Author Archives: mahroosal

Data Physicalisation and starting point of the project We have started the process of brainstorming for this week’s project. Even though we were given some examples and options to choose from for our topic, after discussing it in our group, we all realized the design space is very broad and choosing a topic would takeContinue reading

Artificial Intelligence in IxD Artificial intelligence may sound like an abstract area that only engineers and researchers deal with, at least that is how I felt about it until recently. However, we as normal citizens, come into contact with this matter on an everyday basis, when doing online shopping or browsing e.g. Netflix. In thisContinue reading

Adding Smell to a game! Me and my teammates started the brainstorming process of choosing a game to add a smell to one of its “game mechanics”. Since we are working remotely at the moment, we decided to use whatever scent/smell we have at home. We have landed on the game “draw the pig tail”Continue reading

Smell (intro) The lecture was mostly an overview of the paper “The Skin Games: Fragrant Play, Scented Media and the Stench of Digital Games”[1], which I had already read before the first day. I cannot really think of anything new that came up in the lecture itself only, but one general point is the factContinue reading

Presentation and feedback We continued the rest of the project including the final touches and decisions, the slides and what to say in the presentation remotely. We chose to start by explaining briefly the process of how we did the project and how we came up with the idea followed by the characteristics and designContinue reading

shooting day About the design choices regarding our ideas of peripheral displays, we think the smartwatch itself is not peripheral, but it has some peripheral aspects inside its interface, like the timer. It is glanceable because the information is available very directly and with the least amount of attention. Here we need to consider theContinue reading

Glanceability and starting point of the project The ideation process for the project started with us reading the brief several times and have discussions about it among us. The requirements of the project are not that many, so we have a somewhat open design space. Reading the examples provided, helped us more in understanding exactlyContinue reading

Course intro Today was the first day and the introduction of the course. Afterwards, we made groups and were asked to write our morning routines (user journey) on post-it notes in a chronological order. Then we were asked to imagine that we had a limited time in the morning, so only keep the activities thatContinue reading

Second sketch (3) Our sketch, as it is now, is more focused on the ‘space around‘, and the output, and not enough attention is on the movements themselves. This is why we are thinking of imposing some rules in the way the user should move, e.g. hands need to be attached to the body. IfContinue reading

Second Sketch (2) We decided to first have the code up and running before we started the “bodystroming” process, the reason for this is the limited time in general and the limited skill we have in programming, so it takes a lot of time for us to get familiar enough with the new codes andContinue reading

Second sketch (1) After our coaching session today, we now are moving on to another concept, involving sound as our feedback (output), we are still not sure about the exact movement(s), it’s in our plan to do some “bodystroming” again, most probably blindfolded, to better experience and sense the aesthetics of the in-body movements, eliminatingContinue reading

Frist sketch We decided to tweak the existing sketch we had and came up with the “stretch ball” example to feel the movements as well as to try something out and have something simple up and running from the coding perspective and see how it looks on the monitor and if the 2d quality ofContinue reading

Experimenting with different movements – “Bodystorming” We had a lecture about and revolving around the article “Studies of Dancers: Moving from Experience to Interaction Design”[1]. It talks about a lot of things among which a few are not interesting to us in the context of this course, but one of the things I found interestingContinue reading

Getting familiar with ML as a design tool I was thinking about what is “interesting” in the concept of movement. Or what does “interesting” even mean? Some ideas I am thinking about to experiment with is whether the material will be able to pick up on the different parts of the body if we areContinue reading

Module 3. KICK-OFF Today was the start of the third module. I am already thinking about mistakes I made in the last two, and also what the best possible strategies could be for us to explore the material and the concept to the fullest, and have some final prototype at the end. We will exploreContinue reading

_________________________________________________________________ Second sketch (3) For the “running” pattern, we started to think about the wave of a heartbeat. We discussed our own thoughts and experiences about it and concluded that when we have run for a long time, we can feel our heartbeat, but it is not a double-peaked one. When the heart beats fast,Continue reading

Moving on to the “tangible” We were still focused on the theoretical and contextual part of the project until today, and then we decided to move on to the more practical part. The transition from the intangible exploration to the tangible required us to consider and then trying out different sensors and devices that weContinue reading

Second sketch (2) Today we had a plan of picking one part or stage of the light pattern that we have created, focus on it and what it expresses. We picked the one that was initially supposed to represent the stage of semi-alertness. In the context of “pursuit”, we realized it gave us the feelingContinue reading

second sketch (1) Today we had a concept and plan in mind we wanted to follow, we then decided to have 2 groups of 4(from our classmates) to interview. The idea was to ask the first group, individually, to imagine they are being pursued/followed by someone, and have them name and explain the types ofContinue reading

Constraints The lecture was about the constraints in design process, different kinds of them exist. The lecture was based on the paper [1] we were introduced to, environmental, self-imposed, imposed constraints. Some part of the lecture was about the energy-use/energy-footprint of the existing devices and designs and how we could be more environmentally conscience andContinue reading

Module 2 – first sketch The goal of the first week is to get to know the material and its constrains and limitations, as well as the code (arduino) we are going to use. A single LED is so simple and used everywhere that is somewhat neglected, however, is has a lot of different propertiesContinue reading

_________________________________________________________________ Second sketch (I) The sketch now, as it is, requires the user to adjust her/his breathing pattern and how deep their breathing is, and match it to the GUI to fill the space. If the user stops, even if there are any circles already on the page, they would all get cleared gradually. ThisContinue reading

Interaction Attributes We were briefly introduced to interaction aesthetics last year, in this course we are getting more and more familiar with it. Last week, we formed groups and each group picked one pair of interaction attributes to work with. We picked Instant-Delayed. At first, it was difficult to come up with examples of delayedContinue reading

First sketch After playing around in the “playground” sketch to get to know the material a bit more, the sample I decided to work with was the “threshold”, which detects the frequency of the sound. We picked “whistling” as our input and sound at first. After trying it out and seeing the thresholds were met,Continue reading

About Last Year’s Journaling… •Can you characterize the feedback you got? -The feedback I got was mostly positive, saying it is generally a good journal, the practical activities are briefly summarized and then transitioned into personal reflections. Some improvements can be made. (Although, specifics on which parts exactly are not mentioned.) _________________________________________________ •What did youContinue reading