An Unimaginary Kid

I was looking at UX/IxD/HCI-type programs to help me with my career change and I do not regret attending Michigan. It is the more costly program between the two schools, but I felt it was worth it. 

So now that most of the hubbub with my classes is over, I wanted to take some time to reflect upon the class, my experience and my project. Coming into class, I was a bit apprehensive of the final product. I had never been a person involved with making physical things with my hands, so I had a feeling this class could be a challenge, so I had already started brainstorming rough ideas about viable projects to pursue since day 1 of class. Unfortunately, being indecisive, I had so many ideas that all differed slightly (while managing to involve LEDs) but I never made up my mind go commit to any one idea. Looking back, I shouldn't have let my busy schedule delay me in finalizing my project idea. If I had gotten a handle on what I wanted to do earlier, I could have bought supplies and started experimenting and maybe realized I had a faulty mic ahead of time, or had the prudence to order two in case. However, given the last minute change of plans, I think I managed to create something that exceeded my initial expectations after I had to change my project plans. Simple as it was, I found that I did learn some skills when putting my project together. I was reintroduced to soldering, learned how to strip wire like a pro, learned how to use a wire wrapper, became an exacto knife extraordinaire, and an origami lotus folding marathon champ. And in the end, my simple LED project looked nice and functioned as I had planned it to. Of course the build quality of the stand could have been better and more elegant, but that could be v2 of my project attempts. Overall, I had fun creating my project, and even more fun talking to my classmates about the cool projects they made. Because the majority have an architectural background, it was nice hearing about the techniques they used to build their installments - which was almost totally foreign to me. All in all, I think I may have a few projects to look into that use my Arduino as I continue to experiment in my down time when not working. :)

The premise of my LED Lotus Lights was simple: how can something in your environment react to your presence or absence. In my project, the flowers sense your presence and come alive by lighting up one by one as you draw closer. They are colorful, delicate and pretty; they want to show off. Related to the "living" building in my comparative critique , I wanted otherwise non-sentient objects around us to react to our presence and mimic the ability to understand and react. The flowers were meticulously hand folded. After folding over 30 flowers both white, colored and in several sizes, I decided to go with a multicolored smattering of different size flowers on a black board. The non-linear layout of the flowers in multiple sizes and colors lend itself to a more organic and less structured feeling than LEDs arranged in a square array. I decided to use flowers instead of just putting the LEDs under some sort of diffuser because I wanted to show that technology can come in many different shapes and forms, and because technology is ever more embedded in objects around us, they can come in unexpected shapes and sizes.

Saw so many great projects on Monday! It's amazing some of the things my classmates built/created. :)

And a picture for good measure

Taking a video of my lotus lights tonight before taking it apart for transport tomorrow. Not sure what can go wrong enroute and I want evidence of this project working before I face Fate tomorrow.

OK halfway there. They light up! Now to figure out how to build a stand for this and move the sensor towards the front...

Laying out my board and getting ready to make the holes! Wish me luck... :)

Testing testing... One faulty something so am down to 16 flowers instead of 17

ROYGBIV ....P....R

Anyone want a lotus blossom?

Wire wrapping works! Now to figure out how I want to arrange and build my display...

I think I am liking the white flowers more...

Experimenting with LED color and paper flower color

OK! Ready to fold...

Led Flower Phase one

Lotus flower