Category: Spring 2019

Okay, so this is before I read the response to the first article, and I will upload a similar thought to that article soon. For now, though, here are my thoughts to the original piece.

One on hand, I do comprehend the intention of the author. Bret Victor aims to criticize the current state of design of interaction technology by mocking that the “Pictures Under Glass” (PUG) does not comply well with how our fingers and hands are supposed to use tools. And in a sense, that is true: most of the time the only gestures we utilize are touches, swipes, and a few others. However, I do disagree with his point, and here are two reasons why.

First of all, I want to address this issue in a different perspective. Why make our tools more intricate than it is right now? We use touches and swipes because they are feasible to use. Yes, maybe it gives less sentiment to use these few gestures to go about with our technological devices, yet I do believe that if we were to make them more “hand-interactive”, as the author intends to, most processes will take longer to finish. The goal then, is to try to improve and give sentiment of using our hands without creating more problems.

Furthermore, our tools (phones, tablets) do utilize numerous hand-like gestures. Of course, this is usually when we are playing mobile games, but it is not like they are not capable of doing so. For instance, there is a mobile game where you have to grab your phone/pad and hold it up, trying to balance a ball that is on the screen. The game itself feels like the ball is actually on the device, since the device senses your balance motion. So this again self-explains that although we CAN use these tools, we do not because of maybe the first reason.

 

I think that this article allows for the author to go more in-depth into what he wanted to explain in the original article. In the first article, there is a large build-up to his main argument that touchscreens should not be the future because of its restrictive nature. While he does not provide any absolute solutions to the problem he proposes, I found his analysis of different pathways that interactive technology might take in the coming years to be extremely interesting, and more interesting than the first because of his tackling of tangible examples of this technology he refers to.

I agree with all the major points the author makes, specifically about voice technology and “waving” technology, but he uses this article to reinforce his point in the previous: user interfaces, or the ones we believe the ones of the future will be like, do not provide an immersive experience for the user. It would be very interesting to read about his beliefs in research on user experience, because he merely states that he hopes his rant to inspire more interest in this research, not specific ways in which this research can take place to promote the creation of effective experiences.

For my midterm project, I was thinking of creating an art piece using projection and servo motors. At the moment, in its conceptual stage, I’m imagining a projector pointing downwards towards a space (floor, table?) with a motor attached to a metal rod moving around in circles, carrying a paper plane that will take us on a trip through Abu Dhabi from dawn to night in a loop, using film projections and sound.

I will be attaching the paper plane to a metal rod, which will be connected to the servo motor in the center. Here’s a rough sketch:

The shaded area is where the video footage is going to appear, and the paper kite will be rotating around the circle in a loop, powered by the Servo in the center.

Now, I have two challenges with regards to this project. First, I’d like to incorporate an ‘interactive’ aspect to it, where it’s not just a narrative using video, sound and the paper plane. I’d like some element of it to be controlled by the viewer, and so I may add pressure sensors or buttons, for the user to be able to “control” the paper plane’s direction, in a way turning the installation into a mini-game. The other challenge would be manipulating film footage of aerial and city views of Abu Dhabi to fit into a circular/donut-shaped form surrounding the motor.

 

I liked how Bret responded to the criticism/comments on his rant. It makes it more personal and makes it seem like he really cares and doesn’t want people to get the wrong idea. Good on you, Bret.

I liked his comment about how voice isn’t exactly where he thinks the future is but “if voice gets you excited, do it”. It was inspiring to know that, even though he wasn’t passionate about it, if you can recognise the potential in something and get excited about it, then you should absolutely pursue research in that field. Maybe you’re on to something.

His idea that in the future, if the computer continues progressing the way it is (I.e. not interacting with the physical world and the body), then humans will face the risk of becoming completely immobile. While this is terrifying, and is a very real fear we should strive to stay away from, it just reminded me of that scene from Wall-E with all the overweight people in the chairs who don’t know how to walk. I feel like that’s where humanity is heading if we don’t get active with our technology.

Beginning this reading started out the way most things begin: disappointing.

“Here is the future” and then, a video. A magical video. I was so excited to watch it. And then, as I clicked “play”….

VIDEO UNAVAILABLE

great.

I loved the tone of this reading. It kept me engaged and drew me in as it presented ideas I hadn’t thought of before. I completely agree with most of them. A group of inspired people is definitely one of the most powerful forces and hands are super important for doing anything in life.

I appreciated his ability to make me think about little actions I did and how those little actions weren’t so little for my hands. Tying my shoes, for example, had such precise, nuanced movements and habits that I had learned over time. When you first learn how to tie your shoes, you’re clumsy and you don’t quite understand how to do it. As it becomes muscle memory, however, your hands figure out how to move in just the right way. Hands are such an impressive part of our body. With all the joints, bones, and possibilities, why wouldn’t we use them to enhance our technology?

The thing that stuck with me the most, however, was the quote “with an entire body at your command, do you seriously think the future of interaction should be a single finger?”

This really made me think about where our technology is right now and where we see it going in the future. Phones started with using one finger to swipe, one finger to type in a password. Then, it was one finger that would read fingerprint and unlock the phone. Now, we’re even beyond that. Facial recognition. Why are we straying from hands when Bret so truthfully pointed out that the future is in them?

I think that Victor makes some really good points in his article. Although this might seem odd, but it was not until he mentioned that humans desire some feedback from the tools and objects they are manipulating that I realized how important this was. Specifically with his mention of the iPad keyboard being not nearly as fun to play or immersive as playing an actual keyboard or piano, I realized just how important feedback is in the experience of using a product. Feedback not necessarily in the form of getting the desired outcome(s), but other things that make the product immersive, creating a “genuine” experience for the user.

As we start doing more and more things with our phones, tablets, laptops, Victor makes an extremely good point that there may be something lost from losing feedback and an immersive process as these tasks become “computerized.” As an aside, I really find the discussion of how humans will react to technological advancement thought-provoking. How will everything becoming computerized influence the human condition, when tasks that humans have been doing for millennia become reduced to something that can be done in a matter of seconds with a machine?

For my midterm project, I hope to create a toy car that, when it detects objects in front of it that are extremely close by, will go into reverse, rotate a little bit and continue on its path forward. I was inspired by a remote controlled car I saw at Yas Mall a few weeks ago that would spin its wheels when it would come into contact with a ramp or slanted surface and continue in the opposite direction.

This project will require the two wheels that come with the Sparkfun Inventor’s Kit, a distance sensor as well as the Arduino itself. I also plan on adding a sound library that would play a noise when the car comes close to a surface. I am also thinking of adding a servo motor that would have pictures of faces attached, that would switch depending on the car’s currents state (for example: a happy face for when the car is running unobstructed, and an angry face for when it is close to an object).

I am still trying to think of ways to make the project more interactive, specifically with how a person might interact with the car besides from blocking its path and forcing it to go into reverse.

It was very interesting for me to read this. Even though I love my iPhone’s touch screen, I resonate so much with wanting to touch and feel things with our hands. I think it’s such a loss to lose that interaction. The best part of living in a 3D world is being able to see and feel different shapes and angles and textures. As kids, when we walk around in a store, we want to touch everything. For some of us, this is still the case… Kids are told, however, to stop touching things, and I feel this restriction resembles the restriction of touch in the advancement of technology. But there’s a reason that we want to touch different textures and shapes. It comes from our curiosity. The writer talks about a group of inspired people being powerful, but inspiration is derived from experiencing things for yourself, and becoming curious about them.

As someone who loves the internet but still refuses to give up their journal and planner for google calendar no matter how many invites people send, and someone who appreciates physical books so much more, although I feel the writer’s stance is a little bit extreme, I generally agree with them. For example, people used to use type writers, and then they used big keyboards, and slowly the keys got thinner and thinner until touch screen/touch  keyboards were made. But the experience of a typewriter, however might be less efficient, is so much stronger. I would definitely not want to give up my mac’s keyboard for a touch keyboard. To me, it’s great for some things to be touch screen, but others shouldn’t be, because they would lose the experience. And experiencing these little things is what keeps life interesting and inspiring.

Taking a great inspiration in Zimoun’s work with random tiny objects that make natural sounds, I would like to create something similar- yet obviously on a much smaller scale. A very rough plan is to create a structure with a piece of metal (or some other material) that would be put close to a servo with a long stick attached to it. On the stick, several pieces of small objects (glass balls, metal nuts etc.) would be hanging on strings. In this way, I would like to combine servo’s analog output with an analog input of a sensor (pressure, light, motion – will see what works in the process). Therefore the sensor would trigger the servo to move – just in the right distance so the stick stops in front of the metal piece and physics will do the magic of small tiny objects moving and hitting it.

Starting very simple, but as I learned with the last project, the complexity can be added once the simple idea works.

 

 

 

I was pleasantly surprised to see how much self-reflection Bret actually demonstrated while responding to the critiques/comments to his article. He acknowledged the theoretical limitation that lacks concrete examples and elaborated a little more on the “vision” element, making ambitious inspiration for future designers  an ultimate objective of the paper.

Mentioning the relation and negative effect that technological advancements have on the physical mobility of humans is a factor that I rarely thought about as a possible consequence. Frankly, Bret’s criticism feels a little counter-intuitive, yet I can see the point. Hundreds years, people were striving for energy-saving inventions that would minimise the work and effort (and thus movement) of people, yet Bret actually points out the danger of where, if continued in the same direction, humanity might end up, painting an image that is a little frightening.

Though I agreed with his responses and mostly found them reasonable defence, I came to a point when I did not buy one of his explanations completely. Bret uses the words of Bergström to describe how not practising  with our hand due to touchscreens can lead to a disability of touch in a way similar to blindness. Obviously, such a complex topic cannot be summarised and answered within the scope of a single paragraph taken out of the context.

I just found this problematic of what consequences will be seen on our bodies and senses oversimplified, while feeling like he also dismisses the fact that while losing some skills/habits, we might gain new ones. Bret described the changes as inherently negative and that we should design technology according to what our bodies do at the current stage of development. Yet it ignores the fact that our bodies might be slowly merging with technology in a weird symbiosis, eventually opening the possibility of us not needing, the specific grabs for instance, whatsoever.