Soldering:

I was really excited to learn how to solder and work on circuitboards since I had never really used similar equipment. It proved to be much more challenging than I anticipated. Working out how to link the light circuit according to the picture was annoyingly difficult, despite it being a simple circuit. Nonetheless, I eventually got it working and the light is now sitting on my bedside table :) Apparently, my soldering was a bit messy and could have had smoother blobs. I think this was because I was being stingy with the solder and as a result I was trying to spread blobs too much. In future, I'll aim to get a fatter blob and avoid scraping solder all over the place... I also burnt myself :( Regardless, it was a very educational session and I'm keen to improve!

Presentation:

On Wednesday I pitched my Music Production Paper idea to the class. My speech went pretty well and the critiques endorsed the idea. I'm not great at public speaking, so I was focused on speaking clearly, not to rush and to get my idea across. Presenting without a written speech is definitely a better way to improve your public speaking skills. I was happy to see that the critiques all stated that I was a clear speaker.

Regarding the idea, critiques stated that it was an interesting and novel, but reasonable idea. Music production software is often pretty difficult to wrap your head around so people were excited by a new way to make music. One of my hobby's is music production, so Prod Paper is something that I would love to actually use. So, moving forward with project ideas. I'd be keen to build something music related. Many inspiration ideas were music orientated so it's surely going to be one of the themes. I'm looking forward to the class pooling our ideas together and coming up with some cool concepts.

Concept Theme Brainstorming

With the world cafe coming up next week, the class identified a bunch of themes that came out of our concept presentations. There were around 15 themes in total, so I could already filter out half of them to the ones I'd be most interested in.

Everyday sustainablility

There are a bunch of ideas that I can think of as ways to live more sustainability. Stuff like optimising energy usage, reducing waste, and recycling are some good areas. A presentation that interested me most was the climate gauging, little talking plant that dynamically changes your aircon temperature according to the outside temperature. Its cute face turns sad when you're wasting energy on unnecessary aircon and so it works as an emotional totem incentivising users to make it happy. Another good idea would be a sustainability teaching robot that teaches a family how to be sustainable in a range of ways including energy opimisation.

Musical things / Musical metrics

This theme is a winner for me as it was my concept theme. I'd be keen to combine this theme with another like body as controller to make some sort of novel instrument. I was especially inspired by one of the external uni projects where the user waves around a cloth riddled with sensors that creates sounds by its swishing and flapping movement. While it didn't sound especially good it was cool.

Emotional totems / Emotional intelligence

The crossovers between technology and human emotion definitely interest me. I think there are a lot of unexplored areas about how technology can be used to harness and exploit emotion to create new forms of interaction. For example looking into how different demographics of people can be combined though common emotions. Another area I'm interested in is how technology can possess and use its own emotion to connect with people. For example how people don't want to make a robot sad even when it's simply a program that pretends to be sad. You could do some cool experiments looking at how far people would go to trust a robot or help a robot after making this emotional connection.

Sassy tech

This follows on from emotional intelligence in the way that sassy robots could connect emotionally with users by being annoying or mean. There could be some interesting outcomes of how users would interact with a robot that they clearly don't like and don't trust. Moreover, a robot that they respect and are submissive to lol. This could get weird...

Creative Learning

I thought there could be a bunch of unconventional ways to teach children to read or learn a language. Using games with VR/AR to teach people to cook. Stuff like that.

Presentation

This week we immersed our time into the presentation for our initial concept ideas before we form into a group. It was great to see how everyone’s ideas were different yet somewhat similar themes; for example, having theming around smart products, music, colors, and mental health. It was great to see how people interpreted it differently. There were some interesting ones; for example, using pressure to create color, dance with light- using shadows, and musician- using a string. I would love to see these concepts developed into projects.

However, I was a bit disappointed because I was excited and looking forward to seeing blue-sky thinking. Maybe it just me that have higher expectation. It seems most of the ideas were restricted with limited imagination because some of the design it’s already in the market. It may be because people wanted to be practical to design something that was possible to make in the end. I am not saying they are wrong or the design is bad. Please don’t get me wrong. I am sure each design has its purpose, meaning, and time that they had invested. It’s all valuable. I understand it was hard to come up with something that is out of the box; I was on the same boat. It was painful, not able to have an “interesting” and “fun” ideas. I being there. But I am also agreed that if we keep pushing ourselves and research for more possibilities, we will get there at some point, which I am still working on it.

Reflection

Reflecting on my own presentation, I didn’t do a good job, and it still has room for improvement. Speaking in the on the stage was not my thing; it depends if I am nervous or not. Sometimes I can pull it off even though I am nervous, but this time I let my nervous taking over the control. The more I wanted to do good on presenting my idea, the more nervous I got. But I want to get better at it next time.

Though, I learned some tips through this experience was that don’t wait for too long to present. The more I waited and held back, the more nervous I get. Secondly, don’t look at what I wrote on the poster since this is my idea. I know what it was and how it works. Finally, I just need to have more confidence and faith in myself. In this way, I would be able to explain more clearly to bring my idea across the table.

I felt my concept was cool of using the human water figure as the character in the game, and the droplets are presenting the sweat loss of the player. However, I should have explained it well of what my concept was. Is it a game? Or is it a product that reminds people to drink water? Since some of the feedback I got was confused about my ideas. Let me explain; it was a concept of fitness game that encourages the user to do more exercise and, at the same time, tracking their daily water intake. It is a way of reminding and encouraging people to drink more water.

Additionally, I should also back up with more research about why water is good for our bodies. For example, boost your metabolism, help the kidneys to function, lose weight, …etc. One thing I forgot to mention during my presentation, it was that the user would stand on a pad with two buttons in the front. The user will use their feet to interact during the game(inspired by the Dance Dance Revolution game).

My concept still has room for further refining and tweaking. For example, can this be taken away from using the screen, and cooperating more interaction with multiple users? Even though it doesn’t have a restriction that we need to have multiple users or not. Nevertheless, it would be nice to expand into more possibilities for the physical interaction project since the more people play, the more fun it will get.

Feedback

Overall the feedback I got was better than I thought. More than half of the people understood my concept. They thought it was a nice way of presenting our body water loss and encouraging people to drink more water. Some of them didn’t get my ideas and was confusing about what is the purpose of it. Is it a game or a product. Moreover, a few others gave suggestions on how to make it more playful. Lastly, few said that if it was already out in the market. It was not they make the water shape form from scratch for the commercial only, which I thought it was clever (If you are interested, please check out this link of how they make it - G Active - The Making of Active Water). These were all important feedback I got, and it helped me to know what area I would need to do better next time, thank you!

I think giving paper critique was a great way to stay focus during the presentation rather than spacing out.

Theming

I attended two sections of theming after the presentation. Based on all the ideas, we were trying to find a common theme or creating a theme from more than one idea, which was hard. It is easier to name a theme based on a single idea. But to find a relationship between two or more ideas was a challenge for me. In this stage, I want to push myself to think further rather than just merely naming base on what the ideas were. It was not easy. I found myself staring at the posters searching for clues and meaning behind the ideas. I only contributed a few ideas. It was a good brain exercise to train my brain to think differently. At the same time, learning from others and see what ideas they had.

Pitch Reflection

This week,i was excited to hear my peers' pitch. It's always great to see what others' thinking. Thanks a lot to Lorna and all the teaching crew for giving us remote students the chance to participate in all the activities via Zoom and Slack.Thre are really some interesting ideas apeal to me.

The Musician theme is quite interesting. I love music, especially when i am im room alone, takaing a shower, doing homeword, i'd like to play some music. And i also thought about visulising the audio myself during my DECCO 7230 course. At that time i planned to design a visulised a music band by VR. The player can direct the music band as a cunductor.In a word, music visulisation is a appealing theme deserve to be developed.

I aslo like the Guide Shoews, because it sounds could really solve the daily problem for the blind people. We are all considered the blind people. This is a more practical tool to make their life convinient, and mine is game, focusing more on entertainment. However, when it comes to this shoes, all the notifications, like changing directions and telling obstacles are in the form of vibration, which could probably cause misunderstanding. And what if there were a indicator telling them all the stuffs around them, not just the obstacles.

There are many other interesting ideas, and i changed my initial view in the process of listing to others' pitches. Every time when i started to generate new designning ideas, like this time, i always thought about these ideas can sovle some practial problems. However, i suddenly realised that this thinking pattern limited my imagination. Just because of this kind of "finding out problem and solving it" mode, i cannot create some crazy ideas, but that just what this course expect us to generate. Crazy idea always sounds unrealistic or even stupid to me, but i realise i was wrong beacuse it's always the crazy idea can make innovations and changes.

Inductions

In week 1 and 2 I had my UQ innovate, space induction session and soldering session where I learned to use different tools and equipment which I might use during the construction of my project. I also learned the importance of following all the safety procedures and instructions.

At the end of the UQ innovate session we were all given a 3-D puzzle which could be assembled into a cube (material used - Acrylic sheet, colour - matte black) with "PHSY COMP" engraved on it (which I found pretty cool).

In the soldering session, We made a small and easy circuit using a perf board, a switch, a red LED light, A 15-ohm resistor, a button cell, a few wires and of course a soldering iron. I think I did a decent job for the first time as my circuit was working fine.

We also had a 78-207 space induction and got familiar with all the rules and also tools that are available there to use.

Presentations

On Tuesday and Wednesday, We had the 2-minute pitch which everyone had to give individually on their concepts and ideas. I loved how everyone had so many different unique ideas and concepts. My pitch was on Wednesday and I like to think it went pretty well. Thankfully I was under the 2-minute mark to explain my concept thoroughly.

Critiques (The Squeaker)

Most of the people who gave critiques on my concept said that it was Relevant & Novel and there was clear communication. Which I highly appreciate. I also loved a few Ideas where someone suggested that a human-sized mouse in an office could be creepy/weird so maybe change it to something else which is a fair point.

Another point that was good was that this review system by punching or high-fiving could be very biased like the user will not give a punch to the squeaker if they know that their boss/head is watching them. I think to change this, The squeaker could be created inside a sound-proof booth or something similar to that.

Something that I think I forgot to mention/emphasis in my pitch was that the squeaker is completely anonymous. But again with 2 mins to explain my idea, I guess I just wanted it to go as smooth as possible so I might have missed a few points.

Contact

This week we listened to students' inspirational speeches. I was inspired to explore more ways of interacting. For example, the use of smell, different tastes to change people's mood. Or through the vibration feedback and remind the player, this is an immediate interaction. Through the use of space and simulation of changing the scene, such as adding AR to change the attributes of the space. Finally, all the pitches are classified into themes, which also provide us with a lot of new ideas. Categorize these topics by purpose or interactively. This process also gave me a lot of inspiration.

Soldering

Soldering course this week, I learned how to connect circuit. For example, by analyzing the direction of the positive and negative terminals of the circuit, the circuit is connected and the battery is added, and we also learnt how to soldering and succeeded in soldering small lights. When I checked with my tutor, he told me that more metal should be welded to the switch connections to make them stronger, and that if problems arise in the future, experience has taught us to look first at where the joints are relatively weak. In addition, I was told that the welding point is usually chosen as close to the panel as possible, which is firm, because the welding point is far from the panel and can easily loose and cause the device to break. This is all from experience.

Work Done

This week the contacts consisted of everyone in the class presenting their ideas. My idea was a patch that children can wear to monitor their volume in situations where they require to be quiet and respectful of others. After listening to everyone's idea, we created themes based off those ideas. There was a common theme around health and fitness but the class worked to break down the themes into their underlying themes.

How it Relates

Whist I was listening to others present their idea, I realized that my idea focused heavily on positive and negative reinforcements in the form of a visual representation. Due to my target audience (children) this was an easy learning experiment for them. Whilst growing up, children typically need to learn certain actions and words are appropriate or unacceptable. This was not a common theme among the class, with most people focusing on ideas that they could directly relate to.

Work to Do

Next week we will be participating in a World Cafe which we seem to dive further into our interests and then get grouped with others with the same interests. Until the next contact, I hope to look into the themes created and a further look into my peers blog posts to grasp a deeper understanding of the themes that are emerging. I want to start already thinking about themes that interest me so I have a clearer mindset headed into the World Cafe.

Work that Inspired/Interested Me

I enjoyed the idea of positive and negative reinforcement as a basic way of learning. I use this method with my dogs and it also works well with children. My nieces often don't understand when they can and cannot talk and how loud they're being. They either talk over the top of someone or don't use their inside voice. They were my main inspiration for my idea.

Whilst listening to other classmates' ideas, it was fun to think about alterations or additions that could be made to some ideas or could be added to my own idea.

IDEA CRITIQUE

lots of ideas presented were definitely creative and useful if It were to come into life, however many (including mine) tend to develop from a thing / an object that already exists, in the example ideas that Lorna posted on blackboard on the other hand, are completely new and unique, at least I personally wouldn’t thought about those until I saw them.

So instead of going towards the direction of enhancing / upgrading an exisiting object, personally I’d think inventing something from scratch that isn’t based on any pre-exisiting model would be much more interesting and flexible. In my opinion, we tend not to think out of the box because we are surrounded by everyday objects, interacting and seeing them over and over again, therefore so are our minds.

A majority (including mine) of the ideas has a focus on enhancing everyday life or experience, some rare qualities of an idea such as playfulness, novelty, open-endedness, tend to be neglected, which is not a problem because enhancing everyday life is what humanity should always strive for, but I’ve not seen an idea which is a combination of those values, which is fun to interact with, useful for people’s experience/convenience, caring for people’s feeling etc… Fortunately we could combine different ideas from week 2 to develop one that has all the values mentioned in the next week.

INDUCTION SESSIONS

Tuesday soldering session

I was introduced to soldering on Tuesday, although I was not completely clueless about what it is and why it is useful. The techniques and safety measures that were taught in class definitely was new to me as a third year student who is more interested in software / web based projects than physical computing’s.

Arduino was what I used in DECO2300 but it was nearly a year ago and due to my lack of interest in physical tech the soldering session was certainly refreshing and useful if I want to get through the course.

Wednesday space session

Safety and rules introduction of the room 78-207, things to remember :

• wear covered shoes (I didn’t and had to borrow a pair of donated shoes……..ewwwww)
• Use the right tool for the right job
• keep the area clean even when I wasn’t the one responsible for the mess
• There’s a door for loading should be kept closed
• where to put stuff (eg. sharp wastes to the sharp bin)
• don’t open the door for anyone
• don’t work in the dark
• ask when in doubt

etc etc… a lot of them are common sense.

CONCLUSION (rambling)

In the second week of the course we went through a ton of presentations, be it live or recorded. Even though the course makes me get up at 8 in the morning, it was absolutely worth the struggle after listening to so many inspirational ideas.

I signed up to the course late so I had absolutely zero idea what was going on in the first week before drowning in the sea of content and announcement published on blackboard right after I enrolled.

Unfortunately though I could not participate in the theming part of both Tue and Wed sessions because I had an induction session to attend plus another that I missed in the first week, It’s been hectic for sure for only the second week of the semester. The good thing was that I was inspired by several ideas presented throughout the week, which certainly will affect my decision on project theme selection in the following week.

Feedback

Following points are the common content captured from the peer critique:

Good visualization

• Help people get aware

• Display emotions

• Get remind or alert

• Help to indicate how we treat others

• Decoration with interesting functions related to family moods.

Hard to implement

• Sound categorization

• Measurement

• Distinguish positive/negative loud noise

Concept

• Good idea to ensure home life is healthy

• Like it which try to capture different kinds of emotions

After reading through all this feedback, I realized that form and visualization of my concept is a pass but the deeper theory and implement need more works. I should consider more about how to recognize various sounds and analyze them through computer system. I think I can have some inspiration through the World Cafe next week which I can further build on my concept.

For the past several days - I've been drafting, redrafting and rewriting a specific post that covers my thoughts on the themes that were highlighted as the results of this weeks sessions... in an attempt to get a "definitive list" of thoughts ready ahead of time.

A process that I've come to a certain realisation about - I've technically had several journals for this course until now, physical one with sketches and notes from class, one on my personal drive where I write submissions before making posts here, and this. But the entire point of the online journal system is to have everything in one place.

Plus, journals are supposed to be our thoughts, as we have them, there's a lot of freedom in format, presentation, and content... and so going for more than a dozen or so essays ... when I could have just had bullet point lists for example, for the theme list... well, it's not working smart, rather just putting my nose to the grindstone until I have what I need.

There's a depressing element on spending several days trying to articulate thoughts, and then having to delay sharing them because their presentation is insufficient. Am I doing enough work? It never feels like I am.

"Well, what I need to do is just have a big ol' post that covers everything I think about these themes, that'll make it smoother to discuss them"

Was the thought I'd had. But in truth, I could write and think of as things as much as I want, but there's no value if there isn't a clear output from it. Which is besides the point that you can't have one piece of work that does everything for you anyway.

Although university serves as a place to try out new things and be exposed to unusual ideas, it feels like I'm failing to achieve acceptable results so long as I'm still running in circles.

So, moving forward:

• if I do go with forward with those essay posts at all, I'll reconsider the format and simplify them
• thoughts dont need to be followed down every thread, some incomplete ones can be returned to later
• not answering every single question immediately, some things are worth keeping in mind, but holding off on a conclusion until I discuss with someone else is acceptable too

Which should help with feeling like we're making progess, although... well, the dissatisfaction at not doing enough remainsinescapable.

Theres no such thing as a finished product, and so expecting one out of a journal posts (of all things) just sets me up with unhealthy and excessive expectations that get me nowhere.

Presentation:

The week, we were having our 2 min pitch during the contact. It was good to see others' concepts. Some of these are really great and simple concepts that match all criteria very well. We also wrote down critiques to others' concepts which help us to improve our concepts in the future.

link to the critiques sheets.

I also got feedback from Lorna. She gave me some advice about the interaction of my game. Not only project shadow on the screen, there can be more ways of interaction such as sound or heat effect, users need to squat down when they hear the sound or feel the heat. The game can also motivate players to do other exercises such as jumping. One of my friends also mentioned my concept is not novel since she had played a game with a similar technique. But I thought the purpose and interaction of my game are different.

Soldering:

I haven't done any soldering before and I have limit experience with building the circuit. But this session was running pretty well because tutors gave enough help. I think soldering is very useful for us to design an interactive project if we are going to implement sound or light effects.

Presentation&Idea Theming

In this week’s contact, all of us finished the presentation of ideas. There were a lot of good ideas that I thought could be explored further. We then went through all of the posters thematically in order to put all the ideas together and prepare for next week's world cafe activity. Most of the students' thoughts are reflected in Health, Music, Intelligence, and Behavior Changes. In addition, there are many concepts in Emotion, Learning, Game, Stress Release and so on.

New ideas&Preparing for Next Week

After class I read classmates' posters, I think some functional ideas are practical but lack interest, such as the concept of smart homes. For example, I was impressed with Ryan's idea for a smart kitchen. The design is more like a small smart home system, with voice control, Recipe pre-set function. It combines a physical system with online system. The idea is to allow users to interact with the kitchen in the way they like, while increasing the efficiency of using the kitchen, with automated presets and voice controls, which meet the demands of human value and everyday life. However, I feel that this design lacks some novel elements, and some audacious ideas should be added to make this design more distinctive! I also had some new ideas and insights on some of them, which I thought could be further discussed in next week's world cafe. My personal preference is for more interesting, playful interactive installations, so I'll be focusing on themes like Beautify the Self, Altered Landscapesat, Bothersome tech, Musical things and Emotional totems next week's world cafe activity and I'm looking forward to finding teammates who share my interests.

Contact

Finally, I arrived in Brisbane and took my first class on campus. In Wednesday's contact, I presented my project idea for the class.I felt a little bit nervous because I have not spoken in public for a long time. Fortunatly, I explained my idea clearly.

After listening others ideas, I had some thoughts. To be honest, I didn't see much great ideas. Instead, I have met lots of them in Digital Prototyping course and Design Thinking course. Some of the ideas maybe interesting. But the posters were hard to understand. I think it may have some good ideas in Tuesday's class which I missed.

78-207 Introduction

I participated in this introduction in 78-207. Ben introduced how to use the hand tools for us. The most important thing was that he also introduced the safety rules in detailed. I thought we need to have a try. Maybe in other sessions.

Soldering and Laser cutting

The phys comp cube is done with the laser cutting machine, and soldering done to make the red light works! Fun and the light is working with the switch :)

Wood cutting

Many ways to cut the wood into the shapes we want and third finger can be used to protect our hand when getting close to the blades. Still, those machines are pretty intimidating o.o" but a good learning experience.

Affected by the coronavirus, I am still in Thailand, but I can return to Brisbane the day after tomorrow to participate in the course. After speaking this week, I found a lot of interesting ideas. I sorted them out and said some of my thoughts.

The heart-warming maze

As the article mentioned, as AI matures, it will be critical to study its influence on humans and society. There will be many challenges, such as, between automation and human control, working strategically towards becoming more dryven my humanistic concerns than deterministic ones, and taking into account the social dynamics involved. And as technology matures, they should be able to respond to human emotions and promote human security. And as technology matures, they should be able to respond to human emotions and promote human security. And these new technologies should not violate some of the hidden dangers mentioned in the three principles of robots

Visualization of health

This is a health related device. First of all, it is portable, and it allows people to see their health more intuitively. Especially now, coronavirus is spreading almost everywhere in the world, if everyone has such a device. That way people can check their questions anytime, anywhere. When some symptoms appear, you can achieve self-isolation and effectively spread the virus.

Multifunction Mask

This is a very meaningful interactive device that can help autistic children and deaf people communicate with the outside world. The user only needs to bring a mask-like device. Make some communication through what is shown on the mask. But I think the form of masks may not be a good choice, because people look like wearing masks to refuse communication. So I think it would be better if I changed to another way.

Table dating

This device can reduce the chance of breaking up between couples. For couples who are in college, when they are on vacation, they will return to their homes for months without meeting. Although now extremely powerful smartphones can allow them to make video calls or chat online. But this approach is just a matter of equity. The device mentioned by YIFan can make people have a real face-to-face dating experience, not just limited to a small smartphone screen. But if there are other ways to replace VR glasses, it is better, because this device is not very friendly to myopia users.

The Rhythm Exercise

As it happens, I have watched this video mentioned by TianYi. If I remember correctly, in the video, the author placed more than a dozen ultrasonic sensors on a driver board. These sensors are very sensitive to ultrasonic waves and can convert sound waves that people cannot hear into sounds that people can feel. It's actually interesting that if we really have such a device, we might be able to look at the world from the point of view of a puppy and see which sounds are not animal friendly, so that we don't feel the animal's inexplicable restlessness Surprised. So I think from this perspective, this device will become more interesting.

Smash It

I need such a device so much. Too much has happened in the past three months in 2020. And many people are unable to attend school on time due to the effects of coronavirus, which makes them more stressed than usual. If there is such a device for painting, these stressful and angry people can use these devices to relieve their stress. However, the material of the device may be taken into consideration when designing. After all, the explosive force when people are under great pressure cannot be underestimated. If the material is too strong, it may cause harm to users.

Good MEM Box

When we were young, the teacher asked us to keep a diary. We just kept journals just for homework. Later, there was slowly no separate time to write his own diary. This device helps us to record memories. Recording good memories in life is a very happy thing. By using this device, people can help them remember these wonderful things by completing a mini-game-jigsaw puzzles, and can share them with their family and friends, and may encourage them to share good memories.

Melo Catcher

It can be seen that people's stress is really heavy. I have seen a lot of topic is related to stress. Jianing's design is different from that of several other students. She wants people to ease the pressure through music. Melo Catcher is an interactive music box that lets people play music by touching a wall, table, or other object. This has the great benefit that people no longer have to spend a lot of time learning a musical instrument. But one of the obvious flaws is that if the user's pressure is particularly high, they may not have the patience to rotate the handle. I think that it is better to control the music box by using the handle than to use other methods, such as gestures.

Pitch

This week we heard the pitch sharing of the classmates. I have to say that such a long version of sharing will be a bit difficult to catch-up all of them. But I still heard a few interesting ideas from the pitch.

I think Musician is a very interesting idea. It’s a very interesting idea to express the audio visually and then interact with it. I think we can go deeper and make it more exciting. Secret Handshake Lock is also a very interesting idea, although It’s a bit creepy, but in a good way. I just think it’s cool, because it’s something I have never thought of. Shadow Band also makes me feel very interesting. It sounds like a fun game, but I also hope it can have more physical feedback. Surprisingly, many people are interested in smart homes, but I think this direction is a bit too realistic. I prefer crazy ideas. I thought that more people would come up with games since there are a less boundary in this field and can give full play to imagination. But not many people actually choose to make games.

Theme

After the pitch, we also carried out theming. The most of themes seem to be very clear. As mentioned before, many people are focusing on mental health, smart home and music, which makes theming not so difficult.

Comment

Then I also reviewed peers’ comments on Running Hand. I’m glad that many people can agree with me, especially the part about physical feedback. Although this is something I thought of suddenly when I was playing my hand in the air, I think it’s It really improves interaction.

Alison came up with the idea of a Player vs Player match. I think it's very cool, and in fact it would be cooler if we could add something like defence or skills. And this idea just matches the other comment

“Think about the collaborative way for group of people to play the game together.”

Thinking about how to let people to people interaction through computer is also fascinating.

I am already looking forward to the next week's world cafe that will allow us to come up with better ideas and start teaming up.

On Monday I attended the soldering section, it was fun to build an LED light with circular by myself even though it still needs some more work to get it function. I wish I had more time to work on the soldering. I learned that the welding object has to be the same temperature as the soldering iron so that the solder would stick to that object. Otherwise, the solder will only stay on the soldering iron. I didn’t know in the beginning; therefore, I had a big chunk of the solder that connected to all the pins. It kills the switch since all pins were connected; the circuit is going in a loop.

I want to finish it when I can and glue the pieces together.

Tuesday (3 March 2020)

I was in the (un)fortunate circumstance of presenting first, and once I had completed my pitch, I felt extremely relieved.

Because I had already completed my pitch, I was able to focus and listen to the following presentations without being worried.

A few of my personal favourite designs were Mort.

I found the number of times 'Smart' used in the name of a concept to be amusing as most people used said word to describe technology that would passively sense human interaction.

I was quite concerned with some of the 'Smart' concepts, namely: the Smart Fridge and Smart Toothbrush. Personally, the electric toothbrush that I own is capable of all the technologies that were described for the Smart Toothbrush.

78-207 Workshop Area Induction

At 1:00pm I had the workshop area induction for 78-207. Although I had access to the work shop last semester (Semester 2, 2019) and still currently do, Steven's run through of the rules and hand tools was a fantastic refresher!

The last induction that I need to complete is the UQ Innovate Induction, which I have booked for Monday 9 March.

Wednesday (4 March 2020)

After listening to the pitches, each poster was displayed, themes were generated and concepts were collated together.

During this activity, a class mate had approached Jess to discuss the similarities of their two ideas.

Themes

When each concept was placed under a relevant theme, it was easier to see the similarities that each concept had in regard to enhancing everyday life.

It was great to see the themes that had been produced the previous day (had missed this activity due to 78-207 Workshop Area Induction).

Soldering

We participated in a soldering induction at the beginning of this week. It was a very interesting experience. I have took the fundamental of computer hardware basics courses, but I never think about how the very basic part of a computer is like. Although what we did in in Monday is quite simple---- a circut only include battery, switch, resistance and a LED light. But it gave me a total different experience, compare to using the A..d toolkit. It's like you are building up your own electronic from the very first step.

1. Work Done & Relevance

This week consisted of additional preparation, with a significant amount of time spent on pitches and theming. We also worked on soldering, and had a look at reviews for our pitches.

I suppose it could be questionable whether this week end recap post is even necessary... I'll keep writing them for now, but the main points of reflection for most activities are on their own individual posts throughout the week.

2. Work to Do

The next step involves completing my draft post on my interpretation of the selection of themes that were arrived to - this will help me communicate what I'm thinking at the table once we start discussing potential projects at the world cafe...

I also have ideas for refinements to my existing concepts, but being unsure what next weeks in class tasks are going to be, perhaps these refinements are unnecessary. It's a mixed feeling, on one hand I want to improve the ideas so they can be the best versions of themselves, but on the other ... maybe there's better uses of time, like looking at existing research in the domains of the themes... which would let me make informed suggestions on technologies that might be suitabe for each theme.

3. Things that Inspired Me

Through this week, the other subject I take this semester DECO2200 involved looking at images and art that could be said to inspire ones own personal style.

Now, that subject involves selecting images around visual style, but to arrive at a set of images that I wanted to emulate or improve my style towards, I had to first spend parts of the week considering how and why these images were meaningful to me.

The above is a style board made as part of DECO2200's tasks. I've spent a bit of time trying to justify why these images are things that inspired me or got me thinking, - after all, these creations dont necessarily address a problem,... but I'd argue thinking about why I wanted to emulate these counts as being inspired by them. After all, my goal is to eventually create something that has elements of, or perhaps improve upon them.

a. 36 Days of Type - The Letter K by Karan Singh

There's a lot to be said about how simple things can be made to go wrong in so many ways because the appeal, the simplicity, is overwhelmed by too many incongruous elements. This motion image is an example where that didn't happen. Although the underlying theme is depicting the letter K, and there's lots of moving parts, the artist has gone ahead and tried to tell a short story of a sort of... vibrant fantasy land, where there's shifting blocks that are simply part of architecture.

For the project, I imagine the idea is that a lot of different moving components may exist on our exhibition piece, but none should distract from the whole, and the primary intent. Singh's website

b. Colorworks Series | Backgrounds by Victoria Joh

This series of background art makes use of simple shapes and bright colours, but using visual focus to draw our eyes to specific areas of the illustration. In the same way, it's possible that a 3850 project may be a combination of disparate elements, but highlighting a centerpiece diegetically (via positioning and visual arrangement... or just colour theory) to achieve some goal.

Things get messy when prototyping, and end up all over the place... But a design balanced with a sort of focus, let's us draw the users attention to a specific part of it first, which can be both a functional benefit (people always look at this area before doing taek x), or a benefit to presentation (no one noticed all the messy wires sticking out the side, taped to the desk). Joh's Behance profile

c. Robots - the 2004 I, Robot Movie by Dan Platt

The robots in I, Robot strike a balance between sculpture, and humanoid figure, while only somewhat falling into the uncanny valley. While Computer Generated Imagery has improved since then and they do look slightly less convincing now, almost 20 years later, the idea that robots don't need to look exactly like us (just close enough) for us to form empathetic connections with them and begin to treat them like people was fascinating to me.

Social Robots are a particularly strong interest of mine, and although I'm trying not to push my intent to make something of the sort into the course, knowing that there's not just considerations into, but even mainstream media that has successfully demonstrated how a robot that's like a person could look and function, means I have sources to draw from when thinking of designs... which spurred me to consider other portrayals of machines. An article on I, Robot's digital effects

d. The Excalibur Warframe - from the game Warframe by Digital Extremes

Much more abstract and intrigue filled are the machines from this game, where the microscopic robots compose the figures that you play as (to simplify), which appealed to me because it brought forth the idea that technology doesn't have to look like technology, it doesn't need to "look like a robot" to do things with machines do... smooth lines and silhouettes that only allude to what the design does, until its in action, can create aesthetic appeal.

With that in mind... What should be stopping us from creating technology that looks like a tree, house, shirt, rock or wind tunnel? Addressing technology as a method to get us to something interesting, something that can captivate people, while still offering some practical use to them, could very well be exactly what we do here. Warframe's website

e. Portal 2's Concept Art by Valve Corporation

In an age where smart devices are advertised for every step of ones life, the question, "what if the entire location was the machine" gets brought up occasionally. What if we lived in a world where these giant, landscape spanning machines are central to our daily lives? Like if every device had to be connected by hardware?

One can forget that they're mired in a dungeon of technology of sorts, because of wireless, but if we were literally encircled by doodads, if we could see the connections and bits and pieces that make our daily technology possible to use... It's possible to think we'd still have the same issue as with ccomputers from the 70's or so, where their building spanning designs made them overwhelming to be around.

The implication for us... well, maybe trying not to add to the "tech dungeon" as much if we can, or if we have to, what we create has to be done with the intent to bring genuine value to people, and not just throw in something that we assume people want. Half Life / Portal OverWiki showing some art form Portal 2's development

Alternative link - original breaks due to underscores

f. Brutalist Architecture

To a much lesser extent than the inspiration for technology, and just a follow up for the research on portal's environment design, I looked at brutalist architecture.

With the idea being that, alright, if it would be a nightmare if we were literally surrounded by tech... so what would be the bulkiest, most utilitarian kind of way to construct structures to hide that?

Particularly in focus, using heavy, exposed concrete as a prominent feature... which didn't give me much to take away from, but I did benefit from the realisation that perhaps it isnt a bad thing for the technology not to be hidden, exposed architecture in Brutalism, after all, is pretty much the same as the dozens of exposed wires, boards and arduinos that were a feature of some of my previous DECO course prototypes... if the focus is just functionality, and being a proof of concept, maybe the perfectionism of "hide everything" could prove to be a heavy piece of impedance throughout the semesterBrutalism on Wikipedia

4.0 Closing Thoughts

In hindsight, there was more I could have done this week... especially with regard to revising my concepts. Additionally... there were sources of inspiration I left out because although meaningful, it felt like the reasons those things made me want to do specific things were invalid, very surface level... at least compared to the style board exercise and the investment I had in finding specific pieces to feature on it.

Heyo,

Here is an update to the Idea Inspiration which answers a few questions that fellow mates had. After going through the critique sheets, I saw some of the concerns and questions regarding the concept surface. Below are the main questions of critiques -

• How can the mat know what you do?

The mat detect body movements of a user through multiple sensors. An example of these sensors is pressure sensor, which detects distributuion of body weight, which can analyse the activity you are trying to do.

• How does the mat respond differently to different users?

Before the start of the exercises, you can calibrate the mat to your body shape by simply lieing on it. This activity tells the mat about your shape, any deformities, structural problems and your current health status. The AI in mat keeps these factors in mind when trying to help you exercise.

• Why didn't you use light and sound to support user?

When users exercise, the robots help them via physically touching their body and supporting their posture. Using any other sense when touch sense is already present seems redundant. If any other sense could help users, they would be definately be included.

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Also, other critique's included suggestions for the mat - massage feature for recovery, goal tracking & usage of foam for robot material. These all look like a great addition to the Smart Fitness Mat and I 100% support these. ;-]