Archive for the ‘UI’ Category
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
The 22 August 2009 edition of The Economist includes the article “Snap it, click it, use it” which describes how mobile phones are increasingly being used to read bar codes on products which then present detailed information to consumers. The article begins:
NEGOTIATING his way across a crowded concourse at a busy railway station, a traveller removes his phone from his pocket and, using its camera, photographs a bar code printed on a poster. He then looks at the phone to read details of the train timetable displayed there. In Japan, such conveniences are commonplace, and almost all handsets come with the bar code-reading software already loaded. In America and Europe, though, they are only just being introduced.
See the full article at http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14257721
Posted in Mobile Devices, Technology, UI | 1 Comment »
Monday, July 6th, 2009
Last but not least, we have Vishal Shah’s MEng report on his Fair Tracing Facebook application. Vishal has done a really good job in exploring the social media potential of fair trade — looking at how users can discover new ethical products through friends’ recommendations.
Vishal has been working with the project for two years, previously as an EPSRC summer student, so he deserves special thanks!
Posted in Coding, Fair Tracing project activities, OII, Open Source Software, UI | Comments Off
Sunday, July 5th, 2009
Ivan Antipov has been working on some Fair Tracing software for his BSc Computer Science degree. He has written an Android application both for accessing information on the consumer end, and to allow producers to upload information into the FT database. This is a great demonstration of how small-scale farmers could interact with this kind of ethical product information system. You can read more in his report — thanks Ivan!
Posted in Coding, Fair Tracing project activities, Mobile Devices, OII, Open Source Software, UI | Comments Off
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
Guiseppe Constanza is completing his MA Communication Design degree at University of the Arts London Central Saint Martins with a project called foodtracer.
Food tracer uses d-touch visual markers which can be read at point of sale with a mobile phone. It is designed to address several “ethical issues” such as carbon cost, packaging, local food, Fair Trade and organic. Many of Guiseppe’s ideas take the thinking behind the Fair Tracing project into exciting new directions. He says: “Fair Tracing has been an importnat source of inspiration for me”.
Have a look at Guiseppe’s project website: http://www.giuseppecostanza.it/foodtracer/index.htm
Foodtracer is also on display at the Central Saint Martin’s 2009 Finalist Exhibition, June 22-25 between 10am -8pm at Candid Arts, 3 Torrens Street, London, EC1V 1NQ
Posted in Data Visualisation, Design, General, Tracing & Tracking, UI | Comments Off
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
Pattie Maes of the MIT Media Lab is working on projectable user interfaces:
It lets you walk up to any surface (including your hand) and interact with the projected interface. It responds to his gestures. If you hold your hands like you are taking a photo, the camera takes a photo, and then when you go back to the office, you can project all your photos and sort through them using natural gestures. She showed a projection of a phone keypad on her palm and dialed a number to make a call.
She shows a video of a guy looking at products in a supermarket. It projects a green, yellow, or red dot on a product, telling you whether or not it’s eco-friendly (or whatever criteria you set up). If you look at a book, it’ll project the Amazon rating on the book. Projecting a video of a news story on a blank rectangle on the Wall Street Journal!
Posted in OII, UI | Comments Off
Friday, December 19th, 2008
As we enter the final stage of this project, it is worthwhile to note the following academic workshops co-organised by Dr Ann Light, all of which included various inputs from the Fair Tracing Project:
• CHI2007: Workshop on ‘UUCD and International Development’, April 2007.
• CHI2008: Workshop on ‘HCI for Community and International Development, April 2008.
• OzCHI2008: Workshop on ‘Inclusivity, Interaction Design and Culture’, December 2008.
Posted in conferences, Design, Events, Fair Tracing project activities, UI | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
The clothing company MADE-BY (based in Copenhagen) is “decicated to promoting sustainable clothing manufacture…You can recognise items produced…by the blue button…[Using its Track&Trace technology] you can even find out who made your T-shirt or skirt, and who picked, spun and wove the cotton”. (Source: “Track and Trace: Who made your skirt?”, Jackpot Magazine, Autumn 2008, p 77.)
“MADE-BY Track&Trace follows the trail of your clothes. With the MADE-BY code in your garment you can find out where your garment was made and by whom. In this way, MADE-BY brands open up the doors to the production process…MADE-BY Track&Trace is the very first system to trace the origin of clothes.” (Source: MADE-BY Track&Trace page at http://www.made-by.org/tracktrace.php?lg=en.)
Track & Trace is a database system…for manufacturers that was developed by MADE-BY in collaboration with Organic Exchange and the English IT company Historic Futures. Every link in the production chain enters production information into the database and forwards it to the next link. This gives the brands as direct access as possible to production data from the other suppliers in the chain. Consumers can enter the code found on the clothing label into a simplified consumer page to see who was involved in the production of their clothing”. (Source: ”Track&Trace: what is it?” at http://www.made-by.org/downloads/TrackTrace_EN.pdf)
Posted in consumers, Data Visualisation, Design, General, Supply Chains, Technology, Tracing & Tracking, UI | Comments Off
Thursday, October 30th, 2008
Anyone recognise the place? As avid users of our Fair Tracing Demo will have spotted, this is Valparaiso Harbour in Chile, where the Los Robles Wine gets shipped off around the globe to Sainbury’s harbour warehouses in the UK. Dorothea Kleine and Macarena Vivent from the Fair Tracing team went there to see how the container shipments worked.
This August, about one year on from our original visit, Dorothea and Macarena from the Fair Tracing Team returned to Curico, Chile, to meet with the Fairtrade vintners again. For a variety of reasons, including the fall of the US dollar, the Los Robles co-operative was in financial difficulties (see here). The producers who had the Fairtrade certification, however, had managed to line up an alternative buyer for their Fairtrade grapes next year.
The vintners and employees of the co-operative were the first group to co-design our interfaces for Fair Tracing in 2007, so now we came back and presented the three versions of interfaces we have now begun to develop. The producers remain interested in continuing to work with us while the supply chains through which they are trading are changing. We wish our partners all the very best as they have to manoeuvre through these difficult economic times!
Posted in Chile, Fair Tracing project activities, Supply Chains, UI, Wine | Comments Off
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
TimeTube, created by Dipity, the interactive timeline site, takes YouTube videos and arranges them by date, offering a useful (and often unexpected) perspective on search terms.
Posted in consumers, Data Visualisation, Design, General, Tracing & Tracking, UI | Comments Off
