Relay board schematic to control a common light bulb (or anything attached to a 230V socket) with an arduino.
Author: jonas
Javascript Patterns
For coding my gesture recognition and setting up a user flow, I decided to dive deeper into the universe of javascript to improve my general understanding for the programming language and use proven programming patterns in my code to keep it clean, slick and maintainable.
Mini Interaction Flow
A first quick interaction flow where a user is taught how to say OK and how to cancel a dialogue with an object. Find the whole user flow here.
Interaction System: 1-2
1-2 Managing and Entertaining
The output of a self-regulating system becomes input for a learning system. If the output of the learning system also becomes input for the selfregulating system, two cases arise. The first case is managing automatic systems, for example, a person setting the heading of an autopilot—or the speed of a steam engine. The second variation is a computer running an application, which seeks to maintain a relationship with its user. Often the application’s goal is to keep users engaged, for example, increasing difficulty as player skill increases or introducing surprises as activity falls, provoking renewed activity. This type of interaction is entertaining—maintaining the engagement of a learning system. If 1-2 or 2-1 is open loop, the interaction may be seen as essentially the same as the open-loop case of 0-2, which may be reduced to 0-0.
Source: Dubberly Hugh, Pangaro, Haque. «What is Interaction?
Are There Different Types?». 2009. ACM 1072-5220/09/0100
Prototype Sketch: Radio Object
First sketch of the smart radio as controllable object via gestures. The object should remind of a radio to indicate the functions but the controls happen via gestures. The dialogue how a user get’s to know the different interaction inputs is a key feature in the development of this object prototype.
Testing a dialogue between object and user
Video Documentation: Object – Wizard of Oz from Jones Merc on Vimeo.
A nonfunctional prototype (object) in a «Wizard of Oz»-test-setup. A nearby computer allows to write the text which is subsequently displayed on the object’s screen. Without having to program a smart object with a fully functioning gesture recognition one is able to test different scenarios like this dialogue between user and object. Focus of the dialogue is how to slowly establish a gesture language without presenting it in the first place to the user but rather developing it in a dialogue between the two.
Object Dialogue
The object above is a prototype for a smart computer, that is enabled to regulate things for the user. The user can interact with it via gestures and for simplicity the object has a display to «speak».
This object allows to test different scenarios with the «Wizard of Oz Method». The object just displays text which I am writing at a nearby computer. I can thereby present the object to a possible user and let him interact with it, controlling the objects feedback by myself.