Concept Bombing

It has been a long time since I've undertaken a concept bomb, and since then I had forgotten not only how challenging they are, but how useful they could be if undertaken properly. Today's lesson was certainly refreshing in that sense, however a great deal of the challenge lay in interpreting and understanding the parameters of each of the concepts. They contained a number of seemingly contradictory statements, for example: a device to communicate and prioritise various information sources in everyday life, WITHOUT a screen or any complex audio communication. Such a thing seems at face value almost impossible. In the end, however, the concept bomb exercise provided us with a number of possible directions to start with, and valuable material to work on in the coming weeks. 

Public InterACTION

Just watched a very funny take on public interaction: Most Epic Ad Ever Made.

Presentations

The presentations yesterday showed the great variety of directions taken by the other groups, some of which were remarkably sophisticated in their execution. It was well worth the time taken to explore the other interpretations of the task, and gain inspiration for the next step of the task. 

Reflections on task

This task has been a very, very steep learning curve. When given the Arduino board, I had not the faintest idea how I might get it to do anything at all, and was similarly perplexed as to how to go about working on the assignment. It wasn’t until our second week breakthrough that the gears really started turning and we began undertaking truly productive work. As the first genuinely “interactive” task we have undertaken, this project has significance. There has been an extra dimension we have had to work with; instead of simply designing and modelling a device, its shape and appearance, we were choreographing interaction with that device. The experience gained here, in particular the knowledge of microprocessors such as the Arduino, should prove invaluable in future projects.

Model completion and testing

Today was spent putting the final touches on the model, and testing it on an office chair before heading to a nearby shopping centre carpark to film the model “in the wild”. Here is a video of our testing inside, stay tuned for our carpark video!

Red and green LEDs replace display.

In the place of the 7-segment display, we decided to include a pair of LEDs; one red, one green. To achieve this I wired them in the same way as the blinking LED tutorial, and then patched the code across so that the red LED would accept the same input as the buzzer, and the green would take the input of the victory tune. This proved relatively simple, the only obstacle being the void loop at the end of the audio coding, which needed to be deleted.

LED display cut from model

Despite our best efforts, it seems that we will not be able to get the counter properly programmed in time for the presentation, so we have decided to drop it from the model altogether. Attached is a video of where we got up to in the programming, showing the problematic segments and the missing characters (it was meant to scroll 0-9, A-F)

Tutorials found for LED display

Ann-Maree has forwarded a number of tutorials to me to help with programming the 7-segment LED display, a task which has proven bewildering so far. I’ve decided to focus on one resource in particular: 7- Segment LED Tutorial. We’ll see how it goes…

Two Tone Success

Breakthrough! I managed to coax the Arduino board into generating two tones: on, a low, buzzing tone to be activated whenever the trolley hits the side of the railing, and two, a victory tune that plays when the trolley is properly put away. Next step: programming the display!

Focus Session

The group focus session today was very successful, the fact that all of us had at least some time off allowed us to have a “rolling” focus session that encompassed the whole day.
A trip to Jaycar in Wooloongabba furnished us with the components we would need for our mock-up: soldering iron and solder, a roll of wire and push switches. Before we put these into use, however, we first had to complete the circuitry and coding on the Arduino. I worked primarily on the electronics, Sophie fashioned the mountings for the buttons to be attached to a trolley, and Ann-Maree and Felicity researched programming methods and worked on concepts for the application of the equipment. While the model is far from complete and the electronics still have a lot of work, I feel that today has been a great step forward in terms of progress towards our goal. 

A Breakthrough!

After many days of searching we have managed to conclude our tutorial session today with an idea worth pursuing. Some interesting ideas were gained from the very amusing First World Problems blog, and made for some fun concepts. The best inspiration, however , came from The Fun Theory, a project set up by Volkswagen, which aims to use fun to "change behaviour for the better". Discussion and subsequent brainstorming on this topic led to an idea to encourage people to return shopping trolleys to the bays at the supermarket by turning it into a game. A plan was drawn up, and the necessary parts obtained from Yasu. Our intention is to use buttons on either side of a mock up to make a buzzing noise when users touch the sides of the trolley bay, and one button on the front to activate a victory tune when the trolley is pushed home, "Winning" the game. To add to this, a 7-segment LED display would show how many times the user touched the sides (the lower, the better) and an RGB LED would shine blue for normal use, red when it touched the sides, and green when the trolley hit the end.

Workshop Session 07/08

Today's workshop session provided a particularly steep learning curve, allowing us to shift the focus from dismantling and identifying parts of the objects we had brought in, to experimenting with different forms of action and reaction, and how they can be factored into an interactive model. Experimentation also continued with the Arduino board, however only the most basic tasks have been successful so far. 

Inspiration

Interesting bit of inspiration from one of Arduino's co-founders: Ted Talks - Massimo Banzi

Bill Verplank reading

Bill Verplank’s reading on Blackboard was difficult to respond to. I feel that I will need to return to it throughout the semester to fully understand what it has to say. For now though, it has served to force me to look at computers objectively, not an easy thing given their place in society, and look at the relationship computers have to interactive design. Dividing thought on human-computer interaction into the three paradigms of brain, tool and media is a concept I had not thought of before, but it makes a great deal of sense. I think this will be a rading worth examining further.

Interactive Tutorials

In order to better understand the Arduino and how to use it, we decided to undertake the tutorials These were very instructive, and lots of fun - as this video we put together demonstrates...

Input/output Component ID

The Items we deconstructed have proven difficult to arrange into interactive designs, so we have sorted them to better understand what each component can do for us. The photographs below show the key components identified as either input or output.