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The Glory of Blade

Most popular pocket knives (Swiss Army Knife) in the world
(Also famous to tinkers, hikers, soldiers,and chefs)

1,800 years ago, as a basic living tool, Swiss Army style knives already existed in Roman.

Folding knives such as the modern one shown above were sold in the 19th century as “bowie knives.” They had to be carried in a sheath, as the blade extended beyond the handle when folded.

The first Swiss Army knives were reproductions of pocket knives mass-produced in Soligen, Germany. A blade, punch, can opener, and screwdriver folded into the knife’s handle.

Karl Elsener began making them for the Swiss Army in 1891, after organizing the Swiss Cutlery Guild of 37 craftsmen in order to ease the district’s severe employment deficit, which was forcing its agricultural labor base to seek greener pastures in foreign lands.

However, a small change made Karl Elsener’s design jump out from other contractors’. A small, sharp “erasing” blade was useful for scraping off mistakes in paperwork handwritten by pen. A corkscrew helped enhance the officers’ dining and socializing. The six blades required only two springs. The “Offiziersmesser,” the official knife of the Swiss Army, was registered for trademark protection on June 12, 1897.


Victorinox (changed name in honor of Karl Elsenser’s mother who died 1909) maintained an enduring relationship with pilots, who had a natural affinity for compact, lightweight devices. One aviator even reported using his Swiss Army knife to free himself from burning wreckage. The knives would later be carried aboard the space shuttle.
*The knives that appendages often served more than one function. For example, in 1951 Victorinox received a patent for its new can opener, which was said to work easily and not leave ragged edges. The end of the can opener had been fashioned into a small screwdriver blade.

“Champion” has been displayed at MOMA with 24/30 functions.
Victorinox manufactures 34,000 pocketknives per day. In the 1990s, it retailed for about $90; the six-blade Classic sold for $18.

Stockingmatcher

Stockingmatcher is a mobile app for solving girls’ daily concern about how they dress appropriately with colored stockings. Pick the color of your stocking you are going to wear, and discover the perfect dress and shoes for it. The exploration is based on the model images on catwalks.

Stalking Comparative Websites

As a user, my motivation for going to TV program companies websites is:

1, Check the recent schedule;

2, Look for the information of a specific event or program;

3, Watch TV programs;

4,  Stroll through audience community (social network).

Schedule:

Fox:

Simple, Self evident

NBC:
Confusing, not sure where to go

Untitled from Ge Yu on Vimeo.

2. & 3. Programs & Info

FOX:
Easy to find what I’m looking for, including the basic information (story&cast), full episodes, and out source social networks.

NBC:
Information is complete,well organized, but too much things are going on on the page. To audience, information pages always need to be clear and efficient.

nbc program info from Ge Yu on Vimeo.

4, Audience Social Networks
FOX:
Not alluring, and not friendly. “It’s cold, don’t join it.”
No any extra information about this community.

NBC:
Visually–too much
Signal– welcoming
Information management– not efficient, but at least, it’s showing here is the community.

Untitled from Ge Yu on Vimeo.

THE Funtheory

Faults Finder

Script

5 Second Leader with Program’s Title

Fade-in to the studio

Wide shot of the studio: hosts and six persons divided into two teams are standing in front of the scenery (full of goods).

Medium Hosts: Michael and Mary

Michael: Hello!

Mary: Welcome to “Faults Finder”! Here are the two teams of faults finder today!

Michael: Today we are going to K mart to look for ten faults in the market. Let’s see which team can find the most faults and win the game In twenty minutes,

Mary: Yes, you can easily pick one of the teams you like to join by going to our website or sending text msg to 41411. Don’t wait, play the game at home with such brave and interesting team members, you will have a lot of fun.

Long range shot:

Two teams are waving their hands to the audience.

Medium :

TEAM 1:

Steve: Hi we are the team one!

Amy: I’m the leader of team one.

Terry: Come to join us, we need your help!

TEAM 2:

David: This is team two.

John: I’m the leader of team two.

Tracy: We are the best, wait for your joining!

Close up:

Michael: Yes! All the members, are you ready?

Amy: You know us, we will never give up until we find all of them!

John: Team 2 are all the sharp-nosed! We are the champian!

Long range shot;

All the members are cheering and applauding.

Medium:

Michael: Wow, you guys are very ambitious! That’s good! But don’t forget there are so many audience can give you guys all the hints. So just keep checking the iPad to read what the audience, who are your outside team members, find out or suggest!

Long range shot:

All the team members: Yes!!!

Close up:

Mary: We are about to leave for Kmart now. Please join the team ßßßand send the msgs through the Internet or mobile as long as you find the faults!

Fade Out

Storyboard



User Experience Wireframe

TECH DIAGRAM

We had a long discussion right after the day we formed the team. We almost decided what content we wanted to focus on and play with. Even though the operation during our presentation was not that smooth and successful,  it was very close to our original idea. Knowing the voting result simultaneously and watching the multi visual effects on the screen seem to make the audience excited, I think the overall structure of this program worked well. The combination of unexpected visual effects and weird performance is the experiment we wanted to explore. No matter what language that the reporters speak, audience can still get the context and the environment of what the news’ try to say. The feedback we’ve got from the class is positive, so I think this experiment approaches the ideal interaction.

Obviously, the transition between the voting website and the screen content was not explained or planned very well. Audience didn’t even know why they should go to the website and what they gonna do with so many options. And, being a live show, and as a live show’s producer, I know it made a lot of mistakes, and absolutely was fatal to pause and let audience wait for several times in the show. The tempo was terrible, and I apologize about it.

But, still, we did very complicated experiment this time. None of us has background of coding, but we still did the web page and multi screens show. If we can have another chance, I believe we can reschedule the whole production process, and share more information to each other transparently, and do even once rehearsal. Make everything reasonable and efficient, I think we can avoid many things to happen unexpectedly. Over view, I think our project is still a good try for the experimental live shows.

First, I would say the presentation we gave this week closely approached to our original idea. Even though we encountered a lot of coding difficulties which we didn’t expect, and almost gave up using code to control the video,  eventually we made it. We definitely learned new language from this project, and most important, I started to design and produce the interactive experiments of TV!

In terms of our design, encouraging audience to have fun with TV news is very interesting experiment which can hugely change current news broadcasting style and give a new birth to the dying traditional newsroom. As our expectation, the interaction in the class was great. In certain degree, the respond from the audience was even beyond our prediction.  Gladly, besides the recreation of the news storytelling, the audience were also attracted by the sound effect which made interaction more funny. Personally, that’s very valuable try of interactive design, since I used to struggle with designing  the sound effect in interactive TV shows.

But still, lack of knowledge of coding  limits our imagination. We have other designs to make the news much more interesting, pitifully, we couldn’t put them in our final design. This project is not mature at all for broadcasting, and the quality of production is on the lower level for distributing, but this is really a good start of my interaction design for TV.

Will Kreth brought up  interesting thoughts to me: is that really necessary or workable for audience interaction in all kinds of TV shows? What’s the hypostatic purpose of interactive TV?

In terms of the need of interaction in TV shows, I don’t expect the interaction can be the next generation of TV shows format, in other words, interactive TV only exist when it can add extra value in the shows. For example,the TV serial “Lost”, the audience created a forum to talk about the characters, re-organized the story, predict the story development, and introduced the storyline to the people who were recently into this serial. This forum helped the production company raise topics,keep audience watching the whole season and consequently add more sponsors and commercial value. However, I don’t think it’s fit in the serials, like “CIS” ,” Law of Order” or “House”, or even “Mad Man”. The story matter is the key of interactive creation, so the hypostatic purpose of interactive TV should be grabbing the after market products.

Audience and Mass Communication are the targets that interactive TV need to grab to occupy in the Internet age. Which character or the competitor is most popular among the audience or in the newspaper, the result directly jumps out of the TV from the Internet or the cell phones. Giving various choices to audience, the interaction mentally allure them to follow all the design of the shows, and physically stick them to sit in front of the TV every week. More actors will become stars, more advertising are following up, and more souvenir will be designed. Interactive TV will cause a revolution of how the TV makers to create stories, competitions, and even news. One way informational deliver transfer to two ways,  it will absolutely take time to digest and develop.

Overall, personally, I think I need more experiments to try out and think about, and most important, I still need to take an eye on the recent TV shows, which could probable have already proceeded the revolution!

Hurricane Irene Live Report
Since hurricane Irene was continuously developing for many days, and was uncertainty of how serious it would be, audience who especially live in NYC were extremely eager to know how the trace of this hurricane was before/during it came. This is the right time for television broadcasting interactive news report.
Plan 1,
Encourage audience experiencing the hurricane to send tex messages to describe how it goes right here right now, and selected msgs will be presented on the scroll bar of the bottom. Compared to the only reporter standing in front the camera under the danger, the text messages description makes live news more various and friendly. This probably is the easiest way for television broadcasting to interact with audience.
Plan 2,
Multi channel report. Television is always a one-way informational delivery. Audience are forced to follow the path that the program assigns. In this hurricane live report, CNN for example, has reporting storylines which can’t be selected or arranged by audience. On the other hand, audience can’t get on time information as they want. Put multi channel in one report, let audience pick which live channel’s information they are concerned about, and make their own news observing lines. Most important, it can be another way to evaluate which aspect of report or who is most popular in this program.

Plan 3,
Distribute an app for smart phones. This app only has one function– video recording. Just pushing one button to start shooting, and push again to sent it to the server of this program through the cell phone. Visual reports are always the favorite of audience. Different angles of this monster hurricane from audience could be the most exciting and valuable information of this serial reporting. The videos shown should be fasst selected by the director and offered the prizes by this program. Thirty minute broadcasting delay is allowed since the video is uploaded. Wherever the audience live, they will feel the exactly the same by watching the home made videos.

Dancers in the Vase (Updated3)

Finally with water.

Untitled from Angelia Yu on Vimeo.

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