Report UseWell kickoff meeting
On Monday 22nd of February partners of Usewell met at the Media & Design Academy. It was the first chance for many of the partners to meet each other and to share their particular backgrounds, knowledge and interest in the area of research, design and innovation. The kick off meeting began with a presentation of the Usewell project concept. In her presentation, Liesbeth Huybrechts, UseWell research leader at the Media & Design Academy (C-MD), presented her research into existing illustrated models of user-centred design strategies. This included visualisations created by the Belgian User-centred design consultancy Namahn, Liz Sander’s graphical interpretation of design research across various user-centred domains, Anne Nigten’s collaborative creative tool called The Patchingzone and tools such as Ideo’s method cards, the creativity tool created by the design and innovation consulting firm, IDEO.
puntKom #2 – SoundCoding – Why Mr Blob needs to be happy
Since January 2010 the educational program Communication & MultiMediadesign (with the support of the Social Spaces group) is organising the so-called puntKom-sessions.
puntKom is a series of informal meetings (each second Thursday of the month). It is a mix of crispy lectures, tasty workshops, bite-sized performances and yummy demos. In short, a meeting place for those passionate about media, culture, design and technology!
The first puntKom dealt with Serious Gaming & Digital Bastard Culture and there were lectures by Roman Kirschner & Mirko Tobias Schäfer.
puntKom #2 was all about SoundCoding, how code can create sound. Each participant had a small talk (of some ten minutes) and afterwards people could have a better look at the different projects (and drink a free beer of course). We saw Mr Blob, a project by C-md-students Danny Leen & Thomas Lammers. They created a “cuddly” interface which should help to settle disputes on difference in musical taste when you’re having a party or when you’re sitting in a bar: by “stroking” Mr Blob, you will draw his attention. If you are gentle enough, Mr Blob will be happy and the music in the bar will change to the music you like (using your Last.fm-profile). Well, for more info, just check the movie below…
making of the BLOB – interactive social music creature from Thomas Lammers on Vimeo.