"Computer, is it the future yet?"

Remember the computer from Star Trek: The Next Generation? While there were touch screens in every room and corridor, most people interacted with it by talking. "Computer, where is the captain?" "Computer, increase lighting by twenty percent." "Computer, who won the 1989 world series?" What a cool idea, right? We use speech to communicate with other people, so as computers get more and more sophisticated (read: more like people), we'd eventually start talking to them as well.

So why aren't we talking to our computers yet? Good question, given that the technology is already there. Remember the Motorola Razr? I remember my amazement when I discovered that pressing one of the buttons on the side caused my phone to prompt me to "Please say a command." Even more amazingly, it could usually understand what I said. I'd show this to other people and they'd be surprised that my fairly basic phone could do something so "advanced."

I had a similar experience when I started using a comic book reading app called FFView. It turned on the speech recognition software that apparently came with my mac, and allowed me to control the app by speaking to it. Not only that, but if I wanted to create a new voice command, all I had to do was type in the word and it would be able to recognize it right off the bat! No training or calibration necessary! Of course, this led me to explore this feature more, and I discovered that macs have a lot of voice commands built in, and creating new ones is very easy, as long as there is an associated key command. Check it out for yourself: just go to "Speech" in the systems preferences. Mac help can tell you everything you need to know to start using this feature.

So why have I never heard of anyone using this feature? I'm guessing the main reason is this: the people who would poke around enough to find it are usually computer-savy enough to already use keyboard shortcuts to do the same things, so they have no use for it. Shortcuts, after all, are faster, more precise, and easier to find.

I wonder though: what about people who are not that computer literate? Could this help them? I've got a good guinea pig in mind; I'll let you know how it goes.

The Final Kitchen Crit

The final crit for my festival kitchen crit was today, and I have to say it was one of the best crits I've had at DAAP thus far. Our professor Tony brought in half a dozen local designers to critique our designs, and they had a lot of really valuable insights. Granted, it can be a little frustrating to get criticism from people who haven't been there for all the revisions and past crits, but it is a better measurement of how well you resolved the design. The main criticism I got for my design was that I didn't push things far enough, which I understand. I wasn't really trying to push the envelope with this project; I wanted something that would do a good job of filling the need I had seen simply and easily. Keep it simple, right? On the other hand, I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from the people I actually designed the kitchen for, so I'm pretty happy with my design.

Coop Confirmed!

I've finally got it nailed down: This next quarter I'm going back to work for Sean Mullaney at Quiggie design! I'm really looking forward to it; we had a great time last fall. Sean is an accomplished toy and game designer, and I learn a lot about the industry when I work with him. The only downside is that I'll never be able to tell anyone about most of the things we work on. Ah well, such is the toy invention industry.

The Kettle is Finished!

I'm very happy with how this turned out. Perhaps what I'm the most proud of is the fact that all the details save the silver pipes are functional. Now, I'm also fairly certain that this is one of those projects I'll go back to in the future and refine; the cool thing about steampunk artifacts is that there's no such thing as too much detail, and there are a few features I'd like to add that I simply didn't have time for. Wish me luck on the crit!

Steampunk Kettle Project

Our next project in DesComm is to design some sort of tea kettle using some sort of theme as inspiration. Given that tea makes me think of Victorian England, the first thing that came to my mind was to make a steampunk kettle. Now, given that the steampunk aesthetic is known for very complicated and ornate artifacts, I'm a little worried that I'm biting off a little more than I can chew, but the idea is simply too cool to pass up.

Touch Everything!

While catching up on my RSS feeds, I stumbled across an article about a technology that could turn any surface (even curved or transparent ones) into a multi-touch interface simply by applying a very thin film. You can even put the film under the surface, as long as it isn't deeper than 15 mm. Read about it here.

Protoss Flash

So, since the snow has closed the entire university and I won't have the crit that was supposed to be this evening, I thought I'd post my work here. The assignment was to design a series of three flash drives with a particular brand in mind; I choose to base mine on the Protoss race from Blizzard's Starcraft franchise. Please let me know what you'd think; I've now have a couple more days to tweak it. Thanks!