Month: April 2011

User Test – First conversations, Yukiko

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Dog acceptation of the collar can take some time and training.

First phone call with Yukiko: EPIC FAIL :) 
The sound was really to loud and Daniel felt onto his son’s answering-machine.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QazxRV-S9m4]

2nd phone call to Daniel’s wife. Talking about meeting each other later and traying to talk to the dog.
Daniel’s wife: “Yukiko doesn’t reply to me!”
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F5B5dOjK7U]

3rd phone call with Yukiko, watch it until the end!
The starting of the conversation is a bit tensed, they talk about the device and the experiment, after having given a biscuit to Yukiko the conversation really starts (about work), as the dog move the owner follows her, down on his knees on the carpet.
Daniel: “It’s the first time I use a hairy phone!”
Daniel: “That is a really ‘mobile’ phone…”
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB3Hq40aYro]

User test – Fitting, collars tests

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I didn’t have the opportunity yo touch Yukiko, Daniel decided to meet first in the park—even if it is not the best situation for using the collar—to relax Yukiko. I had to not pay attention to her and let her come to me with her tennis ball (to throw it) as a way to say hello… Quite a wild dog, indeed.

I didn’t have the opportunity to directly interact with her (except by throwing the ball) but, she is quite a nice dog in the end.

The first collar was OK for communication but really too big for the dog.


It’s interesting how dog owners easily talk to each others thanks to their dogs, dogs sociabilisation forces owners interactions.

Inspiration – Example of speculative design

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Sam Hill
A student from RCA

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=3QjOK2pdG20&gl=US]
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjWL2EqJ6xA]

BA DESIGN
Graduating Year Project.
Sam Hill
http://www.samhilldesign.co.uk/

This design process will be fully exhibited at the Goldsmiths College PROCESSED exhibiton.

http://www.goldsmithsdesign.net/

Exhibition at The Boilerhouse, The Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London, Friday 30th May to Monday 2nd June.

Part of Free Range exhibition.

http://www.free-range.org.uk/cgi-bin/portfolio.pl?yearID=13&exhibitionID=…

My project concerns “experience value”, a hypothesis I’ve developed that indicates there is an intellectual, sensational and emotional wealth to be yielded from taking risks and by subverting preventative and protective systems via exposures.

My process has led me on a conceptual U-turn and far beyond my comfort zone, as I have embarked upon a personal quest for experience attainment and contested my own (previously) circumspect attitudes. I’ve sought to redefine my behaviour and ultimately, my personality.

I have endeavoured to rationalise my theory by quantifying it through a series of experiments and validating it via comprehensive, communicative designs.

State of Art – Porte-Parole Mouthpiece (1996)

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Porte-Parole Mouthpiece (1996) – Krzysztof Wodiczko and Sung Ho Kim

http://interrogative.mit.edu/projects/1993/porte-parole

Krzystoff Wodiczko (Canadian, born Poland, 1943)
Videotape, monitor (mouthpiece, 3 1/4 x 6 1/4 x 7 inches), battery pack and documentation
MSU purchase, funded by the Friends of Kresge Art Museum Endowment, 97.9.A-F


Via: http://artmuseum.msu.edu/exhibitions/online/GiftsofArt_AcquisitionExhibition/1980-AD.html#panel-3
Krysztoff Wodiczko belongs to a genre of public artist who meld art with science and technology. He is a member of MIT’s Interrogative Design Group and is internationally renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. Since the late 1980s, he has developed a series of nomadic instruments for both homeless and immigrant operators that function as implements for survival, communication, empowerment, and healing.
In 1992, Wodiczko began Xenology: Immigrant Instruments, tools for “the immigrantÕs art of survival.” In the forms of a staff (Alien Staff), wings (Aegis) or a mouthpiece (Mouthpiece), these instruments include small LCD monitors that project an edited videotape of the wearer’s personal history. The series grew from Wodiczko’s own experience as an emigre. Born and trained in Poland under a socialist regime, Wodiczko settled in Canada in 1977, before moving to the U.S. in the 1980s. Created to be performed in urban centers, Xenology: Immigrant Instruments such as Mouthpiece opened dialogues between their operators and passersby, stimulating communication between the immigrant (the speechless stranger) and the native community.


Via: http://rhizome.org/editorial/2010/jan/26/porte-parole-mouthpiece-1996-krzysztof-wodiczko-an/
The Porte-Parole Mouthpiece is an instrument for strangers, its function is to empower those who are deprived of power.

This object encircles the jaw with a small video monitor and loud speakers placed directly over the wearer’s mouth, showing the lips moving in sync to the prerecorded narrative. It is designed to replace the hesitations and fearful silent of an immigrant’s personal voice with a fully formed version of the immmigrant’s story. It function both as a conduit of ones’ voice and image as well as a gag that blocks the mouth and prevents from speaking.

Porte-Parole transforms its user into a virtual subject, literally, a cyborg communicating through a high-tech device rather than your own bodily apparatus for speech. The small size screen drives viewers to come closer to the user face in order to see the image of the moving lips and hear the voice.