Preparatory Research And Analysis-Amber

Research

Project 1: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/sowmith/visualising-sensor-data-using-arduino-and-processing-e707f0?ref=tag&ref_id=processing&offset=2

This project is successful because it visualize the data to show the changing trend. As we learned from math class, making a graph with statistic could make the data more visualizable and the analysis more convenient. So recording and showing the data is a good idea in many field with wide application. However, this project is the interaction mainly between environment and computer. Maybe people are not that involved. I would prefer to add “search function” to make it more interactive.

This is a project that use processing to visualize the data read by Arduino. This actually remind me of a data visualization project I did last semester(https://wp.nyu.edu/shanghai-amber_kong/2020/11/29/data-visualization-project/). For the data  I want to visualize, I might choose the temperature and humidity. To record these two data and visualize the real-time statistic and changing curve using processing on computer could definitely help professionals to predict the weather. I’m also wandering if I can link the database so that I could put all the statistics into the database and people could search the history record.
For more details, maybe I can add LEDs and buzzers to warm people when there’s extreme weather like extreme high/low temperature, storm, etc.

Project 2:https://editor.p5js.org/yk2308/sketches/gx6D5L_qo

This is actually an example in p5.js library. The function of this project is to draw beautiful symmetry center figure like this:

This is a project only using code but is still interactive. It allows people to create beautiful drawing as the computer would automatically execute symmetry and the symmetrical figure is beautiful. And this project also allows users to change the size of the “brush”, clear the screen and save the drawing with buttons (sorry I didn’t include these in my screen recording), which are really interactive and practical.

I’m wondering I could use two 10K ohm pots as the adjuster to take the place of mouse. One controls the distance to the center of the circle and one controls angle. Users could choose the shape and color via computer (processing) and adjust the distance to the center and finally draw with two 10K ohm pots.
This is only my preliminary assumption and I will come up with more details.

Analysis

1. Again, I think I would firstly put my definition of interaction: a process when a person/device(I call it A) do something and is detected by another people/device(I call it B), B could react and A is able to know that reaction. So according to my definition, my project would be better if I could involve the users as much as possible, not only let the users to see what happened. This is why for the first project I researched, I said that this is more like an interaction between environment and computer. People could only see the computer screen and see what happened. I think this is not interactive enough.
2. From the experience I gained from midterm project, I think the project should not only be interactive and involving, but it should also present the use it of clearly. Just like the feedback we got from the Q&A session in the midterm presentation, our project sought to be not really easy to understand how to use it. So we must make the instruction clear and easy to be understood. And this is actually what we were asked to do during user testing session. Don’t explain how your project works and just let others to find out how it works. If others could figure out how it works, you succeed.
3. Each action leads to a response that, in turn, encourages or enables another action (Ernest Edmonds,7). My understanding of this is that the interaction of the project must be interesting and attractive so that users have the motivation to continue doing this interaction. And I think the feedback we got from Eric for our midterm project could prove this well. If there is a skull with and instruction “please put your hand in my mouth”, almost no one would do so because nobody would want to put his/her hand into such a horrible thing. So we need to make it interesting and attractive so that the users would have the motivation to interact with it. So we put a candy in the mouth of the skull so the users would have the motivation to take that candy out.
4. Ernest Edmonds concludes three terms of approaches of the physical way the audience interact with projects: direct, facilitated and ambient. This just remind me the importance of the audience’s experience. Maybe this point has some intersections with the previous one. But I must say it again that the user’s experience is so important. That’s why we have users testing session. We need more investigation about thee audience rather than only introspect them just as Ernest mentioned that using artists’ (in our case, ourselves) experience as the typical example might be one-sided and subjective.