Definition
At the beginning of this semester, we were introduced to many situations where interaction between ourselves and technology took place. From experiencing these different interactions, I have been able to shape my definition of interaction. Interaction is one party initiates a communication with another party. Following this initial stimulus, the second party must take the time to react and synthesize a response to the first party’s effort. This act of “listening, thinking, and speaking” is what makes an interaction interactive. (Crawford 3)
Projects
Our group went through a number of ideas that we thought would be useful in everyday life. We finally settled on an interactive workout machine. We had a number of inventions that inspired our machine, but the main ones were the Fitbit and the PainPod. Both of these projects have senses of being interactive, and we used these characteristics within the FitBox. We gained the most inspiration from the Fitbit because it has the most interactive features. A person puts on their Fitbit and then goes on with their day. The Fitbit records fitness information until the person wearing it taps the sides, and then the Fitbit thinks and responds with the person’s fitness information at that moment. This represents our definition of interaction very well; the Fitbit is accepting stimulus, counting and storing the information, but it lacks the ability to respond. We wanted a better version of this interaction, one that provided similar services, but had a more interactive response.
The PainPod is a helpful project, but it lacks most of the interactive properties that we wished to include in our invention. We liked this project because the idea of stopping pain before injury is something that an ideal workout machine could do. Despite the inspiration, this device lacks the basic principles of interaction; listening, thinking, and speaking. When you applying the patches, they immediately begin blocking pain signals, not matter if the person is in pain at that moment or not. This is not the same as a device listening to the stimulus given. If the device cannot listen to stimuli, then it cannot think and respond because it has no information to relay.
The FitBox
The central idea of the FitBox was to simulate a personal trainer, and all of the interactions that they can provide in real life. The FitBox has (as of now) two different modes, one is a form correction function, and the other is a motivational function. Both follow our group’s definition of interaction. During both workouts, the user begins the workout, and the machine begins its process. The FitBox scans the user, and then follows throughout the workout to detect issues and to provide motivation when the user has none. This is the beginning of the interaction, the user’s movement provides information for the machine to scan. The machine then assess this information, and responds when there is an issue with form or motivation. When a problem is detected it responds with a hologram, so the user can easily see and fix the issue. The process of the FitBox assessing what the user is doing, searching for issues, and sending out a hologram is a perfect example of a machine listening, thinking, and speaking.
Works Cited
Crawford, “What Exactly is Interactivity,” The Art of Interactive Design, pp. 1-5.