Designing and Building the Physical Prototype
Mid project, on one of our visits to the botany hall we discovered a display that the museum had recently added. It was two branches of Spicebush shrub, one from April 1900 and the other from April 2019 showing early blooming in 2019 due to rising temperatures. This image strengthened our intent to talk about the Anthropocene, its effect on plants and the cascading effects on all elements of the ecosystem. We figured that it would be a valuable idea for the visitors to visualize the effects of Anthropocene through seeing the change in their own collections.
We decided to build an interactive and immersive experience culminating in a grand gesture of a reflection. The experience was divided in two parts:
1. Plant time walk: Scanning the collection on a kiosk to see plants on a timeline
2. Reflection: Tangible Interaction on a dial to see the change in collection in Anthropocene
The Kiosk
The Dial
For the reflective experience, the visitors place their phone on a dial to enable interaction with the dial. Once enabled, they can see their collection in different years: 1750, 1850, 1950 and 2050 by placing their hand on the respective year.
First, we created the visual indicators for each of the years using Arduino Uno, proximity sensors and LEDs. The micro interaction we intended to create was a touch gesture on the year but we didn’t have touch sensors and ordering them would have taken time. Additionally, we didn’t want the sensors to be seen on the surface, so we decided to work with proximity sensors and modulate our hand gesture for the sake of our video. This had to be kept in mind while designing the physical form to house the Arduino circuit.
Keeping in line with the circular form of the kiosk and the circles of plant time walk, we knew that the physical form of the dial had to correspond to the same language somehow. We had tried some options of a circular dial through drawings, but it seemed like a misfit. A circle conveys a loop, whereas we were looking at a linear representation of time. Using a semicircular shape with years placed only the circumference would have allowed us to stay true to a linear motion, while being visually similar to other tangible elements of the experience.
In order to do a quick rough prototype, we started with 1:1 size options that fit the Arduino breadboards and accommodate the size of an adult hand comfortably. The final option was then made out of board. To ensure that the hand gesture in the video did not look obviously different from a touch gesture, we gave it just enough height to allow the thumb to trigger the proximity sensors to light up the LEDs.
After testing and finalizing all dimensions, we were ready to do a high fidelity prototype using Acrylic. We had clear acrylic sheets readily available to us in the studio. These were laser cut, sanded with disc sander and then sprayed with clear glass frost paint to create a translucent look.
After drying, all acrylic pieces were stuck together, arduinos placed within them and the stickers pasted on top. Jus like in the kiosk, this prototype was placed on a semicircular stainless steel dustbin that served as the podium.
