Speakers
Ben Cerveny
Talk Playful Models for Understanding
With the cultural transition away from the desktop as a framing metaphor for computation well underway, the new casual user of tablet-based or entertainment-screen network services still needs tools to understand the ever-growing profusion of contexts they are participating in and have access to. By building dynamic, playful simulations that bind multiple datasources into gamelike landscapes for users to explore and understand, we can unlock the natural human capacity to perceive patterns in complex systems and become virtuosos that use data-driven instruments to discover and interact with the network resources most important to them.
Bio
Ben Cerveny is the founder and president of Bloom Studios, makers of visual instruments for data expression and exploration. Ben has worked for over 20 years on user interaction and experience design, concept prototyping, and strategy in the context of media applications, operating systems, web services, ubiquitous computing, and massively multiplayer games. Most recently, he was an advisor and strategist at Stamen Design, a leading visualization design studio. Previously, he was the founder of the Experience Design Lab at frog design, an international product design company, and a lead game designer and platform development strategist at Ludicorp, makers of Flickr. He is also the founder of the Amsterdam-based research foundation VURB, which investigates digital urbanism, and is constantly engaged in the investigation of innovative ways to improve the flow and play of a user's relationship with task or information.