Archive for March, 2010

Touch Sensitive Button

…with conductive thread! I never thought I would hear myself say that! Thanks to my classmate, Katrina Anderson, for the perfect idea of sewing conductive thread on top of a monome.org style rubber button. Many updates to catch up on… I have decided on a direction for the final prototype: a small cube with a [ READ MORE ]

TRKBRD (example)

I place the TRKBRD design as the “ground zero” example of Stacked User Inputs (SUI). This prototype sparked the SUI for me, and inspired me to investigate it more for my final thesis. The hardware design of the TRKBRD places an invisible light field over the keyboard, thus creating a “touch field” on top of [ READ MORE ]

Arduino Touch Sensing

Currently researching “touch sensing” using the Arduino. I know of capacitive touch chips that are available, for example, at Sparkfun. But why do I need an additional chip for sensing touch, when apparently I can do the same sensing with a piece of wire connected to the arduino? See video… Hardware setup and Arduino code [ READ MORE ]

Framework Brainstorm

From yesterday’s brainstorm session in the studio, using the “Getting a Grip” tangible interaction framework as inspiration… From this brainstorm, I feel I have fine-tuned my framing even further, and come up with an idea to abstract the SUI concept in the form of a simple prototype. My TRKBRD prototype is a concrete application of [ READ MORE ]

No One Is Online

  • March 22nd, 2010
  • Posted in Diary

…and it’s so peaceful&#[ READ MORE ]

“Three-State Model of Graphical Input”

by William A.S. Buxton (1990) “All input devices are not created equal in their capabilities, nor input techniques in their demands.” 6 Generic Transactions of User’s Intentions with a Device (Foley, Wallace, Chan 1984) select an object position an object orient an object ink (draw a line) text (enter text) value (specify a scalar value) [ READ MORE ]

TRKBRD Schematic & Code

The following is full documentation and diagrams of the TRKBRD physical prototype. If you find an error, or figure out a better way, or need help… please contact me! Final Prototype Schematic Diagrams Parts List Arduino Duemilinova (1) #12200020 from Electrokit.se 4051 Multiplexer (16) #73-473-70 from ELFA IR Phototransistor (110) #75-203-15 from ELFA IR Laser (2) [ READ MORE ]

Day 87

  • March 17th, 2010
  • Posted in Diary

The pieces are coming together… so I will now take a break! Well, not really. I will take a break from the research and attempt to use the Kicad schematic software to document the electronics schematic for the TRKBRD. I am putting together full documentation of the TRKBRD design for the Computer Science professor in [ READ MORE ]

What I’ve Learned #3: Prototyping Matrix

I learned this advice the hard way: by failing twice. At the end of my first year of the 2 year Masters program, I had 2 projects due at the same time. One project was for my final Interaction Design course, and the other was for my FashionTechnology course. And unlucky for me, I decided [ READ MORE ]

Research Visualization Alpha

  • March 15th, 2010
  • Posted in Diary

At this point I have read many research articles, and processed 12 of them into the blog to visualization what I’ve learned from each one. Each article is summarized, tagged for the tag cloud, and the thoughts each one provoked are summarized too. But now what? The scientific side of me curiously wants to organize [ READ MORE ]

THIS THESIS TOOK 254 DAYS