Right after the previous one, yet another blogpost! Some of our team members gave away their rest and sleep and worked all weekend on the veneer skins that give Modii that special look. We present to you.. Modii!! (at least the non-interactive Modii)
Hello, this is your buddy Daan for a quick Modii update. You probably wonder what we’ve been up to these days. I’ll show you with the help of these photos.
You can find our photos on our Flickr acount
so we’ve made a little trailer video for KUDA, feast you’re eyes!
This is the fabrication of Modii
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UECm7gobiI4
Video made by Thijs van der Lely
On Wednesday the 11th of January we performed the first user test of our interactive installation. Unfortunately we did not quite hit the deadline for having a finished (or at least bare bones) installation that worked in a representative way. Instead we used a processing mock-up of our interaction station to control the flow of the liquid through our tubing on KUDA. The test subjects, who were at times very descriptive in their feedback and others extremely vague, were all peers from another minor programme. Using post-its to write down critique on four different aspects of the installation, (“form,social aspect, meaning and interaction”) a number of interesting points were raised:
FORM: Some people found the space inside the installation easy to walk in, they like the fact that it had outside and inside viewing angles. The white white rings were found to be subtle yet clinical, some links to hospital apparats were proposed.Others were intrigued by the organic properties and compared it to an alien plant or tree. We had some comments on the fact that you could stare at it for long periods of time and be entertained. Some people didnt like randomness of nets, and were expecting more of a pattern. A recurring remark was on the lack of real entrance, a problem we foresaw.
SOCIAL ASPECT: Some users commented on the clear tubes and how they enabled you to actually see other users users, they recognised that people are brought to a meeting point where two “fluid messages” meet as you are following it. They thought it was fun to make (personal) patterns. Others did not see how social interactivity would be triggered at all.
MEANING: many different guesses, but most were too vague and general. Lots of “wow”s and “fascinating”s, also many references to organisms and nature. However the actual meaning that we intended was not entirely conveyed.
INTERACTION: This part was tricky because the interface wasn’t fully functional, we got numerous comments on this. Other remarks were quite varied. People found the shape of the touchpads appealing and inviting. One person suggested use of a webcam for added fun. Some people imagined the fun you could have cooperating to fill up the net with color entirely, Others simply complained about the sound of the motors. A single person did not understand where the interaction should take place, however this was probably due tue the lack of blinking lights in the touchpads.
And finally a small video of how the day went !
As we had some questions about how things work within the inflatable, we decided to put it to the test and step into the inflatable to see how it works with our own eyes. An interesting – and most of all fun – experiment that we of course wanted to share through a video.
The main question we had was about the telescope within the inflatable. We were wondering if it was either too short or too heavy to go all the way up to the point of the object. Our conclusion is that there is too much friction in the lowest two parts of the telescope, which makes it too heavy for the inflatable to carry it all the way up.
Check out our final presentation of this year about Modii – Interactive modular doorway.
For now, this is the best solution, just download the wetransfer file. We’re working on a way to get all the slides visible on this blog.
Merry X-mas
&
Happy NY
If you need us, we’ll be at the Science Center.
Check out our presentation from December 23rd!
Yesterday all three groups presented their final prototype. In advance to this presentation we had set a deadline for a user test so we could present the results. Although we had to delay the user test by one day, thanks to some inexplicable electrical problems, we were able to conduct the test one day before the presentation.
Above you can see the setup we tested past Thursday. The boxes were made out of CNC milled wood. Made @ Hyperdody.
The fabric was cut using a CNC Fabric Cutter @ Zeil-Doek BV. It took us two days to sow all the fabric together into 7 inflatables: 6 + 1 Spare. Counting one hand cut from earlier testing we right now have 8 inflatables. We are gonna look into using the 2 extra ones to use in the final installation, in order to give us some more toys to play with.
With the inflatables in one piece it was time to get all the components together to make it all work. This turned out to be a very tedious nightmare. It took us two full days to figure out what was wrong. It’s still not quite clear what made it work in the end, but at least it did.
Final checking on Wednesday. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
At last on Thursday we could conduct our user test. The two video’s below show some footage of that day. It was extremely gratifying to see the installation in a somewhat completed form.
Interactive Architecture in The Why Factory
Aeolus Inflatable Environment Usertest 2
The User test gave us quite a few indications of how to further improve the design:
Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!
