Mar 05

Project 3 over distance interactive game

 

Avatar machine — by Marc Owens

 

In game play, we seems to experienced the different virtual worlds thousands times. But that is not true, we just saw what the game character did in the game world. We are just a visitor to games, the game characters are real games owner.  For these result, there is a need in my heart that I want to experience a game character’s life and taste the taste of being controlled as a game character.

 

 

Basically, I want to make an over distance interactive game, which allows players  to help each other to achieve victory.  There are 2 players playing the game that one player plays as a normal game player to control a avatar one player plays as the human shape avatar which is controlled by player1. (The following image is a simple diagram)

 

The responsibilities of player one is a kind of simple, because he uses mouse and key-broad to move player two forward or backward or ask player two to change weapon. The rest parts, such as fight ，dodge, etc are on player two’s hands.

Player two handles the role play part which contains to attack，defend and dodge. He uses his ability to pretend to an avatar, which is covered with helmet and armor. He sees his enemy on the wall which is white and projected. A camera works as a capturer to shot player two and send that to the computer player one uses.

Mar 05

Project 2 Social Media project re-visit

My social interaction is about Space and its totality. What makes a space total? When is a space an empty space, non-total? Is there such thing as an empty space?  Is the empty window on a desktop a space or an object? Do objects make the space TOTAL? When does a space become too total… is there a thin line between  too total and  empty?

Here’s an interactive program where ppl together can decide what constitues for a total space:

Feb 28

Distance Interaction Project – Brainstorming

When I initially started brainstorming about this project, I began thinking about friends and relatives who live outside of the New York area. I briefly analyzed how often I see them and I began to realize that although I might not talk them regularly either offline or online, the amount of hours we spend together during a visit far exceeds the amount of time I would normally spend with my local friends, say over the course of a given year.In class I remembered Jonah commenting that he tends to see his friends who live farther away more often than he sees friends who live in New York. I can say, I have the exact same issue.

Being from Philadelphia, I have a short commute back to my home town. When I do go back, I feel somewhat obligated to attempt to connect to friends that I do not get to see very often (at least that’s how it feels). Usually it works out, that I will meet up with 2 or 3 of them if I go back for a weekend or longer, and it’s great. We catch up, go out for beers and just hang out.

When it comes to my friends in New York on the other hand, I have a far less successful rate in actually getting together or making plans at all. Most everyone I know here is constantly busy. Whether its working late, going out of town, planning a vacation, contending with the holidays or having someone visit from outside the city, we always have an arsenal of reasons why we cannot get together as opposed to having reasons why we can.

There are of course many applications that we use to let people know where we are and what we are planning on doing. There are two problems with both these applications. One, once you announce your location it is usually to late to plan on your friends meeting up with you, this is exemplified in Foursquare. Checking-in will not teleport your friends to your location. Two, making plans using Facebook ‘Events’ is very formal and usually is not used for casual get-togethers or last minute plans like drinks after work.

I plan on exploring the grey area between checking-in to announce your current location and longer term planning for more formal or organized events. I will be researching precedence, asking potential users how they ‘plan’ to see their close friends who they do not see very often and how I can differentiate using a potential app versus group text messaging.

Feb 28

Social Media Project – Teratags

Teratags are the final iteration of the social media project where I continued with the idea of hashtags physically located in a specific place.

Here is a definition:

A Twitter hashtag located in a physical space so as to connect an object, place or happening to the digital world allowing for a streamlined organized conversation to take place.

The concept is to bridge the gap between interactions in a digital space and places or objects located in a physical space. A precedent to this project was created in 2004 called Yellow Arrow where yellow arrow stickers were placed in physical spaces. Using SMS, users could send a message or thought with a unique code located on the arrow.  When another person encounters the arrow, they can listen to the message and using the unique code on the arrow, have the opportunity to respond by sending a message back.

Yellow Arrow logo

The project proved to be successful as it gained a large user base (for 2004) and a lot of press. I think Teratags continues to push this concept but by incorporating Twitter we can open up a more dynamic and widely adopted platform with a higher amount of potential users.

When designing how the hashtag will physically live in a designated space and getting people to recognize that what they are seeing is a physical hashtag was a design challenge. I will have to build the signage so that the hashtag and its connection to the physical world is clear; I will need to define what the signage means. Using a QR code will bring the user to a site where can they look up information and definition of Teratag. This will minimize words on the sticker and keep the design simple.Below is a mock-up of the first design iteration of the sticker that will live in the physical space:

Teratag mock-up sticker

They sticker will only display the hashtag name, a QR code and the logo. Once the QR code is scanned they will be brought to a site that provides more information on Teratags and how to use them. Here is an example of what the website would look like:

Teratag website mock-up that links to QR code

In order to push this project further, there needs to be integration from location-based social media. For example I want to incorporate Foursquare with Teratags and have the Twitter hashtag become part of the venue name. This way when a user checks into a place, the hashtag is immediately known. This allows Teratags to live in the digital world if a sticker could not be easily implemented. Below are a series of examples using Foursquare:

example of Teratag incorporated with Foursquare Venue

example of incorporating Teratag with Foursquare comment

users can share their comment to Twitter for further conversation

Once a check-in is shared to Twitter, the location’s hashtag as well as #teratag are now part of the online conversation which allows for organized conversation about a particular location. Foursquare comments are not streamlined, and it is difficult to hold a conversation about a comment on the app. Once a user checks into a new place, their old comment is no longer directly accessible. Example of Foursquare check-in shared to Twitter:

Foursquare check-in with comment posted to Twitter

In addition to Foursquare, I thought it would also be meaningful to incorporate Instagram. Teratags work well with Instagram because the app already has a feature that saves hashtags for posts. Once you take a photo, comment and share with Twitter, your hashtags become a jumping off point for photos associated with places and events. Below are some examples of how this will look:

 

Instagram photo taken from #themarkrooftop

Instagram post with hashtags

Instagram Post shared on Twitter

 

Once a tweet, check-in or photo is posted to Twitter, it becomes very easy to manage and continue your comments and conversations. Here are some examples of what sorting your hashtags would look like:

hashtag sorting by venue name

#teratag sorting

In the next phases of this project I would build the website, print the stickers and incorporate user testing throughout the entire process as I would have to filter down which locations would be the most likely to attract users. I would also like the website to propose the idea for Foursquare and Instagram users to attach hashtags to venues, comments and posts. If Teratags begin to gain presence on other  location-based social networks, this could really help in the overall adoption rate.

 

 

Feb 27

Social media interaction

 

 

Hello Bike is the name of a serial of my social media bike ideas. It will allow riders to do simple communication with each-other with their bikes.

My original idea was very simple. It is exactly what the top image shows:  a rider will says Hello to everyone when he is through by. That looks like  ridiculous, but if it is existed, it will make our social become more harmonious.

 

We know that it’s hard to say hello to everyone you are through by because you will feel embarrassed. Also when you ride, you have to focus on your way but not to see people who is on sidewalk.

Therefore, my idea for solving this problem is using a sensor to detect if there is a person on sideway. I tried to make prototype.

 

The sensor I used for my first try was Infrared Proximity Sensor. I found that was working well when nothing blocks infrared from the sensor to the sidewalk, but , you know, that is hard to find a sidewalk is without parked car, trees or pipes which all blocks my sensor to detect my target people. In short, I have to rectify my idea a little bit.

After my first protype was not good enough,  I think I can use the infrared proximity sensor to detect if any other bikes are close to or through by you. When they are close to you in short destance, the sensor will know that and tell Arduino to operate a mini projector to post Hello word on the bike lane that looks as the same as the image below:

 

 

Feb 24

From Nathan ( for Anthony )

Nate asked me to share this with you

 

Feb 23

Interaction over distance Pt2 FEELING presence

 

We can experience distance through touching, feeling, remembering. We affiliate ppl with certain colors, smells, objects.

The future of communication will need to include elements of real personalized touch and feel.

Feb 23

Scribbit 1.0 – Social Network Project

I’ve posted to my blog my Scribbit Social Network wireframes/ video mock up. Click here to go there now.

Feb 23

Project 3: moveSpider 1.0 – Brainstorming

My project idea for this final project is to return to the Greed Spider, the first idea I explored in the beginning of the semester but rather than have the spider be controlled by simply me or sensors that are triggered by “sudden movement”, I want to have the spider be controlled by different users over a distance. The way I plan on achieving this is to create a webcam interface, possibly an IRC channel (as a starting point prototype, but I plan on getting more elaborate later) and then to attach a webcam to the spider’s back, where, on a webpage that I plan on building, the spider will be moved depending on a certain number of responses the users give the spider (like say, 100 yes’s will get the spider to go right), and thus, the spider will move according to the number of commands it receives.

To start off, I would like to address each point brought up this week during our in class presentation.

Questions:

How can we close distance gaps through interaction design? What is the future of human relationships as mediated by technology? What everyday physical objects or human experiences can be shared with others across distance?

To answer this, we must ask ourselves how our relationships are affected by distance and how technology can help us overcome that hunch. Humans are just one of many species/organisms that inhabit our sphere that are capable of withstanding robust travel, to be able to adapt to different and evolving environments and to learn how to accustom themselves to different living situations. What does it mean to have a long distance relationship? How are we defined by the environments that we live in and most importantly, what does this say about the way we interact? Where we come from, whether we realize it or not, says a lot about us. Just like other species, we are defined by where we come from. Culture is not simply a free form structure, but something we carry with us, it’s a representation of our ideals, and our belief systems, and what our culture teaches us says a lot about who we are as people.

So how can interaction design help us reach those of us whom we would never seek out? Well, interaction design can bridge and stimulate the interactions we have while also help us simulate and create new meaningful interactions based on recognizing body language/patterns and how we respond to technological signifiers. Because artists create work based on the things they observe in their own environment, the way interaction design engages with it’s audience can be somewhat fuddled in that it has a bias as to who it’s catering to. It’s another bridge that we, as artists, have to cross to make sure our artwork speaks clearly about our intentions and is communicating it’s message effectively.

How we use the objects in our daily lives already reveals a lot about ourselves. I’m hoping to explore, in my project, how we communicate with the objects we use everyday and rely on them to perform the way we expect them to. My quest is to explore how an object would react if it an outcome of it’s use was controlled by more than one person and how that affects the dynamic of the relationship between the user and the object.

Feb 23

Interaction over distance PT 1 / SEEING PRESENCE ( Feeling Presence is Pt 2 );

Ask anyone, like your parents or maybe your grandparents if your parents happen to be of the “progressive type”  and they will tell you that communication / interaction over distance has gotten wayyyyy much easier.

My parents use Skype to talk to their friends in distant lands….My parents don’t really speak English…but they can speak Skype.

You can now-a-day reach anyone/anywhere/anytime within seconds.  You actually don’t have an option of being “not in”… like back in the day of the, what you call it, oh yea, the answering machine and the home telephone system.

So, that’s that. Distant communication via machines of the technology breed will only get easier and faster. Once we get those invisible portable screens, we will truly enter the virtual reality.

Here’s how I see this going down. You will use your iPhone or iWhatever to access someone. You will then get a real life live projection of that person in whatever space you happen to be in. It is like Skype( on steroids ) minus the screen interface( the wall of phone, computer, etc ) .

Something like this:

 

Ok,  so here right above,  we have my personal update on the future of virtual communication…but i am not really all that satisfied with this turn of events of what the future holds.

A solidifying, missing component , in this future of interaction (this might be more or less personal ) is TOUCH and FEEL.

That lovely text message i might get from a loved one, feels exactly the same on my sleek, plastic phone as the message from my bank about my account being overdrawn.

Soooo, I’m thinking about creating some objects ( since objects now can easily communicate over distance this shouldn’t be a problem ) that have personalized texture, feel, smell, color, etc.

I cannot remember last time I received something truly personal from someone…something that meant a lot…like in the movies ( sorry, this is very kitschy ) when they go off to war or some other surreal place and it goes something like this: ” I want you to have this…to remember me by… i will always be there with you…etc”

I would like to create objects that communicate with each other’s owners, and at the same time can just simply represent the presence of the owner. After all, there are times, many times,  that I think of someone or miss them but don’t necessarily want to call/text/email….i just want to feel their presence.