A Class I Wish I Could Have Taken

Professor Kimiko Ryokai has a joint appointment between the School of Information and the Center for New Media at UC-Berkeley. She started teaching Tangible User Interfaces at the I-School last year, in the Fall of 2007. Unfortunately for me, I graduated in the Spring of 2007 and missed her class by a year.The class hosted an open-house last week, which, of course, I could not make it because I have a 9-5 job and the open house was in the afternoon. Read the article on the showcase from this year here.

Looking through the project ideas on the course website shows a couple really unique ideas, including the Peter and the Wolf Storytelling Mixer which reminds me of some work I came across at Georgia Tech over 4 years ago.  The crux of this mixer is bringing music to children, and this is part of  what Gil Weinberg has been doing at Georgia Tech. He builds on the idea that music is good for children and their development, but that instruments are too complex for infants and children younger than 8 or so to play. Young children can benefit from creating and playing with music using simpler toys or instruments. Here’s a video about his Shapers:

This is where I have to admit that when I was applying to graduate school back in 2004, the idea of going to Georgia Tech’s HCI program and working with Professor Weinberg really excited me. I went to visit him during the summer of 2004, on my way back from Texas A&M, because I really admired his work. He was gracious enough to meet with me, but I did not end up going to Atlanta, instead heading to Berkeley in the Fall of 2005.

You can also watch a video about the Bubblegum Sequencer, a project from last year’s TUI class that got a fair amount of publicity:

Find an article about this class at SFGATE.com

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3. Understand iTunes XML: Port Your Music Library from Windows to Mac