Merry #ThrowbackChristmas!
An interactive holiday countdown
’Twas a month before Christmas, and all through the lab, the thinx team was busy working — not a second to gab. Arduinos, tools and spare parts laid on the workbench with care, all in hopes that finished prototypes would soon be there. The team at their stations with sketches a-spread, while visions of interactive products danced in their heads.
Christmas is just around the corner! And much like Santa’s elves, we’ve been busy in our workshop trying to make this December one to remember. So here’s a holiday tale involving a cuckoo clock, an interactive advent calendar and emotional human-machine interaction.
We enjoy the holiday festivities as much as anyone, but it’s also a time of reflection, generosity, appreciation and gratitude. Everyone is wrapping up projects (and presents!), and before everyone is gone for the holidays, we thought we’d say thanks to our colleagues for all the great collaboration and hard work this year. The countdown till Christmas has begun. And what a better way to keep track of the days till Christmas than with an advent calendar!
Our advent calendar delivers a daily dose of Christmas cheer — not with eggnog, Christmas cookies or chocolates, but with something heart-warming, cute and personal… It’s #throwbackchristmas! Behind each door, our colleagues can take a stroll down “nostalgia lane” and experience how Christmas looked at their fellow coworkers’ homes – ugly sweaters, braces, weird hair, and all! But the fun doesn’t end there. In true thinx style, we created something extra special, for our extra special coworkers. To keep the installation interesting and enjoyable long term, we added some technological and interactive elements – because that’s what we do!
HMI: closing the gap
At thinx we spend a lot of time discussing human-machine interaction (HMI). We envision the experiences we’d like to create and then explore the technological possibilities to transform these visions into reality – all with the goal of changing how technology interacts with users and vice versa. As it stands, the gap between technology and users is still too big. There are certainly many ways to close the gap, but a concept that comes up quite frequently in the lab is (reverse) skeuomorphism. No, it’s not some Frankenstein-like super mutation; it’s just a fancy word describing the act of designing digital products which mimic their real-world counterparts, e.g. the “phone” icon on our smartphone screens that looks exactly like a phone. Many would argue that this design concept is dead, but for us it’s alive and well.
Skeuomorphism creates a sense of familiarity in users and gives clues on potential uses or actions — basically, it helps us understand what is possible in our environment and teaches us how to use new technologies. We were curious as to how we could “skeuomorphize” interactions in the digital world. What would happen if we took mechanisms from human-human interaction and applied them to human-machine interaction?
Take a simple greeting as an example: when passing a co-worker at the office, most people smile, nod, or acknowledge this person’s existence in some way — at least that’s what you’re supposed to do according to (local) social norms. While the verbal interaction here is optional, the non-verbal component is crucial to a greeting. This brings us to our next query: how can we re-create such an experience in human-machine interaction?
This very greeting behavior can already be found in technology, e.g. cuckoo clocks. You know…the charming wooden ones where the bird pops out and sings when the clock strikes a full hour? Yep, those. This opening and closing of the doors mimics a simple greeting in a human-human interaction. Here’s the play-by-play: the door opens; the bird appears; it approaches the observer (a movement generally considered to be friendly behavior) before it disappears again — a short, friendly greeting.
Sounds simple enough, but there’s an added challenge: personal human-human interaction always yields an emotional component in addition to the physical movements. So we began thinking about how we could create an interaction between users and objects that not only mimics a greeting, but also includes these emotional elements. We got some answers by looking at principles of affective interactions. With these it’s possible to create interfaces capable of eliciting emotional experiences from users and communicating specific properties through their physical attributes.
Functionality meets emotionality
As Wensveen, Djajadiningrad & Overbeeke explained over a decade ago, intuitive human-object interaction is driven by a close and natural coupling of action to reaction. The reaction of any system not only needs to be an immediate response to the action, but also needs to react coherently over all modalities to the functional and emotional content of the action. Consequently, a reaction with an added emotional layer is easier to understand than a solely functional one. And an object that expresses emotions is more likely to be attributed with intentions, leading to the perception of a personality.
Long story short: people have a stronger emotional reaction to items they can give a personality to or that trigger a certain emotion. But can you give a personality to an object that’s not a robot – or to something you normally don’t interact with? We’ll get to this in a sec, but let’s first explore what we came up with after many hours spent thinking, rethinking and tossing out concepts that didn’t make the cut – which is not necessarily a bad thing in our opinion. We’ll discuss our ideation approach and methods in another article.
Celebrating our differences
Our advent calendar is a large, interactive, wooden wall with lots of little doors, each of which has its own personality. There are shy, outgoing, hectic and tired doors. Come to think of it, the installation is a true representation of our team here at denkwerk – each colleague has their own colorful personality and brings something special to the mix. We’ve installed the calendar in a central location where our colleagues pass at least one a day. The heavy hallway traffic ensures that the installation has what it needs – people in motion. And just as colleagues would greet passersby, the doors (only!) open when people pass by the installation. Each door opens in a way fitting of its personality. For example, the shy doors, like their human counter parts, are reluctant to open themselves right away. These doors wait until you’ve almost passed before unveiling their secrets, giving you just enough time for a quick glimpse of what’s inside. The hectic ones reveal their contents quickly and sporadically. You get the picture…different strokes for different folks.
Behind closed doors
To realize our idea, we used small servo motors for the opening movement, a few distance sensors, and a microcontroller as the “brain”. To keep the system scalable, three doors are connected to one microcontroller which then pair with a sonar distance sensor and an infrared range finder to form a “module”. Each of these modules has a list of parameters that define the individual character traits of their doors’ personalities, i.e. opening and closing speeds, delay or “nervousness”. By using two sensors, each of which measures another value at a slightly different angle, we are able to ensure the installation’s stability and accuracy. These sensors allow the doors to appropriately respond to interferences from the environment or even detect certain materials (e.g. wool).
’Tis the season to…NOT stress out! 2017 is in the final stretch, which means we can look forward to added pressures of holiday-shortened deadlines, end-of-year business demands, and crazed customers. Then there’s also the Christmas shopping, holiday parties, obligatory cookie-baking, Christmas markets, travelling and the actual holidays themselves. It’s absolute madness! At the thinx lab, we’re trying to keep the Christmas spirit high, and the end-of-the-year stress low.
So far, our interactive advent calendar with the added personal touch is a huge holiday hit. There are still a few days until Christmas Eve, which means we’ve got a few more throwback surprises: more “awwwws” and hearty laughter to come! We think Santa would approve.
From our workshop to yours: we wish you a happy holiday season and merry thinx-mas!
