Week-10

Summative Feedback RPO

There were a lot of areas in my research and its presentation that needed work, starting with restructuring the three pillars. Although what is bothering me the most is the research objective, that I have not figured out yet. But the research seems to have taken a good turn. I feel like I am able to identify the depth of each pillar.

The pre-mortem exercise

While I was focused a bit more on the dissertation, I was also worried about the outcome and the process leading to it. So first I did the pre-mortem activity:

I wanted to do Hardware, which is - exploring with Arduino. I had an image of a pop-up book in my mind. But when I was looking at the servo motors and the sensors it did bring up a question in my mind - “How am I gonna structure it to be in a book?” I know that I will find the answer as I experiment however something still didn’t fit and I was now suddenly not able to imagine a final outcome.

If my project fell apart what could be the causes:

1. Lack of basic knowledge in Arduino
2. Lack of planning
3. Lack of experimenting before proceeding to build the final outcome
4. Could not integrate physical computing with paper craft because did not consider certain factors like material volume against the volume of the arduino tools.
5. Could turn out to be a really heavy book
6. Did not explore more possibilities of integrating physical computing with paper craft
7. Just jumped from one tutorials to another without bearing any basic knowledge of the tools used, hence could not respond well to any technical challenges I faced
8. Lost patience :,)

After doing this activity, I was thinking that maybe I specifically decided what my final outcome could look like without exploring and experimenting first. And also to not be so stuck on a ‘totally non-digital’ outcome. Maybe I should open my mind about what my final outcome could look like and experiment more and will be able to figure things out as I progress.

The double diamond approach

Initially I started exploring with paper circuits, but I faced a lot of connectivity issues with it, which maybe could be fixed but I also want to explore with sensors to insert interactivity in my narratives. Which is why I wanted to use Arduino. First when I got confused with structuring my outcome to be a pop-up book, I thought I wanted to explore some other technology but I realised that arduino is one of the best tools to insert interactivity so I should maybe focus on exploring arduino.

So what I really need is to have a fixed technology to explore but to keep my mind open to different possibilities of the final outcome. So I planned my activities according to the double diamond:

Discover (week 11 and 12)

Arduino
1. Research and plan some basic activities that aid in understanding how arduino works
2. Make short notes on all the tools used and its function (it will help in case I face any technical challenges)
3. For each activity performed, with the assistance of ChatGPT, explore different ways of using the same combination of tools
4. A pre-mortem activity to identify other challenges that could be faced while using arduino.

Papercraft
1. Experiment with different tutorials about paper engineering
2. Understand how and why it works
Intent - to understand how arduino functions and bear basic knowledge of each tool and also be able to have better knowledge of papercraft.

Define (week 13 and 14)

1. Research and experiment ways of how arduino acts when integrated with papercraft (doesn't have to be narratives)
2. Explore the different materials of craft that could be used with arduino.
3. Explore with how arduino and craft could be placed together to form a presentable artefact.
Intent - to explore how papercraft and arduino work together and how they can be placed together to form a presentable artefact.

Develop (week 15 and 16)

1. Explore arduino and paper craft with narratives.
2. Use sketching as a way to identify how symbolism could be used to communicate a narrative
3. Then make physical samples of way that they could be made interactive
Intent - To explore and experiment in terms of the final outcome.

Feedback

It seems that I am overthinking a bit and I don’t have to completely think about the outcomes right now, nor do I have to make it so complicated. But I do need to start experimenting. So Andreas gave me two activities to do till thursday:

1. Arduino, button, LED and a pop-up poster
2. Arduino, button, poster, control animation in p5js (how three buttons can create animation in screen)

I have to use the tools mentioned above to make moving posters of the narratives I wish to portray via the artefact. If I think about making a book, it can get a bit complex for me so first I should start with a poster.

One thing I have decided is that it would be digital illustration printed on paper, and first I will identify how to simply explore the tools and then see how I can iterate.