#finalbrief

FINAL BRIEF: EVERYDAY THINGS - PHOTOGRAPHY

Photo 2 is a close up of the weight at the end of the balloons my sister got for her birthday. I like how the light hits the coloured foil at many different angles. I also like the contrast of the the way the light hits the curved ribbon compared to the more rigid folds around the weight. 

I increased the contrast of this photo slightly to exaggerate the lights and darks in this photo.

I decided to choose the 3rd brief as I came up with the idea of walking around Cardiff looking at the clubs and listing the most appealing properties of those clubs to young people. I wanted to make this video because I would’ve loved to have seen this video before coming to Cardiff as a fresher in order to see where the cheap places are and what kind of music they play. It took me quite a while to realise which clubs I liked the best and this guide would’ve helped me a lot.

After testing the different concepts we have decided on one final as our solution to the brief. We have kept the interactional qualities from “Tag” and combined it with the conceptual conflict between reality and computer mediation from “Spotlight”.

Our final concept called “Ghost” extends on the explorative qualities from “Spotlight” by providing options for interaction between visitors. This is done through feedback communicated in the same way, as we did in “Tag”. Furthermore Ghost enhances the conflict between the expected behavior and the actual behavior of the system by showing persons on the screen, that are not present in reality. Instead of having a static image as background like in “Spotlight”, we are now using a pre-recorded video of people walking around at the entrance area.

With the concept “Ghost” we are trying to encourage curiosity by letting users explore through interaction. This interaction holds a conflict between users’ expectation and users’ experience, as it draws a connection between the digital and the real world. Together with the peephole principle for engagement (Dalsgaard & Dindler, 2009) this conflict is what excites users’ curiosity and encourage them to explore the system’s perception and reaction. The idea is, that puzzling visitors provoke reflection on the computer as a medium for representing the real world.

The concept as a solution to the brief Our goal was to demonstrate a novel interactive experience, that provoke visitors to reflect on digital technology as a medium for perceiving reality - focusing on the relation between human and computer.

The field of IT is about representing and enhancing human reality and everyday life through information technology. ITU as a university seeks to explore, understand and develop this field. It is a process driven by curiosity and knowledge generation. Some main focuses within this area are the relation between humans and digital technology, and technology as a medium for representing reality. Our concept invites visitors at ITU to explore this relation between humans and digital technology.

References:

We want to explore different conceptual possibilities before settling with one concept. The technology of motion tracked have proved to be very flexible and suitable for the brief and situation, but we still have to decide on a final concept. We have spend some time converging on the concept of “tag” with one circle following persons nearby, but it is still lacking inquisitive use. Therefore we want to diverge and look into other conceptual ideas. We might be inspired by other ideas and be able to combine them.

To decide which conceptual ideas to pursue, we have evaluated each idea’s interactional properties.

“ALL CIRCLES”

Our initial test sketch, where all tracked persons are marked by a circle. When two circles collide they become one. The main interaction attributes are here fast, instant and stepwise (Lenz et al., 2003). The system reacts instantly as intended and there are no fluent states in-between - the user is either being tracked or not. This makes the correlation between action and function too obvious, which leaves nothing left to be explored.

“VIDEO MASK”

Inspired by the approach of using peepholes as means of engagement (Dalsgaard & Dindler, 2009) this sketch requires social collaboration to reveal hidden information - a video masked between users. This sketch includes an interesting visual aesthetic of layers being controlled by collective motion. But the user engagement is quite passive, because the goal of revealing the video is not challenging at all. Users just spread out their positions to expand the canvas. Furthermore the sketch don’t encourage motion. When testing it we tended to stop moving and watch the video.

“TAG”

The strength of the "tag" concept is the way it encourage high intensity of interaction - also socially. But it is very obvious conceptually and includes no associations to IT - apart from the motion tracking technology.

“SPOTLIGHT”

"Spotlight" is a combination of "tag" and "video mask" in the sense, that it focuses on one user at a time and masks out everything else. A static image of the entrance at ITU is shown in the background with no people. On top of that the person in focus is shown, but other people a hidden, even though they are present i reality. This creates a conflict between, what the user expect to see on the flat screen, and what is actually shown. This conflict encourages inquiry (Dalsgaard, 2008, p. 4) and it provokes reflection. The user has to explore the installation actively to understand it. Conceptually this is very interesting, but the interaction lacks the visibility and apparent feedback from "tag".

References:

Dalsgaard, Peter (2008): "Designing for Inquisitive use" in Designing Interactive Systems '08, ACM, South Africa.

Dalsgaard, Peter & Dindler, Christian (2009): ”Peepholes as Means of Engagement in Interaction Design” in Nordes 2009 - Engaging Artifacts, Oslo.

Lenz, Eva, Diefenbach, Sarah & Hassenzahl, Marc (2003): “Exploring Relationships between Interaction Attributes and Experience” in DPPI 2003, ACM, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

When we tested out our initial motion tracking sketch, we found it interesting to play with the behaviour of the marking circles: How well the circles follow movement, and the way circles merge, when to persons get close to each other. But because all persons being tracked have their own circles, the invitation for engaging socially is very limited. We needed to insert more interesting relations between people being tracked.

The user needed a goal to pursue, and the goal could be provided by the system. We decided to explore, what would happen if we only showed one circle at time. We modified our sketch to have one marking circle, that follows one moving person at a time. If another person comes near the circle changes target and follows the new person.

We needed the circle to change target fluently instead of stepwise (Lenz et al., 2003). This was done by implementing physics of velocity and acceleration into the circle object and an algorithm to steer the transition.

This turned out to offer an abstract but clear goal for the user: To either have the circle or avoid it. This way the circle became a spotlight connoting the system's focus. The concept was similar to the classic children's game "tag".

References:

Now we are entering the final project in this course. Here we are allowed more freedom to explore different technologies and forms of interaction. This post includes my initial thoughts on the final brief, which is phrased as follows:

Design an interactive artifact, that lets ITU visitors experience, that they are visiting an IT University.

This brief is quite open and broad, which leaves it up to us, to decide which technology, interaction and concept is best for solving the task. The brief consists of three parts:

The artifact and interaction has to take place at ITU.

The target user is visitors at ITU, which means people, who both do visit on a daily basis and do not visit daily.

The experience of the interaction should demonstrate or represent the area of information technology in an university setting.