Re-exam (underlined text is part of the re-exam)
Today was the final day of Module II. As part of the course and like in module I, we presented our projects that we worked on for the past three weeks. This presentation has the goal to give feedback and critique the ideas or projects we have, which is supposed to help us with questioning the ideas more in depth.
First the presentation. We decided to meet up today and prepare given that we were the second group presenting. Since I consider myself a lucky person, one of the servos decided to stop working today. It was working for the typing and erasing part but it did not want to move to new position when ‘enter’ is being pressed. The code was not changed since our final test neither the wires or the servos. Overall I believe we presented the idea well. The prototype was responsive and it felt perpetual when in use.
Clint and Jens, also gave us few questions we can reflect more on and think about. These questions might help us with the upcoming 3rd module.
- How does it feel using it?
- The prototype itself was easily interactive and fun when using it. The visualisation of the typing, made me personally to either type faster or be aware when i delete a word. Since the prototype was spinning both forward and backwards there was a lot of sound created. The sound itself may become more annoying with time, which might leave the user not wanting to interact with it.
- The different material experimenting, what was the difference?
- In the beginning we worked with a type of material that was thicker than a paper, but less strong than wood. While testing out the prototype we almost broke our servos since the material couldn’t handle the spinning when it came to keeping the shape. Later we changed to more stable material such as wood. The prototype itself was much heavier and the we had to change the design in small proportions in order to get the smaller servo to run without any problems from the weight.
- What makes it more continues?
- Having the visuals of your typing speed and deleting words, can make a person more aware of their typing. This might make the user type more continuously and try typing without stopping if they find the visuals satisfying. For me at least the sound of working with the prototype made me want to type more in order to see it working.
- What did we learn of actually using it and trying it out?
- Talking about the idea on paper did not fill the justice of trying out the prototype. We had to experience and work with the material to learn which designs are possible and which not. When we sketched out the idea, we did not consider the weight of the material or how it would work with the servos and their cables. Working with physical object from our idea helped us to understand and create better.
- What might be the next iteration?
- We wanted to figure out a way to remove the cables of the servos. If that is possible, it will remove the physical restrictions of the design itself. Another thing we wanted to maybe work with is add more “dimensions” in the prototype which will react differently depending on the type of letter or speed of typing. It can be also made to detect a difference if the typed character was a number or a letter.
- What are the parameters we experimented with?
- What are the dimensions of the project and what is the experimental quality is?
Pink Prototyping 