Week 1

The Work Done:

This week was the first week of physical computing. The week was full on requiring a lot of attention for the 5 hour contact sessions. I did however, learn quite a bit for what I am in for and how to approach the course. This week we looked at interactive digital designs/concepts that are currently out there or in ideation. As a team we discussed these, this exercise was also a good icebreaker as I do not know many people in the course and it was good talking to others.

The second session looked at the HCI Grand Challenges. My section was Human Technology Symbiosis. As a group we discussed potential issues, challenges, benefits and opportunities to do with it. An interesting one for me was safety and how technology as subconsciously made us more safe to the point where we don't even have to think about it. In cars for example, sensors are used to break or let us know if cars are in the blind spot when changing lanes. This is a potential issue which can be dangerous as we put all our trust into technology to keep us safe.

The second exercise for the session was the Design Activity using playing cards with various categories. Our first design category was - “Design for youth in an art gallery, using sound with the quality of nomadic”. This was an interesting piece of subject matter and a view of the technology design can be seen below.

Work to Do:

Based on the work completed in the Design Activity, I feel this has given me a good base to work on my first piece of assessment - for the idea pitch. Over the weekend I will create an A3 poster which imagery and context for my idea along with an explanatory post.

Work that Inspired/Interested Me:

I found the WIM interactive stroke therapy ball quite interesting as it was a piece of UX/UI technology used to help people with health and wellbeing. Almost like gamified therapy which allows rehabilitation to be a little more pleasant and fun for patients. I would like to incorporate a bit of human reality into my design as I feel technology should be designed to help people and make their lives a little more interesting.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bgzo_NjAkmg/

First Day

We talked about our thoughts on what we would learn from the course, our aspirations, fears, rumors of the course and questions. What I was most worried about was us not being able to fully build what we designed for the project. But I was told that that is perfectly normal and that it was impossible to build it exactly the way you want it in a few weeks.

We then looked at projects that were done by students in previous years and went on to find projects that will inspire us for our own projects. I realised that there are many different directions that the project can go and therefore are endless possibilities of what we can design and build.

Second Day

7 HCI Grand Challenges

We had to read a grand challenge from the paper that we were assigned to before the class and then discuss in groups what we understood from it. My group first listed down all the important parts that we understood from each section and finally summarised everything in a short description.

Ideation

In the second part of the class, we did a very fun activity of using cards and words to form a sentence. I think it was a great way of forcing us to think outside the box as many of my sentences didn't make sense. This way, we could think of novel ideas and things that seem ridiculous.

Hi everyone, my name is Shao and I'm from Malaysia. I'm in my third semester of Master of Interaction Design and I previously studied Bachelor of Information Technology.

I am confident in designing but have become rusty in my programming skills. In this course, I hope to work hard and train my coding skills and become comfortable with it again. I also really like that there is a space like UQ Innovate where I can learn new skills and build the things that I design.

I will work hard and have fun in this course and I look forward in seeing all of our projects at the end of the semester.

Tuesday

We brainstormed what our fears, hopes, questions and expectations were in the first part of the day. My main concern that I contributed was cost of material and time constraints because not everyone can use the machines at the same time but we all have the same deadlines.

I forgot to put my expectations for the course in my previous post so I'll put it here instead because it's easier than editing my post and more transparent that way. I'm anticipating a lot of stress but also a lot of relief as well in terms of feeling like I'm ready to graduate and go out into the real world. I expect to encounter a few learning curves depending on the project I do. Especially if it involves woodworking, laser cutting and printing, but this also really excites me because I'm grateful that UQ has these facilities available for us to explore.

The other part of the day was focused on looking at examples of physical computing projects posted in the Slack channel and discussing why they might have been put as an example. We also tried looking for examples of our own. The example I posted was a wearable popcorn eating machine and I had the justification that while it was more of a set-and-forget type thing, it had the potential to be interesting if the hand only moved towards the person's mouth at a filler scene or during more loud bits where they don't have to pay close attention. It could listen and monitor the volume of the video or pre-process the video so it could forecast to the person a good time to take a bathroom break/get more popcorn etc.

Wednesday

HCI 7 Grand Challenges

The first part of the day involved discussing the readings of the HCI Seven Grand Challenges paper that we had to complete before class. I was assigned to Challenge 2 which was about Human-Environment Interactions and we split off into two tables to discuss our interpetations of the challenge we read, anything we'd like to add that wasn't in the challenge, and to come up with a short description. Photos of these can be found below:

Project Ideation

The next part of the day involved some really cool project ideation using a set of playing cards and a list of words where it would generate a sentence to prompt for design ideas. First round was group brainstorming, second round was individual ideation and the third round extended an idea from the table. We went with Lachlan's prompt and concept which can be seen in the 3rd picture.

I will be working on my project inspiration ideas tomorrow and I think my ideas tend to either lean towards being educational or environmentally conscious. This isn't necessarily a problem but I do think it would be cool to explore something more abstract. I'd like to step out of my comfort zone more and not limit myself to things I know already.

I went to the 78-207 Space Induction in the afternoon. Some people kept trailing in after 1pm and that was a bit frustrating because every time someone new came in, Ben would have to go and open the door and check that they had the right shoes and no food or drink, then Steven had to repeat what they missed. The rest of the induction went well though.

Hi! I’m Lucy and I am in my final semester studying BBusMan(Marketing) and BInfTech. I’m super keen for this subject as I think it will be a great way to finish my degree! I’ve always been interested in building physical things by using the laser cutter, 3D printer and woodworking tools at home, so I’m very excited to be able to use these skills in combination with my IT skills to create something really cool. I’m very passionate about visual and UX design so I hope I can implement these skills throughout this course while also being able to better my ability to program, and learn more about electronics and micro-controllers.

I guess my expectations for this course are that I will have a team who will want to work as hard as me to create something that we are proud of. I think the exhibition is such a unique experience to show off what we have all worked on so I hope we take advantage of this by creating something really cool and fun to interact with.

My concerns for this course are that I’m not the most confident programmer and tend to just work on what I’m comfortable doing, which is design. However, I think this will be a great push to enhance my programming skills.

Hi i'm Ryan and i'm in my 5th year at uni, and hopefully my final semester of studying a duel degree in Business and IT i'm keen to get into the design work for this course and make a great final project.

I'm a local from Brisbane who enjoys games, puzzles and drinks and looking to work in Advertising in the future as that is my business Major.

Doing design work is something I really enjoy, along with idea generation and making things as wacky and out there as i can, while still conforming to deliverables and constraints that are provided.

I look forward to working with you all for this semester :)