Major Studio 2, Interactivity:

Final Student Projects Collected

Here is the complete list of student final projects for this course. They are in no particular order as they are very diverse explorations..  These are "mini-thesis" or "practice-thesis" projects.  Some students made fully working prototypes, others made detailed design documents with dummy prototypes, and yet others fell between the two camps.  All of them have have accompanying 10-page documents that presents their research, critical analysis, motivations, and design decisions.  Follow the links for full project site..
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Mike Edward's Pleech
The Pringles Wind Turbine (a.k.a. Power Leech or Pleech) is an attempt to turn simple items found at the hardware store and elsewhere into a working low-voltage power supply. It is also the process for creating the turbine, designed so that other people may reproduce the product themselves.
http://a.parsons.edu/~medwards/?q=node/305
also see: http://www.instructables.com/id/ERTAINQF18DW99A/
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Chia Ying's WhataWaste
WhataWaste is a system built specifically for mobile phones to help people get information about street discarded items based on their demands.In order to encourage user participation, the point system and feedback system are implemented to WhataWaste to increase contribution and trustworthy behavior.
http://a.parsons.edu/~clin/spring2007/wordpress/
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Tracy Gromek's AWARE
AWARE is an alert device for patients and caregives who are concerned with excessive bleeding. If profuse bleeding occurs AWARE emits a high pitched sound that is loud enough to wake a sleeping individual and be heard from distance. It was designed to bring piece of mind to the people who are afraid to sleep or leave the bedside of a loved one due to a medical condition that causes random bleeding.
http://trayjayg.typepad.com/ms2_interface/2007/05/final_paper.html
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Albert Dang's Telx
Telx is a platform for remote communication and interaction. My final paper describes my design questions, domains, precedents, process, and evaluation for the project. The name is derived from the word “telex”, which the Second College Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary defines as:
    A communication system consisting of typewriters connected to a telphonic network to send and receive signals.
The idea is that this platform would expand that method of communication to new technologies and levels of interaction.
http://a.parsons.edu/~adang/blogs/ms2/?p=55
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Cicek Neftci's eMCy
eMCy is a tool to hear a familiar voice and creates a database of sounds from the loved ones.
http://cicek-mj2.blogspot.com/
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Inti Einhorn's Distance Factor
Distance Factor is a turn-based strategy game that simulates the beauty which I have found can exist in something as crude and unlikely as a fight. 
http://intieinhorn.typepad.com/my_weblog/
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Chloe Varelidi's Medusa
Medusa v.0: urban eco toys that glow around the city depending on the amount of water that is spend in a neighborhood on a daily basis.
http://chloevarelidi.blogspot.com/
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Gaelen Green's M Path
M-path is a virtual mapping tool that enables you to experience the city through resonating traces of memory that you and others have left behind.
http://gfgonline.wordpress.com/
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Ivona Zdravevska's Interactive Learning Tool
The Interactive Learning Tool is a tool for children. This tool connects my interests in child development and dynamic media. My inspiration is my 2 year old nice.
http://zivona.wordpress.com/ 
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Jay Rothman's Hybrid Instruments and Performance
The aim of this project is to design a quartet of hybridized organic instruments
http://jayqclone.typepad.com/jayqclone/ 
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Hsinping Dai's Dr. Recipe
“Dr. Recipe” is a health recipe website that is used to search health recipes according to user’s body condition.
http://a.parsons.edu/~hdai/?p=136 
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Carolina Torres's Collective Experience Mood Tool
Is a playful tool aimed to unchain social relationships that can be transformed into emotional readings from a group. Exploring the behavior of users inside the network and identifying how personality, attitudes, motivations and behavior of individuals or groups change in the context of social interaction.
http://caritorres.typepad.com/carolina_torres/2007/05/he_collective_m.html

Haptic Gaming Platforms: Midterm Projects that Explore Advanced Topics in Human Computer Interaction

Trama Bear (Help a Dieing Teddy Bear)
http://trayjayg.typepad.com/ms2_interface/midterm/index.html

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Haptic Space Shooter
http://a.parsons.edu/~adang/blogs/ms2/index.php?paged=2

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Pofle (Collaborative Vibro-Tactile Pong)
http://caritorres.typepad.com/carolina_torres/2007/03/pofle_time_lets.html

Final Project

The self-defined Final Project, serves as preparation for the MFA in Design and Technology Thesis Process, which begins in the third (fall) semester of work.

As a reminder, a Design and Technology thesis is:
i. A singular subject concerning Design, Technology and the Human Condition (Society);
ii. A subject that is debatable, controversial, thought-provoking;
iii. Where evidence and precedents are presented through arguments for or against the thesis (recognizing opposing points of view is critical);
iv. Evidence is made by the design student in a set of iterative experiments and finished projects to prove or disprove the thesis
v. Students should consider the context (historical, domain/field specific), content (concept and execution) and contribution (to the field and/or a group of people) of their thesis.
vi. This is a “mini-thesis” and the project scope needs to be small enough for the period of time allotted for all phases of the project: research, development, ideation, iteration/methodology testing, prototyping and final project. Documentation of the project should be through the use of websites or production notebooks and/or sketchbooks.

April 5th
Explore Personal Motivations/Interests
Questions and/or Motivations:
Make a list of 2-4 primary questions that explain what it is that you are trying to discover. OR, illustrate the primary motivations for your work with design and technology. Your primary questions or motivations may contain a set of sub-questions/motivations as well.
Domains:
What are the domains/fields with which your project engages? List keywords, terms, phrases, concepts, industry-jargon, tags that illustrate these domains. What relationships exist between these domains? Illustrate the domains your project deals with in a Venn diagram.
Illustrations:
Prepare Include illustrations of your domains, interests, and/or motivations. Include keywords, tags, industry-jargon etc.... see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram
500-1000 words / 1-3 Venn Diagrams

April 9th
Precedents and Research
Homework:
What are examples of work that share something in common with your motivations? These precedents can be contemporary or historical, can be drawn from the realms of design, technology, sociology, psychology, etc. In preparing this section of your document, please include the following information for each precedent discussed:
• title of work and author/designer/artist
• brief description of project
• relevance of the project to your motivations
Illustrations:
Overlay Precedents on your Venn Diagrams
500-1000 words / 1-3 Venn Diagrams

April 12th
10 minute presentations.
Homework:
Apply motivations to a concept(s)
Summary:
Write a narrative description of the project(s). What is it, who is it designed for, what is it designed to do, what kind of technology does it explore, why should we care about it, where will we see or what is the project’s life beyond the classroom, how does it make a difference?

Illustrations:

Overlay your project on your Venn Diagram
500-1000 words / 1-3 Venn Diagrams / Other related images

April 16th
10 minute presentations.
Homework:
Illustrate the Process. Illustrate how your concept would functions. Include: a narrative description of your process, key methods, sample sketches, user experience storyboards, diagrams, IA, Technological Solutions etc.
500-1500 words / 1-3 Venn Diagrams / Other related images

April 19th
10 minute presentations.
Illustrative the Prototype, User Experience, and/or Recipe for Construction
Homework: Illustrate your ideal user experience. Provide refined IA illustrations, showing user experience and data flow. Build a recipe for making the concept.
500-1500 words / 1-3 Venn Diagrams / Other related images

April 23th
10 minute presentations.
Homework: Update your research and documentation

April 26
User Feedback
Homework:
Conduct interview with potential users. Collect data on who your users' thought's matched your concept or predictions.
500-1500 words / Other related images

April 30
10 minute presentations.
Homework:
Combine, Redesign, Update document

May 7 and May 10th
Crits
Turn in 5-10 page document which meet the above objectives. Turn in MLA reference and resources.

Design writing represents one form of expression with the MFADT program. As a result, students in the Major Studio will be required to actively engage in writing as part of their overall studio experience. In addition to learning how to write a design brief, students will also be asked to produce a longer piece of writing associated with some aspect of their course work. The following presents the documents general objectives.

+Document Objectives
1. Present a clear and concise overview of the project concept;
2. Situate the project within historical and creative contexts;
3. Provide a set of criteria used to evaluate the project;
4. Provide self-assessment of the project’s strengths and weaknesses;
5. Give an overview of the design process;
6. Present a list of related resources.

By the end of the semester, an annotated Domain Bibliography in MLA format is due to the Department Director for each student with no less than 10 primary and secondary sources. (Primary source examples are direct interviews or user studies; personal diaries/writing; surveys, etc. Secondary source examples and vetted websites).

History of Video Games - Google Video

Link: History of Video Games - Google Video.

Pipes: A Tool For Remixing the Web - Google Video

Link: Pipes: A Tool For Remixing the Web - Google Video.

Online Collaboration and Organizing Assignment

Identify a problem and a collaborative solution with how you, or humans in general, organize their knowledge/life/work or leisure. In other words answer the two questions: I wish the net had a site that ____________. This would allow _______________.

Answer these questions 3 times. Provide the problem/solution pairs. Write as much or as little as needed to explain your concept.
Due April 2nd.

This American Life, kids and cameras animation

Link: This American Life

Tom Kelly, The Ten Faces of Innovation

The roles people play, or can play, in innovation.
Link: The Ten Faces of Innovation » The Ten Faces.

podcast interview with Dr. Nora Gunn:
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail821.html

Schedule for 2nd Half of Semester

This third quarter of class will focus emergent paradigms for social collaboration via online interaction and mobile applications.

March 26th
Review and discuss videos.
Homework:
Upload final video edit to all team members blogs.
Reading
"We Are the Web"  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html
Homework:
Write 3-6 paragraphs about your critique of this article.  The first half of your response should address what in the article agreed with. The second half of your response would include what you did not agree with, and why.

March 29th
+  Speaker: Kenyatta Cheese
Trends in online interaction. De-centralized media explained. Group-centered design.
Homework:
Online Interaction assignment assigned
Reading [6 hours of reading] :
Clay Shirky - Communities, Audiences, and Scale.
http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html
Rocketboom on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketboom

Watch these episode:
http://www.rocketboom.com/stories/rb_07_mar_28
http://www.rocketboom.com/stories/rb_07_mar_29

Howard Rheingold - Technologies of Cooperation
http://www.rheingold.com/cooperation/Technology_of_cooperation.pdf

April 2nd:
+  Speaker: Andrew Baron and Joanne Colan from Rocketboom
Building Audiences. Understanding online culture. The history, present, and future of Rocketboom and video-blogging.
Reading:
Howard Rheingold - Technologies of Cooperation
http://www.rheingold.com/cooperation/Technology_of_cooperation.pdf
Homework:
Pick a concept from your list.  Answer some of the following questions:
Describe all the potential users for your applications.  Describe why they would interact with your project.  Explain, how they would interact with your concept.  Explain, why they would continue to interact with your concept. Lastly, describe how our shared culture, or any particular culture(s), could potentially change because of your concept.  Use concepts from Technologies of Cooperation if to help you articulate your ideas. 
500-1000 words.

April 5th
+ Disucss Technologies of Cooperation
+ 5 Min Presentations of your concept and thougths
+ Final Project introduced and explained
Homework:
Work on Final Project
Reading/Podcast:
Space and Place @ Where 2.0

Mark Hansen - Slogging - Citizen-Initiated Sensing
http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~cocteau/talks/siam.pdf [ It's a PowerPoint presentation.  You should be able to flip through this one and get the idea.]

April 9th
+ Speaker: Anthony Townsend talks in class.
Topics include: How "Space and Place" meet the Internet and mobile applications. We discuss mobile applications and location-based applications.  Look at trends that occur when mobile technology converges with social networking/web 2.0/and user-created content.
Homework:
Work on articulating your Final
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The mobile discussion:
"I am here? Where are you?"
"I've been here.  Where have you been?"
"I've experienced this there.  What have you experienced there?
Social mapping of the space, via the net.   Social mapping in the form of personal story, journal, photos/video, linkages, and etc....
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April 12th - May 3rd
Work on Finals

May 7th and May 10th
Final Presentations in Critique

May 14th
Last day wrap-up and establish further research.

We Are the Web

Link: Wired 13.08: We Are the Web.

We Are the Web The Netscape IPO wasn't really about dot-commerce. At its heart was a new cultural force based on mass collaboration. Blogs, Wikipedia, open source, peer-to-peer - behold the power of the people. By Kevin KellyPage 1 of 5 next »

Space and Place

Where 2006

Torkington, Eisnor, Nolan, Peterson

Download MP3 |
Link to it: Permalink
The web has redefined the word
"community." In some ways it has made a user's physical location
irrelevant. Recently, however, a fascination with physical place has
engendered a new crop of applications aimed at helping users and social
networks to map themselves on the web. These apps lets users identify
and annotate places, see where their friends are, and link physical
locations with other web-based information and technologies.
Link: IT Conversations: Social Data Face-Off.
Notes: Users have insentives to post their location/journal data when that data is as open as possible. B/c of technical limits it is very difficult to do user-centered design. There needs to be more user-centered design.

Google Desktop Blog, PC Apps and Game Dev Made Easy.

Link: Inside Google Desktop.