Here’s the link to the presentation. http://bit.ly/Ydc3pt
February 20, 2013
Incremental counting device for desktop
PERSONAS
Rachel lives for vacation. She is going to Hawaii this year and can’t wait. She is leaving in 100 days and wants to count down toward her vacation. Rachel thinks having a constant reminder of her progress toward vacation will help her get through the tedium of her job.
John’s New Year’s resolution is to scale back on his coffee consumption. At the end of last semester he was drinking as many as 30 cups a week. Rather than going cold turkey, John wants to scale back. He is allowing himself 10 cups a week in 2013 and wants an easy way to keep track of his coffee consumption. He thinks displaying the weekly tally will help shame him into sticking to his resolution and force him to take it seriously.
PRODUCT
A device for your desk that lets you keep an incremental count in a visually appealing way. You can count forwards or backwards and keep track of your progress towards your target.
On the left is a crank that when turned up makes the little human model climb up the mountain, one step at a time, towards the peak which is the target goal.
February 13, 2013
Comparing the top food delivery sites
January 31, 2013
Good UX- an example
Post to your blog an example of an interface that offers the user a clear invitation to do something and makes that engagement a compelling and engaging experience.
As I was making my way through endless websites, deliberate physical interactions with objects and architectures around me in an attempt to answer the question above, I took a bathroom break. And found the answer in this nondescript wash basin.
This looks like any other wash basin. And it is. Except it has a unique way of controlling how much water you use. Strange sounds are not appreciated when they come from bathrooms, especially public bathrooms. And by some invisible mechanism, the wash basin produces a part-alarm, part-flatulence like sound if the lever is almost all the way up.
This is great UX not just because it adds some fun to a banal everyday activity like washing your hands, but because it is surprising, unusual and positively affects everyday habits. A big lesson from fun theory was exactly this. Great UX to my mind can be so much more than seamless, easy and perfectly smooth interaction. This particular UX made me push the lever down, use less water, think about my action and the global water problem, and have a little fun in the process.
It is wholly possible that in the long term, the UX becomes redundant- that people stop caring about the sound, or are annoyed by it. Or it might turn out another way and people are careful about how much water they spend- at least in this particular cafe. We are yet to find out.
September 18, 2012
Assignment #2
PART I
A platform for the ITP floor – is there data and communication that could be shared with the community in a more efficient or unique manner with the Internet involved.
There are a lot of people at ITP and although it seems like there’s not enough room to work, people tend to find a place somehow. That said, there have been many occasions where people have had to move to other buildings for lack of space. A helpful tool would give you an approximation of your chances of finding a suitable place to work on the ITP floor at any given time. An algorithm that takes into account people per class, focus on group work per class, day of the week, events and the weather outdoors and some ball-parking, you should be able to check the probability of finding space on the floor at any given time before you invest in making the trip.
PART II
A personal broadcasting machine – what data are you not sharing yet on the Internet, why develop a system that will collect and broadcast.
The data I am not sharing is the data I have limited access to. For instance, what am I not seeing on my google search results and how that compares to what my friends are seeing. This phenomenon creates echo chambers- it could be interesting to look deeper at these echo chambers that are created through years of data collection and customization and see how that compares to a different demographic. The objective is not to launch a diatribe against internet practices but to become aware of how they shape sensibilities.
PART III
Create a data structure – using one of the ideas above, create a list or objects or dictionaries containing phony data.
books = {
‘Updike’: ’21st ce’,
‘Austen’: ’18th ce’,
‘Seth’ : ’21st ce’,
‘Naipaul’: ’21st ce’
}
authors = {
‘Updike’: ‘British’,
‘Austen’: ‘British’,
‘Seth’ :’Indian’,
‘Naipaul’: ‘Trinidad’
}
number_of_books ={
‘Updike’: ’20’,
‘Austen’:’10’,
‘Seth’: ’10’,
‘Naipaul’:’10’
}
language_of_books ={
‘Updike’: ‘English’,
‘Austen’: ‘English’,
‘Seth’ :’English’,
‘Naipaul’: ‘English’
}
age_of_author ={
‘Updike’ : ’65’,
‘Austen’ : ‘dead’,
‘Seth’ :’50’,
‘Naipaul’:’60’
}
writers = [books, authors, number_of_books, language_of_books, age_of_author]
print (writers)
for w in writers:
print w
for name, language in language_of_books.items():
print name, “writes in”, language
for w in writers:
print books, “and”, authors
class Writer(object):
def _init_(self, name):
self.name= name
def print_stuff(self):
for line in self.name:
print line
updike= Writer [“Updike is a British author and he is 65 years old”]
updike.print_stuff()
March 9, 2012
Utili.tre
For our ‘Be here now’ midterm, we were working with the idea of data- data that is all around us, produced and generated every second, tracked and monetized, stored and distributed, analyzed and sold- the presence of data is overwhelming. Our first approach was to try and circumvent the ways in which data operates in today’s market economy. Our plan was to somehow make users take control of their data and realize a stake in the data currency economy. The idea is dear to our hearts but three weeks was too short a time to intelligently engage with this problem.
Our second approach, and one that led us to this project was channeling the data around us into something fun and useful. We thought of the one kind of data that everyone produces that is most in need of monitoring- energy consumption. Utili.tre is a physical manifestation of your energy consumption- in your backyard, on the subway station, or a community piazza. We envision Utili.tre as a living, breathing tree that is kept alive by the energy you save (figuratively-the mechanisms of the tree will be solar powered, after all this is about saving energy!). Each node feeds off of a particular type of consumption- gas, water or electricity. The more you save, the more your tree blooms!
Utili.tre could be customized for community use or individual use. It creates a direct sense of environmental impact by affecting immediate change in your surroundings- an experience whose lack leads many of us to ignore the world’s energy problems. Utili.tre is a simple yet elegant way to create awareness and empathy towards energy issues.
March 1, 2012
Mobile Web: More pages
For this week I mostly worked on js objects. After we cover files in today’s class I will be in a better place to implement these.
I made a front page for the app which looks terrible in the browser. Something goes wrong with the image and the text in the browser. Here it is- and of course I will clean it up before it goes in the app.
My second page is the map from last week. The colors need to be fixed on this one to match.
After today’s class I will work on making a page that extracts reminders from the database.
Totally Blavatsky- Days and Nights at ITP -NYU 