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.