Dr. Byron Reeves, author of Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete, outlines his views on how virtual worlds and videogames are going to transform our work environments. He discusses how the large numbers of virtual inhabitants (WoW, SL and other youth demographic virtual worlds) are inherently going to alter the needs and requirements of online collaboration within work place contexts.
Great article by Chesbrough and Garman in the Harvard Business Review about open innovation and how companies in lean economy times - can make strategic moves - to reduce costs of research and development through outsourcing or spin-off ventures.
I particularly liked the diagram of the Inside-Out Process, where internal projects of a company are moved outside the company walls to the most sensible strategic destination. I think this diagram aids in understanding how OOM CREATIVE connects with a client’s project. We advance research and development through the design and development of digital environments ranging from information visualisations through to virtual environments. The expertise and skills of digital environments aren’t necessarily core to a company business, but when engaged, can be an important part in the communication, understanding and development of an innovation strategy.
It’s not every day that the Deputy CTO to the White House compliments your work. Beth Noveck (Deputy Chief Technology Officer, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) gave a great keynote outlining the new initiatives of the Obama administration regards games and digital media at the Smart Tools for Smart Power Conference.
I put forward a question via the online chat room asking about the metrics of quality for gaming in these situations since it is such a subjective medium. Beth gave a great answer about how success is not always about numbers of people engaging, but creating new opportunities for people to engage in the ways in which they want to engage.
In a preface to her answer Beth quite unexpectedly complimented my design work and the projects I run with students at RMIT University, and also said it is “… interesting and imaginative work on rethinking the use of public spaces …”. I met Beth a few years back at the New York Law School and it’s great to see her knowledge and interest in this area define the innovative use of digital media to address government initiatives.
An interesting article by Olga Kharif highlighting that 3 of BusinessWeek.com’s annual Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs specialize in 3D applications. Kharif stipulates that the 3D paradigm is advancing due to the fact that even low-end laptops can now run 3D. Software developers are using 3D to allow people to navigate large amounts of data (Cooliris), and new approaches of taking 3D to the world wide web, rather than being isolated in a single virtual world (Sim Ops). The companies featured don’t seem to be radically game changing, however reinforce a shift to integrating 3D as part of daily processes and operations, rather than as a escape, which is a step in the right direction.
A recent set of visuals developed to explain how OOM Creative is developing environments for the immersive internet; designing how digital information and objects translate into shared digital environments.
The images above are diagrams of objects and environments, and the colored elements represent different media channels or information streams.
If one looks closely at the make up or DNA of a media channel one can see that it made from a collection of smaller elements (these could be data, imagery, 3D models etc ).
In the new paradigm of web 3D we can consider 3D digital space as a media channel, which provides a great context to experience other elements from a range of information channels, be it in a platformed or structured space,
or to be experienced in an informational landscape.
OOM Creative is advancing the role of design in these emerging hybrid environments that utilize digital space as a new context for sharing information.
If these ideas are of interest to a project you are developing, your R&D team or business, you can send us a message through the comments form below (remains private), or just drop us a line at info [at] oomcreative.com.
Naturally having work featured in - and attending the opening of - the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at MoMA was a great highlight. An extraordinary exhibition curated by Paola Antonelli was the spatial equivalent of walking through 5 years of innovative art, design and technology blogs. Visualisation - Not Your Usual Interfaces - the section I had work featured in - has resonated for its focus on how designers are considering different scales of information. Most of the visualisation section was based on order of magnitude problems or opportunities to deal with data sets requiring innovative approaches using visual outcomes. Less about illustrating quantity, more about the qualitative and temporal conditions of information, where aesthetics are a driving factor in telling a story through data and image.
OOM CREATIVE is a design consultancy directed by Greg More that specializes in spatial design within 3D digital environments; combining architecture, web and game technologies to develop shared information spaces for business and creative enterprises.
Paul Hyman’s article More Virtual Worlds: Yes, Really discusses how the players of games will become the users of virtual worlds. The following quote from Pavlenyi that isolates a clear statement of how IBM sees virtual worlds being leveraged in the future.
“We believe,” says IBM segment executive Jacques Pavlenyi, “that the ability to connect real-world and virtual-world experiences—and to leverage the strengths of each to reduce complexity and increase productivity—will be a key role that virtual worlds will play.”
It seems a little reductive to state that virtual worlds will increase productivity. Of course in the long term this would be a desired outcome, however in the short term their is need isolate some of their other key values. However I agree with the ability of these spaces to reduce complexity through the sythensis of physical and virtual worlds. Space is a great device for limiting informational content, and isolating key elements of information within a specific context.
Erica Driver and Sam Driver, at ThinkBalm, have released a compelling report The Immersive Internet: Make Tactical Moves Today, For Strategic Advantage Tomorrow for the advancement of the immersive internet in light of current global financial conditions. They present a 3 phase adoption of the immersive internet; Cost savings, Harnessing unexpected business value, Business transformation.
Definition: Immersive Internet
A collection of emerging technologies combined with a social culture that has roots in gaming and virtual worlds. p3
Definition: Enterprise Immersive
Platform Software that, at minimum, includes: a 3D rendering engine, viewer, object and texture library, simulation engine (“physics”), and communication tools. p12
One of the best ways to think about the practice of OOM CREATIVE is to consider the idea of syndicating space. We know how we can syndicate news and information through technologies like RSS, and OOM CREATIVE is forging ahead in thinking about digital architecture and environments in a similar way. How do we broadcast space in meaninful ways? The other day I had a couple of seconds to describe OOM CREATIVE, and this was the one liner,
‘it’s like RSS, but syndicating space instead of news, and how one designs for those type of environments’
As well as director of OOM CREATIVE, I’m also a lecturer of architecture + design at RMIT University, where I recently curated a show entitled Synthetic Environments. This focused on synthetic environments as contexts for research, design and learning. The exhibition features studios, research projects and workshops utilizing virtual worlds, videogames and realtime digital environments for creative purposes.
A recent article by Marty Neumeier argues that business should utilize design to drive innovation. As a designer some of his observations seem like commonsense and in some ways this is his argument, that besides the benefits of designed products design brings processes and ways of thinking that foster new business opportunities.
This visual explains how one can think about information objects migrating between contexts. It’s really helpful in communicating how the same information can co-exist in objective and experiential modes. From left to right; an object, a composition (single user 3D space), an environment (a social 3D space).
It’s interesting in this age of cloud computing - the borderless ether - that countries are beginning to redefine legislation to make companies liable for what happens to their data overseas. A recent article in Australia’s Financial Review (Julian Bajkowski, It’s all change for privacy laws, 12082008, p38) outlined the Australian Government’s first steps in implementing the Australian Law Reform Commission’s 295 proposed reforms. These reforms address the critical issues of consumer information in medical, government and commercial scenarios, in light of cross border data warehousing. These reforms will effect how companies distribute their datascapes, and redefine a new world order of data security and privacy; countries with similar legislation will be able to work more effectively than with those that don’t.
Very short, but interesting, statement about IBM’s take on innovation by Bruce Nussbaum:
You won’t find the words “design” or “design thinking” in any of IBM’s smart Stop—Start ads but look at what they pitch and preach.
Stop: Selling What You Have
Start: Selling What They Need
Stop: Thinking Like A Bank
Start: Thinking Like A Customer
That’s it in 20 words or less. Start with understanding your customer/audience, and work to create something of value WITH them and FOR them. The old days of coming up with something new in the lab and then throwing it into the marketplace to see if it floats are over.
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