Switch & Lever

S&L YouTube Channel

switchandlever — Tue, 19 May 2015 11:24:37 +0000

You may ask yourself what place a YouTube channel has in a design portfolio, but bear with me while we take a visit to the world of Switch & Lever! It started back during 2013 while I was away on internships in San Francisco and later in Cambridge. I had gotten used to whenever I had spare time to go to the school workshop at Umeå Institute of Design and make things, anything from little electronic devices using Arduino to doing woodworking and even metal shaping of various kinds. While away from school my opportunities to do such was limited, so I instead got addicted to watching other people making projects on YouTube while still making whatever small things I could. I found YouTube to indeed be a great platform for sharing techniques and getting input, luckily it’s not all Miley Cyrus, Minecraft videos and whatver else may be popular at the moment. Once back from the internships in early 2014 I decided that I wanted to share what I had learnt though both school and watching countless hours of makers on YouTube. I love helping people, teaching methods, sharing what I make, so starting up a YouTube channel of my own seemed like a natural development. Said and done, with a video making a small brass hammer the Switch & Lever YouTube channel was born. From there it’s continued, and since then a video has been released on the channel roughly every two weeks. Many of the videos deals with workshop projects using a wide variety of machinery, some easily obtainable for the home machinist, some not. There are electronic projects using Arduino, both useful and fun, trying to keep a good mix between teaching and entertaining. I try to narrate my videos in a fairly pedagogical fashion to get the important points across to the viewer as well. This whole experience also mirrors the work I want to do in the future, working both with interaction design but also being very hands on with what I do. More than half of the enjoyment in designing is getting your hands dirty and building something tangible, and it definitely shows in the final result as well. It also mirrors that I at some point in the future want to teach, at least part time, to other prospective design students. As design schools around the world are slowly shutting down their workshops and focus instead of computer screens I fear that the skill of doing physical design will diminish and as far as the experiences we have as consumers will be worse off for it. A mouse, or even a Wacom pad, is no substitution for your hands and your eyes. Hopefully you’ll check out the channel and follow me on the journey of exploring this field together. Thank you!

nuSense

switchandlever — Tue, 19 May 2015 10:01:28 +0000

nuSense is a degree project on master level in interaction design from the Umeå Institute of Design. The project focuses on wearable technology, why innovation is slow, what we can do to change it and in the process extend our senses. As this project is substantial in length please use the menu below to navigate, and the small up-arrows next to the headings to return here. [one_third padding="0 12px 0 2px"]Menu

Intro
Background
Research
Supporting Research
Research Conclusions
Exploratory Prototypes
Users
Concept Structure
nuSense
Design Guidelines
nuSense Hardware
nuSense Software
Web and Community
Use Cases
Summary
Future Work
Full report

[/one_third] [two_third_last padding="0 12px 0 2px"] [/two_third_last] Intro Background Wearable technology is everywhere, you can hardly walk down the street in most cities without seeing someone with a fitness tracker on their arm, or some sort of glasses which augments your view. While wearable technology appears to be running amok and new devices are released almost daily there appears to be a void beyond the fitness trackers and the glasses. When was the last time you saw a wearable device that was not one of those? They do exist, devices like Narrative Clip for instance, but they are in vast minority. Wearable technology is by and large still stuck in the place iPads were when they first came out, we’re still asking ourselves what to do with it. Fitness trackers can’t be the end goal for wearable tech, can it? We should maybe also ask ourselves what wearable technology, and to an extent any technology we carry with us, are doing with the way we interact with the world. They alter our perceptions and give us insight into data which we did not know about ourselves, at least not to the fidelity they provide. In a way we have always altered our perceptions in one way or another but this is the first time in history where that leap has really reached far. We have entered the realm of augmenting and creating new senses. This degree project deals with these two exact concepts. Why wearable technology has reached somewhat of a creative slump, and how we can further extend our senses through wearable technology. Research Ever since the dawn of time we have tried to improve our situation by using tools, and those tools change and improve our abilities. The stone made it possible to crack shells open, the wheel made it possible to travel faster and smoother and the transistor made it possible to compute things at breackneck speeds. Many of these improvements have dealt directly with how we perceive the world, when we couldn’t hear we made funnels and later hearing aids, when we needed to see further we invented the telescope and binoculars. In a way even the mobile phones we carry with us alter our senses in how we navigate around our environments, we’ve effectively outsourced some of our brain power away from dealing with navigation to a small box with a GPS app in our pocket. In doing so we have also added capabilities that we did not have, like traffic information, or places of interest. What’s to stop us there though, why not continue making improvements to our senses? Why stop at the senses we already have, when we could even make new ones? Sensory augmentation and wearable technology go very much hand in hand as they’re both close to our beings. The difficulty comes though when prototyping and building for wearable technology. A stationary device can take almost any form and still be functional, but the form and the function of something that exists on your body and needs to be adapted to different body types becomes infinitely more complex. There is a huge hurdle to overcome in developing wearable tech, and as such a costly one as well. This may be one reason why we don’t see much variation in wearables, why one armband is much like another, one eyeglass like the next. There are however those who have experimented in this realm already, people like Neil Harbisson who was born entirely color-blind but built himself an electronic eye which allows him to perceive color through audio frequencies played to him through headphones. There’s Steve Mann who by some was dubbed as the “father of the wearable computer” who has been wearing one version or another of his EyeTap device since the 1980’s. What they have in common is that they’re both enthusiasts and are using pieces of highly personalized hardware and software to do what they want. Their material remains inaccessible for the average user. So what can we do to make it easier to prototype wearable technology, to create new senses and to make the experience as unrestrictive as possible? One such way may be through modular technology. It’s an idea based on creating complete systems in parts, which are in turn interchangeable. It’s nothing new or revolutionary, modular thinking has existed for decades, not the least in architecture where kit houses can be constructed elsewhere, delivered and assembled on place. More recently we’ve seen modular devices enter the electronics field, devices like Google’s Project Ara which promises to be the last mobile phone you’ll ever buy just because of its modular nature. There are also electronic prototyping platforms, like littleBits and Cubelets which offer their take on building electronics easily without having to deal with running cables, soldering or programming. Supporting Research During research a survey was carried out where users were asked to answer to what extent they already consider themselves augmented, in what way, and how open they were to wearable technology and where their boundaries laid. While the answers were skewed somewhat towards the western world and towards people in their 30s some interesting data could be gathered. Many people have a rather loose idea of what wearable technology and augmentations are, and some even listed items of clothing as things they considered as augmenting themselves. The really interesting thing was however that 87% of the respondents said that they would be open to trying or using sensory augmenting wearable technology. When asked what they would like to sense their answers were rather varied, such as zoom lenses for eyes, super hearing, having a ”calm button” to one person even expressing interest to be able to taste email notifications. Research Conclusions

Dimensional Innovations: Wearable Technology Lacks Innovation.

Four things have become clear coming out of research. [one_half padding="0 10px 0 2px"]1. Wearable and carryable technology has become ubiquitous, it’s in and on almost everyone at this point. Wearable technology still has a long way to go to reach its full potential however. 2. Wearable technology has under-delivered on expectations. Research and development is expensive so making safe devices is financially sound. Consumers may buy the next device, and the next after that, but if each new device is essentially the same as the one before, and as the competitors device, consumers will lose interest.[/one_half] [one_half_last padding="0 2px 0 10px"]3. There is a wealth of potential in wearable tech. Sensor technology is blossoming and we’re seeing new ways of sensing the world that we could only previously imagine. Exploiting these sensors to a greater extent would further enable sensory augmentation on a scale we have not seen before. 4. Modular technology is a well explored field, and one that holds great potential for both prototyping and growth. Yet it is a field that has been left untouched within the area of wearable technology.[/one_half_last] So what can we do to open up the field of wearable technology and make it blossom beyond armbands and glasses? At the moment hardware prototyping is predominately geared towards stationary devices. It’s easy to get an Arduino and start building something which lives in a single place. However, there is a lack of a proper platform geared towards wearable technology. Exploratory Prototypes A few wearable exploratory prototypes were built to better understand sensory augmentation, as well as the challenges of prototyping for wearable technology. The first prototype puts a homage to the biohackers, those who are interested to truly augment your physical body through technological means, by super gluing a magnet to the tip of a finger. In reality biohackers implant the magnet under the skin and through that can sense electromagnetic fields around them through vibrations in the magnet. While gluing it to the surface of the skin lessens the sensitivity my some magnitude it was still plenty sensitive to notice electromagnetic fields around electronics. Interesting, if novel, way to augment your senses and add something you weren’t able to sense before. The second prototype focused more on augmenting your sight, and was a sideways periscope of sorts. It was a mask with two mirrors inside that fit over your eyes and directed your vision behind you. While it was entirely possible to function with the mask on, left became right and up became down and nausea started setting in before long. For the safety of myself and those around the experiment was cut short. Though important to note that when you disrupt your senses too much the experience becomes unpleasant to say the least. The third and final prototype explored the realm of electronics in wearable technology. It was a hand mounted prototype with a distance sensor and a vibrator. The distance sensor triggered the vibrator differently much depending on how far away objects were. The result was a crude depth sensing making it possible to navigate spaces even when you couldn’t see. One interesting thing was how quickly this new sense became second nature, and you stopped actively reacting to it, but rather moving your hand instinctively. The difficulty in designing for sensory augmentation using current technology shows that there is much that can be done to make sensor technology more accessible even for those already adept at electronic prototyping, but maybe especially for those who are not. Users Who would benefit from being able to prototype wearable technology in an easier way though? This project primarily aims towards three groups of users, each with their own set of needs, but each who would benefit from it in their own way. [one_half padding="0 12px 0 2px"]1. The first group are the avid hobbyists, those who love playing around and experimenting. With the maker movement of recent years there has been a huge surge of electronics enthusiasts playing around in basements and attics. Many of them use platforms like Arduino and are quite adept at hacking electronics. However, wearable technology is still hard to access, and while there are some solutions out there like the Arduino LilyPad they’re more like putting a bandaid over a gaping wound rather than stitching it up. [/one_half] [one_half_last padding="0 12px 0 2px"]2. The second group are the designers and developers, those working in the industry trying to develop the next wearable device. There is currently no toolkit to allow this prototyping to be made easily, which means that experimenting and brainstorming quick prototypes becomes a very time consuming and difficult process. Having a system which could be easily used to facilitate the making of these prototypes would significantly shorten development time, and in turn perhaps lead to more interesting devices. [/one_half_last] 3. The third group are the aforementioned bio hackers, those interested in physically hacking into their bodies with electronics. As of now it’s very hard for them to get any work done, largely because no medical professional want to help them out due to the Hippocratic oath. While they’re a bit of an outlier in this project being able to prototype abilities and augments which they would like to make part of their bodies would at least help them to go part way to their goal. It would also give them the possibility to refine their augments before actually implanting them into their bodies. The project, and concept, is intentionally left broad and somewhat open ended to allow users to find and create their own purpose through the tool. Its purpose is not for a user group to use the result of this project, put it down and move on, but rather to create their own purpose, and to have something to build upon. Concept Structure For a development platform to become successful you need more than just hardware of course. Taking Arduino, undoubtedly the biggest and most well known hardware developing platform out there, as an example you definitely need two more things: an easy to use IDE and an active community. Without any of these three legs the proverbial chair would fall over, and a concept built on such would also not work very well. The hardware needs to be in place, the IDE easy to use, even for those who are not programmers and the community needs to be in place to allow users to help each other out and to push the possibilities of the platform further. nuSense The focus of this project has been to connect these three pieces together, rather than to design each piece in isolation. While at its core it’s about a platform for prototyping wearable technology and augment senses it’s also a system with interconnected parts. Design Guidelines One may believe that the field of wearable design already is one that’s already fairly defined, with set rules and guidelines. Unfortunately, maybe because we are so dissimilar as people, that’s not quite so. There has been research done to try to ascertain optimal placement for wearable devices, like the illustration above from Carnegie Mellon. However, are we’re making a platform to build prototypes such data may at best only help to guide further guidelines, but not necessarily to act as a template for design. In fact, since it’s a prototyping platform the user should remain as free as possible in their decisions, and that includes the freedom to make mistakes. Even if it means building something stupendously impractical it should be up to the user to choose to do so, not to the platform to restrict them from doing it. Another consideration that may be more important is one of form and material though. As wearable technology is close to the body some sort of ergonomic requirements should at least be considered. It would be great if we could design for everyone, even the 2.30m tall, six-fingered, outliers, but for sanity’s sake it may be better if we stick to some sort of standard deviation in relation to body type. The question really boils down to identity and practicality. One may think that making the smoothest possible design will be best for the human ergonomy, but then you run the risk of designing something which looks more like a baby’s chew toy than anything else. Go too far in the other direction and things become too edgy and uncomfortable. The golden spot lies somewhere in the middle with well defined shapes but well rounded corners. nuSense Hardware nuSense comes as a kit with everything you need to get started creating and experimenting with wearable technology. In the kit you get the basic building blocks, a few sensors, a few actuators, the base unit, cables and battery. There’s also a small quick start guide to help you take the first steps to getting nuSense up and running, and having a few example projects to start out with. The sensors are mainly based on the senses we already possess, a distance sensor, a direction sensor (compass), an acceleration sensor, sound sensor (microphone), light sensor and a heartbeat sensor. With these sensors you can already reach a fairly broad spectrum of the world around you, and allow you to tap into some things which are available, but not easily accessible, such as telling the direction you’re pointing, or sensing your movement with a higher granularity. Just as you get six sensors, you also get six actuators, also following the line of the sensors with being based on triggering the more basic senses. It has a vibration motor, a speaker, a pushing actuator, for poking or tapping you, a small screen for visual input, a heating pad and a motor. To mount the individual modules we could have designed an elaborate mounting system using proprietary, or at least not readily available, technology. However, this is a prototyping platform, and making it harder to work with the platform is counter intuitive. Even though it’s not a sexy material the best all-around way to mount things, at least for prototyping purposes, remain as Velcro. It’s easily adaptable, can be cut and fitted to almost any shape, and the best part is that you can get as much as you want from your local fabric store. nuSense is based at its core on Arduino, as it's open source and already has a huge community behind it. It's a very capable platform, and development is ongoing. While this may be seen as piggybacking on already existing technology it's by far more effective than developing an entirely new core platform and try to get users into that. Arduino allows users a wider variety and compatibility with existing technology far surpassing that of any newly made platform. The aesthetics of the modules are left simple and utilitarian to blend in rather than stand out, allowing you to test out your prototypes without having the modules sticking out, or making more of a fashion statement than you need. What’s even better with keeping it all simple is that the more advanced users can easily buy third party sensors and actuator to develop with and make their own enclosures for those using any number of techniques, such as 3d printing or even wood working. nuSense Software Just having the hardware does not mean it magically knows what to do, you also need a way to access and set up the sensors and actuators to make them do what you want. The intention behind the nuSense IDE was to leave as much of the complex levels of developing in the background. Instead of writing code on how you want nuSense to behave you access a graphical interface, using sliders, check boxes, easily understood names and values instead of abstracted data. A distance sensor may work on the concept of near to far instead of 0-1023 for instance. While it removes some of the granularity the sensor is capable of it adds for more in ease of use. Once you’ve gotten your kit, read through the quick start guide and installed the software you’re presented with what is essentially a wizard, taking you through the creation of your first project. First you choose which sensor you want to use (1). Once chosen you set up how it should trigger (2). Next step is to choose the placement on the body (3, 4). With the elastic Velcro that ships with the kit placement becomes entirely up to you. Some areas are recommended, but the software won’t prevent you from placing it elsewhere. The idea being that the frustration of having something not working as intended once you build it is less frustrating, and more of a learning experience, than dealing with software that restricts you from doing what you want. A similar setup phase is done with the actuator: which one (5), how it should trigger (6) and placement (7, 8). At the end of the wizard you’re presented with what you will need to build the project you’ve designed, and how to plug it all together(9, below). After everything is hooked up you simply connect the base unit via USB to the computer to load the project code onto the device. Wear it and experience the world in new ways! Beyond the wizard interface lies a mode which you can activate once you’ve reached the boundries of what you can do with the nuSense kit alone, or for that matter if you’re already comfortable with programming and physical prototyping. nuSense is a system designed not only for the novice user, but also for those with a greater wish to push the field of wearable technology further. When you activate the super-user side of the interface you can write your own code for what you want the sensors and actuators to do. Or for that matter you can set up a project using the wizard and then dive into the code of that project and modify it to your heart’s content. Web and Community Even though nuSense is set up for ease of use, like with all systems, users will run into issues. While some issues, like broken hardware, would need to be escalated into actual support cases most of what you run into can be solved by other users who have run into the same issues. The nuSense documentation has plenty of help and troubleshooting, but static documentation only reaches so far. One major element of the nuSense website is the community, where people can go to search for help, to share what they’re working on, to collaborate and just hang out. It’s a source of inspiration when looking for ideas, and from a corporate point of view it’s also free support. Early during this project an interview was conducted with Paul McCarthy, who together with his son Leon built a prosthetic hand using a 3d printer. He mentioned the importance of co-creation and how their project was fueled by the exchange of ideas and discussion between himself and Leon. One doesn’t have to look further than to the vast amount of communities online solely made for the purpose of exchanging ideas, or to the Maker movement which thrives on this exact kind of exchange. Eventually, as the community grows and some users end up spending more time and effort there than most, they can be elevated into forum administrators tasked to help keep the forum running. These are also potentially the people who would help to push nuSense forward, to help develop new modules and to suggest important updates and changes to future releases. Some of these “super users” could very well also be made part of the nuSense team to encourage further growth. As nuSense is based on Arduino technology there are also vast communities already set up to cater to it, so while the nuSense community is solely for the nuSense platform, the ease to get help can be extended far beyond its own community. Use Cases It’s fairly easy to see how this platform could be useful for those developing wearable technologies, regardless if that’s designers and engineers working either in consultancies or in-house, or even at schools or those doing research. Currently if you want to experiment in this field you need to find a developing platform and try to bend it into a wearable shape, as no good wearable development platform exist. Sensors and actuators are currently not adapted to work on a wearable level, and experiments tend to become cruder than they need to be. Speeding up the ability to iterate between versions also means that experimentation becomes freer and less costly. Companies could be more inclined to venture beyond armbands and glasses through a greater extent as research and development cycles go faster, and become cheaper. A good example may be in Google Glass. Looking below the development stages of Google Glass over two years can be seen, and how they started development with hacking a phone, and eventually building up to custom hardware, etc. While there is nothing wrong with hacking existing devices, we’ve all done it at some point, one may still ask if the development cycles couldn’t have been shortened and even some cancelled out by using a development platform already tailored for the purpose? As nuSense would fundamentally be an open source platform it would also democratize its use, as anyone would have access to it, regardless of prerequisites (aside from having access to a computer). This also means that anyone could develop not just new peripherals and modules for nuSense but could essentially clone the platform. A good example how this would work could again be seen in Arduino. The Arduino platform is entirely open source, all the way from the code to the circuit board design. Nothing is stopping anyone from opening up their own Arduino manufacturing and selling Arduino compatible boards. This is with one exception, they cannot use the name Arduino as it’s trademarked to Arduino. A similar framework would be set up around nuSense, where anyone could clone nuSense to their hearts content but have to keep the nuSense branding off it, calling it at most nuSense compatible. This kind of development opens up for a lot of possibilities, just as for Arduino it meant the release of many tailored clones, for different use cases it could mean the same for nuSense. Arduino clones have come out in all shapes and sizes, being able to run almost anything imaginable. What exactly a similar exploration would mean to nuSense is only up for speculation, but could definitely include a much broader set of sensors and actuators, as well as modules for more extreme situations. Summary As a bonus, while finalizing the project time was spent observing and interacting with a class of second year interaction design master students at Umeå Institute of Design during a project dealing with wearable technology. The hardships they went through both in trying to make quick prototypes to test ideas, as well as building their final concepts was very telling for the need of a better wearable development platform. The second hurdle was often simply understanding the data received from the sensors used, and how they related to what the user was doing. When you turn a knob on a box, it’s not hard to tie action with received input together, but when things start becoming more arbitrary and you have to take more complex sensor data into account it’s often hard to reach anywhere meaningful, and you do so simply by virtue of spending a lot of time. nuSense definitely fills a function when being able to iterate quickly on your ideas, as going back and making changes to your project is as easy as hooking up the USB cable and loading over new project code. Even if you need to go into the code and change bits and pieces yourself it’s still a lot easier simply by the code being pre-generated for you and you don’t have to worry about how to communicate with the sensors and actuators, but only focus on the values of how they should act. Future Work As nuSense is grounded in technology of today, while trying to remain a cost effective platform, some concessions had to be made. Cables were used instead of emerging technologies such as Bluetooth Smart (formerly Bluetooth LE) which would allow the modules to be wireless, but would increase the cost, power requirements and size of the platform modules exponentially. If current battery technology continues to improve and wireless communication chips become constantly cheaper, it’s definitely not far-fetched that these modules could become entirely wireless in future versions. As the current form of nuSense is utilitarian in nature there would also be a lot of work needed to bring it up to a more attractive level. This could though be something for version 2 or 3, when early adopters and the community has had a chance to give input and brought the system to where they see fit. By the time an official nuSense version 2 or 3 is ready for launch more tailored clones for specific situations may already exist on the market. This is not a bad thing as it would leave nuSense to focus on being the main backbone behind the development, rather than designing for every specific use scenario, if one could even map out such a thing. While it’s doable to draw out guidelines for how to design for wearable technology, things like smooth shapes and soft materials, it’s only after it’s been tested and vetted by users you know if it would work on not. It’s unwise to expect nuSense to bring a revolution to the ergonomics of wearable technology, as that’s not the main point of the system.

Based on [Buxton, B. (2007). Fig 149 & 150 [Illustration]. Sketching User Experiences (p. 388). Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.]

Full report [two_third padding="0 12px 0 2px"]While this project page is long it is mainly a shortened version of the thesis report made at the end of this Interaction Design MA project. If you would like to read the report in its entirety, as well as explore the references made therein, simply click the image opposite this text for the 3mb PDF. Thank you![/two_third] [one_third_last padding="0 12px 0 2px"][/one_third_last]

Talking Head

switchandlever — Sun, 17 May 2015 19:57:09 +0000

As a small kick-off for my master's thesis I used a previously mentioned 3D scan of my head to create a robotic face with a movable jaw. The face is currently anything but jovial, but could be made to say anything, not just the zombie on screensaver mode as visible in the video below. Concept DETAILS Looking at the intersection between man and machine, what is human and what is machine, I aimed to move towards mimicking the movements of the human face, starting with the jaw. Starting with a cleaned up 3D scan of my head I was able to manipulate it into a format which could be cut out on a laser cutter and glued together into a simile of myself. The software Autodesk 123D Make was used to convert the 3D model into an array of slices, each the thickness of MDF which was available. After getting the slices cut out, they were reassembled into a face once again. The jaw was cut out separately to ensure it could be mounted and actuated once the model was put together. The ridges between each level of the face create an interesting, and somewhat confusing, resolution to what is usually smooth and ordered. The face was animated rather simply using an Arduino Uno and a servo motor, hence the squeaky whirring sound which can be heard in the above video.

RF Arduino Shield

switchandlever — Sun, 17 May 2015 18:25:54 +0000

During an internship spent at Smart Design in San Francisco I had the opportunity to design and make a shield, which is essentially a circuit board which sits on top of a prototyping platform called Arduino, and offers features which the Arduino doesn't have by its own. In this case radio frequency communication. Shield The final shield was designed, manufactured and populated with third party components to form the finished item above. Why RF-communication though? At Smart we were playing around with the Ninja Blocks platform, which is used to connect various items around your home to the internet. Creation As we wanted to make our own peripherals they needed to be able to communicate with the Ninja Blocks base unit, and as so happens that communication takes place over 433MHz radio frequency. Hence, if we could make the Arduino communicate on the same frequency we'd be able to create anything we'd want to. An added benefit was also to enable two way communication between several Arduinos, independently of the Ninja Blocks platform. Work started very crudely, with hooking up the necessary components to breadboards making sure that the idea behind it worked, and then creating a more reliable, soldered, version of the same Once the concept was proven to work the circuit board which would make up the final shield was drawn up in CadSoft EAGLE PCB designing program, and sent off to a small scale manufacturer called OSH Park for production. When the circuit board comes back it needs to be populated with the right components, as well as having headers added so it can be plugged into the Arduino board. If you want to create your own version of the Smart Design RF Shield you can download the EAGLE project files as well as documentation on how to get your Arduino to speak with your final shield at GitHub at the following link: smartInteractionLab/arduinoNinjaShield. You can also read a more in depth article about the creation of the shield at the Smart Interaction Lab blog: Making a Custom Arduino Shield for Ninjablocks.

UID Cookie Box

switchandlever — Sun, 17 May 2015 18:09:57 +0000

UID Cookie Box was a two week project together with Alexis Morin and Sharon Williams during the autumn of 2012 at Umeå Institute of Design (UID). The cookie box was created out of a desire to give something to people at the school. 50% social experiment, 50% unexpected behaviour and 50% cube equals 150% deliciousness! Concept Details The actual box is made from a thick acrylic plastic and fiber board placed in an aluminium tray. Part of the reason of the split design was to make the refilling and service easier, although precautions need to be taken to prevent tampering of the insides. After testing, and failing, to see how well and fast the rumor mill would spread the necessary information about the cookie box and the twitter hashtag required it was decided to put instructions of its usage on the side of the box instead. This was done through laser etching the surface of the painted fiberboard. The insides of the box is controlled by an Arduino which talks with a computer wirelessly via XBee. The computer is running breakout.js and node.js to take care of controlling the Arduino and talking with the Twitter API. The way we managed to set it up means the lag between a tweet being sent to the machine pushing out a cookie can be counted in seconds, wheras in the first iteration of the cookie box it could at times be counted in minutes. The code for the project is available on github for anyone to take part in. Since the lure of cookies is too strong for some people to handle some control functions were built into the cookie box. To prevent people from overfeeding themselves with cookies the box will not push out another cookie if you already tweeted within five minutes, instead it will blink red as a visual indicator that you should slow down. Also, to prevent cookies from piling up on the floor in front of the box due to repeated tweets the machine will simply ignore your request if there already is a cookie in the slot. This prooved to be an especially important feature as people not in the vacinity of the box started retweeting wondering what was going on with the new delicious hashtag in their friends' tweets. The cookie box was placed in the school public during two events for testing and correcting of glitches and troubleshooting. The cookies ran out rather quickly, which is why wooden pucks were made with a message to contact the cookie administrator (i.e. either of us who worked on it) for restocking the box. The longterm goal is to put the box permanently in the school and have it stocked with cookies as often as possible. Delicious cookies for everyone! Concerns about public health notwithstanding. So next time you're in Umeå, Sweden, come by, tweet with #uidcookiebox and grab yourself a cookie!

Up, Down, Left, Right

switchandlever — Sun, 17 May 2015 17:42:21 +0000

The game 'Up, Down, Left, Right' was as experiment made during a course at Umeå Institute of Design where the aim was to learn how to interface with HIDs (Human Interface Devices) such as gamepads. Gameplay Concept The simple purpose of the game is for you, the black square, to escape the red square. The red square gets progressively faster as the game goes on making evasion harder and harder. 'Up, Down, Left, Right' can be played in two different ways, either you hold down the buttons of your gamepad to move around in nigh real-time, getting chased by the red square. Or you do deliberate moves one at a time with the red square making one move for every move you do. Every time you die, and die you will, a ghost is created that follows your previous movements. Every successive play generates a new ghost eventually making your playing field littered with past iterations of yourself, and their inevitable failure. [two_third padding="0 12px 0 2px"]If hearing this doesn't discourage you, you can download and play the game yourself, providing you have a machine which runs Windows. Click the image opposite to this text to download the 6mb zip file which contains game. You will need WinZip or similar unpacking software to be able to extract the files out of the zip. [/two_third][one_third_last padding="0 12px 0 2px"][/one_third_last]

Morph

switchandlever — Sun, 17 May 2015 16:15:31 +0000

Morph was a service design project made during ten weeks in the spring of 2012 at Umeå Institute of Design together with Doris Feurstein and Shelagh McLellan. Today, just as in ages past, people emigrate and immigrate around the world on a daily basis. Reaching new places and learning new languages always proves to be a hurdle, regardless if you're young or old. Is there something we could do to alleviate their problems through the society and with the technology and we have today? Concept Working closely with users who came to Sweden for different reasons, and from different ages, a solution was developed which follows with you from day one in your new country and helps you through the process of being proficient in your new language. This process relies heavily on regular practice in the language as well as participating in social events together with others that are in your situation as well as native speakers. It helps you to keep your learning active by connecting with things that you find interesting or are important to you. The solution is called 'morph', and its purpose to connect you through activities with others. The greatest learning is done through social immersion and the easiest way to reach is by doing things you have a self-interest in. It is in the intersection between language learning and social immersion that morph exists. Morph consists of five parts: a greeting you recieve in your home land before moving, a welcome package with a map and a wireless router cube, a web/mobile portal and actual events organized by morph. Morph is also a method of slowly changing the words in your language over from your native tongue over to your new one successively by replacing words in text you see through correspondance with morph or through digital devices. Through the wireless router cube you can track your progress as well as the words you should practice on in your coming days. By having an incentive, which for example could be sponsored discounts by local companies, you have a stepping stone to reach on your way to mastering your new language. With the morph web-service you can, after setting up your profile in your native language, follow the events that are going on around you. Events that fall in line with your interests are recommended to you to attend. The core of the morph system is your telephone which you carry around you everywhere. The system helps you to get to different places of interest, helps you with your language learning, slowly changes over words which become familiar to you to create a mixture, a morph, between your native language and your new language, until eventually all words are in your new language. Morph does not stop at the point of becoming proficient in your new language but rather continues with you giving back, in a sense becoming a morph ambassador, helping new people as you were helped. This is reinforced by the social network that is created by attending and socializing at morph organized events. Morph is not about making people speak fluently, morph is giving people the tools to go out and connect with others and create situations where language learning can occur in a more relaxed way away from classrooms and books.

3D Scanning

switchandlever — Sun, 17 May 2015 15:32:38 +0000

3D prototyping and manufacturing is on the rise with technology becoming ever cheaper to where you can have your own 3D printer in your own home without a huge investment. Copying is not limited to two-dimensional material any longer. Machines are even reaching the stage of self replication. Because of this I wanted to explore self replication and augmentation through 3D scanning and printing. The process was fairly easy: firstly put a few dozen reflective dots all over your face. Secondly sit completely still and expressionless for about an hour while the 3D scanning operator points a big and menacing, vaguely weapon-like, laser device at your face. Eyes closed please! The resulting 3D model is, out of the box, unfortunately not entirely usable. Many holes to be patched and a lot of unnecessary garbage, created by not being able to scan hair, needed to be dealt with. After a somewhat longwinded, manual cleaning-up, process through various software, augmentations in shape of antlers were added. Finally the 3D model was sent off to Shapeways where it was printed in high quality plastic and sent back. As unnerving as a clone of yourself, even one heavily altered, is it is equally as interesting as a snapshot in time. It is much like a three-dimensional photograph of a moment which will never come again.

USB Lost & Found

switchandlever — Sun, 17 May 2015 14:52:41 +0000

For anyone who has ever lost their USB stick, with its often precious cargo, the process of getting it back, even if lost in familiar territory such as at school or at work, is less than smooth. People don't know who it belongs to unless it's marked, and chances are it ends up forgotten somewhere, "inherited" by whoever finds it or even thrown away. From a quick idea jotted down during a meeting a simple solution to the problem formed. Since "Lost & Found" boxes exist almost anywhere, why not create one specifically for USB sticks in areas where losing them is common, such as copy rooms, common computer rooms and so forth? A holder of sorts, custom made to fit USB connectors, was made and put up in the common copy room at Umeå Institute of Design, an area where many a USB sticks have been lost over the last few years. No more than a week later the rack had already amassed a small collection of USB sticks, of many I have been told already have found their way back to their owners. Since then the holder has been living its own life with sticks coming and going, lost and found, in cyclical motion.

Voices of Umeå

switchandlever — Sun, 17 May 2015 14:40:05 +0000

Voices of Umeå is a project together with the local composer Anders Lind in which he is going to put together a musical piece featuring the citizens of the city of Umeå, Sweden for the year 2014 when Umeå is the European capital of culture. The five day project was intended for pitching an idea of how the recording of Umeå citizens could be done. To achieve his aim, to record several thousand voices, over the span of a few months Anders has plans of creating a device or portal where people can approach and record themselves with minimal effort. The inspiration of the project came from another field where people both feel comfortable to interact and use their voices in as well as an area that is instantly recognizeable; the common phonebooth. Phonebooths from around the world were referenced and all had one theme in common: privacy, or at least the illusion thereof. Drawing upon the arid climate around Umeå in winter the final portal was created. Its edgy structure reminding of the ice and snow that surrounds the north of Sweden come wintertime. The wings on either side both invite the user as well as shield from surrounding noise, making sure that the recording is as clear as possible, privacy as high as possible while keeping claustrophobia to a minimum. The recording device would eventually be touring schools and public institutions around Umeå and should therefore work independently regardless of the environment it is placed in. Since the device will be independent care needs to be taken about its accessibility, people of all characteristics should be able to access it. The wings and screen therefore lowers and raises depending on the height of the person approaching so no one has to be left out. The final portal would have a easy to use and understand interface where you are explained the purpose of the project in simple terms as well as what is in it for you; to receive a visualization of your own voice. After the recording the possibility to delete it should also exist in case the user has changed their mind about participation at any point in the process, or would simply want to have a retry at the recording. A video of the concept from beginning, through interface and recording and ending the interaction. A Processing program was developed to analyze audio, either through prerecorded audio or directly from a microphone, and paint that out on a canvas. At the end of the recording cycle an image file is saved to be able to keep the result. Though, arguably the experience of creating, watching the painted blobs visualize your voice in real time, is much more interesting than watching the static result. The code for the program is largely based on Nicolas Coronado's Audio Painter and a big thank you goes out to him for his help in this process.