Busy busy monday!

28-11

Mondays are not nice, because they are always really busy!
Today started of with a coach meeting with Sam, with the first part being a project meeting in which everybody presented their design documents. Mine, luckily was good enough for the time being, but Bruno had a hard time. It is hard to see this happening to a project mate and I was really doubting if there is something which I needed to say or that I should just let things be.. This does remind me of how important communication is. Being able to tell what you want to tell in a clear overview is a skill which will become of a great importance during a designer's career.

It also reminded me of the unique position of the ID student at the TU/e. The process approach, learning from  other students and learning by doing are different from other ID educations, but make this one so strong. One can learn so much from others. I have learned as much from other students and their work as I have learned from assignments and other activities.

The second part of the meeting, was individual. I send an e-mail to Sam on Thursday or Friday last week that I was struggling with what he mentioned as an interaction which was too easy. I did not quite understand what he meant en though that the power of this concept is in the 'simpleness'; if something would be added/changed the focus of the design would be on another interaction in stead of the pouring-interaction. When I talked to him, he luckily said that he did not think my concept was bad, but the story did not add up entirely yet. I need to mention that the product is meant as some sort of ritual, something which needs to be done to respect the action of creating light. He also taught my showcase has a good base now of which I am really glad!

At 12:15 I joined the Educie meeting again, in which we decided to have a brainstorm and settled some unsolved mysteries of the upcoming photoshop workshop.

In the afternoon, I helped Mariette with programming the Arduino. She had not yet seen the Arduino being hooked up to a sensor, so it was the easiest if somebody could help her for a minute. It was not to hard to write the program, but it needed some smoothing. Unfortunately, another meeting was waiting before I could finish this properly, so I left Mariette on her own with the coding.

The third meeting of the day was with Rik about the SDL report. It needs to be finished! So we looked at the last things which need to happen before it is done. Thankfully, it is not that much. It is mainly the final chapter and pasting the appendices from the right documents.

And in the end of the afternoon there was the academic development again. This time it took the lecturer sooo long to make his point that it was really really boring. I have not learned anything at all this time..

Last week Friday: a normal work day

It started, as usual on Friday with a project meeting. We presented our development and future plans to Sam and he gave some good feedback on making the process and projects work. Our team has a problem in combining the different ideas into 'one concept'. It needs to fit with each other, which is a problem, as the concepts are not developed together or around a theme. In the afternoon we sat together with the projectmates and discussed the different concepts to make sure everybody understand the concepts and the contexts in which they could be placed. We did not immediately see how to combine the concepts, but we made a good start and have material to think about. It looks like this:

I have also had a individual meeting with Sam. In this he also addressed that I have to make some decisions regarding my concept. He likes it if I let him know more what I am doing/going to do. In the planning, it said that I was going to work on my showcase, because of the busy project with Rik, it totally slipped my mind. This is my task for the next meeting with Sam. He wants me to be less boring in my new showcase, as he thinks I have the skills to do some interesting things graphically. We also discussed a book (pattern recognition) which Sam was reading and he thought would be something interesting for me. It is about a trend watcher and how he predicts the trend by living the present ones. It reminded me of 'Transcendent man' about Kurzweil, who predicts the future of technology by making models of the old and present future.

At the end of the day, I wanted to get on paper how far the development of my concept was. I wanted to see where it can be developed further and where it is already (almost) finished. So I wrote down everything I knew (not everything is readable, but this is the only picture I have at the moment.).

Jelmer told be that the aesthetics are also something to look into deeper. This was quite obvious from this overview as well, so I made some sketches of how it could look. (still in progress though). As the bowl needs to be able to be shifted and I want people to be able to do it with one hand. This should be made visible in the aesthetics of the concept; how to hold it and how to place your hands should be clear when a user looks at it for the first time. As inspiration, I started to fiddle around with positioning the bowl.

Project meeting; combining the ideas

7-10


During our coach meeting today, there was a slight emphasis on how we as a group intend to combine the concepts of the individuals into one room/area for the workplace. I will come back to later in this post, as there is some additional information necessary to explain how we combined them.

Mariette explained her ideas. One of them consisted of clouds, which people can use to be transported around. This proves how games can act as a very good source of inspiration, as this is related to the Mario games of Nintendo.

Jelmer had a very productive day on Thursday which resulted in a couple of ideas, his latest involving a waterfall which can be used as an interactive wall for a non-fixed purpose yet.

My concept, being the 'liquid light' idea (which is not a very good name for the concept actually) and those of Jelmer and Mariette can be integrated with each other pretty good. We have decided to present this during the mid-term exhibition. The clouds of Mariette will move around in an oval/circular shape. At one moment, they an animation will 'take 2D clouds upward'. Clouds natural behaviour is that they evaporate into rain, rain is water of course --> Waterfall. The water at the bottom will be used by people, at the midterm for my light activation. In other words, Jelmer's waterfall is the link between the concepts of Mariette and myself. The link will be clearly visible on the posters, which will be blend in with each other. Below you can see the poster which Jelmer made:

Another thing we discussed in this meeting is that we could add a more practical dimension in our concepts. In my case, it could be a way to focus the light on a particular area of the room. There are a lot of different ways to include things like this, which I want to explore on the midterm exhibition by engaging discussions with people about this area.