Week 15

CMT: 29th Jan ‘08

We usually hold this session on Monday, but because Professor Gaver was attending this IDC seminar, we were all requested to attend in place of our typical CMT meeting for the week.
SPEAKER: Professor Bill Gaver, Goldsmiths College, University of London
TITLE: Curious things for curious people: Designing technology for
everyday life
TIME & PLACE: Tuesday 29 January 2008, 1100-1230hours, Focus Area, Town Hall Building, School of Computing Science, Middlesex University.

ABSTRACT: In my studio, we design computational products that shun utilitarian assumptions to tell more interesting stories about who we are and what we care about. The Plane Tracker, for instance, tracks passing flight traffic and imagines views of their journeys. The Local Barometer displays text and images from local sources as if blown through the home. The Home Health Monitor picks up indicative information about household activities and reflects this back in the form of automatically generated horoscopes. Such designs offer new perspectives not only on the form and functions of interactive systems, but on the ways technology reflects people.

ABOUT: Bill Gaver is a Professor of Design at Goldsmiths, University of
London, and also head of the Interaction Research Studio.

At the seminar, he called the presentation Threshold Devices; he started with the Video window, a device he described as being fascinating and by kick-starting the presentation with it, he gets geared up. Furthermore, he talked about the video window being Multi-dimensional in terms of view, aesthetic and a functional content; it can also be seen as an opening to the world with a personal perspective. He only mentioned ludic engagements calmly; although he supported his idea about designing for play/ everyday life.

 

PDE : 1st Feb ‘08

We discussed Professor William Gaver’s Speech/ Presentation at the IDC meeting held earlier in the week; individually we talked about the presentation and what we felt about such designs and ideas. Some of us saw it as great way of thinking and designing. That is to say, techniques like design the product first and then apply/ define the theoretical methods subsequently. Others might view this idea as an unconventional way of making things, but at the end of the day, usual pattern of designing things are not quite innovative some times.

When we later got into the tutorials proper, Halil started by showing the improvement/ new studies/ he has done so far relating to his “Augmented Reality Paradigm” in his presentation, he mentioned about shutter glasses and the possibility of applying it to his design.

After Dikshit showed his project plan to the team and received advice from our team tutors/ supervisors, we then adjourned for lunch.

On returning from the lunch break, I put forward my ideas about “Service Design” and also talked about trying to find an edge to grip on service design project. I received advice on my initial idea and how to go about developing it further in order to result into a valid / realistic project.

Finally David presented a Gantt chart and other resources referring to his “Lead user Innovation” project.

 

Intro

Introduction

Self development is one of the main reasons for choosing this programme of study, my desire is to understand and learn the underlying technique of Interaction Design. I believe that on completion of this course, I will be equipped with the core knowledge needed to critically analyse a range of extant and emergent theoretical perspectives relevant to Interaction design, demonstrate critical awareness of current trends and technological developments within the field in view to creating exceptional interactive experience for users, through understanding people and what motivates them, designing complex products as well as creativity.

The course runs at Middlesex University (Trent Park Campus), and it consists of the following modules; Product design and Engineering (PDE4210)-Interaction Design Practice, Computing and Multimedia Technology (CMT 4210)-Current Issues in Interaction design (Core theories, current issues, research and practice) and CMT 4211-Interaction Design Thesis. This web log also known as reflective journal is a compulsory element of assessment for this course.

Week8

CMT 4210: 19th Nov ‘07

Following other related engagements, the programme leader Dr. Bob Fields could not attend this session, it was suggested that we do self study and individual research on future topics for class discussion.

 

PDE 4210: 20th Nov. ‘07
In this meeting, we focused our discussion on generating hypothesis for the “Effective Domain”. We only had approximately six to seven hours on the fieldwork. Considering the limited time we spent on the field and all other constraints, we decided that in addition to applying rapid ethnographic account, we talked about collaborative data analysis of our individual findings, “Customer Corridor” (outside entrance-web/adverts/signage) Exhibit Entrance, Hill-Vista (Gorilla Island), Glass wall, Day Gym, Exit- Interactive exhibit. Finally, all the team members were required to perform a specific task through the course of the week to support our report and presentation.

My role was to define and describe the basic meaning of Affordance and Feedback?

Give physical examples of each.

The word “Affordance” was invented by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the actionable properties between the world and an actor (a person or animal). To Gibson, Affordances are relationships. They exist naturally: they do not have to be visible, known, or desirable.

Donald A Norman describes Affordance as; when a designer announces “I put an Affordance there,” what could possibly be meant? To the purist, affordances simply exist they are the actions possible by an agent (usually a person) and the environment. But the concept was invented for the natural world, and when it comes to the physical, constructed world, it does make sense for a designer to have deliberately shaped and located the materials so as to afford action.

http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html

Week9

CMT 4210: 26th Nov ‘07
A guest speaker attended the class today; Suzette Keith a researcher on CS (computer Science) with a range of interests in the general area of ‘Inclusive Design’.

She covered two main areas:

1. Introduction to ‘design for all’ in EU and UK, the ‘problem’ of the social and political concerns for the digital divide and the ‘benefits’ of Information and communication technology (ICT) which may improve independence and social participation

2. Introducing our recent project on the needs wants and aspirations of older car drivers in which we decided to apply a participatory design (PD) process to the development of new in-car technologies.

http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/S_Keith/

The latter is based on joint work between computing and product design (and may explain why there is half a car in the studio!).

The attached paper was presented at TRANSED 2007 – a biennial conference on transport, ageing and disability held in Canada.

PDE 4210: 27th Nov. ‘07
Deciding on the presentation of our report to the corresponding team at ZSL, we reconciled our various assignments from last week, and then we mapped out the pattern in the following sequence;

General Introduction

Working methods (Gorilla Specialist, Reassure)

Aim (Support, Concepts, Generate hypothesis)

Concepts (Affordance, Feedback-Generic examples)

Customer Corridor (Analytical topics)

Analysis (Design experience, 6 stages, Video stills)

Recommendations (Secondary research) Further Workings

 

Week 10

CMT 4210: 3rd Dec ‘07
Overview and demo of the AR toolkit

AR (Augmented Reality) toolkit is a software library for building AR applications. The applications use the overlay of virtual imagery on the real world.

“In contrast with virtual reality, which refers to a situation in which the goal is to immerse a user in a completely synthetic environment, augmented reality refers to a situation in which the goal is to supplement a user’s perception of the real world through the addition of virtual objects.” Ronald Azuma (1997) “A Survey of Augmented Reality”, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

Few years ago, Virtual Reality (VR) seems to be the main focus of media attention. The user of the VR tool is completely immersed in computer generated images that totally cuts him off the real world images. In Augmented Reality, the user can see the real world around him although; in this case, the images are composited or superimposed using computer graphics.
A well known technique for executing Augmented Reality is with an optical see-through Head-Mounted Display. This translucent goggles place optical combiners in front of the user’s eyes. The monitors reflect images that combine both the real world view and the three-dimensional (3D) virtual representation.

After the AR discussions and experience, we moved on to Project ideas and suggestions session.

PDE 4210: 4th Dec ‘07
PIC Microcontrollers (Programme Instruction Circuit)

There are several types of microcontrollers like the Serial PIC programmer, chip factory, stamp controller, and so on. For this workshop we used the PICAXE systems which consist of PICAXE microcontrollers. They are single chip microcomputers that can be used for both industrial and educational purpose. The PICAXE system is low cost, easy to use and powerful microcontroller programming system designed to simplify educational and hobby use of microcontrollers, however it requires a computer to write the programme.

 

The unique feature of the PICAXE system is that programs are downloaded via a direct cable link straight into the microcontroller, so no expensive programmers or erasers are required. The easy to use software is free, and the low cost approach also means that students can use the whole programming system at home.

The programme instruction circuit is based on E2PROM or EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory)

There are different ways of programming the PIC – using BASIC, C, or Assembly Language.
The PICAXE microcontrollers are in four sizes:

The 8 pin version provides 5 I/O pins (1 analogue input).

The 18 pin version provides 8 outputs and 5 inputs (3 of the inputs have analogue capabilities).

The 28-pin version provides 9-17 outputs, 0-12 inputs and 0-4 separate analogue inputs.

The 40-pin version provides 9-17 outputs, 8-20 inputs and 3-7 separate analogue inputs.

For this lesson, we used the PICAXE18A, and then we used the sample programme below for our first trial. This program flashes LED (Light-Emitting Diode) connected to output 1 on and off every second.

main: ' make a label called 'main'
high 1 ' switch on output 1
pause 1000 ' wait 1 second (1000 ms)
low 1 ' switch off output 1
pause 1000 ' wait 1 second (1000 ms)
goto main ' jump back to the label

We practised further on our own by writing different programmes and executing same. Some of the programmes I wrote could not run. Dr. Bardill was available to give us further guidance on the assembly language. We carried on trying out different new codes, and I also modified some of the codes I wrote to see what will be the effect on the programme output.

For further readings on the above topic, the following web sites were recommended; www.revolution.com, www.parallax.com, www.mutr.co.uk

Week 11

CMT 4210: 10th Dec ‘07
Discussion: Towards a framework for current issues in interaction design. Recap on topics we have covered through the semester.

We then looked at some of the issues we will cover at next semester.
For the recap, we talked about;

1. Technologies and Innovation

1.1. Sound and Light

1.2. Ubicomp

1.3. Tangible Interface

1.4. Augmented Reality

1.5. Sensors and Display

2. Methods and Approaches

2.1. Participatory Design

2.2. Ethnography

2.3. Documentary film making

2.4. Usability Engineering

2.5. Standards and Constraints

3. Domains and Places

3.1. Public places

3.2. Home

3.3. Work

3.4 Car

3.5. Services

4. Concepts and Perspectives

4.1. Challenges

4.2. Ubiquity

4.3. Ludic Engagement—Pleasurable Designs

PDE 4210: 11th Dec ‘07
I.E. (Information Ergonomics) box and Mini-Project tutorials

Week 12

CMT 4210: 17th Dec ‘07

 

PDE 4210: 18th Dec ‘07
This was the last week of the semester; we started by talking about coming to the end of the session, the web logs and today’s presentation and its importance. We digressed to the London zoo project -Design brief, and we all watched the fully edited /final copy of the video clip the team presented to the management of ZSL.
After the usual break, we all returned to do a presentation on the photo locket. The task was to show the full design process to include; the dream feature, mapping, constraints, iterations, and specific dimensions.

 

 

 

 

All the team mates had about 20minutes each to show to the rest of us how they achieved their final design. The presentation started with Halil, David, Anoi, and Dikshit, after which I took my turn, then Madushani, finally Dean closed the day. To assess classmates’ presentation skills, Andy (programme director) introduced a circular assessment sheet, every member except the presenter had to put a dot to signify weak and strong points, the wider your circle the higher your score. An example of the scoring sheet is attached below:

And you can also download and view my presentation with the link below:

pholock-presentation.pps