Mapping

Med all informasjonen fra intervjuene begynner jeg med å mappe det ut og visualisere det, se linker og problemområder. Dette var ikke lett, men etter at jeg gikk opp i skala ble det lettere å få opp det vesentlige. Samtidig legger media ut om regjeringens demensplan «Den gode dagen». Jeg innser relevansen av prosjektet, men prøver å vente med markedsundersøkelsen, jeg vet det er mange gode produkter allerede på banen og mange på vei. Eldrebølgen er noe de fleste kjenner til. Men for øyeblikket handler det om utviklingen av mitt prosjekt og læren om tjenestedesign. Og etter å ha fått mappet informasjonen var det lett å se nytten av metoden. Problemområdene blir godt synlige. Videre blir jeg nødt til å konsentrere disse ned til 3 konsepter.

Stavanger

Vi blir oppfordret til å holde noen intervju for å komme nærmere på temaet. Jeg tenkte først lenge på hvordan jeg kunne fått et intervju med noen med demens. Samtidig lå uroen over dette over meg. Det er ikke lett for noen å få diagnosen demens. Noe av det første man lærer som pleiemedarbeider er å ikke spørre for mange spørsmål, det kan skape forvirring ettersom de innser hva de har glemt. Hvordan kan jeg spørre noen ut om en sykdom de har glemt de har? På bakgrunn av dette bestemte jeg meg for å rette meg inn mot dem som omgås pasienter med demens. Jeg tok kontakt med noen kollegaer fra i sommer for å sette opp noen intervju. Turen gikk til stavanger. Med kameraet rundt halsen, stativet under armen og en kanne nykokt kaffe dro jeg til TABO (Tananger Bo- og Velferdssenter). Der ble jeg møtt av fire nysgjerrige ansatte. Dette er jo stas! Gjennom intervjuene med to sykesøstre og to pleiemedarbeidere lærte jeg mer om hverdagen med en demenspasient enn jeg gjorde i hele sommer. Ikke minst om mulighetene for forbedring! Inspirert dro jeg tilbake til Oslo. Her fikk jeg satt opp et intervju med en pårørende. Da fikk jeg historien fra en helt annen innfallsvinkel. Bekymring blir en del av hverdagen, i tillegg til ansvaret som hører med til diagnosen. Nå gjenstår det å mappe ut all informasjonen.

Demens

I sommerferien jobbet jeg som pleiemedarbeider på Tananger Bo- og Velferdssenter (TABO). Der jobbet jeg på demensavdelingen. Det var veldig mentalt utmattende men utrolig givende. Jeg fikk lære hvor alvorlig sykdommen demens kan være og hvordan den kan prege hverdagen.

Jeg bestemte meg for at mitt prosjekt skulle handle om demens. Til å begynne med ville jeg få ned faktaene om sykdommen. Demens er kronisk, det er ca. 70 000 med sykdommen i Norge i dag. Det vil si ca. 300 000 pårørende. Det vanligste formen for demens er Alzheimer, som angriper hukommelsen.

Future Well-Being

Dette semesteret har vi et kurs som heter Design og identitet. Vi kommer til å gå igjennom sentrale temart innenfor tjenestedesign som markedsforståelse, merkevarer, tjenestereise, emosjonelle verdier i design, produkters og tjenesters rolle i merkevarebygging og visuell identitet. Oppgaven er å utvikle et tjenstedesignkonsept med temaet The Future of Well-Being. Vi skal designe et helt konsept fra produkt til medvirkende faktorer som f.eks. nettside eller app. Vi står ellers fritt når det kommer til retningen innenfor Well-Being. Dette innser jeg er større enn man først tror. Det første jeg tenker på når jeg hører order er omsorg. Men det kan like så godt være dagligdagse ting som velvære i hjemmet eller miljøet på veien til skolen.

Her er wikipedias forklaring:

Well-being, welfare or wellness is a general term for the condition of an individual or group, for example their social, economic, psychological, spiritual or medical state; a high level of well-being means in some sense the individual or group's experience is positive, while low well-being is associated with negative happenings.

POP-UP

The product I designed for our last brief in Interaction design is a speaker called POP-UP. It is a speaker to-go, to hideaway or to compress.

The POP-UP started out with the idea of transforming. I liked the thought of the evolution of an object that otherwise looks static. Further down in the process I wanted to make the user in charge. This is where the control was created to fit the product. (Process is documented previously in the blog). 

The interaction with the product is through the control situated on top of the box in its stand by position. When the user picks it up the box will unfold itself and reveal its speaker. When in open position the user simply slide the control into its new slot to activate the speaker. The speaker itself was too heavy for the servo to bear, and is therefore not built in the prototype. Watch promo here (http://ragnhildfroyenmilter.tumblr.com/post/105311319741/a-demonstation-of-the-pop-up)

The box consists of two reed switches, a servo and a magnet whom is situated as shown underneath. The rest is up to the code, posted here (http://ragnhildfroyenmilter.tumblr.com/post/104943337211/the-code-is-working-ive-finally-managed-to).

I've really enjoyed this semester, the excitement of watching a code of numbers and strange words become a reality. Or what a great difference the right clipping of a movie can make. I never expected to learn so much about the things we don't see in a product, whats hidden inside a box or in wires. Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg, but now I'm really considering to take the master degree!

POP-UP at the exhibition!

A demonstation of the POP-UP

Putting the pieces together

The code is working!!!!!

I've finally managed to get the servos (although I'll only be using one) to move to an angle at the right time and pace! The red led represent the "off" state and the green the "on" state. Next I'll have to make it cooperate with the box. Here is my code:

#include <Servo.h> //inkluder servoen

Servo myservo; // (hvit ledning)

int switchstate11; //inkluder reed1 (orange ledning)

int switchstate10; //inkluder reed2 (gul ledning)

int prevswitchstate11; // inkluder forje switchstate1

int prevswitchstate10; //inkluder forje switchstate2

int light4=4; //grønt lys (grønn ledning)

int light2=2; //rødt lys (rød ledning)

int pos;

int i;

void setup() //komponenter

{

  pinMode(11, INPUT); //Reed switch1

  pinMode(10, INPUT); //Reed switch2

  pinMode(4, OUTPUT); //grønt lys

  pinMode(2, OUTPUT); //rødt lys

     myservo.attach(6); //servopin

     Serial.begin(9600); //hvor mange ganger den leser igjennom koden

}

void loop()

{

switchstate11=digitalRead(11); //les av reedswitch1

switchstate10=digitalRead(10); //les av reedswitch2

    if ((switchstate11==1) && (switchstate10==0))

    { //når form er lukket og kontroll lagt på

      pos=0; //bestemmer vinkelen

      myservo.write(pos); //Servo er på 0 grader

      digitalWrite(2, HIGH); //rødt lys går på

      digitalWrite(4, LOW); //grønt lys er av

    }

              if ((switchstate11==0) && (prevswitchstate11==1) && (switchstate10==0)) // når kontroller er tatt av og formen utvikles

    {

          for(int i = 0; i <= 120; i++) { //servoen går fra 0 til 120 grader

        myservo.write(i); //servoen går til pos

        delay(20); //denne bestemmer hastigheten

        }

            digitalWrite(2, LOW); //rødt lys er av

      digitalWrite(4, LOW); //grønt lys er av

    }

              if ((switchstate11==0) && (switchstate10==1)) //når form er åpen og kontroll lagt på

    {

      pos=120; //bestemmer vinkelen

      myservo.write(pos); //servo er på 120 grader

      digitalWrite(2, LOW); //rødt lys er av

      digitalWrite(4, HIGH); //grønt lys går på

    }

              if ((switchstate11==0) && (prevswitchstate10==1) && (switchstate10==0)) //når kontrollen er tatt av og formen lukkes

    {

               for(int i = 120; i >= 0; i--) { //servoen går fra 120 til 0 grader

        myservo.write(i); //servoen går til pos

        delay(20); //denne bestemmer hastigheten

        }

             digitalWrite(2, LOW); //rødt lys er av

      digitalWrite(4, LOW); //grønt lys er av

    }

         prevswitchstate11=switchstate11;

    prevswitchstate10=switchstate10;

}

Here's a follow up on my making of the product in our last interaction design project. On the first picture you'll see the products storyboard. It's a "to go" speaker. I've called it beatbox (for now). The user activates it by picking up the wooden piece on top. The box will then transform itself and is ready to play when the piece is put in place on the bottom part. This will also be making the spot to put the phone/Ipod etc. 

I'm trying to make it out of wood, but keeping the green foam as a back up!

Form and function exploring

This week I've done a lot of exploring with my products form and function as well as its coding. Here's some gifs of the final four expressions. 

Here I've managed to code the arduino to make the servos act at different timing as well as going straight to 90 degrees when told to by the two switches. Up next will be to figure out how to code a timeline, and make the magnet switches fit the circuit. 

This last project is about designing a new interactive product using the methods we've learned this semester. These pictures are from my process in the making of this product. I've decided to make a product that will transform into something else. For that I'll need a couple of servos and magnet switches. In the last two pictures I'm trying to make the circuit work starting out with only one servo and two regular switches. The arduino to the left has a microcontroller and is a great way to control the components. The arduino is connected to the computer where I'll have to figure out the coding. This is the tricky part!

This brief was about looking at technologies as materials for interaction design. We were given these themes to look into: 

Photocell, heat element, microphone, speaker element, variable resistor, bluetooth, infrared proximity sensor, solenoid, button, wifi, flex sensor, servo, pressure sensor, RGB LED, magnetometer, reed switch, vibration motor, webcam, el-wire, touchscreen and LCD display, piezo element, air blower, liquid pump, joystick, microcontroller, accelerometer, geared DC motor. 

Me and Andreea Tecusan worked together on finding out what an how a joystick and a microcontroller works. 

JOYSTICK

The joystick is all about turning a physical movement into something the computer can understand. There is lots of different ways a joystick can do it.

The simplest way to do this is to put a circuit board on the backside of the stick (as shown underneath). When the stick is put in any direction it will hit one of the spots on the board, pressing it down and making a closed circuit. It is also possible to put four extra spots on the circuit board, making it an eight – way joystick instead of a four – way joystick. This allows you to use the diagonals as well as the regular up/down/right/left. This is also the method usually used behind the “top hat”, which a lot of today’s consoles are equipped with.

Another way of reading the physical movement is to insert four switches in a square around the stick (picture underneath). Here the stick will push a switch when it is put in a direction. If you want to make this joystick an eight – way, you’ll only have to make the stick thicker. This will make the stick push two switches at once when you hit the diagonal.

These two types of joysticks are perfect for arcade gaming like Pac-man and Tetriz. The con about them is that every direction is absolute. You wont be able to determine how fast you can go in one direction. You can’t make Pac-man go slower. In this case you’ll need a more advanced joystick. This joystick uses an axis system to determine both the direction and the force of the stick. The rails each have their own system of making this into an analogue signal. Both are connected to potentiometers. These are motion sensors consisting of resistor tracks to tell the computer the direction of the stick. This signal will have to be converted to a digital one for the computer to understand.

To make this into a forced feedback joystick it is possible to insert two machines and use the belt system. Here the gamer can get feedback from the game, like vibrations if the player gets hit etc.

To skip the analogue- to digital signal converting you can use the LED system. In this case each axis is connected to a slotted wheel. On one side of the wheel you’ll find a LED and the other a photocell. When the wheel spins in a direction the photocell will create a pulse from the interrupted light signal.

Sources: Wikipedia.org, Howstuffworks.com

MICROCONTROLLER

A microcontroller is like a “mini-computer”. It does one thing really well. So they are used in appliances and specialized devices, like a water boiler. You might have heard of microprocessors, like the ones inside your laptop. Here is the difference between a microprocessor and microcontroller:

This is how a microcontroller board looks like, like this one from Arduino:

The actuall microcontroller is the black rectangle on the lower right hand side. This is an Atmel AVR micro controller. It has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz ceramic resonator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button. It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started (www.arduino.cc). 

The pins on both sides are both input and output pins. You have to define that in your code, so the micro controller knows what to do. What is an input and output is relative, it depends on the perspective. Mice and keyboards take physical movements that the human user outputs and convert them into input signals that a computer can understand; the output from these devices is the computer’s input (www.wikipedia.com).

But how do you make the microcontroller do what you want it to do? Here are the basic principles of operation:

And here is how the programming works:

You first have to write code in an IDE (integrated development program). The IDE proofreads your code and makes is into a binary code (1 and 0s). You then send that code to a programmer called ICSP and then transfer it over to the microcontroller. Now it knows what to do.

Here’s an example of how you make a circuit with an Arduino Uno microcontroller board. 

In brief 10: App-o-rama the task was to design an app with only one function. The apps function and its theme was up to the groups to decide. To go along with the app, we also had to code a website and shoot a promotion movie. In other words merge all of the latest briefs into one.

We made our app about satisfaction. Have you ever had that annoying thing in your everyday that you just so badly wanted to fix? 

Please check out our app: SATISFY

Here is some of the process we had in the making of the Satisfy app. Our group consisting of amaliealbert andreeatecusan augustlund fthue and me started out with some brainstorming around the apps theme. After a lot of drawing, we started shooting scenes for our promotion movie.

Our website for the app and its movie is up next!

We just had the most amazing trip to London! We had a great tour at the V&A and visited the Science Museum, although we were not to impressed by the interaction screens. We also got to see how they work at gov.uk, they do a lot of impressing interaction design!

Of course we had to do all the London stuff like sitting in the front top of a double decker and ride the tube, as well as go shopping, watching the Liverpool - Queens Park Rangers football match at a bar and tasting new beer at a local pub.

I really enjoyed London and would recommend it!!