Screenshot of Worlds Top Tourist Destinations
The last week of our Interactive Data Visualization course was spent working on a final project using Adobe Flash and a UN Data Set of our choice. Working together with Mimi Son, we chose a data set from the UN’s World Tourism Organization and created a visualization that examines the region of origin of tourists in the world’s 10 most visited countries for 2005.
Click here to launch the application in a new window
PhotoCaring mockup
As context for the Graphical User Interfaces course, we used the elderly home insights we discovered in our User Research course for developing concepts for the GUI final project. Why elderly homes? As the course syllabus explains:
Creating a concept with an application specific GUI for an eldercare context with multiple user groups (patients, doctors, nurses and visitors) with their respective information needs represents an interesting basis for the students to create highly tailored and relevant interfaces for a demanding target group. The students will have to develop, design and prototype tools and experiences that have impact and show empathy towards the different user groups needs and contexts.
After a lengthy and intensive concept development process and user testing at the elderly home, Jacob, Ash and I presented PhotoCaring for our final presentation.
Presenting our insights to the class
Earlier in the week we visited two elderly homes in Copenhagen to find “user insights relevant to improving the lives of elderly people.” After countless hours of exhausting data analysis, each group was asked to present “the 3-6 most important insights of relevance for designing and improving the interface between residents and care takers in old people’s home.” We had to organize all our notes, stories, observations, quotes, photos, etc…, identify patterns and refine these broad topics into specific needs.
We started our presentation by discussing the context (homes we visited, people we talked to) and the process of our groups study and analysis. Then we presented four specific needs and supported them with quotes and photos. We discussed opportunities to address these needs, problems and issues obstructing them and ultimate goals that solving these needs might achieve.
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.
Exercise #3 from the Computational Design workshop syllabus:
In Exercise #3 we will focus on ‘people as data’ [3]. Like in the preceding exercise the
participants will be asked to take a prepared data generating object but this time put the object and the data it collects into context. While the construction of the object will not be
discussed the context will. Where do we place the object? What is the interval in which it
will gather data; a minute, an hour, a day? How does the data relate to something
meaningful? The data will be collected and visualized. The participants will learn to
translate a more abstract intention or concept into software. The result will be a poster. It is not required that the poster is created completely from code, but should include a
substantial amount of programmed form. The participants can use tools of their choice ( like pencils, illustrator or fire arms ) to add extra meaningful layers.
The main challenge of this exercise was to represent data in a meaningful and visually pleasing way. Each student was to collect data using a Nintendo Wii controller, use Processing to compute and create a visual representation of that data and finally use that output in a composition presented on an A1 size poster.
We just finished our second “foundations” workshop and the subject was video prototyping. From the course syllabus:
Representing complex relationships, new behaviours and attitudes are an integral part of interaction design. These can be represented through many mediums including sketching, making physical prototypes, etc., but capturing the journey over time requires a linear medium like video.
Prototypes help validate the value of new ideas and test initial assumptions. Prototypes can also help to convince other and yourself. Early and rapid prototypes require low resource and time investment. It provides faster feedback and a participatory approach to developing your ideas. It also provides early validation of ideas in the development life-cycle and creates a platform for constructive discussions.
Exercise #2 from the Computational Design workshop syllabus:
In Exercise #2 we will focus on interaction. It will be a 2-day exercise evolving around the
idea of ‘people s actions as data’ [2]. A single, generic, multi-purpose, data-generating
object will be the center of attention. The participants will learn the basics of the processing development environment, programming fundamentals, thinking interaction and the translation of data into dynamic form. Due to the restriction of only having a single data-source, we expect the participants to also develop a way of exchanging knowledge gained, be it verbally or in software code. The result of the exercise will be a physical, interactive application.
Using Processing as the development environment and the Nintendo Wii controller as an input device, I focused on writing an application that was simple and engaging and I worried less about what I could achieve through programming. The result was an interactive application which gave a user the impression they were watching me eat food in my kitchen and that they could physically fling me from side to side by moving the Nintendo Wii controller. What emerged was a sort of game to see who could make me sit up straight and eat my food.