Processing and sketching with the Arduino
There is no direct path between the designer's intention and the outcome. As you work a problem, you are continually in the process of developing a path into it, forming new appreciations and understandings as you make new moves. - Donald Schon
The first week of workshop, was an intensive crash course on processing (note how intensive, is used to describe something that is already meant to be intense) . I'd only heard of this software while making icons for a programming website during my internship over the summer. This field of interaction design is completely new to me. I've only heard about some of the projects people have done previously. And as a visual communication background i felt its importance in my present/future.
I went with an open mind, without any expectations and a little bit of excitement to learn something new.
Sharath, facilitated the first week and we went through the basics which was to help us through the second week of workshop. We learned how to code for simple shape movement within the screen, multiple objects moving, motion detection, varying sound intensity etc. This was to help us "sketch" using the Arduino and various light sensors, resistors, and LED lights.
Sketching with hardware, was a completely new concept to me. I had no idea where and how to begin. It all seemed too open ended; Like doodling on a blank piece of paper. What do you draw? Where on the paper do you begin? Do you use a pencil, paints or a pen? Spoilt for choice. It took while for the idea of exploration to sink in. To just play around and see what the Arduino is capable of executing. This made me think about how far i can really go with stretching my ideas. What really are the possibilities? It all seemed a bit vague for me to be honest. But I'd like to believe that it's because of the new train of thought. Where does one draw a balance from coding (from just being able to read it, to articulate it) to making the circuit and being technically sound to make the set up work without actually burning out the board. And again, where do you start? Should we conceptualize our idea first or go with the flow and see what happens and form an idea around the current situation? "That's why it's called sketching" Tomas told us. His questions during our presentations - :What did you learn from it? Did it take you to new places? - soon became mandatory for all the groups to answer. For me personally, I'm not entirely sure if our sketching took us to any new place in terms of ideation. I feel like maybe I went about the process in very narrow state of mind. I had an idea and I wanted to execute just that much. In retrospect, however, with my limited knowledge about coding, processing and the Arduino, this methodology seemed right for me.I learned how to code specific steps and programmed certain tasks to be performed. For our final project for the workshop, I worked with Aayushi and Shaun. We wanted to create a device that enable, and motivate senior citizens to increase their activity threshold. The way the device works, is very simple. The sensors would detect/calculate how much the person has walked in a given frame of time and tweet it periodically. This forms a social network between the senior citizens, allowing them to interact with each other and create an atmosphere friendly competition/peer encouragement, it allows family who are geographically distant be more aware of the senior citizen's activity, it would enable doctors to revisit the tweets as a log/documentation for diagnosis and treatment, and it would also work as an alerting device in case of an emergency. To create this device, we used an accelerometer, wifi sheild, jumper wires, arduino board. The movement of the accelerometer (only the y-axis) would be gauged and printed, and every 8th record that was over 600 would be recorded as a tweet. This was just to check if the concept worked; and it did.
I'll have to obviously practice and experiment more to understand the logic and language of coding better and form ideas that are tangible and sketch worthy. I need to learn to go with the flow, and just doodle what comes to mind and understand the path I've created and see if it can be idea that can be implemented.