Category: Unconventional Design

This is written by both Jamie and me. 

Gamers, when they are gaming, it’s critical for them to be aware of the conditions of their computers, which may drastically influence their gaming performances. Changes in CPU temperature and ping speed which would affect the frame count of the game may lead to different gaming decisions. In a traditional gaming interface, the data of CPU temperature and ping speed is usually written in the top-left corner, which is nearly impossible for a gamer to notice when he is fully involved in a game. Therefore, we decide to design an attached pad that reports live data in the form of color changing with other functions as well.

Jamie photoshopped this WatchPad prototype and the color range it would cover.

Watchpad is a product that can stand next to your screen while gaming. After plugging into your pc, the screen is automatically turned on, it consists of only two pages, one is for displaying simple information including date, memos, some photos. The other page is the gaming mode page which only has two sections: the upper part detects the ping speed which would affect the fps; the lower part displays the CPU temperature. Both sections will have specific data within the section, but more importantly, both indexes are also implied through color changes. Red and blue are the two colors that contrast greatly and would be an apparent alarm for the gamer. We design the red as the danger zone and the blue as the normal zone. For ping speed, the redder the section gets, the slower your net speed is; for CPU temperature, the redder, the hotter. WatchPad is designed to be constantly muted so that there won’t be noises that may affect the gamer.

For laptop users, since laptop lacks advanced cooling system, most laptop gamers purchase extra fans that are placed under the laptop to cool down the system, because of the noise the fans make, they are not always on and the player has to manually switch them on. Therefore, our WatchPad has an additional cable that can be linked to the external fans, when the CPU temperature reaches a certain level, WatchPad will automatically switch on the fans and switch them off when the temperature goes down.

Our inspiration comes from a friend who is a professional gamer in Overwatch. He complains about the trouble he encounters when gaming and we hope to solve this problem with our design. It should be categorized as an enchanted object since it is an upgrade for traditional gaming equipment. It fulfills the responsible design agenda as for solving a problem for gamers and achieves the problem-solving goal.

We watched the video of Rudi. We found that he faced several problems about mobile phones in his daily life. He thought he spent too much time on it and hence wasted his time to accompany with family and do his works.

So my group partners and I designed an app for Rudi.  There are four stages of this app. The first one is a warning. When Rudi has used his mobile phone for a bit long time. The second one is that the phone will get hotter. The third one is that the phone needs more time to reaction and the final stage is shutting down.

These are all aimed to warn Rudi that he is using his mobile phone for a long time and need to rest for a while or put down it.

I remembered that one professor raised a question that what if the second stage happens when Rudi is on the subway and when the phone is hot, he can put the phone on the table and continue using it.

This workshop helps me have a propaedeutic command of design. It is designed for the users and should combine appearance and functions.

First, I’m a computer game player so when Jamie and I were discussing what to design as the final project, I suggested that we could design something for gamers. I have lots of friends through games so I went to ask them what troubles they had met during playing computer games. Then I found that most of my friends and I all faced one problem that sometimes when we are playing computer games, we were not able to find out the CPU temperature of the computer is so high that does harm to the computers. We can only notice this by feeling the keyboards are extremely hot. However, if the gamers use external keyboards, it is less possible for them to notice that before the CPU temperature hurts the computers. Even then they want to turn on the external fans to cool down the CPU, they must stop their games. Also, sometimes if the web environment is not good, gamers need to pay more attention to the number of PING to figure out whether their website environment is good or not. These will interrupt and disturb their game process and may even make some gamers get crazy because the poor PING will lead the games laggy and sluggish.

Then I found an article on ZhiHu about “InkCase”. This is a phone case and it has some information on it, such as the weather, the steps you walk today and today’s schedule. The screen is as same as Kindle, so the users don’t need to touch the screen to awake the InkCase. This means whenever you want to check the information, it is available and concise. In addition, from the in-class discussion—design your partner’s project, my partner gave me some suggestion that it can also have the functions similar to Siri.

So we decided to design a project with responsible design agenda and problem-solving goal. First, the appearance of this project is decided to be similar to our inspiration—“InkCase”. It should be a pad with a screen. Then I suggested that the information on the screen should be concise. It is designed for computer-games players. They have little time to read everything on the screen. So we only chose two data, one is the CPU temperature and the other is PING, the value calculates the web environment. It is also not concise enough because the players may have more direct feedbacks by distinguishing the colors. So we used the change of colors to tell the users how about the data currently. If the colors go deeper, the users should have warned. Furthermore, as mentioned above, turning on the external fans will cost players’ time, so we design to connect the watchpad with the external fans. When the CPU temperature is higher than 75 centigrades, the fans will be turned on automatically by WatchPad.

Then my friend raised a question during our design, he thought this project is useless if the users are not playing the computers. In order to make it more attractive, we designed the second interface. It has the functions as same as Siri and also has daily information on it.

After the presentation, we heard lots of advice and comments from the peer. This project needs more improvement, such as more feedbacks from game players. Also, as one of the professors mentioned, if the Ping is high, the users may have no method to handle it so beeping is unnecessary this time and may even interrupt the gamers. In addition, this project may not be based on the pad maybe can be added to the mouse or above the computer screens.

I think this project is successful because of its concise interfaces and useful functions. Game players have not been cared enough in China and some people may even use backward devices. Our goal is to make the game players more convenience during playing computer games. Playing computer games or loving playing them are never incorrect things and we hope the players can play better with this project.

For my final project, I decided to go for one of my favorite design framework – speculative design. My intention for this project is to build a new way of dating people and finding their perfect match or hookup based on your conversation with a lovebot. Through the project, I want people to rethink the modern dating way and how people adjust the fast-pace dating method. 

My inspiration comes from Nicole He’s project — Tinder robot. In her project, she made a fake hand to help the user swipe tinder. It made me think how lazy people can be in dating with modern technology. Since I worked with chatbots for my capstone, I decided to work with voice technology. I am always interested in exploring how people interact with each other on a romantic level. In the New York Times Modern Love column, people talk about their weird and fun stories about finding love and being in love. Thus, I started to work on this project. What is the new way of dating if people are tired of swiping or the current dating app? What else can I explore and combine the voice technology with finding a date? 

I designed a chatbot titled lovebot which can help the user to find their right one no matter if they are looking for a hookup, a date or more. In the live demo, I showed the audience how to find a hookup through the conversation. The bot keeps asking the user questions regards to his ideal hookup type and eventually find him one and set him an appointment at 9 pm. 

I set the context of my design in 10 years later, aka 2029. For this project, I imagine a society in 10 years will get worse on data privacy. Think about how much data that are given to the big technology company, such as Facebook and Google. This situation might shift to dating apps since more people start putting their private information on Tinder and Grindr. The project fits the discursive agenda and lets people think about how much data you give out there. 

In terms of the function of this bot, I got the feedback from my classmates and decided to have a premium function for my bot. If the user is looking for a romantic relationship, the premium function will include the suggestion of dating spot, what to wear and what to do while dating. The bot will get the data of that person from the app, and generate all the useful information that the user needs. The request for the premium function will be included in the middle of the conversation so people will be more willing to pay for it. This can be a new business model that AI bot helps the company to get profit. 

I think the project is pretty successful in terms of people’s reaction that I get after presenting it. Andy said this project made him feel uncomfortable because he felt like people were treated as items with the technology. Some other people also felt the same way when the bot asked for too much information from you. This is exactly what I want the audience to think about from this project.