Tag: Process

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Object: Entry 5

In this lab, 3 types of motor systems were used: DC, Servos, and Steppers. Two systems were all very similar in that they used an H-bridge to control the motor. The servo motor was simpler as it only used the built-in Arduino library

DC Motor

DC motors have a single speed and can only change direction when the polarity is reversed. In order to change the direction of the motor the H-bridge’s pins were manually coded.

Servo Motor

Servo motors can only rotate 180 degrees but have increased torque. In order to change the rotation, the output was mapped to a pressure sensor.

The coding for this is very simple as the Servo will accept a single value to change the rotation.

Stepper Motor

Stepper motors, while more complex then DC or Servo motors, they have the capability of increased torque and a full cyclic range or motion. The schematic for this was a lot more complex as every pin on the H-bridge was used

Because of Arduino’s built-in libraries and example codes, coding the stepper was very easy. I did have trouble getting it to work as the number of steps in a revolution has to be changed based on the stepper. Additionally, the RPM had to be lowered to the point that the motor will not burn out.

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Capstone: Entry 6

AAR: Case Studies

I looked into several projects that circled inthe general direction of my project. I am still missing one idea but the other three are almost fully fleshed out.

Klout

The first case study is Klout. It was an early attempt at codifying someone’s personal impact on social media with a single numeric metric. There were several issues with this. Critics of it came from both sides a the social media gamut. The proponents of social media said that codifying social media into a single number showed users the man behind the curtain and that metrics should be more holistic. They believed that users would modify their behaviors if they were shown how the direct impact of their actions in a “Hawthorne Effect”. Critics of social media worried that giving users the tools to enhance their social media presence would lead to things like the Cambridge Analytica incident in 2016. Of course, they ended up being right.

I also found it interesting to look at how, while heavily criticized for trying to gamify social media, Klout changed how social media giants track data and use data. Facebook and Instagram changed their timelines to increase attention. Facebook also started to offer data tracking to companies in exchange for their data. Other apps have also tried to capitalize on the void by appealing to “influencers” on Youtube and Instagram.

Deepfakes

My second case study is on Deepfakes and GAN. GAN, generative adversarial networks, were first proposed by Ian Goodfellow in 2014 as a new way of training neural networks, whereby a generator neural network is taught to try and convince a detector neural network it is legitimate. He made the analogy to counterfeiters and police. Deepfakes, a portmanteau of “deep learning” and “fakes”, arrived two years later as fake celebrity porn. A Reddit user by the same name had usedGANs to mask the face of celebrities onto adult actresses. This opened up the whole conversation of what lines this crossed, what it could be used for, and if we could ever trust images and videos again. Since then, interest in Deepfakes has waned outside of porn studios.

I found it interesting to look at as it is the cutting edge of creating fakes and can be used to fool all but the most trained eye. While making a porno of the founding fathers would be interesting, it is also interesting to look at how it had a sudden spike in intest and then people forgot about it as though they couldn’t be fooled.

PhoneStory

The third case study is on informing the public. I wanted to look at PhoneStory by MollieIndustria. PhoneStory tells the story of creating an iPhone with a series of dark minigames. It was quickly removed from Apple’s AppStore but has since been added to Google’s Play Store. I wanted to look at how the public can be informed about the error of their ways in non-aggreivating ways.

Subversion

For my last case study, I wanted to look at something subversive. While most of the previous case studies can be construed as subversive, it was not their explicit intent. I wanted to look at something that subverted the commercial narrative. I looked into Garbage Pail kids and the uthors previous venture, Wacky Packages. However, the pictures were often not political and solely sold for their shock and wae. I was also ooking at other rtist’s efforts to create pieces to raise convecern about McDonald’s , The Catholic Church or others. Lastly, I am looking at other commercial attempts to high jck diasters or others to subvert the narrative. in their favor.

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App Studio: Entry 5

Iteration 2: Speulate

Having recieved user testing and seeing how people responded to my first iteration, I need to reprioritize my feature list to be more goal oriented and less about the minute minutes of people’s daily phone usage.

Ideally, the app would have year’s goals, which were broken down by months, then by weeks, and, lastly, by day to day. For an MVP, all this data could be stored to a user’s calendar and not stored on a server. In a further iteration the data should be stored server side so that user’s could easily resume long term goals when they get a new phone. Also for the MVP, I think having goal break downs and some measure of time tracking at a minimum. Lastly, after each event in a user’s calendar, the app will have a notification asking them if they accomplished whatever the goal was and mark that down. I think having a subjective measure is better than having an objective measure of time as most of my user testing indicated that goal achievement was measure more as an emotional response than whether or not they spent x hours doing an event.

In a further iteration, I may use these coupled with the time tracking to create a metric of how well they have progressed towards their goal. This sort of breakdown is a very common theme in goal setting books. The app should start up and load goals as well as checked off goals. It will then check if there are any markers for this week related to each goal and warn users if they are not progressing toward a goal.

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App Studio: Entry 4

Adapt Phase

For the adapt phase, I needed to figure out what worked with my prototype and what didn’t work.

Tools

For the prototyping, I used AdobeXD, which I found very intuitive and useful for making prototypes. I was also able to use Google’s material design icons for my app which made the look of the prototype feel very consistent.

Originally, I had planned on using React Native so that my app would work on both platforms but after some investigation, I found that there was no way to inform users how they spent time on their phone and that even the workarounds to inform users when they used their phone were frowned upon. So I switched to Android Studio.

Android Studio is fairly robust but it is also very extensive and time consuming to research as each API changes things and so testing each step of creation is tedious. However, calendars are a a ubiquitous feature and I was able to find numerous tutorials about everything I needed to know.

For my user testing, I used the AdobeXD app which worked very well to demonstrate to users. I also took a small survey which I explain below.

User Feedback

After doing some user testing, user’s said that seeing how they had done was not as important to them as goal setting. My first older user’s – read: parents – said that they did goal setting and then incrementally worked backwards. So 20-year goals, 10, 5, 1, 6 months, 1 month, this week, and then today. Each goal was then adjusted every increment for smaller goals and more often for larger goals. For example, daily goals were set daily, as were weekly set weekly, monthly set monthly, and yearly set yearly.

This approach looked like a development of the younger user’s goal setting which was done mostly weekly or as needed. Younger users indicated that they only planned a few weeks in advance and were more focused on fitting everything into their calendar rather than having for reaching 5 or 10-year goals.

Additionally, all users said that they rarely used time tracking apps and that they were focused more on planning for the future rather than seeing how they used their time. I think that this is because they had no reason to see how they had used their time. I think if the app gave more reasons to track time usage people would use it more. For example, if the app suggested events such as eating lunch/breakfast/dinner etc. at common times that the user was free or suggested increasing/decreasing time spent on certain apps people would use it more.

Goal setting is not currently what the app is intended to do but it could be a future improvement. I may also pivot to incorporate grand goal planning into setting events, admonishing users, and controlling the grand view for how the app works. This would make it so that each action was attributed toward or against long term goals in areas such as financial, career, familial, and others. Each action could then be marked as a positive or negative on a given goal.

Lastly, users gave some feedback on making the prototype’s UI better but these were minor fixes such as increasing the number of days visible on the calendar view and have the graphs be more legible.

Going Forward

Going forward, I will continue to build out the app as a goal setting and tracking app as this angle was more requested by users. Simply having the data was not enough for users. Instead, applying that information to push toward larger goals will help my app help users.

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Object: Entry 3

Analog I/O

Part 1

The first part of this lab was to create a simple analog input with varying output. For mine, I used a pressure sensor, a potentiometer, and NeoPixels to create a rudimentary strong man device. The number of lights corresponded to the pressure and the color was changed by rotating the potentiometer.

Schematics of part 1

I adopted the WheelPosition function from the AdaFruit strandtest.ino in order to convert the scalar potentiometer readings to cyclic color values. The one issue with this code is that as it updates every half second some pixels were given colors and then not reassigned to blank after the pressure was removed causing the colors to appear off at times.

Part 1 finished
Potentiometer readings in serial monitor
Video demonstration

Part 2

In the second part, we used an analog input to control the tone of a speaker. I found the random buzzing that was created to be annoying so I changed it to notes.

Schematics for part 2

The note values were taken from Wikipedia.

Part 2 testing

For this project, I made a box from plywood. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate my jigsaw and had to use a circular saw (which was too large for such a small project) and a dremel (which was too small). I made most of the pieces larger than needed and then sanded down to size.

Finished box
Video Demonstration

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Capstone: Entry 5

50 + 50 Ideas

Ideas from Class:

  • RSS Feed of Deaths
  • Map showing estimated deaths in real time
  • Interactive art piece showing an individual’s impact of consumer usage with pics of dead children
  • Measuring app using dead children as a measurement for products
  • Narrative of phone creation
  • Surrealist look at consumer usage – substituting people with cats or something
  • AR for statues, war memorialsgiving wiki pages and kill counts
  • Generative art showing trade routes of products
  • Generative art showing the digital impact
  • Music device with triggers on social media impact – likes, retweets etc.
  • Music triggers for war tolls
  • More accurate war memorials
  • AR showing massacre locations
  • Crime feed in social media look
  • App alerting users to places where crimes took place
  • AR HUD
  • AR HUD making us all look like sims
  • AR HUD showing social media data of people
  • Brain mapping cognitive biases
  • Art project showing company slogans and public images with enviromental impact attached
  • Recreation of ads showing death toll
  • AR showing everyone’s indirect kill count
  • Social media posts whenever someone contributes to killing the enviroment
  • Social media posts whenever someone contributes to slavery
  • AR showing products that are indirectly supporting slavery
  • Masks made of corporate items
  • Chains made from nestle procuts to show their support of slavery
  • AR surrealism app mimicing LSD
  • phamtom rings on phones to gaslight user
  • Non-art installation of a room/the installation room
  • AR showing people’s clothing impact
  • HUD with clothing prices with Amazon tie in
  • Chrome extension to show products kill count on Amazon etc.
  • Generative terrian game
  • RPG fighting corporate villians
  • Get companies to support a non-existent video project – with a video project at the end showing the company’s enviromental impact.
  • Impossible monopoly-esque game about corporate take over the app
  • Phone ad blocker
  • Generative hat maker
  • Generative Clothing maker
  • Generative art in the style of HR Giger
  • Platforming where the terrian is based on tweets – the player has to tweet enough and get enugh replies to continue getting land to run to
  • Platformer where the in game currency is created by social media clout
  • Likelihood someone could commit a crime and get away with it based on social media clout
  • Death Metal bluetooth hi jacking somehow replace localized notification sounds with death metal
  • Gernerative tweets based on someone’s social media that people might tweet after their death
  • Obituary creator from people’s social media
  • Calculator for meauring someone’s authenticity
  • calculator for the originality of ideas
  • Rap generator

Ideas from 2nd round

I found the task interesting and that most of my ideas became centered around a few central themes. Most of my ideas were then variants on these themes. I wanted to work with social media and people’s digital footprints, I wanted to have some sort of generative process either with machine learning or algorithmic, and I wanted to shame people for being consumers. I found that since most of my ideas were variations on similar themes, it was hard to create 100 distinct ideas.

I thought most of the feed back I was got was good. People seemed to like the HR Giger headphones more than I anticipated. I was also surprised that some of the feedback on the two subversive ideas were positive and that the person might actually use it. It surprised me as the rest of the feedback on it was positive that it would be good commentary and an nice art piece or that it was terrible.

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App Studio: Entry 3

Explore phase

Unfortunately, I was more ambitious than I should have been. While React Native is a great library and fairly easy to use even with all the modules, there were almost no libraries for accessing data usage as it is an exclusively Android functionality. Even then, data collection on such a scale is frowned upon even if it is just displayed to the user.

Since that is the case, I have switched to using the native Android Studio. In React Native, I would have to write all the code in Java and then wrap it in React in order to access all the phone data I would need. I did complete the prototype and had some user testing though few people seemed to be as anal about tracking their habits as I was.

The final product is mostly a proof of concept that I can integrate all the pieces together. The polishing will come later.

The calendar was requested from the phone calendar. This should be changed in a production version of the app to a login with server storage of all user data to allow for cross platform tracking.

Lastly, the main point of the app to track user’s data had to be shelved for now while the groundwork of a calendar and event interfacing was laid.

Link to Prototype: https://xd.adobe.com/view/66c86bdc-7dcf-45b8-4537-d6541264266a-10f9/

Link to Github: https://github.com/akierson/manageTimeBetter

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Capstone: Entry 4

50 + 50 Ideas

We brainstormed for an hour to produce 05 ideas. Afterwards we brinstormed again for 50 more ideas. MOst of of my ideas had similar themes, including, the usage of personal data, subversion, and our dark Lord Satan.

5 Ideas

These are my five best ideas:

HR Giger Headphones

I have always liked HR Giger and while I have mae a few pieces based on his owrk I have not created any technical creations. I think headphones would be a great way to display this style because of Giger’s frequent use of mechanical elements.

Sculpture by Giger
Sketches of possible head phones

Authenticity App

Have you ever wanted to appear like a unique authentic individual without having to actually put in the work to have discerning tastes? Introducing the Authencity App which will give suggestions based on your location and social demographic. This app will suggest clothing, songs, and photos that are becoming popular but not in your location so you can appear cutting edge and like a cool kid.

This app is more of a subversive idea based on two of my good friends, one who gives all the appearance of having discerning and unique tastes while actually just knowing a guy in a large metropolitan area who keeps him in the know. The other likes to give the appearance of having really unique tastes, abhoring anything commercial and, despite mostly shopping at H&M, won’t be caught dead in a foreign country with one of their bags. I think it would be an interesting look into how being an authentic and unique person has become a pursuit in and of itself instead of the interesting things and events being the pursuit.

Music Remixer

I have always wanted to be able to play an instrument and be good at making music but I have no rhythm. Music, however, can be made using fairly set rules. In this project, I would create an application that could take in a sounds clip, song, or YouTube video and spit out a song in the style of remix music such as dubstep, techno, and house music.

While the music may not sound good at first, with some discerning humans judging it, I think with several iterations the machine could learn to produce modernly okay YouTube poops.

App for Crime Awareness

this project was inspired by a project that someone had done in my design foundations course. The idea is to use the police feed in a given area to put markers where crimes have happened. Whne user’s are then inthe vicinity of where the crime happened, it would alert the user.

This would be part activism, part informative as it could be generalized to all crimes or specifically, hate crimes, sexual crimes, etc.

Post Optimizer

Back in my formative years, my friends and I ran bots on Instagram and Twitter to gain followers from people who would #f4f. This project would take the gamification of social media to a new level by giving optimizations to comments, posts, and hashtag usage.

I liked this one because it’s awful and I hate it, but the challenge of it could make it worth it.

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Capstone: Entry 3

Why?

Being a cynic, I found it hard to watch Simon Sinek’s talk and take the selling seriously. I have a hard time believing that people actually make products with deeper intent. Between my father having me read business books that extolled the virtues and “bending the truth” to customers and the increasing shift toward corporate virtue signaling, I have become jaded from this selling of ideas and identities instead of people making informed decisions about the actual reality of products.

Corporations, am I right?

What is my why? Why do I get out of bed in the morning? Why do I go to my classes? Why am I even in college? Why do I make things?

My “why” is a draw to pull things apart and look at them in a Sartrean light that shows them for what they are outside of some contrived context. Sometimes this comes across as callous, sacrilegious, or perverse, but that’s all subjective.

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Capstone: Entry 2

Updated Research Questions

While my previous research questions were great, their scope was a bit too large and not focused enough. My research questions should have tangible outcomes.

I was thinking of creating a machine that triggers every time an obituary is posted. This is not a research question so much as the answer to one. The research question should be more like: How can interactive art help people come to terms with their own mortality?

The other questions about consumerism could be more focused to be: How can apps and personal technology be used to better inform us about our consumer choices?

Lastly, the bit on being edgy should be left out. It was a dig at the wholesomeness entrenched in Boulder. However, the idea behind creating perversions of common concepts, technologies, and cultural landmarks still does appeal to me. A question about this could be, generally: How can interactive art be used to how the Sartrean absurdism in life? Though too general this question could be refined to point out some facet of the world I live in. One where people will ask for donations to Greenpeace while wearing clothes made in sweat shops, showing some strange idea that the animals in those far off countries are worth more than the people there.

Research Questions

  • How can apps and personal technology be used to better inform us about our consumer choices?
  • Could interactive art help people understand their own internal cognitive dissonance and biases?
  • How can interactive art help people come to terms with their own mortality?