Incorporating an artifice into a mundane daily task #2

Constraints:

-I must make a tangible object using something that is in my apartment. No budget!

-The final object must be incorporated into one of my mundane daily tasks.

-There must be a video documentation of me using the object.

Project 2: How To Put Sauce On Your Pasta With A Manually Operated Mechanic Arm

In continuation with my theme of an unnecessary artifice simulating a human action or movement, I created a manually operated mechanical arm with a pulley system. I tried to recreate the anatomy and the movement of an elbow and wrist using man-made objects.

Result: YouTube video below + screen shot of video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcX_pIMrOu8

Materials used and their limitations:

I once again used pieces from an erector set, elastic bands, Jcrew bracelet, wires and a spoon. Obviously, this device does not work as well as the actual arm and wrist. I had very little control over the jerkiness of the mechanical arm. At one point I almost splattered my camera lens with tomato sauce. This was a very fun piece to make and to use once it was completed.

my 7-in7 project, part 2

7in7-2

For my 7-in-7 project, I decided to start recording sounds on the way back home for 7 days, and create a tiny bit of music on top of them, using them as a motif. So the outcome of the project will be 7 short tracks. Guitar, Bass, [sometimes] Drum Samples and vocals are all done by me and recorded on GarageBand.   🙂

7in7-1

This week’s readings are about Prototype, I really learned and thought a lot.

In interactive product design practice, designers pay more attention on a variety of factors that affect users’ behavior and habits, how to make the user interaction to get a good experience. To this end, design teams often need to build a series of creative concept device to continuously verify the idea, comment assess its value and depth to provide a basis for further design and inspiration.

In the interaction design in general, to help us so to interact with future products, to gain first-hand experience, Explore new ideas and devices, known as the “prototype”, the construction and improvement process, known as “prototyping.” In fact, the prototype has a wide range, anything can be considered a prototype. From paper charts to complex electronic devices, from simple cardboard model to the precision machining of metal device. In short, the prototype is any kind of help us tried the unknown things, and constantly push forward to achieve the goals of things.

Prototyping follow the “learning by doing” approach. Doing the work is an open mind. No one can know the final product before the formal submission of all design details. But when we produced the first prototype, you can look at it, hold it, ponder it and keep using it. Through research and test their structures built in prototypes, we often found it there are many opportunities for improvement. We could learn more knowledge.

Building a prototype required speed ​​and efficiency, everything around us can become a powerful tool for rapid prototyping. This randomness will be more fully stimulate the design team’s creative passion and inspiration.

Prototype must be targeted, each prototype must be designed to effectively solve a group focus of concern point. If the design stage, we focus on who to use the product, then it must be observed, described and research based on the characters to build a prototype, position of the target population to address this critical issue.

The design team members are from different disciplines,  so the prototype can solve different problems. We designers need to consider all aspects. In constitute the process of building a prototype, based on different reasons we need to build a variety of different prototypes, we can not expect a prototype building process to solve all problems, recognizing this limitation, the design team will help to ease the work and stimulate the creativity.

Cardboard Computer —- Mocking-It-Up or Hands-On the Future

This reading is so interesting, I do really love it. When I was reading, I also did some research online—-find out some Cardboard computers. I get some information from those cardboard computers, besides the benefits and good reflections; I found this idea is also doing an environmentally friendly job. It seems to be a kind of cardboard recycling. It is so fantastic.

Come back to the main idea of this article. With mock-ups, people can get easier to achieve the effects they are really looking for. In the very first beginning, mock-up could be such a project. But currently, it seems to be one step of a whole process of a project. Without doubt, most mock-ups are very cheap but quite useful. I mean the materials of these mock-ups, the materials can be paper, whatever, and people pretend to use it as a real one to figure out many problems. The mock up was described that holding a magic to envision the future projects (Maybe high-technical equipments.)

In the first instance, mock up acted as a language game. People can use their familiar language, or the modes of thinking they get used to create new ideas and figure out the mass in work. (Because this design language game has a family resemblance with other language games they know how to play. The language game in which the cardboard box is used has a family resemblance with the use of a traditional proof machine in the professional.)

Nevertheless, mock-ups can be very complex for technology and the functionality. It might be a limitation.

As it is mentioned in this article, “In summary, mock-ups become useful when they make sense to the participants in a specific design language game, not because they mirror “real things,” but because of the interaction and reflection they support (see Ehn, 1989).”

Another point was mentioned in the first part of this article is quite significant—-the concept “ Increasingly it is being accepted that design can not be completed by a designer sitting alone. The design process must include users.” Users are considered as a very important part in a design. That means, we can get some information of the evaluation of designing project from the users. It helper the designers get more accurate in their projects.

My first 7 in 7 project is a short music I made last night, ‘I see faces everywhere’.

I see faces everywhere

watch it in youtube

The constrain is the emotion. In this project, the emotion is loneliness.

This song has two sides, the first side is in the human being side. Sometimes we might feel lonely, when we come to a new place, when we walk in the street, although there are many people in the street, although we see faces everywhere, but in fact we might feel that ‘I am the only person on this street, there is only me on this street. ‘ It is a loneliness, the feeling that we do not belong to this city, this street.  Also, we have always been taught that we have to make people happy when we are in contact with people, which has become a habit. However, is the good and right interaction between people  just as simple as making people happy? Or making people happy is make ourselves happy?

The second side is standing on the machine’s point of view, this song is like the voice of the machine. Machines, robots or even softwares are created in order to ‘make people happy’, there is a program which has a word has been repeated in their minds — ‘make people happy’. They seemed alive, and seemed not alive too. They see our faces everywhere, and they actually are very lonely. For those old machines discarded by us, they once made us happy , they once accompanied us, but when they are no longer usable, we discard them, and they have been very lonely, they have always been just a tool of people. I wonder if one day, the interaction and relationship between people and machines would be more humane? Will people regard machines as true friends, and treat them as real persons some day?

major studio week#1 re-imagined social network