Stimulant’s Surface Experience for Kodak

Kodak, a stalwart exhibitor at the annual Print tradeshow, did something different in 2009. They bucked the industry practice of bringing truly massive commercial printing presses to the show. Instead decided to attract attendee interest with final printed samples, and use a nearly all-digital environment to tell the story of the Kodak technology used to bring these printed materials to life.

Working with Kodak's marketing firm Partners + Napier, exhibit design firm Mirrorshow, and our old friends Obscura Digital, Stimulant created software for Microsoft Surface that allowed trade show attendees to simply pick up a printed sample or object, place it on Surface, and have Surface reveal details on that object's printing methods and what Kodak products were used in its manufacture. We created a byte tag recognition system that's more robust than is typical, so that even large objects could be only partially placed on Surface but still be recognized by the system. Traditional "attract modes" were replaced with local "attract messages" to entice attendees to use the table even when another user was already doing so, leveraging the inherent multi-user capabilities of Surface. Our team also externalized all content so that the client could manage all content themselves, even after the trade show doors opened.

Hundreds of trade show attendees and booth personnel used six Surface units in the Kodak booth without a hiccup during the entire show. Sales personnel found it invaluable to have such information at their fingertips without requiring printed collateral, and trade show attendees could follow along or even acquire knowledge on their own, given the utter simplicity of Stimulant's nearly-invisible interface, based on their own interests and needs.

Stimulant at the Event Design Summit

Nathan, Stimulant's Design Director, will be speaking at the Event Design Summit in Los Angeles next Tuesday! His talk, "Surface-Based Interaction," will be at 10am on Tuesday, September 29, and will cover anything and everything as it relates to table-based computing experiences (including, of course, Microsoft Surface). Every topic will be backed with examples from Stimulant's own work and experiences, so it is sure to be in-depth, informative, and fun. Bring your thinking caps and say hi to Nathan if you see him there!

Surface and Stimulant at Decibel Festival

Decibel Festival starts in Seattle tomorrow, and this year there is a conference portion. One of the sessions tomorrow is on multitouch interfaces for music production and experimentation. We're excited to see the latest from Fashionbuddha, Randy Jones, and Let's Go Outside.

Aside from the speakers, Eric Havir will be bringing a Surface unit for attendees to play with. Stimulant will be there showing off a never-before seen version of our Surface music application, called TouchTones (formerly ToneGrid, now redesigned and much-improved). There will be other apps to play with as well.

The session is 7:30-8:30p, but Surface will be there around 6:00-8:45p. The event is open to the public and will be in the board room at the Seattle Art Museum.

Microsoft Local Impact Map: Surface Edition

Stimulant followed up the excellent reception of theMicrosoft Local Impact Map Silverlight with a special  edition for Microsoft Surface. Drawing on our previous experience with many Surface projects, we saw incredible value in presenting this application in a new medium.

We knew that the Local Impact Map would be used to facilitate conversations about corporate social responsibility between Microsoft and representatives of governments and NGOs. How could we make the map even more collaborative, emotionally engaging, and aid in forming strong conversations around corporate citizenship?

The challenge called out for a fresh approach: build a version of the Local Impact Map for Microsoft Surface. In this way, Microsoft representatives can kick off interactions with their government and NGO contacts, letting them learn how to use the application simply by watching, and then let them explore the map as the conversation continues. All the while, the participants are literally able to look each other in the eye, and neither is in exclusive control of the device, the software, or the content. This makes for an emotionally equitable experience for all concerned. This human emotional connection and transparent communication style is exactly what Microsoft wanted to convey.

The Local Impact Map: Surface Edition shares the same hand-made look and feel as the online application, and is fed by the exact same data sources. We completely refactored the interface to make the Local Impact Map appropriate for Surface, and this laid the groundwork for further innovation.

Lenses hold details and data visualization.

We chose the metaphor of a lens as the cornerstone of our multi-user interface strategy. Onscreen lenses allow for viewing in greater detail. Each lens can even display different styles of data visualization from other lenses, rather than repainting the entire screen with a data visualization that only one user might be interested in. This also allows local content to be freely oriented towards any user. Global filters allow users to hone in on the citizenship topics that matter most to their constituents and communities. Rich support for photography and videos also helps put faces on those helped by Microsoft’s charitable efforts worldwide.

The Microsoft Local Impact Map: Surface Edition is rolled out on Surface units in Microsoft facilities all over the globe.

Nathan talks NUI at Interaction09

Here's Stimulant's Design Director, Nathan Moody, speaking about the design of Natural User Interfaces, or NUI's, at the IxDA's Interaction09 conference in Vancouver in February 2009. Thanks for all who turned out and enjoyed the talk!

We're actually bummed that the random blast of smooth jazz that started playing in the middle of the talk (around 15 minutes in) didn't come through very loudly in the mic, nor did the cameraman catch Nathan groovin' to the smoothness onstage. Ah, well, there's always Interaction10 in Savannah. Enjoy!

Interested in seeing us in person soon? You're in luck: We'll be speaking about installation/destination computing at the Event Design Summit in Los Angeles, doing a hands-on workshop at UXWeek in San Francisco, and talking about NUI at the Heartland Developer's Conference in Omaha!

Project Tuva

Project Tuva is an interactive video application developed for Microsoft Research. It wraps up many of our team's passions in one project: history, interactive video, education, science, and rich internet applications. We are thrilled to be part of the team that brought this exciting video portal to life.

Project Tuva is an interactive video experience that makes learning about science relevant and exciting through annotations authored by researchers and subject-matter experts. Project Tuva launched with Richard Feynman's Messenger Series lectures, a cornerstone set of seven talks at Cornell University in 1964. These videos are enhanced with a number of different layers of contextual information: fully-searchable transcripts and captions, time-synchronized contextual "extras" that link to related web resources, the ability to take notes while watching, integration with Microsoft Research's own amazing World Wide Telescope project, and more. More...

Microsoft Local Impact Map

The Local Impact Map shows the community-level, positive human and economic impacts of Microsoft's citizenship efforts around the globe.

Stimulant loves technology that tells a story and makes a difference, so we were especially thrilled when the Microsoft corporate citizenship team asked us to design and build the Microsoft Local Impact Map, which details hundreds of stories about the positive human and economic impacts Microsoft makes around the globe.

We used Microsoft's own technologies, especially Silverlight and Deep Zoom, to create a map whose look and behavior keeps the focus on what matters most: the positive impact throughout the world made by the corporate citizenship and responsibility programs at Microsoft.

More...

Stimulant on NUI and Multi-Touch at UXWeek: 2008 and 2009

Stimulant has been invited back to UXWeek this year to lead a workshop on designing large-scale multi-touch user experiences. Following on the heels of our talk from 2008 (above) we'll be diving in much deeper and getting hands on with participants on actual multi-touch equipment.

Nathan is also going to be on-site at the Interactive Displays Conference in San Jose from April 21-23, so please drop a line if you'll be in town and would like to connect.

Stimulant/Surface Interview Series Now Online

OK, it's not quite Frost/Nixon, but we did spend a good chunk of time chatting with Eric Havir from the Microsoft Surface team recently, and he's just finished posting up a 5-video series of the talks. The topics vary from general NUI theory to the specifics of developing for Microsoft Surface, so there's something in there for every NUIthusiast(tm). Here are links to the five posts on the official Surface blog, each links through to a YouTube video. We'd love your questions and feedback, so please hit us up in the comments.

• Part 1: Conversations about Microsoft Surface
• Part 2: What is NUI?
• Part 3: Why is Surface Horizontal?
• Part 4: Losing Touch? Feeling Isolated with Technology?
• Part 5: The Revolution's Impact on Development

“Brave NUI World:” Stimulant at SXSW

SXSW Interactive rolls in to Austin on March 13th.

Darren has been invited to participate on a panel at SXSW Interactive 2009, entitled Brave NUI World: The Fearless Future of Device Interaction and moderated by Lee Shupp. He'll be talking NUI with Kristin Alexander, Director at Microsoft Xbox, Jay Baik Myong, Director at Samsung and Chris Schmidt, Director of occo Design. If you're headed to SXSW and want to connect, please email us at sxsw09 (at) stimulant.io or follow our Stimulant Twitter feed (handle: Stimulant) for real-time updates during the conference.