I’ve started working on a taxonomy of feedback for physical computing. I know, “aren’t there enough taxonomies already”? Well, yes, so what’s one more… It’s not so much that there’s something wrong with the ones I’ve found so far, they just tend to be either narrowly focused — task focused VR or haptics — or are behind a paywall and not easy to share with others.

The goal here is to chart out all the possibilities in an attempt to get people thinking about tactile/haptic feedback from some new angles. Honestly, if I see one more tactor-anything I’m going to hit with a hammer. Enough with the pager motors already! We have 5 senses (arguably 20-something), let’s use more of them.

Starting out, I’m using a simple tree: person -> body part -> sense

person->finger->pressure (sensitive)
person->finger->temperature (sensitive)
person->arm->elbow->temperature (normal)
person->leg->foot->sole->pressure (weight)

So, two questions:

1) Has someone already done a good job of this and I simply haven’t found it yet?

2) Is there a preferred format for this sort of thing that’s easy to mail around and text edit?

(p.s. Yes it’s arguably a folk taxonomy but I’m in no mood for pedantry.)

I’m starting to experiment with a shapeways store.

Currently there’s just an antenna mount of interest only amateur radio people, but I’m working on a few more items on the store that I am prototyping with my Makerbot Cupcake before uploading to Shapeways.

As documented earlier, complete this statement every year while limiting your answer to 15 words or less,

“I want to be a designer because …”

…I like finding and solving wicked problems, and design is full of them.

I’ve got a backlog of stuff to write about, including this really great book by Graham Pullin, “design meets disability”. Things have been hectic at The Job That Does Not Pay Me To Blog so it’s been hard finding the mental energy to be smart about non-work stuff.

Until yesterday, that is, when my partner tripped and broke several foot bones that are needed for things like walking and driving and the like. So not only are crutches involved, but we live in a two-story house with the bath upstairs, kitchen on the first floor, and laundry and storage in the basement.

We knew our 1950s house was nowhere close to ADA when we bought it, and we often joke about how ADA-hostile Pittsburgh is in general.

I guess now we’ll get some first-hand experience as to just how bad it is and what we — as designers — can do to help fix things.

On my recent trip to Japan I took my hand-me-down-but-new-to-me DSLR with the intent of documenting my trip and stuffing my swipe file to the brim. I didn’t take my video camera because it was too bulky and required too much attention: tapes that have to be managed, batteries to be charged and swapped, etc. Once I got there I quickly regretted not bringing the video camera and picked up a pocket-sized HD video camera, a Sony HDR-TGV5.

The DSLR is a great tool for documenting 2d and 3d design, but for 4d design you really need something that can capture video. (It’s true that some DSLRs now capture stunning video, but only for short durations and quantities and you’re still lugging around a full-size camera.) My “should have brought the video camera” regret kicked in as soon as I started experiencing how differently Japanese people interact with technology and their environment. Sure, I could take lots of photos and copious notes, but those aren’t nearly as good as 10-15 seconds of video.

It’s not just recording video that’s important, it’s being able to record video conveniently, in high quality, then easily move the video off the camera. With my full-size, miniDV video camera it’s pretty much impossible to take quick snippets of video given the overhead of getting it in/out of the case, turning it on, etc. On the other hand, the TGV5 is small and light enough that I can carry it in my pocket and within a few seconds have it out and recording video. (It’s even faster than getting my Droid out and recording.) Cheap/free software makes it trivial to take a 10-20 second clip, trim it if needed, then “Save As” for Flickr or Vimeo.

As an experiment I’m starting to document design — especially 4d design — using only short video clips. I’ve posted a couple of short clips to a new flickr set, “Japan + Design” which I’ll be filling with video and still clips as I get around to processing the backlog of photos.

There’s no chance of my getting rid of the DSLR any time soon as there’s no substitute for huge glass when it comes to taking good photos. However, I have stopped lugging it around unless I’m intentionally on a trip to take hiqh quality photos as the TGV5 is becoming my “go to” camera for documentation and swipe files.