|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
The success of
the Nintendo Wii is partly because of its
innovative controller. |
|
Better technology by
design |
-- Comfortable?
Probably not if you're reading this online, in which
case your back, shoulders, or eyes might be straining a
bit -- or will be soon. The good news: designers are
getting better at adjusting technology to our bodies and
the way we behave.
You could, for instance, be getting your news on Kindle,
an electronic reading device released by Amazon late
last year. Lightweight and glare-free, it aims to feel
as easy as reading a paperback. Based on early
responses, it succeeds.
Meanwhile old tech standbys like the stylus, mouse and
joystick look increasingly antiquated with the emergence
of recent devices. Take the iPhone, released last year
by Apple.
A popular feature is the way it lets you move screens
with your finger, or zoom in with a pinch-and-expand
gesture. Who needs a stylus? (Similar features have been
added to the trackpads of some Apple laptops).
The upcoming Microsoft Surface lets you slide digital
photos around on a tabletop screen, much as you would on
a regular tabletop. You can enlarge photos, too, by
dragging on their corners with your fingers. It
certainly looks more natural -- and fun -- than using a
mouse.
Nintendo's Wii gaming console, meanwhile, lets you swing
a baseball bat onscreen by swinging the wireless remote
control through the air. Nudge a joystick instead? No
thanks. Of course design evolution is nothing new.
Everyday products have been shaped by centuries of it.
An evolutionary approach
"Cameras are designed a certain way because 100-plus
years have taught us how to design them," notes Ken
Dulaney, an analyst with research firm Gartner.
But computers, cellphones, digital assistants, game
consoles and the like have been given relatively little
design attention and have had less time to evolve. This
is partly explained by the rapid pace of change in the
high-tech arena.
"Rushed-out technology tends to pay little heed to the
user," notes David Humphries, head of insight at
Innovaro, an innovation strategy consultancy.
There are plenty of unfortunate examples. Good design,
he says, "cares" -- and makes the learning process
intuitive. Design-driven hits like the iPod have
demonstrated the commercial value of "caring" about the
user experience.
"Attention-grabbing interface features like iPhone's
swipe gestures and Wii's motion-sensing Wiimote turn
consumer heads better than any marketing tag line ever
could," says Kirk Olson, a consumer strategist at
consultancy Iconoculture.
That's prompting manufacturers to work "harder to
differentiate their products upfront during the
development phase," he adds.
Meanwhile various advances like smaller components and
increased storage capacity have made it easier for
designers to realize their visions. But there's still
plenty of room for improvement, suggests Humphries.
The rarely achieved ideal, he says, is that the device
becomes "invisible" to the user and allows unrestricted,
natural activity.
Smart clothes
Designers are finding other ways to adapt technology to
our behavior. We usually wear clothing and carry things
around, for instance, so designers are finding ways to
piggyback on that.
Backpacks and jackets have solar panels built in, or
buttons for controlling gadgets. Italian fashion
designer Ermenegildo Zegna offers several stylish
jackets along these lines.
The tiny VholdR camcorder from Twenty20 attaches to ski
goggles or a bicycle helmet to help you record your
exploits as you barrel down a mountainside.
Researchers at the University of Michigan, meanwhile,
have developed a prototype knee brace that captures
energy from your movements, so that it can charge
gadgets like cellphones.
D-Rev, a new organization focused on boosting Third
World incomes through smart design, is developing a
small, powerful generator fueled by bicycling. The
peddler, the idea goes, can run a cellphone-charging
business while going about other tasks.
But whether it's tiny generators or the iPhone's touch
screen, designers increasingly are finding ways to adapt
technology to our bodies and behavior. The upshot for
us, fortunately, is a more natural experience. And less
back strain.
Source : CNN
|
|
Pushing paper out
the office |
Are days of the
cluttered office desk finally numbered? |
|
The idea of the
paperless office has been around since the late
1970s but three decades on paper remains hugely
popular. Despite this, there are many ways in which
organisations are starting to cut their paper
consumption.
One of the first step that many companies take is to
turn those reams of paper documents into something
much
more portable.
One particular technology proving useful for this is
Adobe's Portable Data Format.
About 15 years ago this started life as a simple way
to preserve the look and feel of documents as they
were
passed between different operating systems and
computers.
Banks, utilities and many other companies now offer
statements and bills as downloadable PDFs to help
their
customers move towards that paperless state.
|
PDF files and
scanners are essential parts of the paperless
office |
But, said Diana Helander, group manager at
Adobe, it was worth keeping up with the latest
developments in PDF to get the most out of it.
"What you lose if you don't use the current
version of PDF is the opportunity to do things
like include more dynamic content, like Flash;
capturing information from a website, say if
you make an online purchase and you want to
keep the confirmation of that purchase as a
PDF for your records instead of printing it
out to paper," she
said. |
Scanner solutions
Another way to get rid of paper is to scan the
documents and turn them into digital facsimiles. The
relentless
march of technology means today's scanners, even
those found in the home, are more like the very
expensive
ones big corporations use.
They are capable of processing each sheet in a
second or two, regardless of the shape, size or
orientation of
documents. Character recognition software means that
the documents become instantly searchable. The
latest
scanners can even recognise logos and will
categorize each item automatically.
Even better many government agencies now accept
scanned documents as readily as the real thing.
But it is not just big business and big government
that are making better use of scanners. Small firms
are
benefiting too.
They have proved a boon to a medical office that
must keep track of multiple patient documents
generated at
different times and requested by different people.
There, everything is scanned and available in one
place on a secure server to those who need the
information
immediately.
"With filing cabinets and old paperwork you can
always lose, you can always misfile it," says
business manager
Reuvin Alon. "When I need the papers, when I need
some kind of information about the patient, I always
have it.
"I have a lot of papers and charts, so if at a
certain point of time I have to store them I don't
have to go look for storage space, I can always have
them in the computer."
Mail options
Then there are options, such as Earth Class Mail,
that aim to intercept paper before it reaches you,
your home or business.
For a monthly fee, its processing centre intercepts
your post, scans the exterior and lets customers
decide if they want the contents scanned and sent to
a PC, forwarded to your physical location or
recycled.
Ron Wiener, boss of Earth Class Mail said: "Mail is
the least recycled material in our society, only
about 20% of
it actually gets recycled. A lot of it gets shredded
and the shreddings get thrown out and so can't be
turned into paper again.
"We offer the customer both options. They can hit
Recycle or they can hit Shred.
"Of what is opened and scanned almost the entirety
of it is then shredded and recycled."
Organisation considerations
But getting rid of paper does not mean on office or
business functions better. A paperless office faces
the
organisational nightmare as one filled with
documents. All those gigabytes and gigabytes of data
need to be
sorted and searchable.
"Just because it's electronic I don't think that
makes it necessarily any easier," says Diana
Helander.
"It may make it more compact, perhaps easier to keep
track of in terms of where that information resides.
But
not necessarily easier in terms of how you yourself
think through your organisation," she says.
And there are other issues that need considering. At
some point the files need to be stored, burned to
disk and
even encrypted. Even then there is the lingering
uncertainty of how long the PDF format will last.
The final consideration is to realise that if an
office or home is burgled a filing cabinet is a bit
of a chore to carry
away. By contrast a DVD full of documents is easy to
spirit away.
|
|
Tech-stiles: Clothes that
produce power |
Someday, your shirt might be able to power your iPod
just by doing the normal stuff expected of a shirt.
Scientists have developed a way to generate
electricity by jostling fabric with unbelievably
tiny wires woven inside, raising the prospect of
textiles that produce power simply by being
stretched, rustled or ruffled by a breeze.
The research, described in Thursday's edition
of the journal Nature, combines the precision
of ultra-small nanotechnology with the elegant
principle known as the piezoelectric effect,
in which electricity is generated when
pressure is applied to certain materials. |
A microfiber
nanogenerator composed of a pair of entangled fibers |
While the piezoelectric effect has been understood
at least as far back as the 19th century, it is
getting creative new looks now, as concerns about
energy supplies are inspiring quests for alternative
power sources.
For the research described in Nature, Zhong Lin Wang
and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of
Technology covered individual fibers of fabric with
nanowires made of zinc oxide. These wires are only
50 nanometers in diameter 1,800 times thinner than a
human hair.
Alternating fibers are coated with gold. As one
strand of the fabric is stretched against another,
the nanowires on one fiber rub against the
gold-coated ones on the other, like the teeth of two
bottle brushes. The resulting tension and pressure
generates a piezoelectric charge that is captured by
the gold and can be fed into a circuit.
The allure of the idea is that it doesn't take
unusual movement to generate usable electricity.
Pretty much anything someone does while wearing a
piezoelectric shirt would be productive.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
