Electricity Videos Response

These videos talked about the basics of how electronics work. It started with OHMS Law which is how electrical currents can be measured by Voltage (V), Current (I) and Resistance (R). The equation for these are V = I*R   I = v/r and r = v/i. Resistance in important to understand because that is what controls the flow of an electrical current. The resistance in the air is really high and copper has very little. There are many other materials that have different amount of resistance. Voltage is how much power is running. If there is to much voltage running to a sensor or a LED light it can brake it which is why it is important to understand resistance so you can control the current and voltage. Fixed resistors are necessary for proper electronic functions.

Multi-Sensor Context-Awareness in Mobile Devices and Smart Artefacts - Reflection.

In this article they talked about augment mobile devices with awareness of their environment and situation as context. Context is what surrounds, and in mobile and ubiquitous computing the term is primarily used in reference to the physical world that surrounds the use of a mobile device. Examples for situational context are being in a meeting, driving in a car, and user activities such as sleeping, watching TV, cycling, and so on. context in mobile devices is receiving considerable attention in various fields of research including mobile computing, wearable computing, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and human-computer interaction. Most research into context-aware mobile devices has considered the use of single but powerful sensors, specifically position sensors and cameras. Position sensors provide access to location as rather specific but particularly useful context. Its usefulness as context also largely depends on pre-captured knowledge about locations. Cameras similarly provide access to potentially rich information that can be derived by means of feature extraction and video analysis. Electronics with awareness to their environment have potential to make a customers life a lot easier because they can react to our everyday routines and physical actions.

Physical Telepresence: Shape Capture and Display for Embodied, Computer-mediated Remote Collaboration - Reaction

This article talked about how we can interact with each other in remote locations through physical telepresence. This will hopefully solve the problem of being able to give someone a handshake in another country. And many other things like that. The goal of physical telepresence is to extend the physical embodiment of remote participants and combine it with the physical embodiment of remote TUIs. This article talked about a few examples of this by explaining a few telemanipulation scenarios. These are Video Mediated Communication (used for collaborative websites and family communication), Mixed Reality (Large spatial environments that can create collaborative workspaces that can give users an experience of immersion in certain environment), Telerobotics ( Representing remote people with telepresence). Telemanipulation can be used to handle hazardous materials or other objects from a distance. It can also be used for surgeons for more precise control to remove tremors. This is why it is important to study and design physical telepresence and manipulation because it can expand human capabilities. We primarily emphasize the potential in interactions with shared digital models of arbitrary shapes, linked physical objects, and manipulation of remote objects through direct gesture. Using shape capture and display, users can reach through the network and pick up a remote physical object. This is called Direct Gesture Control and it allows a user to interact directly with a remote tangible object though transmitted physical embodiment. Tangible Tokens are the term used to represent a remote tangible object. As a user moves the token, the model of the remote object is updated, and the remote object is moved to reflect the changed state. Tangible tokens can be updated and transformed with activity like scaling, translation, rotations, shearing, stretching and other distortions. They talked about some problems with direct gesture control and what they did to fix it. As the physical shape rendering contains some noise and the motors require a certain time to reach their target position, our detection algorithm thresholds the deformation image and compensates for the time delay. That is something to keep in mind when designing for physical telepresence.

Designing Tangible Interaction - Reaction

When designing tangible interaction, you must follow rules of principled design which is making a decision based on some kind of collective wisdom about design rather than personal preference. Next the article talks about material that can be used in the design of tangible interaction. Some things that can be used are complex sensor based data collection, conductive fabrics, mechanical devices and physical computing. It also talks about Interactive Spaces which is cool because the interaction in certain spaces can track and record data on the movement and behaviors of the users. This is possible because we can interact with small objects that we can grab and move around within arms reach and interact with large objects within a large space and therefore need to move around with our whole body. Some applications that interactive spaces can bring us include learning and education, domestic appliances, games, interactive music installations or instruments, museum installations, tools to support planning and decision making and, increasingly, health and fitness and more. There are four major design principles to make all this work which are tangibility and materiality, physical embodiment of data, bodily interaction, and embeddedness in real spaces and contexts. This article also listed some really good question to ask yourself or group members for a tangible interactive design. Some of them are How can the human body relate with the space? Can you create a meaningful place with atmosphere? Does shifting stuff around have meaning? Can everybody see and follow what happening? Can you hand over control anytime and fluidly share an activity? Does the representation build on users experience and connect with their skills? What is the entry threshold for interaction? These are all really good questions which I think was the most important thing to take out of this article.

Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms - Reaction

Tangible Bits have to do with bringing the human perception ambient display media such as light, sound, airflow and water movement in augmented space. The goal of Tangible Bits is to bridge the gaps between both cyberspace and the physical environment, as well as the foreground and background of human activities in a way that makes the computing truly ubiquitous yet invisible. Wireless connection will make this more possible as we start connecting all our everyday electronic devices with bluetooth or internet. Another way to make bring this to the world is through interactive surfaces where we transform architectural spaces likes walls, ceiling, doors, windows into an active interface. A way to make cyberspace really connect with human perception is to intergrade ambient media into spacial areas. Ambient Media has to do with sound, light, airflow and water movement which stimulates our senses and makes an augmented reality much more real. This is all exploring ways of both improving the quality and broadening the bandwidth of interaction between people and digital information by allowing users to grasp and manipulate foreground bits by coupling bits with physical objects and enabling users to be aware of background bits by using ambient media in an augmented space. This article sparked a question for me and that is how can we make a user feel augmented rain without getting them wet? When it comes to having direct control of virtual objects through physical handles we call the handles “Bricks”. Bricks can be attached to virtual objects to serve as dedicated transducers, each occupying its own space and can be used through motion, sound and touch. We continue to study tangible bits and augmented reality because graphic user interfaces still fall short of embracing the richness of human senses and skills people have developed through a lifetime of interaction with the physical world.

Tangible User Interface for Children - An Overview: - Reaction

This is a very cool article because education and a good learning environment is the most important thing for young children and bringing TUI’s to it is making education more of a social and interactive experience as well as supporting their curiosities, their love of repetition and their need for control. This article talked about Ubiquitous Computing which is the method of enhancing computer use by making many computers available throughout the physical environment, but making them effectively invisible to the user. This can be applied to computer science, engineering and social science and is now being encouraged to be more widely used in schools around the world. The word “Edutainment” stood out to me which is a way to bring more technology to schools by making education a game like experience. If the technology in interactive it will make learning more fun which will get the childs mind more engaged on the subject. Education using TUI’s has child's such as requiring little time to learn how to use the interface, offers an alternative way of interaction which is fun for children, supports trial and error activity and is interactive and can develop teamwork and support a fun social experience. I think this was a very important article to read because learning how to make technology work with helping children learn educational lessons instead of distracting them is a process that will definitely benefit this world.

Interaction Design: What is it, and How can we use it? - Reaction

Interaction design is the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems and services. It connects the digital world with the human one. Some concepts to think about when starting interaction design is define how users can interact with the interface, consider feedback and response time and to simplify the learnability. Those are what I found to be the most important concepts to think about in this article. Next it talked about some principles which are relatively the same for the process in creating any good design. These principles are Motion (There are contemporary motions for touch screen devices that most people already know like swiping left to go through photos. This can help for an easier user experience) , Space ( Is the space only in a screen or does it also take place in the physical world) , Time ( The amount of time a user spends with each interaction is very important for keeping them interested to move forward) , Sounds ( While some users love it, others are quickly annoyed. When using sound in interactions, always account for users who will disable the function; the design needs to work just as effectively without it.), Aesthetics ( Does the look have any emotional impact?), Color ( Consider bright and engaging hues especially for mobile and watch apps) , Typography, Contrast, and Readability.  

An Encompassing View on Tangible Interaction: A Framework: - Reaction

Tangible User Interface and interaction require design in systems within embodied interaction, tangible manipulation, physical representation of data and embeddedness in real space. Tangible user interfaces utilize physical representation and manipulation of digital data which makes it possible to create interactive physical artifacts. There is endless potential on what TUI can do with our surrounding physical world. There are different views of TUI’s. One is the Expressive Movement view which has the goal of putting meaning into the interaction with physical objects. Another is a Space Centered view with rely on combining real space and real objects with digital displays or sound installations. TUI is suppose to exploit the richness of bodily movement and with a Space Centered view we can make our whole body become a sensor for a physical environment connected to a software data. To start designing TUI’s you must start with the frameworks. Frameworks map out an abstract design and show the human interaction experience. There are 4 types of tangible interaction the framework can focus on. These are Tangible Manipulation, Spatial Interaction, Embodied Facilitation, and Expressive Representation. In interaction we read and interpret representations, act on and modify them. Some questions used for interpreting would be are the representations meaningful and have long lasting importance? Can users think and talk with or through objects, using them a s props to act with? Are physical and digital representation seemingly naturally coupled? These are all questions that are useful for designing an effective framework.