For the stupid pet trick, I wanted to design a child’s nightlamp that would change into different colors when the child tapped it. Not only that, but I thought it would be fun if the lamp was able to move slowly/have some kind of motion as it shun its light in the night.

Therefore, my nightlight came into fruition with the help of neopixels, a stepper motor, the laser cutter, and the 3D printer.

First I built the base using the laser cutter and acrylic.

I knew I wanted 2 different kinds of neopixel patterns, so there were neopixels strung to the top of the lamp with orbs from the 3D printer.

Then there was the rack and pinion which physically moved the motor after neopixels were attached to it. The motor was attached to an arduino using a motor shield. Here is the code for the neopixels.

Stepper Motor:

And finally here is the end product. There is a touch potentiometer that allows for the neopixels to change in color.

 

I feel like the people in this response missed the point that Victor was trying to make. He wasn’t necessarily saying that the current design of ipads and touch screens are bad, but that they can be improved on and shouldn’t be the end of that design aspect. I think he also put things into perspective very well when he used the Hamlet and Dr. Suess comparison, even if it was a bit snippy at the audience member who asked the question.

That being said, he was a bit snarky about it which while I found a bit endearing, might make people a bit less open to hearing out his point.

THANK YOU MR. BRET VICTOR.

I am very glad he wrote this article.

When I watched the video, I felt like I was watching the futuristic people from the movie Wall-E. If you haven’t seen the film then let me tell you, people become technologically advanced to the point that they don’t even need to walk. While the video wasn’t that extreme, I felt it wasn’t showing what humans are capable of doing when interacting with this technology too. And this is what Mr. Bret Victor points out too. The reason I thank him so much is because he not only pointed this out, but built a good case on how important our hands are in this human capability/interaction.

Now, there are some issues with his logic, don’t get me wrong. He argues that the future shouldn’t be limited by doing things with simply one finger when we have our whole bodies, but I do not think this should be applied in all cases. This especially comes to mind after Marriane Petit’s Assistive Technology workshop that I attended in which technology is designed with the disabled in mind. In this case, using only one finger to navigate through various tech could be life changing for someone who has limited mobility. So the idea itself has amazing merit, but I do agree that it is not for everyone.

Brainstorming:

When we first began this project, Adham and I were a bit stuck for multiple reasons:

1. we couldn’t think of an instrument to make or how to use a real one. Like if we used a real guitar, how do we pluck the strings with only 2 servos? Should we plug in 4 servos? 6 or more?
2. how do we use a buzzer and a servo in unison???
3. and lastly, I would say the biggest problem we had was we both know absolutely nothing  about music.

From there, we spotted an empty water jug and decided to work with it as a drum.  We figured we could incorporate the buzzer later.

Building/Coding

The building process was not difficult, as we just glued a wooden rod onto a servo, and filled an empty water jug about halfway.

From there, we connected the servo to our Arduino, but we ran into some issues because we thought we were going to use 2 servos. We ended up not using 2 servos but only 1, and our setup for the mechanism includes two Arduinos that are wired up together.

Splitting up the work load was a bit easier, as on one computer we had the code for the buzzer, and on another we had the program for our water jug drum.

From there, we just picked a song and programmed the bass of it into the buzzer, while our water jug would be the drum.

We couldn’t find the notes in an easy-to-read format for someone who cannot read music, and so programming the song into the buzzer took a bit of work, as we only vaguely knew what note was playing. (For example, a C note may have been playing, but we didn’t know if that was a C5, C4, or C3 etc.) So in order to code it, we mostly did it by ear.

Here is the coding for the music:

And here is the coding for the servo/stick:

 

And so our drum song became complete!

Give it a listen, do you recognize the song?

Comment 1.

While reading this, I was reminded a lot of another class I have taken called “Wayfinding” with Professor Goffredo Puccetti. In this course, we walked around our university’s campus and looked at some aspects of the design that were confusing, or even potentially dangerous.

One of the most common problems on campus is that people walk on the grass instead of the pathway; this I think ties into what Don Norman was saying about Human Centered Design. People will want to walk the shortest distance possible to get to their destination, and so that should be taken into consideration when laying out pathways.

This concept specifically stood out to me because it is so prevalent where I live.

Comment 2.

This reading covered a lot of interesting/useful things a designer should keep in mind. From affordances and signifiers to the amount and delivery of feedback; these are all aspects that should be considered in designing lots of things, not just concrete objects.

I like specifically how he mentions things like furniture layout are a part of design, because this is not something people think of when they hear “design”.

This ties back to my Wayfinding class which focused on the ease of navigation and understandability of a space. This too, is design, as it is an umbrella that encompasses a plethora of practices.

Premise:

Have you ever been on a date and the other person begins to be… a little too handsy?

Well say no more, because the “Can’t Touch This Sweater” is the perfect product for you.

Not only will you know that your date is being rude because of their hands, but the flashing red light will show other people that your date is being a bit too handsy.

What do I mean? How does this product work?

The product comes in an adorable black colored sweater, with a cute traffic light on it.

Ok ok, so now you know how it looks, but what exactly does this thing do?

Well, the sweater is at a constant green light as such:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And in the circuit, there is a soft potentiometer. This is the analog input source.

This potentiometer is meant to be around the chest area of the woman.  (Sadly, this was not possible to do on my model due to technical problems.)

Therefore, when there is no contact on the chest area (ie, the soft potentiometer) the light is green. This means everything is ok.

On the outskirts of the soft potentiometer, if there is a pressure, it will still be green. BUT THIS IS ONLY FOR A VERY SMALL SECTION OF THE POTENTIOMETER. 

When the person’s hand begins to come too close to the soft potentiometer area, the light will turn yellow as so. (This area means it is approaching a place it shouldn’t be, but is not quite there yet.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then finally, when the person’s hand is about to reach the chest zone, the light turns red. This indicates that their hand has gone too far and they need to BACK OFF. (Unless consent is given; then by all means continue.)

 

 

And so, here is a video demonstration.

How I made it:

From there, came the physical sweater part.

INSERT IMAGE

In my circuit, there is a soft potentiometer and an RGB LED.

Here is the website that helped me set it up.

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/sik-experiment-guide-for-arduino—v32/experiment-10-reading-a-soft-potentiometer

As for the code, the soft potentiometer works in a range of 0-1023. Taking this, I divided the strip into approx:

green —> 20% of the strip

yellow —> 50% of the strip (yellow in an RGB LED is done by activating both the RED and GREEN)

red —>  30% of the strip

(in this order.)

Here is my code:

*The sweater will not soon be in stores. It was inspired by light-up Christmas sweaters. The next model will have a switch to turn off the green light.*

Picture This.

You’re riding your bicycle at night, wearing a fluorescent vest so cars don’t flatten you on the road. You reach the end of a street but you realize there is a problem.

See, typically in a vehicle that doesn’t have a blinker to indicate where you will turn, the person riding is meant to use their hands to indicate which way they will turn.

But what about at night? You are on a bike with no blinker. Someone in a car far away may see your vest but they won’t have any indication that you are about to switch lanes or turn.

And so my Handy (not) Dandy Bike Light comes into play.

Re-Design

In my last project, I had a pun project called “Punch your Lights On.” This time, I took a similar mechanism, but gave it a more practical use. There is still a kind of jerking motion done in order to activate the lighting. This is due to the fact that on a bike, the movement would be rather deliberate and the light will not be turned on by a jump on the rough road.

 

Difficulties

The code is simply the “Blink” program that comes with the Arduino, but it is applied to the two different LED lights. This part was easy to execute.

Originally, the light was supposed to include a third LED which would constantly be on while a person is on the bike. This third position on the actual mechanism made the light harder to use and so I decided to remove it from the mechanism.

In my last project, the wires to the breadboard were to make contact with the metal marble. This caused some issues as the marble was not always in contact with the wires.

In this project, I expanded the possible surface area by connecting the wires to aluminum foil. These pieces of aluminum foil are meant to come into contact with the marble, making it much easier to complete the circuit.

In this text, there are multiple topics that I feel the author addresses and ties in nicely with the evolution of universality. I will not address all of them as that would make this blog longer than it is already going to be.

1. Firstly, the author starts with an introduction to pictograms and how these evolved into our current writing system. I believe it is important to note that pictograms, while not always the most practical thing, can be universal. They just need to be used differently than the author interprets. The book

   

   was published in 2012 (Deutsch), and so since then emojis have become popular. While they might not always be used to express complex ideas, there is some value to these objects. Windows even had their own style of emojis before they became mainstream and these were known as Wingdings. (Vox 2015) Throughout the reading of the pictograms evolving, all I could think of were Wingdings and emojis and how people have come full circle, back to using a type of pictogram.

2. Towards the end of the reading, he builds on how computers had to move into digital, as analogue would never have reached universality. This section served to denote the discrepancies between analogue and digital which were two words I have always heard but never known the distinction between.  Not only that, but I gained insight on the origin of computers as well.

 

Overall, there is the uniting theme of universality and its implantation throughout various topics, and I quite enjoyed how he tied together the history/evolution of scripts, numerals, computers, and genetics. He took what I thought were random topics and explored a new facet of them.

 

Sources:

Deutsch, David. The beginning of infinity: explanations that transform the world. Penguin Books, 2012, intro.nyuad.im/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Untitled-4.pdf.

Edwards, Phil. “Why the Wingdings font exists.” Vox, Vox, 25 Aug. 2015, www.vox.com/2015/8/25/9200801/wingdings-font-history.

 

 

 

 

In this excerpt from The Art of Interactive Design by Chris Crawford, I disagreed with the base definition of the text: “a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak.” (Crawford 8) This definition does not take into account that multiple objects can interact at the same time and with each other, as it limits the interaction to only taking place between two “actors.”

For example, when a class and professor are having a discussion, this is not a simple two-person conversation. All the students (who are engaged and participating) are listening both to the points of the professor and the other students, and are building their contributions to the discussion from the participation of others along with their own opinions/thoughts. The conversation is driven by more than two people listening, speaking, and thinking.

This three step definition also excludes various interactions as it is a very human-centric definition. It rules out interactions with pets that cannot speak, and humans interacting with the environment.

Lastly, I found the style in which the text is written hard to take seriously. While it tried to be lighthearted and funny, I did not enjoy the interruption of the text with the author’s email and note from the editor. The author also tended to put in a lot of disclaimers on his opinion, which I found made him less credible. If I am going to publish a book of my opinions and definitions, I will stand by them fully.

 

Source:

Crawford, Chris. The art of interactive design: a euphonious and illuminating guide to building successful software. No Starch Press, 2003, intro17fall.nyuad.im/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/chapter1_crawford.pdf.