Yes,Digital Design. Goodbye, BCT.

[qzkevin]

Prepare for the presentation

Today we have finish our final set up before the presentation. Compare to last year and year before, we are more relax at this semester. I think what make the difference is we finally have a good time plan and team role. Unlike my pervious projects, this is the first time I only work with one people in group. It is hard to judge more or less people in group is good or not, but work with Tim really make our work easy. I have work with Tim since the first year, so we know each’s weakness and good. As the result, we can split the project to two and have free to pick one that we like to do.

What we done today is place the poster and fix up some problems. It is quite horrify that I see the cable drop from the wall(was glued by tape before), fortunately we fix that. Last week we were more focus on finish the documentation and poster design, it is good but also means we need finish the button part today. 80% of the button part is finish at last week, all we have to do is just extend the cable little bit so it can place around the table.

(Yes the coke bottle caps is our buttons.)

At this stage, we have done everything we could do. I do send our doc and poster to Sangeeta for getting feedback, but, you know... She doesn't give any reply. Whatever, I am more worried about the presentation, Tim is confidence with the project but I am not. I am always the one that have no confidence with the project result, it happen every years so I should be fine. 

[qzkevin]

week13 studio poster

For explain how is our project works, I made two poster this week. To be honestly, I think most people would understand how to interact our project when they see some buttons, so the poster is more focus on explain the detail about GPGP. In our videos, it shows clearly about how the ocean moves and the GPGP kill animals. The weakness part is we don’t have sound and text in the project. The reason is we don’t want sound as it does not working well in the open studio/showcase (too noise around). The text will be in our poster.

I have take some keyword from our project and make them looks like a maze shape. All I want is this could interested more people stop and look our project. I also steal some idea from national geography for design the out layout which someone believe it looks nice. The information paragraphs will be in the next poster so this one can have more free space.

This is the second page which I believe it had all the information we want show. First, our name, project name and the sub title for telling how to interact our project. Second, two short paragraphs explain what is GPGP and our project. At this point, thanks Tim for helping me finish the writing stuff. Below it is the description for each buttons, we don’t want our audience just random buttons because they don’t know what is that means. We also have a extra blog nearby to talk about the micro plastic problem. It is a part of the GPGP but the fact is people more care about this because they eat fish more than swim in the pacific Ocean.

Tomorrow I will meet Tim to finish the last set up of buttons and prepare for the final presentation.  It is quite pressure but I think we did our best. Hope everyone get a good result, good luck.

[qzkevin]

week13- studio update

Well, it is the week 13 again, deadline is coming.

We had a test about our prototype last week which is useful to judge what is the main problem we need solve. The main problem we need to solve is the buttons. The fabric is fine, but we will change a better one for enhance the user experience. 

First, about the buttons.

Tim has been to the store around city for finding suitable size buttons that can place on our cylinder table. The sad thing is we can’t place those big buttons to a curve surface, and those smaller buttons are just too small. And the good thing  is we still remember the experience from the "DOOM" project. We decide to find some coke bottle caps and fix them on those smaller buttons. The finish buttons will be fixed around the table with some tape and hot glue.

Second, the fabric.

To be honestly, we don’t have much thing could talk about the fabric. We know the old one is shitty and looks bad. The only change we did is just bring a new fabric and test with the projection. Tim has find two fabric which one is more plastic feel and one is soft and light. We decide to use the soft one as it is work better for projection mapping. The new fabric has been cut to a circle shape, we haven’t fixed it on the project structure yet but will do that later in this week.

There will be a presentation at next week, so I am work on finish the a4 one page document and our poster. We plan to finish our physical set up in Thursday or Friday, maybe the weekend as well. Anyway, I have done one poster already and there should have 1 or 2 more for the final. The summary doc also finish but we haven’t ask Sangeeta to check, wonder she can show up today.

[qzkevin]

Prototyping test video 2.

Tumblr is so bad that you can’t upload two video in one post.

Thanks Rachael again.

[qzkevin]

Prototype testing video 1.

Thanks Rachael for help,

[qzkevin]

Studio- Early research data

For our studio paper, we have two different data collecting process, the first one is using the google form and online research to find how many people don’t the GPGP. We also asking their feedback about our project idea to make sure we are working in the right direction. Here is the screen shot from the google form survey we did.

[qzkevin]

SIS reflection

At the start of the semester, the idea I have in the first class is totally different compared to now the project we build. In that time, my idea was making something like spider web which allows the audience to do some interact with those rope to trigger different sound.

The chance I join to the group is Stuart inform me that his idea - making a projection mapping project. I have some experience that make projection mapping in my second year studio project and I have a small projector can use for group. But in the time, I still not give up my idea. After we decide to have a group, we didn’t start develop Stuart’s idea as we all have our own idea that feels better and this do slow our process compare to other groups.

But the good thing is we do understand other's ability and weak during the research and prepare time. So once we coming to decide the team role, everyone know what is their good at and weakness. I like the feeling of having teamwork. It is also the time we start realize that we all have some interest or experience of making the projection mapping project.

The hardest challenge coming to me is I don’t have much work at the really start as I am the person who work on the projector. All I need is just check the projector's focus is right and the editing the size we need. It is quite boring and easy, so I have more time to suggest about the concept and our idea behind our project.

A really interesting point that Sheena told us is she has a paper last year that the topic is about how young people addicted to social media. And this become one of most important concept to our project, which we believe that use broken mobile that we borrow from Clint could easily represent the message we want tell.

The second challenge coming to me is after break, we already done some critique and Clint agree on our idea. To do our final set-up, I get a new team role that is work on collecting sound and editing the sound. I do feel a bit pressure as I have been a long time that not touch any about sound editing and it is also one of the most important job as this paper is Sound Space & image.

In my personal viewpoint, it is fun and valuable to re-study something you already forget. It is way easier than to learn something you never know. In the night when I watch YouTube tutorial, I start become skilful and in the end I can do all the job without get other’s help. I do make some mistake that the first one I made are terrible that has a loud static noise inside. It is weird that never happen on my laptop but I still need fix that. It is the despire night for me in this semester as I can’t stop imagine that my team complain on my work and kick me out from groups.

But the result tells me that I have to think more positive. I have a good team that they support and agree the process I have done which do give me lots of confidence to finish this project. I do realize that is already the 3rd year I coming to the university but I still don’t trust myself sometime. That maybe the reason why I always like do team work job as I need other people’s recognition and encouragement.

In summary, this paper could be one of the most freedom paper I ever had. We don’t have much limit to design and develop our idea and have communication with other people who is also doing cool stuff but different to us. I really like the freedom as I know how bad to limit a creator's imagine by give some boring requirement. The most value thing I have learn from this paper would be I understand my weakness more deeper and improve my teamwork ability, even we comes with different initial idea at start.

[qzkevin]

Everything is ready at this stage, we are happy about all the thing we have done. The only problem we need judge is just about the different of having background or not. We have two version of our project, which is one has a colourful background and other one not. We have a short group chat about this and the result is we decide to show both, see the opinion from the audience.

We also realize something goes wrong while the final set-up. The top left phone on the wall has chance that drop from wall which do make Racheal feel mad. But with having more glue on it, the problem solved.

I am also surprised that we can project mapping that accurate to each phone by using HeavyM software. In the end we decide to use Sheena’s laptop as it would be lag to run on mine.

The feedback from class is cool, they like our project. On the question about different version, most people believe that have no background is more cool and clean to see. There are still some people like the colourful background, like Tim do say that the colourful background take his focus or what.

It is enough for me about this project, we start this paper from totally chaos and no idea to now have a cool, running project is still a amazing experience. Who can still see that the original idea we have is coming from something about “Web”?  It is a really interesting paper that no one limits your idea, you can do what ever you want on develop and change your idea until you are happy with it.

[qzkevin]

Visit Original Link

This is the sound track I made for our SIS project, which is aim to present the feeling of increase social media coming to our life. It only have one normal notification sound at the start, but with the time goes, the amount of sounds and the speed of the sound would also increase to show the chaos feeling that make people addicted. 

The name of our project called Crescendo, and we set the length of video and sound play in just 20 sec, after that is just a 40 sec silence that represent how we feel boring to reality after be addicted to those unreal world.

[qzkevin]

SIS- Sound editing

In the time we decide our team role and start build our project, I am work on the sound part for my team. To be honestly, after the first year sound project that we make a instrument, I never touch this anymore. Most time I work with other people is doing hand craft or programming and VR. I really not have confidence about I can finish this job.

The start isn’t bad as I already get all the notification sound we need before the break. So once we decide to start make the final project, the only challenge for me is to re-learn every thing that I need about Audacity. In the time, Kelvin also told me that we want a increase amount of sounds in the sound track and need speed up with time. With having these requirement, I start my study on YouTube by looking lots of example video that teach people how to use Audacity.

I do make some mistake while cutting the sound, but after 3 or 4 times I become more skilled on this. To do the speed up effect, I make different phase for each sound and increase each phase speed faster than the pervious one. It is work and my team like that.After 2hours(most for watch YouTube), I finish the first test one and I send to the group chat to get my team’s feedback. It is the time near 12 so I just turn sleep, I am ready that I get everyone complain on my shitty sound editing tomorrow.

In the next day, the feedback is more surprised me than I thought. None of my team give any feedback until the next Monday we meet. In that time, the good news is none of them complain about that and bad news it do produce some noise static sound in my speaker. That problem never happen with my laptop test but I still need fix that.

So start my second test about sound editing. In this version, I delete some sound as my team believe it is too noisy. Then I lower down the volume which I believe would solve the problem of have static noise. I get this idea because one of my friends told me that might because my speaker is not that good to play loud sound. Fortunately, he is right, the problem do solve after I decrease the volume.

At the end, I feel I am enjoy on make sound editing. A bit challenge but not that hard, I am glad that I have another chance to do this otherwise I will totally forget what I have learn from my first year paper. Once I finish the sound editing, Stuart do finish the video editing which means it coming to the final stage of this paper that just need set-up and show to everyone in class. I am feeling exciting on work this paper which is also the second project mapping in my university time.

[qzkevin]

“We didn’t study harm”

“We didn’t study harm,” he says. “We showed there are microplastics in human stool. Up to now, people believed it, but now we know it. That’s important.”

-Richard Thompson, a marine scientist at the University of Plymouth in the U.K.

Back to the start of the semester, we were stuck on decide the project idea and be pain for that. In the rest time, I saw a article that explain how GPGP(Great Pacific Garbage Patch) harm to our life. I don’t feel that surprised as I already know this story like 3 years ago, but Tim is not. He told me that he never hear that news before, even his family and friends. It is quite unbelievable, so I go ask some people and lecture in studio about do they ever know this thing, and all the result I get is No.

It is interesting that everyone understand how important about protect environment in New Zealand but not much people know this problem that happen in Pacific Ocean. At this stage, I talk with Tim that could we make a project that introduce this issue to more people? At least let some of them know this would affect our life and future.

Tim agree with my idea and then we talk with Sangeeta, it is first time that Sangeeta strongly agree with our project idea. She told us that she believe this would be the most valuable project we will have before we graduate. We start do some research and prepare for our prototype making. With more and deeper research, I realize this problem may be more serious that I thought. 

Most research article I found all talk about a fact that there are some microplastic find in human poop. They all comes from the fish we eat in daily, which is a loop that human throw rubbish into the sea, fish eat those plastic and finally we eat those fish and those plastic back to harm our health.

We want to build a project that has a education value as our idea is let more people know there is a problem happen around us. I plan to use my projector to create a projection mapping project that allow people to have some simple interact action. And for get feedback data I will make a google form to see how many audience that don’t know this problem and after have interact with our project, what do they feel about their understand on this serious problem.

[qzkevin]

Studio blog - build prototype

It is been a long time that I am not blog my studio project and I know it is bad. I was too focus on solve my elective paper but now it is nearly finish. Compare to last two years, I feel more pressure and busy, we have to do our portfolio, finish studio project and plan for next year... Oh god...

Back to the topic, I have chat with Tim at week 7 about speed up our project process, so what I did in this week is I get the wood we need and finish the laser cutting. During this process, I have made a mistake about cut length, so those two pieces are not able to insert together, fortunately I can fix that just need do a re-cut.

As you can see, now there is the frame of a half sphere project. Once we finish use some paper( or other thing) to make the out cover, we will put some curtain on it so we can do project mapping.

Thanks to Sangeeta save our project. We was stuck on to find out a stand for place our projector which might cost 50$+ on PB tech. The idea she give and save us is:

“Just put that cylinder on any table, that is your stand.”

Yeah that is how we solve the problem, funny and work. I am glad that we finally make Sangeeta love our project idea once before I graduate. Every year we can hear Sangeeta complain about our project idea that make no sense and strange, but not this time. She called this is a big improve for both of us and we should keep doing like this.

Now the plan is Tim will work on the video editing and get the curtain and hard paper we need. I will help him to finish set up the projector and start document our process and work with the portfolio thing. Once both of my two elective paper finish, I will have more blog to post about the way we walk about this project.

[qzkevin]

Week6- interaction and play

We have the second presentation in this week which is quite helpful. We were focus on decide the best way to observe our project last week with some small cut wood. One thing I am quite embrassing is that none of us know we should have a video for the 2nd presentation, so we have to stand out and explain to all class. Well, the postive think is we do get lots of advice and some of them do change our mind.

We were focus on build a real installtion before but one advice is why don’t we think about VR. As we all have the VR paper last semester, it wouldn’t be too hard to make a prototype in the next few weeks. I agree with this, so after the presentation we have a group chat about what should we do for prototype. The result is all of us agree about make in VR and we send a email to Stefan really quick about borrow some equipment.

The good news is Yes he can borrow us, the bad news is Stefan doesn’t have the HTC Vive, what he can give is a mixed reality headset. To be honest, I don’t know any about mixed reality, but what Stefan said is this is not much different compare to the Vive. We just need follow the instruction and download another app in steam. We get all the equipment after my Wesdnsday class and we are ready to test and make in unity.

It is a quite busy week which is close to the break, but fortunatly we get all we need for make the prototype and we have the clearly plan for it. We want to start make the VR at next week and finish in the break, so the week when we back we can test with people in studio easily. At the point, we will have a talk at tomorrow morning for the role. James might work with the project model,Michael and I will work with make the whole map and the enviroment. We will work on unity so with the unity team, it helps us can see other people make change online which save us lots of time.

[qzkevin]

SIS - project idea

During the time we build our prototype, we also think about deeper about of the concept behind our project. At the very start, we have a concept list as we don’t know what we want to do. In the week one and two, five of us are keeping brainstorm about how could we develop each concept and compare them to see the best choice.

It is the time that Stuart show me the vimeo video about projection mapping. I am really interest about that idea and I do have my own small projector. It is the time that our project direction come to the projection mapping way. Stuart explain to us that he would like create something chaos or outlandshi visual experience. To be honestly, I am quite confuse about that as I think we need a more clearly concept.

During the brainstorm, I can’t remeber is Sheena or Racheal that said the social meida. We suddenly connect this idea to the mobile phone we use and think about the possibility of making a projection with this concept. We want to place our project to a T wall or some corner around studio. With the concept include the “phone” idea, we believe just a flat wall might be a better chocie.

In this week, we stop our work process for a bit just want look back to see what value/meanning could also include our project. Racheal was think that our project could link with someone addicted with the phone or other psycho impact. So that is why we want to have a scrolling screen for the projection, we can build the connection between those idea to the project. I like this develeop concept, but in my viewpoint I am more like to see how great we could make for the change of the projection mapping. Which is the idea more close to what Stuart want to see in the end. I agree that concept of our project connect with people who addicated on phone, we plan to have a really shock shut down at the end to present the idea of back to real.

That is it, it looks fine for me at the moment about concept. We might need re-think this after we finish the prototype but this is our direction.

[qzkevin]

SIS -Prototype and team role

We have decide our team role since the week 4 class, which I am doing the sound collecting and help with all the technique problem that happen on the projector. In the past few week, I have collect most social media notification sound that we need use for make the background sound-track. I am still looking for more but now we are ready to start.

Prototype(1):

Our first prototype was made by cardboard which cut to rectangle shape like a mobile phone. We stick those cardboard on wall and project on them. At this stage we don’t make the project mapping accurate but is enough to explain our idea. The idea we have is using this as a way to explain how social media would around our life and they are keep increase with the time. We don’t want judge it would be bad or good for this thing but our audience could understand this message from our project by seeing increase projection on the “phone”.

The software we use for make accurate projection is caleed heavyM. We get Kelvin work on this, he is the only one who knows on using this software. The next plan we have is project some scroing screen on those “phone” and slowly spread out from the middle. During the process, I will be happy to help Kelvin doing this stuff as I also need learn some for my studio paper.

Prototype(2):

After the presentation in class, we get a good new from Clint. We can brorrow some broken mobile phone from BCT. As the result, we kick out the cardboard idea and start paste those phone on wall. To be honestly, it looks much better than the cardboard one which I really want say thanks to Clint.

It is also the time I finish collect all the sound effect we need, at this stage we will start to do our soundtrack, get the video for projecting and all the thing we need to do to present our prototye in the next few weeks. Sheena and Rachael would also review some research they have from their past project which could support our concept more clearly.

One thing I am worried about is Stuart has a opinion that we might do some change for the final set-up but willd depends on how good we could do for this prototye. I also need chat with him about the sound and video editting work as I don’t have much experience and dislike to do that.

[qzkevin]

Week5 interaction and play testing

After we meet Ben in class, we decide to do our project by make a installation and attract our audience to discovery it. The idea we have is to make the experience of discovery be more interesting and playful, thus the user would have more interest to understand the information we want to show. This idea is based on the Urban ThinkSpace project which I have explained in my previous blog. That is a fully success project showing how to attract young child and their parents to interact with those project, while the process, it also improve young child’s space thinking, logic thinking and relationship with their family. In my personal viewpoint, I believe have interest or not is the most important part that would affect to education and understanding. Make the user be interested on the product/project is always the top thing for any business and design.

Location is one thing that we really focus on at last week until now. We like the idea from Ben which is about cover our main information to attract audience want to discovery it. The testing we have made is all about think what is the best way to locate our project so the audience could have the highest interest to discovery what is behind when they first time see it.

Michael get some recycle wood and cut them into small pieces so we can test them with different combination to find the best idea of set up our project. We still not drop the light house idea but at the moment we do think to make somthing like a obelisk with lots of cover around.

In the end, we still not decide what is the best way to set-up the project, but James do love some of them so we might use one of them for our project. For the following plan, we want to bring these idea to real like make a real scale and set up in studio, we also think about use VR but we need ask Stefan first.

[qzkevin]

Interaction&Play - Ben’s advice

In this monday class, we have talk to ben about how we gonna do the play testing and the idea of build our prototye. The orginal idea we have is place some photo of Aotea Square after Photoshop around the studio, so we can get people’s feedback to those outlandish image and understand what they like/want see in the real place.

During the meeting process, we also show Ben the annihilation movie that we saw last week. It is a Sci-fi horror movie but I really love how they present that outlandish but beautiful element in the movie. We interested about how the protagonist been attract into deeper to the center of this alien world. She knows it is dangerous and weird but the changing enviroment just make her can’t stop and back.

Ben like it, and when he understand the way we want to test in studio, he show us a project that he has made in California. It is a part house on the clif, the difference is they make the room space under the ground and have a swimming pool at top. People on the street would only see the light from underground and people play and laugh on the top swimming pool. This cover would make people want to discover what is happen in here, and achieve the goal of attract more people to the party.

Ben think we should make our project like this, not build a part house but some barrior. We should think about have this concept and connect with the coral reef idea that we focus. The idea we get from this meeting is we could use some wood plank as what the chair in Aotea Square used to build out our prototype. Not neceeary to be 1:1 scale but we can place in WG building for a better testing and get data back.