Interesting Device..

Have been thinking about using vibration in someway for the navigation interface. Either simple a simple vibration for left and right turns, perhaps through the phone or a worn device, like bracelets, earrings, shoe inserts or  lightweight  patches you can attach to somewhere on yourself. Or something with more complex vibration patterns to denote a range of different things like which way to turn, signalling when coming up to an intersection or your favourite café. I’m just musing here.

Then I decided to have a look on the Instructables site and under assistive tech found a project for a “Haptic Proximity Module (HPM) for Low Vision users“. It is a proximity sensor that uses vibration as feedback to let the user navigate their surroundings. I think it’s a pretty nifty idea, particularly for those with low to no vision. It ties in with my thought about the use of vibration feedback for navigational purposes. The HPM still looks like it is in the prototype phase but I think it has the potential of being very useful for those with sight impairments, especially once fully developed.

Thoughts on how I use a map app

I have thought about how I use navigation interfaces and what I do and don’t like about them. I’d like it if I didn’t have to get my phone out of my bag every time I need to check where I am and where I need to head, when I am using a maps app. If I were to create a list of steps I take when I use the app it would be something like this:

1. I get my phone out of my bag
2. Key in the pin to unlock it.
3. Open the navigation app I am using
4. Thank the GPS gods for being able to choose ‘current location’ and have it accurate most of the time. Or swear under my breath because I have to type in the address because the map gives my current location as being on the other side of the motorway. While not that far from where I am if I were to go through people’s yards, run across the motorway, scale a fence and go through more yards, I can’t do that, legally. So I have to type in the destination, usually just the number and street are enough but not always, or a contact’s name, which then comes up with the address if I have one associated with them. To be fair, if I am on a website for somewhere I want to go to I can click on the address usually and then pick the directions to/from and it will plot the route for me. It used to open up the google maps app on my phone, however the Apple maps app has replaced it, and so it opens up google web map instead.
5. Then I have look for the first turn or two in the directions and off I head, usually while putting my phone back in my bag because I don’t always like carrying it in my hand.
6. I usually need to look at my phone again either to confirm I am heading in the right direction or to get the next lot of directions. This is where the pain comes in for me, metaphorically speaking. Having to get my phone out, unlock it and then check for the next directions can be a tad annoying. I usually end up stopping when I do this, it’s distracting looking at the map and walking at the same time, especially when it’s in a busy place like the city.

Interaction Design: Interesting TEDtalk

This TED talk is about remaking transport maps so they better fit with the maps in our brains, but the concepts I feel can be applied to any kind of navigational map.

Quick post on coding lecture

Today at our last creative coding lecture we had a third year student come and talk to us about her journey through the coding papers available and showed us some of her second year work. She stressed the importance of exploring in coding what you find interesting in the world. I also liked describing code as the creation of a living breathing organism. That your program is something you create and then give life to.

Interaction Design: User Interface Musings

I have a number of ideas swirling about my brain about this project, and it’s probably about time that I committed them to blog. I am particularly interested in making a map that not just the sighted can used but also the visually impaired. Which possibly makes it a little more difficult and I don’t know the number of visually impaired on campus, but it is an important aspect of user interface design that I don’t think should be overlooked. However, depending on how I approach the design it could actually end up being easy for sighted people too to use as a navigation aid.

Often I try not to rely on maps when I navigate myself around a city, especially one I know well. I will look at a map to get a general idea if necessary and then head off in the general direction. I’ve even done this in cities I don’t know that well. If I had to describe how I navigate I would say I navigate by gut instinct and a little cheating look at a map every now and again. Though I only usually do this when I have time, if I don’t I use a map.

I think this is one time where I feel quite fortunate having been around as an adult when there weren’t smartphones to do the navigating for me and I had to use an old-fashioned paper map to navigate. As the chief navigator in the car because of my permanent passenger status I got very good at navigating using a map, even though I suffer a little from right left confusion. I get my left and right mixed up.

I now own a smartphone with maps and GPS navigation and I would say I use it often apart from the fact that I do find it a bit annoying to actually use. I think it goes back to honing the navigation instinct because I hated having to stop and get a map out to see where I was and where I needed to go next. I find I still hate having to do that with the phone. I would rather it knew where I was and I put in where I needed to be and it reminded me when I needed to turn without my having to get it out or hold it.

This may seem a little tangent but is part of my process. I often find myself thinking about the wee personal assistant imp that Vimes has in the Terry Pratchett books. Yes! Finally got to refer to his ideas! How can I sum up the imp…. It’s the Discworld version of the smartphone without the phone or Internet bits. Essentially he reminds Vimes about his appointments at the necessary times by speech. Vimes doesn’t need to get him out and look because he is told. Another idea from Pratchett’s Watch series is the way Vimes navigates the streets of Ankh-Morpork. As the commander of the City Watch and before that just another beat cop in the Night Watch, he walked the streets constantly, at night; often in extremely poor light, he learnt to know exactly where he was by the feel of the street underneath his feet.

Creative Coding: Interactive Mouse Toy Idea Musing

I have an idea based very loosely on particles and gravity. That’s what it started as anyway. Angela suggested that it the particles should move in a way that will make users associate them with something else, like insects or falling leaves. Which has got me thinking about attraction and repulsion and the use of different colours for the particles. Depending on where they fall in the colour spectrum depends on whether they attract or repel each other. If they attract each other; they merge, if they repel each other; they make each other zoom off in different directions. I’m still trying to figure the interaction bit, but ideally I don’t want users getting it too soon. I’m thinking the mouse could act like a very heavy body with a huge gravity field that causes the particles to coalesce around the mouse, merging and growing larger if they attract and just swirling if they repel.

The gravity associated with the mouse pointer could change depending on where it is on the screen so that different things happened to the particles. I could divide up the screen into four so that when the mouse is in a quadrant, the behaviour associated with it changes.

DSDN142 Creative Coding: Inspiration

At the beginning of the course we had a look at openprocessing.org to get an idea for what can be done with the Processing application. There was a lot of very cool stuff on there. Two of the sketches I liked were:
Processing code: Visualising Text by Diana Lange
Flickr: ‘Visualising Text’ Images

This is a video clip of her code in action.

I liked that this sketch is a visual representation of a poem’s words, as reading is one of my favourite activities. There is something beautiful about the way the sorting of the text becomes a sort of circular web.

The second sketch is by Teodor Michalski called Triangle Party. This one I found fun as the viewer can interact with the triangles with the mouse. It reminds me of a Chinese dragon in the way it twists, and the triangles are reminiscent of dragon scales.

DSDN112 Interaction Design Inspiration

Came across this while surfing YouTube. Other videos of theirs are also very interesting from the interaction design standpoint.

DSDN101 Project 3: Inspiration: Stop Motion Movies

The Morph Files “Excercising”

Peter Lord interview – Morph creator

Stop Motion featuring a Len Lye soundtrack
I like the ripple effect created by the green circles and red lines as the circles go off the edge of the frame.

DEADLINE post-it stop motion

DEADLINE the making of

500 People in 100 Seconds! – I quite like this one.

And one more, using card cutouts. Pretty nifty wee movie.

A STOPMOTION HISTORY OF THE WORLD

Couldn’t help myself. Had to add another. It’s sort of matches a thought that was playing around in my head.
ebay stop motion viral

Simple Destiny

http://vimeo.com/30358701

by Kevin Davidson

Research for the word evanescence. Inspiration for the movement through space.