Progress
I finally finished with the hardware aspect of my project, in terms of making the head body and arm of the cat (the ears are still missing though..). During the process, I encountered some issues with my project, mainly with the pressure sensor. First, I made my own pressure sensor using velostat and that works as shown in the final project proposal for Assignment 12. However this was too small for what I actually need for my final piece, so I tried making it on a larger scale but the pressure sensor did not give me a variety of readings and only gave me high values of readings (in the 1000s) and it rarely varies. I tried using the piezo sensor, but it also does not vary. So at the moment, the pressure sensor is not a functioning part of my project.
Other than that, I have made progress with the interface on the p5 side, finished building the arm and have tested it so that it moves with the servo motor and I have also implemented the lcd to reflect what is written on the input box in the p5 sketch.
User Testing Video
Feedback and Reflections
For this user testing, I asked one of my friends to test my project. He was able to figure it out because I was debugging right in front of him, so he saw what actions I made and knew what to do. But if he didn’t see me do it, he said he would have been confused because I didn’t give instructions for how to trigger the cat’s hand to move.
There were also parts where I couldn’t finish in time to implement, that being illustrating the different images I want to pop up on the p5 sketch whenever the cat’s hand move. So he said the cat’s hand moving right now seems a bit pointless (and I had to explain what was meant to happen).
After this user testing, I realized there are still a lot more improvements and edits that I need to make to my project. One being to give clear instructions on the p5 sketch so that users know exactly what to do. Another thing is to find a way to get the pressure sensor working. And finally, finish with the illustrations so that I can implement it to my p5 sketch.