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Kimiko Ryokai
Assistant
Professor
Information School &
Center for New Media
UC Berkeley |
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School of Information
UC Berkeley
314 South Hall
Berkeley CA 94720
Tel: 415-269-1513
Fax: 510-642-5814
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Office hours:
Mon 12-1pm (110 South Hall)
Tue 3:30-4:30pm (110 South Hall)
Wed 2-3pm (314 South Hall)
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| My
research focuses on building new expressive tools
that take advantage of people's familiarity with
the physical world, and studying how new media expand
the interaction space and the change that could
be brought out in the way people perceive this extended
interaction space. My research investigates the
potential of new interactive media that push us
to actively expand the way we perceive the world
and make new meanings. |
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| OUR
CONNECTION TO PHYSICAL OBJECTS
My
work builds on people’s relationships with physical
objects. Physical objects are charged with
history, narratives, and memories of people, both the
ones who created them and the ones who interacted with
them. We usually do not have access to this information
about our physical objects. Enabling access to it opens
up a whole new set of possibilities, as it provides
an extended space for design, communication, and learning.
Right now, the link that allows us to access it is missing.
My research is about creating that link, and studying
how those enabling technologies influence people’s lives.
It
would be terrible if we lost the ties to our physical
objects, to the record of our interactions with those
objects that helped us grow up to be who we are, and
even who we could be. Think about your childhood objects:
the teddy bear that you told many stories to as a child,
or the old blanket your mom created the week you were
born. Who will be able to remember and tell those stories
about the relationships with your physical objects?
In the digital age, where more and more of our records
are stored in a digital format, and physical objects
become more and more disposable, are we loosing our
personal connection to individualized physical objects?
Will all elements of our past eventually get stored
away onto an electronic storage device? Will there be
any physical objects left that are dear to us, and that
we would want to pass on to our children?
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| BREATHING
NEW LIFE INTO OBJECTS
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believe that in the future, the memories of our
interactions with both digital and physical objects
should coexist, and even support each other in synergy.
My approach is to allow people to breathe a new
kind of life into the physical objects they interact
with. This has two meanings: One is that people
can breathe new life into physical objects through
the creation of new meaning with the object, be
it via stories, illustrations, or ideas. |
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The
other reading is that the creation of meaning also causes
past information about the object related to the present
action to come back. The challenge is to allow all this
to happen in a meaningful physical interaction loop,
and taking advantage of the richness of human perception
and the skills we have developed throughout our lifetime
by interacting with the physical world.
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WHAT
DRIVES DESIGN?
Different
forces can drive the design. (The following discussion
is adapted from a talk by Hiroshi Ishii in 2006.)
On one level, there is technology driven design. This
approach begins with the invention of an innovative
technology. It then applies this new technology to an
application or field.
On
another level, there is need driven design. This approach
begins with careful observation of an existing set of
problems. It then shapes the design around solving these
problems. This may also be called human-centered design.
Yet
on another level, there is vision driven design. This
approach starts with a preconceived vision or concept,
and then designs artifacts which embody that concept,
and eventually evaluates the new concept.
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the core of a radically new design, there is often
a new vision. Such a vision, however, needs to be
implemented and tested in an iterative process that
involves the intense collaboration of designers,
engineers, and social scientists. |
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