I found two interaction projects that inspire me on YouTube. One is the solar tracker designed by Robot Greek in the video “Top 10 Arduino projects all the time ред Amazing Arduino school projects genius youtuber” . The other is the mood reflecting floor published by the “visualcraft”.
For the first one, I think it’s successful because it can interact with the environment. While according to the “Art, Interaction and Engagement”, it mentions “infant behavior”, which is that infants will react according to the environment, I think this project can be viewed of a manifestation of the theory: the machine turn according to the light. From this project, it inspires me that, this project is very much like a sunflower, and maybe I can design a sunflower according to this idea but add more interaction with human, and make this interaction, continuous, according to the “Art, Interaction and Engagement”. And for the latter one, it provides a really good visual experience to me, and it’s also pretty entertaining and can interact with people for quite a long time. Also, I think I also reminds me of the interactive floor I saw in a hotel that there are many fishes projected on the floor, and they will “swim” away if you step on them. This inspires me that maybe I can also design my project with items that will change position or forms according to human movements.
I think a successful interactive experience should not only be containing the machine and people, as I said before in my definition of interaction. What’s more important in an interactive experience is that it should inspire the user to interact more, rather than just a one-round interaction. According to “Art, Interaction and Engagement”, “the interaction [should be] continuous and fluid”. which, I think is also what I can improve for my midterm project as well. And also, the interactive experience should have a deeper intention. Just like what we did in our group project, by reading “The Winter Market” by William Gibson, we see the insight of how technology has negative influence on people, and integrated that in our design. So it is that we designed our midterm project to help people with eyesight disability.
Reference:
- E. Edmonds, “Art, Interaction and Engagement,” 2011 15th International Conference on Information Visualisation, 2011, pp. 451-456, doi: 10.1109/IV.2011.73.
- TGibson, W. (2000). The winter market. Burning chrome.