The concept behind my midterm project came from a one of my sketches I worked on in ICM: a bowling ball going down the alley and hitting a pin at the end. We attempted to make a device with a educational purpose — a student response system.
In class 5, we consulted with Arlene about the idea of simulating hand gesture and the goal we wanted to achieve with the bowling sketch. She happened to mention photocell might be a good sensor to work with and play with shadows over the sensor. After multiple attempts of trying, we found it rather challenging to create and control shadows over sensor using just hand gesture. Since shadow is a key element to trigger motion on the screen, we decided to look for alternatives, and eventually found out that an educational student response system would make more sense in terms working with photocell.
The technology of this device is that, by interacting with three photocells, you will get different motions of the ball on the screen by creating shadows. First step, you hit the down arrow key to initialize the serial communication, and when your hand is touching sensor #1, the ball will go to the bottom left of the screen, when a hand is over sensor#2, the ball will go down in the middle of the screen, and when a hand is over sensor#3, the ball will go to bottom right of the screen.
The research we did and the inspiration we gathered are actually from a student response system. The way it works is as follow: as the device (we invented) will be marked with A, B and C, and each answer option is assigned to a sensor, which then trigger motions of the ball on the screen. So in reality, when a students is presented with a question and answer choices A, B, or C, when the student chooses B and move his/her hand hovers/touches the top of sensor B, the light/and sensor value of B will change accordingly, and that change will move the ball and do a strike. Hopefully that excitement of getting a strike will encourage and inspire the student to feel confident and positive, thus continue to move forward and learn.
There are a few challenges in the process though. First, what seems like an simple easy task just to make the ball move with directions we desire requires a whole lot of Processing code writing. We spent hours and hours just on writing Processing coding in order to incorporate with Arduino, and unfortunately lost sight of this is supposed to be a physical interaction focused assignment.
Second, photocell isn’t the best choice to work with small body movement related project. As photocell is light-dependent, it is particularly hard to play with light or create shadow on a breadboard with limited space. In this particular case, the ideal sensor to work with would be a pair of gloves with force sensor, or a set of push button.
Moving forward, we will know better in selecting a sensor based on conditions and how to plan ahead in details.
Good job in explaining your project background and pivot, and great real-world example. I’m also glad you gave a lot of thought to incentivization and positive/negative reinforcement– a key component to interaction design. Going forward, it of course would be important to think through the integration of the visual and physical design, as well as the implications of the sensor/switches you would use in a group of students. As you pointed out, laying out a project plan will be an essential starting point, once you have some of the more basic technical skills under your belt.
The educational field is very important and has many interesting subjects to explore, yet its a very difficult field as you are dealing with kids who (usually) are NOT interested in the subjects being taught. This requires a main focus on how to incentive this kids to study, learn and concentrate, or how through technology explain concepts in a clearer and more interesting way. I liked that you chose to invent in this particular field.