Newsletter #8
After the success last week of our “Mirrors” idea, we repeated the same week-long process. On Monday we brought new ideas to the table and sifted through the new ideas and the ideas from last week. On Tuesday we deepened a selection of the ideas to see which of the ideas we all felt would be the strongest. By Wednesday we chose our fourth idea: a panel of tubes that route through the wall and dangle down; the panel can either be wall-mounted or ceiling-mounted. People can pick up a tube and speak into it to communicate with a tube somewhere else in the installation. The point we are driving here is to obscure communication. This is similar to our “Jars” concept but instead focuses on the present instead of connecting two people through a delay. Moreover, this installation has a different set of interaction since it will be much more tangible in nature.
Anisha has been exploring what kind of tubes we could use since the tubes will have to be sturdy enough to house the wires and components but also flexible enough to dangle when not in use. We’re also looking into lighting solutions such as routing EL wire through the length of the tube. Jason has been investigating audio restrictions for this idea such as length restrictions.
Elwin and Jason have also been working on the technology that would drive the “Jars” experience. Most importantly is the PCB that would replace the Arduino in the circuit. The PCB has the added benefit of being similar enough technologically to also drive the “Tubes” experience. They also researched the technological requirements we would need for motion in our “Mirrors” concept. Since the panels will need to turn, Elwin determined that a stepper motor would be our best solution since servos cannot track their rotational position.
Looking Forward to Halves, Fabrication
Next week is spring break for us and we’ll be spending that time refining the four ideas we have for our Halves milestone. Halves, like Quarters, is a check-in for the faculty. This milestone is a formal presentation and its function is for us to highlight what we’ve done so far and what we plan to do from this point. We plan to present our process for generating these ideas and the process we went through to explore our theme of connecting people through physical installations.
By Halves, our intention is to choose 1 or 2 prototypes to advance to the fabrication phase. We’d also like to elicit feedback from the faculty about which ideas they feel would be best for us to pursue.
Current Challenge
Things have been running much more smoothly since we’ve adopted this new process of idea generation. The pressure to create physical prototypes within two weeks put a great deal of strain on the team since we had to generate an idea, determine the correct parts, order them, and build it within a very short time frame. Our challenge as we approach halves will be to determine which prototypes we should advance to fabrication. The second part of the semester is much shorter given spring break and then GDC so we’ll have to be very prudent about how we schedule our time.