Week Three: Class Revision and Workshop

The brief presentation from Leonardo helped me understand better the concept of Input/Output and the wide range of input and output methods. This was demonstrated through Leonardo’s music mapping techniques. Particularly the “Drum Beat” Noodle thing and the dancers music board. All these inputs came from a wide variety of sources and were able to tap into a wide variety of sources.

The design task centres around understanding a behaviour and helping to design an interaction centred around the behaviour; something which helps facilitate an interaction.

From here, we brainstormed understanding keywords from week 1, listing inputs and outputs. This was coupled with a brainstorm of behaviours, which resulted in connecting inputs and outputs.

Finally, the design team also looked at the technology we had at our disposal as well as our current understandings of Arduino programming. We wanted to create an interaction that utilised all 5 senses, something that was bold without being limited by the usual solutions. 

Assessment One Workshop:

The Concept:

The Concept we generated, and at this point, the one we’re running with, centres around what people do in a panic. A reaction which is perhaps more natural and unfiltered than any other.

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The group then thought of ways to harness the panic as an input to an “interaction” with a fictious ‘device’ that would produce an output, thus easing, preventing or stopping the panic.

We brainstormed several emergency or terror-driven situations as can be seen here.

As a result, we came up with the concept of a prison situation, which involved restriction of interaction between people for their own safety. The Input would come through several sources. If a person felt threatened, they could yell or hit a safety switch which would trigger a visual and sound alert on console to tell the authorities about the incident. 

The third and final input would require no conscious input by the person at risk. This concept would require a weight sensor in a “cell” which would be triggered if more than a specific amount of weight entered the area, thus indicating that two people were in the one area.