The Best UI is no UI

Having Adam Oliveira as a guest speaker was almost like watching a ted talk on the next big five things. Adam is a Creative Director, Digital Product Designer, and technologist. He has worked for top agencies including Organic, Blast Radius, and Saatchi+Saatchi, as well as having been a partner and co-founder of 2 startups. He is currently the Co-Founder, Creative Director and Game Desginer at Blitztream Games Inc. and frequently consults for clients on the creative use of technology in digital and electronic products as well as UX design and IA for web and mobile. His LinkedIn profile has a “Causes Adam cares about” section that I found very genuine because it was very evident throughout his talk that he was very passionate about these causes.

Before Adam spoke about the next big five things, he took us back in time and spoke about how big things happened one at a time. Now, at least five big things are happening currently: Wearables, Connected Appliances, VR, 3D Printing and Robotics, which Adam was very excited about because he has had the chance to dabble in or at least experiment with a lot of these areas. Although these big things are very nascent at this stage, they are still very well known.

WEARABLES

• Nike plus shoes: have a slot where you can put a pod inside and it tracks your biometrics when you’re running, such as distance, speed, gps etc…
• Smart Watches: uses tactile feedback in wearables.
• Myo Bracelet: picks up electrical signals around the muscles in your forearms so when you actually move your fingers it knows and it responds to it. Kind of like that Tom Cruise movie Minority Report. It’s very interesting for UI design because it’s no longer a visual design process; it’s a physical design process that we have to look at.
• Smart ring by Mota: Adam explains how the concept of being able to wear not just one smart ring but multiple rings to do different things is pretty cool.
• BCI (Brain Computer Interface) headset: One of the other pieces of technology that Adam had been working on with Dr. Milos Popovic is a BCI headset that not only has larger degrees of control but also sensory feedback so his device will let you feel wind on your face, or smell different smells or actually feel pressure.
• Adam has been working with combining technologies such as low cost 3d printing hands combined with Milos Popovic’s headsets that allow people to feel as opposed to just controlling a fake hand. He hoping to help Easter Seals (non-profit organization providing opportunities for children with physical and/or mental disabilities.

CONNECTIVE APPLIANCES (SMART APPLIANCES) 

“The best UI is no UI. It’s a UI were you can engage with it naturally” — Adam Oliveira

• Just like wearables, connective appliances make a difference in a sense that the people who are making it aren’t just doing it for the cool factor, but they’re looking at interesting applications were primarily there is a reduction of the user interface to it’s absolute minimal form.
• Connective appliance matter because of three major reasons: energy efficiency, safety/security, reduction of waste of produce.
• Nest, a home automation company, is trying to reduce energy consumption worldwide. They send nest users a report every month on their energy usage.
• Smart lighting (intelligent lighting) is where the lights switch off by itself. Phillips already created a light switch pad witch responds to the gestures you use allowing you to control the lights all over your house.
• Smart Fridge by Sumsung alerts you on the freshness of our produce to help with the reduction of wasted food/produce.
• SnapTell: Acquired by Amazon is an iphone app that allows you to take a photo of a book cover and then directs you to amazon. It basically uses image recognition.
• This is a great concept for people in situations who can’t reach into their pockets to get their phone or use touch screen. For example, if you’re trying to perform a task while wearing a bulky space suit or if you’re deep diving and need to access something.
• Another cool factor is that it has the ability to track biometric data that they couldn’t do before. They provide useful visualization and useful feedback on how they interact with their devices.
• Corning did a conceptual 3 min video called a day made of glass. They show all of the really cool tech applications where glass in involved. For example: a car windshield with a heads-up display, news projection on your living room window, bathroom mirror where you can try different makeups and hairstyles. Information can be integrated into everyday surfaces. For example a preparation surface where you can put a bunch of kale on it and it will decide how heavy it is and how to cut the kale depending on the recipe. Surfaces where they can detect weight and volume etc…Here’s the link to the youtube video

VIRTUAL REALITY (VR)

• Oculus rift: Although the resolution and frame rate are a lot higher, it still has that motion sickness element. We will start to see some interesting applications once they actually overcome the motion sickness.
• Microsoft Hololens: Allows you to see the world around you transformed with 3D objects floating, virtual screens on walls and your living room covered in virtual characters.
• Google Glass: For adam, it was a bit of a disappointment because he thought it was going to be more of an AR piece but it turned out to be a tiny notification thing. Google says they’re working on Google Glass 2 with the founder of Nest.
• The Verge by Sony: It’s their version of the Google Glass but it’s more modular. It just clips onto any eyewear.
• AR and VR matter, but AR in particular is where things become more interesting because of all of the applications where we need to overlay information onto the real world. To Adam, it’s the idea/concept of augmentation that allows human to essentially become super human through this technology giving us access to information.
• Adam believes that AR has a lot more applications than VR. He’s been working with AR since 2007.
• We all know knowledge is power, but most of us can’t know everything. If we are connected to the cloud, then we actually have access to almost anything. That gives us a lot of power.
• We’re starting to see conceptual applications in fields like medicine where they are using things like VR and AR to simulate surgery prior to actual surgery. This software will actually generate all of the risks for a surgeon preparing them for unexpected situations.
• Adam has been doing some work with an organization called Accessible Media Inc and they are talking to people who are essentially blind. They’re finding that way finding, maps and gps are huge components for people who can’t see. As result we will start to see more of AR applications that convert visual information into audio information.
• Be My Eyes is a brilliant social media app that connects blind people with volunteer helpers from around the world via live video chat.

ROBOTICS

• Once they get over things like battery life, range, etc.. we will start to see some really awesome stuff in areas where Adam likes to call ‘remote tasks’ where you get to send a robot to do something that you can’t do yourself. For example: aerial photography, mitigation of risks in dangerous situations of being able to send a robot to take care of a hazardous chemical leak, or using robotics to do repetitive tasks.
• Drones: Adam is doing some consulting for a start-up that allows swarms of drones to work together autonomously. For example aircraft inspection— when a plane goes into a hanger, aircraft inspectors come in to do tedious and repetitive inspections where most of the time they don’t find anything wrong. They are limited to what they can physical see whereas drones can be equipped with multi-spectral sensors to look through a structure and see what’s inside.
• Amazon has these drones (early stages) that are capable of delivering pay loads. Here is a link to there youtube video
• Orbit: A little toy designed by Steve Castellotti, founder of Puzzlebox Productions LLC, created the Puzzle Box Orbit to be controlled by the Brain Computer Interface (BCI) headset. Steve specifically uses the emotiv which is at a very primitive stage. It really just flies up and down at the moment based on your focus and concentration span. Steve is finding that there is lot of use for this is things like stroke recovery or other traumatic head injuries.
• The Lotus: Another one of Steve Castellotti’s producst that he released last year that is essentially a robotic flower that opens and closes. It was originally designed as a feedback mechanism for meditation. He has paired it with other forms of wearables that track your daily biometrics so that you know if you had a good day (lotus opens) or bad day (lotus closes)
• Anki Cars: Little toy cars sold in the Apple store for around $50 each. The concept is a self-learning intelligent toy cars. They drive around this track and the app on your iphone lets you control the weather, tire traction, and the cars will drive as if they are in those conditions. When you introduce other cars, they will observe how the other car drives and learns to drive more competitively. You obviously need more than one car to get the full experience.
• Hugh Herr is an American rock climber, engineer and biophysicist who lost both his limbs below the knees. He has creating prosthetic limbs that actually detect the nerves and electrical signals around the muscles that do function to simulate natural movement in the limbs. Here is a link to the Ted Talk
• Eythor Bender is the CEO of Berkeley Bionics, which augments humans with wearable, powered and artificially intelligent devices called exoskeletons or “wearable robots” Here is a link to the Ted Talk

3D PRINTING

• This is the ability to fabricate anything, anytime, anywhere on demand.
• Adam has a neighbor who consults for various hospitals designing and fabricating replacement parts for MRI’s using a 3D Printer. He actually 3D Printed and built a working desktop MRI that comes in different versions.
• NASA had been doing a lot of work with 3D Printing of food.
• Someone has already started printing food from sustainable sources such as algae and earth worms which comes in powder form and has a shelf life of 25 years. The goal is to create sustainable food that doesn’t expire for developing countries to also reduce waste. NASA of course had to get their hands on this technology for their long haul space flight missions.
• The Open Hand Project (a kickstarter project) basically figured out how to 3D print a robotic hand for $300, which is amazing considering these hands costs upwards of $10,00 dollars.
• Anthony Atala has been 3D printing functioning kidney’s for patience. When it comes to organ transplant one of the biggest problems is the rejection because your body rejects anything that is not genetically coded to your body. Anthony is able to take a persons cell and reprint their kidney’s, a process that takes about 9 hours to print. There are less side-effects due to the fact that it is your own DNA. Here is a link to the Ted Talk

It’s very exciting that we’ve already come this far in these areas. What’s really cool is when we actually start seeing a lot of these things converge. For example combining 3D printing with Drones. You might have a busted car part deep in your transmission and your option is to rip apart your transmission and replace that part, or send a little 3D printer drone that can be controlled through gestures or intelligence and it can go in and actually 3D print the part in place.

Thank you Adam for a very inspiring and informative talk!

Adam Oliveira Linkedin     |     Adam Oliveria Twitter

Blitztream Games Inc.