This is the documentation of the Interaction Lab Group Research Project, which details how the artifact we built came into being and why we chose to design in a certain way, as well as a section of peer critique.
1. The idea
The artifact has to satisfy three main criteria: 1) made from cardboard; 2) in one of the narratives; 3) no electronics or advanced technology. We started from the criteria and looked for inspirations, and came across the initial idea of building a cardboard TV situated inside the narrative of the Veldt (more on how our idea came to be in the “sketches” section). The idea is that the TV will turn something in a person’s thought into a real item, via a headphone-like device that can read the person’s imagination. This artifact would match all three of the criteria.
Image 1: the finished artifact
2. Interactivity
In the research part of this project, Crawford defined interactions as “a cyclical process in which two actors alternatively listen, think, and speak” (link, page 5).
In the case of an interaction between human and a machine, the “listen, think, and speak” part can also be “input, process, output”. I think our TV design fits this definition well, in the sense that it captures the user’s thought, process the thought, and output a real object. Some other features of established forms of interactions include intuitiveness and meaningful. The TV is very intuitive to use, since it only requires the user to put on the headphone and turn the machine on. The machine will then give instructions on how to operate. Lastly, the interactivity demonstrated in the artifact is also meaningful, since it turns imaginations into their material existence.
3. Sketches of design
At first, we wanted the TV to be a virtual place similar to the “nursery” in the story, and have the children to finally realize that they need made a mistake and needs to save their parents. Then, the children would jump inside the TV and save their parents. This process of saving the parents will be our performance. However, to create the entire sequence inside the TV would be very hard to achieve given the time we had left, since we wanted to create cardboard “figures” inside the TV. The making of small objects in cardboard was very difficult and we abandoned this idea after a few try.
Then, we moved on to our current idea, which is a TV that can turn thoughts into real things, with “retro” fitted appearance and controls. We wanted to have knobs and antennas on the TV, and a headphone that can convert imaginations to digital signals. With these ideas in mind, we went ahead and created our artifact.
4. Successes and failures of the artifact
One success of our artifact is its simplistic and retroactive design. I think good interactive designs can last a long time without feeling “outdated”. Similar technologies available now is 3D printers, but a 3D printer is harder to use and requires training. The design of our artifact reflects the idea that “old looking” things can also do cool stuff. Moreover, our artifact fits well within the narrative of the Veldt. It is something that could very well exist in the story, since there are a virtual reality room, an automatic table that cooks for you, and chairs that can move you inside the house.
There are some failures too, one significant problem is that we didn’t set limits on what can it produce. Professor Parren asked if the TV can produce a gun, and I think this is a really good question that reflects the danger of such a product. Also, there is a “size limit” on what it could produce, that is, the size of the TV is fixed, and for something to be created within, it has to be smaller than the TV itself. These considerations are valuable feedbacks that we can think of when designing something. Furthermore, our storyline was too short and uneventful. I noticed that other groups had much more vibrant performances because they had created stories with ups and downs, while our performance is more like a demonstration.
5. Personal contribution and how we worked together
My personal contribution to the project was helping to cut and glue the cardboard, and also acting during the performance.
Our group worked together by meeting several times. During these meetings, we came up with ideas and tried out different designs. Some of us were better at drawing sketches and coming up with ideas, while others are good at hands-on tasks. After we decided on the idea, we spilt ourselves for different parts of the building process.
6. Peer critique
The group with the “mirror” artifact left a very positive impression on me. Their project is centered around a “mirror” inside the narrative of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”. On the other side of the mirror is actually a child trapped inside, which had to perform the same movement as the person looking at the mirror to make it more realistic. This idea is very fascinating, because this group recreated the underlying essence of the story in the form of a mirror. Moreover, the stage performance had a brilliant setup: the movement of actors and actress always revolves the mirror in a circular manner. This way, the movements create a spotlight on the mirror and build up the tension when circling, and also making it easier to see what is happening for the audience sitting in different angles. Overall, I think this group’s performance is very relevant to the narrative, and also meets the criteria very well. The creativity in designing the artifact and the performance helped significantly with understanding how it worked. However, there is one improvement that can be made, which is about the structure of the artifact. I noticed that the base for the mirror is a cardboard box, and it was a little bit hard for the mirror to stand on itself. If the top part of the mirror could be reduced in size a little bit, and some kind of triangular base could be made, it would be better for structural stability.
7. Script, pictures of props, teamwork, building process
For our performance, we did not have a specific script, and we delegated each part to one person. But a overview of the performance looks like this:
(1) Introduce the background information: the parents were locked in the “nursery” and devoured by the lions. The children cracked open their’s parents safe and bought this newly introduced TV.
(2) TV makes an entrance: one person carries the TV into the scene
(3) Turning on the machine: when touching the knob, the machine will turn on and display “Welcome, what would you like to imagine today”
(4) Three different group members will go on stage and try the machine, and they will think of three different items (a bottle of water, a burger, a jacket, and Airpods). They will first put on the headphones, and act accordingly (for the water bottle, act like thirsty). Then, the item will appear inside the TV (one person will slide a picture of that item through a gap on the bottom of the TV).
The building process took several steps:
Step 1: brainstorm. During our first meeting, we spent some time coming with the idea that we want to make a cardboard TV in the narrative of the Veldt.
Step 2: prototyping. We built a simple cardboard box that resembles a TV, and tried to come up with additional features that the TV could have.
Image 2: building the cardboard box that resembles a TV
Step 3: the story. Like mentioned above, we abandoned the idea of creating a sequence of the children saving their parents, and switched to a simple “make-a-wish” machine. We decided to have different members of the group performing how the TV can satisfy their needs by producing something.
Step 4: finishing up the design. In this last step, we gathered together and added buttons, a knob , and a set of antennas on the TV to make it look more retro-styled. Also, we created a headphone with colored blocks to resemble antennas.
Image 3: the design of the headphone
Step 5: rehearsal and performance day. We rehearsed our performance before we finished up the day before recitation, and a video of the actual performance is attached below.
Image 4: rehearsal
Video: recording of the actual performance
Finally, our teamwork was efficient overall. We communicated through a WeChat group and everyone was responsive. We met three times in total within a week, and spent around 10-12 hours on this project. The task allocation was spontaneous: I assumed the task of building some of the cardboard TV (cutting and gluing), and printing the pages needed for props. Haotong was very good at creating sketches and illustrating ideas. Patrick, Malaine, and Yuni together built a lot of the accessory of the TV (antennas, buttons) and the headphone. Malaine stored the prototype at her place each time, and Yuni came up with the essential ideas of the performance.