This was a response to the design competition for the IDC (Interaction Design for Children) 2016 conference.
This VERY high-level concept is about a way for children to use material sensors to learn about the world around them; where the materials that make up the world come from, what goes into making them, and where they go when we're done with them. Interestingly, all of the technologies for this temporary tattoo- style wearable currently exist, even if they aren't affordable or practical yet. See the paper for more details!
he Paper: The Story of Things: Awareness through Happenstance Interaction
DEM (Dynamic Embodied Metaphor) Cubes are a set of research artifacts built for evaluating a hypothetical study (the study was never run). The concept was built on the work of previous researchers who suggest that many parts of language are structured around low-level psychological construct called image schemata. I planned to extend previous research from cubes which embodied metaphors statically (i.e. a rough cube and a smooth cube) to cubes which can change between a binary metaphor dynamically.
This map is a map of trees. Each green circle indicates 1 municipally owned tree in Lethbridge AB, as of roughly 2010. There are no other markings on the map other than labels and the city border.
I think it’s interesting how apparent the structure of the city is through the lens of it’s plant life.
I wish I could remember how many trees are here, but I think it’s a few tens of thousands. I DO remember that loading the final vector file on the computer I made this one was nearly impossible. I had to use one of the dedicated 3D rendering machines at the University to generate the final image.
Note: this does not include any privately owned trees.
Thermouse is a functional prototype designed to evaluate a research question. We were curious if we could persuade people to respond differently to important topics by changing the temperature of the mouse they used to respond. There IS precedent; see the paper for background.
The mouse uses a peltier element to cool water circulated through a copper mouse, and an electric heating element to heat the mouse directly.
These images progress through the stages of prototyping. First a proof of concept cooling plant and mouse, then a second iteration of both.
This was a collaboration with Jillian Warren to build a research artifact for a design research study. These little wi-fi wearables have sensors on the knees, thighs, and butts of equestrians to measure and track rider pressure on the horse, and send it back to a trainer, who can provide vibro-tactile feedback in real time.
The pictures show the first, functional, proof-of-concept prototype.
