Senses
In my opinion, successful artifacts not only bring interesting interactions and experiences, but also provoke thoughts about social issues. For a long time,the disabled people have been ignored by the society.And one of the most obvious examples is that many of China’s blind corridors have problems such as broken or uneven surfaces, bicycles and electric vehicles occupying the blind corridors, etc. Based on these phenomona,I think it is time for us normal people to raise awareness of this problem and to care about the blind.Therefore,the original topic of my design is the disabled ,especially the blind.I want to design a artifact that can let normal people experience the life of the disabled.However,I also do not want to make my design too sad and depressing.Thus,the core idea of my design is to abandon the visuals like the blind and emphasize other senses,especially audios.The main challenge is that whether the artifact will be influential when visuals are not prioritized because most artifacts regard visuals as the most important things.Meanwhile,this is a real salute to the visually impaired people because users can empathize with them during the experiences.Also,it can trigger them to think about the disabled community in society,which is my ultimate purpose for the design.
Just as Ernest Edmonds said,”there are three kinds of engagement:Attracting,sustaining,relating”(Edmonds,12).In the article Art,Interaction and Engagement,he divided interavtive art systems into four situations which were termed”Static”,”Dynamic-Passive”,”Dynamic-Interactive” and “Dynamic-Interactive(Varying).The last two situations are when the works are influenced by the audience and they are closely related to the artifact that I would like to create.He also simplified four kinds of interactive art systems into”Responding,varying,influencing and communicating”(Edmonds,13).From my point of view,interaction means acting with each other ,whether it was the acting between people,computers or between people and computers.More importantly,this was a two-way acting,which meant both sides had to respond to the other’s reactions.Besides,interaction should be something that is playable or subjected to change.
The project that I researched is a VR game called Beat Saber.In the game,the game use two devices that looked like swords to cut the cubes while following the rhythm and the music.Here,the VR device showed the user different cubes as instructions for “hitting”.Then the user make actions based on the instructions.After “hitting” the cubes,new animations on the screens would appear to let the user notice that he had successfully hit the cubes in the game.Through this circulation as well as two-way acting,the user can interact with the VR device and achieve great fun,which fits Ernest’s ideas of”Responding,varying,influencing and communicating”(Edmonds,13).Therefore,I regard it as a successful interactive experience.More importantly,it also inspired me to use audios in my project to promote innovative ideas since the convention tends to focus on visuals.
Hence, my design is to create interaction through senses such as hearing and touch.The narrative is that the user is a blind people,so he needs to rely on his other senses.Also,the user has to cover his or her eyes.Firstly,a box with nine buttons will be present in front of the user.Then the user has to follow the audio instructions to find the only right button to start a game.In the game,the user may encounter situations like being chased by a monster or facing the danger of being hit by cars.Hence,they need to jump front and back or side to side based on the instructions in Processing.Also, pressure sensors will be applied to detect the actions of the users.Addtional task such as audios from 360 degrees may be a new challenge and it may trigger new inspirations of audio artifacts. Box and buttons:Dec.2nd ; Processing and pressure sensor :Dec.4th；other tasks:Dec.6th-Dec.9th
Reference List
1.Edmonds E. Art, Interaction and Engagement. 2011 15th International Conference on Information Visualisation, Information Visualisation (IV), 2011 15th International Conference on. July 2011:451-456. doi:10.1109/IV.2011.73
