Tom Wujec studies team dynamics and puts on workshops around team building and prepares groups to solve large and complex problems. During his workshops he gives teams The Marshmallow Challenge, an 18 minute challenge to build the tallest structure from a few items including spaghetti and marshmallows. Interestingly, kindergarteners produce some of the tallest structures. Tom chalks up their success to iterative prototyping and trying lots of ideas. On the contrary, business school students do the worst.

Ji Lee, Creative Director at Google, speaks at the 99% conference about his personal endeavor in 2002 to break out of the creative constraints of his advertising job by creating his own art project. Ji’s ad-spoofing Bubble Project entailed printing out stickers in the shape of word bubbles and sticking them on advertisements all around New York City. Ji would return later to document what people would write into the bubbles. Amusing, political, and esoteric, the bubbles were a hit and spawned campaigns by others. Ji now advocates for using personal projects to provide an outlet for personal creative freedom, create platforms for others to collaborate, meet new people, and to learn new skills.

James Archer, Managing Director at Forty (a design and marketing consultancy), posted a great webcast explaining how people make purchasing decisions and gives some very practical advice for designing websites seeking new users and customers. Potential customers fall into four different categories (called Decision Modes): spontaneous, competitive, humanistic, and methodical. The categorization depends on two scales. The first, fast or slow, and the second, logical or emotional. By taking into account the information each of these consumer types look for, you can ensure success in communicating the value proposition and convert more customers.

Tan Le, head of Emotiv Systems talks at TED about their creation of the EPOC, a brainwave reading headset. The EPOC has won a 2010 Red Dot Award for design, and uses new algorithms to read the brainwaves of any individual. Unlike previous brainwave reading headsets which take a long time to set up and cost on the order of tens of thousands of dollars, the EPOC is available now for $299 on the Emotiv website. The applications for the device are incredibly diverse and endless as it provides the ability to control any digital device with one’s mind. Emotiv is currently seeking developers and researchers to expand upon the platform and come up with new applications for the device to usher in all new and exciting human computer interactions.

Philip Zimbardo, the man behind the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, talks at RSA ( Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) about how people perceive time differently. This perception is sometimes faith based, geographically based, or may be indicative of one’s age. The result of which directs one’s behavior in the world. The presentation is fascinating to say the least and Philip recommends first recognizing how other’s perceive time and then take that into account to better understand where they are coming from. RSA has posted a brilliant 10 minute animated featurette, and the full 41 minute talk can be found after the break as well.

Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We’re trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.
- Philip Zimbardo

In an effort to counter the frequent aggression and violence against public service employees in the Netherlands, an interactive billboard has been created to inform otherwise casual onlookers on how to take action. The interactive billboard uses a pre-recorded clip of an aggressive act happening and combines it with a live camera pointed at those in view of the billboard. The final composition is both striking and effective at conveying the problem at hand and moving onlookers to take action.

The Machine Orchestra brings together custom-built robotic musical instruments and human performers with modified instruments, unique musical interfaces, and hemispherical speaker-pods. The ensemble combines KarmetiK’s international lineup of artists and musicians with students in the Music Technology & Technical Direction programs at the California Institute of the Arts.

Microsoft Research presents its case for the inclusion of pen input along side of touch input on Tablet PCs and other touch-enabled computers. While Microsoft and Apple have taken opposing views on the need for pen input on computing devices, there are indeed good arguments on both sides. Unfortunately the more obvious and useful cases for pen input, such as sketching, are slightly less academic, making researchers strive to come up with more novel uses. In any case, several intriguing use-cases are presented and perhaps they will inspire more practical applications down the road. It seemed like only yesterday when every multi-touch computer simply demonstrated rotating and zooming photos.

In an effort to re-imagine the out of the box experience and make it easier for older people to understand new technologies, this collaborative group has indeed created a couple imaginative solutions. The first solution being a book with cut outs where the physical components rest while instructions surround the components. The user is then guided through the setup process until finally it is ready to use. Another idea was to include cards, which when tapped on the device, provide instructions for a given task. Lastly, a map was designed which allows users to familiarize themselves with the menu system without diving into layers and layers of menus. This project was a collaboration between Clara Gaggero, Adrian Westaway, Samsung Design Europe, and the Helen Hamlyn Center.

Smart Design, an award winning design firm, has a new tool in their bag of research tricks and is showing it off in this new video. The idea entails having users spend 15 minutes writing a breakup letter with a given product. By doing so, users expose their emotions buried beneath the surface and enable the designers to understand the emotional connection between people and the products.