Interaction Design / SCIENCE MUSEUM

First project back after the summer:

After what seemed like the never ending summer, year 2 began with the lecture of 'Interaction Design'.

What is interaction design I hear you say: It is the design of interaction between users and products. The aim of interaction design is to create products that enable the user to achieve their objectives. It involves elements like motion sound and space.

Our brief for the Science Museum:

"Using digital media, create an interactive experience that reaches people aged between 20 - 30 (people who may not come/ know about mathematics exhibition in a memorable way) Needs to have a wow factor to get people to museum "

Initial Response to brief:

As soon as I was given the brief I had a flourish of ideas around how I could use maths in a fun and interactive design. These ideas came before being told our project had to be based on one of the exhibitions in the mathmatics gallery. They were influenced by examples shown to use. The two designs that inspired me were called; ' The global radio' you were given an interactive globe to spin and move around like google maps; you were then able to click a country and region to tune into the local radio. This was really clever in how it broke down the physical boundaries that radios create within countries. This concept inspired me to come up with an idea of using a globe to show how maths has influenced design. The examples could include; In India, geometry is used within tile and textile design. The geometric shapes are used to construct repetitive designs. If you clicked India on the globe you would be shown multiple choices ie, games, geometry problems that relate to that country. Each example would change depending on mathematics and its influences within design.

However, my favourite one was called ' The making of the kinetic facade' - this was a huge instillation made to construct a persons face using giant pins. Basically it was a large scale version of the rectangular pin toy that you push your hand into and would make an impression of your hand. However, the reason I liked it so much was because of the ingenuity and shear scale. It was constructed and designed for the Sotchi olympic games. Athletes faces would be made out of the pins and anyone who would send an image to the device.

It involved 4 of the 5 dimensions taught to us within interaction design (can be seen in the image below)

5 dimensions of interactive design:

After being introduced to our new topic we were introduced to a new technology called Arduino. This was used to get are brains to start thinking about new tech we could try and incorporate within out design using coding a installation design. At first I struggled to understand the concept of the board and wires etc but with perseverance me and Rosie managed to create some very basic but cool things. (see blog post on Arduino to find out more and what I got up to)

The next step was to go to the exhibition in the science museum to get inspired and to come up with some ideas.