Midterm

Deadlines

Design Brief

Below are two design briefs. You may choose ONE to shape and inform your midterm project. All projects must meet the requirements listed below regardless of the selected brief.

Option 1: Create a Gift for a Friend

Design an interactive, bespoke gift that delights the recipient and/or prompts reflection on a question or topic. It could take the form of a garment or accessory (e.g. a bag, jacket, harness, epaulette, costume, glove, bracelet, etc.) or a computationally-enhanced soft object (e.g. a book, quilt, card, pillow, poster, game controller, stuffy, etc.).

As an act of collective care, gift curation or creation is an intimate, hyperlocal act for an audience of one. The ideas and emotions it communicates condense a dimension of your relationship into an object or interaction. By embedding technology into a handcrafted gift, we can alter its emotional resonance and intended meaning, especially as we contemplate the ways that current technologies mediate our relationships. As you design and build your gift, consider the following questions:

  • How will your object interact with its recipient? How will it interact with the environment?
  • How will it collect input? How will the output augment the message or feeling you seek to communicate through your gift?
  • How might the gift invite the receiver to engage, adapt, or collaboratively build meaning?

Project Inspiration

Here are a few—mostly wearable—examples. Please do not let the scope of these examples constrain you; rather let them serve as a start to cultivate new ideas.

Option 2: Create a Measuring Tool1

Design a soft system or tool that poses a question, then measures something to answer that question in an interesting or unconventional way. Your system should collect data that responds to the question, process it, and interprets or visualizes it. Given the nature of this class, there is a rich archive of wearable projects focused on measuring and displaying body-centric data or using embodiment as a way to render invisible processes concrete. You will decide what to measure and how. (I want to note that this is not a data science project—you do not need to collect massive amounts of data or have experience in this domain to build a compelling project.)

Acts of measurement often seem inevitable and mundane: imperial is the US standard, the time it takes to walk to the train, infant weight over the first year of life, vehicle speeds, etc. Measurement can also be considered a deeply political act. This can be overt, such as gathering census data or counting votes and covert, such as neglecting to collect or include data from a group, over-indexing on data from a group (usually through surveillance), or altering metrics and established baselines to favor a particular outcome. As you design and build your system, consider the following questions:

  • What story might this act of measuring communicate?
  • What overlooked dynamics or invisible rhythms can you uncover?
  • How might you exaggerate or reinterpret these metrics as part of a critical and/or playful commentary?
  • Where can you incorporate the whimsical or absurd to provoke reflection? How can you leverage the surprise and unexpected nature of these materials to support audience interaction?
  • What is the role of measurement in shaping our self-perception and perception of others? What are the un/spoken baselines and metrics?
  • How will you invite others to engage with the data collection process (if this is part of your system)? What consent do you need to get from them?

Project Inspiration

Here are a few—mostly wearable—examples. Please do not let the scope of these examples constrain you; rather let them serve as a start to cultivate new ideas.

Project Requirements

I will assess you on the following deliverables:

Deliverable 1: Project

Using knowledge that you have developed in this class so far, your project MUST include the following:

  • One or more custom switches and/or sensors built using materials and techniques we have been studying in class.
  • A microcontroller to read input, process it in a meaningful way, and control an output. It should be embedded into a chosen substrate using materials and techniques we have been studying in class.
  • An output in the form of LEDs or another actuator if you wish. It should be embedded into a chosen substrate using materials and techniques we have been studying in class. As we have not covered other outputs, I will not expect to see anything but LEDs though you are welcome to push yourself.
  • Strong sewn or soldered electrical connections.
  • No wires or very limited use of wires. You should use the conductive fabric or thread. Note that I will reduce your grade if you submit a p comp project.

Deliverable 2: Documentation

You must submit project documentation that includes:

  • An image of your project
  • A video of your project in action. Bonus points for process images.
  • A link to your project code.
  • A brief paragraph to contextualize your project. You should address:
    • The brief you selected and why you decided to respond to it with this project
    • At least 2 project precedents (only one can be drawn from a list above)
    • Any other relevant details
  • A detailed description of how your project works from an electrical and computational perspective. It should address the following:
    • Description: What your project does and how someone interacts with it
    • Process: A high level overview of your fabrication process, any challenges you encountered, and steps you took to mitigate them
    • List of Materials
    • Circuit: A circuit diagram, bullet points, etc
    • Code: Heavily commented code, a flowchart, bullet points, etc
  1. This brief was adapted from the book Code As Creative Medium by Golan Levin and Tega Brain. ↩︎