Digital dialogues

I am now working on a service for a norwegian food magazine on their website.
More to come……

Presence project

After helping out Stig Skjelvik on his Dobpler™ project, I really wanted to work on something analouge and sensorbased up against an answer to Peter Cook´s article on how low the actual activity level at AHO is. I mean, come on, it´s the place I´m spending five years studiyng my future at... We all agreed on coming up with and present our individual ideas over the weekend. This resulted in 3 main directions. The one We ended up with tracks the activity level and uses these data to generate trees over a period of two weeks. During this period the graphichal result changes colours, from red to yellow. As the project started out we tried to get a hold of the data produced by the access-card system at school. The fist response on this from AHO´s managment was positive, then turned out to be quite negative. So we ended up with two actual and active IR-sensors at the main entrance, functioning as a counter for the processingfile wich produces the trees in the sensors surroundings. To this we added four dummy sensors, witch are placed around at the ground floor in central doorways. These sensors where given a personality by how they look, and by speaking an abstract phrase when someone passes. The fact that these sensors are placed out of sight from the actual visual result gives the users the impression that they are in fact hooked up to the system.
The result can be viewed here.

Infomation architecture

Since I have a perticular interest in tv and digital media I wanted to look into some kind of navigation software or service. After a bit of research I chose Windows XP Mediasenter since this is the closest kind of service availeble here in Norway.
My report can be downloaded in PDF format here.

Game design

A project done with Knut, David and myself, we started out with a bird consept. The main idea was to manouver an adult bird around in air using a videocamera to detect armmovements, picking up worms. The adult bird was then going to feed 3-4 baby-birds, if this was not completed within a sirtain amount of time the babies would fall out of a nest and die. Gameplaywise the meaning here was to put the player under stress, the youngsters would scream louder and louder if not fed in time, and then ultimatly die, the amount of youngsters would count as lives. However this was not the final result, the task of getting graphics to play along with videosensors for arm-movement, witch controlled the adult bat (before this, a bird) was quite a challenge. So the final result was called "Transylvanian nights" where the game consisted of a bat flying around under a full moon eating insects. An active kind of a cleaning-game.
Video of gameplay can be found here

Week 5 Interactive toy

Project done with Camilla, Knut and me. We found an interfearing object interresting, from this we discussed what this could be and came up with ideas on something that attracted or avoided attention. One idea was to have a character appear on you´r desktop and eat the mousepointer when a special commando or gesture was given. We went for the opposite, a character that avoides the pointer by all means. The character turned out as a face with following eyes and moody eyebrowes. It becomes angry like and runs away if you get to close, it even disapears outside the screen and turns up when it´s "safe".

You can find the code here.

Week 4 drawingmachine

The following code creates a drawingmachine.
It was written by Katarina and myself.

You can download the code here

Start drawing using your mouse, the code continues drawing, press "b" to speed up the process, press any other key to stop.

Week 4 Snow

Snow fun with Katarina

Download the code here

Translate function

Today Daniel learned me some nifty actions:

void setup() {
size(1000,1000);
background(255);
noStroke();
smooth();
fly();
translate(600,0);
fly();
translate(0,600);
fly();
translate(-600,0);
fly();
translate(300,-300);
fly();
}

void fly() {
//finne
fill(10,80,161);
ellipse(200,155,8,30);

//vinger
fill(10,80,161);
ellipse(125,196,136,9);
ellipse(275,196,136,9);

//hode
fill(255,255,0);
ellipse(200,172,25,25);


//flykropp
fill(10,80,161);
ellipse(200,200,48,48);

//propell
fill(10,80,161,30);
ellipse(200,200,75,75);

//propellfront
fill(51,160,44);
ellipse(200,200,10,10);
}

Week 3 - processing

Ouch...
This hurts.. No seriously, a totally new experience for me. But with the help of my classmates I guess I´l find my way...
Right now I´m trying to understand the basics, I will post codes and results as soon as I have something to show...

2. task, Making meaning with no context

Part 1 - physical components.
Knut and myself worked with 3 cubes, 10cm x 10cm. Each cube should look as if one should/can:
· Rub it
· Turn it
· Squeeze it
We decided to go with material and mechanical mapping.

Pictures coming.



Part 2 - digital components.
Each square should look as if one should/can:
· Turn it
· Move or drag it
· Rub on it
We came out with 3 consepts on how to communicate a direction or desired action through a square, by whispering the action and whispering the direction.


fig1

fig2

fig3

1. task macro

we ended up with a broadcasting consept, much like instant messaging . It´s based on users broadcasting their "state of mind", this could be , gone fishing, away, bored, availeble, etc.
Your state shows in other users contactlist, using colours (red/green) and text, this is editable.
We also talked about a balance bar, witch measures contact-rate between two users.

1. task

Starting off with a sociology lecture by Dr. Rich Ling. He talks about social networks, how they work, what they contain and how they are built. The most interresting part was how the so called "weak links", (a friend of a friend) usually is the link making a differense. This could be in creatin "a buzz" or getting help finding a new job...

Out of this we started discussing how to enhance or constrain contact in these groups.

After the discussion we where divided into groups, my group focuses on how to exclude people ?


We look at the use of cellphones:



Visual:
Turn your back...
Reverse the above by acting non-etikette visually

contact-rate bar measuring, like in a fighting game...

Showing profile status in display...
displaying the rejection....


Haptic:
forced feedback in buttons on last digit...
send a message using vibrator in phone...

Audio:
Special audio signal, rejecting instead of ring-tone or answer




contact-rate bar measuring, like in a fighting game...

When trying to dial a number, if rejected, last digit is replaced with a buzz. Done by uploaded app to cellphone




Combination of contact-scale and state of mind....
Like in msn or ichat the user set a presense state, this should be possible to broadcast. The cellphone is becoming more and more like a computer, and in near future maybe it is just that, a portable computer.

starting off with babysteps...

After 3 years of productdesign I decided to go deeper into interaction. This came out in the open after I did a project based on mediacenter and IPTV last year.
When designing user electronics the distance between handheld controllers and actual interaction are usually quite big. The ballast taken in on this course will help me to think wider and better hopefully :-)
Combined with this class I am also "Exploring creativity", a course, to widen my horizon and keep far fetched ideas a bit longer in processes. Possibly studiyng IDEO´s ideas about creativity.