Kick-Off workshop of the Playful Experiences project

Playful Experiences is a new project in the Mobile Life Centre. The main purpose of the project is to understand what constitutes enjoyment of using a product; what kinds of experiences the product can elicit, and how to design something that evokes certain kind of experience. The kick-off workshop of the project took place in a beautiful cosy house in Bergianska trädgården, Naturens Hus. Together with 3 researchers from Nokia Research Center in Tampere and a group from the Mobile Life Centre (Ylva, Henriette and Nicolas) discussed and decided what we want to achieve in this project. From the playful experience of flirting to language differences around the word "playfulness", the discussions were intense and promising for the next steps of the projects. You can read more on the project on the Mobile Life website.

Video of GlowBots

Here's a video of GlowBots!

GlowBots are small round robots that displays visually appealing shapes on a color-intense hypnotizing display. Interacting with the robot encourages it to seek out and communicate its shape to other robots. Through their rich interaction a flora of shapes emerges that entices interest and engagement in an open ended fashion for joy and entertainment.



GlowBots are here presented by Mattias Jacobsson.

LIREC meeting in London

Ylva and Sara are going to London 8-10 of February to attend a LIREC meeting. Their ambition with the meeting is to discuss how to work with scenarios as a design-tool in robot research, and to go from this towards design requirements.

I'm back!

After being on parental leave during 2009, I'm now looking forward to face new interesting research challenges! I'm very happy to soon start developing forecasts about future scenarios of technology use, in a collaboration project between Wireless@KTH, Mobile Life and several industry partners. I'll also continue my work in the LIREC project about everyday robotics and ethics. Furthermore, I'm hoping to soon contribute with new funding and interesting projects at the Mobile Life Centre!

Cheers,

Sara Ljungblad

LIREC project in New Scientist - Learning to love to hate robots

Maria Håkansson has been interviewed in New Scientist about our long-term study of the robotic toy dinosaur Pleo in the homes of families. Read the article here!

SIGGRAPH Asia in Yokohama

Lars Erik Holmquist chairs the Emerging Technologies section of SIGGRAPH Asia 2009, in Yokohama, Japan. In Emerging Technologies, attendees experience works that show how computer graphics and interactive techniques are evolving to adapt to new technical, social, and environmental conditions. We collaborated with Södertörn University to produce a teaser video for the exhibition:

Maria receives grant from Nokia Research

Maria Håkansson has received a personal grant from Nokia Research Center Helsinki to do a user study of location-based services from a non-urban perspective! The project is planned for January-March 2010.