Yesterday me and Paul went to i-design at the southbank centre which is apparently “the UK’s leading conference about interactive design – the web, mobile, experiential, virtual worlds, and more.” They had some interesting speakers with people from Tinker and Fabrica but it was a shame that the talking topics didn’t really progress from just an introduction of people’s work into a debate, which seemed to be what everyone was expecting. Anyway there was still some nice work shown especially from Brendan Dawes (Magnetic North) and Paul Dawson (Conchango) amongst many. Here’s some (slightly blurred and far away) photos below.

Pics: (from top) Brendan Dawes – Magnetic North,  Paul Dawson -Conchango, Andy Cameron – Fabrica, Image from Ann Longley’s Presentation – “Interaction Design Opportunities”

After days of having to work underneath a table trying to stick leds to the bottom of glass and burning my fingers with hot glue the table is now finished!  So the hardware is in and we so far have one game, Pong to play. Here’s some pics of the table in action >>>>>

Each button sensor is surrounded by a ring of leds (orange for digit )   the menu button has a bolder ring with double the amount of leds and the slider is distinguished by surrounding brackets of leds on each end.  Each sensor’s leds are controlled independantly and can be switched on/off depending on whether that sensor is being used for a game. e.g. If a game only requires the slider sensor and one button then the leds round the other buttons can be switched off showing the user what sensors are in play and what aren’t.  Also if the games table is not in use then all the leds can be switched off completley, and with the projector off as well and all the electronics hidden underneath, the table just looks like a normal meeting room table and it’s secret identity as games table remains a secret…. ha!

Here’s our clever box that hides all the electronics and is held together with velcro so that we can still open it and fiddle with wires. How clever is that?? yes very…thanks!