It took us a while to absorb the advancement in interactions that the touch screens has brought us recently (Thank you Apple and even Microsoft) but as it seems, we are already playing with the next big thing in the interaction world, Augmented Reality.

What is Augmented Reality? Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time. ( Wikipedia )

So far, there are many beautiful experiments done with AR, and as a big fan of it, I just want to present a few videos here (If you don't know them already):

Some "Basic" Augmented Reality:

A ugmented Reality Business Cards – 2 nice videos: (From the " Reaction " Blog)

Augmented Business Card from jonas on Vimeo .

AR Business Card from James Alliban on Vimeo .

Zugara’s Augmented Reality Dressing Room : (From TechCrunch )

Augmented reality – iPhone application that helps you find your Mommy… (From Gizmodo )

iPhone 3GS Augmented Reality from Chris Hughes on Vimeo .

Augmented ID: Augmented Reality Facial Recognition for Mobile : (From ReadWriteWeb )

The future is here?

Layar Mobile Augmented Reality Browser : (From ReadWriteWeb )

Microsoft extreme augmented reality : (From Johnny Holland Magazine )

I am so! looking forward for future developments in this area, it amazing!

Mind360.com Beta was launched yesterday very quietly and I am very proud to present it here as its my brother in law brilliant startup :)

Our brain needs training to be in shape, just like our muscles, and this is why Mind360 was created, they offer a variety of games that allow you to practice and improve different cognitive aspects of your brain, and as a member you have a personal training program to improve your cognitive capabilities and strengthen your weaknesses, and do all this while playing and having fun (well not all fun, some is really hard work, but the challenges keep you going).

As described best in Mind360 home page: Brain training games aren’t just for seniors anymore. Now you can hang on to your wits by simply playing the leading scientifically based brain training games on the net. And what better way to strengthen your cognitive skills than by having a fundamentally good time as well. Today’s advanced brain training games help improve your memory, increase your ability to stay focused, plus make faster and better decisions.

As a Cognitive psychologist I am very familiar with Brain training, it was proven to work amazingly, for example on US Air Force pilots, and on US basketball players .

The best thing as I see it is the ability to get a professional automated analysis of your achievements and to see if your progress is sufficient and where to invest more time. This is truly not trivial, and part of the key to get a real improvement.

Here is an example of one of the games "Celebrity Spot" and what you can gain just by playing it.

• Cognitive exercise: Motoric Precision
• Cognitive skill trained: Eye-Hand Coordination
• Objectives: Synchronize mouse movement with click timing

Although it is just in beta and has a few bugs here and there and some of the advanced function are not up yet, it gives a great user experience. and i cant finish without saying one more thing about the design – it is just amazing, my compliments to the designer, clean, professional and beautiful design.

Keep up the good work.

I came across a game developed with and for Amnesty International, called " Pictures for truth ".

About the project: "This game was developed to support Amnesty International's campaign on China. The story and characters represented are fictional. The aim of this project is to sensitize the player to human rights violations"

About the game: "You are a journalist and photographer. A few months before the Beijing Olympic Games, your best friend, Jun Shen, a human rights defender and journalist, calls for help. You will do everything you can to help him. This adventure will take you to China where you will be confronted to many human rights violations.  By investigating, taking pictures and publishing your articles, you will work to solve the problems you encounter and eventually save your friend!"

Anyway... I played with the game for about an hour until I finished the game (Its a short game) with a score of 4000 fame points (Hurray!) and I must say that I liked it, It brought me back to the good old days of playing simple quests. But this is obviously not a game for gamers, its a very creative way to spread the amnesty agenda. And a good work doing so in this way, it really brought it to my attention.

In terms of usability the game is pretty intuitive, and I have just one main remark - It was really hard to learn how to start playing... Why?

This is the first screen you encounter after you load the game

Good idea to show me the game instruction before i play, but i kept looking and looking for the Start playing button, and couldn't find him. I just didn't know how to start the game. After a lot of air-clicking I pressed the instructions button F1 and the instruction disappeared and I could play the game. From my subjective view, this was not so intuitive... so please add a Close/Start/Play button instead of making us try and understand that this is not a pre-game screen, and just a layer of the instructions already opened...

Other than that, and on an ethic level something really bothered me

During the game you need to take pictures of "events" in order to publish articles (each article gives you more fame points). If you manage to get a better picture that shows things in different angels, for examples a bigger focus on the big bad Chinese police and in the background its prisoner, you gain more fame points then just a simple picture of both of them.

What is my problem?

• First, the game objective is to gain "Fame" points by revealing the truth and exposing the real deal. Do Amnesty people do it for the sake of fame?
• Second, the game enforces the art of taking the right picture? Do Amnesty encourage people touch up the pictures so that they will be more effective?

These things make me think a lot about the objectivity in reports, The entire conception looks a bit rotten, But the game is pretty cool, and it does deliver an important message, so go play it .

Came across some games of an Israeli flash game developer (among other things) Eyal Shahar, and one of his games really amazed me - Blind Shooter, the idea behind it is so creative and so "out of the box".

The purpose of the game is to shoot birds of some sort (why birds...) by aiming with the left and right arrows, while you can't see a thing ("see" on the screen shot on your left...).

So how do I know where to shoot? By listening of course... you heard me!

When the target (the poor bird) is to the right of me, I'll hear her voice in the right earphone, if the target on the left I'll hear the voice on the left earphone. In addition the volume of the bird voice changes to give me another indication of how far on the right (or left) the bird is (High volume - closer, Low volume - not so close). when I start hearing the bird on both left and right earphones I can assume that the bird is pretty much on my target. If I aim correctly at the bird, and "kill" it, I'll just stop hearing that bird. (I presume that no real birds died in making of this game :).

It really made me feel blind and helpless, that it made me wish that the indications that were given during the game, were much stronger, but I guess the life of a blind is not that easy, and I feel it is important for us to appreciate and understand it. So go and experience it.

More over the idea behind Blind Shooter is so creative and so "out of the box" and I just love it!

Can't wait to see what will be next, meanwhile I'm going to play again with some of the other games he developed, like this other really innovative one called PAH! - A Voice controlled game.

I came across  a few weeks ago by chance (Thank you StumbleUpon ) with Bart Bonte's games , and I fell in love with them in just a few seconds. I fell in love with its simplicity, and with its creativity level. (The man is a genius).

What makes Bonte games so brilliant?

• Most of them do not include any instructions on how to play the game, you either get it, or try until you do.
• They require you to think differently every time, sometimes it requires you to think outside the box, sometimes you need to think in a very methodological way, and sometimes you just need to do the obvious. But you always have to think.
• When you pass a stage or finish a game, It always gives you a good feeling of accomplishment, you feel like you gained something by playing. Didn't play so many games that gave me that.
• The games are very simple and creative, each game has its own "spirit".

2 games I really adore and I must recommend you to play (I feel that I need to warn you that these games are highly addictive):

• F actory balls 2
• D uck, think outside the flock

I'm so happy when I witness such a great combination of simplicity, cleverness and creativeness ,Bart Bonte is certainly one to follow.

A a usability professional I'm a bit ashamed that I didn't know anything about it, and more ashamed that it didn't occur to me to do some Guerrilla Usability on my neighborhood myself.

If you don't know what is Guerrilla Usability, I'll explain shortly - It means improving usability level with methods that require a minimal budget.  And what I mean  by "Guerrilla Usability raid in your neighborhood"? Walking around finding things that are so horrible to use in your own neighborhood, and making them a little bit (or sometimes much) better. (see notes on the example below)

I saw some wonderful examples of such guerrilla raids when i viewed the blog post Users fix parking ticket machine interface themselves in etre company blog. There I saw some examples of such raids people did to very un-usable products in their neighborhood, here the best example:

Parking ticket machine:

Oh and one last thing, this reminds me of a really cool project that was done in a small supermarket in Israel - web2.0 supermarket - you must watch it:

I fell in love with the raid idea. If you got any cool examples or raid opportunities, let me know.

I read an interesting blog post on the article "Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception" in The mouse trap blog.

In general the experiment described in the article found that "Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions".

The blog post took the article conclusions in to one direction, and I want to take it in another. From brief reading, the article made me think of a creativity and not psychosis... Illusions, imagining things, conspiracies and etc... these can all be examples of creative thinking, and high imagination. To be able to create things from nothing requires a lot of creativity.

Think about it, it might be good to feel lack of control, we don't need to control everything or be afraid of loosing control. Sometimes it is good to flow to where life takes you.  

Next time when you are trying to think of a creative solution to something, or to discover the next big thing, think about it.

Came across this very unique demo of a "Painting game" by Ian Dallas

What fascinated me the most, was the fact that in this game you reveal the world by splattering paint around. You decide where to splatter paint and what parts you think are crucial to be revealed in order for you to progress in the game.

It will be interesting to see if all people will splatter the same things or not, do we view the world differently? do we need the same visual "anchors" to understand the world we are in?

Very creative and innovative, but regarding game play, would we be able to splatter paint for the entire game?

The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.