Who am I?

My name is Marie Thoresen, I'm 26 (soon 27) and at my last semester of the master of interaction design program. After I graduate I aim to work with web design and graphic design since this is something that I've been passionate about for a long time.

What I hope to learn/achieve in PhysComp

Since this is my last semester I'm aiming to get better in areas that are connected with future employment. Programming is something that I've never been good at so this will be my main focus this semester. Especially programming languages who are related to web design would be a major plus.

I'm also looking forward to make something physical since I enjoy making things with my hands with various materials. If I had the time and money I would probably engage in more DIY projects so this course is a great excuse to do just that.

Lastly, I hope to achieve a good grade in this course and make something that I can add to my portfolio at the end of the semester.

Week 1 activities

The first week we spent getting to know the course and what to expect. I must admit that at first I was a bit sceptical as to if this course would be something that would peak my interest or not, but after the first two lectures I must say I got excited for what the coming weeks have in store.

After the first lecture we were tasked with reading a chapter in a paper. The chapter I was allocated was about ethics, privacy and security which is a bit funny since this is exactly what my thesis projects is about. Because of this I knew a lot about the topic from before which made it easy to join in on the discussion. I felt the discussion went fine, except that it was mostly just three who discussed while the other sat on their phones/computer and didn't contribute much.

In addition, we got to do some ideation for the main project by using a card deck and some notes which allocated different locations, design etc to those cards. This exercise turned out to be very difficult since there were many factors to consider and the different cards woulds always match one another.

The ideation went for three different round where, the first the group would come up with ideas together. In the second round we would come up with ideas alone and in the last we would change one idea from the first round.

These were the ideas I generated from the second round:

Design to embrace a ruin from different dimensions in an aggressive way

• Make life like scale of ancient ruins so people can interact with them however they like without the fear of permanent damage
• Idea above using holographic means instead of building materials
• Idea above only making the ruins as they were like before they became a ruin (from another time).
• Idea above using cameras or holographic to show the decay of the ruin from its prime to current standard
• A smaller scale remake of the ruin that shows the entirety from the bottom and up so people can see every single detail of the building process
• An invisible shield surrounding the ruin so people can interact with it as closely as possible without damaging it.

Design to embrace (in) a hot air balloon by sliding it in an aggressive way

• Instead of having the hot air balloon as a high-altitude device it can be used to get people from A to B by sliding it with a rope etc. that pulls it.
• Using a hot air balloon to surf
• Couple therapy air balloon where they won’t be allowed to slide down before they have resolved their dispute.
• Force people to hug by sliding the air balloon so they crash into each other. Blind dating air balloon.