Colombia, a country on the North-Western corner of South America, has been facing certain critical challenges—after a 50-year civil war, many Colombians are left suffering the effects of living in a post-conflict zone and the consequences of the displacement of over 3 million persons, and the death of 220,000, with 4 out of the 5 deaths non-combatant civilians. Various stakeholders, including members of the immobilized FARC, local farmers and ranchers, and indigenous groups, as well as participants from elsewhere in the country, are hoping to use design methods to imagine a better future for themselves, their communities, and their country. Dr. Roberts-Smith, Dr. Ruecker, andRead More →

Materializing Text Analytical Experiences: the Bubblelines Hydra Project There is a tradition in the digital humanities of interpreting texts through various forms of computer-generated text analysis and visualization. For example, the Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) and Voyant.org both provide online access to a broad-range of tools for work with a variety of data. However, these systems require a significant learning curve, both for students and senior humanities scholars. In addition, the standard computer screen and its interfaces can conceal the vastness and complexity of the material under study. In this project, we experimented with creating new forms of interface that leverage physicality and kinesthetic intelligence (Ruecker, forthcoming). There were three primary objectives:Read More →

Completed Presented Co-authors 2013 Proceedings of the International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR). Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan. Piotr Michura, Stan Ruecker, & the INKE Research Group In this paper, we report on a tool we developed for use by our students as part of a senior-level undergraduate degree course in Information Design. Students were asked to re-design a web site for a local not-for-profit agency. The first part of the project asked them to conduct an environmental scan on the topic most closely related to the client: HIV / AIDS, using a new tool we developed, comprised ofRead More →

Completed Published Co-authors 2013 Literary and Linguistic Computing. 28(4), 615-628. Luciano Frizzera, Geoff Roeder, Ernesto Peña, Teresa Dobson, Stan Ruecker, Geoffrey Rockwell, Susan Brown, & the INKE Research Group In this paper, we provide a discussion of the concept of visual interactive workflows, how they relate to our previous work on structured surfaces, and how they have been adapted to experiments in managing articles for journal publication and managing biographical histories being written and tagged in XML. We conclude with a user experience study of the prototypes, which suggests that they are relatively acceptable at the level of reflective response, but might benefit from moreRead More →

Completed Presented Co-authors November 2015 IASDR: The International Association of Societies of Design Research conference, Brisbane, Australia Stan Ruecker & Stéfan Sinclair In this paper, we discuss a strategy for introducing significant change in general, and in the Digital Humanities in particular. The approach is to negotiate expectations early in a research project by genuinely proposing what might be understood as a “critical design” intervention, in order to produce an effect in the minds of the various stakeholders where a small incremental change will not be felt to be appropriate. Critical design is an attempt to radically interrupt people’s thinking on a subject by designing artifacts thatRead More →

ampDamp is an web browser extension that interacts with a USB knob to manipulate social media websites. Binary controls provided within existing platforms offer a vast horizon of possible interactions and mute the dynamism of social media environments. Our current design is focused specifically on improving peer to peer learning on Twitter. Users twists the physical knob connected to the computer via a USB. The ampDamp device driver receives the signal and sends it to the browser at which point the ampDamp browser extension takes that signal and extracts tweet features based on the mouse pointer location. The extension selects all tweets that match theRead More →

This interface is the third concept design for my dissertation. It is meant as a visual and functional compromise between the first two alternatives – innovative yet familiar to those in the manufacturing sector. The top shows controls, while the bottom the resulting solutions.Read More →

This interface is also part of my PhD thesis. The concept is based around components that are traditionally associated with decision dashboards. I completed a thorough exploration of alternatives to the visual representation of the solution portion of this design (located at the bottom of the display), and developed 24 unique designs, sub-divided into 7 categories. In this design, the controls used to manipulate the constraints are separate from the results of the calculations.Read More →

This interface is one of three concepts designed as part of my PhD dissertation. Working in partnership with an Alberta-based oil company, my goal is to produce alternatives to human-machine interfaces for use in the manufacturing process.  Specifically, I am looking to design interfaces that support human decision making, enable accountability, and the leveraging of individual and collective knowledge. The sketch on the right shows Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for ice cream manufacturing, in this case it is displaying profit across time. Radzikowska, M., S. Ruecker, C. Ta, W. Bischof, and F. Forbes. (2011). “Human Decisions for a Machine World: Designing Experimental Interface Alternatives that SupportRead More →

MONK is an attempt to build on the earlier NORA and Wordhoard projects in their efforts to make data-mining and visualization systems available in forms that are congenial to humanities scholars, and that work across a wide range of digital collections. The Monk interface is made up of a multi-step system, designed for complex textual experimentation and analysis. McDonald, A., A. Kumar, M. Bouchard, A. Giacometti, M. Patey, M. Radzikowska, P. Michura, C. Fiorentino, S. Ruecker, C. Plaisant, and S. Sinclair. (2008). “Dozens of Little Radio Stations: Getting Technologies Talking in the MONK Workbench.” Paper presented at the third Digital Humanities and Computer Science (DHCS)Read More →