Technology + ?

Craft + technology = this

This is a good stuff.

Internet + craft = ?

Mood visualisation

Now that most of us have a mobile phone, we can update our mood from wherever and whenever.
Pachube supplies these datas as a feed so that we can share these information all around the world.

However, these data's are merely numbers (visually), or variables (if you convert it into electricity.)
It's just interesting to visualise these data because they are real-time, and come from bloody far away.

Since I've been working on people's mood, I picked up some people's mood data on Pachube, and visualised it, using processing.




The size and color of each rectangle represents the mood (bigger = better, clearer = better).
The red dot corresponds to the latitude and longitude where a person at. (the left person is from London, and the right person is from Glasgow.)

Rhinoceros

This is amazing.
This is only for browsing 3D files so far, but I can imagine in the future, we render on the touch panels, using our fingers.
It will be sort of digital sculpting... amazing.

I got the port open today

Been thinking about the interface, I'm getting a bit aware of the different way of design.
Was aiming at making more interactive, or customisable interface, but maybe it's not the right way in this case. (I don't want it to be too gadgety)

The product is a medical device, then it should be 1. Simple, 2. easily fitting to daily routine, 3. sustainable (something you want to keep for long time).


Then I looked up the Dieter Rams again. His design is simple in terms of 1. easy to find how to use, without manual, 2. not too expressive so that the product can fit in daily life.




Fitting in daily like, like melting down into the daily environment. But it doesn't mean it's invisible or not having any effect on life.
He said 'A little touch of colors is even more colorful than using too much colors'.
Maybe just a little use of colors can make a subtle but positive impact on the environment. Also, the subtle use of colors keeps product simple, which means it's not gonna be eaten away by the surge of fashion.

Since I've been thinking about using colors to bring about positive effect from the product on people, his thought may be helpful.

I also want to take professionals needs into consideration. The current 3 measures (anxiety, depression, optimism) are established measures to rate mood, so it would be better to include these 3 measures to avoid making a mess in the current service system.
That means, we likely have to includes these 3 words,(which I was trying to avoid).


Then I researched about typefaces. Then found some characters of different types.
The type has to be 1.neutral (not expressive) , 2. light, 3. good readibility. I want it to be as ordinary as almost invisible.

Then i decided to use Helvetica Neau-Light. Because Helvetica is most commonly used typeface in our world so that it's supposed to be well melted into our society. In terms of it, it's invisible but still has good readibility.

I'm very aware that the design getting kind of as boring as mundane objects, with normal shape, few colors, helvetica.
But it's the aim. I want it to look as normally as kettles, phones, or so.

Also, we've already got amazing function and cool ID. I don't need to mess around it.

Pirate radio

Now that we have the internet streaming services, we can do our pirate radio legally.
There are some softwares for setting up your own real-time internet radio station.

I chose Nicecast to do it.
Here is the URL;

http://86.14.121.13:8000/listen.m3u

You would download the podcast, and then you can listen to the sound on my laptop real-timely.

I was tasked the project in which I have to make a jukebox connected to the internet, and people can listen to the
songs playing at real-time.

But I quite like the idea of pirate radio, so it may be a set of turntable and microphone, ideally in a retro suitcase?

How to measure your mood?

Well, I've got many answers for my questionnaire about how to measure mood.
I appreciate it, really.

Since ever, I've been thinking about what is the best measurement, or units, to rate your mood.
Then stuck, so I looked back the research booklet (116 pages!!) that I got from Sidekick Studios.

There is a quote from the service users, saying

All the service users we spoke to liked the idea of a device like a mood barometer and the fact it could allow you to register ‘in-between’ moods. Its difficult to decided just one word to describe how you’re feeing.

Also,

One service user commented that when you attach a word to the way you are feeling it can compound your mood rather than help you change it.

Probably there is no only one best unit to rate mood.
We are different, we have different perceptions, and we must have our own ways to rate our moods.

Now I'm thinking that we sometimes need the products with BLANK, the room for being personal, especially when the product is for personal matter. So that people can interactive with them in their own way, which can be taken as PLAYFUL.

The difficulty here is that when we deal with very sensitive subject (such as mental disorder), we should be very careful about what kind of messages we would send to users by products. The playful object might send the message, saying we don't take your problem seriously.






Yes, it's time to go bed!!!!

Body, and Mood

Started the internship today and working on how to represent the mood by some means.
There are some basics (and might be the best way to represent mood?) that has been done.



Currently moods are represented by words, and words are merely a sign which is arbitrary.
But mood is already quite subjective, and arbitrary. That means we represent the arbitrary subject by the arbitrary mean.

I've sent a quite few questionnaire about how to measure your mood, and so far I've got some answers referring UNITS.
(and also ICE CREAMS... for some reasons, interesting indeed!!)

Originally, units come from the dimension of human body and used to be varied by persons, or regions. Then the authorities has started to standerise them.




Could we have the emotional 'metric system'?

Maybe too ambitious? or ending up using the emoticons perhaps?
As long as the units mention the physical quantities, such as length, weights. tempreture, and so on, we might be able to set up the main subject to be measured (length of music? this is also one of the answer).

However, the thing is the measure has to be simple and easy to be understood by every users. In that sense, the combination of words and numbers seem to be a logical consequence. (I know it might be a bit boring though.)

So far I'm pretty much messed up, might go for this 'ice cream' idea, which is gonna be AMAZING!!