Location/Environment Project Evaluation

The brief for this project was to ‘design and present your ideas and working prototype for an interactive kiosk/advertising with AV content’. This was a group project and would be worked on in pairs. Keywords - reactive, site-specific, physical interface.

The idea for the project was to create something innovative and creative to be set in art gallery cafes. The kiosk would be a large screen mounted in a specifically designed table with different phidgets built in such as a slider, a vibration sensor, and a touch sensor. Each phidget would activate a different animation and a joystick would give the user the ability to draw on the screen (see design boards).

Throughout the project an online journal would record thought processes, research, design ideas and notes (see online journal entries). This would help record each stage of the project and keep it on track.

To create a prototype of the interactive kiosk Adobe Flash CS3 with Actionscript 3.0 was used along with a Phidget interface kit. The project was challenging as it involved using unfamiliar software and technology. There were many problems testing the kiosk prototype, as the university computers were often not connecting to the ‘local host’ needed to use the phidgets. This made the project frustrating and slow. The scripting was difficult as tutorials involving phidget interface kits were tough to find, although seminar sessions were extremely helpful.

Towards the end of the project it was decided to only use the two main phidgets, the joystick and the vibration sensor. It was agreed that this would be the best action to take due to time constraints as it would be better to have two phidgets that worked well and without problems rather than struggling on with all four and possibly ending up with none working. This was a disappointing step to take but a necessary one.

The scheduling in this project was not up to standard, which, in turn, made the work difficult to plan out and divide up between the pair. In future it would be a better idea to carry out more research into what creating the prototype would entail, so that preparation and scheduling could be more detailed and exact. If it had been known prior to starting the action script work just how difficult it would be, more time would have been allowed which would mean the project would not have been compromised and changed at the last minute.

In this project, feedback from seminar and tutorial sessions were extremely beneficial to the idea and design process. This is important in any work or project as without feedback no one can be sure how well he or she is doing in context. Research is a key starting point to any project and it must be thorough or it will prove to be useless later in the task. As always, a time plan is crucial to success. It helps to keep work on track and on schedule, without it the project will end up lost with no plan of where to go next. It is important to learn from both the positive and negative aspects in this assignment in order to progress in the future.

Project Update

Camilla and me have been struggling grasping the actionscript for our interactive kiosk over the past couple of weeks. We have been using tutorials found online and the help of David Downes. In the last few days we seem to have gained more understanding and things have finally started to come together. Due to our underestimation of how complicated the scripting part of the project would be we have decided to further simplify our kiosk. We are now only using two phidgets, the joystick which acts as a drawing tool for the user, and the vibration sensor which activates an animation. After careful consideration we decided this would be for the best as we would rather have two interactive elements that work really well rather than 4 phidgets that don't work at all. We have drawn up our design boards of what we had hoped to do and what the finished product would be like. This will give the tutors a better understanding of what we would have achieved given more time and if we had planned things out better. This may be a project I would like to try and take further in my own time so I can continue to gain knowledge of actionscript and the use of phidgets.

Useful Tutorials

http://www.flashandmath.com/index.html

This website has some really useful tutorials for using Flash AS3

http://www.flashandmath.com/basic/mousedraw/index.html

http://www.flashandmath.com/basic/colors/index.html

These two in particular will come in useful for Camilla and I when writing the script for our interactive kiosk.

Tutorial Feedback & Project Update

In our tutorial yesterday with Roma, Camilla and I discussed our idea for our interactive kiosk. We got some useful feedback from our tutor group and have adjusted our idea slightly. We have decided to limit the number of phidgets and animations in our kiosk, by doing this we will be able to make a each animation more interactive and therefore make a more successful and appealing kiosk.

We are planning to use 3 or 4 phidgets in our interactive kiosk. A joystick which we will hopefully be able to make into a simple drawing tool for the user so they can create their own image over the animations they have activated using the other sensors. We are not sure how feasible this idea is and need to carry out further research to find out if it is possible and also how complex it would be to create. A vibration sensor will activate an animation on the screen which will vibrate and move around with more velocity the more the sensor is made to vibrate, again this is an idea that we need to look into further as we do not know if we have the knowledge in actionscript to make it happen. The third sensor will be a slider which when activated will change the background colour from light to dark.

When all the sensors are activated the user will have interesting visuals to view which they have helped to create by using the joystick to create their own image over the background shade they have chosen and the animation they have activated.

If all goes well and the kiosk works with these phidgets and effects we would like to add one last phidget. This would be a touch button which would take a snapshot of the image the user has created. When this kiosk is in place in an art gallery cafe or bar the user would be able to print this snapshot image to postcard or business card size. They would collect this card from the bar for a small fee. On one side of the card would be the image and on the other would be some basic information for the gallery such as gallery name, address, phone number and website address. This would work well as advertising for the gallery and with a small charge for the printoff the gallery can also make a small profit.

Word Animation Idea 3

Word Animation Idea 2

Line Animation Idea

or go to http://www.swfup.com/uploads/swf-132733.swf

Word Animation Idea

View my SWF file
or go to http://www.swfup.com/uploads/swf-132709.swf to view

Short Animation

View my SWF file
or go to http://www.swfup.com/file/131000

This is a short animation I have worked on which would appear in response to a phidget on our interactive kiosk. It is like the previous post but I have expanded on it to make it more intereseting.

An example of one of the simple animations

View my SWF file
Or go to http://www.swfup.com/file/129247

The Idea

Today Camilla and I had a mass brainstorming session over giant mugs of tea. After sitting in silence for a while with no inspiration we finally came up with the idea. We decided the industry sector we wanted to design for would be cultural/entertainment more specifically, art galleries. We want to create something for an art gallery's cafe or bar rather that in the exhibits. Cafes are usually quite bland, although they make the effort with avant-garde furniture the overall effect is often clinical and unwelcoming.

Our idea is to create something innovative, creative and most importantly entertaining to be set in these cafes. We want to use a range of phidgets in our design including touch sensors, vibration sensors, sliders, a joystick and a light sensor. The idea is to have a screen mounted in a table with the phidgets lined up below the screen. Each phidget will create a different effect of moving images on the screen, by playing around with the phidgets and using them in different orders the animation on the screen will change as the different images overlap.

We will create the animations and the links to the phidgets using actionscript 3.0 in Flash. As neither Camilla or myself are experts in using actionscript this idea will work quite well, it gives us the flexibility we need if we come across problems with actionscript. We will start by creating very simple animations in Flash which will allow us to start on the scripting quickly, as we become more confident with the actionscript we can expand our animations to become more complex. By doing the project this way we are giving ourselves the freedom to leave the animations simple if our scripting work causes us problems.

Interactive Advertising

www.nike.com

The nike website has great interactivity, you can customize the sportswear, get inspired by other people's choices and create your own personalised look. I had fun on this website and if I had the money i certainly would have been tempted to buy the outfits I had created.



www.miniusa.com

The mini website has games the user can play, it's great way to get people talking about the brand of mini which in turn gets people taking about the cars. The games are just a bit of fun and don't really need to be on the website but it adds a different interactive side to the website ad keeps the user interested. These games could be played on a big screen at a launch of a new car as part of an advertising campaign.

Videos of Interactive Kiosks

Outdoor Interactive Kiosk


DEMO of APRIL KIOSK Edition - Effects of Smoking


kiosk system "head over heels"


Videos found at www.YouTube.com search Interactive Kiosk

Interactive Kiosks cont.

These are just a few examples of interactive kiosks that have been personalised and altered to fit their purpose in the chosen area of interactivity.

http://www.scream.co.uk/information-kiosks.htm

Interactive kiosks are used for many different purposes, including advertising, information, and art work. A kiosk can be a good way to get people involved with a product or a piece of art as the user is in control of whether they use the kiosk, want to use it for, and what information they take away from the kiosk.

These kiosks are far more commonly seen nowadays from supermarkets and shopping centres, to art galleries and launch parties for products. Many kiosks are not interactive but are just screens which are used to display information, but even these are an effective and innovative way of advertising in shop windows. An example of these advertising screens can be seen in any woolworths store where they have many screen displaying JML adverts to explain and demonstrate the use of a variety of products. These screens attract customers to stop and watch which makes them slightly interactive as the consumer feels they have been told about the product fully which, in turn, helps them make an informed decision on whether to purchase or not.

Interactive kiosks

Touch4 is a UK company that designs, manufactures and builds interactive. These kiosks can be used for many purposes and a popular use is information kiosks in shopping centres.



Here is an example of a typical basic interactive kiosk with an attached keyboard, at the website below you can view more and see the specifications of each model.

http://www.touch4.com/kiosks_touch_screens/index.html

Some more examples of interactivity

Interactive Floor and Interactive Wall @ Innovation Expo 05

I like these examples of interactivity, i think the wall is really innovative how it reacts to the shadow of a persons movement.