Scenarios1

There are several scenarios that my project could possibly fit in to. I’ve been trying to flush out some of them, and focus on only two of the scenarios to create my design for.

Here are the five scenes:

1. Sports Bar
Location: A small sports bar located in a crowded city.
Users: People who just came out of work, and want to meet with friends at the sports bar.

In a sports bar, where the friends come together to this interactive table and search through informations about the latest sports or things that are related to their work. The platform would provide functions for them to share the news and experience live game together. The interface would also provide an opportunity for a user to interact with a stranger through a common interest of news articles. For instance, a user might find out that a girl at the next table is super interested in Football, he could then upload the a piece of news related to football onto his cup, and bring it over to the other table to use it as an icebreaker to meet the girl.

2. Airport
Location: The waiting room for international flights
Users: People who are waiting to board the flight, especially for people who are waiting for a transition flight

In an international airport. Where people are waiting for a transition flight. It’s very normal and usual for travelers to be stuck in airports waiting for their transition flights for almost 4 to 5 hrs. During that waiting time, a lot of people ether go to tax free stores to shop or they would just sit on the chair and surf the internet with their laptops. Having a device like this, would actually help people kill time but in a much more effective and useful way. The device provides the users the ability to search for news articles that date from a century ago. The travelers would have the opportunity to have a deeper understanding of the place they are going to, they could also have the results be emailed or downloaded to their computer or handheld device so they could bring it along with them.

3. Home environment
Location: kitchen area in the home of a family of three
Users: The father, mother and the teenage son.

Many families eat their breakfast together in the morning, a typical theme is the parents would be sitting at the table reading the newspaper on a Sunday morning while their son might be surfing on the internet upstairs in his own room. The father might find an interesting article and tells the mother to read it too. If they were using their own computers, they would probably try to email each other the link or the full article. If they were reading a newspaper, one would probably than try to read it out loud for the other. There is an opportunity here for this platform to exist. The interface would allow them to be able to share and recommend articles to each other in a more direct and easier way. They could also search together on the same topic, but look into different aspects of the topic they are interested in. For example, the husband could try to search for articles about the city constructions of Los Angeles, while the wife could try to search for the urban designs of Los Angeles.

4. Library
Location: A research room in the public library
Users: Three students doing a group project could come and use the device as a group research tool.

While doing a group project, it is important that we find a way to share the research results that we find interesting or useful. We used to do this through email or by printing it out on papers. This device could enhance the experience of collaboration and cooperation within a small group of researchers-in this case, students. The idea is to provide the students a better way to share the results that they find, and be able to talk and discuss about their findings in a much more direct and easier way. For example if they were all researching on the topic “China”. They could easily divide their task in three ways. One could probably look for articles about the industrialized history of China, whereas the other two could look into the cultural or the geographical elements of China. The device provides the opportunity for them to do separate tasks, but gather and collect the useful ones and share it with other researchers.

5. Disaster situation
Location: LA downtown
Users: Emergency response units, LAPD, LAFD,

Whenever a major disaster happens on a larger scale. Different response units are needed to get involved in the situation. They all come to the table with what their own professional skills, insights and resources. There is also always a coordinator to help coordinate all these resource and manpower. It would be important that all the commanders from different emergency units could sit at a place where they can discuss what they have, and sort out ways to utilize their resource and cooperate their manpower. In this scenario, a platform for multiple users could actually be helpful. The commanders could upload their resources to the platform, and they could cooperate or plan out rescue plans for the emergency by discussing and planing directly through the use of this platform.

Notes For Exhibition

Drafts.

1. Poster project as the entry point of thesis.

2. Intro Poster to explain the idea of the thesis.

3. Mosiac project – Collaborative process.

4. Small experiments on a mac screen. <on pedestal>

5. Motion storyboards for the last project / printed and mounted on foam boards.

6. Big screen running motion demo for interface.

*7. A flash step by step demo for interface design.

Thesis writing 1

My interest has always been in the relations between the individuals and the community.

Some of my previous works shows my interest in co-creation and the presence of  individuals working together to form a collaborative result. My works have also been about creating common grounds to serve as a icebreaker for people to interact with each other. In my thesis term, I have been drifting around different ideas and concept of how news reading can be a part of our social interaction.

This last project that I’m working on, is to create a platform that allows or maybe forcing users to search in a collaborative process. Each is allowed to implement a piece of what they want to read. Each of the three users are given control over one kind of category. Therefore, the users will be forced to work with each other in order to facilitate any results. The idea of having it in a social or public space, also gives the users an immediate response from another user. The physical aspect of this device gives it an interesting advantage in bringing it’s users face to face. The idea is to facilitate more interactions between the users, things such as conversations or physical gestures.

This is a process of give and take, what and how does the users enter the things they like into the system. Moreover, how do they collect the results? Since the users can only have control over one certain category of the search. It is almost impossible for them to get exactly what they want, unless they talk and convince the other users. However, even though it might not be what they want, there would still be a part of it that is controlled by them. Which is what makes the search result a collaborated result.

The content that I’ll be using for this search system is the news media. The reason for picking this content, is because it is already structured in many different categories. Almost every piece of the article contains the aspects of  time, space and the happened event. Every article also comes with a different voice which can be identified by the agency or the writer.

The society we live in today requires us to move faster and faster in our life. It also requires us to be more precise then ever before to just get what we want out of everything. It is almost the same for news reading, the usual reading time is less then an hour a day. People only skim the headlines and select what they want to read. This type of reading falls into a danger where people end up reading what they like. And become more ignorant to other things that are happening in the world. The main idea is to provide people a platform where they can create a body of news article that has been selected based on a public input, instead on a purely personal interest. It is about the user next to you, about the articles that you select together, and also about understanding that different people have different opinions towards news.

Like what I stated before, I have an interest in the relationship between the community and it’s individuals. How does the individual gets what they want from the community, and how is the community been shaped by it’s users? Do the citizens change the city, or does the city changes us?