Joe Lamantia.com

The good peo­ple at Chi Nether­lands just posted video of my talk “Play­ing Well With Oth­ers: Inter­ac­tion Design and Social Design for Aug­mented Real­ity” at the Web and Beyond 2010 here in Ams­ter­dam in June.  It’s couched as a col­lec­tion of design prin­ci­ples for the oncom­ing cat­e­gory of social aug­mented inter­ac­tions made pos­si­ble by the new medium of aug­mented real­ity.  But this talk is also a call to action for all mak­ers of expe­ri­ences for the emerg­ing engage­ment space of every­ware to focus on the human and the humane per­spec­tives as we explore the new inter­ac­tions made possible.

The out­line of the talk is roughly:

1. Overview of aug­mented reality
2. Social inter­ac­tion per­spec­tive on cur­rent AR experiences
3. Def­i­n­i­tion of ‘social aug­mented experiences’
4. Com­mon inter­ac­tion design pat­terns for AR
5. Social ‘anti-patterns’ lim­it­ing design of aug­mented experiences
6. Design prin­ci­ples for social aug­mented experiences

(The audio qual­ity is quite good, and the cam­era­man cap­tured most of the slides nicely — so this is a record­ing worth watching.)

This year’s TWAB fea­tured sev­eral talks on aug­mented real­ity, ubiq­ui­tous com­put­ing and related top­ics; you’ll find record­ings of these on the Chi Ned­er­land Vimeo chan­nel: http://vimeo.com/chinederland

Many thanks to the orga­niz­ers and vol­un­teers for putting on such a well-run event!

TWAB2010: Joe Laman­tia — Play­ing well with oth­ers: inter­ac­tion design and social design for aug­mented real­ity from Chi Ned­er­land on Vimeo.

Thanks to all who came to the Muziekge­bouw on a lovely early sum­mer day to talk about the emerg­ing engage­ment space of social aug­mented expe­ri­ences for the third edi­tion of The Web And Beyond con­fer­ence in Amsterdam.

For ref­er­ence, here’s the ses­sion descrip­tion from the offi­cial program:

Aug­mented real­ity blends the real world and the Inter­net in real time, mak­ing many new kinds of prox­im­ity, con­text, and loca­tion based expe­ri­ences pos­si­ble for indi­vid­u­als and groups. Despite these many pos­si­bil­i­ties, we know from his­tory that the long term value and impact of aug­mented real­ity for most peo­ple will depend on how well these expe­ri­ences inte­grate with ordi­nary social set­tings, and sup­port every­day inter­ac­tions. Yet the inter­ac­tion pat­terns and behav­ior we see in cur­rent AR expe­ri­ences seem almost ‘anti-social’ by design. This is an impor­tant gap that design must close in order to cre­ate suc­cess­ful AR offer­ings. In other words, much like chil­dren going to school for the first time, AR must to learn to ‘play well with oth­ers’ to be valu­able and suc­cess­ful. This pre­sen­ta­tion reviews the inter­ac­tion design pat­terns com­mon to aug­mented real­ity, sug­gests tools to help under­stand and improve the ’social matu­rity’ of AR prod­ucts and appli­ca­tions, and shares design prin­ci­ples for cre­at­ing gen­uinely social aug­mented expe­ri­ences that inte­grate well with human social set­tings and interactions.

I’ve posted my slides for the Where 2.0 panel “The Next Wave of AR: Social Aug­mented Expe­ri­ences” orga­nized by Tish Shute. After a review of the cur­rent state of aug­mented real­ity expe­ri­ences in terms of the social inter­ac­tions sup­ported (using the met­ric of ‘social matu­rity’), it shares 9 prin­ci­ples for cre­at­ing social AR expe­ri­ences that peo­ple will enjoy and value.

Spe­cial points to those who spot the embed­ded April Fool’s joke…

Radio Johnny (brought to you by the good peo­ple of Johnny Hol­land mag­a­zine) just pub­lished an inter­view Jeff Parks recorded with me shortly before the New Year, dis­cussing aug­mented real­ity, why it’s of inter­est for Expe­ri­ence Design, and some of the areas of likely devel­op­ment we’ll see in AR in the near future.

You can down­load the pod­cast, check out the show notes, and sub­scribe to the full Radio Johnny feed here: http://johnnyholland.org/2010/03/08/radio-johnny-joe-lamantia-on-augmented-reality/

Hubris alert: I admit to hav­ing grandiose schemes to influ­ence the evo­lu­tion of an emerg­ing medium, by con­sis­tently hec­tor­ing the world on the impor­tance of tools for sim­ple con­tent creation…

2009 was a big year for aug­mented real­ity, and there are many pre­dic­tions that 2010 will be even big­ger; with accom­plish­ments com­ing in the form of new tech­nolo­gies, devices, busi­ness mod­els, and ways of hav­ing fun.  But even as we go about build­ing this emerg­ing medium, we’re still rely­ing largely on old-media style cen­tral­ized under­stand­ings of the pro­duc­tion mod­els, form, and con­tent of the aug­mented world.  What hap­pens when we grasp the new social and inter­ac­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties of aug­mented reality?

I’m part of a panel titled The Next Wave of AR: Explor­ing Social Aug­mented Expe­ri­ences that’s address­ing this ques­tion at the Where 2.0 con­fer­ence in San Jose in late March / early April.  We’ve got a good group of speak­ers that includes Tish Shute (Ugo­trade), whur­ley * (whur­leyvi­sion llc),Jeremy Hight (Mis­sion Col­lege, CA), and Thomas Wro­bel (Lost Again).  Our goal is to look ahead at how aug­mented real­ity will soon evolve to include — or be based on! — mean­ing­ful social inter­ac­tions and dynam­ics at small and large group scales.

In the spirit of co-created social aug­mented expe­ri­ences, we’re ask­ing for audi­ence con­tri­bu­tions: in the form of sim­ple sce­nar­ios that describe the future of social AR.  What will it feel like? Who will you inter­act with?  How will these expe­ri­ences change every­day life?

Panel Sum­mary (full descrip­tion on the Where 2.0 site)

This panel will dis­cuss shared aug­mented real­i­ties, con­sid­er­ing some of the essen­tial pos­si­bil­i­ties and chal­lenges inher­ent in this new class of social aug­mented expe­ri­ences. The for­mat is pre­sen­ta­tion of a small set of sce­nar­ios (defined in advance, with audi­ence input) describ­ing likely future forms of shared aug­mented real­i­ties at dif­fer­ing scales of social engage­ment for dis­cus­sion by a panel of lead­ing prac­ti­tion­ers in tech­nol­ogy, expe­ri­ence design, net­worked urban­ism, inter­face design, game design, and aug­mented reality.

Cur­rent aug­mented real­ity expe­ri­ences put who you are, where you are, what you are doing, and what is around you at cen­ter stage. But we can already look beyond the first stage of inter­ac­tions assum­ing a sin­gle user see­ing sim­ple arrows and tags indi­cat­ing POIs, and begin to explore shared (multiuser/multisource) aug­mented real­i­ties.
These social aug­mented expe­ri­ences will allow not only mashups, & mul­ti­source data flows, but dynamic over­lays (not lim­ited to 3d), cre­ated by dis­trib­uted groups of users, linked to location/place/time, and syn­di­cated to peo­ple who wish to engage with the expe­ri­ence by view­ing and co-creating ele­ments for their own goals and benefit.

Share your sce­nar­ios for the Next Wave of AR in the com­ments or else­where (tag nextwaveAR socialAR), and come to Where 2.0 and see the panel!

UX Mat­ters just pub­lished Anony­mous Cow­ards, Avatars, and the Zeit­geist: Per­sonal Iden­tity in Flux.  This is the lat­est install­ment of my col­umn on ubiq­ui­tous com­put­ing and user expe­ri­ence, and it takes on the ques­tion of how per­sonal iden­tity is chang­ing is a result of the rise of dig­i­tal tools, ser­vices, and mea­sure­ments for iden­tity.   Iden­tity is a fun­da­men­tal aspect of expe­ri­ence, so it’s crit­i­cal that we under­stand what is hap­pen­ing to this uni­ver­sal ele­ment.  ‘Anony­mous Cow­ards’ is the first of two parts, focused on under­stand­ing how dig­i­tal iden­ti­ties work, and are dif­fer­ent from what we know.  Here’s an excerpt:

Dri­ven by dra­matic shifts in tech­nol­ogy, eco­nom­ics, and media, noth­ing less than a trans­for­ma­tion in the makeup and behav­ior of our per­sonal iden­tity is at hand—what it is, where it comes from, how it works, who con­trols it, how peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions use and value it. As a direct result of this trans­for­ma­tion, the expe­ri­ence peo­ple have of per­sonal identity—both their own and the iden­ti­ties of others—is chang­ing rapidly. As design­ers of the blended dig­i­tal, social, and mate­r­ial expe­ri­ences of every­ware, we must under­stand the chang­ing nature of per­sonal iden­tity. And now that human­ity itself is within the design hori­zon, it is espe­cially impor­tant for design to under­stand the shift­ing expe­ri­ence of dig­i­tal identity.

The sec­ond part will look at the impli­ca­tions of these changes for our expe­ri­ence of iden­tity.  As I put together my pre­dic­tions for what iden­tity will be like in 10 years, I wel­come input — what do you think?

I’m very happy to announce that Inside Out: Inter­ac­tion Design for Aug­mented Real­ity — the lat­est install­ment of my col­umn Every­ware @UX Mat­ters -  is live now.  (Tim­ing is some­times the writer’s friend, as I was at the Layar event Mon­day night here in Ams­ter­dam just the day before, and had the chance to talk with some of their team.)

AR is more of a per­spec­tive and class of expe­ri­ences than an instance of new tech­nol­ogy, so I wanted to approach the sub­ject from the spe­cific per­spec­tive of user expe­ri­ence and inter­ac­tion design.  Reac­tions from the aug­mented real­ity com­mu­nity are pos­i­tive so far; Claire Boon­stra of Layar, and no less than the inim­itable Tish Shute of Ugo­Trade, have all been kind enough to rec­om­mend it.  Thanks to them and to every­one who’s tweeted and posted this one.

As we explore the role aug­mented real­ity will play in our gigan­tic exper­i­ment with every­ware, we should keep in mind that the map is not the ter­ri­tory.  But there is no deny­ing an effec­tive map will surely help point the way as you try to find your way around a strange new coun­try.

What hap­pens when *every­thing* is des­ignable? When the bound­aries between human­ity, tech­nol­ogy, and the larger envi­ron­ment dis­ap­pear? Design­ing Post-humanity: Every­ware In the Far Future, the lat­est install­ment of my col­umn on user expe­ri­ence and ubiq­ui­tous com­put­ing in UXmat­ters, takes a look at these ques­tions. Post-humans, ubi­comp, and sci­ence fic­tion may seem like strange ter­ri­tory for user expe­ri­ence pro­fes­sion­als, but by con­sid­er­ing these kinds of futures today, we make many impor­tant deci­sions about who we will [all!] be tomorrow.

**Update: Bruce Ster­ling just posted about it in his Beyond the Beyond blog at Wired. Thanks for notic­ing, Bruce!

Two quick updates on things hap­pen­ing other places.

First, the lat­est install­ment of Every­ware: Design­ing the Ubiq­ui­tous Expe­ri­ence (my col­umn for UXmat­ters) was pub­lished back in March. It explores the world of Ver­nor Vinge’s story Syn­thetic Serendip­ity from the expe­ri­ence design per­spec­tive. Vinge is justly reknowned as an SF author, but what makes Syn­thetic Serendip­ity worth read­ing closely is the dense col­lec­tion of ideas it shares: aug­mented real­ity, wear­able com­put­ing sys­tems, a network-based co-creation econ­omy open to all par­tic­i­pa­tion by peo­ple of all ages, the games vs. real­ity inver­sion, gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences in adap­ta­tion to tech­no­log­i­cal change, etc.

Mostly, I like Syn­thetic Serendip­ity as an entry point into the ubiq­ui­tous com­put­ing space because it presents a pic­ture of the future from the view­point of an ordi­nary kid, who has ordi­nary con­cerns; go to school, play video games, stay out of trou­ble with friends.

In the com­pan­ion piece in draft now, I look much fur­ther ahead, explor­ing sce­nar­ios that con­sider what hap­pens when the bound­aries sep­a­rat­ing humans from the envi­ron­ment blur and dis­solve, and human­ity itself becomes an object of design.

Sec­ond, and related, Jeff Parks just posted the pod­cast of a group dis­cus­sion on ubiq­ui­tous com­put­ing that he orga­nized at the IA Sum­mit in Mem­phis. You’ll hear me along with Jeff, Steve Baty, Will Evans, Matthew Milan, John Tir­mandi, Joe Sokohl, Todd Zaki War­fel as we share exam­ples, ideas, and ques­tions about the inter­sec­tion of user expe­ri­ence and ubiq­ui­tous com­put­ing. Thanks to Jeff for mak­ing this hap­pen — it was a fun ses­sion, and I hope you enjoy lis­ten­ing as much as we enjoyed record­ing it.

I’ve been focused on under­stand­ing future direc­tions in the land­scape of dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences recently (which nicely par­al­lels some of the work I’ve been doing on design and futures in gen­eral), so I’m shar­ing a sum­mary of the analy­sis that’s come out of this research.
This pre­sen­ta­tion shares an overview of all the major waves of change affect­ing dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences, some of the espe­cially forward-looking insights around shifts in our iden­ti­ties, and the impli­ca­tions for those cre­at­ing dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences.
The 8 waves dis­cussed here (are there more? let me know!)

• Dig­i­tal = Social
• Co-Creation
• Dig­i­tal Natives
• Itʼs All a Game
• Take Away
• Every­ware
• Con­ver­gence
• See­ing Is Believing