Conception and Design

Based on the suggestions I received from project proposal presentation, I decided to concentrate more on interactions between people. So instead of building a device that helps people concentrate on their own work, my project now encourages face-to-face communication, while the main problem that my project stresses on is still the over usage of cell phones. To achieve my project’s goal, first I need a device to detect if people have put down their phones. Inspired by one of my friends, I named my project “recharge”, because it is homonymous. According to Oxford English Dictionaries, “recharge” has the meaning: “restore electrical energy in (a battery or a battery-operated device) by connecting it to a power supply” and “(of a person) return to a normal state of mind or strength after a period of exertion”. So, I referred to the machine that charges phones in the mall while building the physical part of my project. I cut out three gaps on the box according to the common sizes of phones. In this way, I expected users to know how to “plug in” their phones from the shape of the gaps and from people’s common knowledge of these kinds of charging machines. I also user tested on many of my friends’ phones to make sure all phones fit the gap. Moreover, in order to create a more immersive environment, I bought a “picnic basket” to decorate my box. And thanks to Marcela’s advice and Rudi’s picnic blanket, I simulated an actual picnic scene in IMA show, and I think it realized my project idea well.

Fabrication and Production

During my production process, two major problems that I dealt with were sensors and Processing. For sensors that I used to detect phones, I first tried pressure sensors. However, they are not very sensitive and could not sense the phone’s weights. Then, I tried light sensors by placing a sensor with a LED and when the phone blocks the light the sensor will detect it. This method didn’t work well at first, but after I put them all into the box and used brighter LEDs as light sources, influences from external lights were greatly reduced and it worked.

Processing was the part that I spent most of the time on. In order to simulate a “picnic” environment, I planned to draw trees with processing, which will be triggered by sensors’ detection of phone. And with more phones being put in, the tree will show different effects, which is designed to get more people involved so that they can interact and communicate. Before actually starting to write the code, I had so many thoughts of the appearance of the tree and how it will grow and change. However, soon I found most of them too complicated to achieve. So instead of simply drawing out what I want, I started by searching for code examples online and gained a basic idea of what I can achieve.

The first tree that I successfully drew was a perfectly symmetric one. It was not satisfying, because my project’s goal is to create a natural environment for people, while the tree looks artificial and unnatural. After researching online and experimenting myself, I made much improvement upon that. I used random function to make the tree looks more natural and every time the tree it generated is different. I also referred to examples online and figured out the way to show the growing process of the tree. I used two classes to achieve that effect and created another class in addition to let it grow leaves and flowers upon users’ commands. And I used several Boolean variables to keep track of which state the tree should be in, in accordance with the number of phones that have been put in or taken out.

During user testing, I received many useful feedbacks. I added bird sounds along with the tree growing and I adjusted the tree to grow a little bit faster, as many of them suggested that users might get confused about what is happening at first when the tree’s shape hasn’t been fully shown. The major improvement I made was the feedback users received. For my prototype, the tree only had three states and could only change in order from the first to the last and then start over. While during user test, people did a lot of other unexpected movements and they would expect the tree to give responses. Based on various situations I encountered during user test, I added different effects to the tree in accordance with every possible movement they could take. For example, the leaves can fall off, turn into yellow, or grow back without starting over. The final version of my tree has seven states in total. And then one more challenge I faced was how to trigger these seven states. Originally, it only has three states, so each state corresponds to the total number of phones that have been put in. But now, for example, if Arduino senses there are two phones inside now, I also need to know whether there was one phone before or three phones. The code I used to solve this problem is as follows.

Conclusions

The goal of my project is to encourage face-to-face communication by reducing the time people spend on their phones. In order to achieve that, my project uses a device that detects whether people have put down their phones, and if they do, it generates a natural picnic environment, in which people tend to stay away from technology and talk with friends. When defining interaction, I emphasized in my new definition that I think interaction also happens among multiple actors, it’s not just between human and machines, but also among humans, and I think my project aligns with that part of my definition well.

During IMA show, a lot of people interacted with my project and I think my project has achieved its goal. People cooperated and volunteered to put down phones to let the tree grow. And especially with the blanket and projector, people sitting together would actually get a sense of nature and picnic. During the process, communication between people indeed increased. People would ask their friends standing by to join the “picnic”, and they talked and interacted with each other while sitting there. However, one common problem was that people tend to put more attention on the tree and played with putting in and taking out phones only to see how the tree will change. And also, as the show has many other distractions, it was hard for people to sit down and take their time to purely relax and have conversation. Another small problem was that sometimes sensors and LEDs would be moved or disconnected when users taking out phones carelessly. It can be solved by many methods and I would definitely improve that if I had more time.

The issue that my project raised is the over usage of cell phones and the decrement of face-to-face communication. The problem has become more and more common and pressing in this era, while people rarely tend to solve it, as it does not do immediate harm to our life and cell phones indeed bring much convenience. So, my project is designed to arouse people’s awareness of this issue. By showing them the beauty of nature and reminding them of the feeling of going out picnic with friends, I intended to address the importance of face-to-face communication and its irreplaceability by modern technology.

Workshop: Object Oriented Programming with Tristan

In this workshop, we learned to build a class from scratch and to achieve more complicated functions.  For the exercise, I created a class called Snowflake and used this class to simulate snowing scenes. In the class, each snowflake has four variables: x, y coordinate positions, size, and falling speed. Point (x, y) is its center and I used three lines across it to create its shape. And I also create a function called fall to control its speed of falling.

Then, in order to use this class to simulate snowing, I created an ArrayList called snow. Every time the user clicks the mouse, new snowflakes will be added to this ArrayList and in draw loop they will be displayed. To make the scene more natural, I used random functions so that the snowflakes generated will be of random sizes, random speed and random positions around the mouse. Moreover, snowflakes won’t disappear from the screen, but stop when their y is equal to height, which stimulates snow’s accumulation on the ground.

For this recitation project, I used a potentiometer to control the speed of a video. I found a video from youtube of the views while driving in Switzerland and I wanted to use Arduino to control the speed of the video to create a feeling that the user is driving himself in Switzerland. Users can slow down the speed or “stop the car” when they find one location attractive and can speed up if they want to see other views.

The coding part wasn’t that hard as it only contains one value to control. I used myMovie.speed(valueFromArduino) to control the speed of the video and myMovie.loop() to let the video play continuously. The code worked, but the result was not satisfying, because the video reacts really slow to potentiometer’s value changes. The video’s speed changes a long time after I rotate the potentiometer and when it slows down, it plays very unsmoothly. 

As it says in the article “Computer Vision for Artist and Designers”, computer vision algorithms are being used more and more often in interactive artworks. Due to the development of software, it’s easier for us to utilize it in a wide variety of projects and to integrate and make full use of different kinds of media. For this simple project I made, I used one potentiometer to control the speed of a video and it could create a similar experience of a car game, which is quite difficult to make only by code. 

Step 1

Musical Colors

Musical Colors is a music game, in which one or two players can play songs by pressing the buttons in accordance with the colored blocks shown on the screen. The suggestion we gave was to increase the interactivity between players. In the original plan, two players need to press the key at the same time to play the notes, but they still play separately, and we think it might be better if they can play it together. For example, I suggested the keys could be placed further away from each other so that one player can’t play it with ten fingers. Players have to cooperate when several blocks show up together. The idea of two players play one song makes the project unique from other music games and it also aligns with my definition of interaction. Players interact with the machine, while at the same time their actions affect each other as well.

A Melody Interactive Installation

This project intends to create an experience for users. There will be several fake water lilies made by plastic spoons placed on a shelf and when users interact with it, it will give sound feedback of “bianzhong”. They haven’t decided on the way to interact, but they were thinking about using hands or a stick. So we explored some possibilities of the way to interact and suggested to use sensors like light sensor, instead of pressure sensor, because the feeling of the experience should be more gentle. And we also suggested them to put water lilies on “water” to make the experience more immersive. I think one interesting part of their project is the atmosphere it creates by combining water lilies and the sound of “bianzhong”, which adds more cultural meaning to modern technology.

Your Pet Plant

Your Pet Plant is designed to arouse human’s awareness of plants’ important role in environmental issues by externalizing the connections between human and plants. The project will use Processing to show an electronic plant and by clicking a certain part of the plant, a physical plant will give feedback like sound, light or movement. There is no detailed plan of how exactly the plant will react and it could be hard to build the physical part as he needs to combine Arduino with the plant. So we suggested him to make a more detailed plan and especially take components like wires into consideration. This project uses technology to visualize the interaction between human and plant and I think this idea is interesting and reveals a new perspective of interaction.

Step 2

For my project, firstly, I wasn’t sure about how it will work when multiple users are involved, so asked my group members for suggestions. My group members suggested me to make the tree grow faster, and when a tree is fully grown, it can add another tree. I will take this suggestion for now, as I’m also afraid my original plan might be confusing for users and hard to achieve on Processing, but I’m still open for changes depending on user testing feedback. One more problem they pointed out was that my project is designed to reduce the time we spend on phones, but in order to show the growing tree, I need another screen. I’ve also thought about the problem before, but due to technical restriction, I need processing to generate tree animation. We’ve also discussed other possibilities of how to present feedback. However, I still think using Processing is more ideal, but I will do more research on this and try to find inspirations from other projects.

Project Title

Foresters

Project Statement of Purpose

With the development of mobile technologies, smartphones bring us convenience but also troubles. “Cell phone addiction” has become a social issue that affects a significant amount of young people to varying degrees. There are two major negative effects. First, people get distracted from work easily and procrastinate a lot. Second, face-to-face communication greatly reduced. And these are the two problems that my project intends to address on and people who have these problems are my target audiences.

Project Plan

First, to solve the problem of hard to concentrate, I’m planning to make a box or merely a piece of board and install sensors to detect whether there is a phone or not. So users can simply put their phone aside before starting to work and a tree will automatically be planted. The tree will be shown on Processing and it will be a “living” tree that slowly grows over time, and dies if the phone is taken away. I also want to add a function to detect phone calls. For now, I’m planning to use a vibration sensor to achieve that. So if users have turned on vibration mode, every time they get a phone call, tree leaves will shake to let them know someone is calling, and the tree won’t die if users take out their phone at this time.

The project will also be able to be used by multiple users at the same time. For example, if there are two boxes and users put phones separately in them, then two trees will show on the screen. Moreover, users can also choose to put phones in the same box, then the tree will grow faster. Users can compete and cooperate depend on their choices. And I think it will encourage people to put down their phones and communicate, especially in scenarios like eating in a restaurant.

The more complicated part of my project is to write the code to draw the tree and achieve these functions. So I will put more effort into that. I will decide on the appearance of the tree, write the code and test on sensors in the next two weeks. Then in the third week, I will put everything together to build the final product and user test with my friends.

Context and Significance

During my preparatory research, I found a project named “Connected tools – Devices that mediate smartphone consumption”. As I mentioned in my previous post, the main goal of the project is to reduce the time people spend on mobile phones, and three tools were designed to help people achieve that. The project was categorized as “project that does not align with my definition of interaction” because its level of interaction is low. However, I found the idea “mediate smartphone consumption” inspiring and decided to develop upon that.

Apart from “Connected tools”, I also gained inspirations from an app called “focus forest”. The app is designed to help people concentrate while working. Users can open the app and plant a tree when they start to work, and if they quit the app before the set time, the tree will die. The app is interesting and useful, but I also found it sometimes inconvenient, as users have to unlock their phones, open the app, pick a tree, and then start to work. So I decided to take the idea of tree growing, combine it with the previous project, and enhance its interactivity.

I think my project aligns with my definition of interaction because first of all it takes input, processes and gives output. And the process is cyclic, users and the device take turns to react, depending on the situation. The tree grows and dies based on users’ acts of putting down and taking away their phones, while users also respond accordingly to the tree’s signs. Moreover, the interaction here not only happens between human and machine but also among humans and between machines themselves. The device responds to the phone’s vibrations, and users interact with each other.