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Rob Tannen and his team at the Bressler Group, where he is Director of Research, have been working on the FieldCREW User Research Concept Platform, photo above. In Tannen's own words, "It's a concept design for a data gathering system for user researchers who...spend so much time gathering information to design high-tech products, but have very limited tools themselves. It also brings together some interesting 'near-future' technologies, like subvocalization to silently take notes while conducting field observations."

The nifty for-designers, by-designers tablet features

...several wireless data gathering components, including:

- Wireless, remotely controlled tracking video cameras for audio and video recording
- Handheld wireless taggers that allow each observer to tag key events of their choosing for later review - tagging is synched to a common timeline on the tablet
- Subvocalization sensor allows the researcher to silently dictate notes that are automatically transcribed to text and stored on the tablet

The tablet manages and receives data from these wireless components and provides features including:

- Video notation (i.e. telestrator) for annotation of events as they happen
- Speech-to-text translation of recorded audio (and subvocalizations)
- Access to stored and online project and research reference materials
- Built-in storage and recharging for wireless components
- Synchronization of all input sources (video, tagging, notes) for streamlined analysis

Check out the full slideshow and description here.