Adventures in Electrostatic

week I made a little program called “Gradient Judger.” To use it, you would draw a gradient, scan it in to the computer, then put it in a specific folder, run the program, and presto, it would spit back an analysis of your gradient’s smoothness; and that was all well and good… but long and a little too critical. The computer just got to sit back and judge you after the fact. I thought it would be nice this week to make that process interactive. So what was once the “Gradient Judger”, now becomes the “Gradient Helper.” Read more »

Computers are easy on us, which makes them seem fake (or at least artificial). In the real world we get feedback from our actions on objects in very real ways: fire burns, rocks are heavy, and bees sting; because we know all of this, our subconscious watches out for us by giving us signals… really nice. Another nice thing about being human is our ability to think ahead and predict a series of events: Read more »

I have been thinking a lot about my sketching habits lately. I have noticed I tend to draw, or shade-in really, lots of circles and squares. I love shading… getting the gradient just right. I get the same feeling when I am laying out a page in graphically… theres something about the minute adjustments and gut feelings I really love. So, when brainstorming about a new project for Computational Cameras drawing popped into my head. Read more »

Its been nice the past two weeks fussing over such a deceptively simple thing: light. Which type of light should I use, halogen, LED, cold cathode, normal incandescent, fluorescent. How much do I need; and at what power? And to complicate matters I have to think about light in the context of exactly what I want to do; namely, glowing through wood. Its all very illusive and tricky. There aren’t any standards by which to judge lighting that are reliable; Read more »

Its been nice to have the excuse to learn some more Flash stuff I have neglected over the years. Last week it was database stuff, and this week it was learning to be a better Flash programmer. Not necessarily that much more skilled, but more responsible. Flash is usually a mess after you are done coding it. Script all over the place, almost impossible to debug if you come back to it in a year, or heaven forbid you give it to someone else. Now that I’m starting to do some Flash work professionally, I figured it would be a good thing to get some good habits under my belt. Read more »

I don’t know why, but having the computer draw a box around something you’re holding in your hand is really neat. Its like the computer has a brain and discern things… its still dumb as ever, I know because I know exactly what its thinking… and its not a lot, but somehow its still plain ‘ole neat. Read more »

So when we were assigned to explore some software methods for user testing it took me a little while to figure out where to go and what to do. I think it was tricky because I know how to do all the obvious user testing things in a few different softwares: Flash, Processing, etc; but after I sat there for awhile I got excited about the prospect of generating some real data in Flash… nice numbers that I could keep track of. Because Flash is so web-friendly, it also made sense to figure out how to test and grab results from people remotely… so that meant databases. Read more »

if (HUE == 230){
thisPixel = color(250, 33, 100);
drawLineTo(thisPixel.x, thisPixel.y);
}

Thats it.

I wanted to see what it would be like to track the instances of a specific HUE across a time-based video. I didn’t really care what is on the video, so I went to youtube to source a random one… well it wasn’t really random because I put “230″ in the search to find it. Then I took that video, fed it through the video library in processing, and out pops I cute little composition. TA-DA!

So I have this vision… a beautiful object that is little and wood, and it lights on fire; and with magic, it turns on and controls a larger light source. I also have this class, Physical Computing Studio, where you can pick a project to work on all semester. So I thought, great, seems like a match made in heaven: I get to create this image my mind cannot seem to let go of, and better yet, I have enough time to make it really well and put it in the hands of real users. All sounds good… and it is… theres just one small problem. I am not entirely sure what the ‘point’ of it is (the object). Read more »

It is interesting how changing something as little as when a LED turns on or off greatly affects the interaction of a device. What does blinking mean?… green or red?… text or no text? I can understand (a little) how these little decisions get overlooked by electronic and appliance companies, but it seems as though most could be fixed with just a little user testing… or at least a competent designer. We all know its possible, Apple does a great job at it, and yes their stuff is more expensive; but look at Ikea… their stuff is cheap AND designed well. Read more »