Categories: design, learning, physical interactive media

Last week Professor Andrew Bucksbarg, instructed the Physical Media class to build a minature model of our project and present it to the class. The reason for this exercise is to open our projects to more critique and encourage students to get a better understanding how the individual parts fit together - the arduinos, mounting the LEDs and sensors, and how the wiring and power sources are positioned in the enclosure.

Our model was made of foam board and paper vellum. We revised the physical dimensions from 3 x 3 (rows, columns) to 4 x 3. Where the center of the installation is at eye-level and the sensors are positioned between the waist and knee area for an adult.

One important question our team didn’t address in the design - what happens when nobody interacts with it? What does it do? To encourage engagement, we thought about various interactions that feels inviting yet triggers curiosity. In other words a “teaser”. Some ideas we played around with were to have certain squares fade or blink, a snake-like pattern from left to right, or spell out the words “YMCA”.

What’s next?

• Build the wooden casing (enclosure).
• Code the proximity sensors to map to certain colors with various distances.
• Brainstorm the detailed interactions when nobody interacts with it. When one, two, or three people interact with it (individually or jointly).