Soldering

In this week's soldering instruction class, we learned how to solder and some things to pay attention to during soldering. I already touched the circuit board connection when I was using the deco2300. One of the biggest points in this welding practice is that I can't ensure that more complex lines can be connected together in the physical design of the project.

Contact

In this week's class, I listened to everyone's speech, and evaluated and dig deep into the content of the speech and poster design. So in this class, I got a lot of interesting and weird ideas, such as smoking baby ideas. At the same time, I found that some students overlap in the design of ideas, such as the virtual dressing projection technology designed to save dressing time. In fact, I have seen this idea on the deco2300, but unfortunately, the final product was not Designed, I think this is a very creative idea and I like it very much, and I am looking forward to seeing the finished product design this semester.

But I don't quite understand the content of some speeches, because too short statements lead to not too much pavement to explain why it is designed in this way, but only designed for a certain needs of people. But in my opinion, technology is to assist people's lives, not to design some products that users need, but to add more complicated processes to them. At the same time, good design needs to have the ability to promote users to use it. It also needs to select targeted groups. A design cannot be designed just because the user needs it.

In the second half of Wednesday, we categorized ideas based on those design ideas, such as health, change, stress, music, accessibility, game, learning, etc.

Peer Pitch Reflection

I was impressed with the pitches that were made this week. I do believe some missed the mark and either weren't effectively communicated or didn't address the domains outlined in the brief (playful, everyday and sci-fi). Nevertheless, there were some very novel ideas. I was drawn to concepts with interesting interaction modes. Interactions such as pressure pads or making shadows were some interesting proposals and would like to see these concepts developed into projects.

My Pitch Reflection

I was pretty happy with how my pitch went! I believe I was able to clearly communicate the concept to my peers and addressed the domains outlined in the brief: playful, everyday use, and sci-fi. I have really enjoyed ideating design possibilities for Mort and it was promising to see the same excitement come from my classmates.

Critique Reflection

After going through the peer reflections of my concept, there were a few recurring critiques of Mort. These critiques can be grouped under themes: lack of audio, relevance of morse code and networking Mort with friends so they can talk to eachother.

I think that the incorporation of audio would be a really beneficial form of feedback for the user and could also assist in personifying Mort.

While morse code is essentially a redundant language, the cognitive benefits acquired through learning a language remains. Morse code is a relatively simple language to teach and Mort lends itself nicely to facilitating cognitive growth.

The future of Mort could definitely involve networking. This could further the user's encoding and decoding skills and allow them to practice with friends. I really like this suggestion!

Reflection on Concept Ideation

I actively pursued three main concepts: Mort, Fortunes Fast-Tracked and Self-Op. Each had a focus on different domains that the brief facilitated, however, education and emotional wellbeing were recurring design directions.

I chose to pitch Mort due to the versatility of the concept. A direct link to a playful interaction, everday use and sci-fi themes can be established.

I have always had a passion for education, and Mort lent himself nicely to teaching young children cognitive techniques to learn languages and decode encrypted messages.

I can see myself actively pursuing the design and development of Mort and, at this point in time, am very excited about what direction he could go in.

Notes for Concept Ideation

In Class

This week, we had our 2-minute Project Inspiration Presentations in class. I had fun listening to everyone presenting as it was interesting to see silly and quirky ideas that I would never have thought of. I thought that it was nice to limit them to short 2-minute presentations because if it was longer, we would have all gotten bored.

We also had critique sheets to write down our opinions and comments for everyone's presentation. It did a good job keeping me focused on the presentations and made me reflect on each idea.

Inductions

I had both the Soldering 101 Induction and the 78-207 Space Induction this week.

It was my first time soldering. I was fine following the diagram to connect all the parts to the breadboard as I already learned this in DECO7230. However, for soldering, I had more trouble. I had to position everything properly to be able to fit it in the box. Positioning the switch on the other side, the height for the LED and the distance between each part to make soldering easier. I also had to use wires to connect to the battery as there were not enough battery holders for everybody.

After soldering everything, I showed it to Ben and we found out that the LED is always on even if I switch it off. This was because the solder was all touching each other. I had to separate it all and made a mess to make it work.

What did we do?

In studio this week, we had the opportunity to pitch and present our ideas to the class. There were many very interesting ideas combining playful aspects to digital computing which was very interesting. After the presentations, we were able to spend some time theming all the ideas into more abstract groups in order to visualise what themes were most popular among the studio class. Based on what we did, the most common themes were creative learning, bothersome tech and fitness/mental health.

Personal faves

Personally, I really enjoyed all the ideas based of negative response in order to promote behavioural change and creative learning. I enjoyed projects like Chroma as it incorporates learning into sometime interactive and interesting, I think I would enjoy playing around with colour theory targeting children as an audience.

Projects such as the Kitchen Kriminal was also very interesting as it adds a playful element into what would be a boring task. added onto that, it could be used by children anf the elderly as a safety measure concealed in a fun game like tool.

Reflection

Reflecting on my own presentation, I realise that I should have had more fun with my idea and think outside the box when it comes to idea generation. Moving forward, I am keen to think more creatively not only for idea generation but also to solve problems creatively.

Project Inspirations Ideas

I had a few different ideas for my project inspiration presentation and these are the ones that did not make the final cut.

Shoes

p.s. I used the third idea (bottom right) as my final project inspiration.

I was browsing through the internet to see whether any of my ideas already existed when I found a shoe that is similar to my first idea.

GPS Shoe

The shoe has LEDs in the toes of the shoes. The LED lights on the left shoe point the wearer to their destination and the right shoe shows the distance.

https://weburbanist.com/2012/09/27/no-need-for-directions-with-gps-shoes-to-guide-you/

Social

For these ideas, I designed them with introverts in mind. Some introverts have trouble communicating with other people and some of them want alone time and a personal space for themselves.

This week I mainly listened to the ideas of my classmates. Most of them are interesting, but there are some that I don't understand.

My thoughts are about music. I want to focus on a few posters that are similar to my ideas.I think my own idea is about music, but I see teachers in the table classify it as emotional. The punching bag is really good for venting emotions, but it is also good fitness equipment. In addition, the fountain is a large installation. In future designs, I will consider replacing the fountain with the small water column.

THE RHYTHM OF EXERCISE

His idea is to use a pressure sensor, which is similar to my idea. In addition, we both chose to combine music with sports. His target users are people interested in sports or fitness enthusiasts. But I think this idea is more suitable for those who think sports are boring. In his Inspiration, he mentioned, "Every digital signal or waveform could be transcript into sound waves". I think it is possible to visualize these sound waves and display them with lights or images. In this way, the whole idea will be more attractive.

Naomi – Mixed Reality music creator

I don't think the interaction of this design is obvious. Put a recording device on the glasses, and then press the switch on the glasses to record. This design is more like a glasses-shaped recorder. The interaction method is a traditional button, and this button is mounted on the glasses. I want to improve this interaction, for example, using a finger to make a gesture in front of the glasses to trigger the recording switch. Regarding the use of MR technology, I learned some knowledge about AR, VR, MR last year. I don't think the technology of MR is mature at this moment, and MR technology can be difficult to do. If use glasses, I think AR can be used instead of MR. In addition to glasses, recording equipment can also use other media, such as gourds, test tubes, dolls and so on.

Melo Catcher – A music box that can DIY your own melody

The traditional music box is also controlled by the controller. I recommend changing the interaction method of the controller. We can use fitness equipment, such as spinning bikes or treadmills instead of controllers. In addition, each controller can represent a scale of do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, respectively. In this way, players can ensemble a tune together, enhancing the fun.

The display screen can show a game, combining the game with music, such as Super Mario or Whac-A-Mole（https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whac-A-Mole

）. Use Mario to jump out of the music score, or each gopher can represent a tone, and hit the gopher with a sound-controlled hammer.

Pitch

While it was only a two minute presentation, for next time, I'll probably hold off on explaining my ideas elevator pitch style... I didn't fully appreciate the difference between that and pecha-kucha style pitches until I completed all my talking points, and still had a minute and a half to spare. I even had extra lines prepared, but then decided on the spot that the jokes from them likely wouldn't land now that the main points were all covered. Quite amatuerish after two years of giving a variety of different types of presentation, but it's behind me now... so I'll let it go.

Critiques

Yesterdays critiques were more brief than the one from the day before, I made it a point to just focus on the selling points of the different ideas rather than trying to provide laid out points. I think because of how rapid fire the pitches were meant to be, meaningful feedback in the moment was... difficult, but it wasn't necessarily possible to finish up feedback after the fact because... well, you'd have just heard 30 presentations, the content of individual ones feel a lot less distinct once you've absorbed that much information.

I did have some favourites, DigPhoto resonated with me (mostly because of the intent), because of it's focus on reminding you of positive experiences in the past was something I think would be genuinely helpful. It's quite easy to get mired in depression when focusing just on the now, and forget that there are occasionally good times worth recalling. Like you're drowned by a cavalcade of nonsense distracting you from what you should actually be doing

I interpret that there's a strong amount on focus on living in the moment on social media, and if the current moment isn't good, then your life must be terrible (usually followed by - "please buy our product so you can change this")... so this idea struck a chord with me.

Bus Composer appealed to me for a similar reason, it can be sapping taking an hour or two to get to where you need to be, simply the novelty of having something fun you can do on the bus on the way to your destination, a brief brightness in your day before you get off at your stop, made this feel awesome. Plus, it kinda reminds me of the vehicles in childrens cartoons from when I was a tiny human, where not every part of the world had to have a logical function, and there's just silly details that you notice for one or two scenes before it continues to the next location. A trigger for a sweet memory - making it meaningful in my mind.

Live Social Feed (Name Pending?) was also pretty cool. I draw as a hobby, which means looking for either inspiration from real life (by watching people) or, from other peoples art. Occasionally, I also find a place on campus to sit around and just observe people, to understand them better. This type of creation would make it so that I could do all of those things at once, observing things from peoples feeds on the building, while observing people observing the buildings, while drawing things based on being inspired by a large number of things.

Theming

A second round of post it notes to collect themes went around next;

We had even more people for the second theming session than the one the day before, which had some benefits, but also, I would argue, drawbacks that countered them so severely as to make the session ... a priority topic to review at the end of the semester. I would say there were too many chefs, meaning that the group broke off into small collections of people, not all of whom wanted to be up front and writing on the board.

After one of my attempts to contribute, I'd say that this included myself. While I made some suggestions for themes, none of them were deemed suitable enough to be put on the board, so I walked away to see if I could contribute to a different conversation. It felt a bit like rather than having a discussion, I was having to convince the guardians of the markers that my perspective was also acceptable as a theme. This felt adversarial instead of collaborative, which I know wasn't the intent..., but it was certainly the result.

Even if I feel my contribution could have been useful, I couldn't care less about the main task after the repeated shutdowns.

On the bright side, it seemed like more people were willing to speak their minds and not hold back on their reservations on this stage of the process, than on Tuesday. Despite not being able to bring forward any of my themes, I appreciated this additional honesty fom my peers. Most of the time there's a lot of... "go with the flow, this is what the teaching team wants us to do", but there were some points raised by my peers that I didn't realise until someone else said it, that helped me reconsider what I did and didn't like about both the pitches, and the process.There was... an apparent fatigue from things being messy and all over the place (but, well, thats design for you), but I felt my concern at feeling unable or unwilling to contribute more than I'd already done echoed in more students.

In a literal sense, I am not these people, I can't see their perspective completely how they see it, unless they tell me what they think. But to smoothly operate in this society, we all live under the same rules and tradeoffs. There's hundreds of things we share in common, even if on the surface level theres a few major differences - which means we have a strong start to genuinely engaging with each other, rather than letting pleasantries dominate the conversation and only briefly touching on inner thoughts.

Having someone impulsively say "I hate this because" - followed by venting - lets me reevaluate what parts of the session were useful to me, and the collective.

A collection of themes was produced at the end of the session, although... I can't really say I had much of a hand in deciding on them, only some investment in how pitches were grouped under themes.

For the next post, I'd like to wash off the lingering dissatisfaction with Wednesdays session, and focus instead on what the chosen themes mean to me. I think interpreting them on my own beforehand will be useful for next weeks exercises, and have some tangential sketches prepared that relate to the themes which could be their own suggestions too - if not simply a direction for preparatory research into the spaces the themes occupy.

This week

This week we shared our concepts and use poster as a visual aid. Afraid of the network delays, I made a pre-recording to share my concept with class through zoom. Although it was through the Internet, I was still amazed by the inspiration of many students. There are various ideas covering many aspects, such as music, smart home, protecting the environment and change daily things etc., and also has the similar idea with me about the shadow interaction.

A few of them impressed me. The first one was a game that had the same interaction ways with me, using shadows for basic interaction. His concept is called the Shadow Wall, which requires the players to use their imagination, and to use the shadow cast on the wall as the digital image to increase the level. What attracted me of the game was the infinite possibilities. Players create extra functionality by using real-life items to create different shadows. For example, players can use their hands to create a shadow of a gun to defeat the devil. The game has a lot in common with my concept, and I love this idea.

The second concept that I really like is called Running Hand. The device can be played within just two fingers. The player can be controlled by two gestures, walking and jumping. And the ring will vibrate to inform the player. This game is very convenient, and has a certain degree of competitiveness, I think it will be a very interesting game. In addition, I like the clarity and simplicity of this poster.

Work to do

Because of the travel ban, I didn’t participate the soldering induction as well as the discussion of theme grouping. But I will arrive at the school next week and will definitily participate the World Cup discussion. Lorna has summarized 17 topics for us. At present, I am interested in the two topics of 'Creative Learning' and 'Body as controller', but I will wait for the discussion next week. New ideas and collisions will be generate after the World Cafe. I can't wait to get back to school. See you next week.

In week 2, on Tuesday, after all the presentations for session 1 and 2 were completed, the posters were laid out on the table. Everyone then had to come up with themes to group ideas together. This was put on post-it notes and placed on another table. Once everyone had exhausted ideas for themes, similar themes were grouped together. Different themes were Emotion, Health, Learning, Change, Stress, Game, Music, Accessibility, Fitness Physical, Negative Reinforcement, Sustainability, Smart and Social. Common themes included Health, Fitness and Smart. This exercise was interesting to see what people in the contact were focused on or interested in that would improve people’s lives.

The next day, the same exercise was done again with all posters. Some of the same themes were used while new ones were created. In the second attempt of the exercise, there were more themes that were common such as Music, Smart, Emotion, Behavioural Change, Environment and Learning. New themes that emerged were Memories, Learning, Colour, Kids, Wearables and Physical.

The next exercise was to make the themes more specific; where similar ideas were grouped based on the concept itself rather then the technology used or general themes. These themes were put on the whiteboard with the ideas that related to them.

Next week, ideas will be created and explored that relate to the final themes.

Comments and Critiques were given about each presentation. They are useful tools as it allows people to be informed about what could be improved or expanded on, what works, how people view each other’s ideas and whether they are interested in the concept. Some of the comments were interesting, confirming or indicating if the idea was to be further explored. These comments were on issues with privacy. Not everyone would want to document good moments every-day and people who are suffering a mental illness might feel pressure to fake good memories. These comments would be useful to help improve the idea by making it more appealing to a larger group of people or explore how this idea could benefit but not cure people suffering from mental health. One of the comments was interesting as it focused on privacy. This particular critique would encourage me to think about how my idea could be used negatively rather then the way I expect it to be used if it were to be further explored. As the person who created the idea, it is not always easy to think about how it could impact people because, typically, we come up with, and create, concepts to improve people’s lives. There are no current privacy controls in place, however, it would be interesting to think about what information people would have access to and whether that would affect the user greatly, out-way the positives.

Idea Presentation

In week 2, both Tuesday and Wednesday were presentation sessions. Most of the students presented in class, some of them were presenting through zoom due to the coronavirus. It was a very enjoyable session, I was inspired by many ideas. The most remarkable one was the Floor coloring project. This device will project paintings on the floor, the user can adjust the color of the paint through the bracelet, they will start mopping the floor when the color is selected. In reality, a tool or device like this can be invented for house decoration. To make this idea more interactive, they can install a perfume box on the device as well. For example, when yellow is selected, the user can mop the floor with a lemon smell. Other than this project, there are lots of smart device idea that inspired me, for example, smart kitchen, smart wardrobe, smart knife, even for the smart floor. All the idea combines together can form an IoT smart home system.

Idea Grouping

Grouping themes

At the end of the presentation session, students grouped similar ideas together and wrote them on a piece of paper. I group the ideas involved in plants together. It seemed that these ideas could form a bigger idea that involved human value and more interactive. Also, I made a stress release group, there were three projects ideas that created to deal with stress problem, including smashing it, stress relief ball... I really look forward to the world cafe next week. According to the timetable, there will be an Ideation and discussion around themes revealed through inspiration presentations. I wish I can group up with the students who want to work on a similar project as mine.

General Inspirations

Before taking the course, I visited an interactive museum in Tokyo called teamLab Borderless which strongly inspired me for the direction I wanted to go in for the final project. The museum uses technology to elicit emotional responses and encourages their visitors to immerse themselves and take part in the artworks. Personally, I found the artworks to be the most interesting and joyful interactions I have experienced with technology and I have a gained a strong admiration for the domain.

From their website:

https://borderless.teamlab.art/

teamLab Borderless is a group of artworks that form one borderless world. Artworks move out of rooms, communicate with other works, influence, and sometimes intermingle with each other with no boundaries.

Immerse your body in borderless art in this vast, complex, three-dimensional 10,000 square meter world. Wander, explore with intention, discover, and create a new world with others.

What stood out to me with the artworks was the use of colour and sound to stimulate multiple senses. The combination visual and audible elements which complemented each other made me more aware of my surroundings and gave me a sense of relaxation and inner calmness. For me, this was the first time technology had made me feel these emotions in such an immersive manner. These feelings inspired me to create a similar experience, and so I would like to explore this domain further in the following weeks.

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### Forest of Resonating Lamps

Furthermore, it was very interesting to explore the concept of participating in an artwork with a community of people, especially strangers. One installation, named Forest of Resonating Lamps uses the visitors presence to form a single connecting light between all lamps.

From their website:

https://borderless.teamlab.art/ew/forestofresonatinglampsfireonice/

When a person stands still close to a lamp, it shines brightly and emits a color that resonates out. The light becomes the starting point, and it spreads to the two nearest lamps. The light from the two nearest lamps transmits the same color to other lamps, spreading out continuously. The light transmitted always resonates out as a bright light once, passing to close lamps, until all lamps have shone brightly once, and then returns to the first lamp. The light of the lamp in response to human interaction, divides in two, becomes one optical line through all lamps respectively, finally, meeting at the first lamp that became the starting point.

Forest of Resonating Lamps was a room of which you entered for a few minutes with a group of strangers. We were spread out across the room, and the lamps started alternating between colours in a pattern across the room. It was very interesting to be in the space, and I felt a sense of community by observing the lamps change from person to person. Reflecting on this, it was interesting how lamps changing in colour evoked this feeling.

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### Inverted Globe Graffiti Nature, Red List

The installation called Inverted Globe Graffiti Nature, Red List challenged me to be playful and creative. These skills are not regularly employed or exercised in my daily life, and so it was enriching to engage with the activity. The activity mainly revolved around colouring an outline of a red-listed animal which was subsequently scanned and displayed in the premises.

From their website:

https://www.teamlab.art/ew/graffitinatureinverted_macao

Various creatures drawn by everyone live in the inverted globe. Color in a creature on the paper provided. See the picture you have drawn come to life and move in front of you.

Living things eat each other and are eaten by each other to create one shared ecosystem. If the creature you drew eats other living things, its numbers will increase. On the other hand, if it does not eat enough, it will die. And if it is eaten by other creatures, it will disappear.

Flowers will bloom if you stand still, but will disperse if you walk around. And the salamanders will die if you step on them too much. This work is based on the Red List and depicts local endangered wildlife.

I found this activity to be the most memorable and unique experience of the museum. Although the concept was likely more aimed towards children, I felt pleased and happy interacting with it. It was nice to simply sit down with a creative outlet and experiment with colour, and I could imagine using it as a form of stress relief. Upon scanning my drawing, it started appearing on the floor. I followed it around for a few minutes, and saw it interact with the other animals created by other visitors. It was an exceptional experience to see the drawing come alive with animations, and it filled me with a sense of joy and pride. This ended up being my main inspiration for the idea I presented during the week 2 presentations, as the experience of creation and creativity is something I would love to explore further.

Work Done

Soldering

On Tuesday this week we took part in the soldering practise, which taught us about how to using the electric iron to solder the Arduino components (like the bulb, switch and battery) on circuit board. At first, the tutor provided us with a circuit diagram which is about how to use the switch control the on and off the light. Then we started trying to connect the circuit on the Arduino board, although I come across some problems at the beginning of the class, but with the help of our tutors, I gradually remembered how to connect the circuit and the bulb is lighted successfully. Then we have to move all the components to the circuit board and soldering them together. The whole process is interesting and I learnt a lot.

Presentation

On Wednesday we had a presentation session on our contact class, every student bring their ideas and shared it with the other students. Each of us has two minutes to present our idea and answer the question. My concept is a kind of shooting game but you can interact with it by speaking. This idea allows users to turn their words into bullets to shoot the enemies.

Work To Do

• In the next week we will have a world cafe to communicate our ideas and vote for the top three themes. Based on the theme we vote, we can find our group mates in the next session.
• Next week, I will also have an innovative and induction course.

Work Done

Presentations

This week we had our inspiration presentations. It was super interesting how everyone interpreted the overall theme to create such a variety of physical interactions from physical products to art installations. I was pretty happy with my final idea and presentation and think it could be a pretty cool idea. After my presentation, Lorna gave me some feedback about how I could improve my concept even further. These included:

• have garden of multiple so you can see where you are succeeding and failing
• have some way of showing how user can do better (might know they are leaving their lights on, but don’t know how to stop)
• could think of ways to minimise impact through production process (try to reuse as many other items as possible)

We also received feedback from other students in the class. I received a lot of feedback about how useful this idea is as well as one person suggesting it wasn't novel and another encouraging a more physical interaction to be included. In the coming week I want to keep thinking about my concept and how I can try to maximise the interaction between the user and the plant so that it is something that can be fully interacted with daily.

Theming Sessions

After the presentations we had theming sessions to help us group the ideas. There were definitely some themes emerging from the first session that carried onto the next session. Some things I noticed was daily sustainability, negative reinforcement for behaviour change, bothersome technology, emotion as input, and using shadows.


Session 1

Session 2

It was really interesting to see that even though we had such a broad theme to begin with, so many ideas could be grouped into smaller, more specific sub-themes.


Work to Do

Now that we have been given the chosen themes for the project, I need to do some more brainstorming about potential ideas that fit some of the other themes to ensure I vote for a theme that I’m passionate about spending an entire semester working on. I also want to look over the feedback Lorna gave me to try to enhance my idea more in case I do end up wanting to pick that idea.

Work that inspired me

This week I was honestly very inspired by the other projects being shown. I particularly liked 'No Craving Shoe' as they were able to use bothersome tech to change behaviour. My current idea is quite limited in terms of interaction so I thought this was a very interesting space.

Ahoy Lads,

This week, all students had to present their ideas in the studio session. Moreover, I attended Soldering 101 session. My experience with both activities are summarised below

Contacts -

The contacts consisted of myriads of 2 minute presentations. Fair effort was put in by everyone during the task and many clear themes could be seen during the presentations. The most common theme that I noticed was: expressing emotions through various stimuli (mainly music and colours). Another apparent theme was the manipulation of behaviour via discomfort or imbalance of ordinary. At the end of Wednessday contact, the students came up with several themes which are shown below :

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The themes I would like to take part in would be -

1. Negative Reinforcement - Cause who doesn't like to mess with other people. Interest's prime reason is the fine line between harm, crime and negative reinforcement.
2. Emotion as Input - It would be because of novel inputs. Not just emotion but also weird inputs that achieve reasonable goals seem unusual enough to push for.
3. Promoting Social Interaction - This category in my perspective crosses with negative reinforcement (since social awkwardness can be negative reinforcement). I just want to push people to awkward scenario's to test the what qualifies as a promotion of social interaction.

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Soldering -

This week, I attended the Soldering 101 session, wherein I got to create an a basic circuit. Not gonna lie, at first I started soldering on the plastic side, not knowing the difference. Thankfully, my neighbour realised it just as I started and before it was sad enough to redo the soldering. Then, I was able to produce the circuit as shown below. The only part remaining was soldering the battery but except for that, circuit works so a self pat on the back ;)

Class presentation

This week we start to present project concept that we generated from previous week. It's quite hard for me to remeber and leave the comments for more than 50 ideas in 4 hours.

I am do love the concept,Elements, i generated for presentation, because the interaction mode, breath, is quiet novel and and this idea could be used in various context such as home, art gallery, meditation studio. From my perspective, this concept is like a bridge to connect inner-net with natural elements and help people to look at themselves.

However there is still a room for the further development after i listen to other's presentation. The most important thing i did not realise in my presentation is that that target user, who will be the user, how they are gonna interact with this project and is there any difference for them to interact with this project in different context.

In addition, i need to find more research to back up or change my concept. because so far it is just a assumption i made. i think meditation with the natural elements would help people to find their relaxation and inner connection, but it could be also distracted.

The reflection for presentation.

I spent more time on explaining why I am doing that rather than justifying why this concepts meet the requirements. if the Q&A section is for the public audience instead of teaching group, my ideas could be explained much better. This because I received some questions from critique sheets and these questions are the exactly the same like what Lorna asked me in the Q&A section.

Critique

At the first 30 mins, i was quite excited and looking forward to get impressed by the "fun" ideas. Unfortunately, i think most fellows restrict their imgination at this stage, they put more attetnion on how to make a practical ideas instead of making it fun and innovative. I'm not saying this is wrong or not good. it's just a shame to lose the chance to make the "dream" bigger. being practical and making ideas feasible is quite important, but the main purpose of this stage should be more open minded.

In the terms of communication, due to the time limitation, we are not allowed to ask a question or have a dialogue with the presenter. It's a little bit challenge to articulate the all concept in 2 minutes. The poster helps a lot, but some poster are too detailed and wordy, which is hard to understand. The logical sketch would be much better to help audience understanding the goal of the concept.

Feedbacks

There are only a few comments about my concept and other critiques I received are just ticks.

I summarise these comments into two types of question. what is the suitable context and how it could be used in everyday life?

what is the context, if the everyday life is the necessary requirement, the best context would be home. used could have a meditation before they sleep everyday. For the broad use, they Art gallery could be a good place to install, because it could attract more users and let them to look at meditation in different way.

For the everyday life, I think it's a highly personal perspective. This is a meditation installation which could be used for meditation amateur everyday, but also be used by general visitor only once.

Theming

After presentation we had a session for theming idea which put ideas share the same characteristics. My brain was not working well after listening 3hours presentation. so I slightly participate in this session.

Presentations

This week was dedicated to presenting initial concept ideas for the course. It was very interesting to see all the different ideas and inpirations people had, specially since we did not have a topic to stick to. One of the ideas that excited me most was one that used pressure pads to create different colours as a game. While the idea itself was fairly simple, the idea of creating variants of colours using pressure seemed very interesting. Perhaps one could extend on this idea and for example instead of only using pressure you could add on with gestures, or even pulling, expanding the material. What I also noticed was that some people were still stuck on the screen interaction mode, which had me question why it had to be a screen. I saw many trends in the domains that people were exploring such as plants, kitchen and mental health.

Regarding my own idea (hearing sounds through your hands and creating music through a wire on the bus) I still think this is an interesting idea that has a lot of potential. I got a feedback saying that we could explore the idea to give different sounds depending on where you were stanidng on the bus, which could be interesting. I would love to see the suggested technology in real life.

In class we were prompted to do a paper critique for each idea, which was very useful to stay focused and not zoning out!

Outside of class

This week I completed my last required sessions; soldering and space induction. This was very useful and I am excited to start using the spaces.

The Work Done:

This week was quite big and required a bit of thinking to get my first ideation inspiration out. I sat down on the weekend and really did some brainstorming on different topics, concepts, technologies and what products are out there already. I attached a few of my mind maps to the first concept post, so that can be viewed there.

This week I also finished the bulk of my inductions completing the soldering and space induction. I have now completed my box and light and it has come together quite nicely.

How it Relates:

I had my pitch presentation on Tuesday morning, and I think it went alright. My concept was quite different to others and it received some mixed feedback when going through the critiques. Some things I did not take into account the concept of promoting violence and hitting. I saw it more as a fun, playful interaction as the Smash Rooms were quite cool to look at. But maybe the age group we are designing for this may not be a thing. Below are some of the critiques I made.

I participated in the theming session on Tuesday. It was quite interesting to see that alot of the themes that came out of the exercise were stress, mental health, education and overall wellness. I guess these are HOT topics in today's society and are very important for overall happiness.

Work to Do:

Over the weekend and before next week’s session I am going to think about some pitches that stood out to me and how I can turn them into a cool project idea. I think this will help me go into next week's World Cafe session.

Work that Inspired/Interested Me:

This art installation inspired me this week. I came across it on my Pinterest feed. Its called “Giant Lite Brite For School Project Gallery”. It's a really cool installation that uses different coloured light on a massive wall to create imagery and artwork. It's made of acrylic and it is quite easy to make. I think it would be really cool to see this incorporated into one of the colour theme inspiration concepts. It has physically movable pieces and intereactions. It can be used to show emotion or encourage play. Could even be used to educate colour theory as one of the pitch’s this week mention that.

Day 1

After hearing all the ideas and a large portion of the class left to do inductions, the rest stayed behind to find common themes among the different ideas. Here are some of the common themes I found and the collection of themes found by all that were present.

After some time we worked together to find common themes among the themes we had found as individuals, putting them together in larger themes.

Day 2

We repeated the procedure from yesterday, collecting common themes from the ideas, then we again worked together to put them in larger themes collected by everyone.

What we did differently today was that after the previous step we wrote different themes on the whiteboards to narrow some of the themes down. Such as Negative and Positive reinforcement into smaller themes so that they could be more specific.

When it comes to my own presentation, it could have been a little better prepared and snappier. Although I believe it served its purpose, some points could have been clearer and two or three small thoughts were not included. In general, most presentations were good enough, only a few were unclear, difficult to hear or otherwise difficult to understand. That said, although most were understandable, a fair portion of them seemed to have missed the brief on several points, neither having novel or physical interactions. Some of these were interesting or fascinating ideas that could be interesting to work on, but served little purpose when they missed the brief.

I think that ideation processes can be very useful, however, I think that the time we did ideation was much too short and not specific enough for the brief. I understand that the idea is to gather many ideas and build on those over time, however, time is the resource we did not have in class and to ideate alone at home is only partially effective. I do understand that there are time limitations in such a comprehensive course and I appreciate the relative freedom we have been given. That said, I think that given the time constrains it could be beneficial to divide into groups earlier and ideate within those groups within certain predetermined themes to build group dynamic and start working on the project much sooner.

Thus far I'm not yet sure what I would like to work on and I'm keen to see what themes and ideas will be carried on to next week and to if there are any themes or ideas that I will be excited to work on. There are some ideas that I find interesting if they'll live on into next week, however, remains to be seen.

Soldering

Tuesday was the soldering induction in which we learnt how to solder, this was also a refresher for me on how to use a bread board as it has been a while since i've used one. After completing the bread board circuit we placed the same circuit onto the copper board. With this board we were able to apply the same connection to get the light to turn on and off with the switch.

Below are some images from the session as well as a little video of the working light.

https://i.imgur.com/oK4HgOr.mp4

Class

In class we listened to everyone's ideas through their pitches and presentations. Alongside this we had critiqued some of the presenters, saying if there concept was relevant to the task, if the presenter communicated their idea clearly and any comments if we wanted to leave them any.