Category Archives: interactivity

The Most Powerful Arm Ever Invented

This is a project we at Reactive worked extremely hard for over the last 2 months. It’s called ‘The Most Powerful Arm Ever Invented” and this is its story.

The Most Powerful Arm Ever Invented

The Most Powerful Arm Ever Invented

Children with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) suffer from progressive deterioration of their muscles. The kids lose the ability to use their arms and for example sign their name very early in their life. At the same time the Australian government does not have a policy on this disease, meaning there is no research support to help halt or cure DMD. This is why we created The Most Powerful Arm, a bionic arm with which you can help wake up the politicians. Please sign a petition to the Australian government, asking them to start supporting the important research on this crippling disease. Watch the trailer below:

The arm is publicly installed, first in Customs House Sydney, and now in Ariel Book Store. It takes your signature via your Facebook login, also accesible thorough your mobile phone if you happen to be in front of the installation. It then signs the petition for you, with a real pen on paper. It uses the original handwriting of one of the children affected, Jacob Lancaster, which we turned into a typeface. A photo camera will then take a picture of each signature and post it to the respective signee’s Facebook wall.

I really appreciate any help you can give to the cause. We have smashed the original target of 20,000 which was required to have the petition considered by parliament. But the more signatures we get, the more weight it will have. Please add your signature at TheMostPowerfulArm.com and if you want and can afford to, you can also donate to make the trials happen.

Below you find our  Making Of The Most PowerfulArm that explains the whole signing experience in detail.

Here are some photos from our launch day in Customs House.

The Most Powerful Arm is a collaboration between ReactiveFinch and Havas Worldwide / Red Agency. Special shout out goes to Emad Tahtouh who heads the creative technology at Finch and who not only had the idea but also tirelessly worked on all the robotics, video, photos and backend technology to make the arm the most powerful ever invented.

Can’t Touch This! New Interface Challenges

TechMeetups have asked me to speak at their first Sydney event this Thursday, and I’d be very happy if the Sydneysiders among you could come along. There will be free drinks thanks to our co-presenters from Ninefold. But if that alone isn’t enough to coax you into attending, you’ll meet lots of budding startup people, developers, designers and industry movers and shakers. I also have picked a topic that hopefully interests the design/UX/strategy person in you.

Please register your interest for Feb 28 evening here:
http://www.meetup.com/Sydney-TechMeetups/events/95030572

Something that occupies a lot of my thinking lately is the overlap of clicking and pointing. Or more precise how an interface that works with clicking (desktop) blends into interfaces that work with touching (mobile and tablet). And how responsive design is supposed to be the magic glue that makes it work (but doesn’t on its own). And how it changes our expectation of a good web experience, hopping from one device to the next. And us users wanting to be recognised and supported every time.

nissan

Something that goes along the lines of this excellent posts by Josh Clark on ‘Every screen that can be, should be Finger Friendly‘. I’ll throw in my own thoughts and some interesting like this responsive typography experiement, that bases the size of the text on how far away from the screen y9ou are (based on face recognition and tracking via the computer’s  camera)

Screen Shot 2013-02-22 at 3.03.14 PM

Essentially, I will elaborate on an article I wrote for the new SoDA report (coming out coincidentally on the same day).

soda

Internet of Things begins with Ninjas

I wanted to connect two of my previous posts about electronic tinkering with Arduino and the fabulous Kickstarter project LIGHT by Moore’s Cloud (a web-enabled, interactive lamp so to say). NinjaBlocks come at AU $199 a pop and contain an Ubunta-operated mini computer (similar to the LIGHT). And you can control the Ninja’s LED eyes for extra geek appeal. Ninja Blocks hardware Ninja Blocks allow you to hook up any sensory input in an “If This – Then That” fashion. You can use Arduino’s microcontroller language or a ready made sensor, and operate everything from the NinjaBlocks dashboard.

NinjaBlocks dashboard

NinjaBlocks dashboard

Check out their little summary here: http://new.ninjablocks.com

A mate of mine, Nick Clark, who was also part of the ‘Snake The Planet‘ mobile projection, is helping to promote these Ninja blocks. And they are selling like hot cakes. Get amongst it.

Code, Snags and Developer Gurus

The very first event I organised since joining Reactive’s Sydney office was ‘Code and Snags‘, and despite being drummed up pretty much last minute, it was a fabulous success. Some of the uber-developers from Web Directions South including conference director John Allsopp and some of his speakers attended our little shindig in Surry Hills.

Very special mention goes out to three of our guests:
Josh Clark, author of O’Reilly book ‘Tapworthy – mobile design and UX‘, currently working on mobile content experiences for the New York Times. Chatting with him actually inspired the title of my next talk at NEWTup.
Douglas Crockford, author of ‘Javascript – the good parts‘ who with his book majorly influenced how Javascript is being used today.
Paul, part of the team behind ‘Light – by Moore’s Cloud‘, a lamp driven by a web connected mini computer. It is completely open-source and has hit Kickstarter (go, pledge!). See  the lamp’s website here.

It’s safe to say that everyone had a good chinwag over beers and snags – and some serious developer bro-mance was in the air! Reactive Melbourne’s Tech Director Troy and a few of his Melbourne team later joined us for the conference itself – nice write ups of the conference speakers here on Sharepoint and here on Everguide.

Talk at NEWTup with Tom Uglow

Anyone who happens to be in Sydney, here is an invite to a gig I will be speaking at in 2 weeks time. Web Directions / NEWTup have invited Tom Uglow, Creative Director of Google Creative Labs and myself to speak on Wed Nov 21, 6 – 9 pm.

Tom Uglow: Putting digital at the start of the creative process

Tim Buesing: Does Siri make my gestures tapworthy?

So my topic is about the multitude of user interfaces that have matured in recent months: touch, voice, gesture all holding a significant share in how customers access the web, content and advertising. I’ll be exploring what this means for creative ideas and their execution.
More details on this free (including drinks) event and RSVP can be done here: http://newtupnov2012.eventbrite.com
While NEWTup (NEWT = New Exciting Web Technologies) is normally pretty developer focussed, this event is appealing to the wider (digital) creative scene.
And Tom is a killer presenter, so I can only hope to not fall off a cliff in comparison.
See Tom’s previous talk here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvE8wsj5DE8