The Infinite Gauntlet_Johnny_Eric

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE:

The last group project I work on is the smart cube. The biggest inspiration I take from the last project isn’t about any interaction part. On the opposite, it is the topic of that group project, which is science fiction. Combining with another class I take this semester, which is the American Superheroes, I come up with the idea that I might find some interesting stuff in the Marvel Movies. The first movie I am researching is the Avengers and tons of high technology weapons have come to my mind. I have lots of things that I want to build, such as Thor’s hammer, making it responsible for people passing by, and the ironman’s helmet, making it responsive to a hand waving in front of it and this one, the infinity gauntlet, which is worn by the Thanos. But as you might think, all these toys are made a lot on Taobao. While something I have discovered is that all these toys, though they seemed to be pretty, they do not interact with the user. In the hammer’s case, most of them are only a decoration, which you can only hold and there is no response given if you do a certain movement towards it. And later on, I have checked several infinity gauntlet models and have found the same issue, which is that they are not as interactive as I thought, they do not give feedback when the user does the movement like those made by the superhero in the Marvel movie. Taking the infinity gauntlet as an example, the gems are shining based on the user touching it. While in the movie, when Thanos bends his fingers, the power of the gem is motivated. So we come up with the idea to build an updated version of the infinity gauntlet which has the features mentioned above. I haven’t discovered until Eric told me in the user test that he had never seen the Avengers. So in the poster, we have brought up a summary of Thanos, the old owner of this powerful weapon. Then we make the product positioning that this one is a toy for children and teenagers and any other Marvel fans.

CONCEPTION AND DESIGN

Since our product seems to be very straightforward, the only thing we need to consider is how to measure the difference brought by bending fingers. But the first thing to do is to get the glove. I have 2 ideas emerging in my mind when talking about this decision. The first is that I have imagined that maybe we can use the 3D printer to produce on our own. And the second thing is to purchase one from Taobao. But the first option is soon out of our consideration. Since the pattern on the glove is too difficult for us to build on the computer and the most important reason is that most of the materials used by the 3D printer are plastic. And this will cause the consequence that the fingers are hard to bend, thus making the product have a bad user experience. So we decide to purchase one from Taobao and then accomplish the improvement partly to make it fit our original design. One more thing to bring up is that during the process, we have actually changed our sensors. The original thought is that the pressure at the end of the finger will change when you bend the finger. So all we need to do is to cut off a little piece of the glove and then put the sensor inside of it. Here is our original model of the pressure sensor. But the pressure sensor is not suitable for soldering, thus making it hard to make it connect with the Arduino board.

While later there is one fellow who happens to see me working on this project and suggests that the normal way to build a wearable device is to use the flex sensor. The index of it will change a lot when you bend it and also it is more easily to be added to the surface of the glove. There is no more need to put the whole sensor inside the glove, which will make it very hard to get off when you try to return all these sensors borrowed from the equipment room. And after using one for the test, we have found that the result is quite satisfying. So we take the advice and then switch the interaction part from measuring the pressure to measuring how curly the sensor is. This makes the interaction part very obvious to the users.

FABRICATION AND PRODUCTION

To make the glove a wearable toy, we originally have decided to make a box by laser cutting and then put it on the backside of the gauntlet so that it will be more beautiful. Based on this idea, we use the link attached to the end of the slide to make a box and then build a prototype of the gauntlet. This is the short video of I did the user test.

And then we move on to the user test session. Something out of our expectation is that most of the users said that the box attached to the back of the gauntlet is too heavy for them to carry, thus making the wearing experience not so pleasant as expected. This question is also raised by 2 instructors and both of them have recommended us to put this box on our shoulder since it can handle much heavier weight. There are also users expecting to see more feedback when they hold a fist, not merely the cool sound effect and the shining LEDs. And the most surprising one is that the user hasn’t seen the Avengers before, so they basically don’t know what is going on here and whether this is a toy or something else. So in response to this confusion and suggestions, we make some adaptations to improve the prototype. 

The first thing we do is to add a summary of Thanos and the story of this gauntlet so that people who haven’t seen Avengers or barely remembered what happened in the movie can still enjoy playing with the toy. The second thing we do is to remove the box attached to the backside of the gauntlet and then put it on the shoulder, meanwhile lengthening all the wires to make them suitable for the former adjustment. While we find it hard to make more interactions after making a fist and this is due to the limited inputs and outputs. This is a picture of the infinity gauntlet after we have made some adjustments to it.

Personally, I think all the adjustments have reached their expected outcome, which is to make this toy more wearable.

CONCLUSIONS

My goal for this project is to build an entertaining device that is unlike those sold on Taobao, but the one that can correctly reveal the power of the infinity gems with the movement of the finger. In the previous blog, I have defined “interaction” as an event in which two or more sides are involved in and each side has the ability to sense others’ movements or changes and then form its own response accordingly so that the whole incident will be looked different from a third party perspective. Theoretically speaking, I think my project aligns with my definition of interaction. Whenever the user bends his finger, the infinity gems will separately give the feedback of shining, thus making the whole gauntlet looks cooler and when holding a fist, all the gems will be shining and there will be a sound effect. These designs suit my definition well. Due to its very straightforward interaction and the fame of Thanos, nearly every user interacts with it as we expected. Also because we have tested the gauntlet before and make the sensors very sensitive to only a tiny bending, it is easy for the user to discover what interaction this product has and then encourages them to discover all the interaction parts involved in this. If I had more time, I would mainly make 2 improvements. The first one is that all the wires are on the top of the gauntlet and I think this makes the toy “uglier” than we imagine. So maybe users can still get the idea of what we are building. While I still want to make it look cooler. To do that, I might use a buncher to collect all these wires and then make a cover to put on the top of all the wires so that the gauntlet looks better. The second improvement I can think of is to borrow an updated version of Arduino from the equipment room and add more interaction to it. For example, I have imagined that when the user makes a finger snap movement, what feedback the gauntlet can give back. Maybe I will build a bunch of card-made people and they will respond to the power of the gems separately and then together they will be more responsive to the gesture like making a fist and making snap fingers. Also, if it’s possible, I would like to switch the music contained in this toy as well. I would prefer to record the original movie sound to take the place of the Mario sound effect. I think the most important thing I take away from the accomplishment of this project is to form a clear understanding of the target user. For this, I haven’t considered it in the first place and this causes one of the confusion raised in the user test.