Innovation

The Kinect, for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, came out almost a year ago. It’s a control interface that uses only motion sensors and voice recognition to control the gaming console.

Most people give me an odd look when I say I took a class on “Science Fiction Prototyping.” It’s not exactly a clear term. Are you prototyping science fiction stories? Prototyping some other kind of fiction using science? Prototyping science with fiction?
Bingo!

The term innovation is often used, in conversations that I’ve been around, to describe product innovation. If you haven’t invented a new product or greatly enhanced a technology, then it’s not called innovation.

Last week Justin and I went to the University of Washington Human Centered Design & Engineering Corporate Affiliates Day. (See my post about that event)

It used to be a futuristic fantasy exclusively portrayed at the box office, where artificially intelligent machines guised as humans could walk, talk and ride motorcycles with one hand while toting a sawed-off shotgun in the other.

Crafting and reviewing at the overall design strategy of a product is one of those upfront actions that helps to get all involved parties to agree on a consistent look, feel and design philosophy for that product's interface. Identifying the various business goals, user requirements and technological constraints helps the team set reasonable success milestones.

With developments in computer vision technology such as depth-sensitive cameras, engineers are innovating new means of interacting with machines.

I’ve been following, with some interest, over the last few years the open data movement. For me it started with Hans Rosling’s 2006 TED talk: Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen.

Last Fall, Karyn, Jessica and I attended the Gel Health Conference in New York. It was an amazing experience.

The Open Data movement is starting to see some positive returns. Listen to Tim Berners-Lee speak at Ted regarding the progress made in just one year.