Physical computing, in the broadest sense, means building interactive physical systems by the use of software and hardware that can sense and respond to the analog world. While this definition is broad enough to encompass things such as smart automotive traffic control systems or factory automation processes, it is not commonly used to describe them. In the broad sense, physical computing is a creative framework for understanding human beings' relationship to the digital world. In practical use, the term most often describes handmade art, design or DIY hobby projects that use sensors and microcontrollers to translate analog input to a software system, and/or control electro-mechanical devices such as motors, servos, lighting or other hardware. [Wikipedia]

Physical computing is used in a wide variety of domains and applications.

In museums

Fabricio Dore - IDEO Labs

• What is Sketching in Hardware?
• The napkin sketch is the lingua franca of all design. We all do it because—hundreds of years since we started doing it—it's still the best way to get inspired, to get unstuck, to get real.
• Until recently, electronic-device design has been sprinting up the steep incline of Moore's Law. Our ability to conceptualize early ideas is tripping on its shoelaces. It's hard to simplify the inherent dynamism of an electronic device—no matter how elaborate the margin doodle; it often confuses more than clarifies. And how could it not? Electronic devices are alive and interactive. They gather information about their environment or user, process values, and respond accordingly. Even the most well-intentioned sketch quickly reaches the limitations of the medium.
• Hardware sketches are the tools or building blocks of technology design. They allow the designer to explore experiences mediated by products or staged in spaces without requiring engineering support during creative phases.
• If a sketch of a static device can be thought of as a noun, a sketch of an electronic device must be closer to a verb. So while a designer can create storyboards to determine whether a phone should vibrate under specific conditions, like the intensity of light in a given space, to get a feeling for what that really means, a working device—a sketch model—needs to be built.
• With the introduction of the microchip, and the subsequent miniaturization of electronic components, almost to the point of disappearance, came a new set of challenges for designers.
• Although most of the time some sort of software is required, sketching in hardware is more about interactions in the physical world than simply on-screen representations. Hardware sketches are the building blocks of technology design. They allow the designer to explore experiences mediated by products or staged in spaces without requiring engineering support during creative phases.
• Designers should be spending more time creating variations of experiences and running those through users instead of reassembling the building blocks…Reinventing the wheel is not exactly how we should spend our precious time.
• In 2001, Gillian Crampton-Smith, building on her own experience running the Computer-Related Design Department at the RCA, founded the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII) in Italy. During its short life, the IDII graduated some of the best Interaction Designers in the market. From its studios and rooms one of the main components of hardware sketching was born: the Arduino board.

• Tools To Improve The Design Process
• Designers should be spending more time creating variations of experiences and running those through users instead of reassembling the building blocks. I'm not saying tinkering is bad; don't get me wrong. But reinventing the wheel is not exactly how we should spend our precious time.
• Andre Knörig presented Fritzing, developed by the Interaction Design Lab at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam in Germany. It's an open sharing platform that can be used to document and share Arduino based prototypes. Once the assembly is built virtually, the designer can order custom made printed circuit boards or PCBs.

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Intersections of Art, Technology, Science & Culture - Links

Flong

generactive

Physical Computing in Examples

Core77

http://www.physical-computing.de/

experientia

Physical Computing 2012 Linksammlung - Züricher Hochschule

Physical Computing at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Sketching in Hardware Sketching 09

• Since the early 2000s Interface design has become interaction design, and interaction design has come into alliance with architecture [McCullough, 2004].
• New terms have emerged like “ubiquity”, “pervasive”, “tangible”, “spatial or physical computing”. All the above new trends share the same notion; “Now that computation’s denial of physicality has gone as far as it can, it is time for the reclamation of space as a computation medium” [Greenwold, 2003 – p.8].
• All these variety of terms have been used to encompass different activities being carried out, but in order to avoid any confusion I will use the term “Physical Computing” as an umbrella term.
• Simon Greenwold [2003] defines physical computing as human interaction with a machine in which the machine retains and manipulates referents to real objects and spaces. The advocates of this notion demonstrate that physical objects have a sensory richness of meaning that screen-based elements do not. When we see, hear and feel real-world objects we are enabled to train both cognitive and perceptual skills in combination. Such objects can help us create interfaces that are easier, more beautiful and more fun to use [Øritsland et al, 2000].
• Taking into consideration the fact that previous paradigms of cyberspace threatened to degrade the physical infrastructure [Schmitt, 1999], by moving the play into the virtual realm, physical computing suggests a defense of our physical world. Malcolm McCullough [2004] believes that architects and those in related disciplines of the physical environment need to become aware of the challenges and opportunities raised by this new state. They need to understand where technology is going and what it has to do with architecture.

• McCullough, Malcolm. 2004. Digital Ground - Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Greenwold, Simon. 2003. Spatial Computing, Master’s thesis, MIT, Link accessed July 2005.
• Øritsland, T.A., Buur, J. 2000. “Interaction styles: An aesthetic sense of direction in interface design” , NordiCHI conference, Stockholm
• Schmitt, Gerhard. 1999.Information Architecture – Basis and Future of CAAD, Basel: Birkhauser
• Papadimatos, Panagis. 2005. Physical Computing - Using everyday objects as Communication tools, Master’s thesis, University College London, Link accessed April 2014.

Hardware sketches are the tools or building blocks of technology design. They allow the designer to explore experiences mediated by products or staged in spaces without requiring engineering support during creative phases. IDEO Labs

• How the computer sees us
• Personal computers have evolved in an office environment in which you sit on your butt, moving only your fingers, entering and receiving information censored by your conscious mind.
• We need to think about computers that sense more of your body, serve you in more places, and convey physical expression in addition to information.
• Before we invent new forms for the computer, we need to decide why it needs to take new forms. We need to take a better look at ourselves to see our full range of expression.
• To make the computer a medium for expression, you need to describe the conversation you want to have with (or better yet, through) the computer.
• To make the computer a medium for expression, you need to describe the conversation you want to have with (or better yet, through) the computer.

„Physical computing is about creating a conversation between the physical world and the virtual world of the computer. Physical computing is about creating a conversation between the physical world and the virtual world of the computer.“

• The process of transduction, or the conversion of one form of energy into another, is what enables this flow (conversation).
• Your job is to find, and learn to use, transducers to convert between the physical energy appropriate for your project and the electrical energy used by the computer.
• Identify the direction of the energy flows as input or output
• A microphone is a classic transducer because it changes sound pressure waves in the air to a changing electrical voltage. Speakers convert the same energy in the opposite direction. Transducers are the eyes, ears, hands, legs, and mouth of any physical computing system.

• One defintion of interaction: interaction is “an iterative process of listening, thinking, and speaking between two or more actors.„ [Chris Crawford]
• Most physical computing projects (and most computer applications in general) can be broken down into these same three stages: listening, thinking, and speaking—or, in computer terms: input, processing, and output.
• Input transducers (sensors), such as switches and variable resistors, convert heat, light, motion, and sound into electrical energy.
• Output transducers (actuators), such as motors and buzzers, convert electrical energy into the various forms of energy that the body can sense.

• When describing an activity, begin by breaking it down in terms of how many possible outcomes there are.
• The terms digital and analog make it possible for us to be clear about what we’re listening to (our input) or what we’re saying (our output).
• Sometimes we view events in the world along a continuous range of possible states.
• At other times, we only care about the difference between two possible states.
• When two states will suffice, we’ll call it digital.
• When a continuous range of multiple states is considered, we’ll call it analog.
• For example, as you get dressed in the morning you might prefer to know the actual outdoor temperature (analog) rather than just hearing that it’s hot or cold (digital).[1] On the other hand, when deciding to bring your umbrella, you only want to know whether it is raining or not (digital); you don’t care how hard it’s raining (analog).
• In general, digital input and output (I/O) are easier than analog I/O because computers use a two-state, or binary system, but analog I/O can be more fun and interesting.
• If you can use the words “whether or not,” or the word “either,” in describing the input or output, then you’re probably talking about a digital input or output.
• Figure: Digital sensor readings over time:
• 
• If you can use words like “how much” for input or superlative adjectives like “stronger,” “faster,” “brighter,” then you’re probably talking about an analog input or output.
• Figure: Analog sensor readings over time:
• 

• We also need to be clear about how we’re speaking or listening.
• Sometimes we present ideas simply, one after another, in discrete chunks. For example, a simple melody played on a solo instrument lets us focus on the structure of the melody, and how its changes affect our emotions.
• At other times, we present many ideas all at once so that they complement each other. For example, a symphony’s power comes from the experience of hearing many instruments playing different harmonies all at once; each individual instrument’s melody line is important, but the combined effect of all of them presented at once is what we take away from the experience.
• For our purposes, we’ll refer to events that happen one at a time as serial events, and when several events happen simultaneously, we’ll refer to them as parallel events.

• Example: A person walking down a hallway, as seen by a microcontroller
• 
• Analog sensor readings
• 

• Circuits are the glue between the transducers you use to sense and control the world and the computers you use to interpret what’s going on.
• Circuits are usually described in a diagram called a schematic that shows the electrical components and how they are connected to each other.

• A microcontroller is a very small, very simple computer that’s good at three things: receiving information from sensors, controlling basic motors and other devices that create physical change, and sending information to computers and other devices.
• They act as gateways between the physical world and the computing world.
• Microcontrollers are small and cheap. This allows you to explore location-specific projects that embed computers in the most unlikely places.
• Microcontrollers are found in everything from washing machines to light switches. You benefit from this ubiquity, as it has brought down the cost and improved the ease of use of microcontrollers.

• VVVV and Arduino

• A microcontroller is good at listening to switches, but not so good at more advanced multimedia tasks.
• It might send messages to your multimedia computer, which is better at playing sounds or videos.

Original Paper:
[1]Kim Halskov and Peter Dalsgård. 2006. Inspiration card workshops. In Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems (DIS '06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2-11. DOI=10.1145/1142405.1142409 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1142405.1142409

Technique description [1]:

• Inspiration Card Workshop is a collaborative method for combining findings from domain studies, represented in Domain Cards, with sources of inspiration from applications of technology, represented in Technology Cards, to create new concepts for design.
• An Inspiration Card is a 2” by 3” cardboard card on which an image, a title, a description, and a reference is printed.
• We work with two broad categories of inspiraration cards, Technology Cards and Domain Cards.
  • Technology Cards:
    • represents either a specific technology (i.e. Motion Capture) or an application of one or more technologies ( i.e. The I/O Brush).
    • We use Technology Cards as a standard format for storing information on interesting technologies that we have encountered, whether they are of our own design, or that of other designers.
    • Repository CAVI: http://digitalexperience.projects.cavi.dk/frontend/
  • Domain Cards:
    • represent information on the domains for which we design
    • This information may pertain to situations, people, settings, themes etc. from the domain.
    • Domain Cards are typically only meaningful within the specific project for which they were created, and reuse is limited
  • Workshop:
    • The workshop consists of the participants collaboratively combining the cards on posters, in order to capture design concepts.