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Exercise #3: Design Generation
Due on October 15.
Please note that two related things are due on Oct. 15: 1. Each individual class member should work through the exercise described below. This will not necessarily be discussed in class but should help inform your team's project development.
2. Each team will present in class their planned project and current state of thinking about the project: what the instrument is, what it does, why that's interesting, and how they plan to implement.
DESIGN GENERATION
This is another multi-step exercise:
STEP 1: THEME. Begin by developing a description of your own interpretation of our design theme (physical instruments for complex data): what are important aspects of the Ideal Data Instrument? List a number of features an Instrument should have (may or may not be related to the ones proposed in class). These are not absolutes, but a guide to help you think along various vectors.
STEP 2: EXPANSION: Then, bearing your ideal instrument in mind, come up with at least 4 interesting research questions (content for your instrument to work with), 4 interesting input modes, 4 output modes, and 4 metaphors.
STEP 3: EXPLORATION: Combinatorically explore that
4-dimensional space. (Remember the Zwicky box?) That
is, identify the most promising combinations along the dimensions that you identified in your questions. (Probably select 4-8 candidates from among the 256 possibilities.) Be creative here;
don't dismiss odd combinations out of hand. Be systematic in finding the "sweet spots" in your design space. You may want to try using cartooning, sketching or storyboarding to envision your combos.
STEP 4: REVIEW AND REFLECTION: Embody your work in Theme, Expansion, and Exploration in written form (plus/or art if you think it's appropriate). Each person will do this exercise individually, but we will collect and evaluate them by team. We'll do that in a next round of team meetings. This
will help to surface hidden ideas that your team may
not have heard or taken seriously.
HINTS AND ADVICE FOR EACH STEP:
THEME:
Here are some aspects of The Ideal Instrument (as digested
in class). Revise at will (but be prepared to say why):
A modal/adjustable artifact; even if form itself is
immovable, a user should be able to manipulate it
(e.g. capacitive sensors, optic sensors)
Intersects/interprets/explores virtual system/complex dataset
Immediacy in perceived effect
Enhances understanding of complex datasets through personal exploration and improvisation
Shortens feedback loop (query/response); possibly real-time
May enable multi-sensory interaction
May allow multi-person ensemble interaction
Naive - expert user continuum: shortening learning curve
NOT: wearables; virtual, ambient or augmented systems; tangible media, though some aspects will doubtless be shared with these. Let's find the diffs.
EXPANSION: RESEARCH QUESTIONS
By now, you and your team should be looking at some
general directions to head in: domain, problem type, some interesting hardware. Turn your curiosity into research questions. One rule of thumb: the answer to a good research question is often another research question. While the rest of this exercise should be
done individually, some team-wide discussion of
research questions and domains will help here. We expect to see
some consistency among team members.
INPUT MODES: include form, type, and possible technologies.
Here are few questions to get you thinking (remember the class exercise?):
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Find forms (physical or conceptual, e.g. free-space gesture) that resonate for you (perhaps in some way that's related to your research domain(s)). What kinds of sensors could be attached/embedded/used in each form?
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How many streams/types of information could be gotten out of those sensors? Are these compatible?
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Which forms are preferred: most useful, manipulable, obvious to user, give greatest range of control...?
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How could the form of the input mode be altered to best enable the preferred sensors? Scale, shape, material, genre...
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What kind of problem would resonate nicely with this form?
OUTPUT MODES: include form, type, and possible technologies.
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Think about forms and types of sensory modes for understanding output and a related output display, effector, or actuator: e.g. visual/auditory/tactiale/haptic/multimodal, color/shape/scale/context.
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What kinds of data map best to your set of sensory modes and displays/actuators/effectors?
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How many streams of information can be manipulated and
absorbed? Where are there conflicts?
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Which is preferred: most useful,
manipulable, obvious to user, gives greatest range of
control...?
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How could the form of the output be altered to best enable understanding of the data? Scale, shape, material, genre...
METAPHOR
While we have not said much about metaphors as yet, they are
powerful ways of thinking about problems (as well as
making devices more comprehensible.) If you feel
stuck, start by using experiences that were presented
in class. Clearly, interactive metaphors will be more
useful than static or passive one. Go to your research
questions for inspiration as a last resort.
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