GROUP SCREW

USER EXPERIENCE VISION Group screw is a hands-on, interdisciplinary community of makers, thinkers, and tinkerers. We share values of transparency, respect and individualism, saving crits for the classroom. Group Screw is dedicated to using technology creatively, exploring emerging technologies, providing peer support for ideation, and demystifying technical processes. An experiment in instigating a trans-disciplinary community, Group Screw invites you to make in public. HOW IT WORKS Group Screw is open to any Art Center College of Design student with an interest in participating in an open source community that provides an opportunity for each member to help develop the programming and experiences offered by Group Screw. Activities can range from hour long brainstorm sessions, to case studies on curated projects, to any range of additional programming advocated for by its members.

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An incredible video installation will transport you through the origins of the galaxy--but only if you stand still and your phone doesnt ring.

 Seamless UX or Accountable UX: What would Don Norman Do?

In a world where technology is designed to distract, this experience refuses to play without your undivided attention.  The principle is exciting to me because I imagine it implemented in movie theaters, museums, or any other place or work that requires a focused audience.  The stubborn quality of the design is not about seamless UX, but about earned engagement, which in a world of constant distraction feels like it facilitates a user experience that resonates way deeper than a push notification.

I describe the principle used in this installation as 'Accountable UX' where the user is accountable for their interaction and engagement with the experience. It requires the user to pause and think about what they are doing, not mindlessly flip, tap, or swipe from screen to screen continuously filling the mental and digital landfills which characterize our existence today.   Don Norman, one of the preeminent thinkers on UX always advocates for a seamless experience with everyday things, but I feel that sometimes difficult design is necessary to ensure the message penetrates our digitally distracted populace, and may apply less to interactions that are created to communicate a deeper message than opening a door...but what if opening a door was intended to communicate a deeper message...

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James Turrell Sunday 11/24

Ticket Information for Sunday 11/24/13. Does this date and time work for everyone? The tickets are $27 per person. I have attached the ticketing link below. 

Event : James Turrell: A Retrospective  On  11/24/13 10:00 AM   Location  BCAM Level 2    Area :              BCAM Level 2           

03General Public*$27.00=$81.0000LACMA Member*$0.00=$0.0000Children under 18 (under 5 not required)*$0.00=$0.0000Adult Group (10+ paid tickets in transaction)*$22.00=$0.00Total :  3 Tickets, $81.00 BackAdd to basket

http://tx1.lacma.org/show_events_list.asp 

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Burning Man is an annual event and temporary community based on radical self expression and self-reliance in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

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An Enormous Floating Array For Cleaning Up The Ocean, Designed By A College Kid

Instead of scouring the ocean for debris this device uses the ocean to collect the trash.

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See Amazing Underwater Sculptures Made Of Our Marine Trash

Artists Mathieu Goussin and Hortense Le Calvez create innovative underwater sculptures out of jeans streamers and lawn chairs--to remind us that stuff...

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A Mechanical Ceiling That Moves With The Flow Of Ocean Waves

Using a Kinect sensor to motion-capture a swath of gently choppy water an artist creates a somewhat disorienting installation. Hope youre not seasick.

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Delivered in Beta from KS12 on Vimeo.

Several weeks ago at the Group Screw weekly meeting we were privy to some amazing discussion about large concepts and short term projects.  Here is a video that we shared with the group to kick off the discussion on innovation and applying Open Design principles to the experience at Art Center College of Design.

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Here is the video I was talking about during our last meeting. I think it relevant to many things we were talking about as well as being insightful. Enjoy!

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Group Screw Pecha Kucha deep dives into your Curiosity - Friday 10/18

In the interest of giving people time to prepare a dazzling presentation, we've elected to hold Group Screw's Pecha Kucha for Friday 10/18 in room 201 from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm PST.

Here's a little more information on how to structure your presentation if you're stuck.  

The theme for the presentation is Curiosity.  Please think about something you are deeply curious about and would be thrilled to know more about on a detailed and educational level.

Here's to deep diving!

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Fail Fast & Fail Frequently

Here at Group Screw we are committed to pushing innovation around a community of makers. One idea that is very important to us is failure and how we relate to it as individuals and as a community. The motto Fail Fast, Fail Frequently is one that is discussed often in the tech community. It allows you to iterate quickly and is also a large driver of the Agile Software Movement.

Here's one of our favorite links on process and how you can turn your failure into a learning opportunity. 

Fast CoDesign - Fail Fast - Fail Frequently, and an interesting counter to all of the startup cliches recently published in Wired!

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1point perspective, Vis Com 1, 12 pages of cubes due on Tuesday

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Vis Com 1 1 page of cubes down, 11 more to go.

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How Not To Burnout

When figuring out what to do next, ask yourself - what do I want to do that's not going to make me burnout? - Zack Robbins

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A 3D Printer with an Undo Button? It’s possible.

"A group of grad students at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles have harnessed the ability to fix the past when it comes to 3-D printing. Traditional 3-D printers create objects by incrementally printing thousands of 2-D layers, which makes going back to fix things impossible. That’s why Brian Harms, the lead designer of theSuspended Dispositions project, and his team created a freeform printer that injects ultraviolet-curable liquid resin into a tank of gel using a needle-thin print head mounted on a robotic arm. The resin stays in liquid form until it comes into contact with UV light, which means designers can retrace missteps, manually or robotically, and fix potential design flaws. It’s essentially like pressing an “undo” button."

  (via Fast Co.Labs- http://www.fastcolabs.com/3014851/what-if-3-d-printers-had-an-undo-button)

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This is awesome!!!

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DBC Final Project Ideas!

After working with the Instagram API today until 2 am, here are a few things I'm curious about. Instagram limits the amount of server calls that you can make. How does one optimize that? I imagine that knowing where your traffic is coming from on a timezone level allows you to optimize how frequently you refresh based on geography and user behavior of your target. Additionally there is the ability to maximize your calls to the server by using a cache. I imagine an API call algorithm to optimize sites use of an API would be really useful. Really interesting post on conditional API calls below to further the ideation. https://coderwall.com/p/hu2n4g Woot! Optimize APIs!

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Debugging at DBC - I have a JQuery!

Just had my brains blown by @stephenitis, our generous TA here at DBC in San Francisco.

Showed me some incredibly useful techniques to Debug JQuery to determine what is being selected and what is working syntactically.

1. of course - debugger - stops the code from running right when it hits this command.

2. the console.log(this) - a great way to find out what $(this) actually is!

3.  alert - this is an interesting way of figuring out if you are interacting with your desired element as well.

4. Selector Gadget - the best way to select the 'nth child' that I've seen to date.

Maybe I'll get home before 11:00 tonight, and get 6 hours of sleep!!! BOSS. MAN.

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DBC PHASE II

I promised myself I'd blog more about this experience.

In addition to rigorous challenges, we also had an insightful lecture on Mindfulness and Mediation that is featured in the SYI course at Google.

Here's the video to give you a taste. 

Search Inside Yourself - Meng Tan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8fcqrNO7so

 I plan on working on our solo challenges today. The first one up.

Validations in Active Record and Sinatra.

Core

Use ActiveRecord and Sinatra to allow anyone to create an event, so long as it passes validation rules.

Objectives

Add validations to the Event model and show appropriate messages to the user when the validations fail.

Prevent Events from being saved when: a. The events date is empty, in the past, or is not valid. b. The events title is already taken or empty. c. The event organizers name is empty. d. The event organizers email address is invalid.

You Will Know You Are Done When:

Invalid Events are not created when the form is posted.

The user is informed for each failing validation.

The form remains populated with the users input after posting.

Bonus points if errors are presented near the invalid form field.