Tag: #interactivity

Posted on in Art, Design, Video Prototyping

More ideation

Prior to the ideation sessions, I started to research a bit about indoor climate. I remembered about this principle used in contemporary interior design – biophilic design and I wanted to go more in-depth in the subject. The main philosophy behind it talks about connecting the user with the natural environment as much as possible through direct or indirect means and the right spatial decisions. I didn’t quite see at this point how I could use this for our shape changing object, but I promised myself to keep it in mind. 

We did around three ideation sessions of 15 minutes, after which we each shared our ideas for the project. The following ideas were ideated during these sessions: 

  • an object similar to the Pokemon go that would open up and create a different shape, its function being used mainly in self entertainment;
  • curtains that can be controlled – light intensity wise; 
  • a bench that decreases its size in order to make people sitting on it become closer, an idea that would fit in the category of designing for social interaction; 
  • a painting that changes its initial shapes into three different parts and rotates according to your body movement; 
  • shape-changing textiles: a jacket that is lightweight, but you can control its size depending on the temperature; an object used for nature expeditions where weather can change very drastically from one moment to the other; 
  • a cube that reacts to sound, heat or light and changes its shape according to the indoor climate levels (db, temperature, light intensity); 

We agreed fully that the painting idea was one of the best from these sessions and we started to discuss about it decided to choose this for our video project. 

Third session was pretty difficult as we each had our own questions about the whole project. At times, very below the surface questions as “what is a shape changing object”, is rotation considered as a change in its shape or does an object have to completely change its initial shape in order to be considered in this category. Following these types of questions, we went more in depth regarding the actual technicalities of what our project implies. First of all, a physical object that changes its shapes, the visual part containing some artwork and finally the interactivity part where the object reacts to your relation to it. After we established that the rotation system will not count as shape changing, I have came up with the idea of one single object that bends its screen and incorporates patterns from nature. This should solve our interactive shape changing ideation quest after these multiple discussions. 

Posted on in Video Prototyping

Ideation, ideation, ideation

A few years ago, I was watching a reality show (something I never do, but this American show was pretty interesting at the time) about small entrepreneurs that came in to pitch their innovation from all kind of fields to different investors. Max Gunawan, an architect from San Fracisco, designed a very simple and minimalistic shape changing lamp. A very fine design and concept that instantly attracted investments of over 1 milion dollars from the jury. Writing about him right now and doing a fast google search, I see that the concept is a stable company and the founder was given multiple design awards. 

When we started the discussion about possible concepts for our video visualisation of an interactive, shape changing object, this design was one of the first thing coming into my mind. I filled my team mates in and we started to discuss about it. This is something that I am most of the times concerned regarding creative thinking. We are constantly informing ourselves about the latest innovations, ground breaking technologies, new systems, new ways of drawing, new ways of creating and all of this, of course it is stored in our subconscious. When we are doing creative thinking ourselves, how much are we building on other people’s ideas? Where does actual innovation exist in a society where data transparency and availability has reached very high levels? While I steel agree you need inspiration, as Picasso would highly regard the female gender and transform them in models and muses throughout his artistic work, he became an influencer because he went out of his times. He was the first one to draw a female portrait with irregular shapes and lines that never connect in times where being able to create portraits as closer to reality as possible was one of the highest regarded ability of an artist. While I often find myself tied in the cords of my own research, my wish is to find the mind space between inspiration and outside the box thinking. 

We kept building up on ideas and we were at this stage considering designing an object for controlling the right indoor climate. We are all well aware of the positive effects on the human mind implied by creating the right environment. We were considering sound and light for main functionality and we brainstormed on the different aspects that can create our interactive object. Should it be a volume changer? A light switch?