Posts tagged as cci

Coming up for air.

What happened is: I lined up the Next Thing (as mentioned at the end of last quarter’s worknotes), and then it promptly proceeded to entirely consume my time and brain for the next quarter.

Which is good, from an income-and-labour perspective, but was somewhat to the detriment of the content strategy here, where I’d hoped to be able to write smaller, spikier pieces of content between the studio updates.

So a goal for this quarter: making sure I don’t let client work overwhelm the routines I’d like to establish.

What’s been going on for the past few months?

Google Research/Deepmind AIUX - prototyping and exploration

The previous Next Thing.

Just as the quarter was beginning, I lined up a short, intense prototyping project with the crew at AIUX that I’d previously worked with. They began the project within Google Research, but by mid-project had been reorganised into Google Deepmind.

This made almost no difference to our work, though it did make the “ooh” people make when you tell them who your current client is go up a semitone more than usual (before you tell them you can’t tell them anything else owing to confidentiality).

I spent a couple of months with a motley crew of internal and external folks, pulling together an interesting, full-stack working prototype. Designing interactions, poking technology to see what it feels like, working out how to communicate the new ideas that a piece of software makes possible.

I think all I can say about what we were up to is “stuff to do with vector embeddings”.

The stakeholder feedback at the end of the project was really enthusiastic, and there’s talk of further work on this brief. Very much the right project at the right time.

Creative Computing Institute - end of term

June marked the end of term at CCI, where I wrapped up my fifth year of teaching Sound and Image Processing to first year undergraduates - and which means shortly after I’ve breathed out from the end of class, I have to mark 31 portfolios. It’s a lot to get through, but I’m always surprised and delighted by the places some students will take me, and it’s those moments that keep me going as I work through reading and executing a lot of Processing.

When I tell people I’ve been marking, they often ask about the impact of ChatGPT on my results. All I can say is: yes, we are educating in the age of ChatGPT now. (Other LLMs are available; I’m using ChatGPT as shorthand for LLM chatbots you ask for answers).

We don’t have a problem with students using LLMs; they’re a tool like any other, and for students less confident in a second (or third+) language, or students newer to programming, they can be a confidence-booster. We ask students to cite them just like any other source. (I usually teach citation by suggesting you quote as little as possible, and then, if you are uncomfortable revealing the size of your quotation, perhaps that’s an indication for you to quote less.)

Despite this, I believe I had many students who used ChatGPT and didn’t cite it. You can’t prove it, but there’s a… vibe? Smell? It never feels like plagiarism or copying; it’s more like a number of students all sharing the same tutor, whose personal style and predilections keeps appearing in their work. The programming equivalent of delvish, perhaps. (I had lots of (int) style casting this year, for instance, which seemed like a tic given I’d never really introduced it, and Processing’s built-in int() function is probably more intuitive).

But there are also thoughtful uses of these tools. I’ve had students submit entire transcripts of their conversations with ChatGPT, for instance, which has been good: they showed they had the knowledge necessary to ask meaningful questions and build on them, and showed how they refined their own knowledge in the dialogue. I’ve also had students describe processes - one talked about submitting his code to ChatGPT and then asking how would you improve this? which is an interesting approach to virtual pairing/refactoring, and shows a good degree of insight - not to mention curiosity.

With marking done, I rounded out the year by going to the student festival, the end-of-year show of work. This was the second year where students I’d taught in their first undergraduate year were graduating. It was hugely enjoyable and rewarding to see how they have developed, and how they are expressing their ideas and interests in creative computation a few years down the line.

Lunar - hardware/software refinements

I’ve just kicked off a very short engagement with Lunar - some further refinements to the LED interaction tools work that we did. Some new hardware, and a revision to both firmware and browser tooling has made for a busy week back leaping between C++ and Typescript.

What’s next?

The next few months are coming into focus now. August looks a little less frantic, with some smaller projects slotting into the schedule alongside a deliberate amount of Slack, and there are rumblings of larger work in September that could keep me busy for several months.

Meanwhile there’s admin to be done, and some plates to keep spinning, as well as making sure I return to some Process Notes here. And so: onwards!

A quarter has passed since the last worknotes; now’s a good time to reflect on what I’ve been up to.

Lunar Energy

Two pieces of work this quarter with the Design team at Lunar. I wrapped up the project mentioned at the end of 2023 in January, as I’d expected. A second project emerged in March, exploring generative/systemic graphic and motion design, and that wrapped that up this week. There should be things I can point at and say more about very soon.

Creative Computing Institute

It’s spring break currently - the gap between the second and third terms - at CCI. I wrapped the first half of the first year undergrad class I teach; I’m back in early April for the summer term, when we’ll be looking first at audio, and then at particle systems. I particularly enjoy the latter - it’s such a rich and fun topic to play with in code.

Work with Acts Not Facts

A small project with Matt W over at Acts Not Facts, which there’s not much to say about right now, but had some good in-room collaboration. Oh, and his AI Clock - Poem/1 - that I’d previously done some firmware work on - hit its goal on Kickstarter (and then some - 117% funded), which is excellent news, and means that will be getting into the world.

Ongoing consulting

Technical/strategy consulting with the very early-stage startup I’m advising continued; just this week I’ve been helping them get a prototype of a core concept up and running, so that they can evaluate and test it with real users.

I also had a catch-up about a games project I’d been lightly advising on; they’ve got funding, which means there’s some thinking/consulting/plotting - and maybe prototyping - to come in the next quarter.

Content strategy for this site

One of the outcomes of some recent coaching with Andrew Lovett-Baron was overhauling how I communicate a bit; trying to build up a cadence of content here again. Weeknotes served me well for so long, but they are had to maintain in fallow periods, or in long periods of NDA’d work. So they fell by the wayside a bit.

I’ve decided to try to move to a more programmed set of formats: regular-ish (eg, quarterly) Worknotes that describe recent output and projects; Process Notes that talk about studio practice and process, not necessarily focused on a recent project, but as a way of demonstrating my own practice and approach; and writing about One Thing from time to time, as a way of sharing insight and critique - as well as the kinds of things that interest me as a designer/technologist.

So far: I think it’s going OK?

Spending time with peers

I’ve spent a bunch of Q1 2024 just taking time to catch up with peers and colleagues to compare notes on… this and that. That’s been, as usual, restorative. I’m writing this to remind myself - and you, reader - that it’s worth expending the effort on. As a sole practitioner, it’s worth spending time maintaining the collaborative/conversational/social aspects of work that just aren’t there when you’re on your own most days. Q1 was a good period to recharge in.

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What’s on the horizon for the coming months: wrapping this term of teaching; beginning consulting on the above games project; some ongoing hardware prototyping/exploration; lining up the Next Thing. Onwards.

What’s been going on in the studio this summer?

UAL Creative Computing Institute

I finished another term of teaching at CCI: as usual, teaching the first year BSc Creative Computing students about Sound and Image Processing - an introduction to implementing audio and graphics in code. That means pixel arrays, dithering, audio buffers, unit generators, building up to particle systems and flocking - all with a focus on the creative application of these topics. It was great to see where the students had got to in their final portfolios - some lovely and surprising work in there, as always.

A reminder: why do I teach alongside consulting and development work? I have no employees, and so this is my way of sharing back my knowledge and developing new talent - as a practitioner-teacher, and as someone who can share expertise from within industry back to students looking to break into it.

I value “education” as an ideal, and so spending about half a day a week, around client work, for a few months, to educate and share knowledge feels like a reasonable use of my time. It’s also good to practice the teaching/educating muscle: there’s always new stuff to learn, especially in a classroom environment, that feeds into other workshop and collaboration spaces.

AI Clock P2

I spent a short while working with Matt Webb on “P2” - prototype 2 - of his AI Clock. He’s written more about this prototype over at the newsletter for the project - including his route to getting the product into the world.

This prototype involved evaluating a few different e-ink screen modules according to Matt’s goals for the project, and creating a first pass of his interaction design in embedded code. I built out the critical paths he’d designed for connecting and configuring the clock, as well as integrating it with his new API service. The prototype established feasibility of the design and, during its development, informed the second version of the overall architecture.

Since I’ve handed over the code, he’s continued to build on top of it. I find this part of handover satisfying: nothing is worth than handing over code and it sitting, going stale, or unmaintained. By contrast, when someone can take what you’ve done and spin it up easily, start working with it, and extending it - that feels like part of a contracting/consulting job well done: not just doing the initial task, but making a foundation for others to build on. Some of that work is code, some of it’s documentation, and some of it’s collaboration, and it’s something I work towards on all my client engagements.

Lunar Energy

I’ve been working on a small project with Lunar Energy. The design team were looking to prototype a specific hardware interaction on the actual hardware involved. I’ve been making hardware and software to enable the designers to work with the real materials in a rapid fashion - and in a way that they can easily share with technical and product colleagues.

It’s been a great example of engineering in the service of design, and of the kind of collaborative toolmaking work I both enjoy and am particularly effective at. I’ve been jumping back and forth between browser and hardware, Javascript and embedded C++, and I think we’ve got to a really good place. I can’t wait to share a case study.

Promising Trouble

Finally, I’ve started a small consultancy gig with Promising Trouble on one of their programmes, spread over a few days this summer, and then a few more towards the winter. My job here is being a technological sounding board and trusted advisor, to help join the team join some dots on a project exploring a technological prototype to address societal issues. A nice consultancy project to sit alongside the nitty-gritty of the Lunar work.

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and…?

And what else? I have capacity from early August onwards, so if you’d like to talk about opportunities for collaboration or work, now is a great time to get in touch. What shape of opportunities? Right now, my sweet spots are:

• invention and problem-solving: answering the questions what if? or could we even?; many of my most successful and impactful projects have begun by exploring the possible, and then building the probable.
• “engineering for design” - being a software developer in the service of design, or vice versa; the technical detail of platforms, APIs, or hardware is part of what we design for now, and recent work for companies like Google AIUX and Lunar has involved straddling both worlds, letting one inform the other, working in tight cross-functional teams to build and explore that space, and ultimately communicating all of this to stakeholders.
• projects that blend the digital and physical. I’ve been working on increasing numbers of projects that straddle hardware, firmware, and desktop or browser software, and the interactions that connect all of them.
• technology strategy; that might be writing/thinking/collaborating, or building/exploring, or first one, then the other; I’ve recently done this with a few early-stage founders and companies.
• focused technical projects, whether greenfield or a companion to existing work - that might be adding or integrating a significant feature, or building a standalone tool. I tend to work on the Web, in Ruby, Typescript and Javascript (as well as markup/CSS, obviously). I like relational data models, HTTP, and the interesting edges of browsers.
• and in all of the above: thinking through making, informing the work through prototypes and final product builds.

You can email me here if any of that sounds relevant. And now, back to the desk and workbench!