Interaction Design, Project One, Blog One

Five Sensory Items


I have looked at five different everyday items that stimulate more than just the sight sense.

My first item was the iPod Touch.

This is a fairly obvious one as the iPod TOUCH clearly requires the sense of feeling and sight, it also requires the sense of sound when listening to music or playing games.

I then looked at Immunofort.

These pills require you to use your sight in order to read directions and see what your doing with it, but the feel of the pill is helps to direct you in the way of swallowing and also the taste is not very pleasant so that also encourages you to swallow.

The Microwave is another.

The Microwave requires you to use your hearing in order to tell when it's working and then the chime when it is finished, also the nose can be used to tell whether the food is cooked or over cooked.

Then there is the key and lock combo.

This requires sight of course but also hearing to hear when the lock is locked or unlocked and also feeling to feel whether the key will release or is stuck and thus needs to be twisted to the origin position.

Finally I looked at the Hot Chocolate.

The Hot Chocolate uses taste and sight, but also I feel it uses touch a lot too, as we often get a one in order to warm up our hands and bellies.

Design Visualisation, Project Three, Blog Nine

I have now completed all of my editing and here is my FINAL CLIP...

Overall I think my clip has come out fairly exact to my original storyboarded plan. I think the message is fairly clear also however I'm not entirely sure whether the last shot of the wallet necessarily gives the idea that it influences consumer spending but I think even if the viewer doesn't make that connection I think the overall idea that different media provide a way for consumers to be bombarded with advertisements.

In terms of my editing choices I had to cut a lot of things down, I didn't take anything out it was more just a matter of trimming what I had down to make it concise and to the point.

For my soundtrack, I went with a slightly different idea than I originally thought. I originally was going to go with a very dark, and spooky soundtrack to make it seem like a very evil invasion. However in the end I settled on a soundtrack which more emphasizes the idea that advertising is something that can spread quite quickly through the use of media, and that it happens often without a consumer even realising it. I achieved this by first using 'un-occupied room' ambience, such as the ticking clock noise, to suggest that there is no one in the room or paying attention to what is going on. Then I used the computer start up sound to show firstly that the computer has been turned on and secondly to suggest the beginning of the invasion, as often these days the internet is a place where viral campaigns can start. Then I used a fast paced 'rushed' sounding track to emphasise the speed in which campaigns can spread. I then have the music cut off once the hand comes into shot and when the labels have all hidden in the wallet to suggest that this has all happened behind the consumers back, I also contrast the previous track with again the room ambience and clock sound to make it seem like nothing had gone on at all.

In terms of the lighting I decided to brighten up the footage over all as the lighting was fairly dim, I also added a slight blue tint in order to make it look less red.

Overall I am very disappointed with the video quality of this clip, I found that once I exported the clip from iMovie the quality reduced greatly and it is just as grainy if not more than my interim video, which is really disappointing after going to all that effort. But looking past the bad video quality I think it achieves what I set out to achieve.

'Media design provides a way to bombard consumers with advertisements in a variety of ways'


Soundtrack References:


Subway Sandwich Wrapper - bsung88 Retrieved from http://www.freesound.org/people/bsung88/sounds/79136/


Clock - Pogotron Retrieved from http://www.freesound.org/people/Pogotron/sounds/60811/


MouthPop - Herbert Boland Retrieved from http://www.freesound.org/people/HerbertBoland/sounds/33369/


Flurry - Apple Inc.


Mac Chime - Apple Inc.

Design Visualisation, Project Three, Blog Eight

After getting to the point I was for my interim presentation I have since re-shot everything in order to try get an overall better quality clip. I decided to use a better quality camera, I also used a tripod so my image sequences are more steady, as previously I was using a cellphone with no tripod so it was very shaky.

Below is part of the new footage I have taken...

I think this footage is pretty good quality, it is steady and it's not too grainy, however the images have already lost a bit of quality in the process of putting them together. I'm not that pleased with the lighting as I found I had to film during the night, as during the day the light changes too much, due to clouds and time of day...etc. However doing it at night with just the room lights on makes every thing look very orange, but this is something I'm going to have to put up with and something I can alter using iMovie.

I have now been having problems using the software 'framebyframe' (a basic software used for collating and organising images together into a stop motion video). Since I have now been using a better camera my images have a larger file size which has made it harder for 'framebyframe' to export them into .mov files which I then edit in iMovie. Thus I have been having to import then export fewer images at a time, at the length of the clip above. This has extended the time I have had to take working on this project.

In terms of re-shooting my clip I firstly decided to digitally draw my 'Kraca-Kola' logo on the computer to make it look more legit as I want it to look like a real label made by a large company.

I also reworked a lot of camera shots in order to make my story more clear condensed. In the beginning I decided to have the screwed up advert outside of the rubbish bin in order to save time, so I didn't have to have an extra shot over the top of the bin and then have it crawl out. I think it now still achieves the idea that it is a piece of rubbish which is supposed to be in the bin, which in the end shows that even though the consumer thought they had thrown away this flier they have still been exposed to it and thus when they see the ad again on different media they will recognise it, and be more likely to purchase the product. I also changed how the paper moved, I decided to not have it compress like a caterpillar and just slide around instead, even though I liked this original movement I found it too fiddly to pull off as it would often fall out of place and it was hard to keep it a consistent movement. Also they can now move faster and smoother with just a slide motion keeping the clip concise.

Another shot I changed was where the paper climbs up to the top of the desk and enters the CD drive of the laptop. Before I had a shot of it reach the top then it went a shot of the laptop, then a shot of the advert entering the drive. I found this was very confusing especially as the CD drive is on the opposite side to the side of the desk the paper came from. So i decided to make this more clear by having the camera pan. Now I have the advert climb up, slide over the top of the keyboard and down facing the CD drive, this is all followed by the camera using a pan shot. I then have a closeup as I did before of the ad entering the drive.

I also added a wide shot just before the final wallet shot. I decided a wide shot was necessary to give an overall view of the desk and what the invasion of this 'Kraca-Kola' had covered, so the viewer could get the idea of the context, being someones personal desk in their room. This is an important idea in my clip as it shows advertising is able to bombard you in your very home through the use of media.

Otherwise everything else has remained similar, and I now have to collate and edit all the separate clips in iMovie.

Design Visualisation, Project Three, Blog Seven

I have slowly been working through each part of my clip and have put together what I have so far for an interim presentation, here it is...

 I'm not sure whether I will keep any of this as I think I might try use a better quality camera as this clip isn't particularly good quality as I have been using my cellphone camera with no tripod. However in terms of this clip I think there is a lot of editing which could be done on what I have so far, trimming down bits, whilst adding a bit more to other bits. Also with the lighting effects I have used in this I think they could use tweakings too as they make the quality of the pictures worse looking.

I think using more moving camera shots then still shots will also help with the pacing of this clip, such as the movement I have in the opening shot where the camera tilts upwards.

Creative Coding, Project Three, Blog Eleven

Finished!

I have now completed my code ready for hand-in.

Here's the link for it on open processing...
http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/63605

Since last time I have further developed the freezing idea and now when the mouse is held over a snowflake it will grow and form an ice cube shape, additionally I have made the snowflakes semi-transparent so they look more icy. If the ice cubes are then left unattended they melt back down and begin to spin.

Here's some ice cubes

Here's some more

I also decided to have the snowflakes freeze quicker when the mouse is near to create the idea it is freezing them and also it makes it more satisfying in my opinion.

At one stage when working on these developments I ended up putting a '{' in the wrong place and the whole application ended up going pretty crazy...Check it out...

http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/63599

As a summary I will answer the questions we were given at the beginning of the project...

Why is it fun?
You are able to interact with the Snowflakes motion, size colour etc + when you don't interact they still do stuff on their own accord (they have a life of their own).
What does the person learn over time?
They learn that the Snowflakes spin and explode of they are not interacted with, and that they can transform if intreated with.
How long does it take to learn?
A little while, the person has to have a turn at interacting and not interacting to see exactly what the application does.
Is it still fun once you've learnt?
Yes, once you have learnt the interaction becomes more interesting as you can see the effect it has on the Snowflakes which is the fun part.
How is it similar/dissimilar to a game?
It's dissimilar from a game in the fact that you don't really achieve something from playing with it, their is no goal to reach, in a way you could try turn it into a game by trying to keep the Snowflakes from exploding, but there is no real consequence is you don't, you can't win or lose. Instead you simply interact with overheating Snowflakes.

Creative Coding, Project Three, Blog Ten

Since my last developments I have been experimenting with snowflakes exploding. I first made it so they explode once they have reached a certain speed by having the distance between the shapes constantly increasing.

However I wanted to add a few more features to it, such as what I had previously, being the trembling of the snowflakes just before they explode.

So I tried doing this again, however since the snowflakes were already rotating, it added the increase of the x and y co-ordinates which creates the shape form the central point however it still rotated around the original point meaning the orbited around a point they didn't spin around the central snowflake position.

This is what is happening in the image below.

Crazy rotations!

In the next image below shows the same thing except quite are few are exploding...

In order to fix this (or more make it less crazy) I simply reduced the amount it could shake by, so now this still happens but it is so small it just creates they amount of shakage I want but does not make a mess.

Here are the remaining snowflakes that haven't exploded and now their rotation point is not distorted.

I then looked at adding another feature to the explosion, having the shape size increase just as they're about to explode. I think this enhances the exploding idea, as quite often when things inflate too much they explode, thus the growing complements the action.

Here I have the shape size grow just before they explode.

I also made it so if the mouse runs back over an inflated snow flake the size will decrease back down to original size to show it has been reversed, I also wanted to have a reversal not just a snap back to the original size so it is more fluid.

Here some of the inflated snowflakes have exploded.

After creating the explosions I then looked at bringing colour back to my application. I first looked at the background colour, having it fade into different shades in relation to the mouse speed. I learnt a new function which is used for fading colours from one to the other called 'lerpColor'.

Here is an example from my code of using lerpColor, I have two colors 'col1' and 'col2' then another variable 'speed[i]' which holds the value in how much of each colour it will use, thus if it changes the colour will change/fade.

However for my background exploration I ended up making it so the background colour faded to a colour dependent on where it was on the screen, I had the colours fading between white and red but ended up with some odd colours in between as you can see by the following images...

Orange

Grey

Purply Grey

I then decided my background colour did not need to change in order to enhance the interaction so I decided to have it as a dark blue to complement the white colour of my snowflakes and give the idea of 'cold' as it is when you have snowflakes.

For my snowflakes colour I decided to have them white while they are still but then when they rotate the begin to fade into red, so the faster they got the reder they get until they explode. I thought red was suitable with my concept as it represents heat as opposed to a cool blue or white.

Here are my snowflakes glowing red before they explode.

A handy tool I discovered that Processing has is the Color Selector, which is useful to find out the values of the colours...

Color Selector

Another feature I wanted to add was to have the snowflakes respawn after they explode, so the application never ends. I did this by having it that after a certain amount of time they reappear, I then added it so they fade back in. I also made it so that in the beginning the snowflakes slowly fade in before they start.

Here the snowflakes are fading back in after previously exploding.

Again more snowflakes respawning

After doing all of this I looked at my application to see if I found it fun. I decided that since I had inverted it seemed less fun as by interacting with it the snowflakes stop and the action freezes, watching the snowflakes explode on their own accord seemed much more fun that bothering to interact.

So I have since been looking at ways to make the interaction more worthwhile. I have been looking at having a second layer of shapes appear in the snowflake when the mouse is in range.

In the image below I had just added the extra layer to all snowflakes no matter what range they were from the mouse, I made them a yellow colour...

I then looked at making it so they pulse inside the snowflake but only when the snowflake is stationary otherwise it fades away. In terms of the colour I made it fade between red and white, white when it is most spread and red when it is compressed in the centre. I also learnt a new feature which makes pulsing movements much easier, the function 'sin' or 'cos' which puts the increasing value into a sin or cos wave so it instead alternates between -1 and 1. This was the result....

Pulsing inner layers.

I then decided shades of red were not the right colour as in this case red is heat and when the snowflake is stationary it should be cool, so I instead made the colour a light blue.

Light blue inner layer

I still thought that even with this it wasn't that interesting so I decided to make it that each snowflake has it's own individual shade of blue inner pulsing layer...

However after experimenting with this I found it was not that interesting. So I then looked at having the inner layers beat faster when the mouse was near, at first I made it a little too fast but now I have it as a speed I like and I think I will keep this.

I have now re-looked into my idea of them being snowflakes and this whole heating and cooling idea and have decided that the mouse could take the role of a freezer, when it runs over the snowflakes it freezes them restoring them to white and freezing them still, and now additionally I want them to freeze further into an ice-cube, meaning the shape size will grow until it is completely inflated into a cube. Additionally the pulsing inner layer has become a snowflake heart, which looks as if it pumps it up, you really have to play with the application to get what I mean. However I want to have it so once the mouse moves away it melts back to its original sizes then spins turning red and explodes.

Here's what I have accomplished based on this ides so far.

I am now going to further this develop idea more and also look at having the snowflakes transparent as it looks more awesome.

Design Visualisation, Project Three, Blog Six

'Media design provides a way to bombard consumers with advertisements in a variety of ways'

“90% of all products introduced into the marketplace are pulled within 24 months. Most of them failed because most buyers never heard about them”(Austin, 1999). This statistic shows that it is important for a product to have consumer awareness for it to be successful/profitable and thus in order to achieve this advertising needs to be used. Additionally to gain a greater level of consumer awareness multiple types of media are often used for single campaigns.

Today there are many different types of media available to advertisers. There are the older types of media such as print media, billboards, magazines, newspapers and now modern digital media such as the internet, television etc. Thus consumers are now bombarded with advertisements almost everywhere they look. It is particularly bad now with the internet, as soon as you enter a website suddenly multiple pop-ups appear bombarding you with product advertisements. According to inc.com a recent report has found that digital advertising is “excessive”(2012). However they believe it could cause a major “backlash” from consumers as they dislike the constant bombardment.

Advertising is also presented more subtly as well. An example of this is product placement which is becoming more and more common in things such as music videos and films.

(Product Placement, 2012)

Above is an example of Coca-Cola placing their 'Diet Coke' cans in Lady Gaga's hair in a music video.

Again this is another way consumers are bombarded, creating further awareness of a product, thus making it more likely for them to notice it and purchase it.

In my clip I am wanting to show this idea of bombardment by having an advert spread itself as if a virus across multiple media in order to gain consumer attention. I want to set it in a bedroom making it seem more of a personal invasion, invading privacy to gain a consumer's attention, which I believe advertisements do.

References:

Austin, G. (1999). High Impact: How you can create advertising that sells!. Retrieved from http://www.marketingpsychology.com/advertisingbook.pdf

Sherman, E. (2012). Advertising Overload: Are you guilty?. Retrieved from http://www.inc.com/erik-sherman/are-you-guilty-online-advertising-overload.html

Product Placement. (2012). Retrieved from http://megsinfinitepossibilities.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/product-placement.html