Application Development ( Ezra & Alex )

Application Development ( Ezra & Alex )

1)    A summary of the problem and an overview of your work.

It is hard to learn music and get use to all the note, chord and scale structures.
We want to create an interactive audio space where kids can have fun creating
audio while at the same time learning by seeing visuals of what the noise actually
means and how certain notes sound.

2)    Detailed problem Description

a)    Problem Descriptions

Kids are easily distracted and it takes a huge amount of focus to start understanding
how to create structured music. It usually takes consistent lessons to achieve the
memory in order to improvise, write down notes and understand how to read music.

b)    Assumptions

Music is very fun and limitless. It is a way to connect with the world through feelings
and vibes. Music is one of the most important things this world has. It is important for
kids to have learning opportunities where they can have fun exploring their own styles
in audio/music.

c)    The way you obtained your information

We just think it is important to build more interactive audio spaces for people to experience.
Everyone enjoys music at least more than once in their lives. It’s important to make learning
and experiencing something fun for kids considering they are now heavily distracted by
screens and video games.

d)    Your methodology to solve the problem

Build an interactive audio environment using lasers that set off triggers for all the notes on
a piano scale ( A through G# ) The notes will be large round domes with the letters painted on them.

e)    Environments (e.g., hardware, software, equipment, policy of the company, etc.)

There is a window that separates a room from another. We can drill holes into the window
and place the lasers in it with silicon so that the laser is fixed but can move around. This
way the kids cant take the laser and shine it around into someones eye. It stays pointed
at the wall.

It is a Phantom Laser and you can see the beam. We will make plastic half domes that
brighten up when hit with the beam that'll trigger a photoresistor connected to an arduino
board connected to a computer running MAX MSP ( a software that can turn sensors into
audio triggers )

Hopefully we can run 25 photoresistors in plastic or glass domes which is 2 full note scales.
There will have to be small walls between the notes so that the glare coming off one doesn’t
trigger the others in its vicinity.

This is a green laser. We could potentially add a blue laser that triggers visuals and a red
that triggers an audio slide with a glide effect in maxmsp.

The audio is wired to newly installed BOSE or SONOS speakers that are in the spectator room.

f)    Any special considerations specific to your problem

Start with making an on/off audio switch work in maxmsp. Then build the domes using plastic
or glass bowls. Then get 25 photoresistors and a lot of wire that connects to an arduino board.
About a $600-800 budget. Wire, sensors, material, speakers, drilling the hole and construction
time. We have 2 lasers already but hopefully we can get another 2 so 4 kids can go at it. Of
course they might make the most crazy amount of noise but if they can have a fun experience
then maybe they will have the curiosity to go learn a real instrument. So pretty much we want
to share a fun experience with an interactive audio space to trigger more curiosity in learning
how to compose music for kids.

Design Presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1E_P9vCOZr0WVgV1liCrfk96cSJQrGsPZk-dS2aQSMJM/edit?usp=sharing

Confidence and Motivation in Design Thinking

Confidence and Motivation in Design Thinking

• Creating teams out of people with different backgrounds, known as interdisciplinarity, is an essential prerequisite for design thinking.
• The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible gaps created by the varying experience level of design thinking practitioners.
• How the practitioner feels - Empathy between practitioner and stakeholder is important. A stakeholder should trust a practitioner to keep study and design thinking a top priority.
• Design Thinking Traits - Design thinking process navigates using three constraints; feasibility, viability, desirability. Some steps to navigate with are; empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Inspiration can come from; creativity, ambidextrous thinking, teamwork, user-centeredness, curiosity and optimism.
• 4 principles to design thinking are:
• 1) The Human Rule - All design activity is social in nature.
• 2) The Ambiguity Rule - Innovation demands experimentation at the limits of our knowledge and the freedom to see things differently.
• 3) The re-design Rule - We must understand social change to better estimate social and technical conditions we will encounter in the future.
• 4) The Tangibility Rule - Prototypes that are tangible are better communicated and understood.
• Personal Practitioner Traits - We need to look at the practitioner as an individual and see the different aspects of insecurities and doubt that they may have so that a team can work on these before it effects a project in the long term.
• Creativity - There are 5 discovery skills essential for innovation; Associating, Questioning, Observing, Networking, and Experimenting.
• Combination of Expertise(technical and intellectual), Creative thinking skills(How flexibly and imaginative) and motivation(intrinsic value of thought) equals Creativity
• Constraints - Creativity needs constraints
• Causal vs. Effectual Reasoning - As an entrepreneur you have to be creative given the constraints on resources like time and money.
• Effectual Reasoning - Using the available resources in the right way to create a path to the solution of a problem.
• Success and value creation is dependent on creativity connecting association with ambidextrous thinking.
• Hunches - There are 2 systems in the working brain.
• 1) Fast Thinking - Unconscious, effortless, Automatic, no self awareness or control, Superficial impulsive, Assess the situation, Deliver updates
• 2) Slow Thinking - Deliberate and conscious effortful controlled mental process, with self awareness or control, Logical and skeptical Analytical, Seek new or missing info, Make decisions.
• Flow - Optimal experience, those times when people report feeling of concentration and deep enjoyment.
• With Flow emotional problems disappear and there is an exhilarating feeling of transcendence.
• There must be a clear set of goals.
• There must be feedback that allows adjustment for performance in flow state.
• To facilitate an environment for good Flow:
• Create Spatial arrangements
• Playground design - Charts for information input, flow graphs, project summaries, and open topics of conversation
• Parallel, Organized working.
• Target Group Focus
• Advancement of existing one.

Creating Confidence

• Creative confidence is key for jumping into risks of spending a lot of time prototyping and getting things done with creative building and communication.

Mindset

• People have different mindsets so understanding the persona and character of the people you work with in a team is a important to figuring out what part of the projects people will work best in.
• Mindsets are different for creative thinking, business management, social networking an effort in building prototypes.

Empathy

• Understanding someone and there problems and needs.

Communication

• Being able to communicate a business plan on where it is and where it should be.
• Understanding mindsets before starting a project will help communication flow when the work starts.

Experience

• Defining Experience - communication and understanding
• Process Experience - prototyping research and networking
• Background experience - To assign a practitioner with a type of experience on what their mindset and skills are.

Difference between novice and experts.

• Experts accumulate a large number of examples of problems and solutions
• Novice step back from accumulating and conceptualize abstract ideas related in their domain of expertise.
• They recognize underlying principles rather than focusing on the surface problems.

Experience as a confidence booster

• There are are actually no indications on correlations between experience confidence and performance.

Interview Structure

• These 4 points should be brought to the interview
• The human rule • The ambiguity rule • The re-design rule • The tangibility rule
• Audio from interview can be used.
• Good flow in conversation and understanding persons mindset right off the bat leads to a good interview.

• It is important to consider that there are more factors affecting how practitioners experience design thinking that just the practitioners view on the process.
• How you experience design thinking depends on the context, environment, team members and mindsets, teachers projects and communication.

Conclusion to Study

• A team and its composition plays a central role when is come to the motivation of the practitioners.
• For financial and engineering planning lack of measurable outcomes could create gaps.
• Providing examples that can link a practitioner to relate to the real word is a great way to stimulate confidence and motivation.
• Having time is important. If you feel rushed than the experience can feel un natural which can cause a gap.

Design Thinking Methods and Tools for Innovation

Design Thinking Methods

and Tools for Innovation

https://nmd306s18.slack.com/files/U8X7QTA9Z/F978UM31D/9783319208855-c2__1_.pdf

Design Thinking as an Innovation Approach.

Innovative response to Rapidly changing market demands.

• innovation is often a process to which several actors with complementary capabilities contribute

• companies adopt multidisciplinary teams during DT processes as a strategy to increase team performance
• During an innovation process supported by DT, a team
• needs first to broaden their thinking, making it divergent, allowing multiple inputs for their problem area.
• We must forster stimulous for creative inputs in divergent thinking.
• The last stage is putting ideas into action.
• Design constitutes of two phases of design.
• (1) an analytical phase of finding and discovery
• (2) a synthetic phase of invention and creation
• This allows us to innovate through observational or ethnographic research, creating frameworks  for  understanding  data,  analyzing  new  customer  needs,  and  developing solutions or new products to meet these needs

Design THinking Methods and Tools

• motivation  to  use  it, the  audience, the representations used, and activities in the design process.
• This is used to understand the problem.
• The DT - The creation of meaning and making sense of things.
• The DT process consists of five stages: empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping,
• and testing
• Empathizing - Relating the the persona and understanding their need and constraints .
• Ideation Phase - Brainstorming and generating ideas with stimulus and making prototypes.
• Test Phase - Visualize the systems complexity and reflect a convergent and divergent view of design.

 Personas

• The study of someones persona can be used to empathize with a customer based target market.
• It can help identify someones needs and desires.
• A persona is “a user representation  intending  to  simplify  communication  and  project  decision  making  by selecting project rules that suit the real propositions
• Smaply( a web service for providing options of personas based on input)  provides several options for describing personas, including ready-made avatars, quotes, options for collaboration, and engaging visualizations

StakeHolderMap

• a visual or physical representation of the various groups involved in  a  particular  product  or  service,  such  as customers,  users,  partners,  organizations, companies, and other stakeholders
• It’s a human business perspective to help the customers relate better to the product or service.
• It is designed to put stakeholders on the management radar. The more people who have assessment and revisional opinions the more stimulus and team of designers and businessmen can achieve.

Customer Journey Map

• This describes a collection of touchpoints from beginning to end for a product of service delivery, from the customers point of view.
• Touchpoint - “an instance or a potential point of communication or interaction between a customer and a service provider”
• This must define the relation between persona/customer and the technical side of service
• This helps convert information into intuitive, data rich map of a customer journey

Service Blueprint

• Service blueprints show the actions between customers and service providers during a service delivery.
• This allows the customer to relate to what the experience will be for a product or service.
• Creately - A web-based tool for blueprint diagrams

Business Model Innovation

• Exploring Market Opportunities
• The Business Model Canvas (BMC) is  a  visual  way  of  handling  a  BM  and  related  economic,  operational,  and  managerial decisions.
• This is the business logic of an idea.
• Strategyzer - BM innovation web-based tool
• This should cover economic analysis, 5 - 10 year business plans for thought out financial management and future potential target markets for business/product growth.

Rapid Prototyping

• This should be a prototype that shows the technology that is possible for a solution or experience.
• This should be graphic, tangible if product, have audio or something that explains a function.
• It has a graphical user interface for creating mockups of websites and applications.
• This helps get direct feedback

Case Study

• Innovation and collaboration where workshops involve both convergent and divergent thinking in a task

Aesthetic-Usability Effect SlideShow

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1q7ETsWFwZdB2e__GLzlQMpcjSE3uAEoQs_HeaoIg4Z4/edit?usp=sharing

How can people learn from design

With Accessibility we can better help people learn from a design by better understanding the diversity of people and their personas. If we can connect people of different languages, genders, ethnic groups, healthy and disabled on technological devices that they can all relate to than we can learn together in sequence rather than isolated in the exposure of knowledge. Accessibility to fundamental technology like the internet and having a phone have allowed us to learn more efficiently.

Advanced Organizers are a key to learning. People have a short attention span and can only hold so much memory in their heads when learning something new. Because of this when information is presented in an organized spoken, written or illustrated way like a summary it allows us to focus better at the subject at hand.

The Biophilia Effect is a philosophical idea that the imagery of natural views like a forest or sunrise reduce stress and enhance focus. I believe it is true to the extent of people having phobias of dark forests or getting lost. But I do believe most people can relate in saying that they like the look of natural scenes and because of this reading information with a background image you like will be more stimulating than a simple mundane color.

The Cathedral Effect is when we perceived height of a ceiling and cognition.

Chunking is combining information so that it is easier to process. This helps people learn because it allows them to use less memory when trying to focus on something. Most people can remember a list of five words for 30 seconds but most can’t do 10. So when chunking information into the least amount of words possible it allows people to learn easier.

Classical Conditioning is stimulating the unconscious physical or emotional response. An example of this would be using colors to influence emotion