Per Nilsson

Portfolio

• Design Concepts

  • Day Lighting

    

    In this project, we addressed the well-being of a growing group of workers. How can offices be constructed to use daylight as the main source of light? Current practices were investigated, and we proposed a new solution. (2006)

    • Visualization
    • Illustration
    • Light Design

  • friend.phone

    

    A two week innovation workshop yielded this concept for an automated match-making service. (2005)

    • Interaction Design
    • Visualization
    • Illustration

• User-Centered Design

  • Mobile Cashier

    

    Making grocery shopping a more humane experience. Roaming cashiers can check out customers from anywhere in the store, while providing a higher level of customer service.(2006)

    • User-Centered Design
    • Interaction Design
    • Illustration
    • Prototyping

  • Wave Ticketing

    

    Our team designed a system that reduced the amount of manual ticket controls, increasing the time available for customer service. We developed a prototype interface for a handheld device, and tested it with train personnel. (2005)

    • User-Centered Design
    • Interaction Design
    • Prototyping
    • Flash
    • Actionscript

• Interactive Objects and Environments

  • Rain

    

    An interactive installation displayed at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver BC. When visitors stepped under umbrellas hung from the ceiling, they could hear sounds of rain. The rain increased in intensity to a storm when more people participated. (2007)

    • Physical Computing
    • Interaction Design
    • Arduino
    • Circuit Design

  • Samba Meeting

    

    A social music-making machine, Samba Meeting lets two people grab a maraca each and shake them to produce rhythms together. (2006)

    • Physical Computing
    • Interaction Design
    • Circuit Design
    • Music
    • Arduino

  • XSense

    

    An international team produced a wearable device that crossed the wearers' sight and hearing. A user could successfully navigate around a room using stereo audio feedback from the distance sensors. Sounds in the room were translated into a color pattern visible to the wearer.

    Xsense was exhibited first at Malmö University, then at the Interactivos? exhibition at Madrid Media Lab, and has been featured at the popular blog WWMNA. (2005)

    • Physical Computing
    • Interaction Design
    • Arduino
    • Circuit Design

• Games and Applications

  • Asteroids Bounce!

    

    A clone of the classic game where a ship has to blast asteroids out of existence to survive. Written in the "Processing" Java environment as an exercise in object oriented programming. (2005 with improvements 2008)

    • Java
    • Processing
    • Game Design

  • Boys and Girls

    

    Watch as the boys and girls first meet, start thinking about each other, and finally goes off together! A silly Flash application done as an exercise in Gaussian distribution. (2006)

    • Flash
    • Actionscript

  • Kvadrofenia

    

    An adventure game in comic-book style, inspired by classic point-and-click games such as Monkey Island®, with a responsive world the player wanted to explore.

    In a team of six, my roles were: Game story writer, Game world designer, Scripting language co-designer. (2006)

    • Game Design
    • Java

  • ÜberMessenger

    

    An instant messaging client that could handle several parallel conversations.

    In this OOP + project management class, I was one of two project coordinators, and the lead programmer in a group of twelve. I was also part of the support team developing a web service library that all project groups were using for the communication between IM clients. (2005)

    • Project Management
    • Java

• Web

  • MechDuels

    

    IA, IxD, and website development for a synchronous multiplayer game. (2009)

  • Freelance work

    

    A financial website, a car website, and two small business websites. (2007-2008)

• Video

  • Urban Tracks

    

    The result of the final project for the course "digital storytelling". The task was to use video and text published on a weblog, to document traces or tracks of human activities in the urban environment.

    All videos were mapped on the collaborative mapping site Communitywalk. I rode my bicycle around Seattle, collecting traces and ideas. (2006)

    • Ethnography
    • Video Photography
    • Editing

• Animation

  • Flash animation

    

    I made a flash e-card for valentine's day (2007)

    • Flash
    • Actionscript
    • Illustration
    • Animation

  • Stop-Motion Animation

    

    A stop-motion animation created at a workshop during the Oxblood Masquerade festival in Austin (2008)

    • Sculpture
    • Animation

• Papers

  • Idea Generation

    

    My BSc. thesis covering idea-generation techniques and why we need them. I also discuss online idea sharing tools, and propose my own "idea world" application. (2007)

    • Interaction Design
    • Lateral Thinking
    • Paper

  • Electronic Waste

    

    What does it mean that a computer becomes obsolete? Why is it that consumers feel a constant need to upgrade their hardware? How was work getting done with this old hardware before? Could we make do with hardware deemed "outdated"? What is the fate of the thrown out hardware? (2005)

    • Planned Obsolescence
    • Sustainable Design
    • Paper