Brief: construct a prototype that exemplifies an approach to Embodied Interaction based on experimental interaction design techniques and digital sketching and relevant theoretical or critical grounding.
Malmö University | Master in Interaction Design | Embodied Interaction course
Individual / group work: group work. The project was a collaboration between Lina Alvis, Dorien Koelemeijer, Rodrigo Jimenez, Franziska Tachtler and Danai Tsouni
Date and duration: 1 month, November 2014
Goals of the project: the creation of an appropriate environment that provides people’s fear stories, following embodied interaction’s approaches.
My role / skills: research, ideation, concept development, cultural probes, bodystorming.
Further action: presented in 11th Student Interaction Design Research conference, Kolding, Denmark, 27 - 28 March, 2014
FEAR DIVISION: AN INSTALLATION ABOUT ARCHIVING THE INTANGIBLE
Fear Division is an interactive installation about how people experience the feeling of fear. Research on how the human brain works in order to retrieve memories, how stimuli affect people and what kind of neural connections are made when a fear memory is reproduced are taken into consideration for the context of the interaction design experience.
Following embodied interaction’s approaches, an appropriate environment that provides peoples’ real stories about fear has been created.
Cultural Probes were used to explore emotional settings focusing on fear, to develop a design dialogue with participants and to observe what people are afraid of.
The cultural probe package, named “Fear Diary”, included a notebook, a pencil and a voice recorder. Users could find specific tasks in relation to fear inside the notebook.
The users expressed either personal fear memories that they have experienced in the past, or general settings they were afraid of. This led to a rising empathy for the users, increasing the responsibility from the designers’ side.
Inside the cube, the interactive component is a set of plastic tubes with different lengths and lights, hanging from the ceiling. By touching a tube, a sound is being reproduced and specific tubes are lighted. There are three different type of sounds:
1. Parts of the recorded fear stories of the cultural probes (longer and red-lighted tubes)
2. Natural sounds that trigger fear related to the stories (shorter and blue-lighted tubes)
3. Abstract sounds that trigger fear related to the stories (shorter and green-lighted tubes)
Technology and implementation:
Two Arduino Mega have been used. The Arduino is responsible for detecting the touch, when a tube is touched. This is achieved through conductivity. Part of the plastic tubes (PVC) had been covered with aluminium, due to its conductive characteristic.
Programming language Processing is responsible for reproducing the audio files.
