Step 1
Sam Li
Sam’s project aims to get people to have a more fun, entertaining, and interactive experience with fine art. Sam’s project uses an illustration/representation of the Mona Lisa on a screen, accompanied by buttons users can press. By pressing buttons, users can choose how they feel and what they think about the art, and a corresponding visual will change the display on the screen.
The idea of making viewing and learning about fine art more engaging was very interesting to me. And, the user touch buttons/potentiometers, which the computer receives and processes, and outputs the correct facial expression based on the button the user pressed aligned to my and her definition of interaction.
For me, I interpreted Sam’s project as giving the user the ability to express their thoughts on the artwork, in which I suggested Sam to give users more options to express their opinions, instead of using buttons, use perhaps an input box. However, Sam clarified that her project was less about letting users express their thoughts on the Mona Lisa, and more about letting users play around with the facial features of Mona Lisa. The group also suggested that instead of using buttons, she could use alter Mona Lisa’s expression frame by frame, which would make her project more complex and interesting.
Alex
Alex wanted to create a project in which the user could interact with technology in a way that feels natural. He came up with a computer bow and arrow game, accompanied by a physical glove and button system that would mimic the experience of shooting an arrow.
Alex’s concept of making interaction with objects as natural as possible was very interesting to me, especially because my definition of interaction had evolved in a similar, human-centric way (I interpreted making objects interactive as trying to give human qualities and make the object more similar to human behavior and actions). However, Alex’s project seemed very challenging, especially if he aimed to align the project to his definition of interaction (interaction should be natural) as well as recreate a physical component to his project. We as a group advised Alex to come up with a more detailed plan as to how he would implement his project.
Lindsay Chen
Lindsay wanted to give people the ability to draw in the air. Her project reminded me of google tilt brush, a program that enables the artist to draw in the air, and see their creation in VR. I like the concept of giving artists another dimension to explore and generate new art. However, as a group, we were worried about how she would track the user’s position in the air and translate those values to a sketch in processing. We suggested limiting the range the user could draw in, perhaps by using 2 or more distance sensors, and mapping the user’s hand’s distance from the sensor to processing. Lindsay’s definition of interaction was, “interaction is a process of performance where people communicate with the machine in a specific language, and can only be completed with both the people and the machine together.” Her project fits her definition of interaction because drawing in the air has a performance like quality. The user uses their body to communicate with the computer. Compared to Lindsay’s definition of interaction, my definition of interaction is less focused on human performance, and goes more into detail on giving objects human like qualities.
Step 2
Feedback for my project: Feedback included to involve more data consumption by tracking facebook usage time rather than computer usage time. Making an object that vibrates, rather than making a car, because it would be hard to communicate information from the computer to the car without using a usb cord.
Most successful part, agree/disagree: Using gifs and an entertaining physical component to remind users of how long they have been using data.
Least successful part, agree/disagree: Tracking user’s computer time. If I were to track the computer’s user time, I would re-frame my project as a computer usage tracker rather than a data consumption related project.
How will this feedback influence your project?
I have decided to focus on tracking a user’s use of facebook, instead of tracking how long they spend on the computer. If possible, I will also freeze the user’s ability to access facebook if they use facebook for a specific amount of time.
I will not be incorporating the feedback regarding not making the car, because, we have figured out that we can use bluetooth to transmit information to the car.