Medical UI in Deus Ex : Human Revolution
Deus Ex : Human Revolution (developed by Eidos Montreal) is the third title in a series that originated with a game which basically redefined PC gaming. Human Revolutions is set to be released this fall but the studio had already put up some awesome trailers and artwork. I’ve snapped some shots from their trailers below.
User interfaces in games aren’t suposed to look realistic, accurate, or be very useful. They are there to look badass. We can draw inspiration from them when designing real-world UI.
Coming soon!
Medical user interfaces in games
This is a follow up to Medical user interfaces in film. Just like in movies, user interfaces in games aren’t suposed to look realistic, accurate, or be very useful. They are there to look badass. We can draw inspiration from them when designing real-world UI.
Halo: Reach (2010)
“Birth of a Spartan” Extended Live-Action Short (YouTube)
Director: Noam Murro
Agency: agencytwofifteen
Notice the four screens (two on the left and two on the right)
Deus Ex (2000)
DOOM 3 (2004)
Medical user interfaces in film
User interfaces in Hollywood blockbusters aren’t meant to look realistic, accurate, or be user friendly. They are there to look badass. That, however, doesn’t mean we can’t draw inspiration from them. I have taken apart countless UI scenes frame by frame and learned about the studios that designed them.
Some of my favorites ones are listed below. You can find high res pictures by going to studios’ pages.
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Created by Prologue
Iron Man 1 (2008)
Designed by Kent Seki, Visualization and HUD Supervisor + team.
Tony: “Now, when you pull it out just make sure you don’t pull out, there’s a magnet at the end of it…”
Pepper: “What’s wrong?”
Tony: “Nothing, I’m just going into cardiac arrest because you YANKED it out.”
Notice the change in color from blue to red in the screen behind them.
The following is the final fight scene between The Dude Obadiah and Tony. Notice the information bubbles on the right (PET, EKG, EEG, TEMP) in the first and (ARM, ARC, ENV, ICE) in the second (along with PET redlining). Click on the pictures for higher resolution.
The Island (2005)
Designed by Mark Coleran
Star Trek (2009)
Designed by OOO-ii
Click for higher resolution.
Also check out Medical user interfaces in games!
Use of QR codes on food packaging in Japan
I think that the use of QR codes on food packaging is an interesting concept with many applications: from getting nutrition information to being able to track down the source of every item in your fridge. If anything, it could serve as an additional medium for broadcasting food contamination alerts.
In terms of gauging the progress of these applications being adopted in the West, I found this exchange quite distressing. Funnily enough, those are from summer 2010. Food producers in Japan have been allowing consumers to check food safety by using QR codes on food packaging since 2004.
Chuck Close
(via davemorin)
On Human-Computer Interface (HCI)
I’ve recently become fascinated by the use of EEG/EMG for the purposes of brain-computer interfacing (BCI). This may seem as a giant leap from the traditional interface methods which we’ve become accustomed to: keyboard, mouse, voice, touchscreen, but in reality, is BCI really that far fetched?
Electroencephalography (EEG) is not a new concept, but it seems to be gaining popularity as of recent with Texas Instruments pushing their new front end for ECG/EEG and companies such as NeuroSky (www.neurosky.com), Emotiv (www.emotiv.com), and OCZ (linky) releasing EEG technology oriented at gaming.
Working on this would be a mindful as developing the technology required would involve medical & electrical engineering, psychology, physics, computer science and neurology.
There will be a Stanford conference conducted on this topic on May 16:
- “The Business of the Brain” http://www.vlab.org/article.html?aid=339
30 Days in Silicon Valley
“If you want to do movies, you go to Hollywood; if you want to do fashion you go to Milan or New York; if you want to do a startup you go to Silicon Valley.” This phrase, in one shape or another, has been voiced by pretty much everyone I met here in California during my thirty day tour - and I can’t but agree with them.
As I’m sitting at the San Francisco International Aiport waiting to board my plane back to Vancouver, BC, I am already planning my return back here. It won’t be easy, but I feel that it is what I must do even if it takes going through an alphabet soup of visas and paying steep legal fees.
Maybe it’s the relaxed atmosphere of the Silicon Valley that had allowed the minds of so many geniuses and visionaries to roam free and create world-changing technology. People are definitely friendly and welcoming here. Not everyone you meet is working on “the next big thing”, but everyone is keeping an open mind out for one. That is what creates this perfect environment to inspire and be inspired.
The Bay Area is home to some of the most brilliant minds in the world. Not surprising, considering it houses Stanford, Google, Yahoo, Sun, Microsoft and virtually every major web startup in existence. Ideas are born here, over shots of esspresso in the coffee shops of San Francisco, after lectures in the classrooms at Stanford, or over weekend beers inside the home offices of Palo Alto.
The startup community welcomes newcomers and everyone is open to a geeky chat on where things are now and where they will be in the next few years. Nowhere else can one hope to get a better prediction of the direction a new technology will take than in Bay Area. Being in another part of the world, reading the tech news and forecasting is one thing. Witnessing the news being made is something entirely different.
It may be called “living in a bubble”, and perhaps rightfully so, but I’d rather be in a bubble than floating in stale water. There is no harm in being exposed to an uncontrolled flow of free ideas as long as you don’t lose your own sense of direction. More so, exposing yourself to intelligent people and rubbing shoulders with those who are smarter than you drives you to challenge yourself, to broaden your imagination, and, hopefully, to shift your entire paradigm for the better.
Here I have made new friends and connections, picked up new ideas, and had a fresh breath of inspiration set it into me. I realized what I had been missing: I once had grand visions on the future of technology. Visions gradually took a second place to lengthy financial spreadsheets, and business plans. I’m not saying that those aren’t important, on the contrary they are some of the most powerful tools in the entrepreneur’s arsenal, but they are not the primary reason I wanted to start my own company. The reason was the original vision of being able to make a difference, create meaning and make change. I am lucky to have felt that again here and am embarking on a brand new and very ambitious project as proof.
Silicon Valley, ‘till we meet again!
