Alex McDougal DSDN 112: July 2011

Thursday, 28 July 2011

Photography

The idea was to highlight certain aspects that were similar in the objects to make it more of a challenge for the user.

I made these objects out of air dry clay, I started with a traditional triangle, square and circle shapes then abstracted them. When asked others in my tutor group what they thought, the most popular objects were the ones that were more 3D forms than flat shapes, also the ones that were more simple without added texture had a better "overall feeling". Things I am going to improve on are making the shapes more refined and crisp and getting away from using flat shapes like squares and circles.

Sunday, 24 July 2011

Discription

Can You Feel What You See? – Description

I am going to build a box out of simple materials approximately 250mmx250mmx250mm in size; one side of the box will have a circle cut out of it large enough to put your hand in, around that circle will be some elastic fabric so that no matter what the size the hand of the user, they will not be able to see inside the box. In the box will be several objects that I have made out of clay. The user will be presented with a photograph of one of the objects inside, though the photograph will only show one part of the object. The aim is to find that particular object by only using the touch sense. To ensure that it is clear what object is in the photograph, each clay object will be painted a different colour.

Due to the simplicity of the interactive object I will be able to acquire simple materials to construct the whole thing, as well as using the tools I have at home and the ones available to me in the workshop.

The over all experience for the user should be engaging as it will be a challenge to isolate the senses in order to identify an object. Normally we use parts of all our senses to recognize something, using this interactive object the experience should also be surprising due to this factor.

Storyboard

Friday, 22 July 2011

Conclusions

From my tests I found that the first idea (my original idea), did not work very well because too many people draw differently. This made it hard to judge how different people interoperate what they feel. Other flaws in this test included that the objects I used were to common so people drew off memory rather than what they felt. However, one object had holes in it and apparently it was quite difficult to figure out how many holes there were.

For the second test, people found it too easy to find the objects and when they were given all the pictures it made it even easier. Though the people who did both tests found the second one to be more interesting as the scale of the objects in the pictures and in reality did not seem to match. But the images, even though they were blurry, still gave away the materials which made them easy to find.

Therefore I will continue to develop the second test of having a picture and trying to find that object amongst others only using the touch sense. The things I will change are the objects themselves, I will make the objects myself so people can't go on memory because they would have never seen them before. I will make all the objects out of the same material (either wood or clay). Also the user will only be given one image so they only have to find the one object. Though I must keep in mind that I do not make it too difficult for people.