Group Project Reflection–Blog 6
I. Reflection of Our Group’s Project
For the group project, our group come up with the idea of a smart globe that is powered through the process that people are riding bikes next to it. The idea of this invention that is similar to artificial intelligence is inspired by the story of Newton’s Sleep. Therefore, our background settings are based on the future when people are transferred and are living in the space and the Earth has changed completely from nowadays. There is no forests, no parks, no nature scenes any more, instead, there are industries, laboratories… Everything is high-tech and people at that time have no idea what did the Earth look like hundreds years ago. So, to inform future people what is the original Earth, this globe provides information of “ancient” scenes and information after being powered. When people touch on one spot on the globe, the smart globe will give the picture of the place and provide the information about the animals that lived there, the history and overview etc. Hence, people in the future can see the original ecological earth that has not been transformed by industry and technology before. The interactive part in this design includes two parts. First one is that the globe needs to be powered by the process of people riding the bikes. More people are riding, the longer the time the globe is able to work. Another part is that when users are touching on different spots, they can get information accordingly.
As for the process of turning this idea into reality, we hold two meetings to figure out how to perform. Since we need bikes as one of our props and we cannot borrow real ones to ride in the classroom, we decide to have two students to act as one bike, and the only thing we need here are two chairs. Another and the most important prop that we need to include in our performance is the smart globe. Since we couldn’t use any technology, we decide to have one student to be the globe–she will hold up the globe and be the narrator of the globe. With her help, the globe can spin around in the sky. The globe itself is a small yoga ball and it includes papers that are printed the name of places that we are going to introduce. After preparing the props, we rehearse several times to make the performance fluent and logical.
After performed in the class, I realized that we had several shortcomings. First of all, we didn’t explain clearly where the device was located and the plot wasn’t very fluent and may confuse the audience. Also, just as the instructor said, since we set our story in the future, then we can change the idea of riding bicycles to floating around the device. Moreover, since the world has already had the technology to power devices, the idea wasn’t so new and can be improved.
The video of our performance:
II. Reflection of Another Group’s Project
One performance that really attracted my attention is the one from the second group. Their design is a device that help disabled people to do things that they aren’t able to do. The device includes one control panel, and four robots who listen to the order from the control panel. The disabled person tried all the four robots and found out the best robot that could help him to pick up the pen that he had fallen on the ground. I think the idea is closely related to the story of Newton’s Sleep because in that story there were disabled people and the device they came up with can be helpful for those people. However there is something I think that can be improved. For the idea, I think it will be better if the smart control panel is linked to the wheel chair and the robots can be taken around instead of putting them at a fixed position. Otherwise, when the owner is away from this place, he will not be able to use this intelligent design. At the same time, since only one of them had lines and other four people kept silent throughout the performance, it was a little bit hard to understand accurately what they wanted to tell the audience. For instance, same as the instructor said, I considered that the previous three robots all had some problems so the user had to change to another one. But it turned out to be that the other three robots all had things that they were specified at. As a result, I think maybe they can improve their performance by adding more lines. However, their idea is really good and meets the criteria of the project assignment.