Creative Technology portfolio

Laser engraving my phone

Herjan — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:49:16 +0000

Since November I’ve been the owner of an HTC Desire Z. I decided I wanted to add a bit of uniqueness to my phone, so I generated a maze with the maze generation algorithm we had to make for Programming with Structures and burned it in the battery cover of my phone. This is the result:

Android apps

Herjan — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 18:33:13 +0000

For the course Ambient Screens, every student had to do some research on a technique we could use for our final project. Of course we had to present our findings to the rest of the group. I decided to tell something about developing Android apps.

Since smartphones are getting the norm, Android is one of the most popular mobile operating systems and – most important reason – I own an Android phone, I decided to focus on Android apps. I made a short presentation about what software you need and a short introduction in the development environment. Slides after the break.

Portfolio updated

Herjan — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:14:42 +0000

Since it’s vacation, I had the time to improve my website a little. I changed the domain name to herjan.me and I updated my portfolio. I added the fridge magnets and our smart parking system. I still have to add my Graphic Design assignments and a report about our telemedicine visualization though… Maybe later ;)

Game in the City

Herjan — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:48:23 +0000

Today I visited Game in the City in Amersfoort, together with my fellow CreaTer Siewart. It was nice to see so much game designers, developers and business people together. There were inspiring talks about marketing with games, serious gaming and keynotes from different people from the gaming industry.

We also got the chance to play a bit with Microsoft’s new Kinect, which was really promising! Now we are convinced that Creative Technology needs at least one of those devices to use in our different projects. The performance in low-light conditions was much better than I expected. Using the Kinect hacked to a PC, we can absolutely make nice motion tracking and 3D capturing applications.

I also met someone from Teach32, a company that develops interactive solutions for class use. They connect several input devices (tablet, mouse, keyboard) to the teacher’s PC, which enables the pupils to give individual input with feedback using a smartboard (or just a regular beamer). It also allows the teacher to adapt the teaching material to the needs of individuals. Now that the infrastructure is there, all they need is content. I see some nice possibilities! To be continued…

GOGBOT 2010

Herjan — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 10:29:24 +0000

The GOGBOT festival will be held from the 9th till the 12th of September in Enschede. Creative Technology will be present with the results of the Have fun and play! project in the Grote Kerk.

Our installation is a virtual canvas that reflects the visitors’ actions in space, to create awareness about reflections of their digital shadow in virtual space. In relation to the singularity theme, the installation acts as a deus ex machina to counteract the predicted technical singularity by inviting people to create playful drawings and objects. The way these drawings are constructed reflects the occurrence of digital shadows in real life and how technology follows us everywhere. With this installation, the Creative Technology students offer an alternative to the cultural pessimism induced by the fear of the coming human machine civilization.

More information about the GOGBOT festival can be found on the website.

Parents’ Day

Herjan — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:38:20 +0000

Every bachelor’s program has a Parents’ Day once a year. At this day, the parents of the first year’s students visit the university to take a look at what their children do at the study. Last Tuesday CreaTe had its Parents’ Day. Since there are not that many students, there also weren’t that many parents. However, with such a small group it was very nice to do some brainstorming.

The parents had to come up with a story line for a game to make young adults (or old children?) more aware of the world around them. Of course the CreaTe study program was part of the story lines! With the professional supervision of Anton Eliens, the parents developed three different story lines. All story lines were applied on the students lives by the parents.

Robot cleaner interface

Herjan — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 17:33:00 +0000

Some weeks ago I wrote about our robot vacuum cleaner for Human Factors. By now, we finished our interface prototype. We ran some tests with test subjects and the results were quite positive! Later on, I will post some more information and the report on my portfolio page, but you can already check out the interface prototype. It’s a bit slow and I didn’t test it in Internet Explorer, so better use Firefox instead.

Creative Exploration of Structures

Herjan — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:00:21 +0000

Last week we finished the course Creative Exploration of Structures. Although the name doesn’t sound like it, it was a mathematics course. It was about some less common subjects of math: infinity, the golden proportion, self-similar structures, etc. We proved some classic math theorems ourselves and tried to make some nice images with fractals. At the end, we all had to write an essay on a (more or less) math-related topic. I chose to write mine about anamorphosis. The result can be found in my portfolio.

Moodboard

Herjan — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:55:29 +0000

For the course Interactive Visualization, we held a moodboard election yesterday. The assignment was to make an interactive moodboard with Unity. The subject was not specified, so we could use our own creativity for that. The results of the election can be found here, together with the submissions of all students. My own moodboard can be found here. (Unity web player is required, ~2MB)

Telemedicine: an interactive visualization

Herjan — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:40:19 +0000

For the course Interactive Visualization Jan Kolkmeier, Douwe Bart Mulder and I are working on a visualization of a telemedicine scenario. The idea behind the telemedicine application is to create a platform with which care givers, care takers and relatives can communicate and to help the people who need care. The system designed by the telemedicine department at the University of Twente is called Julie. Besides the ability to facilitate communication between people, it can also keep up tasklists for patients; remind them to take there medicines or to do exercises and warn the caregivers in case of emergency.

To illustrate the working of the system, we’re making a visualization of a nursing home. People can walk around and discover how the systems reacts to several different events, such as heart attacks.

The latest version of our work can be found here. (Installation of the Unity browser plug-in is required.)