Funky bookcase

This is a follow-up of the Arduino-Processing timer project. To read more about the process leading up to this project, including the introduction of Processing and how Processing and Arduino communicate, read here.

The project took place during the latter part of class after the introduction to the communication between Arduino and the Processing software. The brief states to a game/any interactive artifact set in a specific context that utilizes some sort of a timer, the timer is a requirement and is to be created using Processing. We are to also combine all our knowledge learned from earlier today using the Arduino together with Processing to create something fun and interactive. We must form groups of 2-4 and the minimum requirement of each group is to have at least one student from the Product Design class (if this wasn’t stated before, year-two Product design students are also taking a similar course about interactivity hence why we do Arduino workshops together). The Product Design students each draw a context from a bunch of contexts David has written down, and Interaction Design students are to form groups with those, therefore, one group will have one context to work with and so on. I collaborated with Max from Product Design, and Viktor and Josefine from IDK18. The context we were to work with was… the library.

Our group ran into troubles early in the process, struggling to brainstorm and settle on an idea on how to make use of the context to create an interactive artifact. After closer attention and some sketch-prototyping, we settled on a bookcase idea. The bookcase would make use of a servo from the Arduino starter-kit. We plan to make a physical bookcase, create some books that go on it, and also create a system so that when the books are placed in its designated order, you’ve beat the game, if you don’t and the given runs out, the servo is triggered and the book case tilts, causing the books to fall down.

We ran through several challenges along the way, most of it being inefficient time-management and being overly ambitious to begin with. I will address these issues as we go on.

We made use of the laser-cutter in the workshop, and with Max’s extensive knowledge with product design, we put him in charge of the construction of the bookcase structure. He creates parts using Illustrator and cuts them out using laser-cutter. We also used the laser-cutter to cut-out the books, to hopefully speed up the process and shape the books uniformly, the laser printer was acting up a little in the beginning as it didn’t read the Illustrator file-format we provided so that delayed our process a little. Josefine printed out some old vintage book covers, so after we glued the books into the right shape, we pasted the covers and they looked very convincing!

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How are we going to make it so that the books only allow one specific order to be the correct one? Our plan is to attach copper tape in specific patterns on the individual books so that the tape would only make contact with the adjacent books. If you don’t place the right book the connection would break and the timer would continue counting down. As you can see, these books to the right would not be in the right order because the tapes are not coming in contact with one another.

Now these are all ideas we wish to execute but was it successful? Unfortunately, it wasn’t. After creating the timer on processing and writing code on the Arduino editor, it was time to see if all 16 of the books, when placed in the correct order (alphabetical order by author’s last name), would establish a connection. We tested this by checking with LED Blink on Arduino. Sadly, it only worked with one or two books, sometimes three, but never more than that. The wires/Arduino (we don’t know which one was the issue) also tend to stop working after a while, forcing us to re-upload the program every other minute. Max was able to built the bookshelf beautifully, but the books just would not work at all, we believe the issue may be that that the books are not placed tightly enough so some of the tapes do not touch, but even when we tried to tighten it, it still didn’t work. Maybe the thinner copper tapes are not as conductive on cardboard, but that’s also not completely certain. All in all, we were not able to conduct our game and our interactive artifact, but at least the execution and the visual appeal was successful.

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A Reflection

Why weren’t we able to finish the exercise and present a working artifact? In addition to the technical malfunctions, perhaps we were overly ambitious to start with. We paid a huge amount of attention to the visual appeal of our bookcase but didn’t necessarily brainstorm and test its functionality early enough. We should have keep in mind that it was simply a prototyping project, and in no shape or form needed to be perfect. Don’t get me wrong, the end product was extremely rewarding, but it was a shame that the core functionality of the bookcase was not able to be executed. If we had discovered the issues with the copper tape and Arduino earlier, perhaps we could have taken a step back to work towards something else, however, by the time we finished taping the tapes, the time for us to work with the project was almost up. If we hadn’t paid too much attention to the visuals at all- such as the unnecessary pasting of the covers- and started with the program earlier on, we might have been able to present a functioning bookcase.

This was yet another exercise for cardboard prototyping. Cardboard prototyping, as I’ve mentioned in the QWOP entry, is essential because it’s a common lo-fi method to prototype and test physical objects and environments. It’s cheap and easy and often created to be thrown away. This makes it easier for those who created the prototype to let go, reflect, and embrace the necessary changes. It was nice to explore with this medium again, this time incorporating both Processing and Arduino into the project. What happened to the timer by the way? It worked fine, it’s on Viktor’s laptop so I cannot display it here, but we couldn’t incorporate it at all after the failure of the copper taped books. The bookcase is stored in the workshop so maybe one day we could pick up the project again and make it work.

Some photos↓

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