The Hull Digital Media Labs is a week long residency program with a group of ten chosen artists working alongside one another as part of a commissioning process for a touch screen based art work for the new NHS Hull Wilberforce Health Centre. I was nominated to take part as one of the artists on the residency and will be documenting our findings and work as the week progresses.

Day 00 – we all arrived, checked in to the hotel and went for a walk around Hull to chat and see some sights. There are a lot of interesting people on the project and I’m really looking forward to finding out more about their work and what they plan to do for the coming week.

I am particularly interested in learning more Processing techniques and skills – something that I’ve tinkered with over the past year or so but not sat down with and really explored.

Touch screen interfaces are growing more popular – as can be seen with the success of hand held devices such as the iPhone and iPad. Don’t get me wrong – I think that there will always be place for keyboards and real buttons – but touch screens do open up other ways of interfacing with software and can change the user experience dramatically. This then opens up a topic for dialogue and research, including:

• How do touch screens change the behaviour of a user?
• How can the graphical interface of a piece of software be improved for touch screen use?
• Is a touch interface really suitable for existing / traditional operating systems?
• Is touch useful for all applications or does it suit some better than others?

I will post up more thoughts and ideas on these questions and others as the residency continues.

An interesting site for further reading: SAP Design Guild ‘Interaction Design Guide for Touchscreen Applications‘ though written in 2000 presents some useful + noteworthy points.

Another outcome of the residency will be an exhibition of our processes and works at the Eleven Gallery on Humber Street in the fruit market sector of the city. The exhibition will be on the 4th – 5th November 2010 from 7-9pm.

For more information about the Digital Media Labs see here.