Designing Narrative Experiences: Week 3

Pre-Reading:

‘Cultural Probes and the Value of Uncertainty’: Cultural Probes are collections of playful, open-ended tasks or artifacts designed to provoke inspirational responses from people, rather than generate precise or comprehensive data or solve a problem. This emphasises the importance of playfulness in the design process. Cultural probes encourage a design approach that is more about discovery, empathy, and subjective interpretation than solving practical problems. Some of the key takeaways are embracing uncertainty, subjective interpretation and play as a design tool.

Extracts from ‘Lupton and Lipps’ (2018):

Notes:

Examples of Multi-Sensory Design:

Light Theremin by Kevin Powell Studio: There are two potentiometers that vary the pitch and the oscillation speed of the LED in the finger. That LED is used to get the theremin “wobbly” effect through the light dependent resistor on the bot’s temple. The 3.5mm jack in the mouth is the output. There’s another 3.5mm jack on the back of the head for easily removing the hand connection.

‘In Real Life’ by Olafur Eliasson’s at Tate Modern:

‘Bouquet’ by Niklas Roy: a synaesthetic olfactory device which allows the user to perceive color through fragrances

3D Printed Interactive Wearable Designs by Anouk Wipprecht:

Intro to Sensor Kits: These are made up of several modules, each module being able to either input or output different types of data, therefore being able to support different interactive installations and experiences.

The Modules:

Arduino Sensor Kit:

Analog Inputs:

Button controlling LED:

Potentiometer Upload the code and see a live variable change in real-time as you turn the knob.

Light Sensor: Stream data from the photoresistor (a sensor that measures the amount of light ) into the Arduino software. As you cover it with your hand and then remove it the value change depending on how much light is being received.

Ultrasonic Distance Sensor (HC-SR04): This means you need to record an analog input of the distance between two objects, measures proximity.