Benang Merah | All We’ve Learnt in 1 Project
We are living in a connected world, where communication becomes instant where the boundary we have is the speed of our internet connection. For most people on earth today living two social life has become normal and without realizing it we formed a personality in this intangible world we cannot touch.
Where fantasy becomes reality and our reality is a part of that fantasy that is our digital-self. Whether we are becoming more and more alike with our digital-self or the other way around. We cannot escape from the binding spell of the internet, come the social media, wearables and now virtual reality.
These digital-self data often reflect the physical self of the user where it seems imperceptible to some people and representing it in a metaphorical way to let people feel and reflect on it instead of reading and analyze, it is what Benang Merah sought to after.
Benang Merah is an invitation to reflect on the connection between people, the city and the environment they live in. Our installation invites audience to interact and reflect on the spirit of the people in the city.
The idea behind Benang Merah is to use virtual data and present it in a tangible way to invoke reflections on how people connect to their city and surrounding through their digital self.
The Process
We based our process on the design thinking process (DTP). As Benang Merah was aimed to be an artistic exploration of interaction design, we decided to “de-systematize“ the DTP. By “de-systemizing” the process we can use the iterative unassuming nature of the DTP into an exploratory guideline for design as a creative process.
To understand what is a creative process we need to define what is creativity. Based on the paper by Warr and O’Neill to define creativity there are three concepts we need to understand by which creativity has been defined: the creative process, the creative person, and the creative product (Warr & O’Neill, 2005). The creative process itself has been defined as a process on which internal to an individual to generate ideas (Warr & O’Neill, 2005) while on her paper Elisondo’s experiment strengthen the point that creativity is a social process, exploring ideas and creation needs social interaction at some point (Elisondo, 2016).
So creative process is an exploration of ideas through reflections and brainstorming sessions and hours of studying materials and talking to people and empathizing with others. A creative process is often reserved for artistic work, not so much for productivity.
Through the progression of the project we went through a lot of changes that goes out of the topic of digital-self and back to representing digital self to invite user to reflect on the existence of our amorphous identity. These changes are shown in stages where I find important to our exploration of the topic. Through the whole journey of exploration, the creative process was messy, challenging and undirected. Though it sounds difficult I enjoy the process where I feel unbound to sets of constraints to follow. As I believe we must give creativity freedom for it to grow beyond what we can expect. In a parable, the journey is like urban exploration where we got limitless options to go to and instead of picking a place right away or setting up itinerary to the journey we pick an activity we want to do and what we hope to get from doing that activity.
1st Stage | The Journey
With our initial study, we decided to come up with our own definition of digital-self this is a way for us to get into the same space of mind before we started working on the concept. As per our research we come up with our own definition of digital-self.
A person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others in a virtual environment that may or may not be constrained by their physical presence.
By having a proper definition, we manage to focus on the project within the broad spectrum of the topic itself. Therefore, in our first stage of the development we came up with something totally different from our final project that still bears the same concept of digital-self. Where the first idea was more of a product, a wearable inspired by the technology that is available now and by predicting the trend in the extreme future based on this technology.
2nd Stage | The Direction
This is one of our most crucial stage where we need to define the direction on which we were going. But like any exploration, we did not know our destination we only have a set of ideals we want to follow and unlimited pathways to go to. As a proverb says that “All roads lead to Rome” we just believed that we will reach ‘Rome’ even though in this stage we have no idea on what is ‘Rome’ and we are just trying to move forward with the process. But it was a mistake, we were going on aimlessly.
Though exploration is a great tool to discover the unseen, but without defining the direction it took our journey longer and sometimes redundant. So, we decided to go tangible, no screens allowed no GUI (graphical user interface) what so ever to the users. We want users to be able to feel the data, therefore we decided to use strings to represent data and for users to interact with. The process does not stop there, as defining the method did not automatically gave us the direction we have no idea what kind of purpose the installation serves, what kind of data it will gives and what kind of interactions is right for the kind of data we want to use and we don’t even have any idea on the kind of data we want to use.
Comes the time to ask for directions, we then took our scaled down prototype and had a contextual inquiry on how could we further expand the use of strings for interactions. As utilitarian a technology is, most of the response is very different than what we thought the project would be. We then tried to reach out to more people to clarify our concept, we went with 3 questions questionnaire to ask for more information to clarify the directions we’re going with.
The problem was, these were not the right questions for us to ask. We were given the impression that this is right based on the steps we refer to, the design thinking process. We did not know what kind of problem we should work on therefore we keep on asking people on what problems they have. But their problems are not always our problems and in this case, we once again did not ask the right questions to our respondent.
Exploration is sure fun, it gives you the sense of wonder on what you are going to find and it gives you a feeling of discovery when you found something. But often you found something you do not need and must make a choice between keep going or to turn around and start again. And at this point we have felt that we’re too deep into this so we change the direction to follow the status quo (that’s what design is, the status quo is your user there’s no point of creating something the user don’t want to use).
3rd Stage | The Destination
We wanted to keep as much of the initial ideals of the projects as possible, we keep the tangible interactions no screens attached (pun intended). With the 1:1 scale prototype we decided to conduct a workshop to see what people sees in our installation, we asked them of what they think of the interactions and how they would use it without giving away any idea of what it is and what it is supposed to do. A response gave the right kick for us to redevelop the interactions into something more relatable to our initial thought of evoking reflection (yay it seems like we don’t need to go the informative tools route). To connect people with other people we give each strings heartbeat.
Upon finalizing the idea, we must pick the sets of data we want to use to bring the connection from digital-self data to the physical-self. We want something related to people physically, with the widely used wearable like Fitbit human physical measurement is easy to obtain. We then choose to go with the heartbeat data as one of the basic function offered by these types of wearables. Secondly with the physical form of our installation, it makes it easy to relate location as one of the bridging topic between the users and the digital-self data, relating the data to the location it came from was the key point for our users to reflect on. Whether the heartbeat in the area is specifically because of the area, or was it affected by some sort of actions. We then incorporate pollution level to enrich the value of reflections on the human connection with their surroundings.
The Result
A 2 meters tall and 4 meters square, tangible interactive strings built with six 1.6mm mdf base with wooden pin interlocking system to keep it at place and stop it from moving, a translucent plastic pole where we can put ambient lights in and hides the electronics and hooks to hold the strings. The six mdf boards was hand painted with monochromatic pantone depicting simplified maps of Brisbane.
The strings were controlled with Arduino, the input uses capacitive touch, where the surface were insulated wires. The 0.2mm insulated wires were to replace the use of strings which were not conductive. The capacitive wires work with the same principle as any capacitive touch surface, where the microcontroller detects the change of current affected by touch to the physical input. This changes of current then used as a trigger for the output which was to simulate heartbeat on the wire using vibration motor, and to change color of the light inside the pole to show pollution level.
Unity was used to translate and send real time data to the Arduino, the difficulty arises on reading the data the Arduino received as the Arduino can only use the port for one purpose at a time, either sending or receiving. Therefore, further adjustment was needed. To reprimand this problem, I must use unity to read what the Arduino is reading therefore the Arduino can use the port for reading the data sent by the unity.
What I’ve Learnt
Apart from time and team management, resources allocation, I learnt that creativity has no border, the method we choose is just a matter of pathways to get into the destination. From this experience, I understand that explorative approach is a good way to work on unfamiliar concept trying to not affected by the bias of other concepts. But structure is always needed to enforce discipline for the team to move forward. A project is prone to be unfinished when the designer has no resolve.
Technical knowledge wise, I learnt a lot on Arduino prototype development the type of sensors we can use and the type of sensors we can make. A lot of considerations for hardware has been put in creating the installation from choosing between actuators or vibration motors, touch interaction or gesture interaction, to the type of conductive materials could be used in the installation, it has certainly broadened my knowledge of hardware design and prototyping.
