PROJECT TITLE: “Walk Into the Newsroom”
`This project focuses on transforming our way of learning about world issues into something fun and informative. My partner had the idea from the fact that her schoolmates do not frequently discuss the current events that are happening in the world, yet they all collectively acknowledge that it is necessary for them to know the news that is happening in this fast-paced world. Personally, I found it to be very interesting too. Because seldom it is hard to keep up with the news and issues. In addition to that, sometimes the news are heavy and heartbreaking, so I prefer to not read it. With this project, my partner and I are determined to make reading the news interesting and entertaining. In order to fulfill our goal, we will try out best to make our project utilize both Arduino and processing thoroughly.
For the design of the project, there will be a medium-sized carpet or mat that has the world map on it. We were thinking of ordering the world map from Taobao, but if we could not find it we will paint it on a wood board. After that, we will attach buttons in some countries according to the Arduino ports and add LEDs, therefore, the user can step on it and the screen will display the news of that country. For the source of the news, we were thinking of using twitter, as that is the platform where people can freely express their opinions and the diversity of those opinions is what we were looking for. I would also make the project to involve the user a lot, so we were thinking of using the laptop’s webcam to display the user’s face as the person saying all the news from a speech bubble.
Attached above is the approximate timeline of our project. We will try ordering the map this weekend, and if that does not work then we will paint it. Next week, we will write the code and build the circuits for the Arduino. Our professor told us to search for examples from the internet on how to combine twitter or other news social media into processing using API, therefore we will do some research on that by next week. After we have our Arduino code done, we will write the code for processing, this code will display the tweets and the news. Also, we will have to draw the body for the user and use the webcam camera to add the user’s face to the drawing. I think that the most difficult part will be on the processing code and the integration between Arduino and processing. Therefore, I added a trial and error week on December, so that whatever’s not working after our initial work can be fixed or changed.
What we want most from the outcome of our project is to appeal to the user so that they would be interested in using the product, and to make them want to use our product over and over again. This (hopefully) will be achieved by making the world carpet as interesting as possible and by the design of the tweets and the speech bubble to make it seems funny and engaging. My partner and I believed that our project is significant as it educates and entertains at the same time. This kind of project is not common and we hope to make a really good rendition out of our own ideas. The most important thing about our project is that it aligns with our definition of interaction. The user will have to “read” the world map, “think” where to press and what the button does, and then “speak” as the outcome of seeing the news. The interaction will be a cycle as the news will be different each time the user presses the button (we will make sure of that) and it would be very exciting as the user reads the thoughts and opinions of other people regarding the issue that is happening. This project can also be simplified or advanced to fit different audiences. For example, maybe instead of reading the tweets, it would show the most popular places people can go in that area, or the language that the people speak, or even the songs that people listen to. Either way, this project fulfills its intended purpose as a fun educational tool.