Sheng Kai Tang

Tangible Surface V1

shengkait — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 20:49:35 +0000

We are very happy that Actuating Geometry in Design Workshop has finished successfully!! In order to demonstrate the concept and signal transformation from physical simulation in Grasshopper to geometry calculation in Processing to physical actuation via Arduino, TsungHsien, Shih Yuan and I had a pre-workshop a week before the actual workshop and built the Tangible Surface example!

Dynamic tangible surface is not a brand new concept and many projects have already been built, such as Hyposurface of Decoi, Recompose of Hiroshi Ishii and my Tangible Pixels. These projects all use single axis mechanism to create free surface movements. However, if you observe these projects from top view in detail, their surface grid is actually fixed and surface area is unchanged. In other words, these so called dynamic surfaces are fake and limited. So, Tangible Surface try to break the limitation to create real dynamic surface by implementing a three axises actuation mechanism. With this mechanism, the Tangible Surface could be deformed to simulate any mathematical surface with physical characteristics.

很高興的，設計中的動態幾何工作營已順利結束。為了展示從物理模擬到幾何運算乃至於實體致動間的概念呈現與訊號轉換，聰憲、識源以及我，早在工作營開始前的一週，我們自己也閉關先來個預先工作營。

創造動態的實體表面的概念已經不是新鮮事，如早期的Decoi的Hyposurface到Hiroshi Ishii的Recompose，以及我自己的Tangible Pixels。但這些案子都僅是透過單軸的上下運動來產生看似自由的表面，然而這樣的表面基本上從上視來看，其格點都是固定不動的，整體的範圍也是固定的，換句話說，這樣的動態是假的有侷限的。因此，Tangible Surface試圖的創造出能三軸運動的機構，進而來產生真的能自由扭曲的據物理特性的數學網面，企圖為動態表面致動做一點突破性的嘗試。

Tangible Pixels (Pixelbot) is cited in Mark’s article of ACM Interactions!

shengkait — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:03:20 +0000

Prof. Mark Gross of Carnegie Mellon publishes an article "Architectural Robotics Inevitably" in the latest ACM Interactions magazine, where the "Tangible Pixels (Pixelbot)" project of 2011 Taiwan Designers’ Week is cited as one of the examples!

PDF download link: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2065335&CFID=82140898&CFTOKEN=28088478

卡內基美侖大學教授Mark Gross發表"建築機器人是不可避免的未來“文章於最新一期的ACM Interactions雜誌中，其中的第五頁有引用2011台灣設計師週中的"實體像素“作為案例之一！

PDF下載連結：http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2065335&CFID=82140898&CFTOKEN=28088478

Actuating Geometry Workshop

shengkait — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:58:51 +0000

"Actuating Geometry in Design" workshop will be held in 2012/02/11(Sat.) and 2012/02/12(Sun.) in Taipei (might borrow classroom of TKU). This workshop is organized and will be leaded by Tsung-Hsien Wang, Shih-Yuan Wang and Sheng Kai Tang. Through this workshop, participants will realize and be familiar with updated concepts and skills of computational design tools, which are Grasshopper, Processing and Arduino, and will try to discover and establish this potential design and research field.

[Please visit the facebook group "Actuating Geometry in Design" for detail info!!]

Full size poster link:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4606803/AG_poster_final.jpg

Statement of Adaptive Artifact V1

shengkait — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 03:02:46 +0000

Belief

In one discussion I had with Professor Scott Hudson in a class at CMU in 2007, I brought up my first idea of Adaptive Artifact, which is an Adaptive Mouse. The discussion inspired my strong interest and enthusiasm in the term of Adaptive Artifact. For three years, I have constantly been exploring research topics related to this term. Moreover, I plan to make this term to be a popular field within the next decade, for I believe that the Adaptive Artifact is the future of artifact design.

In the past, the design of artifacts was focused on dealing with function and form. As Don Norman, expert in industrial design, once said, good affordance provides better learnability and usability, and enables intuitive user experience; or as in the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s dialectic between "form follows function" and "function follows form," they all emphasize the importance of seamless mapping between form and function. However, no matter how intuitive the form design is or how properly the function is arranged, it is proven in the history of artifact that it is impossible to satisfy all of the users’ needs. The cognition of the users varies, and their needs change over time; therefore, a solid, static, and passive artifact would never fit those needs, no matter how refined the design is.

The main issue of Adaptive Artifact would be how to make an artifact intuitively detect the user’s status and needs, to alter its form in order to fit ergonomics, and even to provide proper functions to meet the user’s dynamic requirements. This is also the area on which “Adaptive Artifact" group intends to focus, research, develop and promote.

Preliminary Studies

We currently propose two approaches to discover foregoing ideas, micro and macro, and get some prototypes done. In detail, micro approach treats an artifact as a smart object capable of detecting user’s conditions and fulfilling dynamic formal and functional purposes, while macro approach achieves the same capabilities by gathering a group of identical smart objects to conduct collective behaviors.

Take Adaptive Mouse for example, the mouse itself is a smart object consisting of sensible skin and pattern recognition mechanism. It dynamically predicts button locations by actively monitoring user’s hand grasps.

Florabot is the implementation of macro approach; around 500 identical Florabots independently sense activities on the field, propagate information and conduct collective reactions in terms of lighting and shape-changing effects.

With computational mechanism embedded, both approaches could potentially overturn the existing model of Human-Artifact Interaction. Conventionally, an artifact, such as a Swiss knife(Figure1), provides proper affordances (visual and tangible clues) for users to observe, think and manipulate (Figure2). However, based on adaptive perspective, this mental process will be removed from users and be further assigned to artifacts. In other words, artifacts will observe, think and provide properties for manipulation. All user have to do is to perform their desired action and correct formal and functional feedbacks will always be there (Figure3).

Figure1. Typical adaptable artifact

Figure2. Conventional Model of Human Artifact Interaction

Figure3. Adaptive Model of Human Artifact Interaction

Currently, several parallel adpative projects are planning and developing, such as Adaptive Keyboard and Adaptive Pad for micro approach, and Pixelbot for macro approach. They will soon be released in the coming year.

Bio

shengkait — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 08:29:38 +0000

Sheng Kai Tang (Tony) is currently the founder and principle researcher of Adaptive Artifact, a non-profit lab dedicating in the discovery and development of artifacts with adaptive abilities. He was a User Experience Design Specialist in ASUS Design Center and an adjunct lecturer in National Chiao Tung University. He focuses on the development of innovative user experience from both design (Artifact Design) and science (Human Computer Interaction) perspectives. Tony’s expertise includes Tangible UI, Adaptive Artifact, Adaptive Computing, Interactive Prototyping and User Experience Methodology (Qualitative). For the past three years, he conducted many interesting design and research works. His design productions were demonstrated in CES, Computex and CeBIT. Research findings were published in CHI, TEI and HCI International. Interactive Art installations were exhibited in Taiwan Designer’s Week and 2011 International Taipei Flora Expo.

Prior to ASUS Design Center, Tony was a designer, a researcher and an inventor, working in the COmputational DEsign Lab of Carnegie Mellon University, Center for Design Informatics of Harvard, and Graduate School of Architecture of National Chiao Tung University. He holds a Master of Computation Design from Carnegie Mellon University, a Master of Applied Art from National Chiao Tung University and a Bachelor of Architecture from Fung Chia University.

Education

shengkait — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 21:44:21 +0000

2005-2008 Ph.D. Study and M.S. Degree in Computational Design, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

2002-2003 Visiting Researcher, Center for Design Informatics, Harvard University, USA

1999-2002 Ph.D. Study and M.S. Degree in Applied Art, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

1994-1999 B.S. Degree in Architecture, Fung Chia University, Taiwan

Experience

shengkait — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 20:02:23 +0000

2011-now Founder, Adaptive Artifact, Taiwan

2008-2011 User Experience Design Specialist, ASUS Design Center, ASUS Computer Inc., Taiwan

2008-now Adjunct Lecturer, Graduate School of Architecture, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

2005-2008 Research and Teaching Assistant, COmputational DEsign Lab, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

2002-2003 Adjunct Project Coordinator, Center for Design Informatics, Harvard University, USA

1999-2002 Project Coordinator, Graduate School of Architecture, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

1994-1999 Intern Designer, YJ Interior Design, Taiwan

Hello world! 哈囉！

shengkait — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:33:10 +0000

歡迎來到 WordPress。這是您的第一篇文章。編輯或者刪除本篇文章，然後開始您的部落客生活！

Publication

shengkait — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:39:32 +0000

Journal Paper

01. Liu, Y.T. and Tang, S.K.: 2003, Space, Place and Digital Media– Towards a Better Simulation for a Disappeared City, International Journal of Architectural Computing.

Conference Paper

01. Liu, Y.P., Lin, S.T. and Tang, S.K.: 2011, Effects of Character Size and Grayscale Contrast On Legibility for the Elderly, EAEFS 2011(upcoming).

02. Tang, S.K., Tzeng, W.C., Chiu, K.C., Luo, W.W., Lin, S.T., and Liu, Y.P.: 2011, Virtual Mouse: A Low Cost Proximity Based Gestural Pointing Device. HCI International 2011.

03. Tang, S.K., Tzeng, W.C., Chiu, K.C., Luo, W.W., Lin, S.T., and Liu, Y.P.: 2011, Virtual Mouse: A Low Cost Proximity Based Gestural Pointing Device. TEI2011 Workshop.

04. Tang, S.K. and Tang, W. Y.: 2010, Adaptive Mouse: A Computer Mouse Achieving Form-Function Synchronization. In Proceeding of CHI 2010, p2785-2792.

05. Tang, S.K. and Tang, W. Y.: 2009, Calligraphic Brush: An Intuitive Tangible User Interface for Interactive Algorithmic Design, In Proceedings of The Fourteenth Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia 2009.

06. Tang, W.Y. and Tang, S.K.: 2006, A development of tactile modeling interface, In Proceedings of The Eleventh Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia 2006.

07. Tang, S.K. and Liu, Y.T.: 2002, A digital reconstruction procedure for a disappeared city space and its activities, In Proceedings of the twentieth Conference on Education in Computer Aided Architecture Design in Europe 2002, p598-603.

08. Tang, S.K., Liu, Y.T. and Fan, Y.C.: 2002, How to simulate and realize a disappeared city and city life? — A VR cave simulation, In Proceedings of The seventh Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia 2002, p301-308.

09. Lee, H.L., Liu, Y.T., Chen, S.C and Tang, S.K.: 2002, A Comparative study of protocol analysis for Spatiality of a Text-based Cyberspace, In Proceedings of the twentieth Conference on Education in Computer Aided Architecture Design in Europe 2002, p262-266.

10. Tang, S.K. and Liu, Y.T.: 2001, The visual harmony between new and old materials in the restoration of historical architecture, In Proceedings of The sixth Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia 2001, p205-210.

Others

01. Tang, S.K. and Liu, Y.T.: 2001, The digital reconstruction procedure of Chi-Chi Station, in the magazine of Construction News Record 2002, p205-210.

02. Liu, Y.T. and Tang, S.K.: 2001, Virtual Chan An City: the combinational presentation of culture, art and technology, in the national palace museum monthly of Chinese art 231, p4-23.

03. 林緯婷, 唐聖凱, 陳立杰: 2010, 觸碰介面模式下之視覺配置與操作流程的設計迷思, 第十七屆人因工程研討會.

Award

shengkait — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:01:24 +0000

2009 Best Paper Award, CAADRIA2009, Taiwan

8/2006~8/2008 Studying Abroad Scholarship, Ministry of Education, Taiwan

8/2005~6/2007 Full Funded Assistantship, Carnegie Mellon University, PA

2002 Ivan Petrovic Prize, eCAADe, UK

1999 Annual Prize for Outstanding Student Design, The National Association of Architect, Taiwan