http://pleated-jeans.com/2011/01/24/the-united-states-of-shame-chart/

This is a great mashup I came across!

MASHUP #1: Software-Screen based

Greenmaket Mapping Project

My goal is to analyze which neighborhoods have the most amount of greenmarkets and how that data correlates with New York City’s obesity rate and income level of each neighborhood. Each pin on the map will show the name, location and hours of each green market. Pin with a dot in the center represents locations that are open year-round. I am using Google Maps to mash up existing data. I have already begun the project, below is a completed mashup of Manhattan and some data for Brooklyn. At the end of the project, the map will include all 5 boroughs.

Sources:

Grownyc.org for market locations

Wikipedia for neighborhood border lines

Homes Point 2 for average salary per household data

Google Public Data Explorer for obesity rates by neighborhood

Conclusion:

I am not aware of an interactive map that shows you all the greenmarket locations in New York City. GrowNYC has a .pdf with a complicated key to map out locations and it has links to individual maps on their site. In other words, a person cannot just get on Google Maps to see ALL greenmarket locations, get instant directions and see hours and days of operation all on one screen. My map will provide all of that . No downloading of pdfs and clicking on multiple browser windows! Statistical analysis of obesity rates and income levels add an extra layer of awareness to the public. From my analysis, areas with lower income levels have a higher obesity rate and less greenmarkets. Hopefully, a map like this will inspire communities to open up more greenmarkets, have accessibility to fresh vegetables and live a healthier lifestyle.

MASHUP #2: Software/Hardware

All In A Day’s Work

I would like to take a kids’ sound book, specifically Thomas & Friends: All in a Day’s Work, and mash up its friendly stories with headlines about wars that are going on in the world right now. I will keep some pages as they are, teaching kids life lessons about how to be good citizens. Other pages will be audio of machine guns, and other war sounds along with recordings of my voice reading headlines from NYTimes.

FEEDBACK LOOP:

The Sitting Calculator:

I have found myself sitting a lot lately; on the subway, studying, during class lectures, eating etc. I began to wonder, what portion of my day do I end up sitting and what portion am I actually active? I will use pressure sensors and a screen reader attached to an Arduino board to measure that data. The counter will start calculating when the subject is in a sitting position and stop when the subject gets up. All of the data will be compiled on the screen in front of them. Using The Sitting Calculator will hopefully influence people to stand a little more and be aware of their inactivity.

I was thinking of writing a program that would automatically tweet/update status of facebook every time I procastinated (which is like, every single day) but then I realised my friends would probably get really annoyed with me after a while since it would be auto-tweeting/updating every 5 mins and causing major info-floods.

So instead I thought of making something called Rest Your Eyes. I get minor headaches sometimes when I stare too long at a computer screen because the brightness levels bothers me a lot, so I thought maybe I’ll do an automatic pop-up every 45mins or so with a notice saying like: ‘hey, aren’t you going to take a break now?’; ‘it’s time to get some rest’ or maybe one of those health tips about taking care of your eyes or whatever. And if you ignored the message for too long, either the screen would automatically dim/go to sleep or a picture of natural greenery would pop up and you can’t escape from it for the next 15mins

I’ll probably build it on xcode, but not openframeworks. I’ve been trying my hand at writing c++ recently (like teaching myself, not from a class) and I really want to try making a cocoa project.

Why live with icons when you can have a 3-d desktop?

putting your 2-d into 3-d

My mashup is a 3-d/2-d converter! Make 2-d screens into 3-d rendered objects, and then convert your photos of friends/enviroment/whatever into a convienient 2-d lineart style.

Firstly, I should confess that I am absolutely amazed by the close correlation of cognitive psychology and design practice. The deeper I dig into design process, theory and successful examples, the more I find out that before getting hands dirty, sketching up cool and slick ideas and appealing interfaces, one should carry out a thorough study of human in relation with that concept, since after all, we are all designing for human.

Among all the referrals in the passage, cybernetics was the most appealing to me.  Cybernetics by definition deals with chain of action, sensing, comparison and again to action. This chain, resembles very closely to the feedback loop, and the fact that it correlate so closely with information theory and control theory is very interesting since, in my opinion, cognitive psychology and feedback loops can roughly be viewed as humanized version of Cybernetics, information theory and control system. The over all goal of all of the above working in integration, is to find an efficient pattern and to stick with it.

In the case of the speedometer feedback loop, I believe the social pressure caused by a combination of social values and self-consciousness complement each other to create the relevance stage of the feedback loop. But since the speedometer is clearly taking advantage of an active measurement method, it can not be scaled down to feedback loops necessary in our daily personal lives. The idea of passive measurement tools and sensors is a great workaround for this problem.

Furthermore, the accuracy of data obtained from the sensors, and finding the correct pattern in the data is of vital importance. Take the long bath / leaking toilet as an example. If patterns are not taken into consideration, and if we rely solely on the volume in recording data, we will not be able to take accurate further steps to complete our feedback loop.

I found the point brought up by Rose about “enchantment” very appealing. Too noisy feedback and passive feedback can both lead the loop to failure. The notion of “friendliness” of tools that remind us of things not by shooting information at us, but by subtle indirect pulses sounds like the most efficient behavioral attitude for feedback devices.

I could not agree more with Bandura’s view on mankind “People are proactive, aspiring organisms.” and the fact that “Feedback taps into those aspirations”. In other words, by taking advantage of feedback loops, speaking the language of mankind’s mind.

Finally, I found the concept of “Gamification” and “Internet of things” very interesting. Games have a peculiar seductive nature to walk our minds through a certain path. That path can be engineered to serve any purpose, and in this case, changing behavioral patterns.

Do you ever get an #eyedeer, and it just festers in your head until you do it? Well, that’s what this one feels like. It’s not actually in the assignment list, so I’m going to do it as an additional piece of work because I can’t get it out of my head and it’s driving me nuts.

book mashup; hardware version and googlebooks version. I just love the idea of it; pages of different books layered above each other,  and somehow revealing themselves by deleting the original context. Do words ever talk to each other? Can you read a book, and let the words show themselves?

I was in a group with Firm, Paweena and Doug (spelling?) and actually we came up with THREE different musical instruments out of an old printer and a xbox. The most-fun bit was probably breaking open the xbox, and I got to mallet the harddisk drive! (yay!) After we opened the harddisk drive, Doug said he’ll try to make it into a looping beat and spin it like a dj

The first project we did was with the scanner portion of the printer, we added a thin layer of aluminium foil over the track and another layer on the light-nodule itself so when it ran across the track it would have a change in pitch. We gave it to Firm to do the wiring for it though, so idk what happened to it in the end.

The second one was with the printer, and that’s the one that Paweena and I worked mostly on. The idea was to make a musical ‘keyboard’ of foil switches, so depending on where the jet-nodule was it would play a different note. It was really fun to make, but when we were done it seemed kinda plain….. so we decided to jazz it up a bit and add hearts! ♥

heart printer

… so it became a musical heart printer!!! when 2 hearts ♥ + ❤ = ♡♪♫~~~~~~ the pure music comes out~~

so OK very cheesy, but I think it was really fun! Also nowadays I can’t look at junk without thinking HMMMM… MAYBE I SHOULD PICK IT UP and then my housemate goes: ‘rachel, it’s probably got bed bugs or termites in it’.  I’ve also learnt that a lot of the stuff we have has a RIDICULOUS amount of plastic, like seriously no wonder we’re running out of resources if we have so much plastic wrapper that we can barely get into the mechanism inside.

The Hush Box, project #7 from 7 in 7 assignment:

This is more of a personal use.

I’d like to use M&Ms to gauge how much time I’m spending on which project per class.  Each color would represent the class and its project and one M&M would be one hour. They will be filled inside glass jars to which I will be documenting via photo or video.

The goal is to find out which projects and classes demand most of my time.  I would then figure out if I’m spending too much in one project more than I need to.  If that occurs, I’d like to explore the why, how and what should I do after.  Am I having problems understanding certain materials?  If so, should I ask for help?  Am I ignoring other projects?  If so, why?