ketch-up

Presentation went rather good, some confusion happened rather because initially we wanted to male it is equal and democratical as possibe, so we wrote script and and devided roles. At the end of the day we did not took into account diferences in public presentation skills and redines to improvise. 

Our pitch-presentatio  was predominantly critisised from the point of impossibility of imlementation, as well as over verbalised presentation, probably key points could be highlighted in more clear and acesseble way, probably more pictures and visualisation could be included. on the other hand we were told to be less modest and embrace our insight and speak of their importance in more clear way.

Speaking of other groups, I was highly impressed with my classmates. The most I understaood from presentation made by our peer-group Felix and Alina, they went the other way then we. They went with temperatur feedback. We skiped this idea almost immidiatly so that was curious how they managed to make something great out of what we took as not a working idea.

We actually were ready with script for the presentation and devision of the rols pretty in advance. We word main concept in a rather catchy style, at least how we understood the task, and had some argues if it shold sound as a ready made commersial: “Vibrace is a device for mindful shopping in which you can set your daily spending limit and the device notifies you with a tender vibration when the different stages is reached. It signals right at the moment when your hand reaches the desired item to wake up your awareness in order to help you make more aware choices or in the best case scenario prevent compulsive buying behavior”. 

We devided slideshow among us, and wrote a script pe slide each. That seems like a nice devision of work, but at the end of the day script were very different in style, length, and approach.

Video was not improved that much, but one if tester users told that if to add colored bar this might make idea more clear for the viewer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0e3qMaB4NY

After making simpliest GUI for operating our arduino part we also need some time to make libarary operate with it the way it was expected. The coding part of the project, we conducted to implement the JavaScript into the arduino and how we would do the layout of the visual side. It should refere to a shopping basket with an input field where you write in the cost of the hypothetical product that you are buying, ADVICE

- rougher to do it without ship but not more difficult

- code example:  

x = how long its on  

y = how long it stay off for

- we can control the vibration with button press/slider for instance

- we can use javascript or Arduino, whatever is easiest for us

- ask ioio lab for help

- we need to look at the spectrum between not feeling the vibration and it being disturbing

- probe our feedback and feedforward

- not sure if we should invest our time in making it work

- how much can we communicate through vibration is more important:  

frequency  intensity  time  patterns

- we need to be able to defend the bracelet and build a reason for it, "why is it better than a notification". 

Re-reading this article second time in frame of IxD cours. Except main aim of the articl to define and re-define design lexicon, but dig deeper on purposes and and variability of prototypes. re-reading was useful for Prototyping course in aprticular, to look sharper what kind of sences can be worked through form, what should be placed for user prototyping, and what can designers got.  Authors claim that previously prototypes was named, define and understood mostly by their attributes rather then their function and purpose, and further on they place the aim: “is to establish a model that describes any prototype in terms of the artifact being designed, rather than the prototype’s incidental attributes”.

After short presentation of current stage of development, we were recommended to plan further activities to be more efficient with preparing presentation. So we enlisted main milestones for first week, planed time for drafts, and also rest time.

We started with dividing into smaller groups on first day: pair dealing with arduino code, pair dealing with javascript and jason, and me planning and checking availability and other management tasks to make sure our plan is reachable.

Next days we spend in Design workshop trying out different apperances, soldering arduino cables etc.

Instruction was given about spaces of Design Lab, which consist of around 10 separated spaces. Entering from Orkanen, at first one enteres office where teachers and technicials can be found most of the time. 

This space wil be rebuild in summer, so during instruction guide we did not focus on that space much, all we need remember was to keep in mind office suplies are there. Next two rooms we used a lot for group work, and next one seems to be used for lectures for architects and other related professions. Some useful machines situated in smaller lecture and group work space, one can cut sharply plastics, papers and alike.

My favorite was a wood and metal workshow, full of big machinery to work on bigger projects, like table and chain saw, drill, belt sander and other. Since they are could cause the biggest harm, those all equiped with emergency button.

We were given detailed instruction how to beahve in emergency situation, and first  thing should be done is emergency button pressed, then bleeding stopped qnd qfter 112 should be reached. Although the technishian insure there was not emergenicies in the room since the moment Design Lab was builed. 

Our team also visited a lot a corner with smaller tools like automated screwdrivers, screws, knifs, hammers, scissors, etc. As well as tiny office for teachers stuff, storage for projects connected to the wooden workshop. Next big rooom was full of dryied orages juices because it was other student working on materials developing materials. 

Finally, deep far in the corner is pains, oils, lack, and clay workshop. The coolest of all equipment it the room was sandblast. 

Key point of the lecture was about distancing yourself from the people we are taking interview from.

My question remaind the same through the whole lecture: tthat to to distance onself from the audience, probably we should first to get closer and rather empathetic with the object, try yourself in shoes of studied individual, whithout this step it would be complicated to stay careful, ethical and accurate with recording reaction and maybe even emotional  connection. 

Of course a strong self-reflection should be part of the whole process, questioning own emotions and reaction might be easier format for me to work product of my studies.  At least, I really would argue it is better to be empathetic and connected during interview, in this case distancing come during transcribing interviews.

That lecture seemed to be pretty early in time, since deanline is on March 25th, but at the moment instructions and reflections in our group seems to be stuck on the stage of missing the point of the question in overly complected wording of the task. At the same time it gave a very clear understanding that this time essay should be take much more seriously then it was withing Methods I and Methods II courses. Current requirements and recommendation felt highly demanding and academical. Despite having somewhat experience in writing academical text I felt challenged, and scared at the same time.

Filming in a store

Showcase the bracelet

Show how the bracelet works: Feedback when picking up a product. If you put the product back on the shelf, the bracelet will think you wont buy the product. If you dont put it back, the bracelet will assume you will buy it and add the price to a tally so that the next product potentially gets a stronger feedback.

Show the entire transaction from choosing the product to paying for it

The transaction can be made by using this gadget (bracelet) as well and given the feedback(haptics) with the same intensity as the last purchase that has been made. Ex: if the intensity scales from the first purchse to the last, the intensity of the transaction will be the same as of the last purchase ot the interval you are currently at. In a way to remind the user of their purchase or what interval they are at.

https://youtu.be/6AcIDi3WpN8

At this point our work process felt chaotic, and amount of ideas where overwhelming. In a way we were scared and lost, but we still were obliged to come and present our “Thing”, which was not a thing yet. Presenting it to teachers helped us to organise thoughts, and come up with kind a structure; as well as to find out how hight are demands and stacks at this point.

After supervision we went to test sensory feedbacks. We considered sound, haptics, temperature and visual. We started from questioning again what we want to communicate through the feedback in relation to our HMW (materials, construction method, how abstract it should be.) 

A key realisation was to focus on the sensory feedback before the actual purchase occurs. If you consider buying a product, it is at the initial consideration phase that feedback on the price would be the most impactful. NB! Insight we got from a tester to make users more aware of their purchases it might not be very effective to give feedback of what you have bought after the transaction is made, because then you cant really change anything or reflect on the purhase and it might be a while before your next purchase.

SInce range of signals we can give is not very wide we also have other questions what the feedback should relate to? Was it feedback on the price compared to similar products? Compared to your balance? In relation to all products in that store? After some hours of discussion we decided to focus on giving feedback on the price of an object based on how much you have spent throughout the day. We chose this option because we felt that comparing a product to another with sensory feedback could be a bit redundant as you could just look at the price tags. We also wanted to steer clear of just comparing it to your balance because.  

ADVICE:

keep revisiting HMW;  

at the supervision we did not have much to present except scetches and owr way of thinking though cons and pros of different senses which potentially could serve us later. my initial idea after last supervision was to deconstruct each and every sense and its interective characteristics, such as levels of publicity and intimacy, positive and negative conotations and how those could be played around.

ADVICE: start trying things out! test materials, test senses, document  your insights!

So we did some usertesting of vibration and sound and documented it with video. First concept: Increasing sound by every purchase that exceeds your daily limit just before the transaction.The participant has expressed very vague connection between the sound and the behaviour of spending. The participant said that it wouldn't stop him/ her from buying the item or actually to draw a connection between the purchase and sound at all.Second concept: The vibration of the phone when the daily limit is exceeded just before the transaction is made.The participant said that it would just carry informative value in a way that it would let him know that his limit is exceeded but not in any way prevent from buying or changing his mind.Participant also said that if he was to make the transaction with a cashier, then it would pressure him to not give back the item, because it would make him feel uncomfortable or awkward. If he had a basket of items it would also be too much of a hassle to put everything back in its place.

Initially we tried plug-in headphones, and phone vibration. And came up with summery that sound was to distant from the action. On one hand it actually make person uncomfortable to have louder sounds, but on the other it was hard to connect action and sound.

Vibration on opposite was rather close to the moves and actions performed by hand (we attached phone with remotecontrol vibration to the  hand with tape). It happened to be very fruitful work, since our testers highlighted how different intensity of vibration do or do not informative. .

-----------------------------------------------------------SOUND

-----------------------------------------------------------FEEDBACK A bit intensive with a sound in general and especially with a heartbeat sound. Doesn't want people around you to hear the sound. Might not have earphones or Not wearing headphones when shopping even with headphones he wouldn't want something disturbing what he was listening to.  

People said they wouldn't want other people to hear the sound. Could this be connected to feelings of embarrassment or is it more about not wanting to be annoying.  

----------------------------------------------------------HAPTICS  

----------------------------------------------------------FEEDBACK

Users felt that haptics intensity reflects how much you are buying. Leads to more awareness, especially if you are in mindless shopping sprint. Liked the idea, thought it could help tester when mindlessly spending.

Tester thought it would be annoying for the first 3 products but for 4+ products it would be helpful to have a vibration. It is clear vibration. It reflects the intensity of how much you are buyingIf i know that I don't have money I would listen to this thing more. It wouldn't be nice to have something vibrating on my arm. 

---------------------------------------------------------FEEDBACK

---------------------------------------------------------TEMPERATURE 

We didn't have a way of testing the temperatures in a accurate way. After considering and asking users what they thought about it though we realized the cons of temperature outweighs the pros. We want a quick reactive feedback when you pick up a product which is hard to do on a bracelet with temperature. This could however work if the bracelet was always active throughout the day and got hotter as you paid more instead of when you pick up a product. ------------------------------------------------------------VISUALS We have not prototyped or tested the idea of visual feedback due to low responsivness of this type of feedback. After discussing all the pros and cons of this feedback we came to the conclusion that visuals are easy to ignore and might not be the most effecient way of getting people's reaction. Compared to other forms of fedback that make you aware of your purchase whether you put effort or not, the visuals might be more attention demanding of the user

Lecture started with rather discussional way, we were suggested to watch a video and  follow a number of characteristics to keep in mind for further discussion.

Those videos triggert, which trigger lively discussion, about ethics, about form. About purpose and need for this exact for of prototyping. My background in contemporary art and years of being fan of critical theory kept my interest especially when my classmates were undermining ctitical approach for knowledge development, I felt bothered and that pushes me to think of other argument. 

One of the questions we discussed was a project  by an inventors of the term “critcal design” Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. A dolls with collection of DNA of love partners, which list of characteristics written around the doll. The idea might sound fun, crazy, but also extremly unethical and uncomfortable for majority of class. We who grew up in the word full of missuse of personal data scares us with idea that our biometrics might be secretly collected and stored in a form of dolls by one of our past or future partners. Almost horrible scenario made our class argue, on one hand Impossibility and unnesecety of such a design object seems rediculous to produce, since it will never have any comercial value. But on the other hand such an extrem grotesaue form of design make it most vived what we value in idea of privacy for personal data and samples of own bodies.

In the following reseach through design also seems interesting for my way of thinking about the world of object.

Power of design, when it is comforting to look at smth questionable and superficial?

Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby developed a long list of characteristics to devide affirmative design, meaning design which follows current status quo of existing world and critical design aiming to overcome current state of affairs

Some of the problematic points of these aproaches mentioned in class were lack of responsibility, distant high-brow approach, lack of self-criticism, overcomlective way to sparce discussion.

NB! Speculative approaches - judge concepts as concepts; Critical design - place holders, not actually ment to be an answer; Indangetic design, which comes from process:

Further readings:

Bruce M. Tharp, Stephanie M. Tharp, Ken Friedman. (2013) Discursive Design: Critical, Speculative, and Alternative Things. 

Bardzell, S., Bardzell, J., Forlizzi, J., Zimmerman, J., & Antanitis, J. (2012).Critical Design and Critical Theory: The Challenge of Designing for Provocation. Proc. DIS’12, p288–297. ACM Press. 

Bardzell, J., & Bardzell, S. (2013). What is “critical” about critical design? In Proc. CHI’13, p3297–3306). ACM Press.

Dunne, A. (1999) Hertzian Tales: electronic products, aesthetic experience, and critical design (2005 ed.) The MIT Press, Cambridge MA. 

Tharp, B. M., & Tharp, S. M. (2013). Discursive design basics: Mode and audience. Nordes, 1(5). 

Tonkinwise, C (2014). How We Intend to Future: Review of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming, Design Philosophy Papers, 12:2, p169-187. Routledge

Next supervision was too soon, but our team came up with a number of pretty banal solutions. After each session of silent scetching of ideasion, we discusses each others ideas. Noticebly in most cases we kept ourselfs and teammates on the rational and pragmatical side of the river, meaning we tried to kept track of what will be easiest and most possible idea to develop in given time and with given resorces. 

presenting it at supervision was rather to understand how develeloped should be the project at the end of the course. ADVICE:

  So we were pretty surprised to hear that instead of self-limiting and self-censoring we should rather: “think wider, don’t be afraid to make crazy ideas,futuristic”

Getting ready for this supervision, our group was lost and not sure what to present. Main point seems to be about plan of activities, at the same time we were pretty scared with the fact of deadline for the video which approaching. 

We had some ideas, but does not have consensus Upon a concept and main idea or hmw. We felt raw and unprepared, so instead of presenting plan, we decided to get answers for bothering question to understand how to proceed.  Some notes were taking during the session. Since we do not have much to present, we only brought some sketches most of which cam from “experience prototyping exercise done the other day in class.  Raw notes from the meeting: ADVICE:

- Refine to some extend withing this family of ideas. - Try to thing of how to try out a physical solution. - No obligation to use cardboard at all, don’t constrain your mind. - Do role play, acted it out, construct it physically, do think. - What we expect that you still rely.

- Make stuff to find out.

- it is great to do as little prototyping, but with problem question to be resolved. - why did not you make survey, more feeding app. - think of what you imagine as outcome- 

*****************************************************************

VIDEO:

- figuring out, what is the right example, outside world, knowledge faking interaction, - aim is to have a moment of clarity - for concept, to be clear for teachers, 

- do not drop away ideas, what this modality gives us, maybe try to generate this ******************************************************************

PROCEED:

- color it with dreams, - can you try this thing, - prototyping 5 ideas, 5 concepts, - representation — no need spend all time,

- defending - idea, concept, prototype,

- ask yourself “how is different”, slow lingering, - light output - lingering feedback, it can take interesting, - distilling

“"What I hear I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand!"

Lao Tse

What is important in this text is that authors was addressing a practice of “prototyping an experience” which existed in design for ages, but was not highlighted as a matter of a prototype. All their examples are still material objects but for the authors materiality of the object or surrounding is not the one which matters as a prototype. One might say they are also trying to see unseen or rather to literally stage and play through “what it feels likes”. 

In this sense their article definitely convinced me look more closely on how prototyping could be extended. Although, I felt some kind of unclear upon who experience they are addressing as some of the given examples of “experience prototyping” was to stage a situation for designer like it was with designing a train interior, some was about usual cultural probes like with photo devices given to kids. Of course in discussion part Buchenau and Suri mentioned impossibility to feel others’ feeling for real, but they did not unpack that impossibility, limits and ambiguities of what they called “experience prototyping”.

Key design activities —

understanding, exploring and communicating

— through examples from design projects.

beyond the "concrete sensory." 

For future use, I also noted some quotes:

"Prototypes" are representations of a design made before final artifacts exist. They are created to inform both design process and design decisions.”

“Building from this foundation, designers at IDEO are working to expand internal prototyping practices to embody the concept of "Experience Prototyping" as an integrated part of the design process.“

“Prototyping "experience" Houde and Hill call the "look and feel" of a product or system, : "the concrete sensory experience of using an artifact — what the user looks at, feels and hears while using it." 

"Experience Prototype" the experiential aspect of whatever representations are needed to successfully (re)live or convey an experience with a product, space or system”. 

“Experience Prototyping is less a set of techniques, than it is an attitude, allowing the designer to think of the design problem in terms of designing an integrated experience, rather than one or more specific artifacts.”

who are those specialists ? e.g. interaction design, industrial design, designers of environments, human factors specialists, mechanical and electrical engineers.

[would be curious to google those specialization, have not heard about half at least]

“Resonates with personal experience”.

“What are the contextual, physical, temporal, sensory, social and cognitive factors we must consider as we embark on design? What is the essence of the existing user experience? What are essential factors that our design should preserve?”

“The vividness of this owned experience creates subjective, lasting memories which influence and guide the designers’ choices and decisions throughout all stages of the design and development process”.

February 14. Lecture upon Experience Design 

At the lecture main points of the article upon Experience design was presented and suggested for design. From that article I was curious weather who win more from that kind of design user or design. We were suggested to brainstorm on idea from experience  design upon googles to see radio magnetic waves. Our  tandem with Silvia came up with having UV marques only visible in darkness with specific flashlight. With more time given simple maker around daily object such as computer, microwave, etc, could be developed with spreading sparkle when the object is turned on. That exercise was useful and challenging at the same time.

......  For accomplishing an assignment we were given about 2,5 days. We were trying to set and imagine what kind of data could be easy to navigate and read with only a joystick and a led lamp. After looking through availiable libraries and APIs and a short brainstorm of ideas, Lukas suggested using and compiling Google Maps API and COVID cases statistics. Meaning one should be able to navigate along given google map and considering numbers of COVID cases led-lamp-brightness (or frequency of blinks) would respond accordingly. 

However, after figuring out how to generate API key of Google Maps without payment, and other big and small things concerning GMaps API documentation, which was really hard to consume, we also went through a video tutorial and so on. We finally agree that our idea was too ambitious and it might be simply not enough time so also to include COVID case, and properly read through it’s documentation. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript.

Although, I still feel lost facing API  documentation, we worked as a team and helped each other throughout the process, which was a blessing for me. 

Desperate after hours of thoughts, we asked some teachers for assistance and got fluent and fast help which worked on assignments that felt more decent, but also brought guilt of not being clever enough. Challenged with Google maps we came up with a simpler version of the project, where we would only expect lamps to blink upon crossing the equator. 

On the final day, we came to class frustrated and lost, because we understood that even taking into account the joystick breaks the whole system, so we were allowed due to lack of time (and brain apparently) to only work with LED brightness and GMaps API. 

https://youtu.be/4jpE0dAAxXA