Boll is an interactive tangible user interface, designed to allow students to publicly vote on anonymous questions submitted by their peers.
KEY ROLES
Overview
Concept Development, Project Management, Physcial Prototyping, Coding, Schematics
Design Research, Visual Design, Branding, Prototyping, Storytelling, Filmmaking, Video Editing
PARTNERS
Overview
Design Research, Visual Design, Branding, Prototyping, Storytelling, Filmmaking, Video Editing
INSTRUCTOR
Overview
Graham Plumb & Nathan Villicana-Shaw
Design Research, Visual Design, Branding, Prototyping, Storytelling, Filmmaking, Video Editing
BRIEF
Overview
Augment a physical space on campus, prototyping interactive objects and/or spaces that shape the way people interact with one another and create an "interactive language" using tangible or natural user interfaces.
Craft a complete and consistent Out of Box Experience for a new IoT device which results in behavior change for the user.
APPROACH
Overview
For this project our team worked together to ideate concept directions, map spatial design considerations, iterate on and test prototypes, and document the final working installation in use at the end of the project.
Craft a complete and consistent Out of Box Experience for a new IoT device which results in behavior change for the user.
01
Team Roles
Our team for this project was comprised of three people taking on the designated roles of "Techie," "Modelmaker," and "Generalist," based on our background and experience. Based on my knowledge of programming and electronics, I was given the role of team "Techie" for which the responsibilities included sourcing materials, wiring up everything to the Arduino, drawing schematics, and writing the program code in Processing. Other tasks that I also took on over the course of the project were designing the questionnaire posters and aiding in the construction of the physical prototypes.
02
Concept Ideation
Our team came into the start of this project with a multitude of possible ideas of what we could do. Initially we were very excited about the idea of working with sound and even music to create a dynamic and engaging experience encouraging people to get close to each other in a physical space.
However, the technology required to achieve something like this was outside of our expertise and available materials. That being said, we still wanted to create an Ice Breaker sort of concept and so, using a series of Concept Development Worksheets, we finally came to a consensus on a concept centered around throwing balls.
03
Metrics of Success
As students, we knew firsthand how difficult it can be to meet new people at school when everyone is seemingly segregated between their respective program departments and studio spaces— there is very little opportunity and incentive for striking up a conversation with someone new in the hallway. Given the time of year as well, we thought it would be perfect opportunity to capitalize on people stress and frustration during finals week at school.
1. Give unconnected students an excuse to do something together.
2. Bring life to a large, uninviting, and under-used space on campus.
3. Provide something that could be used as a conversation starter.
04
Initial Prototype
To prevent ourselves from getting bogged down with all of the technical aspects too fast and too soon, we chose to create our first prototype with very simple materials: cardboard, paint, and foam balls.
Inspired by the Emotion Color Wheel, which maps every human emotions according the color spectrum, our first prototype sought to explore people’s response to color in correlation to there mood/feelings/emotions.
The question we wanted to answer was:
Is there an existing shared understanding that people
have about the relationship between emotions and color?
Unfortunately, it appeared the answer was "no."
Process