Thought-Crumbs

Don't look here!

2009-12-19T07:44:00.001-08:00

Oh,

2009-11-30T07:18:00.000-08:00

I didn't realise. I haven't blogged here in ages...

I have finished scenarios, design languages and technology scenarios as well as organise my first regional meeting (this Saturday) for Ataxia UK.

That seems like it should have taken up more than one sentence but it hasn't....

Hello Blog

2009-11-30T07:15:00.000-08:00

Hello.

I've submitted my dissertation :)

I have a working dishwasher :)

I don't know what I'm doing :(

...

I'll go to the gym later. Then have dinner. Then drive home (to Fife home). I'm going to the 'communication matters' roadshow in Edinburgh to see some AAC devices... from the websites of the companies that are coming, I feel a little uninspired.

SO now I feel like I've forgotten all about what I am doing. Sad day.

Trying to work out a scenario...

2009-11-02T06:57:00.000-08:00

This isn't right... I think it would be more important for the scenarios to be all about the user, without the technology at all, just to highlight the problem.

It's also a bit unclear without any text... so I need to brush this up. I'm glad I didn't spend more time on them though, this is just good enough to begin to get a bit clearer what I need these to communicate...

So in 11 days I have...

2009-10-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

Been in London, and written some Dissertation!

I have literally spent the last 5 days just on my dissertation, I now have some written (maybe 2 thirds to 3 quarters) but writing this much is actually more difficult than I thought it would be! Repeating myself, blending everything together into a mush and not making sense are all problems at the moment, but I'm looking forward to the point at which that I've covered everything, and just need to arrange it and polish it into something cohesive. I'm sure it'll be fine...

In case I haven't said before; my dissertation title is "the current state of design (theoretical and in practice) for people with Cerebellar Ataxia." Although it keeps changing - basically I'm covering a little product design and interaction design discussed through the condition and through design theory (such things as design for disability, inclusive and universal design) and discussing the way things work at the moment for a niche user group...

Something else.... Proloquo2Go AAC for your iPod

2009-10-15T01:59:00.000-07:00

Relatively boring videos, and the application has the same accessibility issues as the ipod does normally - I'm thinking of fine motor control here. However, this is far nicer and cheaper (£80) than anything else.

Presentations and loopy flatmates.

2009-10-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

Due to extreme stress and tiredness, my flatmate has lost her brain. We have discussed making the kettle work by remote control, and I beat her to saying "I need to pee". She is currently worried about exploding. But is not moving until the tea is finished (which was made via physical labour.)

In more interesting news, I have finally transcribed (?) a couple of my interviews for my dissertation, and have come to the realization that I'm likely to have over 20,000 words of research for this dissertation. I don't think this is a good thing. Although it will be when I pull it off.

I have my presentation tomorrow for my project plan / proposal. From speaking to everyone else who presented on Monday, I suspect I'll get an 'amber' light: mostly because my output of the communication concept is really unknown until I have 'completed' my research... but I am well focussed in all other aspects, so this doesn't really worry me.

What was really interesting was my interview with a principal speech therapist yesterday. She forms an integral part of a regional service that identifies, and has budget for, augmented and alternative communication devices for people with communication disabilities. (Obviously dead handy for my dissertation!) She was responsible for getting the touchscreen voice synthesizer into my Mum's hands, and it was great to have the chance to understand the way the service works. My initial opinion is that we are very lucky to have this service. Ideally there needs to be more budget so that perhaps there could be more time spent on the interim stages between clear speech and unintelligible. When it does come to unintelligible speech however, the service seems to be doing everything it can to maintain an (if indirect) dialogue between user and designer. This is something that really tied in with the identification of 'path to market' struggles by my design interviewee, so woohoo! This thing might get written!

Later.

Charity Meeting

2009-10-11T10:13:00.000-07:00

So this afternoon was the first regional meeting for Ataxia UK in Dundee, the turnout was disappointing (only one person with Ataxia) however I think what is important to realize here is the practicality of achieving user centered design with people who have physical disabilities. This is something I discussed with my experienced designer friend on Tuesday - finding and achieving a channel to market with essentially isolated people, is. a. mission. The users are not passing your product on the shelves, and as today demonstrated, meeting up is also difficult; even when it is with a Charity.

I am now the contact for this region, and will be trying to arrange the next meeting. If nothing else this is a great opportunity to truly immerse myself in a user group, I just hope I have the intelligence to pull something relevant from it!

I am just polishing my presentation for this week, I've got my Grandfather's funeral tomorrow, so the presentation probably won't happen till Tuesday at the earliest (but then again I have another interview, this time in Auchterderan, in the afternoon.)

Life. I'm going to watch x-factor.

ARRG! Long time no speak!

2009-10-11T04:06:00.000-07:00

Ok so to recap on the missing months of my life... here’s a brief(ish) summary of what I’ve been doing!!

After the Spiritual Object exhibition which I mentioned here a couple of times, I then was invited to apply for a design Internship at Orange, and got it! Woohoo!

So I packed my bags, moved in with three total strangers from gumtree, and started working full time for three months in London. Best experience ever. Made some great friends, met some great people, and even got some graphic design experience on the set of a feature length film.

As you can imagine, I completely ignored the fact that I had to go back to university! So here I am, back in rainy Dundee, trying to get used to being back at ‘school’.

This is my honors year (that must mean I have an ordinary degree already!) so there are two main pieces of work: a written dissertation and a personal project which will be exhibited at our degree show (May 2010) and maybe at New Designers next summer.

I am going to try to keep this blog up to date this semester as I did last, and maybe this will help me organize my life, and keep track of my process.

My dissertation is on the current state of interaction and product design for adults with cerebellar ataxia. My mother has this condition, and has a list of symptoms ranging from mobility issues, coordination and speech dysarthria. The condition is progressive, and as such it is a bit of a challenge to source and design products to help her retain some form of independence. Realistically this isn’t a long piece (only 7700 words) so my argument will be more exploratory.

So far I have recruited and interviewed three people with the condition, at different stages of the condition: one slight, one moderate, and one more progressed. I have also sourced a speech therapist, occupational therapist and two designers (with heavy experience in design for disability). I completed a 2 hour interview with one designer last week, and it was a very interesting conversation. Somehow all the design lectures from my three years here mean less to me than having a conversation directly with someone in the industry, and to have the opportunity to take design methodology from a conversation that I’ve had, instead of a stale quote from a book, really helps me maintain my inspiration for writing this paper. So yes, that was a good, ‘productive’ day!

Ataxia UK, the charity for the condition, have kindly invited me to their first regional meeting this afternoon in Dundee, where I hope to make some new contacts to help not only my dissertation but also my honors project which I will explain next!

My honors project (which will hopefully get approval following my presentation this week) is also exploratory. I wish to develop a concept based on near future speech recognition technologies that primarily ensures the user feels confident and stimulates desire to contribute to the conversation. The outcome will not focus on the technicalities of the software, but on the value of the outcome to the user. Essentially the experience of communicating in an environment as an adult, with flare that the user needs to feel valued in the dialogue.

I might choose to focus on loss of clarity for the individuals over the phone due to the speech dysarthria, as this is something I noticed myself when speaking to my mother. Her speech is intelligible, and we have been playing with Nuance Dragon speech recognition software, and she is understood by it, to a degree. What my focus is is on the actual output design. Most alternative, augmented communication devices (AAC) that I have come across are text to speech converters, so the output is almost a third person in the room, speaking on behalf of the user. This loses the focus on the person speaking, and essentially isolates the individual from the conversation.

I’m hoping that through research with current and future recruited users to understand their tastes and feelings towards AAC devices and to then develop a prototype that exhibits my findings and a graphical or typographic output that demonstrates the level of maturity and intelligence, the beauty of their conversation. This should be desirable to use by everyone, and as such encourage people who find themselves misunderstood to speak more freely.

Breath.

I’ll continue this soon.

Been a while!

2009-04-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

Just had the exhibition deadline last week, so pretty much until now I've been concentrating on that, and it went really well thanks for asking!

This was my exhibit...

AND believe it or not it is still working! Thoroughly impressed.

Unfortunately the exhibition is on all week, so I have to go in for half nine to switch on, and 5 to switch off (I don't trust anyone else to touch it, or rather I don't think anyone else would want to incase they caused it to break!)

The whole experience has been quite gratifying, considering a lot of this semester has been spent not really achieving anything tangible. Someone even said to me at the exhibit that they now had a better idea of what we get up to, normally they don't see anything that IMD produce!

I ordered a macbook yesterday! Woohoo! And my dad has finally plastered the wall behind the fridge (it was his one task, considering the amount I've done to the flat, I thought it only fair! I also was sick of plaster after making the heads and various other parts of the exhibit.)

Feel a little bit at a loose end at the moment, still got work to do but it doesn't seem quite so impending, so I'm happy to waste some time away playing with my folio site, which is maybe becoming a real thing. How exciting.

Woohoo!

2009-03-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

Got my touchatag today, and it works perfectly. I have the RFid tags going to a link that carries php script to email my blog. My blog then turns the email into a blog entry. Another site takes these entries, combines them and spits out a story! It's like a relay race for phps!

So.

2009-03-16T08:38:00.000-07:00

So. Had a family oriented weekend, and me and my sister went and visited my childhood home, to see what had changed.

This was a photo from my phone at the time (ahh how camera's on phones have changed!) and it was in so much better condition! The house is now sort of, tatty looking. The paint needs redone and the garden has been hacked to pieces. The Hut and Tower that I had built with my brother is demolished and there is now a prefabricated thing with a pirate flag!!

To add insult to injury I have found out the owners have applied for planning permission to double the size of the place. So far, I have no faith in their taste, AND the house doesn't seem to have had any work done in the past four years- the drive is tatty and has weeds in it, and the gravel needs redone. All these childhood chores have been wasted on the new owners!

And that brings me to the next point - where's the money coming from to do the extension, if they haven't done anything in the past four years?! If they found treasure in the well we will be very unhappy!

Today I have bought a pair of sweety lips for 6p, and nailed it to a babies head, then painted it with gloss paint. I know, I'm MENTAL.

I have also began investigating the empty flat in my block, made a couple of calls to Blackadders (the estate agents/solicitors) and they are on the case. VERY Exciting.

I will start on the rest of my list now...

I have lots to do...

2009-03-12T16:35:00.000-07:00

18th March

Individual DHTP portfolios

2nd April (Week 11)

Printing PHP
Do Lips
Paint Cups
RFid Tags
5-10 minute video presenting concept/story/demonstration
Project summary of 150 words
Exhibit construction
Final SemaGrave Report
Exhibition 3rd - 10th April

14th April

PDP video (5 minutes)
PDP Blog (2x A4)

27th April

Dissertation 2500 words

Oh, dear.

The Happy Curtain Company

2009-03-11T10:17:00.001-07:00

The Happy Curtain Company just presented their business concept today. It's almost over!! Just a wee report to do and that's one part of a module complete!

I ordered a giant plastic pipe today. I also had lunch with my sister and returned my phone to O2. Went phone shopping, failed.

Had a break...

2009-03-09T11:34:00.001-07:00

It was my birthday at the weekend so I treated myself to a break (a break which I'm sure to regret in April!) but I'm back now! Just hung a new mirror and moved a picture frame, built an under-sink storage unit and tidied. I now realise that my planned spray painting will have to wait till tomorrow as it is now dark. HOW that happened so fast is beyond me!

Managed to make some more progress on friday with Uni project (that 'spiritual' one) so here is a wee pic. This was done with a laser cutter on 4mm MDF, and has had a coat of emulsion. I'm thinking spray paint is the way forward to get in amongst the shapes that have been cut out though...

Made it to Wednesday!

2009-03-04T03:24:00.001-08:00

Ok so I've made it to the middle of the week, and thought I was making good progress with my Uni submissions, until we had more submissions announced to us today! Spent last night making a website for a fake business idea for Design, was actually almost fun, took a lot of the design language from existing sites such as innocent smoothies who also have similar business ethos.

Visit the happy curtain company.

Today I have planned out an exciting afternoon of plaster casting more dolls heads, woohoo! (see this if you don't know what I'm chatting about!)

I also need to reply to a designer that emailed me concerning my dissertation, all this communication is exciting stuff!

Oh we got a new electric meter yesterday, for 'free'. I suspect it was included in last months bill...

Anyway, free soup time and I am starving.

Belfast Baby!

2009-03-01T07:54:00.000-08:00

Just got back from an amazing weekend in Belfast, a well earned break from work for a friends 21st birthday. Have had very little sleep so this may sound all back to front and upside down...

Belfast is a really nice city, never been before- it's all very clean and new, feels afluent. In terms of life, it was nice to have a break from stressing about uni submissions, however returning to 24 emails (I hid from them while I was away - sometimes mobile's CAN be ignored!) has put me right back into stress mode. Fortunately I thought I was keeping up with everything, and had planned to work on some physical prototypes of the objects for my spiritual media submission tomorrow. Orange are coming along on Tuesday to catch up with our projects and will expect us to have made progress in designing the exhibition with Orange branding - we haven't had time to meet and discuss this yet so I'm expecting to have to arrange a meeting tomorrow. Great. My timekeeping is fine- it's these surprise emails that are a real put-off!

Dissertation

2009-02-26T09:22:00.000-08:00

Had a dissertation seminar today, just confirming our ideas were good enough to continue to research. For me I think it went really well, the proposal that I typed after waking up with a brainwave at 3am turned out to be very good and was described as 'in depth'! Amazing really.

The next step (I think?) is to actually start working on it, not that I really understand why - I thought it was a fourth year thing and we have ANOTHER proposal of 2500 words to do for the end of April. Considering the full thing is only to be 7500 words, I feel like this is a bit extreme really. As almost all of my dissertation is going to be based on primary research, I think I would struggle to start it before the summer - the training seminar I mentioned before was on a Tuesday for example, my busiest day in Uni, so I missed out on whatever project information there was for our exhibition this year. I have asked what exactly is require for the April hand in and hope to find out the guidelines soon so I at least know where I stand!

Otherwise today was a good day, finished a hand in early, got positive feedback about my work so far AND it was sunny. Oh yeah, flying to Belfast tomorrow for a friends birthday, so that pretty much puts me on at least cloud eight.

Arrivederci!

I may move this but...

2009-02-24T06:41:00.000-08:00

This session has become more of a module critique, however we did just have an interesting discussion about work prospects before hand.

I don't know if I don't get it, but I saw first and second year as really just a taste of everything so that you could work out what you liked, what you were good at and what you enjoyed. In third year the modules have been much more open. Even the computing module has given more opportunities for working with users, presenting and generally working through a full project to prototyping stage. [You don't even have to do coding!] This is relevant in all fields of work as everyone must be capable of defending their ideas, whether you end up writing or selling, starting a business or teaching.

Sigh. With any degree the future is what you make it, as long as we know our skills and selling points, we can surely forge a space for ourselves in almost any field of work.

Half way through the day...

2009-02-24T05:39:00.001-08:00

Today in uni we are having a career themed day, developing a pitch for work placements and discussing our CV's for employment. Part of this involved identifying our top 5 values that we would want to be met in work. Mine (may change) were...

- I enjoy variety
- I like taking risks
- I need stimulus from others
- I enjoy social interaction
- I like to have opportunities to use creativity, imagination and originality.

(Employ me!)

I think that a lot of this exercise is really dependent on what you have in your mind as the job you are applying for... the other cards that didn't make it into the top five are still important to me, and after comparing our course's choices with another, we sounded quite selfish. Is that true?

Laser Cutting

2009-02-22T10:05:00.001-08:00

Oh yeah, went laser cutting the other week, it is very cool.

Hoping to use it for my work on Spiritual Objects for an exhibition.

Wordle

2009-02-22T09:08:00.001-08:00

How come I hadn't seen this before? I like it. Might do something similar with twitter statuses/ blog entries...

http://www.wordle.net/gallery

I have a piano!

2009-02-21T07:08:00.000-08:00

And it is beautiful.

That is all. I'm going to make lunch now...

Dissertation

2009-02-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

Guess what.

My dissertation topic is..

"Interaction design for Cerbellar Ataxia. As a progressive condition, Cerebellar Ataxia proves to be a difficult condition to design for. The products that are provided for people suffering from the condition are often inappropriate. How is the disability catered for and how must designers learn to meet these people’s needs more exactly."

I had a training session with the designer of Grid 2, Paul Hawes, on Tuesday. It was an invaluable experience as Paul has been working on this software for 20 years, and has a great deal of experience with working with an ever changing user. The software is impressive - it interfaces with windows computers and can be built to the users specifications. It is, at it's core, a communication device. I will get round to typing up my notes soon but for now this is just a taster. (My dissertation proposal has not yet been accepted.) Furthermore the staff at the centre are more than happy to help me, and have vital contacts with those who are in charge of providing the users with the different technologies available.

This morning I received an email from an old friend of my dad's who was actually head of research and development for 3 years at an award winning company producing assistive technologies. These are often designed with the elderly in mind however this could not be more relevant as age itself is a degenerative illness, and the problems encountered will be similar to those from designing for specifically (progressively) disabled people.

I haven't even made contact with those in Dundee University (who are heavily involved in design for the disabled) yet! Exciting!!

Folio and Blogs

2009-02-01T08:45:00.000-08:00

Blogs here NOW!

Presentation

2008-03-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

Well the presentation went very well yesterday all in all. As you can see in the (surely final) critical image below, the objects have been made. All our critique was very good, our rationale is flawless (booyahkasha) and the iphone app was performing well, basically everything is fine except for our cardboard writing tablet and wooden (post receiving) table.

These two objects were in actual fact only criticized by one lecturer, and I was entirely unimpressed. His focus is product design, so of course I have no reason to doubt he qualifies to crit our work, but what he critisised was entirely his doing. The industrial designer, Martin, was told not to make the writing tablet in wood, that this had to be done in cardboard. As the interaction designer I thought this entirely deflated the whole metaphor of old versus new. It was warped by the paint and was very disappointing. In hindsight we should not have listened to him, and should have continued where we were going in the first place. If you remember, our first prototype was wooden and was much admired by Margery. If we had maintained the wood throughout the process then I think more passion would have gone into it's manufacture, regardless of the fact that 'we are not furniture designers'. (We aren't anything but students right now, and we are capable of learning and learning alone.)

Naturally the same lecturer admired an other groups prototype for resembling something out of Star Wars (their concept had nothing to do with this film of course) and then criticized another prototype for being white card (as opposed to ...?).

Good news is - the hand in for IMD is done. Now is the time (4 weeks to do this) to make the prototypes how they should always have been - and we will NOT be leaving anything to chance. I'm more than happy to be a regular customer at B&Q.

Here is the final Image, a little last minute and I may well re-photoshop the image, but It displays the who, why, what, where and when of the concept, and sets the context beautifully, if I do say so myself!

Presentation Tomorrow

2008-03-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

Here is our current 'killer image'. Featuring a now broken prototype.

Sigh. Tired much.

Home Run

2008-03-11T04:38:00.000-07:00

Just had feedback yesterday on our project so far, and to be honest it was all really positive. The stage we are at now is very daunting- in two weeks time we will have two networked objects and an application for the iphone (demonstrated on an ipod Touch). The plan at the moment is basically to do as much as we possibly can.

Download the Design Rationale

A problem that we have at the moment is that webcams typically don't have very good focussing capabilities close up. This means that the cameras will need to be far apart, thus making the writing tablet far too cumbersome to be a realistic prototype. Ideally a scanner is what we would use but scanners are incredibly difficult to use with pure data - the programming language that we are using.

The deliverable prototype is purely to demonstrate the experience of using our objects, and we can see how to fake a lot of this but we need as much of it to be automated as possible. Or maybe that's just a want.

For the 'iPhone' our thinking is, as it doesn't understand flash, to make a website designed for the iPhone's screen size that uses java script to interact with the postcard. One of the reasons that the critique we received yesterday was so positive is down to the small details of the design, and so I hope that I can retain as many of these as possible.

.... Java script tutorials here I come....

Margery Sent Pablo 2 Postcards

2008-03-02T09:45:00.000-08:00

"Dear Pablo,

Nicky and I visited an exhibition of paintings by Cézanne last October, and I bought these cards- I know he is one of your favourite artists.

This is my particular favourite, which is why I thought you would like it.

Granny."

Content 2

2008-03-02T04:51:00.000-08:00

Having studied Art History at Edinburgh University, Margery maintains an active interest in the subject. She regularly visits galleries and museums with friends, and often passes on her experience to her family. In this example she has read about a painting at the portrait Gallery in Edinburgh and gone on to visit it – she has passed on the same news clipping that inspired her visit to Pablo, with a short note. This model of her communication is very brief and to the point, something that it has in common with the postcard from Perthshire. Although the note says that it was “today” that Margery visited the gallery, we know from her interviews that it is uncommon for her to write off about an event that same day. Margery sees this painting to be of interest to Pablo purely because of it’s tie with Dundee, however Pablo is actually more interested in the artwork than the geographical context, and so Margery is not knowingly encouraging Pablo’s interest in art beyond what he would usually look for. The contrast between their tastes is something that these networked objects will highlight: as the process was repeated, both parties will become more educated about the different artists admired by people in different age ranges.

The clipping itself has been folded to fit in an envelope, and the small piece of paper accompanied it. Margery does not write on the clippings she sends, and leaves any interpretation up to Pablo.

To send something such as this through our writing tablet would be involved in a very similar process, as if she was folding the clipping for an envelope, she would fold the clipping for the slot. This is an important stage in the process as Newspapers are typed on such thin paper, that to send to anyone we inevitably fold it, even to physically pass it on to someone.

First Mailing

2008-03-01T13:38:00.000-08:00

I've just began working on the content that is shared through our networked objects, and this is what Margery recenty sent Pablo. I plan to put his reply up as soon as I can, but this may be later in the week.

This is an example of a postcard that Margery recently sent Pablo after a visit to Perthshire. As Margery had already spoken to her grandson, Pablo, about the trip on the phone (and knowing that Pablo undoubtedly would have heard more about the trip from his mother who was with her) I find it interesting that the card she sent him was brief and informative. I feel this contrasts something one might usually expect from the casual medium of a postcard.

“This is Queen Victoria’s favourite view – she loved Scotland and so did Prince Albert whose castle I visited in Germany – Coburg Castle.”

Margery is inadvertently passing on her knowledge of an area of Scotland, but doesn’t go into any detail. It is like a line of thought, captured on paper to pass on to her grandson. This style of communication has caused Pablo to search the Internet for more detail into this topic, and in so doing he is being taught something of Scotland’s history.

This postcard was sent along with another in an envelope, to prevent paying for two stamps. The second postcard was in reference to a belonging accidentally left at her house, so the content of this card is not important; however in both cards Margery has written over the full of the back - over the space for the address. This demonstrates how Margery uses this medium to write on, and shows that the typical format of a postcard is unimportant to her, it is the sending of the image and the conversation that she finds most important- not the idea of a stamped, addressed postcard.

Board 1

2008-03-01T01:23:00.001-08:00

Board 2

2008-03-01T01:17:00.000-08:00

Board 3

2008-02-29T16:07:00.000-08:00

Hand-in Looms

2008-02-27T07:01:00.000-08:00

Interaction architects hand in is on Monday... and this means two things.

Crap loads of work...

and finalised (almost) concept design.

What needs to be clear in my presentation on Monday is the key interactions involved in our concept, the content being passed from each generation and demonstrate how Margery is educating her grandson.

The presentation is in three parts:

Key Interactions scenarios of using the object(s)

Content three instances of postcards and replies

Design Details justification of all decisions

With any luck, this will be the beginning of the end of our justifying our designs and the start of actually making them work! No doubt things will change when we realise our limitations!

Last Monday we presented our two minute concept video, and it helped us portray how we saw the objects working. (Video below). I worry that it maybe is not clear what information is being exchanged however we will wait until we have had feedback from our tutors.

Video

2008-02-25T08:45:00.000-08:00

Storyboarding mkII

2008-02-24T11:47:00.003-08:00

Update

2008-02-24T03:19:00.001-08:00

It has been a while since my last blog, and we have now reached a comfortable stage of the process. Each of us in our team are finally clear what our networked objects are, and how Pablo will interact with the process to allow him to reply to and receive messages.

Margery's postcards are scanned in through her writing tablet, and this appears to scan onto Pablo's iPhone in real time. Although I was not overly excited by the idea of using a phone, we have realised its simplicity is what could make our networked objects complete. Receiving a visually impressive animation of the postcard on an iPhone is exciting, and this alone gives the receiver a reason to reply in a similarly thoughtful manner. (I was concerned that using a mobile phone would undermine the thought process of writing a letter or postcard that Margery advocates as being incredibly important.)

The animation exploits the iPhone's motion sensors so that, when tilted to one side, the postcard flips over to allow the viewer to see the back of the postcard and read the writing.

We have also now decided that to reply, Pablo must use his own font, through MMS. This is a decision made only recently after listening through our audio of Margery's interview- she sees a persons handwriting as something familiar and comforting- and so this must not be lost, to ensure Margery still feels connected to the dialogue. (Type has been set aside as it was deemed impersonal.)

Yesterday was spent 9-5 video editing, and although we haven't quite brought our trailer down to two minutes (this was from 2-3 hours of footage) I am confident that when we polish the trailer off on Monday morning before the hand-in we will have a very strong piece. Completing this documentary - trailer - has allowed us to conclude in our minds the final concept, not what it looks like but definitely its purpose. Luckily we have managed to include all stages of the process (writing tablet, iphone, printer-drawer) in the video, and that alone is incredibly useful in demonstrating our concept.

Pablo is on Film!

2008-02-20T13:31:00.000-08:00

Just spent today filming Pablo's end of the communication process with Margery, and felt very professional getting into using the lighting kit and such. The footage we got today, with any luck at all, was really nice, some interesting thoughts and angles. Wish me luck when we start editing it all on Friday/Saturday! Next task to film is the use of an iPhone (Pablo receiving Margery's postcard) and going to an art exhibition or something of that ilk at the DCA.

Brief for Monday

2008-02-18T02:42:00.000-08:00

Aside from filming Pablo, editing, diluting and merging video for Monday, I need to prepare a presentation that displays the interactions involved in our concept(s). The context must be obvious; set the scenario, who what where when of the project; and then detail (to an absolute level) the concepts content. This will take the form of 3 interactions, the process involved in each (what is being sent, when and where) and therefore three replies. This gives me the opportunity to describe the concept conclusively and demonstrate the currently ambiguous design of the interactions.

Pablo if you are reading this.... what are you going to reply with? How?

I am assuming it is most comfortable for Pablo to reply by email, as there is not the same stress on physical correspondence in our generation as there was in that of his grandmother.

The details of both objects must be justified, eg. why is there going to be green felt on the writing tablet? During Margery's writing classes at boarding school she learned to write on green felt desks.

We Visited Margery Today

2008-02-17T13:00:00.000-08:00

Just got back from a productive day in Edinburgh filming Margery and her home. She is a great conversationalist, and after settling into casual conversation, she was in her element. The conversations were interesting to me in particular, as I don't know anything about her, unlike her grandson, Pablo. She was in her element describing her schooling, her life experiences and her friends. She is a rather grand lady, and lives in an opulent flat in Edinburgh. We filmed a lengthy interview, a total of an hour’s chat, then proceeded to move around the various rooms in her flat, as Margery explained the stories behind all the interesting artefacts that decorate her home. Through these conversations we began to understand the reasons for her writing letters as opposed to using ‘modern’ technology. (I say ‘modern’, but what Margery considers modern is anything from a telephone to a television, computers have barely crossed her mind!)

Something I thought particularly beneficial for our project on a whole was her interaction with our prototype. Although rough, she understood our thinking, and she does indeed like a sloped writing surface, even though she is not in the habit of using one. Something else which I found interesting that she even mentioned was that when she was at school in India, she attended letter writing classes, and although this is interesting in itself, she went on to describe that these classes were furnished by felt covered desks much like that on traditional card tables. I would like to see this make its way into our concept if possible, as it is a nice connection, and personal to her past.

We now have two hours of Margery-only footage, even more audio and a decent sized portfolio of images! We have gained so much information from today that I can't even think of it all just now, so I'll leave the rest to blog tomorrow if time allows!

Storyboarding

2008-02-11T15:43:00.001-08:00

Monday 11th February

2008-02-11T12:36:00.001-08:00

Progress: Started to sketch the processes involved in interacting with our objects, and took this process back to Margery. Key issues arose- such things as she doesn't use her writing desk as she finds it too precious, instead she uses a flat desk in her study. This is interesting in that it coincided with our idea of using a modern interpretation of a writing box.

Margery doesn't see herself using a conventional writing box, as she already has a study, and therefore we are going to prototype a similar idea to that of the box but to fit in with her existing set up.

Plan of action is now to get together daily, or as close to daily as possible. Today we began thinking about our next deliverable; our 2 minute concept video:

Possibilities include....

- art gallery curator provides narrative (this is the knowledge that Pablo and Margery will be sharing after all)

- video of main hall in Edinburgh Museum?

- stop motion 'day in the life of Margery'

- something to similar effect with Pablo

- Margery interview

Desk?

2008-02-10T15:14:00.000-08:00

insert imagination here

Dump

2008-02-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

WE WENT TO THE DUMP YESTERDAY!

Our concept at the moment is an intelligent desk/antique writing furniture and a cool pinboard at Pablo's end (we have chosen Pablo and his Gran Margery to prototype for). Basically Margery uses her desk to send Pablo emails, and he uses his computer or something in the pinboard maybe to send Margery post.

So yeah, we are going to hack apart a desk? And as students, we are poor- hence the epic trip to the local dump!

I like to think of our trip as recycling- perfection.

I now have 13 videos (vhs), Pablo has a new dvd player and Emma has an iMac.

This was perhaps a distraction.... but something good course-wise did come out of it: mmm writing boxes.

Microsoft Brief

2008-02-10T14:52:00.000-08:00

This blogs main purpose is to record my thoughts and activities throughout this semesters coursework, however I'm sure that won't be true for long.

Most importantly we are taking part in a brief for Microsoft this semester; and the summary of the brief as I understand it is this: We are to develop a networked object (an object that utilizes technologies to provide one service or feature and do so well) that bridges the generation gap between my generation and that of my grandparent's. This must provide some form of education to at least one of the parties involved.

We started off by raking our thoughts for an interesting 'old' person... and I started talking to my Great-Aunt Carol. She is very much untypical elderly person- does tai-chi, acts, socialises regularly, works in a shop, has been in a television advert.... the list goes on. So we started talking, she likes to record her rehearsals with her acting group, and acting is something I have always been interested in... so we realised a common interest there, and it was a good excuse to get to know each other.

In the end our group didn't decide to use me and my grandperson, as the ideas we had for her had little scope- basically a small, wireless camera that streamed her rehearsals to my television in miles away. I will however keep her in my mind for advice and guidance throughout this semester.