Assignment Week 7+8

Part 1: Write a response to the exhibition “Future World”.  Keep in mind the following questions – What is experience design and what are the possibilities of responsive environments? How might this change the way we think about the world around us and the ways that we communicate with each other?

 

Future world was an eye opening experience that were filled with discoveries of the interaction between people and the projected designs. As we stepped into the different interactive ‘zones’, without actually given any direct instructions, the space invokes the curiosity within the different audiences and it was a metacognitive experience as we learnt to interact with the spaces by trying and by observing. The whole experience somehow felt like it brought us back to our younger days when everything around us was a playground projected from our imagination and as such the aesthetics revolves around ‘play’ to which I felt was relevant.

It was interesting how an empty room could be transformed into an interactive space which could also be seen as a digitally projected playground. The thought behind every interaction linked to a poetic narrative somehow makes the experience felt welcoming and easily relatable. It was crafted with the understanding of nature and how our interactivity within the space would cause the different feedbacks to the projections, in which an example was the death of a butterfly someone were to interact with it.

Although there were many other interesting exhibits, I wouldn’t go about explaining every single one. But what exactly is experience design? How do we bring about crafting the different experiential qualities through observing human interactions? Through the end the exhibition, I felt that experience design is not truly limited to the available space that we have but to open up to the possibilities of how we could design an experience from the surrounding objects. To design experience, we would need to keep in mind of the response or feedback through our interaction and the emotional quality it might produce.

I believe that the possibilities for a responsive environment is possible but would still be limited to an extent due to various constraints. As an example, the exhibition ‘Future World’ would not be possible if it was curated in a well lighted environment as it mainly deals with projections. Also if it were possible to create projection interactivity in the entire city, the amount of electricity consumption would be massive. However, if in the near future that our lives revolves around projection mapping, our day-night cycle might even be reversed to which everything comes to live at night and dims down in the day.


Part 2: Start to work on final project proposals – prepare three ideas for a screen-based experience that you’d like to create (it can be speculative). Prepare a slide show to illustrate your ideas. The ideas can be based on any of the field trips done so far or can be something completely new.

 

1. City Rampage

3

Floor based projection in which you need to carefully traverse through the narrow paths to prevent the destruction of the city. Or you could just go on a rampage and destroy everything.

 

2. Shadow Zoo

2

Creatively sculpt shadows with your hands to resemble an animal and watch it be released into the wild as it interacts with the other surrounding animals! 

 

3. Shadow Swap

1

Interact with someone else’s shadow by mimicry or troll each other through the use of body language. 


Part 3: Find 3 examples of a product/project that you think are good examples of thoughtfully designed user experience. Be prepared to support your choices.

1.  Renault Twin’Z by Ross Lovegrove

Image result for ross lovegrove twin'z

 

2. HENG Lamp by Zanwen Li

3.  Bevel Cup by Zhou Buyi

 

 


Part 4: Reading

This weeks reading is on CH01 Designing for the Digital Age by Goodwin.

It provides insights and clarification to what a design process is actually about describes the structure that could generally be used to design a successful product. Many a times we as practicing designers come across a situation where a question such as, “What’s the difference between art and design?”. This reading summarises concisely and precisely what design is and the differentiation between art, design and science.

An interesting argument was made to which the experience design that designers crafted out be it through human-centered design or service design is a presumptuous process. A designer can go through many researches and study of human interaction but there is still a limitation to determine exactly what someone experiences as everyone brings their own attitudes and behaviours to the field.

The other point that was brought up was, ‘To design a successful product is to focus on achieving goals’, which explains the methods or framework a designer could use as reference to craft out a more holistic design.