Remake App Ideas

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Call for Interaction Concept

Having different sources to a place where creatives channel their creative blockage and funnel their frustration through a playful way of tentative sustainable ideas has come to: three types of interactions and a pre-screen that sets the turning-point towards fun. 

The first screen is a feed of memes about creative block. A good way of setting perspective is through tragic comedy

Ideation Elements to Remix

Images are separated in three categories. The first is an unclaimed or abandoned object, the second is a highly sustainable material and the third a remake design. Whenever shuffling a new remix, the idea is to also create phrases. This phrase should include terms like as upcycle, reconfigure, renewable, inclusive, composting, durable and modular.

 

Interaction 1: Spinning

Interaction 2: Flipping

Interaction 3: Tapping

Unclaimed, Lost and Abandoned meet "Chaceros"

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Last class as we explored the False Mythification methodology, the idea of an anthropomorphic figure who wanders through remixed ideas emerged as a tentative pathway for exploration beyond coding. A juggler of platonic solids embodying possible ideas from remixed unclaimed/abandoned/lost objects, blending them into reconfiguration. Through the informal streets of Bogota he mingles with the "amigos" AKA "chaceros". 

From Portraits by Robby Cavanaugh

From Portraits by Robby Cavanaugh

The idea behind unclaimed items in transit spaces such as airports have a curious reclaiming history. These are either resold by state-run surplus centers or at online auction sites.Places like www.govdeals.com www.unclaimedbaggage.com or www.greasbys.co.uk auction these. 

The other component of this exercise (chacero), are a local/colombian figure that after a bit of online research replicates across other countries, whose economy hasn't entirely formalized. "Chacero" is the slang for street vendors in Colombia. These are wonderful examples of remixed and repurposed stuff through history.



Sustainable Ideation

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Concept

With the initial ideation tool concept and prototype, the idea is to explore ways of aligning it to sustainability. This is the reason its gonna be submitted to Cradle to Cradle Product Design Challenge. Even though it might be slightly off track, since its a digital product, the tool can be assessed to the challenge's description and requirements:

Central to Cradle to Cradle® as a design framework is to eliminate the concept of waste — recognizing that all materials are valuable and finite and when designed appropriately can be used in infinite cycles.  Effectively implementing this design principle can have a significant impact on the environment and the economy.  

The goal of this design challenge is to eliminate the concept of "waste" by designing products with materials that may be perpetually cycled to retain their value as nutrients to fuel growing global economies.

Submission Requirements

Download a pdf of the submission requirements or follow the instructions on this page. All submissions must be in English. All written material should be packaged as a single PDF document not to exceed five pages.

Submission Format

Submissions should be formatted following the outline below using the identical numbers and headings.  Please read the Official Rules prior to submission.

References:

Cradle2Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

 

Ideation Tool – Redesign & Interactive Prototype

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Ideation Tool from Cooper Hewitt Museum API
Ideation Tool from Cooper Hewitt Museum API

Previous Iteration

 

Call for Interaction

Having in mind Mobile Devices peripherals, I set onto creating a more playful interaction. An interaction from the intersection between common gestures in the real world and Mobile Phone's accelerometer.

I've borrowed two playful gestures from daily observations the reflexive spinning and the swift juggling. Two gestures that could be technically feasible and experientially engaging.

UI Redesign

I've decided to simplify the interface towards the new experience. The accelerometer remixes the images, and a tap shows the prompt from a generated text. This text is a computational mix from the description of the objects shown on screen. This way, people can be inspired visually and textually.

Interactive Prototype

The interactive prototype was made in Javascript using Cooper Hewitt Museum's API, a RiTa a toolkit for computational literature and the p5js library. This is where the Interactive Prototype can be experienced.

Through Javascript, I'm retrieving all the data from the Cooper Hewitt Museum including images and text from their online exhibition data base. I clean the information and select a topic, in this case, all objects in the museum related to 3D Printing. 

Gestures

Turns out the spinning gesture is one of the blind spots in Phone Accelerometers. This is why, the prototype will only respond to juggling-type gestures. 

Text Prompt

By retrieving the descriptions from the 3 objects shown in the screen, I create one phrase by remixing the tokens through a set of computational procedures. Every time the images shown change the tokens by which the phrases are created change. 

Even though the prompted phrases have grammatical errors, embracing the computational glitchiness aligns with the overall playful and mind diverting concept of overcoming a creative block.

M-Code Box

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Concept

How can a fabricated object have an interactive life? The M-Code Box is a manifestation of words translated into a tangible morse code percussion. You can find the code here and what's needed to create one M-Code Box is an Arduino UNO, a Solenoid Motor (external power source, simple circuit) and a laptop with Processing.

Next Steps

There are two paths to take this project further. One is to have an interpreter component, recording its sounds and re-encoding them into words, like conversation triggers. The second is to start thinking on musical compositions by multiplying and varying this box in materials and dimensions.

 

 

Previous Iterations

This project came upon assembling two previous projects, the Box Fab exploration of live hinges and the Morse Code Translator that translates typed text into physical pulses.

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IMG_20150210_181948220_HDR.jpg
Box Fab
Circuit Prototype
Morse Code Translator

Lamp Shade

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Concept

Inspired by Hieronymus Bosch's suculent imagery, I decided to make a lamp. This is a continuation from one of the happy accidents from the live-hinges box. An exploration to push further the notion of wood bending. The result was an interesting exercise in terms of light composition, but not entirely satisfactory in terms of plastic art terms. This is how the result looked

Insights

A key fact to consider for future creations involving various bended pieces that will ultimately assemble one shape, is to bend them all together instead of separately. Another insight around this exploration was the progressive ability to successfully bend 1/4 inch plywood. There were two live hinges patterns involved in this lamp shade. The lower pieces were created through a more flexible pattern, while the upper pieces hadn't a lot of flexibility. Both were bended with hot water but the latter involved a DIY circular press that helped create a memory in the wood fibers. Here's a lineal documentation of the entire fabrication process

These were the live-hinges involved in the lamp shade design, upper and lower correspondingly.

Kinetic Energy Challenge

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Concept Development

Along Oryan Inbar, we decided to address the kinetic energy challenge by powering the LED through a trainer bicycle setup. After repurposing the stepper motor from a bill-printer we began exploring different circuit  possibilities around capacitive, resistor and charging settings. In the end our circuit is composed by the two rectified-coils from the stepper connected in series, a two way switch that allows to charge the capacitors first and light the LED after, three 1F Capacitors, one 330 Ohm resistor and a counter LED (which we believe is lit by 1.7 Volts)

Insights

It was surprising to see the Short Circuit Voltage whenever plugging the LED, from around 29V to 2.2V. We also decided to add up the two coils to two Bridge Rectifiers that would power the circuit in series. This and the overall capacitance pointed that we needed to first charge the capacitors before connecting the LED. This is the reason behind the two way switch. After sorting the general circuitry, we decided to use the strongest muscles as the source of power along with an already solved solution as the mechanism –a bicycle–. 

Conclusions

We created a bicycle trainer to interface the bicycle to the stepper motor. This latter one we re-use it from a bill-printer taken from the shop's junk shelf. The overall kinetic energy  inputed into the stepper motor can be identified from the gear configuration. We re-use the embedded gear system from the printer and realized that the driver has a 11:1 ratio in relation to the driven motor gear. At the same time, this gear system, specifically its driver was connected to the back wheel from the bike, having more less a 1:35 ratio.

Box Fab

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Concept

We decided to work with live-hinges for our first project. We started off by concept proving through black foam.

Tests

After some tests, we chose the "parametric kerf #6" pattern given to its generous flexibility. For our overall box concept we combined the live-hinge method with a for dice semi-cubed volume. The next step we took, was to start cutting the two apparently replicated pieces.

Insight

However, our estimates for covering the half circles was inaccurate, avoiding the planes to fully assemble one-another.

Fabrication

For our second iteration, we follow Eric's advice and jump to prototype with our final material, wood. This we planned and did a little calculations to make sure the sides height would match to the half circle perimeters. We also planned for 45º edges, so we created 5mm inner reference raster-edges to sand after cutting. Since the material is 5mm thick, we realize that for 45º edges we needed a "square" reference to more less know our limit when sanding off the residue.

On our second laser cutting attempt, we came around with some technical unexpected obstacles. Besides overestimating the setup a bit high, the machine also cut offset (unknown reason still). Last but not least, the 60W laser cutter settings are different from the 50W when it comes to edging/rastering with black. This third setback was in fact a happy accident that allow us to realize we could simplify the entire process by scaling one of the sides by the thickness of the material. Our third cut run quite smoothly.

Error Correction and Experimentation

We even explore ways of conveniently bending wood with warm water and overnight drying. The result wasn't perfect, but we now know how to make a perfect matching wood bending from what we learnt with this first experiment. In the end, our thought magnetized-closing lid wasn't necessary. This is our final prototype, along with our inspirational dice. 

Result

Panic App

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By the end of 2014, crime rate -deaths- in Bogota, Colombia decreased. Mugs however remained, and to tackle the common smartphones theft, in Pinedot Studios we attempted to solve it. We created this concept app and pitched it to INTEL Colombia.

Wireframe

Mockup

Generative Soundscape Diagram, Time Table & BOM

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System Diagram

This is the basic behavior of the system, where sound is the medium of communication. The Trigger is the element that initiates the chain reaction. It will translate the rolling motion into the sound that will trigger the modules laying in the ground. This event will start the chained reaction.

Time Table

This is our initial Time Table and we've divided the overall project's development in two main blocks, the trigger element –stands for [T] in the timeline– and the module –stands for [M]–. Follow this link for a detailed description on each of the activities involved in our Time Table.

Bill of Materials

 

This Bill of Materials is thought for an initial prototype of one Trigger and two Modules. There's still a lot to figure out, but so far this is how it looks. You can follow this link for future references.

Morse Code Translator

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Inspired by the "Hi Juno" project, I sought an easier way to use Morse Code. This is why I've created the Morse Code Translator, a program that translates your text input into "morsed" physical pulses. One idea to explore further could be thinking how would words express physically perceivable (sound, light, taste?, color?, Tº)

So far I've successfully made the serial communication and the Arduino's functionality. In other words, the idea works up to Arduino's embedded LED (pin 13). This is how a HI looks being translated into light.

Followup, making the solenoid work through morse coded pulses. You can find the Processing and Arduino code in this Github Repo.

Rippled Installation Concept Development

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Installation–Piece that has 2 behaviours

    Step and Modular ripple effect

1. Autonomous

2. Interactive

—Map physical phenomena in space that draws the work (installation/piece) out of its equilibrium

—Visibilize an invisible disturbance

 

Form – Codex Seraphinianus: modular

Mechanisms

Oval Regulated System

Oval Regulated System

Hexagonal Wave by Bees & Bombs (Tumblr)

Hexagonal Wave by Bees & Bombs (Tumblr)

Idea 

Ripple hexagonal module that reacts to an invisible phenomena

Paper Prototype

 

Systema Solar Live Act

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Brief

We were commissioned an Interactive Live Show by the Colombian band Systema Solar. With a team of 3 Creative Technologists we developed different real time visual effects. I was in charge for coding the puppetry controls, the audio-reactive silhouette patches and figuring out best UX practices. We created a VJ deck, from the physical rack to the digital patches.

Overview

To better understand the puppetry possibilities with Kinect, we figure out how Animata worked. After having a first glimpse, I began this patch from scratch in the live software VVVV. Even though I had no previous experience with Kinect or VVVV, this project was evidence of perseverant work, squeezed wit and sought fortune. By the end, there were 3 crafted puppets of Systema Solar's crew (Johnpri –lead singer–, Walter –lead performer & singer– and Corpas –dj/scratcher–)

The VJ Deck

The rack is composed of 1 Kinect, 3 GoPro Cameras, 7 signal converters, 1 MIDI Pad, 1 Mac Mini, 1 Four-Channel Mixer. These 4 signals are the input for the VJ's laptop.

Rehersal

Video Documentation

Flux iPad App

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Concept Development

Flux is a mobile application for tablets that introduces college students to System Dynamics. Its Design Objective involves a new visual representation to improve the user experience in System Dynamic softwares. I was the Visual and Interaction Designer behind its creation. The second iteration at the right was created with a micro-organism metaphor in mind.

For this project I worked closely with a PhD in Applied Sciences directing and implementing the mathematical models behind it, and a junior iOS Programmer.

Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory sprung from Biology, thus a micro-organism metaphor for the final design seems convenient and captivating. Elements within the aqueous environment resemble organic-like shapes. Both features, the animated elements and organic forms contribute to Flux's aim to bridge users’ mindset onto a unified perceivable and predictable interface.

Iteration 1

Ripple effect concept were elements' behaviors interfere like waves disturbing water. 

Iteration 2

Micro-organism concept were elements have a biological look and the interface borrows visual queues from a petri-dish 

Brand Identity

In System Dynamics the concept of cycle is essential. This is why the logo's starting point is a cycle. Afterwards, a double cycle resembling the infinity symbol was used for the name's starting point.

Logo

 

Splash-screen