Adam Little @ CIID

In this photo: Cheeseburgers, fries, quesadillas, US flags, Statue of Liberty and 7 people not eligible to vote in the USA.

Some photos from last week’s project by Alice, Ujjval and I…

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As a final project for our Physical Computing workshop, Ujjval Panchal, Alice Pintus and I created a physical email notifier in the form of a wine bottle.

Message in a Bottle is the first prototype in a series of physical objects for the home that notify their owner of incoming emails. Our goal is to limit our compulsion to obsessively check the computer for new messages while also bringing characteristics of postal mail to the digital world.

Through ambient lighting, this wine bottle will display the amount of new emails from a set of specific contacts (i.e. friends from back home) which are defined in the user’s email client. Picking up the bottle will activate an LCD screen with a summary of the most recent message and turning the bottle upside-down will load the next new message. Once all messages have been read, the LCD screen and ambient light will shut off until new messages are received and looked at.

We envision different objects for different sets of contacts, such as a picture frame for family, a pencil holder on your desk for work contacts or a sentimental object to notify emails from a significant other.

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My bookmarks from the past week:

• The Power of The Visual
  “Ben Fry discusses the ever-increasing crossover between art, design, and technology”
• Emily Pilton interview on Ecolect

Photo by Tobias Toft

The topic of the last two weeks was Physical Computing. The course was taught by Massimo Banzi from Italy and Gwendolyn Floyd from the US with help from CIID faculty member David Mellis. Our tool of choice was Arduino, the open-source electronics platform that is most popular amongst designers and hobbyists because of its flexibility, ease of use and large online community. Massimo and Dave are two of the original Arduino developers (and featured in the current issue of Wired) so learning from them was a real pleasure.

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