A joint design research project (HES-SO) between ECAL, HEAD, EPFL-ECAL Lab & EPFL
The website presenting the downloadable results of the joint design and ethnographic research Inhabiting and Interfacing the Cloud(s) is now online.
Web design by Eurostandard; Photography of the final artifacts by Daniela & Tonatiuh.
More than a year after our last publication on this blog and the end of the scientific part of the design research Inhabiting and Interfacing the Cloud(s), we’re very happy to signal the publication of two books in Print on Demand (Lulu) and their accompanying free PDFs.
One book concerns the ethnographic the ethnographic research: Cloud of Practicies, while the other is dedicated to the design research and its results and uses many of the resources published on this blog along the process: Cloud of Cards.
A website gives access to the results of the research in the form of a kit: www.cloudofcards.org
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Cloud of Cards:
Download the free PDF on the Cloud of Cards website (under “Publications” link), or buy the paperback version on Lulu.
Graphic design by Eurostandard; Photography of the final artifacts by Daniela & Tonatiuh.
Project developed by Christian Babski (fabric | ch)
Cloud of Cards Processing Library consists in the unification of three different API dedicated to online files and folders manipulation and the development of an additional fourth one specific to the needs of the Cloud of Cards kit and the Inhabiting and Interfacing the Cloud(s) research project. The overall final package has been adapted to the Processing development language and linked to the open-source cloud software ownCloud.
Additional behaviors are included that can also be used in relation to ownCloud (or Nextcloud), for both its server and clients. These additional functions are the implemented results of the design research process, linked to an ethnographic study about the cloud user experience.
Through the use of this new library written in Processing and linked to other open-source tools, it is now easier for a wider public to experiment, sketch and develop alternative interfaces, visual or physical applications for the cloud. In particular, the communities of designers and makers that are used to the Processing language.
Please find below the necessary recipes, blueprints and information for the Cloud of Cards Processing Library project.
Download Cloud of Cards Processing Library manual (PDF).
Download Cloud of Cards Processing Library on Github. Codes, recipes, how-to, instructions & forks.
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You can also:
Install ownCloud server (for Linux) & client (or Nextcloud, optional).
Project developed by Christian Babski (fabric | ch)
5 Folders Cloud is a software implementation (among many possible) of the Cloud of Cards Processing Library and exemplifies its use, server and software side. It is a version of ownCloud with automated behaviors and cascades of events, in particular when linked to the 5 Connected Objects. As a matter of fact, this variation on the cloud combines a client-server architecture with a distributed, almost horizontal peer-to-peer approach.
Linked to the results of the research project’s ethnographic research on the uses of the cloud, 5 Folders Cloud translates in the form of five verbs of action the various identified motivations that seem to push users to drop files and data into this technological setup. These verbs in turn become the main functions and names of five synchronized cloud folders that serve the various files interactions. Each of these folders automates digital procedures linked to these motivations.
Please find below the necessary recipes, blueprints and information for the 5 Folders Cloud project.
Look for, Subscribe and syndicate to one or many 5 Folders Cloud (recipes, how-to & instructions included).
A project developed by Lucien Langton
5 Connected Objects consist in a physical implementation (among many possible) of the Cloud of Cards Processing Library and exemplifies its use, client side. Linked to the 5 Folders Cloud (both server and software sides), the five physical objects work exclusively as its complements and have no independent digital functions of their own. They seek to propose a form of natural gestures interface (“clients” for the cloud) to locally access, monitor and manipulate ones data or files in the distant cloud, with a Cloud of Cards twist…
Indeed, directly linked to the results of the design research, as well as the ethnographic field study on the uses of the cloud, the purpose of the 5 Connected Objects is to materialize in daily environments the “ghostly” presence of one’s distant data. It is to incarnate as well the “digital anxiety” caused by various problems that can occur to personal files and data when dropped in a distant cloud (fear of losing one’s files, apprehension of erasing versions, of wrong sharing or access rights, of having private files being openly published, of undesired updates, of hacks, etc.)
As a consequence, the objects, and in particular their physical manipulation, can trigger automated procedures linked to these potential problems…
... Along the design research, we are going through many different types of references that we don't necessarily post or document ...
The website presenting the downloadable results of the joint design and ethnographic research Inhabiting and Interfacing the Cloud(s) is now ...