Julia (2013)
Over the last few years R&D has studied a wide variety of interfaces and devices, which each brought a new component of our offline lives into a connected, digital conversation. Part of our research has involved not only individual platforms but the ways in which devices interact with one another as part of a larger ecosystem, how they can borrow capabilities from their environments to show us new information in new ways.
The Julia project is an experiment in developing an experience that uses what Josh Clark might call a "migrating interface" and what we in the lab often talk about as "environmental computing": allowing devices to leverage the capabilities of other nearby systems to support a holistic interaction model. Further, it was an experiment into using The New York Times recipe database in as many ways as we could: interpreting ingredients and tools, extracting verbs from steps, and tying photography and video into the experience. Finally, it was an experiment to think about how usage data and sensor data could be tied into a feedback loop between a publisher and its users to improve future offerings.