Nuclei is an interactive table application concept

1. A tangible interaction project by
Alexander Morosow and Valeria Querini

2. INDEX
THE CHALLENGE
1
OUR PROCESS
2
BRAINSTORMING
4
RESEARCH
AND INSPIRATIONS
7
THE CONCEPT
14
CONVERSATIONS AS NUCLEI
16
CONTEXT
18
TECHNOLOGY
21
PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
25
THE FINAL RESULT
37

3. THE CHALLENGE
Nuclei was ideated and developed during the
2013/2014 edition of the Tangible Interaction
Research course at BTK.
Our goal was to come up with a design based
on the idea of “the beauty of waiting”.
1

4. OUR PROCESS
2

5. OUR PROCESS
3
We approached the task with a media neutral
vision of the problem, extensively researching
the subject.
Since we consider the aestethic and
informational dimensions to be equally
important in our design, we focused our
efforts in both directions.

6. BRAINSTORMING
4
Emotions
Psychology
Invisible Design
Passive Interaction
Speech Recognition
Biofeedback
Social Science
Waiting
Interactive Furniture
Group Dynamics
Experience Design
Adaptive Lighting
Sound Design
Interior Design

7. BRAINSTORMING
Our initial brainstorming session touched
various fields and subjects, we then focused
on waiting situations set in different spaces
and on the activities that people carry out in
those contexts.
5

8. BRAINSTORMING
6
SaFety
WorrieS
Fear
Looking gLaSS
outSide
FeeL
touCh
ConverSation
reFLeCtion
See
exCLuded
grip
death
SiLenCe
obServe
hidden
meta
experienCe
reLaxed
hand
ComFort
5 Senses
“Where am i?“
meditation
LoSt
Light
Waiting
path
Smooth / SoFt
FingerS
muSiCaL inStrumentS
guiding
LighthouSe
paSSion
Jazz
Waiting Loop
SoundtraCkS
paSSive
not moving
moving
movieS
interaCtion
Stagnation
advertS
boredom
Queue
gameS
media
media
entertainment
ConSuming

9. RESEARCH AND INSPIRATIONS
7

10. RESEARCH AND INSPIRATIONS
During the research phase we looked at
academic investigations of the topic and
considered already existing designs in both
the experimental and commercial realm.
We also researched the possibilities of
existing and developing speech recognition
technologies to indentify the ideal way to
implement our concept.
8

11. RESEARCH AND INSPIRATIONS
MIND BROWSER - Kim Haagen
https://vimeo.com/76508027
9

12. RESEARCH AND INSPIRATIONS
Re:MARK - Golan Levin & Zachary Lieberman
http://www.flong.com/projects/remark/
10

13. RESEARCH AND INSPIRATIONS
HIDDEN WORLDS OF VOICE AND NOISE- Golan Levin & Zachary Lieberman
http://www.flong.com/projects/hwnv/
11

14. RESEARCH AND INSPIRATIONS
REFLECT - Khaled Bachour
http://www.computer.org/csdl/trans/lt/2010/03/tlt2010030203.html
12

15. RESEARCH AND INSPIRATIONS
SKYPE VISUALIZATION - Onformative
https://www.prote.in/en/feed/2011/06/conversation-visualization
13

16. THE CONCEPT
14
The concept beyond Nuclei comes from an
interest we developed in exploring how
conversations emerge during the waiting time
as actions that become possible in the land of
“in-between” created by the waiting moment.
This project is meant to contrast the intagibility
and transience of oral language, giving
further meaning to human social interactions.

17. THE CONCEPT
15
The design of Nuclei features two levels of
interactions: a passive one and an active one.
The passive interaction level is carachterized
by an aestethic approach and the display of
basic informations. It consists in the generative
visualization of current conversations.
The active interaction level allows a deeper
eploration of the informations and consists in
the possibility to expand the visualization and
generate further associations by retrieving
data from external sources.

18. CONVERSATIONS AS NUCLEI
16

19. CONVERSATIONS AS NUCLEI
We explored different design solutions to
represent on the screen how conversations are
generated and how they exist in space and
influence each other.
Ultimately we came up with the idea of
thinking about conversations as composed by
nuclei of meaning around which the single
parts of speech spin around.
17

20. CONTEXT
18

21. CONTEXT
19
Nuclei is an application that can be run on a
variety of devices but is especially thought for
touch devices that are situated in a particular
physical and social space and that allow a
multi-user experience.
The contexts in which it could be implemented
include (but are not restricted to):
•
•
•
•
•
Hotels halls
Museums
Conferences
Cafès
Exhibitions

22. CONTEXT
20

23. TECHNOLOGY
21
credits: multitouch | www.instructables.com

24. TECHNOLOGY
22
The Nuclei prototype was developed to show
a possible implementation of our ideas in a
functional environment.
Processing was used as the prototyping
framework.
http://processing.org
The prototype was presented at
“In Bewegung” in February 2014.
http://www.btk-fh.de/in-bewegung-14

25. TECHNOLOGY
23
Spoken word
The words rotate around
nuclei, during which they
are being processed.
Microphone
Word
Speech to Text (Google Speech)
Word
Natural Language Processing
with Apache OpenNLP
noun
The diagram on the right
shows the steps for each
individual word.
Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Word
noun
Content
AND
Definition
After some time, the words collapse -
Query to wikipedia.org to get
the first line of an associated
article
AND
Retrieve definition of the word
from a wiktionary database via
JWKTL
Touch
On touch these collapsed items open and display content.

26. TECHNOLOGY
24
Resources
Processing 2…………………………
processing.org
Toxiclibs………………………………
toxiclibs.org
Simple Multi-Touch Toolkit…………
vialab.science.uoit.ca/SMT/
STT………………………………………
stt.getflourish.com
Apache OpenNLP……………………
opennlp.apache.org
JWKTL…………………………………
www.ukp.tu-darmstadt.de/software/jwktl/
Gson……………………………………
code.google.com/p/google-gson/
jsoup……………………………………
http://jsoup.org
Mediawiki API………………………
www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page

27. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
25

28. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
26

29. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
27

30. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
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31. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
29

32. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
30

33. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
31

34. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
32

35. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
33

36. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
34

37. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
35

38. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTION
36

39. THE FINAL RESULT
A working prototype of Nuclei was presented
in February 2014 during “In Bewegung 2” an
interaction design exhibition organized by BTK
in Berlin.
37

40. Thanks for watching!
Start a conversation with us:
Alexander Morosow
Interaction Designer
alexander.morosow@googlemail.com
Valeria Querini
Communication Designer
valeria.querini@gmail.com