Post- coaching…
Clint gave us tips regarding our current prototype. He compliments us for having set a very narrow context but pushes us into experimenting with more “dimensions”.
In addition to this main critique, he further explained that it wasn’t necessary to establish fully nuanced feedforward if we already have rather nuanced feedback planned as part of our artifact. We explained that the green and red LED lamps we incorporated turned out to present itself more as a feedback rather than feedforward. He agrees that it behaves more as a feedback than feedforward indeed but it’s almost redundant to incorporate that as part of our artifact because it’s not powered by the servo at all, even though it behaves based on the state of the servo. We decided to scratch this idea.
The plus about this artifact is that the choker does not necessarily have to be limited to being about weather, it could be about anything! pollen levels, homework load, and so much more. This is what makes the prototype versatile so it’s important to add more nuances.
What we moved on with was ideating about more potential materials or sensations we can play with next. In addition to that, we ideated about adding scales / range sliders to a UI so we can experiment with nuance.
More sensations we thought about:
- Choking / Tightening (current)
- Tapping / Rhythm
- Vibration
We discussed about adding other parts in addition to the main choker after Clint introduced somebody else’s project having three separate arm pieces attached that tap consecutively and though they are obviously separate pieces the sensation of them tapping in order gives the false perception that they’re presented as a “whole”. We thought this would be interesting to explore but also a little hectic with the limited time left to create additional pieces that essentially do the same thing.
What came next?
We bought a few beads to see what we can do with it, but was mostly obstructed by a dead-end, it was very difficult to maneuver the beads due to the choker’s close contact to skin. Because it’s so close in contact the beads are unable to move between the fabric and the skin due to friction. We tried different mechanisms to experiment but it didn’t really work…
The next day we also tried experimenting with other sensations such as tickling and scratching, which i dug up sandpaper and feathers to play with that. The sandpaper mechanism was way to bulky to incorporate into the choker and it’s also way too painful so we quickly “scratched” that idea (pun intended), and the feather movements are hard to incorporate nuance too, it’s also not impactful enough to be a “dimension”. We kept it attached to the artifact still however for it to remain as a decorative element.
Journal with me! 