king talk

We received a mail from a friend this morning, who told us that our Arduino Icon Redesign was brought to life. The Massimo Banzi´s students of CIID (Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design) baked a cake based on the icon for the Arduino IDE.

And Massimo Banzi seemed to be surprised, but happy. How long did he spent eating this Arduino Mega Cake…?

via Arduino Blog

Does anyone know about the litl? It´s a so called »Webbook«, a tiny computer without anything, just made for browsing the web and reading RSS-Feeds. This gadget that looks deceptively like a laptop but works nothing like any computer you’ve ever used. The hardware to the user interface to the activities it supports, the new machine created by this Boston-based startup, rejects three decades of convention. But what can you do with it? Just browsing the internet seems to be nice, but the developers should asked theirselfs: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? (John Thackara)

If you want to buy a litl, you a get a small computer which is radically downsized for about 700 bucks (!!!). It has a 12″ display, an Atom Processor with 1,6 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 2 GB Flash Memory, 1x USB and a 802.11g Wifi chip, that´s it. It even hasn´t enough space for a operating system so they offer you »litl OS« which has two modes. A simple grid view and a 3D view based on the z-axis which reminds me of Apple Time Machine.

In my opinion these product has three main failures. First of all it´s a tool which can only do one thing, browsing the internet and receiving atom feeds. This is a nice idea, but chumby is already doing stuff like that. You can get this small device which is able to play wifi radio, play games and use one of 1500 additional applications for about 100 dollar. And chumby offers you a touch sensitive display,…

which brings me to the next failure. It is the way the user is interacting with the product. You can chosse between a reduced QWERTY keyboard, a touch pad and a remote… Why? What´s about touch? What´s about motion tracking? A radical product like these is screeming for new ways of interaction. The litl offers you a very light weight computer with a small display. A touch interface would be a more direct way of navigating and browsing the content especially in 3D mode. Last but not least…

continue reading …

Barely a week has passed since the Deutsche Museum opened up the gates to our latest project, the brand new ZNT (Center for New Technologies). This week the Museum published this »Making of« Clip. Can you imagine that it looked quite like that one week before the opening? With a hundred of willing hands working there and some serious sleep deprivation the exhibition could open in time.

via youtube channel of Deutsches Museum

After weeks of sleep deprivation and a lot of hard work, the ZNT (»Center for New Technologies«) at Deutsches Museum in Munich finally opened its gates to the public today. It’s a fully interactive permanent exhibition about bio- and nanotechnology – with an interaction concept conceived and produced by envis precisely in cooperation Haslbeck Ausstellungsprojekte and other partners – introduces its visitors to the world of very tiny things.

The whole  concept is based on 33 interactive mini laboratories made of steel and glass. They provide the guest with information about the opportunities, risks and the fascination of nanotechnology. The visitors are no longer just spectators – they become explorers in this exhibiton.

The widespread use of digital technology has become commonplace in modern science and is also reflected in the exhibition. The entire front surfaces of the cabinets are actually touch-sensitive panels. By simply pointing to an object, the visitor gets access to additional information on the central information display. This interface then offers further explanatory pictures or short films.

Closing the gap between the visitor and the information as directly as possible was one of our main goals. We created the interfaces, interactions and the media systems for the labs and other special units as well as the motion design of all informal short movies.

A lot of positive press feedback was published just in the last few hours. German TV news show »ZDF heute journal« calls the exhibition a »spectacular, new, interactive show« and the Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer believes it is »the new crown jewel« of the Deutsche Museum. We humbly agree.

You can watch the whole clip of heute journal (Minute: 22:04 – 26:06, German) or visit our ZNT flickr set for some more pictures if you want. Some additional information and an entry at our portfolio will be published asap…

Hello everybody. It´s time to introduce you to the brand new issue no.2 of Germany’s finest magazine for interaction design called weave. It will be released on Monday, the 16th.

And envis has written an article again. This time it´s all about prototyping, but I don´t want to tell more about it. Just go to the next kiosk and grab yourself a weave…