Sneha Pai @snehapai12 - Tumblr Blog

How many bathtubs filled with water does it take to grow, produce, and process the various foods that we consume?

[An infographic I made for a graphic design mini-course at SVA MFA IXD]

Over four weeks in January and February, 13 first and second year students participated in Rachel Abrams' MTA Big Data workshop. Devised for and with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the workshop's goal was twofold:

First, to introduce the public agency to the principles,...

snehapai12

A wonderful workshop and project in my MFA department that I was fortunate to be a part of:

Revisiting childhood through an entrepreneurial lens (er..scope)

One of my favorite illustrators, Shaun Tan, beautifully states in one of his essays:

"This is perhaps what picture books are good for - continuing that playful inquiry we began in childhood, of using imagination to find significance and meaning in those ordinary, day-to-day experiences that might otherwise remain unnoticed."

I am always daydreaming and it is a happy moment when this occurs with pen and sketchbook in hand. It used to be a frequent occurrence when I studied animation, illustration and fine art in my undergraduate degree, but soon enough, student life transitioned into work life, and then that work life mostly consisted of drawing, animating and observing procedures about internal organs for medical simulation, and the doodler in me became dormant for quite some time.

Moving to New York and embarking on this new phase of studying has revived the doodling-daydreamer in me. There's definitely something about the strange strangers on the subway and streets, new living situations, classes to occasionally daydream in, and a whole host of learning funny-sounding terminologies and slang in a new subject matter (cybernetics, GUI (goooeeeyyy!!!), skeuomorphism, ubiquitous computing, and yeah - big data).

I can't help but giggle at the everyday things we (un)consciously say and do and experience and when my mind wanders off, these silly thoughts instantly translate into characters and stories- mini (a)musings that have a fleeting tendency unless quickly scribbled down. I never intend for them to be anything more than a laugh for myself, and so these characters/stories usually hide forever in large numbers inside my sketchbook (except when asked to draw an animation for thesis). Not anymore!

I think the ideas/product that Melody and I are beginning to envision will definitely strive to evoke playfulness and child-like glee and curiosity for our audience. It will require crafting an end-product that is succinct, thoughtful and bold, and it will require me to personally be okay with shipping some of my tiny mind-thoughts out into the world.

The author Milan Kundera expresses the spirit of Entrepreneurial Design class and our task at hand so fittingly when he says:

"We go on being children, regardless of age, because in life we are always encountering new things that challenge us to understand them, instances where a practiced imagination is actually more useful that all laboriously acquired knowledge."

#entrepreneurial design #sketching

Toymail

While investigating my own ideas about designing for children and/or designing child-like things for the "$1000 Project", I came across and was very inspired by a great new "high-tech meets lo-fi" toy for kids called Toymail.

Toymail is a text to voice messenger that allows non-immediate family members to communicate with the tiny loved ones in their lives. It works through the connection of the proprietary Toymail app with a range of cute, hard-rubberized toy creatures that operate on a wireless chip adapter and rechargeable battery power. The adult user (for example a grandparent) would open the Toymail app on her phone, and type in a text message style note to send to their grandchild. Upon sending the note, within a few seconds, the grandchild who owns the Toymail toy of her choice would hear her toy speaking the text message from her grandma out loud, in a childlike ‘chipmunky’ voice: “Hello Suzy! You are as cute as a mouse.”

In a world that is steering increasingly towards a nuclear family size, Toymail could improve familial bonds by allowing extended family to connect with their loved ones. Young children do not have access to phones and are often too young to use internet and other screen based communication, and Toymail gives them a simple way to engage in “SMS” without ever touching a screen or having to navigate a more complex device to communicate.

One design decision I admire and find interesting is that the device translates the voice into a creature-like voice, almost personifying the voice to the animal from which the sound outputs. It brings the conversation to the child’s level and fosters the child’s emotions of imaginary and fantastical creatures that are commonly spoken about at that age. I also like that the device mostly looks like a toy, with very few buttons that are mostly hidden on the back side of the toy. When looked at from the front, the toy looks like it comes to life with a voice when a message is received.

#entrepreneurial design #smart objects

An interesting resource to assist in word association

#svaixd #link #idea #brainstorming #craftinginteractions

Goldilocks and the Three Entrepreneurial Ideas

The process of investigating and generating new ideas for Entrepreneurial Design reminded me of the familiar children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

At first, the ideas were endlessly free-flowing and broad. It's a great feeling to feel like an inventor, floating around lovely, idealistic, hypothetical ideas for cool things that I've always wanted to make. The dreamer in me would love to daydream and doodle about these forever but this is a class about getting it shipped, and making something that someone would actually pay for. The constraints (some about time, some about skills, some about practicality, but mostly mental) started to sink in, creating a feeling of a stifling reality check.

Some of these ideas are too small of an endeavor. Some of these ideas will take years to execute, and will enlist the help of many people. So which idea will be just right?

After a week of ideating almost too lucratively, my teammate and I decided to defer our premature practicality and scrutiny in favor of passion and step-by-step discovery. We plan on exploring our shared passion of creating content for children by combining my illustration/animation skills with her content/content-strategy/writing skills, and we will soon explore, shape, and refine what our tangible output will be.

Here's to some great learning by doing!

#Entrepreneurial Design #svaixd #ideas #illustration #animation #writing #passion

Weatherbox

Physical Computing Midterm Project, SVA Interaction Design MFA Sneha Pai & Matthew Brigante

The Weatherbox is a desk or bedside companion that displays an ambient and abstract light-based representation of the temperature and wind-speed outside your window. Throughout the seasons, it will reflect meaningful shifts in temperature with a specific color of LED light emitted for each incremental range. A reading that is below 35 degrees fahrenheit will be represented by blue lights on both ends of the Weatherbox. For every 15-20 degrees increase in temperature, the Weatherbox will output a warmer color of light. The warmest outdoor temperatures of 80-110 degrees will output a red light. The center panel of the Weatherbox displays the rate of outdoor wind speed with an animated LED array that changes the speed of animation based on the rate of wind passing by your window.

// // Written for the LoL Shield, designed by Jimmie Rodgers: // http://jimmieprodgers.com/kits/lolshield/ // Adapted from Noisy by Jacob Joaquin <[email protected]> 10/3/2012 //wind sensor parts int windmin; int windmax; //lolshield #include "Charliplexing.h" void setup() { //lolshield setup LedSign::Init(); //wind sensor setup Serial.begin(9600); windmin = analogRead(A0); // calibrate wind sensor on analog pin A0 windmax = windmin+400; //this is where the range is declared } void loop() { int windSensor = analogRead(A0); // read wind sensor value // if(windSensor<windmin) windSensor=windmin; // compress ends of scale to avoid going out of range if(windSensor>windmax) windSensor=windmax; // int windoutput = map(windSensor, windmin,windmax,0,100); //remap wind value to length of array Serial.println(windoutput); delay(150); if ((windoutput <= 10) && (windoutput >= 0 )) { for(uint8_t y = 0; y < 9; y++) { for(uint8_t x = 0; x < 14; x++) { LedSign::Set(x, y, random(2)); } } delay(2000); } else if ((windoutput <= 20) && (windoutput > 10 )) { for(uint8_t y = 0; y < 9; y++) { for(uint8_t x = 0; x < 14; x++) { LedSign::Set(x, y, random(2)); } } delay(1500); } else if ((windoutput <= 30) && (windoutput > 20 )) { for(uint8_t y = 0; y < 9; y++) { for(uint8_t x = 0; x < 14; x++) { LedSign::Set(x, y, random(2)); } } delay(1000); } else if ((windoutput <= 40) && (windoutput > 30 )) { for(uint8_t y = 0; y < 9; y++) { for(uint8_t x = 0; x < 14; x++) { LedSign::Set(x, y, random(2)); } } delay(750); } else if ((windoutput <= 50) && (windoutput > 40 )) { for(uint8_t y = 0; y < 9; y++) { for(uint8_t x = 0; x < 14; x++) { LedSign::Set(x, y, random(2)); } } delay(500); } else if ((windoutput <= 60) && (windoutput > 50 )) { for(uint8_t y = 0; y < 9; y++) { for(uint8_t x = 0; x < 14; x++) { LedSign::Set(x, y, random(2)); } } delay(300); } }

#physicalcomputing #LEDs #windsensor #temperature sensor #tmp36 #arduino

Serial Communication Project

In this project, Luke Stern and I attempted to create a drawing tool assistant that acted as an "eraser."

In the processing run window, you could draw lines/squiggles/doodles with the (!mousePressed) state. Then, using a golden tilt sensor's manipulation (shaking), you could effectively "erase" the drawing you made (with an "if" statement) that overwrote the drawing with alpha background values to slowly "fade" away the drawing (similar to an etch-a-sketch). Ideally, we would want to embed the tilt sensor and circuit into a Maraca-like instrument that is conducive to shaking, making noise, and acting as an instrument/eraser to the drawing on-screen.

We were successfully able to translate and output 0 or 1023 values from the tilt sensor in the arduino code (we translated 0 into "A" and 1023 into "B"). These values were coming through clearly in the serial monitor.

We then had a bit of difficulty writing the serialEvent related code which would allow the A and B values to then affect what could happen in the draw loop (to override our doodles with a rectangle drawing if-statement.

See code below:

Arduino code:

const int bluePin = A0;

int sensorVal;

int threshold = 400;

void setup()

{

Serial.begin(9600);

}

void loop()

{

sensorVal = analogRead(bluePin);

if (sensorVal < threshold) {//not shaking

Serial.println('A');

}

else {

Serial.println('B');

}

delay(50);

}

-----------------------------------------------------------------///////

Processing code:

import processing.serial.*;

boolean isShaking = true;

Serial myPort;

void setup() {

size(1000, 800);

smooth();

fill(255,255, 255);

// List all the available serial ports

println(Serial.list());

// I know that the first port in the serial list on my mac

// is always my Arduino, so I open Serial.list()[0].

// Open whatever port is the one you're using.

myPort = new Serial(this, Serial.list()[8], 9600);

// don't generate a serialEvent() unless you get a newline character:

myPort.bufferUntil('\n');

}

void draw() {

strokeWeight(random(15));

stroke(random(255), random(255), random(200), 70);

if(!mousePressed) line(pmouseX,pmouseY,mouseX,mouseY);

if (isShaking) {

fill(255,100);

noStroke();

rect(0,0,width,height);

}

void serialEvent(Serial myPort) {

// get the ASCII string:

String inString = myPort.readStringUntil('\n');

if (inString.equals("A")) isShaking = true; //Arduino says it's shaking

if (inString.equals("B")) isShaking = false;

}

Bit.fall (2006) (my five-minute artist presentation)

See video capture here: https://vimeo.com/16642092#

and interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AICq53U3dl8

Created by German installation artist Julius Popp, Bit.fall is an installation made of falling water that displays words that are parsed and aggregated from world news websites using a certain algorithm. The water falls from 320 nozzles controlled by computer software and electromagnetic valves. Each word is only legible and "word-like" for a fraction of a second, and then it distorts as the water droplets accelerate and complete their fall. The code probably involves creating "pixel-like" graphical recipes (maybe binary values?) for each word via each nozzle/valve, similar in some ways to how the rain room in the MOMA might work? Just like the news, which is fleeting and ever-changing, these words and water have a fleeting and temporary presence. If you miss reading it, you miss the event. This installation toured the world with different contexts, most recently at the Olympics in London.

Combo Lock Project

For the combination lock project, I attempted to create a locked box, where a "secret" combination of two mini potentiometers would need to be set at a certain number value (0-10) each, and the right key would then trigger the servo to rotate by 90 degrees (enough to move out of the barrier that then allowed the "door" on a cardboard box to open outward.

The project never made it into a box because I faced some errors due to soldering/committing (but it worked while it was just wired together).

Here is the code in arduino:

#include<Servo.h>

int redLED = 13;

int greenLED = 12;

Servo myservo;

void setup()

{

Serial.begin(9600);

pinMode(redLED, OUTPUT);

pinMode(greenLED, OUTPUT);

pinMode(button1, INPUT);

myservo.attach(9);

}

void loop()

{

int analog1 = analogRead(A0);

int pot1 = analog1 * (10.0 / 1023.0);

int analog2 = analogRead(A3);

int pot2 = analog2 * (10.0 / 1023.0);

if (pot1 == 5 && pot2 == 1)

{

digitalWrite(greenLED, HIGH);

digitalWrite(redLED, LOW);

myservo.write(90);

delay(15);

}

else

{

digitalWrite(greenLED, LOW);

digitalWrite(redLED, HIGH);

myservo.write(180);

delay(15);

}

Using the arduino, a blue LED, and the piezo speaker, I created a hypothetical enhancement test model to my LED powered anatomy teaching tool.

In this project, the arduino is powered by a 9V battery, and consists of a series circuit that includes the piezo and the led, and an appropriate amount of resistance for both. When the wires come into contact, the circuit is completed, and the code activates, causing a sound to occur while the LED is lit.

Video demonstrating the functionality of "The Human Body" A pre-school anatomy learning toy + book

#physicalcomputing #leds #svaixd

Object with Homemade Switch

For the Object with Homemade Switch assignment, I decided to create an anatomy learning tool for preschool children. In this tool, there are three components:

A box that has the anatomy drawing + cutout shapes of the organs with a translucent vellum paper that allows light to show through

A book with anatomy facts for each of the five organs, as well as a small "touch" panel that allows the user to light up the organ of their choice, per page.

A "stylus" pen that acts as the other end of the switch. Upon contact with the "touch" panel in the book, the corresponding organ lights up in the box.

The circuit consists of 5 parallel lines, with each line holding one resistor and one LED. The switch is located right before the circuit meets the negative side of the power source (a 9V battery).

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