Step 1
I learned about and provided feedbacks to three projects by students in our recitation. The first one was Tiana’s project about data consumption. She tries to build an interactive system that visualize the bombarded amount of data we consume everyday through showcasing gifs on the computer screen, and she also had the idea of showcasing the intensity and speed of data consumption through activating a racing car. If users spend too much time consuming data on their digital devices, the car will be triggered and start racing. Users have to close their computers to stop the car. The second project I learned about was Lindsay’s “Hand Pen” project. Lindsay tries to create a device through which users can draw in the air. Her interactive system will also enable users to draw different kinds of shapes and lines. The third project was Alex’s VR archery game. Alex tries to build a game that immerses users in the experience of shooting arrow towards the target.
I found their projects very interesting and inspiring, because their design intention and definitions of interaction quite align with what I have been thinking about interaction. For instance, Tiana’s project concerns a social issue faced by human society in this digital era, i.e. the overload of digital information and interaction. Alex and Lindsay thought about how to design interactions that are familiar to the human body, instead of building interactions that are alienating.
However, I also discovered something quite different between how I approached my interaction lab project versus how the others did it. Alex said that he began the project by thinking how he could incorporate what he had learned to create something, and Lindsay’s idea was built upon some project examples she had seen. However, I began my project by thinking about an expressive statement that I wanted to make and a problem I hoped to solve, then I came down to the specific technical details and see how I can realize my project. Our discussion made me reflect more on these different approaches towards interaction design. Learning about their projects helped me revisit my definition of interaction, which now involves the natural and familiar reaction from human beings.
Step 2
I received really valuable feedbacks from my group. My group members expressed that they really like the design intention of my project, which involves art and the experience of looking at art. However, they also mentioned that they thought our project should use the actual piece of Mona Lisa instead of recreating an animated version of the painting. Two group members also suggested that we should use potentiometer or controllers with analog inputs instead of using buttons with digital inputs. The feedback that we can use analog inputs to let users control the degree of emotions they want to express was really revealing to me. Another group member recommended that we can also enable users to type in texts and the changes of Mona Lisa’s facial expression will be based on the texts people put. Another comment was that because Mona Lisa is such an ambiguous piece of art work, users might use the console to control, say 10 % of anger, 40% of happiness, and so on.
These feedbacks inspires me to think more about how we can design our console so that users know what to expect when they interact with it, and they also feel a sense of control. I will definitely discuss with my project partner and other fellows about the design of our console. However, I am quite reluctant to use the actual Mona Lisa piece, as they suggested. One concern is about the difficulty in coding. The other reason is that our design intention was to make the art experience fun and engaging, but we also don’t hope to appropriate or misuse Leonardo da Vinci’s original masterpiece.