Work Done

The first week of content was centred around course expectations and project ideation.

For the Tuesday session, we focused mainly on course structure and expectations. In smaller groups at each table we discussed and wrote down some of our expectations to be discussed as a class. This included what we thought we would learn, what our aspirations and fears were, what rumours we had heard and any remaining questions. This was a great opportunity to reflect on the course, and have any questions answered from the course coordinator and teaching staff.

At our table, everyone engaged in the discussion and had formed their own opinions.

We were excited to learn:

• Connecting physical and digital
• Building stuff with teams
• Using new equipment

We aspired to:

• Showcase our work at the exhibition
• Build stuff
• Be creative

We feared:

• Building desired functionality within given time frame
• Workload
• Dangerous equipment
• Not having enough skills
• Working in an unfamiliar team for a double weighted course
• Coding in unfamiliar environments
• Uneven splits of designers and developers

We had heard rumours that:

• The course required a lot of work
• We would lose our minds in the lead up to the exhibition
• We would have to do all nighters in the labs

We had questions about:

• How do I know what material to use when?
• What are we allowed to make? And how do we know when we are being unreasonable?
• How to split the workload?

These aspirations and concerns were all addressed when we discussed them collectively after combining the tables' ideas on the whiteboards. It seemed that our expectations seemed fairly consistent with what Lorna said to expect from the course. Although we had more fears than anything else on our poster, I am excited to engage with the course. I expect to be challenged and struggle, but I am ready to face these head on and will hopefully be a better designer and developer as a result of this. Overall, what I hope to achieve with this course is learning by trying.

The rest of the Tuesday session was spent seeking inspiration for the final project as some students attended induction sessions. Our table came across some very interesting examples such as a piece of cloth that conjures light and audio based on movement. (https://www.fastcompany.com/1671684/a-piece-of-cloth-that-conjures-light-and-sound). I also explored the other examples as discussed in the previous blog post regarding initial inspirations. What I found the most interesting as examples of novel interactions were the ones involving visual and audible system feedback in response to body movement and other forms of human interaction. Another example of my favourite examples was the interactive sound table using electric paint (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhOd2UIQjkc). This example also had an element of collaboration and and interaction between users, which I found very interesting. The social aspect would be fascinating to explore, to see how users would interact. Considering this, I would like to include some form of interaction between users in my project idea.

At the Wednesday session, the activities revolved around Seven HCI Grand Challenges and idea generation. I was assigned to the section of 'Human Technology Symbiosis', which discussed the challenges of ensuring technology which supports humans without compromising human control and safety.

When reading my assigned section, I found some aspects intriguing as highlighted in the text. In the part of meaningful human control, I found it the most interesting to read about how transparency, understandability and accountability contribute to establish trust between humans and computer systems. More specifically, it was focused on how humans have an obligation to understand the system to be morally responsible for its actions - mentioning AI which may be unpredictable and opaque in its behaviour both to users and its developers. The idea of moral responsibility in technology, is a relevant theme with the emergence of new technology which have critical consequences, e.g. autonomous cars.

Furthermore, it was enriching to explore how computer systems can support humans through extending cognitive abilities and "nudging" humans to change behaviour in favour of their own or humanity's benefit. Finally, it was discussed how the issue is complex and how technology needs to encompass human values in design choices.

Those of us who had been assigned this section discussed the issues and its components collectively at our table. We found that implications with privacy could mean that the relationship was not symbiotic, yet rather slightly parasitic. Furthermore, as a definition we found symbiosis troublesome as it implies that humans are benefiting technology in a way. As a group, we felt that humans do not contribute positively to or necessarily benefit technology. On the other hand, we felt that technology has the potential to make us "better" humans in some ways. By nudging us to create better habits for our physical health such as engaging in physical exercise, reminding us to stay hydrated or suggesting better sleeping habits we felt that technology may benefit us to some extent. Yet this may come at the price of providing personal data through trackers for the technology to adapt and improve to personal habits or overall accuracy.

As a description, we wrote:

Symbiotic tech means you and the technology are indistinguishable, they are integrated in a way such that they provide benefits without serving an external entity.

After summarising the Seven HCI Grand Challenges, we started an activity using playing cards to ideate.

At our table we slightly misunderstood the task initially, so we spent the first few minutes trying to interpret the generated sentence in multiple ways. After understanding the activity, we started coming up with actual ideas. As a group we presented the idea of an interactive rubber duck which promoted mindfulness and stress management whilst simultaneously facilitating and motivating physical exercise. The idea was derived from the sentence "Design to rest in a swimming pool with natural jump.". As a group we interpreted the swimming pool as any body of water, the resting as laying still and jumping as any form of physical exercise. Our idea was to have an object which would detect physical movement in the water and then respond accordingly to the predicted emotional needs of the user. If there was little water movement detected in the currents, the rubber duck would show soothing colours and play calming audio in conjunction with this. Furthermore it could pulsate to e.g. a calm heartbeat or breathing exercises. This would apply to the resting aspect of the generated sentence. On the other hand to accommodate the jumping, we aspired to have the rubber duck show vibrant colours and play upbeat music to motivate physical activity.

Once the group activity had been completed, we were to generate ideas individually. My generated sentence was "Design for empathising in a monument with skip and the quality of aggressive.". I found this quite challenging as empathising and aggression are quite contradictory. I interpreted it as a lack of restriction - meaning the interaction would not be moderated and hence could be aggressive in nature.

Some of my ideas included:

* Floor tiles where an empathising message can be written, and they are spread out so the user can skip between them.

* Placing small buttons on a board where the placement decides the shape, e.g. can be a heart.

* Mood boards where every person places a pin of their preferred colour.

* Connect bracelet for all visitors where it vibrates in compassion. Each visitor can choose if they want to receive or give comfort. Stroking the 'giving comfort' bracelets would make the 'receiving comfort' bracelets vibrate gently.

* Drawings by visitors are scanned and displayed on the monument.

* Each visitor chooses a colour and the joint colour of all visitors is the displayed colour of the monument through LED lights.

# How it Relates

The in-class activities have been helpful to start the ideating process, especially the playing card-based activity. I found it easier to think of an idea when we had a purpose and more restricted space to design for. Furthermore it was enriching to explore the Seven HCI Grand Challenges prior to the ideation stage as this helped me try to encompass and consider human values in my design. Furthermore, it has been inspirational to look at examples of innovative and novel technology.

# Work to Do

At this stage in the semester I need to ideate and iterate on ideas related to the final project. To do so, I will research existing technology and explore the domains I am the most interested in such as playing with colour and music to create a creative outlet or cognitive learning tool.

Once I have settled on an idea and the ideation stage has been completed I need to complete my poster and refine my pitch. When completing this task I have to carefully consider how to best 'sell' my idea and communicate the technicalities clearly.

# Work that Inspired/Interested Me

In my ideation process, I found it helpful to read this article regarding unrealistic and innovative ideas that have not yet become a reality. The lack of restriction of the ideas helped me expand my scope and be more novel in my proposed interactions. I found that in the start of the ideation process I struggled to be creative and sufficiently innovative, and so this material somewhat helped me combat these restrictions.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/03/magazine/innovations-issue.html

This week everyone presented their ideas to the class in a pitch-and-poster format. The audience was required to critique the different works based on the relevance of the concept, and how well it was illustrated and explained. It was an incredibly tedious effort sitting for quite a few hours, but it forced me to pay attention to each and every single concept, and try and understand it to the fullest, rather than if I had sat idly and zoned out. I had written a pitch to aide my poster, however my nerves had gotten to me and I struggled to properly explain my concept. I still believe my poster mostly did it justice.

The feedback received on the concept was mostly positive, with a few suggestions here and there on how to make it slightly more interactive. Some of the key features people took a liking to were its portability, its assistance in describing ones emotions to others (therapist or friend), and how it was not incorporated into a fact.

Anyhow, the second part of the process was to identify common themes among the various concepts. There were many that immediately came to mind, such as "shadows", "music", "emotion", but a friend and I tried exploring into other areas, totalling about 10 different themes between the two of us.

Most people had the same ideas with others, and some ideas weren't so easy to sort into a single category. Themes like health, game, music, emotion, fitness, smart, sustainability, and behavioural change were the most common themes. Themes such as life beautification and memories were more unique categories that only a few individuals had identified.

These themes were explored further and broken down into more specific themes, outlined below.

Some of these included themes like creating music through movement, individual action for sustainability, negative reinforcement for behaviour change, and emotion as input. This is beneficial for next week's World Café activity.

Idea Generated Process：

The initial idea is from the autistic and then related to the deaf-mute.

This mask, you can also think it's a very advanced and cool mask. If you make any sound, it will be converted into text and displayed on the screen. In addition, it has a simultaneous translation broadcast function and automatic scanning gesture function. The purpose is to implement "barrier-free communication".

Don't think this mask is only for autistic children. Of course, children can wear it. What if it's for the teacher? Most autistic children are not willing to accept voice. In many cases, writing or written expression is more useful than speaking.

For the deaf-mute, the mask will automatically scan sign language, then translate gesture and output the content results on a screen with play sound function. In short, sign language becomes speech.

Reflection：

I feel very happy after two speeches lasting for more than an hour because I have found very interesting and meaningful points from many people's ideas and ideals. Everyone's ideas are flying in the sky and have practical significance. I've got a couple of ways of thinking that I think are very helpful to me.

First:

there are some ideas that have nothing to do with implementation. This makes me realize that under the living environment of modern society, brain thinking is very easy to be limited in a certain field or in certain thinking.

Second:

when I think about ideas, the real biggest limitation is that there is no limit to the scope. At this time, I found that my thinking method had fatal problems. In the past, I was able to do well under limited conditions. This allowed me to rediscover my lack of ability.

Third:

the whole speech also trained me to deal with different, novel and strange ideas for fast recording and comparison. So as to absorb the most noteworthy points in each idea. For example, install the function of listening to songs in shoes. In my opinion, the first comparative idea is "turn the air pods interaction from hand to foot".

Fourth:

receiving information for a long time is a great test of the brain's ability to bear and everyone's speech is very tight. It is not only necessary to see the obvious and important information from the posters, but also to listen to the speaker's narration at the same time.

Soldering 101 Induction

1.

The welding operation is the first contact. In the beginning, the tutor emphasized the precautions many times, and then equipped each person with the devices of the electric board, connecting wire, switch button and LED light.

2

After the completion of the LED light, the tutor will assign a complete circuit board to the students again, and then the students will give priority to the simple introduction of their own exploration and production. Then use the instrument to weld the board and the wire together.

3

Finally, in the complete circuit board, after welding, the final connection with the battery. And this practical results are different with DECO2300.

4

The biggest regret is to forget to take photos and record the process of discussion.

Idea generate process

At first, I was't quite sure about what is the outcome should be and was frustrated about lacking suitable ideas. However, I have came up with two rough ideas:

The first one is the travel neck pillow with massage machine implemented. The product will detect the users heart rate and the muscle tenseness to determine their stress level and then will automatically the release the users stress.

The second ideas is the presented one: the shoes that determines the users' mood and chooses the most suitable playlist. I have chosen the second idea as my final outcome since it is more related to my needs and the inspiration also comes from personal experience.

Pitch

Feedback from lecturer and peers:

1. Express interest in the colour spectrum that represent people's emotions from the sensors and will be shown on the shoes
2. Concerns towards whether the shoes will be able to detect human emotions.
• Research has shown that it is possible to recognise human emotions based on body action, such as rhythmic movements represented happiness and sudden and advancing movement represented anger. (Melzer A, Shafir T, Tsachor R.P, 2019)
3. After detecting the users emotions, the system can play music that relieve their stress and anger in order to enhance their mental health.
• The idea is technically achievable, since research have raised the idea of music can boost people's happiness and reduce anxiety. (Boothby S, 2017)

Others ideas

During the session, we are giving out critiques to others ideas and grouping the posters into different categories in order to generate themes for future work.

There are several ideas that I am interested in:

1. The smart wardrobe
• In the previous courses, I have developed a project based on similar concept. The method the people present it is very interesting since it connects daily outfits to personal schedules and the weather forecasting, which is highly customised and thoughtful.
2. Smash it
• This idea is suitable for modern society since people usually have a high level of stressfulness in their daily life. As an individual, I would likely to experience the final outcome and monitor the results of how it impacts me.

Soldering 101 Induction

The session was quite interested for me. Since as an IT student, there isn't a lot of opportunities to expose to the hardware and build a simple lightbulb circuit. I was a bit confused in the beginning since I have little experience towards breadboard, but with the help from tutors, I was able to finish soldering and successfully light up the bulb.

Reference

• Melzer A, Shafir T, Tsachor R.P, 2019, How Do We Recognize Emotion From Movement? Specific Motor Components Contribute to the Recognition of Each Emotion

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01389/full

• Boothby S, 2017, Does Music Affect Your Mood?

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/mental-listening-to-music-lifts-or-reinforces-mood-051713#3

The Pitch

In week two, we are mainly focused on presenting ideas we generated from last week and giving comments on others' pitch.

In general, I don't think I was well prepared :(

At first, I was pretty confident about my idea along with my poster, however, I forgot to practice my public speaking skills. My voice was a bit shaking when giving the pitch, and was super nervous about the timing. As for other work, most of the people using everyday objects as interactive facilities, "super crazy stuff from sci-fi fiction" is rarely seen. The whole presenting session is pretty fun to get involved since I got many inspirations from the projects of others. I personally like the "pretty closet" one, which the user can try out the style they are thinking of instead of putting them on for real. I guess I will purchase one if it's out haha!

(My pitch draft)

The Sessions

I also attended two workshops this week.

Soldering 101

This is an experimental class in a lab, we played with Arduino USB board which connects to the computer with a standard USB cable and also other kits. Once we finished setting, we spent half of the class on soldering which is to connect wires by ironing-ish. Its temperature is extremely dangerous high, I accidentally touched it with my fingertip and I burnt. Sad story :(

78-207 Space Induction

This is an hour introduction to lab safety, and I am happy to get familiar with these instructions before start building in later assignments.

Summary & Reflection

This week’s inspiration pitch enabled me to expose my initial idea to the whole class, and I think I have tried to present my ideas clearly and I managed to communicate my concept to the audience well.

In general, most responses for my initial concept were positive, because the most audience thought my idea has responded well to the brief, which was playful, novel, valued human values and focused on everyday life. Some people are also interested in the way in which everyday objects are used as interactive tokens, and they think it is attractive for users to experience the immersive interactions in a playful way. That has been a great pleasure for me, as my initial ideas have received positive feedback from others and may provide some inspiration for their eventual actual projects.

Some of the feedback from the audience also provided me with some valuable and constructive suggestions for further improvement and consideration of my concept, including:

• Reducing the difficulty of colour matching/choosing for users, especially novice painters.
• Considering more using contexts/scenarios.
• Enabling different users to form a closer connection.

I think most feedback provided by them were specific, actionable and objective, which inspires me to a great extent. Like taking above three feedback into account, I could provide some pre-set colour collations to lower users’ learning threshold, and allow multiple projectors to be used to connect different players, so that form a colour matching competition for the same painting. Also, creating a ‘community’ for users to share their own customised paintings for others to download and share their own colouring experience.

Documentation:

For this week, I mainly listened to others’ ideas and was also inspired by some of them. There were lots of really engaging ideas that could be potentially designed and developed to a final project that will be presented in the showcase.

We also gave critiques to others’ initial concepts, which may further provide some inspirations to them about where they did well and where they could improve. In the last hour of each day’s session, we also themed various ideas into different themes. By doing that, we were able to generate the initial sets of themes with the teaching team, which can help us better choose, extend and adapt ideas on the upcoming week’s word café session.

Actually, there were some notable projects during the presentation sessions, and many projects based around music, body control, beautification, etc. In particular, I was interested in:

• The rhythm of exercise
• Running hand
• Punching bag fountain

I was impressed by these projects mainly because they all provided new ways for users to interact with the ‘system’ and take human values into consideration. Although some of them may not totally focus on everyday life, they can consider making further improvements and putting their projects into everyday scenarios. There were actually many more ideas that were inspirational and interesting, so I was very looking forward to seeing them to be translated into some actual projects!

Improvement

1. Compressing the image file size for better display in journal post.
2. Adding the alt text description of each image

About my presentation

In my presentation, I made a big mistake. I feel too much tension, and the performance was not plain sailing. It needs me to rethink profoundly because when you feel nervous, it is difficult to convey my thoughts to the audience accurately. In the next presentation, I need to avoid nervousness, which will make the presentation more attractive.

Presentation Reflection

In this week's presentation, everyone shared their inspiration. We then categorized these inspirations, which will be helpful for subsequent group work.

Below I will record a few memorable cases in meeting. These inspirations are all worth learning for me.

Speaking shooting game

As far as the design concept is concerned, the users of this device can use the device to make the words they say turn into bullets to fight against the enemy. I think this idea is very novel.

The interaction of this design is also novel. Because of the different ways of interaction, the entertainment of the entire device has increased.

From a design perspective, this device also achieves the purpose of decompressing for users.

Smart bedroom

The concept made only home, which is rarely mentioned in the presentation. At the same time, this design is combined with human emotion.

The way of interaction is novel. This smart bed analyzes the user's emotions by identifying data on human features and body.

Interestingly, this design is combined with the concept of emotional triggers of colors. Some other design inspiration can add a similar theoretical basis.

About future work

Due to the travel ban, I missed some activities in the Innovation Lab, which has left me behind other classmates. I hope I can attend these events on time next week. In addition, for the concept of design pitch, after the presentation, Lorna put forward some suggestions for modification, and I need to refine the design concept next week.

In the beginning, I had a hard time coming up with an interesting, novel, and fun idea. I saw the MIT work, the inForm, which many of us have seen it before. It is a legend that inspires a lot of people, including me. At that time, I wanted to replace the tactile to something that does not have a dimension or a brick, where people can manipulate an object on their hand. With that in mind, I thought of searching for cool materials for the replacement of the tactile. I saw this YouTube video, “7 Strangest & Coolest Materials Which Actually Exist.” In the video, I got inspired by two materials which are Ultra Hydrophobic Material and Hydrogel. These two materials we have seen in our daily life, with water-resistant material; such as rain jackets, shoes, backpacks, and hydrogel in the plants.

“Water” came to my mind. I want to used water as a daily object. First, I thought if I can manipulate water like how we see on the space that the water is floating (okay! I don’t think it can achieve in the earth right now). However, my thought was using water to make a button. But I don’t think it’s possible and I don’t know how it would work. After talking to tutors with my idea of water balls, they encourage me to think further and explore on what water ball can do. It can add textures, weight, and smell (maybe).

In my first three ideas, I want to use a water ball to design something fun since hydrogel can absorb water. I want to create a game for kids. Each water ball has its own colors, but when two of them collide, the water released and it a new set of color is made. The new set of color will transfer to the LED screen, which has color pallets. Children can use the color they mixed to create art.

I was inspired by a YouTube clip; I saw called New Interactive RGB LED modules and Interactive Water and LED Installation. Children can use any soft surface props like brush and sponge or water gun and spread bottles to draw on the LED canvas. The LED canvas senses the interaction with the amount of water that applied to the canvas. A tutor reminded me that what my design is different from the typical canvas and why they have to drop the water balls to mix the colors. Humm….it does make sense, and I couldn’t think about any better explanation of why this is better than the normal one, except it includes the technology and looks cool.

The second and third ideas were somewhat similar to a little tweaking and a different user. I changed to blind people. I ideas was teaching blinded people about how to mix color. But when I shared my idea with my friend, she asked me that how would they know the color they made are the ones they like? It strikes me that for the people who are born with blindness, they have never seen colors before. How would they know colors? Even if I had added textures, weight, smell, and food(representation with the shape and reminder of natural food colors), they wouldn’t have any clues.

Later, I went on YouTube to search with any keyword that came to my mind besides the keywords, such as, physical computing, interaction design, and tangible computer. I wanted to push myself to think outside of the box this time. It’s easier said than done. I felt that from previous courses, I tend to get stuck, and I went into a dark hole where I constantly thinking in a circle. When it happened, I felt that my mind got overwhelmed, and it comes to a deadlock. I want to try differently this time.

I started with the word “water” since this is the daily element that I would like to focus on. I went to explore all different types of designs that I could find. I felt that every design has its own story even though they might have got inspiration from another artist. But by adding personal thoughts, ideas, intentions, and messages, it gives a different life to the art. On that said, I saw this big side water bubble ring toss, which reminded this game I played before. Even though this finding didn’t help me to get a new idea, but it reminded me of not only focusing on hands.

Instead of hands, I can cooperate with both hands and legs at the same time. It reminds me of a commercial I saw years ago from the G Active sport’s drinks commercial. The human water shapes inspired me to use it as a character in a fitness running game. The human water form symbolized the human being since our body contains lots of water. It tied up the relationship between water and human. (If you are interested in how they make the human water form real, you can go to my poster blog page. It had a YouTube link of how they make it. It's really amazing!)

Moreover, in place of seeing the character on the screen, I want to bring the character to a life where we can see it in 3d water human shapes. It’s a cool visualization. After I shared my idea with a tutor, she helped me to think further about why the droplets are essential? How does it use in the design other than visually appealing? With the ideas the tutor shared, I thought of adding playfulness to the game by changing the visibility depends on how fast the character runs. We sweat when we do an exercise. The water intensity reflected in the sweat lost during the exercise to push the player to run more. If they run slow, then they are easy to lost control in the game. It is a fitness game with a combination of health to remind people to drink more water.

Image reference:

Hydrokinesis. (2020). [Image]. Retrieved from https://abilitiespowersgifts.blogspot.com/2014/07/hydrokinesis.html

In the beginning, I had a hard time coming up with an interesting, novel, and fun idea. I saw the MIT work, the inForm, which many of us have seen it before. It is a legend that inspires a lot of people, including me. At that time, I wanted to replace the tactile to something that does not have a dimension or a brick, where people can manipulate an object on their hand. With that in mind, I thought of searching for cool materials for the replacement of the tactile. I saw this YouTube video, “7 Strangest & Coolest Materials Which Actually Exist.” In the video, I got inspired by two materials which are Ultra Hydrophobic Material and Hydrogel. These two materials we have seen in our daily life, with water-resistant material; such as rain jackets, shoes, backpacks, and hydrogel in the plants.

“Water” came to my mind. I want to used water as a daily object. First, I thought if I can manipulate water like how we see on the space that the water is floating (okay! I don’t think it can achieve in the earth right now). However, my thought was using water to make a button(figure 1). But I don’t think it’s possible and I don’t know how it would work. After talking to tutors with my idea of water balls, they encourage me to think further and explore on what water ball can do. It can add textures, weight, and smell (maybe).

In my first three ideas, I want to use a water ball to design something fun since hydrogel can absorb water. I want to create a game for kids. Each water ball has its own colors, but when two of them collide, the water released and it a new set of color is made. The new set of color will transfer to the LED screen, which has color pallets. Children can use the color they mixed to create art.

I was inspired by a YouTube clip; I saw called New Interactive RGB LED modules and Interactive Water and LED Installation. Children can use any soft surface props like brush and sponge or water gun and spread bottles to draw on the LED canvas. The LED canvas senses the interaction with the amount of water that applied to the canvas. A tutor reminded me that what my design is different from the typical canvas and why they have to drop the water balls to mix the colors. Humm….it does make sense, and I couldn’t think about any better explanation of why this is better than the normal one, except it includes the technology and looks cool.

The second and third ideas were somewhat similar to a little tweaking and a different user. I changed to blind people. I ideas was teaching blinded people about how to mix color. But when I shared my idea with my friend, she asked me that how would they know the color they made are the ones they like? It strikes me that for the people who are born with blindness, they have never seen colors before. How would they know colors? Even if I had added textures, weight, smell, and food(representation with the shape and reminder of natural food colors), they wouldn’t have any clues.

Later, I went on YouTube to search with any keyword that came to my mind besides the keywords, such as, physical computing, interaction design, and tangible computer. I wanted to push myself to think outside of the box this time. It’s easier said than done. I felt that from previous courses, I tend to get stuck, and I went into a dark hole where I constantly thinking in a circle. When it happened, I felt that my mind got overwhelmed, and it comes to a deadlock. I want to try differently this time.

I started with the word “water” since this is the daily element that I would like to focus on. I went to explore all different types of designs that I could find. I felt that every design has its own story even though they might have got inspiration from another artist. But by adding personal thoughts, ideas, intentions, and messages, it gives a different life to the art. On that said, I saw this big side water bubble ring toss, which reminded this game I played before. Even though this finding didn’t help me to get a new idea, but it reminded me of not only focusing on hands.

Instead of hands, I can cooperate with both hands and legs at the same time. It reminds me of a commercial I saw years ago from the G Active sport’s drinks commercial. The human water shapes inspired me to use it as a character in a fitness running game. The human water form symbolized the human being since our body contains lots of water. It tied up the relationship between water and human. (If you are interested in how they make the human water form real, you can go to my poster blog page. It had a YouTube link of how they make it. It's really amazing!)

Moreover, instead of seeing the character on the screen, I want to bring the character to a life where we can see it in 3d water human shapes. It’s a cool visualization. After I shared my idea with a tutor, she helped me to think further about why the droplets are essential? How does it use in the design other than visually appealing? With the ideas the tutor shared, I thought of adding playfulness to the game by changing the visibility depends on how fast the character runs. We sweat when we do an exercise. The water intensity reflected in the sweat lost during the exercise to push the player to run more. If they run slow, then they are easy to lost control in the game. It is a fitness game with a combination of health to remind people to drink more water.

Image reference:

Hydrokinesis. (2020). [Image]. Retrieved from https://abilitiespowersgifts.blogspot.com/2014/07/hydrokinesis.html

After all the concepts have been presented, we categories them under different themes. Next contact will do world cafe with these themes and form a group.

Critiques reflection

Some suggest to add sound/music to the BIBO light or make the light "breathing" maybe by making it glows when inhaling and dims when exhaling. Also, a suggestion to install a fan on it to make the whoosh sound. I think all these can be taken into consideration and experiment it later to see if they increase user experience.

I had Soldering 101 Induction this week.

This is my first time soldering. I didn't learn how to connect the circuits in-depth, so there were some problems at the beginning of the connection, although it was a simple circuit connection problem, however, I didn't know how to connect them to the breadboard, so I spent a lot of time in the beginning. Through the tutor's explanation and help, I successfully lit the led lamp.

The next step is the soldering process, I also get some trouble on this. Due to the limited length of each fitting cable, I had to arrange all the parts in a proper position. The switch needs to be on the back of the board to fit in the box. The distance between the parts makes soldering easier.

After soldering, I found that the LED didn't turn on even if I switch it on. Finally, with the tutor's help, I found the problem. I made the LED in the wrong direction.

After some consideration, I consider it fair to say that if one were to look at some earlier idea generation posts, it could be said that I'd deliberately went with what I'd consider the safest idea for the recent pitch session. The context of a knife that gets mad at you feels like it's far more socially acceptable than a cage match with an interview machine, or a water fountain that forced you to reflect on yourself because you need to improve. "If people think I'm crazy because of my ideas they'll reject me".

A Logic that Can Justify Anything

Few will literally think someone else in their vicinity is crazy, and people already dismiss each other for any number of reasons anyway. We subconciously judge each other and decide on a hierarchy of who we'd like to work with - this might not even be apparent to us, but there's a hidden selection process that goes on in our minds, and usually when someone thinks up a name when it's time to form groups, well, that's because the rolodex in the minds of the selector has already been spun through and just so happened to land on people with traits that were useful.

This isn't discrimination,... it's a survival tactic to weed out "Mad Man". In a tribe, a member that acts unpredictably causes the most risk for disruption - and a chance that "something bad or dangerous" will happen - an undesired outcome. "Mad Man Kill Tribe if do this, Tribe Kill Mad Man first!". And thus, "Tribe Friendship Ended with Mad Man, Now Safety is My Best Friend". Removing unpredictable factors is part of risk management, and so there's a set of expectations to fit into to not be considered a risk (Mad Man).

This leaves you with a more limited space to work with, its not that "wow dawg, look at how big my brain is, these guys cant even fathom how perpendicular my neurons are" but instead that the more bizzare and abstract an idea gets, the further away Man stands from Tribe. Everyone wants to feel like they belong and matter, like they have something they can do for 3850 Tribe, and so confronting the reality that what you say has a strong impact on people's impressions, there's a passive self correcitng that happens to make sure that place in the Tribe stays undisturbed.

Tribe So Hard and Got So Far, But in the End, It Didn't Even Matter

Relating this to personal experience, from time to time I have the opportunity to talk to people about the discrimination I experienced from growing up in Malaysia. Over there, in most everyday situations, I would automatically not be part of the Tribe, being a minority. While the countries minorities aren't actively jailed for being minorities, other forms of persecution is commonplace, and there's always an air that things can go sour at any time . But regardless of how progressive people in Australia claim to be, any time I begin talking about how this discrimination - it inherently causes discomfort - if not silence in response. As a result, I now make less of an effort to talk about how things are back home, and the vast majority of people assume that I've had the same experience as them, being treated fairly and with respect - but to me this consideration, or even small things like people remembering my name and not using a slur are unexpected and new - even a year or so into being here.

The point here is that by talking about how one isn't part of Tribe elsewhere, one loses the opportunity to be a part of a different Tribe. Whether its a one time negative experience of having people throw stones at me, or more commonly - just having people pull at my hair when I wore a headscarf - these, among others - are experiences that are too distant from the minds of the average person here for them to relate with, and inevitably lead to a cut off in communication that makes me change the discussion to receive acceptance and a response. I perceive that in the same way, a risky idea will result in the same situation, as accepting as people are, there's a limit where things are too personal or confronting for them to engage with you anymore.

Going Beyond Tribe Logic

For these reason among others, I've left "people I want to work with" empty on the course form for week three. I have plenty of people who I have some excitement to work with, but that's because I've spun the rolodex, and have expectations of who they are going to be.

This places undue expectations on the selected members, in my mind is a flash frame of the people, that expects them to fit within its narrow confines. People can ride beyond or fall short of such expectations at any point, expecting not to be surprised by those around us is more than a little unfair. I would prefer to instead share the opportunity with someone I don't know, - a blank slate - to see what we can achieve when the cards are more obscured from view

I do sadly have people I don't want to work with... there's a certain feeling of guilt that I've decided to put their name down on that list - it's one chance less at having them prove me wrong, and maybe the negative experiences around them were a one time things... but at the same time, I feel like there's certain lines and boundaries that are fair to set up, so it's best not to dwell on this topic.

Closing Thoughts

An idea that was more honest to my will for the course, would have made it easier for people to know what I really want to do... but there's a veneer of inauthenticity that one must wear to fit in any social situation, and even if "inauthenticity" makes it sound bad, having it enable my continued presence here means that it's just one of the many rotating masks of impression management we all put on to reach a comfortable compromise.

Post

Smart Fridge

My ideas come from my own experience, I usually put the food in the fridge and forget to eat them, and miss the best time to eat it. I think that if the fridge can remind people the out of date of the food, that will be very helpful and convenient for people. The smart fridge will help people to take care of people’s food.

In my concept, the smart fridge should have 3 main functions.Weight, light and screen

Weight

this is the main function of the smart fridge, which can calculate the weight of food and calories. This can be very helpful for people who are keeping fit.

Light

There will be a light to mention people if the food will out of date.

Screen

A screen on the fridge can tell people how to use the food in the refrigerator to make dishes.

• Example: User just buy a fresh tomato from the supermarket, he can select the "tomato" on the screen and put it in the fridge, the smart fridge will calculate the data of the tomato, type the shelf life of the tomato. The light will change the light color, it is used to remind the user to eat this food before missing the best time to eat. There also will be some recommendations on the screen about how to make dishes by using this tomato.

Reviewing the feedback I've received, I'd initially thought that the negative feedback outweighed the positive, and that most people, like me, thought that the idea was complete garbage. I consider the vast majority of my work to be at this standard. However, this was untrue when actually counting up the number of positive and negative responses (vs indetermined responses that were just ticks for the caregories of relevance and communication)

The pace of my pitch (and possibly the fact that I went up first on that day) meant that several students couldn't understand my idea - I wouldn't blame them either, because their feedback was in broken english, it likely meant that it was their second or third language.

I think it was rather inconsiderate of me to not consider the fact that I'm presenting to an international audience, which would mean adjusting not just how quickly I present things, but also the visual assistance I use (I didn't bother with a detailed poster), and the cultural considerations of what information is most critical. In a way, preparing for a presentation is like preparing a design for your users, just with that design being something you speak instead of visually demonstrate.

I need to be more compassionate next time... which is not asking for a lot, but it's quite a bit easier to brush it off and say "bah, they should just get better at english" , which would be the response I'd have given to this feedback had I received it two years ago - but ignores the fact that people have different and complex circumstances behind why they have trouble with the language.

Furthermore, it's more than just the fact that the time given to provide feedback was limited, there were several thoughts that were half finished that I thought were interesting, but couldn't make sense of without additional context. I think that if I spoke to these people in person, we'd be able to come to something useful, because the reasoning would be more apparent. If they treated the activity the same as me, then it would be a side task, something to keep them active while listening to the pitch, rather than fading out of the classroom during the downtime, so no harm done.

Of the ones that were positive, much of the reaction was that this device would be useful for someone who didn't know how to cook... that was my target audience, but I'd assumed that the implication of "It teaches you how to hold a knife" was that" someone who doesn't know how to safely use a knife, cannot cook.... I think I overestimated how much would be delivered with each line of the pitch.

Another common thread of feedback was that the device should be more "smart", in that it should do more things with scanning and tracking you, or having additional functionalities... but in truth, I feel those features, while interesting, would require the idea to be a smart kitchen instead of just a social robot thats also a knife...

This, to me takes away from the aspect of "you're working with the tool to make something, it's not just a smart tool that sits quietly the entire day until you press a button and it finishes a task for you". I may have a future post that covers potential additions... but looking at the themes we have, it feels like Kitchen Kriminal is probably headed to the electric chair, and I may have a new ... thing to work on in its place.

In hindsight, I think I could have said more on this topic, but in keeping with some more resolutions to just post what I have, and revisit ideas later when I have more to add, I'll sign off on this here as I have an additional post ready to go.

My name is Vicky, and I am in my third year of studying a Bachelor of Information Technology. My major is User Experience Design.

I like this major because it is interesting. Students in this major have different projects. And I usually can get a good idea from the group working.

My expectation for this course is I can improve my ability of thinking and use devices effectively to create a physical project. that also will be a challenge for me in this course. My coding is not good enough, according to this course I hope I can improve my coding skills.

Presentations

This week we presented our inspirational ideas to the class which we had developed over the past week. I won't go into much detail explaining my idea because it is in the previous post but essentially the core component was harnessing kinetic energy through physical movements to charge our everyday devices. The physical component of the interaction was using your devices and your movements would be tracked through the little sensors in each one of the devices. This would mean that without using your computer/typing/mouse movements it would not charge and eventually go flat. Therefore the requirement is that you are always efficiently using these devices, without the physical movement the idea won't work. Unfortunately the tutors didn't really think this was a strong enough example of adapting a physical component and believed that it was just a technical idea.

Ben and Steven both suggested that I think more about how it makes the user feel and what kind of emotions I can produce from this idea to make it more humanly interactive. Im not really too sure exactly how to do this at the moment but am trying to come up with ideas to achieve this.

Soldering 101 Induction

On Tuesday after class I had the soldering 101 induction which was where we got more hands on compared to the makerspace induction. Initially I had quite a bit of trouble making the circuit to that everything worked and the light would turn on via the switch but after figuring it out with mates the soldering part wasn't very difficult as I have done this at school and with dad before. One mistake I made was accidently soldering the black wire directly to the light so ultimately this cut out the use of the switch and the light was permananently on. This was a pretty easy fix just solder around and remove this extra soldering that connected the circuit.

General Purpose South Workshop Induction

This was a pretty relaxed induction as it only went for roughly an hour. The core message were basically "dont be dumb" and "ask us" if you don't understand how a tool works or something has gone wrong.

Pitch & Critique Reflection

In week 2, I had listening to everyone’s 2-mins pitch. All concepts were interesting and also very helpful to inspire some new ideas as well.

I also had critique sheets to write down my opinions for all ideas.

Ideas Classification

In week 2, we also categorised ideas. Based on our pitch, the most common theses were fitness/health/bothersome tech and learning.

Pitch

I did a personal concept presentation on Tuesday. What I'm showing you is a voice-controlled elevator, and the idea for me to design this was the idea for the new coronavirus from the world health security issue at the time. In addition, I found that many people around me were reluctant to touch the button of the elevator floor when they were riding in the elevator. Moreover, the elevator is a crowded and relatively closed environment suitable for virus survival. So I made this concept.

In the process, I found many interesting and imaginative concepts. For example, there is a concept of zooming people out using VR technology, which comes from toy story, and I thought it was interesting, because I love ant-man, so I wanted to play in that perspective. Another concept that I found interesting was the idea of a door that was encrypted with a handshake, which is not very practical, but it sounds really cool, but it's just a little weird.

Subject classification

After pitch, we classified the themes. Most people choose smart home, mental health, body controller, VR and AR, etc. This allows for a smooth classification of topics.

Weekly Reflection

For this week's presentations, I think everyone has shown their understanding of designing for playful and open ended interactions in everyday life. Most of the ideas did good in supporting human values. Although I couldn't get to know every point in tens of presentations, they let me to have a glance at the possibilities of physical computing in many fields. The idea that impressed me the most was Forest Story, an interactive game with the meaning of protecting the habitats of wildlife. I think Kinect technology can be used of its implementation.

After listening to the ideas presented this week, I think I would consider more about novel approach to interact with technology for my own project inspiration. It seems there are different applications worth trying about this topic. The first thing to do is adding different interaction modes of my concept to make it more playful.

Soldering 101