SMARDROBE: Progress & Storyboard

Progress

  • Surveys
  • Interviews
  • Finalizing concept
  • Website template
  • Storyboard

Surveys

Our survey forms had been dispersed to many whatsapp groups and our social media platforms to gather at least 100 responses. From the process, we have received 168 responses, and these are the conclusion:

Continue reading SMARDROBE: Progress & Storyboard

Final Project Proposal

TITLE: SMARDROBE

SMARDROBE is a smart wardrobe that does not only store your wearables but also knows all of your fashion collection and how to match them. SMARDROBE knows when your fashion piece had been taken out of it or is already put in; and with the screen of SMARDROBE you would be able to mix and match your OOTD using whatever outfits available in the wardrobe without digging through your hangers and piles and trying! Better still, SMARDROBE connects to your smartphone to help your smart-shopping: to avoid that double shopping of the same item. Easier, hassle-free days for greater OOTD and greater shopping! Looking good should be easy.

Continue reading Final Project Proposal

Reading Response: Thoughtful Interaction Design – Two Good Products

Whatsapp

The most phenomenal product in my life is definitely Whatsapp. It changes, I believe, millions of lives even when they do not realize it. Whatsapp is a well-thought design because of its ultimate function, simple and easy interface, high affordability. It creates revolutionary changes about communication as well as it has thought well about different kind of users. Whatsapp makes itself a versatile product for different types of users.

Continue reading Reading Response: Thoughtful Interaction Design – Two Good Products

Diary of Behaviour: One Gadget-less Day

Day 1 – Sunday, 26 February 2017 (with gadgets)

  • 630am. Woke up with the phone’s alarm.
  • 700am. Showered, checked phone.
  • 730am. Going to church by bus and MRT. Using phone to chat with my mom and friends, to browse random stuffs on google, to check time.
  • 730 to 830am. In the bus & MRT, listening to the music in the phone.
  • 830 to 1100am. During church, I was checking my whatsapp and Instagram for several times so I wouldn’t get bored. I took note of the sermon using my phone too. After church, I uploaded a picture to my Instagram.
  • 1100am to 100pm. Strolling around Star Vista and Jurong Point, and chatting in Whatsapp at some points of time. I checked emails and made an online purchase. While shopping at Watson, I checked the online price of a product before deciding to buy it from Watson.
  • 100 to 200pm. On my way back to the bus: listening to the music and chatting.
  • 200 to 230pm. Lunch at Hall Canteen without using phone.
  • 230 to 450pm. In my room, I was checking Instagram and whatsapp, editting a photograph on my laptop. I was listening to youtube all afternoon, and watching videos sometimes. I uploaded a blog post on Tumblr.
  • 450 to 600pm. Home cardio exercising while turning on the music from youtube and I used my phone’s timer to set time limit.
  • 600 to 630pm. Resting after exercise while chatting with a foreign friend on Instagram. I used Google translate in order to talk to him.
  • 700 to 730pm. I was preparing dinner while checking on my phone some times.
  • 730 to 10pm. I was browsing instagram, watching a live runway show by Dolce Gabanna, while listening to music on youtube with my laptop. I was watching a makeup tutorial video, checking on my email.
  • 1000 to 1100pm. Writing this Day 1 report on my laptop and reading the reading material.
  • 1100pm to midnight. Answering some chats and was ready to sleep.

Continue reading Diary of Behaviour: One Gadget-less Day

Final Project Proposal 3 – “Cooking Mama” Real Life (Digital Cooking)

Some children are so avid about cooking, but parents are afraid they would get burns or cause fire. Some children are simply not exposed to cooking, because these days, home economics are not a popular subject to take in the era of booming technology. Some adults are just aspiring cook who likes to watch Tastemade, but are too afraid of real fire and boiling oil. Or, they become too lazy to cook the most mouthwatering dishes, but complicated, because it took too much space in their shared fridge. If only there is a place with a machine where children, or adults can play the cooking game, and get the real food based on how they have ‘cooked’ it.

Objective

Expose people to more cooking experience without having to manually cook it.

Possible Research & Interview

  1. Rate of people who want to cook but never do so.
  2. Rate of people who wish cooking can be as easy as “Cooking Mama”, a gameboy and Nintendo DS game.
  3. What children and adults think about cooking.
  4. Popularity of computer cooking game.

Mockup

after it’s done… TADDAH

You can eat “your own cooking result!”

Final Project Proposal 2 – Digital Fitting Room

Isn’t it anxious to shop dresses online? Or shoes? Especially when it is from overseas and there is no way of shipping it back if the dress does not make us look any better or the shoes bite our feet so hard because they are slightly too small. Who wish to ‘try’ those pieces on the screen before purchasing them? I do.

Objective

Allow customers to digital try the clothes or fashion pieces before buying them online.

Possible Research & Interview

  1. Rate of dissatisfaction from buying fashion items online without having tried them.
  2. Reasons why some people do not like to buy things online.

Mockup

Final Project Proposal 1 – Hawking Hawker Web/Mobile App

You may easily found plenty of blog posts about the best cafes and brunch places in Singapore. There are plenty of of apps for you to know the review of endless lists of cafes, restaurants and bars – you can even book them too right away in the same app. Well, fair enough, hawker centres got some spotlight too. You can google the best hawker centres in Singapore, or where to find the best chicken rice and laksa with the most affordable price. However, is that all? Do you know that the un-google-able fritters stall in Newton Circus and carrot cake stall in one of the Toa Payoh hawker centres are worth the travel and fat? Do you know there are hawker centres in the middle of HDB with the best western food stalls? Isn’t it wonderful if there is a review about each of the stalls when you visit a hawker centre you have never visited before? I think, they deserve more exposure and we deserve more information.

Objective
Connecting customers and tourists to as many as possible small F&B businesses in hawker centres.

Possible Research & Interview

  1. Views and opinions about hawker centre food.
  2. Public desire to know more about the “hidden gems” of hawker centre.
  3. Prospect of businesses when their information are put up on the Internet.
  4. Preference of hawker stalls to have their information and reviews on the Internet.

Mockup

Reading Response: Designing for Digital Age

It is a great chapter that sounds like a mini tutorial/self-help chapter to me. There are concise step-by-step design processes, which I think is not only applicable to digital products but also other kind of products. I find the tips and steps are versatile.

I am a bit surprised how design can exist in a corporate world where everything the designer does, has to link back to the stakeholders’ desire and preference. It truly sounds like the typical corporate job. What if the stakeholders have unrealistic objective? What if they are unappreciative of designers and design skills? I know we will work with clients, but the term stakeholders in the design industry is new to me.

And I agree with this chapter on how important working relationship is to the success of the project. The business people, engineers and designers could not work like as separate entities but they should function like different organs in one body, each complements the others and would not work well without the other.

The problem I am worried about is what if those people we are working with are not appreciative of designs because they simply have the mindset that looks down on design? Because I had been in such an environment, and after getting out of that situation, all I want is to work as creative entrepreneur. It was not a sweet experience. I wish Singapore can appreciate art and design professionals as much as they appreciate politicians, engineers, doctors and all science field professionals.

Response: My Little Piece of Privacy

This installation makes me imagining how nice it is if there is a curtain that follows me around, so whenever I want to do something that is pretty shameful in the public, I can simply do it as the curtain protects me from being seen: farting, nose digging, sleeping with my mouth open on the train, etc. I don’t know how that would be possible but it’s pretty nice to have privacy following me around.

But, yeah, with a ‘privacy’ whose physical feature is attractive to the public, it causes curiosity, and with more people are curious about what’s behind the curtain/privacy, less privacy we will have! This happens in the installation too, where public became attracted to the moving curtain, talked about it and even crowding the storefront. It ‘counter-attacks’ the purpose, an irony.

However, the irony reminds me of about “deceiving distraction”. The moving curtain can act like an attraction to distract people from realizing other things around it. So the ‘attractive privacy’ still can do its purpose to protect privacy because it distracts people from realizing the (whatever) real thing that the artist/owner want to keep private. So, I think this installation is not really fail. it’s not fail to me.

Class Trip to Future World – Response

I cannot be more than grateful to be able to visit Future World exhibition as a class trip and being explained by the TeamLab member himself, Takasu. Overall, it was an eye-opening experience about how close we are to the ‘future’, where everything is third generation computing, and able to turn non-technological things into a piece of technology in an instance – in the exhibition, projections of animation on tables, walls and things react to our presence and actions. I feel like I was in the future, fully immersed that I almost forgot most of the world out there is unlike Future World right now.

My favourite installation for me is the Story of the Time where Gods were Everywhere, at the Park Session. This is the installation where the rain of ancient caligraphy could turn into ‘real objects’ when we touch it. For example, if we tap unto the caligraphy with double circle, it would become a sun in that ‘world’. Then, if we tap the animal symbols before there is food such as grass, they would die. Wrongly tap a fire symbol would burn the whole forest. It reminds me a lot about the creation of the world in the Bible, where everything is in its right order so that no creature suffers. It is so impressive to me too because different audience are able to create different world, and one could change the other’s world. We can become ‘gods’ in this installation, like literally.

The Story of the Time where Gods were Everywhere Photos

img_6916-min img_6934-min

However, the most unforgettable piece is the last installation, Crystal Universe. Visually, it is really breathtaking that I thought they were all diamonds or stars. Such strong visual is forever embedded in my mind it create a very high standard for the aesthetic of installation art. Sadly, there were no enough time to really feel the entire 4D experience by supposedly ‘swiping stars and planets’ in the mobile app. But this is really the most gorgeous installation I’ve ever seen.

Crystal Universe Photos

img_6947-min img_6944-min img_6939-min

At the end of the tour, there was a lecture that was short but sweetly revealed the art concept behind the whole Future World: the Japanese or eastern perception of beauty. Never I expect that would be the inspiration, because the installations are so futuristic – who gonna think it was inspired closely to the eastern traditional perception of beauty? The western beauty theorem ‘direct us’ while the eastern ‘surround us’. I must admit the beauty, feeling and experience of the exhibition are multi-directional that it feels like another world. This is one great lesson for me as an artist and product designer.

NATURE Section – Interactive installation where the ‘flowers’ we step on will die and more will grow in the place we do not stand on; animation of the sea. Both are inspired from Japanese traditional screen.

TOWN Section – Immediate urban planning; move the block and you move the whole infrastructure on the screen; draw your buildings and vehicles and you might see them on the screen; building blocks that change colors; interactive table

PARK Section – A place for you to play with other visitors; hopscotch!; create your own fish; become a god and create your world.

SPACE Section – Immerse yourself in the celestial space and cosmos.

img_6957-min