"Paranormal discreptancy"

Yeah, I'm not good in figuring out titles :), better make it sound good.

Last post was about that I would read back my all my posts that I have made before and reflect on that. And after the reflecting I would set course and sail into waters which would bring me to awesomeness. Haha! How wrong I was... some stuff happened (Mainly work) and of course the summer in Amsterdam (parks, picnics, bbqs. Sun :) ). So now finally (when the weather is bad) I get back on this.
So when reading the posts I had to take notes right? This is why I used the amazing Paper on my ipad. It is really interesting how you can make sort of nice images :), so you'll find them scattered around this post :).




I started this blog, way in the beginning, for me to focus. I had just tasted a little of Arduino and MAX-MSP and it sparked something in me. I wanted to do projects, but by keeping this blog (or journal) I could find a direction and investigate this further and thus reach a niche which I should really like.


But apparently even focusing on this "electronical" branch of "Design" (not sure if it is design or not?) seemed to be surprisingly difficult, because it is actually quite big. I experimented with weather interactions using Arduino, making music using Arduino, programming live (or at least love) in processing, Building BEAM bots and making a longboard. All of them were really cool to do, which made it more difficult to choose which way to continue. Next to that, other interest tried to lead me into designing and making things like watches or write stuff about buttons or the conflict between the digital and analog world.
These things seem to sort themselves (it's fuzzy sometimes) in three categories: Creating life, Product design and Research/essay.

Creating life is about... well.. creating life, this is where the BEAMbots come in most, to me they are the most like small creatures that do just on thing, but in a life like way, sort of... But also the things like the sun greeter and sun chime fall under this category in that they make the things around us which might not have a life (the weather) seem like they do live. I like this category the most because this is why I started this blog (I guess). The first time I used Arduino I found out how lifeless things seemed lifelike, and then if it is very life like, then isn't it alive? Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I want to create something that seems as though it might be alive, or at least sparks some imagination that it might exist.



Product design always kind of comes back, in me trying to find something that I can maybe make and then sell, and then make more, and then sell more. This is the case with the watches, wallet and also slightly with the Tower-USB. I would really like to do this sort of full-time, 50% writing and making projects and 50% building product to sell online or something. I'm never really sure what I should do with this, because it will never end until I finally do it, but it will never work until I find something that might actually sell. But this will be continued surely in other posts :).

Research/essay is my conscience part that wants to be smart, and smart people do research and write about it. I like that. And there are some things that are actually quite interesting (Buttons, digital vs analog interactions) and I would really like to see where it ends up... The thing is, I need to start on it and expect it will take me more than a year before I ever finish any of it. But it is interesting :).

So, now I'm not sure yet where to go with this blog, I do have ideas, but I need to think a bit harder on them to be sure.



I started this blog which the idea that I would post every week, even if I had nothing to show it would still keep me going. I think I want to do this but then every two weeks, to give me some preparation time :).




see you in two weeks!

Alive!

I'm Alive!

Yeah!,

Let's not talk about the details but yeah, I'm still here.

I guess I've written two posts already, but due to problems with Evernote (damn logins) and bad writing I didn't post anything.
The problem was (or still is?) that I was working on my Internship, and after that didn't really have the time (read : energy) to do anything else (let's say work on blog/projects/guitar playing/reading/watching blogs/ etc.). But then Aurora and I got a house(!) in Amsterdam(!) so now, for a month, we've been painting, laying the floor, slept, moved all our stuff, had coffee, had lunch, tried to organize way too many things, fix bike, dance Tango, drink more coffee, also some tea, bake pizza, and bake bread.
So I guess my excuse was (and sometimes still is) that I have too many things to do, to even care about my projects.

So, now the tide seems to have withdrawn for a while.

So from now on I will have some time to play with some ideas for projects.

The plan:
- Read back the posts..
- write down plans for new projects, or ones I still need to finish
- Start first project

(One note: the working room is still a mess so big handworking projects may still need to wait, so maybe now I will start the beginning of an awesome project! :) )
(Not too, that I don't really have a clue what I'm doing.)

But it does sound like a good plan right?

Also (maybe especially now that I have a house) this website has awesome projects! to create awesome furniture cheaply and awesomely!:

http://homemade-modern.com/

:D

cheers!
Frank

A new Year

Hello!

Happy New Year :).

From Berg London

Last month a lot of interesting things showed up on the internet. The first one was lamps, a collaboration between BERG london and google creative labs (which somehow is untraceable on google... ). It started out with the question of what google would be if it were physical and thus not behind glass. The end result is an interesting mix between projection mapping and a DIY kind of Kinect. This "lamp" could project data on the things it sees, which might be handy on a desktop: maybe to do some sort of physical photoshop, aided and saved by a computer or even the cloud! 

Wheathly from Portal 2

Anyway, there were some very interesting remarks about what this "lamp" shuld be. They called it a companion species like Bit in Tron or the Daemons in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Phillip Pullman. I realy like this concept, now that i think of it it can also be that robot from portal2 Wheatly :). But this lamp would be your little mind (companion) that connects to the big mind, aka the cloud, to help you do your things and give you more and relevant information. (Actually this also sounds like paperclip from word :), but then hopefully more helpful and context aware.)

From Berg London

It is interesting how this companion species is described: "... when our digital tools become more than just tools - acquiring their own behaviour, personality and agency." For example Lamp, would be you companion that would shoot between the cloud and the real world. Having learned from experience what you like, how fast you;d like it and how you like your information given, it will adapt itself more and more to you. But that is not the only thing: having its own personality and behaviour means that it is able to surprise you.

It kind of reminds me of what I wanted to create for a project, though a lot less informative. I wanted to create a little creature that would need a lot of attention when you'd want to sleep during a lecture. It would try to move, break free, or even scream, to make sure you'll keep it in check before some social awkwardness appears. But this idea is a lot more interesting in onnovatove in how it looks at the prodict itself, what its function is and how it should interact with the user.

More on this later? maybe? :)

Ingress

The other cool thing that showed up is Ingress by Google (coincidence?). Which is a game that wants to break free from the screen. It makes you go outside, see the world and progress in the game. It is connected to the internet so it becomes a sort of mmorpg but then in real live.

I guess it's a mix between existing things: Pac Manhattan, FourSquare (and other geolocation based games) and maybe even WOW, but then mixed into something new and big. The deal is that Google made it and I think that they can make something big out of it so it can become interesting to play. Because, especially with a game like this you'd need to have a lot of players to keep it interesting. I'd like to see how this develops :).

The Nature of Code

In the more programming or Creative coding world, two interesting things came up, The Nature of Code by Daniel Shiffman and Weird Faces Study by Matthias Dörfelt created in paper.js. I'm still in the process of reading the nature of code, But so far it is very interesting, and it really helps me a lot in developing my coding skills and the way I think about programming stuff. 

Weird Faces Study

Weird Faces Study showed me something that I never thought about but really hit me in the face. In this project a computer makes up faces and they are all different, and it seems as though an artist has created them! But the thing is, Matthias created a set of different eyes, noses, ears and so on, and the computer can draw a face with randomly chosen eyes and ears, but still change them a little bit. This is why every face is different. 

The thing that was interesting for me was that he uses predefined objects and then shuffles them together! Now that I think about it I've seen it at Spelunky:

Spelunky

Which creates whole levels by randomly placing tiles in the level, but also maintaining a playable level.

And Canabalt:

Canabalt

Which places building block and other set pieces randomly so that every run is different.

So now I plan to make a program that is both predictable and yet, also, still unpredictable and random!

I hope you have liked the read :).

and see you next time!

Frank

Tower-USB progress

I had already shown that I made my Tower-USB real. I had already printed and painted three towers and gotten the USB-sticks to make them. But so far I've only shown one, but my chair and mentor both also had one which weren't finished. So, a couple of weeks ago I picked them up, I made them and now I returned them. Here is a picture of all of them together:

When I was picking them up we had a meeting (with the chair and mentor) and we talked about selling these towers. I’m not really sure if it would pay of, but it is an interesting thought though. So I made some adjustments to the 3D Model and turned it into a printable file, which on my old laptop is a bit of a chore right now. But I managed and uploaded it to Shapeways!

This all went well (after about 5 tries) and it was time to see how it looked when it is printed in SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) in Nylon and Nylon with 20% Aluminium (Alumide). I ordered them and two weeks later I got them!

And together with the first one:

The all Nylon one is very light, but it also feels very fragile, the grey alumide one feels stronger. So I think I will use the alumide version and try to put the USB-stick into it. And then I need to put it on Etsy and Shapeways! Which can be quite scary because then I need to think of a brand!

But next week I’ll be done with that so I’ll show the results of it :)

cheers!

Frank

Digital – Analogue interactions

Ever since I started this blog, or, actually the reason that I started this blog, was to develop an idea. When I started working with Arduino and other prototyping / digital tools there was this spark that lid some part of my imagination, but I never knew what to do with it. So I needed to bring more fuel to this spark. 

Anyway, later on I found that it is interesting to look at the friction between the analogue and digital world. We’re all turning into more digital beings, where our social lives are becoming more digital, our work is more digital and how we create things is becoming more and more digital. One of the results in the beginning of this digitalization is apples, then beloved and now hated, Skeumorphism. To lead new users into this digital world a lot of metaphors have been used to make it a quicker transition. We got our desktops back together with our files and folders. And we could fill these in with our trusty keyboard, the new typewriters.

This is all said and done before, but with the new smart phones and tablets coming you see a shift in what is possible. Now we have cameras and touch sensitive screens that help make the interactions much more intuitive. Also with techniques like the Kinect interacting with the digital world becomes more interesting.

Even though the interaction with the digital world is becoming more diverse, the way that the digital world interacts with us is mostly by images on screens and sounds. Of course we also have printing and now 3d printing, even though it isn’t really an interaction is it is a form of output.

So, where I’m trying to get, is that it is an interesting space to explore: the interaction of the digital in the analogue world. And I guess that this is where Arduino can be (or is) at its strongest.

Examples

Ping

This lamp exists out of 2 parts, one part stays at your house and the other in the house of your partner. When you touch it, it lights up, but because of an internet connection with the other lamp, that one also lights up, making your partner aware that you turned on your light. And when both lamps are on they both shine brighter.

It is a very simple concept but it lets you share an emotion with just an ‘analogue’ interaction.

LittlePrinter

This is a small cute printer that prints you tweets, new, puzzles or other things daily. To have a good start of the day. With you smart phone you can select what kind of prints you would like to get, and then you just need to wake up.

Again it is a deceivingly simple concept, but a great interaction. By tearing of the receipt like print, you have a nice way of getting your information. But also as it just sits and smiles at you when it is done. It is a great way for your digital world to become part of your analogue world.

Picollo

This is a small Processing / Arduino based CnC Bot. It has a small hand which can grab something like a pen or small knive and it can move on three axes. It’s small and inexpensive at thus easily to get hold of and to start experimenting with.

I think this can be a very good way to let the digital world into the analogue world and to leave a trace. I’m not sure how the processing sketch will work, but with it you can probably also plug it into the web. and create cloud data based sketches! :)

Okay, I’m not sure yet where this will lead, especially since all these products are still a work in progress or just not for sale. But I’m going to try to find out more about it.

see you next week!

frank

Tower-USB

Tower-USB

When I finished my master I had to do a presentation to present the work that I had done for my graduation project. Remember the research to the aesthetic preference to product metaphors? Well It’s kind of normal to give you mentor and chair a small present as a sign of appreciation, usually this is the normal to give something like a bottle of wine, or something similar. But I wanted to give something special, something I had designed during the project itself!

  

So this is the USB stick that refers to a castle tower to convey the message of protection of your data. For the gift I already made a printable file (which was a pain in the ass BTW!) and I printed them out at the faculty :). And I bought very very very small USB-sticks to put into these towers. So far so good, expect that I still needed to finish my presentation and didn’t have any time to work on it anymore. So in the end I ended up giving the tower and the USB stick separately, with the promise to finish it after my graduation.

I had one for myself to make first, as an experiment and then I would make that of my mentor and chair. But I lost mine, during the time that I moved from my student room to my parents place. And I searched and searched in all the boxed. But today, I found it in a very small insignificant box. So this is what I had.

The USB-stick doesn’t fit at the moment because of it’s large behind (how polite) but it was easily removed by giving it a bit more space by means of sticking a screwdriver between the USB part and the black part.

To make the hinge, I drilled too small holes into the tower, and also carved a little into the metal part of the USB stick. On that little hole I added solder and attached a small part of some wire. Then I cut the wire until it is very small and put it in the tower. 

I needed to make more space in the tower at the holes to make up for the extra solder. Also, the USB stick is a little bigger than I anticipated, so I needed to make the ‘gate opening’ slightly bigger so it can turn inwards. So here is the result:

And when connected.

Next week I’ll talk about my website, and maybe about some theory?

cheers!

My graduation Project,

To finish my masters in Design for Interaction (DfI) I needed to do a graduation project. This is a project that takes about a semester and is usually a design project done for a company, but there is also an option to do a research project at the faculty. When searching for an assignment I found a project to do research on product metaphors. It was still very vague but I liked the idea of looking at product design from a new perspective: using metaphors. Up to then my idea of a metaphor was a figure of speech, which combines two ideas into a new idea.

When I started talking with my mentor (Nazli Cila, a PHD student doing research on Product Metaphors) and my chair (Paul Hekkert, Professor and chair of the Design Aesthetic section) it became apparent that there was already a lot known about product metaphors and metaphors in different forms. An exploration would not be very useful so it would be better to come up with a theory and see if that would be true. The theory we came up with was the following: a product metaphor becomes more aesthetically pleasing when the source (reference to the other idea) is novel yet, comprehensible and when the mapping (how the source is presented in the product) is subtle, yet identifiable.

Okay, so lets break this down, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson came with the theory (they are kind of considered to be the ones that made this theory big) that metaphors aren’t some strange things only poets make, but that it is actually a very central part of our mental process. It is our way of understanding something by means of something else. So for example when, in Skakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliette (?)”, Romeo says something like “… Jullia is like the sun…” we know he doesn’t mean that she is a flaming hot ball of fire many times the size of the earth far away. But our mind can turn that around and link only certain properties from the sun to Jullia: being bright, radiant and warm. This selection and transfer of these properties is called mapping. But the esmaple “Temperatures are rising” is a metaphor, temperatures don’t rise, not physically, but because we plot them on graphs we know that when it gets warm, the line goes up, so the temperature ‘rises’.

There have been lots of theories on what makes a good metaphor, some say that the source (in ‘julia is the sun’ the sun) and target (Julia) need to be conceptually very different, this means that these concepts don’t have much, if anything, in common. Others say that they need to be as similar as possible for the metaphor to be good. It seems that there is a truth in both of these theories in that when the target and source are too different people won’t understand it, but when they are too similar it won’t be seen as a metaphor. It might just be that both sides are talking about something different. First of all a metaphor needs to be understood, because else there is no interpretation, so this is why the target and source need to have some similarity. But it also needs that bit of creativity, that spark of brilliance, which is described as being conceptually different. So there probably needs to be some sort of balance between both. Tourangeau and Sternberg have a very nice theory about it. (look it up J)

This idea of metaphor has been researched or talked about in a couple of different forms: newspaper cartoons, art, advertisements and movies. Product metaphors is a subject that hasn’t been published a lot about, but most of the subjects, as stated earlier, have some similarities, so a lot could be learned. First of all, a metaphor needs to be found by an observer, this sounds quite obvious but if nobody sees it there is no interpretation and thus no produced metaphor. Also because every person is different in terms of background and culture, it is inevitable that different people have different interpretations of the metaphor. This might even lead to an interpretation that the producer of the metaphor didn’t envision.

  
 

Anyway, with all this information I set out to do a study, I took 60 product metaphors (a couple presented above and left) and let 60 participants rate them on: novelty, comprehensibility, subtlety, identifiability and aesthetic preference. The participants were all students in the Netherlands recruited either by social media or colourful posters at the universities in Delft, Utrecht, Leiden and Amsterdam.

The results were very good! After some statistical analyses, I found out that all four factors (novelty, comprehensibility, subtlety and identifiability) influence the aesthetic appreciation in a positive way. In the graphs below I plotted the novelty against the comprehensibility and the subtlety against the identifiability, where the bigger the dot the bigger the aesthetic preference. There is a very interesting effect between the novelty and comprehensibility because you can see that the ones that are high on both also have a higher aesthetic appreciation. The graph of subtlety against identifiability shows this is a far lesser extend.

So, this is great! But then again it might be good to dig deeper into the contrast of subtlety and identifiability, and there is no better way that to design the products themselves J. So the idea was to create to product metaphors and let them vary on subtlety and identifiability. The first one was a coffee mug that refers to a Koala Bear to convey the message of warmth and friendship. And the second one was an USB stick that refers to a castle tower, to convey the message of protection of your data. Below are the variations.

From this study I found that identifiability has more effect on the aesthetic appreciation than the subtlety. So this confirmed the results of the first study. But looking further I found out that the highest appreciation is found then the identifiability is high, no matter how subtle. But when the identifiability is lower it needs to be more subtle. I guess that this means that people like to see what a product metaphor refers to, but if it isn’t clear, it should be pushed away. Does this make sense? (Ah well, nobody that read it..)

At the end of July I presented this work and finshed my studies with a whopping 8.5! J So, needless to say I was really happy with it.

I’m not sure yet what I’ll do afterwards, it has been 2 months since, and still I haven’t decided if I would like to do research or designing. If it would be possible I’d do both, I seem to like to write, but maybe what I write about isn’t that good… J But this blog might lend itself more to that: I like the analyzing of other products. So I hope maybe instead of showing process on one of my projects, I might give my thoughts on some projects and learn something from it J.

anyway, this was it, see you next week J. (hopefully a bitless writing :))

Frank