Design Domain Research
Playful Systems
I’ve started by going to the MIT research website and looking through projects.
While watching this video
This video presented ideas about multi-agent systems and emergent properties that can come out of a system where multiple agents have simple rules applied, such as a flock of birds.
This project, Kilobots, presents a system like
As mentioned before, now I’m looking for talks by other people at the MIT Media Lab playful systems group to get an understanding about their process.
Here Taylor Levy speaks a bit about her work:
I found her talk interesting and her aims to achieve simplicity in both construction and presentation of her work to be quite interesting.
After browsing and watching more videos and reading more project proposals from people at the medialab, I’m starting to think that perhaps these projects just come from a place of curiosity and exploration rather than sitting and writing and bouncing around on various websites. One project I liked the simplicity of is this:
I also found this writing on generative design interesting, though not applicable to this project:
“We need to think more ethnographically to build our own data sets that are more granular and meaningful to the context of the design. The big hurdle is to come up with a process that converts ethnographic research into quantifiable data so the data could be used in algorithms.”
Now that I’ve read through the list of projects on MIT Playful Systems, I still feel a bit stuck.
Thinking a bit about how to reveal the complexity in the way humans input information. Perhaps it could be interesting to explore donald normans 7 input layers
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/fb/37/aa/fb37aa4c4083d78728060132b41c8465.jpg
It’s interesting to note that blogging more actively makes me aware of how quickly attention shifts. I apologize for all the rambling in these blogs. This is just a way to experiment with this form of active documentation.
I watched this talk about “Enchanted Objects”
“Enchanted objects will make interfaces tangible, haptic, incidental, embedded, expressive, humanistic”
I found this thought interesting and would like to consider alternate modes of input and output as a starting point for my playful system.
— taking a break to read some random tabs I have open and because I feel like I’m wasting time; on second thought reading random tabs that are open probably won’t help. going to close my computer and doodle or do something more physical for a bit.
done taking break —
during this time I wrote in my notebook about three tangible next steps:
- created a version of Steve Reich’s clapping in processing
- sound data visualization using IOT— input from various sensors that will make a collage of sound based on actions
- Write interview questions for everyday magic using design thinking
When thinking about Playful Systems, youth is often mentioned. These systems seem to be curious and naive. Interaction Designers LOVE to talk about interfaces and interactions as “intuitive” although I often find most interactions are not as intuitive as we would hope. Perhaps it takes looking at childhood and the real world to model our interactions with computers.
What if we had a volume liquid that we used to fill a special cup with sensors that would raise the volume of a computer?
The Death of Clapping music Idea
I was considering making a simple version of clapping by Steve Reich using processing. But I don’t think that this would work because it wouldn’t be very interactive. I would essentially just have a backing track acting as the second clapper, and upon further investigation, such an app already exists called Clapping Music:
Was considering using a solenoid to make a “clapping” noise
https://www.proto-pic.co.uk/solenoid-5v-small.html
Sound data visualization using IOT
Strange Instruments + Playful Systems + Enchanted Objects
A network of sensors in the home act as instruments which create a sound collage that is a document of your experience. Audio-ization (like visualization) of your experience.
Connected Objects. Complexity is revealed through the objects. They are “magical”.
Will have to create networked sensors using Arduino.
Have started reading from the arduino cookbook and making things talk. based off this, I can see that the overhead for creating IOT might be pretty costly. although i believe it depends on my choice in wireless technology.
3 most common and unavoidable things humans do:
use bathroom
unlock iphone?
open macbook?
drink from water glass?
toilet handles?
doors?
eat
refrigerator?
sleep
light switch in room?
What if all of these interactions acted as input, so that one could create a collage of sounds from all of these small interactions. This collage of sound would then serve to document the activity of one’s day.
It would be interesting to just record the sound of each of these activities
Or to map each of these activities to a representative sound? perhaps this can be a generic door close, generic toilet flush, etc. or perhaps it can be sounds that are representative of these interactions in some way.
I will ask the tutors tomorrow about the cheapest way to create a network of sensors in a home to detect things such as door opening.
Leaving this here for reference while I try to decide what technologies to use:
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/Arduino_Genuino/smart-thermostat-e1f400
today i’ve drawn a journey map to illustrate how a person’s interaction with my playful system would happen.
had a conversation with jen and these are the two next possible steps:
- create a 1–1 wireless connection to test what a wireless version of the system could be like (this can be prototyped on one board as input output then split up) using this board: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather-32u4-radio-with-rfm69hcw-module
- create a multiple input wired version of the system to see if the sound of daily life can be recorded as a score and turned into music
Bounced off ideas with Oolaf.
Thinking about systems of input and output. I could make the input of the system richer if I attached piezo microphones for input
Then for the output, I could have 3 separate speakers. One for each of the input devices.
and a computer that keeps track of time.
going to test today:
contact microphone pickup with arduino
keep track of the samples / input somehow
esp8266
radio
1–1
multiple inputs
