The first assignment was to choose 3 serif and 3 sans serif fonts that best represent our name. Click on the images to see my work:
The second was to create 3 expressive words:
Monthly Archives: September 2012
Here’s my first Arduino program in action:
And my analog in assignment:
For my observation, I chose to look at the subway turnstiles and how people use them. There are 3 key steps that result in someone passing through the gate: swiping the metro card, receiving feedback in the form of a beep and text and pushing the turnstile to pass through. In my experience, and through observation, I’ve found that this has the potential to break down at each step of the interactions. First, people swipe the metro card incorrectly fairly often, by either swiping to fast or too slow, having insufficient fare or even having a defective card (like one I had that got wet). This results in feedback from the machine, telling the user to swipe again, but not giving any information about how to swipe correctly, unless, of course, there is insufficient fare; though, even in that case the user isn’t told how to respond. When the first two steps have been successful, the user can interact with the turnstile and successfully push their way through it. Here, the most common interaction has to do with what the user is carrying. Backpacks tend to be particularly difficult because of the relatively small space that users have to pass through and because of the nature of the turnstile. It prevents more than one person from passing through at once, but also limits the space that one person has to get through, often hitting a backpack or other bag. Because of this, passing through the turnstile can often take the longest time out of all of the steps, causing bottlenecks in the flow of travelers through the gates.
Here are some examples I found of bad sinage:
Click on the following two images for my revision.
This week, the readings for this class were the first two chapters of Chris Crawford’s The Art of Interactive Design and “A Brief Rant on the Future of Interactive Design” by Bret Victor. Both offered unique perspectives on interactive design and helped to clarify, or at least inspire thought about, what good interactive design is. Three questions followed these readings:
How would you define physical interaction?
When I hear this question, it’s difficult for me to avoid directly quoting Chris Crawford’s definition of interactivity as conversation; I’ve used this as my own definition since I first read Crawford’s book in my undergraduate studies. When coming up with definitions for new or foreign concepts, the most useful metaphors are often the most familiar. I think that conversation, being one of the most familiar concepts to people, is easily one of, if not, the most useful. Translating it to physical interaction takes some thought though. Here’s my definition: “A cyclical process of sensing a physical stimulus, processing that stimulus to formulate a response and carrying out a physical response.”
What makes for good physical interaction?
My answer to this question is informed both by Victor’s rant and my past reading of Sharp’s Interaction Design. Good physical interaction provides quality sensing, processing and responding in a cyclical fashion. It does so by using an interface that is familiar to the user in form and takes full advantage of the capabilities of the user.
Are there works from others that you would say are good examples of digital technology that are not interactive?
A microwave
The interface for a DVD payer
A credit card
Make something cool.
http://itp.nyu.edu/~mam1286/ICM/ICM_JSHW/
