Overpromise and Overdeliver is a book on how to design and deliver customer experiences in order to create ‘unshakable customer loyalty’. Now the title does make one think this is yet another book trying to convey a theory on how to be the most successful company in the industry, and that assumption is completely right. We’ve seen a lot of them in the last couple of years, which made me wonder; does Overpromise and Overdeliver live up to the theory it’s trying to convey, and to which extend is it applicable to design? … »

During the E3 2009 expo, which was held from the 2nd to the 5th of June, Microsoft presented Project Natal. The project brings human-computer interaction without an electronic input device to the masses. By capturing your full body movement and your voice (and being able of doing this for several people at the same time) it brings gameplay to an entirely new level. … »

Primal Source is an interactive performance/installation which has been created for an art festival in California. They used a large-scale outdoor waterscreen/mist projection system to project a stunning light-show onto the mist. The installation responds to sound emanating from the crowd, thereby letting the crowd create their own performace. That night 200.000 people brought it to life, by walking past the installation. … »

By now we have seen a number of different ambient futures for the web here on Johnny, which almost all include some form of augmenting the physical world. Recently Pattie Maes of the MIT medialab presented Sixthsense, a wearable interface that augments the environment and uses gesture based input. A big difference with the things that we’ve seen here so far, is that this one actually works… … »

Hylozoic Soil is an interactive architectural sculpture created by Philip Beesley, an architect based in Toronto. It can sense the presence of someone or something using proximity sensors and kinetic actuators, and responds with air movement. The result is an incredibly organic sculpture. So organic that the way people tend to interact with it, shows more resemblance with human-human interaction than human-computer interaction. … »

Beautiful Evidence is Edward R. Tufte’s fourth book on visual evidence. His earlier books about this topic where ‘Visual Explanations’, ‘Envisioning Information’ and the highly praised ‘The Visual Display of Quantitative Information’. Beautiful Evidence deals with analytical design and is a collection of critically analyzed (and very beautiful) images, principles and pitfalls which apply to everything from MS Powerpoint to sculptures. … »

Siftables are small devices which have a graphical display, a number of sensors and wireless communication capabilities. They are small tangible user interfaces which can function individually or in a group, and can be manipulated to interact with digital information and media. … »

From October 2008 to January 2009 the Milwaukee Art Museum hosted the first exhibition in an art museum. It was an intuitive, digitally developed interactive art. Here are two video’s to give you an impression of the exhibition. … »

Chris Harrison and Scott Hudson (Carnegie Mellon University) came up with a way to use any flat surface as a gesture based input device (Scratch input). An absolute breakthrough which makes extraordinary interactions, like for example controlling your television or music player with your wooden kitchen table, possible. … »

Augmented reality is hot… new uses seem to pop up every day. In the last months we’ve seen augmented Japanese slaves, Mini cars driving in magazines and many other interesting solutions. This time it’s LEGO’s turn to try out this interesting technology worldwide in toy stores. … »