Description

Indyfund is an international project fund and a contact network targeted mainly for artists and activists. The network structure of Indyfund is flat and trust-based — that means every member has an equal status and that they have all been invited and recommended by other members.

Every member pays a membership fee (€4/month) that is automatically contracted via credit card. 95% of the revenues generated by membership fees are placed in a project fund. In addition, other sources of funds like sponsorships and grants are added to the fund. The remaining 5% is used to manage administration and maintenance costs.

Projects can be documented.

As a member of Indyfund you are enabled to publish project applications, i.e. request funds for your project. As a member you can also influence the real-time funding system by placing a vote for your favored project.
On the basis of votes, the system gives every project a share of the current cash flow. This, in turn, enables the system to calculate an E.T.F. (Estimated Time of Funding) for each project currently requesting funds. Due to the fact that members can influence the vote balance at any time, the E.T.F. is fluctuating (Though it has been proved that the E.T.F. is usually quite stable after the first week when most votes have been placed).
The time-based democracy-driven funding system is a critical technology/ideology-component of Indyfund. It allows for transparency in funding matters — members can quickly get an overview of the development.

In addition, there are a number of services provided for members so that they can coordinate their projects and manage contacts. This includes messaging/forum services, news/article publishing, event scheduling, tools for gathering people and finding resources for projects and media-rich project documentations, among other things.

Development process

In spring 00 the main concepts for the organization and the website was laid out in a series of meetings. The conclusions of the meetings where the following:

• We wanted an intranet solution, so that members could prepare and discuss projects privately (as of now there is no publicly available information about Indyfund on the site.).
• We wanted a powerful tool, which could possibly need — and allow for — a slightly steeper learning curve than the usual website. We knew that some members would use it extensively. In addition, many members would personally introduce new members to the site, in effect teaching them how to use it.
• We wanted to minimize administration and maintenance.
• We needed to apply for a grant.

A panel provides quick navigation.

During summer 00 I developed a design that was intended to reflect the meta-nature of Indyfund, resulting in a strict grayscale appearance with few redundant visual elements. No logo was designed (since its use was prohibited in the rule-set of Indyfund) — a discrete city skyline came to serve as the only visual identification.
In August 00 I created a click-through prototype. The prototype was accepted with minor changes, and work began to implement a functional site. Since the project group consisted of volunteers, we had limited resources, and in the beginning implementation work progressed slowly.
In January 01 we received funding from the Future Culture Foundation. We then set up a project group coordinated by Andreas Nordwall and me.
The site was beta-tested by a number of users before it was opened in Stockholm on Mars 30 2001.

After receiving additional funds from the Swedish Culture Fund in Finland in late 01, the site undergone a major revision.

The opening ceremony.

The UI was updated with dynamic elements. A navigation-panel and a history-function (listing all changes/entries made by members) was provided. Some usability issues were solved in discussions with members. The entire site was updated to support key web standards such as XHTML, CSS2 and ECMAscript.

Present situation

Today Indyfund has 150+ members from many cities in Europe. Several projects has been funded, coordinated and documented using the tools on the site. Administration and maintenance levels are exceptionally low, and we expect the member base to double during the next 12 months.
Another major site revision is due in 2003, and there are plans for requesting funds from the EU. «

Introduction

City5 is developed to function as a city guide platform – that means it is designed with customizability in mind. A customer can embed City5 into e.g. a portal, load any xml-formatted content into desired channels and easily brand the UI by adding corporate color-schemes and icons. City5 uses state of the art technologies – it enables users to browse cities by navigating a dynamic map, and apply layers with geo-contextual information such as restaurant recommendations on the fly. It is also possible to bookmark map locations in a web browser and later get driving directions to these locations via e.g. a mobile phone.

Development process

The home page.

We started development by analyzing the existing market. We did this by looking at 50 existing city guides, trying to generalize target groups and find good solutions to problems.

We then identified and prioritized a number of use cases, which we then modelled using UML-diagrams.
In collaboration with pReview design, we worked out a UI-concept. It was difficult, because we were constantly forced to work on a meta-level, trying to foresee possible content-, structure- and design customization needs. After a few iterations of changing use case-diagrams and draft screens, we eventually decided to construct a click-through prototype with a white label design and data set.

During implementation I acted as a connection between programmers and product managers. We ensured site usability, performance and accessibility by utilizing web standards such as XHTML, CSS2 and ECMAscript and by following the W3C accessibility guidelines.

Present situation

City5 is one of gate5’s flagship products. Several major customers are considering deployment on their portals, and a version 2.0 is under development. «

Introduction

Guide5 is a city guide- and navigator, designed for portability over a broad array of mobile devices. It can wirelessly download media-rich, geographically relevant content such as images, audio and movies, but it also functions without a network connection using city information packs.

It can also make use of various positioning technologies to track the position of the user. Users can send messages to each other in a city and leave messages attached to locations. Buildings can be directly highlighted and browsed. Various information channels can be layered directly on a smoothly animated map.

Development process

Highlight a building by tapping it.

This was a challenging project from a designer’s point of view, because even though we had to develop a UI for devices with limited capacity and restricted input/output methods, we very still building a native application. Since we had an excellent team of programmers who knew how to make full use of this fact, we were able to do fairly advanced graphics and animation.

Eventually it was decided that we would develop two applications – a native one that would be running on Linux/Windows CE/Windows/Car Navigation-devices and a light version based on Java that could be used for e.g. 3G-handsets.

We started the design process by identifying key uses for the product. We continued by extracting specific use cases and then discussed these accordingly. There were many new issues to be solved; how, for example, should a user grant the localization of him/her from another user, and how should location based messaging work?

Map navigation was also an issue: how could navigation be consistent across platforms with different input methods (Pens, mice, keyboards, keypads)?

To test different navigation paradigms, I built a series of prototypes that we could test directly on the devices.

After deciding on one of the paradigms – a map-centric UI, with most UI elements and information appearing on demand as overlays – we set out to model the use cases in UML and to produce concrete UIs. After much discussion and refining we ended up with a whopping 120 case screens.

To assist the programmers, we developed an interactive specification that included links between use cases and case screens, textual descriptions and annotated case screens. As it turned out, the specification was good enough to be used for customer presentations.

In all, Guide5 is a groundbreaking application, and it is clear that it will take a while before it will reach the mass market. An early version of the product was demonstrated at CEBIT 02, and it was very well received. «

Description

Gilles Peterson Worldwide 2

During the last years I have been focusing on sampling and sound collage-work. Most of my music is groove based, but lately I’ve also been experimenting with various cut-up techniques and ambiences.

Since joining up with Sonar Kollektiv, I’ve done a couple of remixes and exclusives. For full discography and gig dates, see my official website. «

Description

Kloss was designed to solve a common problem, and that is the fact that currently more and more Djs are moving from playing records to playing using purely digital equipment.
While traditional record players are still very successful because they offer good standard interfaces for music mixing, computers offer unsurpassed flexibility and many new possibilities.

Mixing music with a computer can be done in many ways; although most are quite primitive and not well adapted to e.g. club environments (The most common way being using keyboard and mouse). Today computer-based Djs always have to bring their own equipment to be able to play in e.g. a club, which is complicated and expensive.

The interface prototype

We wanted to created an intermediate solution that would allow Djs to play records and files in a mixed fashion, either using a full digital screen-based interface or a combination of analog and digital interfaces. The solution could be permanently installed in a club and Djs could bring their own material on e.g. a DVD or by download over an Internet connection.

Development process

During our first discussions we realized we would have to build a customized computer to satisfy our needs.

We acquired the needed PC components, including 2 DVD-players and an extra sound card for multiple output possibility.
For the prototype we used a standard 3U electronics box that we modified using a water-cutter. We then installed custom components like a power switch and rubber details for the DVD-players.
Touch screen specialist Telac were kind enough to lend us a robust touch-screen that could be used as the main interface.

Robust 14” touch screen

I developed a UI prototype that was designed to mimic the functionality of a professional mixer and dual CD player, and to aid the fact that it can be hard to control UIs with small controls from a touch screen.

In the end the UI was never implemented in a real application – instead we used available third party tools to try out the touch interface. We also thought about alternative hardware interfaces, but since there where a lack of standard components it would have been too expensive to build a prototype.

The fully functional prototype was used for live Dj-sets and was also featured in a Swedish magazine.
The project was cancelled due to time and funding problems. Recently, similar products have reached the market, such as Native instruments Traktor, Ableton Live and Stanton Final scratch, but we have not yet seen compelling hardware/software-solutions. «

Description

The nerd confronts his destiny

In 98 Palle Derkert and I produced a short film for a competition held in Borlänge, Sweden. The competition was held at a gathering for computer enthusiasts, and so we decided to write a story about an excessive computer user — a nerd.

The film let us follow the nerd as he is catapulted out of his monotonous life, and is faced with his destiny in an escalating series of events.

Since our budget was limited, we decided to make use of techniques to disguise the fact that we were using semi-professional equipment at best. The result was a silent movie, with a musical score built from sounds from various vintage films. We also processed the video through a number of filters, generating a convincing look. «