#everyday interaction

[not-mary-sue]

Life is so beautifully but simply weird sometimes. I was walking home from work, tired and quite stressed out, when a teenaged boy came beside me on a bike. I thought "great, here's trouble"

Boy: Want to see me do a wheelie?

Me: What?

Boy: Want to see me pull a wheelie?

Me: Sure.

And off he goes, speeding off on one wheel yelling with excitement, with his friend chasing behind on foot. I was so taken off guard by the interaction that I couldn't be grumpy anymore.

[mfadt-is-s15]

Assignment 4: Everyday Interaction

Name: Tiffany Kao

Daily Interaction: Telling a story

Projects:

Take a Seat, Make a Friend? by SoulPancake

JetBlue Story booth by Mesh Architecture

Subway Stories by Alon Chitayat & Jeff Ong.

We are telling stories every day. Whenever we are talking to someone or posting things online, we are constantly telling stories about ourselves or someone else. Stories are tools of power: they shape how other see you and they persuade. A story can be short like a tweet, or long like a book or movie. 

"Take a seat, Make a Friend" is a project by SoulPancake. “Take a Seat, Make a Friend” involves turning a large wooden crate into a ball pit with questions written on each of the balls. A sign is posted over the pit saying “Take a Seat & Make a Friend" and random people walking past are invited to sit down with one another and discuss life's big questions. Two strangers climb in and talk about life questions, some funny, some serious. What starts out as why may seem like a weird social experiment turns into the sharing of life stories, laughter, hugs, and even a secret handshake or two.

“Subway Stories” is an interactive subway simulator exploring the inner-lives of commuters in New York City. Through an interactive storytelling environment, “Subway Stories” invites users to reconsider the seemingly ordinary and daily experience of commuting to create an intimate experience between the user and the subway, but more importantly between passengers - bridging the gap between the isolating experience of public spaces with the power of stories.  Using two handles, a user controls the position of the adjacent car from which the camera looks into the subway on screen. Passengers have accompanying thoughts and sounds that play when the camera is focused on them. 

“JetBlue Story Booth” was a main component of the “Sincerely, JetBlue” campaign in 2006. JetBlue understood that the best way for their company to get people who had not tried the airline to try was to have them hear positive stories from people they knew and trusted. It invites visitors to enter the booth to record video testimony of their experiences flying JetBlue. The best stories are used in TV commercials and on the Web. The booth incorporates a full LED video display, LED-backlit composite graphic panel sides, and a full interactive, chromakey video recording system.

All these projects use the potential of storytelling as a platform to shape users’ interactive experiences. “Take a Seat, Make a Friend” uses prompts in the ballpit to encourage two participants sharing their own stories. Each dual then developed their own dynamic relationships. “Subway Stories” is a single-person experience and it focuses on delivering their versions of subway stories to the user. “JetBlue Story Booth” utilizes the power of storytelling as a tool to not only engage with their current customers but also persuade their future clients. Telling stories is one of the most effective ways to close the gap of how people perceive you and how you see yourself. All these installations incorporate storytelling as their main objective and utilize this interactive experience to help the user craft another story that can be told to their friends. 

[designandusability]

This was the first time that I saw a flush in this shape. Although it was new to me, I had no problem figuring out how to use it. All I needed to do was to turn it clockwise. The affordability of the button is clear. You know where you should grab it and how you should turn it. In my opinion that's the sign for a good design.

[designandusability]

Lemon Squeezer

A nifty accessory for squeezing lemon in tea. It fits a small enough piece of lemon and squeezes all the juice out of it. I like it because its design is intuitive and you can clearly see its affordability. I also like that I don't get lemon juice on my hands :)

[designandusability]

Have you ever tried calling abroad via Skype on your smart phone? I did today and to my surprise it was not that straightforward. Usually when you are calling abroad you dial two zeroes before the country code, right? It’s not possible to do so on Skype on smart phone though. If you enter the code of the country, Skype recognizes the country but is not able to dial your number.

What you have to do is to enter a plus sign instead of a double zero. My question is, why? Why can’t I just do what I’m used to do? Why do I have to push and hold the zero button to enter a plus sign when I can easily just dial a zero?

[designandusability]

Which one do you think is selected? All or Missed? It’s really confusing because the Edit and All buttons look the same but All is the one which has been tapped on not Edit. The selected one should be the one which looks different to give users feedback on their action. In the picture on the right you can see that they designed it right and made the List button (which is tapped) look different from the other two buttons. 

[designandusability]

I borrowed this voice recorder to record an interview. During the interview I could see it was recording (because of the blinking lights) but when the interview was over I was not sure what to do. Should I push the button in the middle (Play/Power)? Should I push the Delete/Stop button? Will that stop the recording or will it remove all I have? Why did they put Stop and Delete functions on the same button? 

[designandusability]

Have you seen these trash bins? They show you where to put what. Nice, clean and environmental friendly, eh? There is only one problem. Nothing shows you how small or big your plastic cup should be to fit in the circles on the trash bin. So the result is what you see in the picture on the left. Big cups don’t make it through the holes which results in making a mess around the trash bin. Writing instructions on a trash bin doesn’t work (as shown in the picture on the right). Who reads the instructions on a trash bin before throwing their cup away?