Studio 29/7/11 continued

So my tutor gave me a new idea to look at and that was to have an element of the pieces drop into the holes instead of the whole piece because it would create functional problems. For example have a marble in the tile and when it goes over the circular hole the marble drops in and the square tile is still free to move around the board, sort of like those children toys where you put the shapes into the holes.

 He also suggested working on a grid like the original sliding puzzles just so the tiles don't freely move around the board, maybe 4x4 or 5x5. He really encouraged me to look at the rough and smooth textures on the botoom of the pieces so that some are more difficult to move and to help boost that interactivity. One material mentioned was a fabric that moves really well one way but is hard to move the other way. This may be something I look at.

Studio 29/7/11

For the the studio today I decided to look at other materials that could be used for the individual pieces.

I have made some in clay but they take forever to dry so I thought I'd look at three others while I waited for the clay to dry. Having a variety of different materials in my final object could make it more appealing.

•  Metal was the first one, it is very smooth and would slide along most surfaces really well,it is also very shiny which makes it very visually appealing. However adding the subtle details would be difficult. It can be polished as well to make it even shinier. Metal is a very sturdy material so it would be able to take a good beating.

• The second one was clear acrylic which I thought would be pretty cool because of the transparency and the smoothness of the surface would allow for a smooth sliding motion. Yet again adding the subtle details like the little extrusions or the finger imprints would be hard due to the material. I think that this would be the most visually appealing piece if I was to use it due to the transparent nature.

• The third material was  wood. I chose wood because it is a very commonly used material and you can do many things with it. It can be painted, sanded cut easily and it can also have either a rough or smooth surface depending on how it is handled. The availability of the wood would also make this a good material to use. It is easy to work with and is very robust.

Something I want to look at is having rough and smooth surfaces to create a variety of pieces so that some can move easily across the board and others are difficult and require effort to move them. I have decided for my board which the pieces will be placed on will be made of wood that has been sanded down so that it is smooth. I could possibly make some areas of the board rough and some smooth, just a thought. I am yet to decide how big I want my board, but I don't really want it too small or too big. Also making it out of wood would make it quite heavy and would be a burden to carry around.

Studio 26/7/11

For today's studio we brought in objects that we basically find awesome. I brought my razor in because I thought that it was way awesomer than those disposable razors and also because of the features it had. The razor heads could be removed just by pushing a button, the handle was nice to hold and had a nice rubber grip. The handle also had a nice weight to it unlike those cheap plastic ones but the weight of it isn't visible at first but only when you hold it is it obvious.

We also discussed my project and an idea that came up was to have a board and have sort of like holes in it which when the pieces are moved they fall into them. But I must remember that I am not aiming for a visually appealing set of objects but I am focussing on the touch aspect of it. I shall start creating the pieces out of clay tonight and just experiment with them and how well they work. I won't know anything until I actually make the pieces.

Storyboard and Description

For my Interaction project I have chosen to do something with touch. So as my storyboard suggests, I have little tiles which have a different surface type. For example one piece has a little extrusion in the top left corner of the tile. When someone interacts with it and touches it they know that that piece needs to be moved to the top left or moved diagonally just by touching the tile, no vision required. Another piece will have a subtle finger imprint that you can only tell is there by touching the tile which depending on where it is on the tile indicates that it should be moved in that direction. My tiles stimulate the touch sense by allowing the user to rely on the touch alone and not sight. By using the subtle details I achieve this because when someone looks at the tiles they cannot see the finger imprints for example. It is going to be exciting for the user because they can no longer rely on their sight but they have to rely on their touch to feel these objects.

Lab 3

For the third lab I made a test object, I created a couple of tiles out of cardboard with different touch aspects to them. Some of these were finger holes, a curved ramp like surface and a little extruding corner. My tutor pointed out that I should ditch the puzzle like frame and she really liked the subtle extruding corner and suggested that I should work on subtle little things for my object. One other suggestion was to try it in clay which I am going to experiment with as I can indent a subtle finger gap to put your finger in.

Lab 2

For the second lab we looked at the different interactions we make with some everyday objects and we looked at ways we can improve the interaction by thinking about the other senses and how we can incorporate those into the object. I looked at how the sliding puzzle toy could be used through touch and not by sight so I thought you could have these tiles in the puzzle that you can tell where they go just by touching them and feeling the surface. When I discussed with my tutor my idea, she said that I should try and play with people's perceptions and make my object more 3-dimensional. I thought of like a sliding puzzle but in a cube so it has six sliding puzzles, one on each side, which get progressively harder. Almost like combining a rubiks cube and a sliding puzzle. I will continue to experiment with these ideas.

First Studio

For my first studio we had to bring in some items that you could interact with and then we discussed them as a group. I brought in my Rubik's cube, wallet and an apple.





We broke down the objects into their different characteristics, for example, how the colours on the rubik's cube is visually stimulating and the noise it makes when it turns. We examined the taste of the objects, the smell and also what the surface of the object felt like, whether it was rough or smooth.

For my wallet we looked at the texture of the material and how parts of the leather were worn out due to the rubbing in my pocket and this resulted in a shiny smooth surface.

What I got out of this studio was how we have to really go in depth and look at the little things when analyzing our objects.