studio session

This week is the last week of the studio session, and the time in this semester seems to be passing by very fast, and I have only one week left to work on our project and show it online. The last week of the studio focused more on the reflective of our own projects and plans for online exhibitions. In the report back session, I shared with my classmates about the recent changes in life caused by the relaxation of the ban. Due to the relaxation of the current social ban, my team members and I will go to the UQ innovate to do some group activities about soldering and project assembly.

In the report back stage, we also discussed how to change the project if I have magic. This can't help me to reflect on the whole project of our team. The most needed change in our group project is to make the entire device wire-free. The wire-free here not only refers to removing the messy jumper wire connecting each sensor, but the most important thing is also the design of the dropper part, our ideal is to use the dropper to record any sound users like, that is to say, users can take the dropper to everywhere for sound collection. Although we used extension cords in the design of the project to expand the range of recorded sounds, the sound recording will still be limited because the extension cords are fixed. If there is no wire restriction, the product will be more popular with users. Another thing I hope to solve with magic is the visual effects part of my design. Despite trying many methods, but still can not connect Arduino with python and unity. This caused that in the future exhibition, we need to manually enter the path to complete the display of the visual part.

Since the online exhibition is relatively unknown, our group conducted a group meeting on how to present the project after the report back. Our main concern is how to better communicate our design ideas through online platforms and how to allow users to interact with our products. For this reason, I also seek help from the teaching team in class, based on the discussion results, we decided to act as a ‘robot’ in the online exhibition, that is, we only give a brief introduction to the project, all other operations will be given by the user, maximize the distance between users and products. We all looking forward to next week's online exhibition...

project progress

This week is very busy because it is at the end of the semester, not only do I have to prepare for the exhibition of the next week, but also I will have 4000-word report to submit. This makes me feel overloaded. Fortunately, the main functions of our entire project have been basically completed. Our main work this week is to integrate various parts and think about how to achieve the visual-pleasing design.

Since the chemical equipment toys we bought for the project before are very small in size, we can't even have spaces for the installation of all sensors, especially vibration sensors, so we purchased large glass laboratory equipment instead. However, although the large glass-based experimental equipment can put all the sensors inside, because these types of equipment are transparent, the sensors installed in the equipment can be seen clearly, which is not visually beautiful, so I tried to use white acrylic to paint on the equipment. On the one hand, let all equipment reduce transparency to hide the sensors and wires that were originally exposed. On the other hand, make the lighting effect on the equipment more obvious. The colored equipment can well hide sensors and messy jumper wires and can better display the led inside, but we found that the colored equipment is a bit different from the chemical equipment. To this end, we use a marker to draw a symbolic mark, so that it is visually more like a set of laboratory equipment.

At the same time, I made a test tube rack according to the size of the test tube. I chose a larger cardboard box in order to hide the development board and breadboard in order to prevent users from seeing the messy wires to achieve a good visual effect. The first two pictures are the status when we have just integrated our respective parts together. Due to the installation of many sensors, the line is particularly messy. We use electric tape to wrap up the messy wires of different parts and hide the excess wires in the carton. The whole work becomes neat.

Major changes in my group members' respective parts

Iris is responsible for designing the dropper part in our whole project. The main change in her part of the final delivery project is the design of the dropper. In order to better hide the switch and achieve a good "squeeze" interactive effect, we are replacing the material of the dropper. The picture below is what the final dropper looks like.

The role of dropper: sound recording

The function currently implemented: squeeze the plastic head and place the dropper close to the sound source to record.

Rhea is responsible for designing the sound mixing part in the group. The main change in her part of the final delivery project is the design of the visual effect of the sound mixing as well as adding the function to interact with friends. The interactive device in the picture below is composed of two handles. The user can invite his friends to comment on the remix he made. Shaking the smiling face means like, the system will automatically play a clapping sound, shaking the crying face means dislike, the system will play a sad sound effect and then the mix will be deleted automatically. In the process of mixing, close the lid and playback will stop automatically....

Overall Product after integration

Portfolio

At present, I have completed the text part and updated the corresponding pictures and text to my portfolio. My portfolio can be found at UQ Interaction Design Exhibit 2020. URL is as follows:

Sophia Jin's portfolio link

prepare for the exhibition

Next Wednesday is the online exhibition, we will conduct another project integration and confirm the presentation form next week.

We are going to shoot live video and conduct a group test to confirm that the project can be carried out smoothly.