Interactive Illustrations

Living with Interactive Patterns
EPSRC Research in the wild grant - £359,626
Collaborative Research project between University of Nottingham, Horizon Digital Economy Research, Central Saint Martins and Johnson Tiles, Busaba Eathai and Debbie Bryan shop
Decorative patterns are an ever-present feature of our everyday world. From motifs and borders, to swathes of colour and texture, almost every 'thing' of value is embellished with a pattern that has been carefully designed to enhance its aesthetic, meaning and function.
We aim to make such decorative patterns interactive so that all manner of everyday objects can become part of the Internet of Things simply by decorating their surfaces. Pointing a camera at a thing (or indeed pointing a thing at a camera) might then enable people to learn about what it is, how it was made, and how to use it; to access personal memories or review their history of use; or to trigger other contextually relevant services.
Our proposal builds on a technology called Aestheticodes that we have already developed and demonstrated through a feasibility project. This enables designers and craftspeople to draw beautiful decorative patterns that contain computer-recognisable visual codes embedded within them. So far, we have implemented the technology to run on smartphones, worked with ceramic designers to produce an initial portfolio of fifteen patterns, and worked with the Busaba Eathai restaurant chain to apply these designs to plates, placemats and menus. These were then deployed in one of their restaurants to demonstrate an enhanced dining experience during London Design Week.
This project will conduct an in the wild study of this technology actually being used in two complementary real world settings so as to learn how interactive decorative patterns can enhance everyday life, understand the challenges of interacting with patterns that contain embedded codes under testing real-world conditions, and establish ways of engaging designers and end-users in designing and reappropriating patterned objects and surfaces.