Week 26 Log

Week beginning 02/04/2012

This project involved ‘noticing the unnoticed’ and expanded the development of a way to make ‘hidden’ memories visible to other people. Through ideation work throughout this project, the presence of others has been developed as the ‘memories’ that are being conveyed.

In the past week, methodology research has been conducted. ‘Designing Interactions’ by Bill Moggridge, and ‘NONOBJECT’ by Lukic, Katz and Moggridge were read for this purpose. Particular focus was placed upon the way in which rapid prototyping was used as a development technique as well as an approach to design that ‘begins neither with the product nor with the person using it but the space in-between’. Durrell Bishops interview in ‘designing interactions’ explored the ways in which physical objects can be augmented to hold additional information, and in a way the paired status system are essentially props which have been augmented to contain additional information. The system has a parallel with augmented reality which was not previously recognised. Similar systems will be investigated along these lines.

There was also some pilot using testing with a functional version of the prototype which was explored in an interview style. It was in preparation for the following weeks user testing. The idea of ‘I miss you’ emerged, and there were various revelations. The user liked the idea of a ‘handle’ rather than a ‘button’, where the user maintained control rather than using a ‘button’ and handing over control to the computer. This is the concept that Bill Verplank is associated with in ‘Designing Interactions’ by Bill Moggridge. It has been blogged about here.

The spiral model was selected as the primary software development model. It is an iterative model. The RAPID model had been used until now which used rapid prototyping as a developmental method, and the spiral model develops this whilst incorporating things like requirements and more detailed design and implementation.

Goals achieved this week: Pilot user testing for focus group, conceptual exploration through user feedback, early context of use

Goals for next week: Focus group, context of use verification, beginning of stage 2 prototyping in the spiral model.