Definition
Interaction is a word that has been steadily used in our daily lives. Interaction broadly would be a term used for any process of communication happening between a person/thing and person/thing in a given environment. To dig deeper into this vocab word, we must recall what was mentioned by Crawford. According to Crawford, in order for a person or a thing to interact with another, one must go through the iterating process of input, processing, and output (1). Oddly it might sound since input and output are often used in the computer world, us listening what the professor says, what we see with our eyes, all can be counted as inputs. Similarly, us replying to the professor’s question, us high-fiving our friends all can be counted as outputs.
If we were to recall our memory about what we read in Igoe and O’Sullivan’s “Introduction to Physical Computing”, we can understand the similarity between interaction with and without the computer’s involvement. He mentions, “computers for the rest of you”. From some point in our lifetime, we have been living amongst computers. Computers appeared everywhere. Technology no longer was a property of experts: the commoners could also easily use and access it.
Like this, we are interacting without consciousness. Therefore, I believe, adding on to my previous definition of interaction from my previous documents, I believe an interactive project has to be a project that the user can easily figure out the usage (how to use the device), and the device must show a clear sign of processing based on the input that the user has put in.
In such a way, this camera technology from this project fits well with my definition. If we were to remember the used-to-be-famous Pokemon Go, we tended to look around the world in the camera and threw pokemon balls. Just by giving the user this camera, drawing upon a lot of camera-related applications from animes and movies, when the user takes a look at the camera, it is likely that they will be curious to go around looking at the world through this project. Although the user would have to type in what object they want to count, it manages to count the object that they want, just as the user would have wanted.
On the other hand, this project relatively did not fit well with my definition. In order for a project to well fit my definition, the user, without experts to explain the usage to them, must be able to know and use the device right away. However, if I were to use this project, I would not be able to figure out its usage. I, first, was attracted to the word “interactive” on the title and went inside to take a glance at it. However, just from looking at the video, I could not tell the usage of the project. It was after thoroughly reading the article, I could be able to tell what the project was supposed to be doing.
Our Project
This initial research prior to meeting up with my groupmates definitely affected my first thought about the interaction project. I first came up with an idea of the lens for individuals with “Prosopagnosia”, individuals who can not tell who the person is from just looking at people’s faces.
Of course, technology to identify people from their faces already has been developed, as NYU Shanghai students are already using to enter the Academic Building and dorms. However, in a manner that this function would be inputted into a lens, it would take 100 years to be developed.
Throughout discussing with my groupmates, the details of the project changed a lot. The idea of my lens idea and my groupmate’s “wanting to learn dance easily” resulted in a dancing machine idea.
This is the poster of our project that shows detailed usage of the device.
The teacher’s device is similar to that of already existing smartwatch. The teacher can select which student’s device to connect to. The bracelet and the belt are able to record all the movement and can be sent to the student’s device.
The student’s device is made of the helmet, bracelet, and the belt. This helmet can be turned transparent and visible (this is where my idea came in) by pressing the button. If the teacher abuse the usage of this device, the student can also turn back into a visible mode to escape from the connection mode.
The teacher’s device is going to record the teacher’s movement and will perform two types of action: send the information to the helmet for the input of the information (for learning purpose), synchronize the movement of the student with that of the teacher. By doing so, it will be easy for the teacher to teach, and easy to learn for the student.
In a way that it will be apparent for both, teacher and student, to use the device (because the button is going to be obvious that they would need to press on it and the bracelet is similar to famous smartwatch), it well fits my definition of interaction.