Midterm Group Project
This project is worth 30% of your grade. 20% of the grade is the final product and 10% is process work.
For the midterm you and your group will design an interactive experience/system that uses an everyday interaction as a starting point to develop a concept. The outcome can be some an object or an experience. Plan on capitalizing on the skills that you have and perhaps stretching yourself in a reasonable way in terms of the experiences that you have and will have as a result of the class.
Document your work thoroughly online as you go. Include details of all phases of the project. Include a project summary as well, explaining what the system you built is, what it does, and what purpose it's intended to serve. Your summary should introduce the project, but it may be the last thing you write.
A few examples:
Game interfaces are also good candidates for this project. Like musical instruments, they involve constant back-and-forth interaction and immediate response. They are often simpler than musical instruments. In fact, the standard game controller has gotten so standard that the action of many games is artificially adapted to the needs of the controller, not the physical expressiveness of the player. Pick a specific game and see if you can change that.
Assistive devices are good candidates for this project as well. Whether it's something as simple as a reaching device or something more complex, these devices are very demanding of clear, reliable response.
Remote control systems work for this assignment as well. They require not only a clear interface, but must also return enough information on the remote system's action to let you know that you're doing the right thing. Whether it's a remote controller for your home electrical devices or a Mars rover controller, the need for clarity and good feedback are equally essential to the person who it's made for.
There are many other good applications for this project. Discuss the specifics of yours with your instructor.
You'll do this project in five and half weeks:
Week 1: Observations and planning
Choose an action that produces changes in a medium. It might be strumming a guitar (the medium is sound), hammering a nail (the media are wood, nails, and sound), flying a model plane (the media are the plane and the air). What tool or device is the action taken on? What is the goal of the activity? Observe a person or people engaged in the activity. What are the physical parameters of that activity? What does the person engaged in it do with their arms, their legs, their hands or feet, their head? How do they change their posture? Where do they need to focus their attention? Is there a secondary focus of attention (for example, if two limbs are used independently)? What physical elements of the activity make it engaging? What elements make it difficult, painful, or boring?
Do the action multiple times (perhaps 100 times), or have someone else do it. Record the action, with a video camera, or sensors feeding a graphing program, or in some other way. What patterns appear when the action is repeated?
What are the physical characteristics of the medium that you have to take as given? What physical input to the tool or to the device suggests or mirror those characteristics? For example, how actions you take on an audio mixer mirror the inherent characteristics of sound? How does the arrangement of controls on a VCR suggest what each control does?
Plan out your protoype based on your observations, and figure out what you need for it. If you need to order stuff for it, do so early.
Week 2: Researching the technology and developing a concept
Locate the potential technologies that you might use to use to make this piece. Learn how to use the technologies. Your CONCEPT should be driven by the technology. You will need to research a sensor and learn how to use it. Do your ideas correlate with what the sensor can actually do? Think about the interface design. Experiment with interface. Poll your classmates as well as people in the SAAH community with your ideas and initial sketches.
Week 3: Early prototype and test
Now that you've observed one tool or device that manipulates the medium you observed, create another one. Either modify an existing device so that it affords changes to the medium that it didn't previously, or make a whole new tool to manipulate the medium in new ways.
Ask yourself (and your intended users) why someone should use your device to do the job. Don't assume that someone will want to use it, or even know how to use it. Make the functions apparent, and figure out what will make a person want to use your device. How will it make their experience of the activity better?
Is your device dependent on other devices, or on a specific location, or on the arrangement of elements in a space? Where is is best used? What social situations (i.e in private, in front of an audience, in a crowd) are best for its use? How will you ensure that those conditions are met?
Get the thing working in week 3. Then get other people to use your device, instrument or tool. Try to only tell your audience what they need to get started. For example, if you made a musical instrument, just tell them how to produce changing tones; don't tell them what to play. If you made a device that writes text in response to eye movements, don't tell them what to write, just tell them how to make letters. Observe how your users use your device. Take notes on where they defy your assumptions as to how the tool is to be used. Ask them how they think the device works (their mental model of the action). Listen to what they have to say, and figure out where their mental model diverges from your model of how it works. Use this information to make the tool better.
Week 4: Final prototype
Based on all the information you've gathered, iron out any bugs, make any necessary interface revisions, and complete your device, instrument, or tool. Finalize the documentation of the process.
Documentation and Product Expectations
10% of the grade of the midterm is process. You should tirelessly be writing your observations and evaluations of the project to the blog. All sketches should be scanned and posted to the blog. All experiments can be videoed and posted on the blog. Please be reflective and thoughtful as well as exhaustive.
Much of this part is demonstrated in your use of the blog as a sketchbook. You regularly recorded your ideas and process as you made the piece (not after). You showed me the research (reflective writing and image collection) you did on your conceptual idea as well as the techniques that you employed to make the piece. You responded thoughtfully to the feedback you were given by your peers and myself. With respect to the blog, you can upload images, write text and include links to resources that you used while making this piece. You developed prototypes along the way.
20% of your grade is based on the final product. Your piece needs to be finished and well crafted. You come to the critique with a data DVD of video and any visual aides that clearly show your pieces as well as how it is being used by the audience meaning that you will need to get someone to video during the experiential part of the crit. You need to be prepared to discuss your conceptual ideas and your process with the class. Ultimately you are in charge of your critique. After finding out how the class reacts to what you have done, you can and should ask questions that will help you to make your piece better.
· Project Title
· Concept
· Background Research
· Observations
· Process
· Intended Interaction
· Challenges & Successes
· Next Steps
Groups
You will choose the group that you will work with. Groups must consist of 2-3 people.
Deadlines
Proposal and Presentation is Wednesday, September 10, 2014
In Progress Critique is Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Midterm Project Critique is Wednesday, October 15, 2014
GOOD LUCK. I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING WHAT YOU ALL COME UP WITH.