about showing interactive or motion based work compared to static material is the inability to evaluate projects side by side. So if individual pieces are all going to be boring, let’s look at them all at once.
Of course this produces emergent qualities, but then again… that was kind of the original point…
I found it interesting in this study how the cursors form and reform little collections that seem to each become individual entities with new qualities.
UPDATE: I’m putting a moratorium on daily updates. Blame Dourish.
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