Synthesis Studios

I recently attended the kick-off workshop for Fritzing, an open-source initiative to help artists and designers turn their electronic prototypes into products. Fritzing was initiated by Reto Wettach at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam (just outside of Berlin) in collaboration with André Knörig and Zach Eveland. They plan to create a schematic editor and PCB layout tool that’s easy-to-use for people new to electronics. The goal is two-fold: first, to allow people to document and share the things they’ve made, and, second, to help get them manufactured. In this way, Fritzing builds on and extends the current trend towards homemade and DIY electronics embodied by projects like Arduino and Make Magazine.

Fritzing builds on and extends the current trend towards homemade and DIY electronics. by first allowing people to document and share the things they’ve made, and second helping get them manufactured.

The reason I was involved is because of my work on Arduino, an open- source platform for electronics prototyping — i.e. making the things that Fritzing will help people document and manufacture. Arduino originated at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, where I got a Masters in interaction design. It’s since grown into quite a wide- spread project, with thousands of users around the world, and is used in a number of universities. We were lucky enough to be there as the interest in DIY electronics started to take off and the project expanded quickly. It’s been a lot of work, but it’s rewarding to see the amazing things that people have been able to make as a result. At Synthesis, I’m lucky enough to get to spend 20% of my time working Arduino, which lets me accomplish a lot more than I could in my spare time. (Yet another reason this place rocks.)

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As a female engineer, I have always expected to be in the minority. It’s no secret that achieving true acceptance of women in positions of power and intelligence is a struggle in progress. But, given the escalating progress that women have been making in the fields of medicine, law, and politics, I assumed it was just a matter of time until it would be irrelevant for me to prefix my profession with my gender.

I assumed it was just a matter of time until it would be irrelevant for me to prefix my profession with my gender.

However, it turns out that I should have been checking the facts before idly waiting for equality to evolve.

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We’ve been tinkering with a couple of different projects in the social media space; our most ambitious, 1Hop, has been attracting some attention recently. 1Hop is a cell phone application that grabs data from your online social networks and tries to rectify that against the phones (and therefore the people) you meet on the street. While 1Hop comes from the pedigree of Nokia Sensor, Imity, and some research work of Nathan Eagle while at the Media Lab, what I find the most compelling and different is that 1Hop is not creating a social network and taking it mobile, but instead relies on networks that you’ve already created and you already tend to – 1Hop just gives you a different view into those networks, one that is seen from the physical world.

1Hop is not creating a social network and taking it mobile, but instead relies on networks that you’ve already created and you already tend to – 1Hop just gives you a different view into those networks, one that is seen from the physical world.

For anybody who spends time away from his or her computer, this view is important! For that, I mean, it’s trivial for you to “meet” people online, but sometimes it does just come down to face-to-face. What do you talk about? The weather? The other person’s shoes? How about talking about a mutual friend instead? What about seeing the photos the other has placed on Flickr? 1Hop constantly does Bluetooth searches looking for other phones around you, consults with the 1Hop engine, and then decides whether it should buzz its user. We really don’t want to interrupt the user that often (he or she may already be chatting with somebody!), so 1Hop takes careful care to manage its user’s attention – and when he or she does pull out the phone, 1Hop puts up “just enough” information for him or her so he or she can put that phone right back and bring the eyes and face up.

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