Last week we did a lot of research before we’re going to pick out concepts. Noraley did the theoretical research, Suzann the design/user research and I’m looking for technical answers on my technical questions.
Tomorrow we have our research presentation to reflect on it.
For the technical part I’m looking into the sensory possibilities of the Arduino. This way we can figure out witch kind of interaction is possible. I’ll post some examples that I found interesting.
A laser switch:
Accelerometer for pointing camera:
Using your body to interact witch digital visuals using range finder:
Yesterday we went to the Niet Normaal exposition in Amsterdam. Basically we wanted to get more in to interactive installations, whats out there at the moment, especially focused on the trend of media.
There where a few interesting installations, there was for instance a large artistic colorful and extraordinary collage that was set up as if it was a building. I could even go inside between two hanging legs. The hall was small, the sealing low and the walls where for a part made of a kind of horseshit. At the end of the somewhat tree meter hall was a microphone standing in front of me. And of course you start speaking into the mic or at least I started making crazy bird sounds just for the hack of it. Nothing happened but sure I was that the sounds would be used for something funky. Later I found out that the sounds where live played out load into the museum. It still gives me a chuckle
This setup works good because you’re lead to a kind of cozy private atmosphere where you can say stuff not realizing your voice is live on a propaganda tower.
There was also a strange physical installation with a lot of sensors, metal pieces, micro chips, electronic cables, print-boards and a bird in the middle of a huge spiraling cylinder. It was a really interesting spectacle without a real purpose to help mankind.
Further there was a artistic hangout where you where asked to contribute to a drawing. You could afterwords push a button and a camera that was setup made a picture of the drawing.
What I also liked about Niet Normaal was that they asked visitors to write down on a sheet of paper what they thought is not normal and whats is normal.
I like the idea to ask the people for input this makes it more real. Just normal people with normal or not normal ideas.
Last thursday we had a creative workshop on how to come up with lots of ideas by Charlie Mulholland. He gave us an introduction on what creativity actually is. According to Charlie everyone one of us is creative. Its just about you coming up with original ideas for problems. Like: how do I keep my pencil up straight?
The first thing we had to do was defining the problem. Not only according to us but also according to the user and according to the MedialLab (for example).
During the workshop we got a lot of brainstorming techniques. One of them was to think about how we could make the problem worse? If you reverse this solutions afterwords you get some awsome ideas.
And not to forget: Don’t judge during the brainstorm! This kills creativity. So just put everything on post-its without judging one-another. And read the stuff your teammates are putting on the wall, cause this can fire up new neuron-pathways and therefore tricker your creativity.
An other thing to keep in mind is that you have to evaluate your brainstorm afterwords. Do something with your results. Cluster, filter, categorize them and so on.
Results of the brainstorm:
Things we shouldn’t do
- Put a border around it
- Don’t explain anything
- Neglect McLuhan
- Tell the wrong theories
- Make it too complex
- Boring installation: do not touch!
- Install it in the torture museum in Amsterdam
- Pretend it doesn’t exist
- Just don’t place it, but pretend it’s there
- Too expensive entry
- Prove McLuhan wrong
- Tackle his theory
- We announce McLuhan being there at the opening!
- McLuhans theory is mispronounced
- Make McLuhan balloons
- Insult the intelligence of the target group
Questions
- Is media forever?
- Will your input last forever? Data storage
- Can we only be social through media?
- Where does it go?
- Who is McLuhan?
- Will there be a universal language
- McLuhan vs. ?
- Who is against McLuhan?
- Is media the answer?
- What’s the difference between old and new media?
- What’s the price?
Form of the installation
- Written / visual / body … language
- Convert the invisible web into sound
- Music has to involvued, use your senses
- It must be a piece of art
- 3D
- Make something that challenges every expertise
- Hysteria or quiet peacefulness
- Create something with electronics
- Interactive installations are always about screens. Avoid them!
- Make it a game
- Interface
- Philosophy meets interaction
- Use different media
- Use photos
- Media & me
- Multilanguage
- Makei t accessible / open for everyone
- Let people do something
- Surprises
- RFID
- “Do not touch” is forbidden
- Videos
-
Conceptual
- Violence prevented or caused by media
- Fool people
- Are you better than McLuhan>
- Set up a debate
- Visualise his theories
- Ask people for their ideas about media
- Show similarities in media and nature
- Let them experience what happens
- Make something that makes this world a better place
- With a McLuhan theory puzzle
- Let it be about communication and language
- Musem is boring?
- MAke it so interesting people will talk about it with a coffee
- Sensibilisation
- Reflection
- Message
- Make it a social happening
- Confront people with themselves
- Commercial campain
- Connect people
- Hot / cool media
- Visualised mediascape
- McLuhan: how media influences culture & identity ß religion
- The connection between religion and media
- Marketing
- Shock
- Touch!
- Pens were yesterday
- Utopia
Philosophical
- Google listens to your prayers
- Media is god
- Mass knowledge
- What if machines could thing? (AI)
- Technology vs. Nature
- Program our brains
- Donna Haraway (cyborg theory)
- New hobbies
- Emotional vs. Rational
Vague
- People have fun
- MAAAAAAAD!!!!!!!!
- Attract people
- Work as a team <3
- Input
- Be proud of ourselves
- Make Robert happy
- Enthusiasm
- Think beyond
- Conform expectations
I just started a new project group where I’m gonna develop an interactive installation for the scryption museum in Tilburg. Our team exist out of tree people technical role is my part and the we have a designer (Susi) who is from Germany and Noraly who does more the research and scientific parts. But we are just with the tree of us so we do all a bit of every thing in the end I think.
Our slogan is “Get lost in language”.
Today I’ve done a lot of animation work in After Effects. This was the second time that I did a great job in this program so it took a while to get back to it. But finally we got our end result.
During my internship at Medimatic I’ve done a lot of usability testing. For this I’ve used the tobii eye-tracking system at my faculty for Interactive Media. Here we have a very nice high tech usability lab.
First of all I wanted to know if I could actually use this lab for tests that I had to do for my internship, luckily my teacher (Sanne ‘t hooft) had no problems with that.
After I’d made an appointment with Sanne for using the lab I set up the test. We wanted to test the flap element, this is the magenta button that’s gonna cover a lot of functions. Functions like: I like this, Flag this, Block this user, Add as a contact, Reserve tickets, Buy Tickets and so on..
This sounds simpler than is actually is. People simply don’t look in a button that says ‘Actions’ if they want to buy tickets for an event.
They are just not used to this. Especially people over thirty years old have problems with this. They just want a button that says Buy Tickets Here, or something in that sense. And because Mediamatic didn’t want to take the risk of not selling tickets we (Emina, Tal and me) had to test this issue very deeply and finally create the masterpiece.
This is the disign process we’ve gone true:
Things I’ve learned during the usability testing process:
Its important to make clear to the tester before testing that him not finding stuff are faults of the webdesign and that he is not the one that’s stupid.
Give the user clear goals before starting the test. What does he want to achieve on your webpage/application.
Don’t draw your conclusions too soon. First observate and nothing more.
Write down your observations; the things that the user has problems with.
Ask the user to speak out loud; What is he looking for. His expectations. His hesitations or doubts.
Look in the eye-tracking results for the first things he’s looking at and the last things.
Cookies work good to lure the mice into your testing environment. No just kidding, but it works.. true
Keep in mind that the user is doing you a favor by helping you with a test so be polite and think about offering something in return.
About the Design:
We tempt to have not much patience with searching for stuff. We often don’t even read stuff if its longer then a few words. This particularly applies to younger generation users. So clear labeling is very important.
Use white-space to make elements more visible.
Don’t make things ugly huge so the web-design gets messed up.
Hacker Camp is the annual event where artists, interaction designers, philosophers, programmers, geeks, nerds, designers and other talented masters all over the world gather to invent tensive interactive machines. By using Arduino’s the hackers are able to create wonderful installations.
The Friendslicer was one of the new born installations during the gathering. I was part of this creative flow and shared my love with the herd during brainstorm-sessions.
