Throughout our course, making films is always something we have used, as both an end product, a way to record our research and a way to document how things work.
For one of our first project’s, we were asked to make a documentry focusing on how information is used on the internet. So here’s our take on freedom of speech on the internet…
For our final hand in for our Interaction module we were asked to design and make a website focused around sign systems, based strongly on the web and print research we had already completed.
i decided to base mine on Road markings, exploring the different types and styles of road markings
from typography to physical markings.
In our final project in the Arduino module, we were asked to create an Arduino based system which had a physical interfaced which let users convey human data through twitter.
In our group, we felt an RFID treasure hunt could be a good idea.
In the game there will be gold coins, which you scan off the RFID reader, to register that you have found each clue.There are Lights along the top of your treasure chest (reader) to track your process. Using PHP your progress will be posted on twitter.
Here’s a small film to document how our game formed:
In our DIxD module, the first thing we looked at was the difference between graphic design in both print and web design. after being asked to look at a piece from both sides i found firstly a website, http://www.corporateriskwatch.com/index.html by a design company “LeftLoft”. which became my design model for a large amount of my module this year. Something we were to focus on right the way through was constantly studying examples of good design, to improve our own designs.
We were asked to analyse our examples of design. Corporate risk watch (CRW) have used a five-column structure, this is a similar structure to a newspaper. The margins and spacing is consistent which gives the site an organised and professional feel. The use of whitespace gives corporate risk watch the site a clean, professional and uncluttered overview, the use of no images and good line spacing allows the reader to scan and read the website easily. Each of the five columns are used for individual means i.e. links to other pages, but they also act as the grid that the layout and content is created on. The gestalt of keywords used along the five headings highlights the interaction of the website. The design is simple but effective, the use of whitespace reduces the amount of text the reader sees at once, making the content easier to read and understand.
The text is justified to the right and the use of dark grey coloured font gives the site a corporate appeal. Dashes of colour draw the reader’s attention to the most important pieces of text. When it comes to typography there are two different fonts used through- out, these are rotated between headings and body text. Different pieces of text are split with a fine grey line, this is to emphasises the grids that are used in the layout.
The print design i studied was a brochure designed by Chris Paul for Morris James. The simplicity of this design instantly drew me in.
This print uses the Gestalt rules of simplicity very well, the impact of the oversize black numbers is concise and striking, it is strong which emphasis the figure and ground composition and this makes the whitespace stand out.
There is one small image used in the brochure to symbolise the problem or issue that is being talked about, the computer has added shadow to make the image stand out, this is another example of gestalt grouping.
The leading used creates a simple design; it looks like a gestalt of shapes as well as a body text. In print a serif font can be used, in this print the designer uses a coloured, sans serif text to draw the reader’s eye to the keywords, as it is different.
The use of whitespace reduces the amount of text the reader sees at once making it easy to read, it organises the text and images so that the page isn’t cluttered. This also reduces the amount of text making it easier to read, it looks and feels professional, there is also visual prominence to emphasise key words to the reader.
okay, so i suppose the next part of our physical computing module has been the Arduino pressure project, we were given a brief to design a game based around a single sensor chosen at random, and our group got a polar heart rate sensor.
Your heart rate is the number of beats measured against a period of time, usually beats per minute. (bpm) so from this we began to contemplate how we could take this information and use it in a game.
Considering that a persons heart rate can speed up and slow down depending on the activity they are engaging in, we felt this was a good basis to work from, beginning by thinking about the different activities that could stimulate your heart. Defining physical activity(exercise) and strong emotion as two main sections we wanted to explore. Drawing up some basic sketches and ideas.
We chose to look at the effect of staying calm, thinking about the difference between your resting heart rate, and when something is aggravating you. And so we began to create “KEEP CALM”
Okay, so thow this works… the heart rate monitor interface (HRMI), the red component in our set up, is an intelligent peripheral device that converts the signal from the Polar electro HRM transmitter, the sensor on the band round the persons chest, into easy to use heart rate data, showing your bpm through the serial monitor. So taking this data we changer the characters to integers and formed an if statement around this, where: if your heart rate reaches above a certain number a buzzer will sound, and as the aim of the game is to keep calm, the buzzer will only stop when you calm your self down.
so in this module so far we have been learning the basics of arduino coding in a serious of lectures. As well as this, we began a small research project, in which we had to look at a piece of physical computing using arduino and explore how it works, and it’s impact.
We discussed the Ideo’s C60, a music player created with arduino which plays music saved on RFID tags. On cards, that look like tapes. This is part of the Imissmypencil project, trying to make digital products physical again. Combining the idea of play lists and shuffle but adding a physical feel of mix tapes.
Each card has two RFID(radio frequency identification) tags in it, which have an MP3 format song attached. They wanted to use this technology to play multiple songs with the music player, by using a great number of antennas, positioned on the board at an angle they realised the could detect the maximum number of tags, making a more responsive music player.
You connect the arduino in the music player to a computer, and then play through speakers in or attached to the computer.
The attraction of this project was always the physical use of of music again, I have always been a fan of mix tapes, and would love to use something like this to actually feel my music again. This to me, seemed like a key point to Physical Computing, the idea that we should be interacting with out technology again, not only through a PC.
