“Those who mistrust the machine and those who glorify it show the same incapacity to utilize it. Machine work and mass production offer unheard-of possibilities for creation, and those who are able to place these possibilities at the service of a daring imagination will be my creators of tomorrow.”
Guy Debord[1]McDonough, Tom, ed. 2004. Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. [pdf]
For your final projects, you are asked to explore building interactive interfaces/systems as a form of critical inquiry. As information technologies become ever more part of our daily lives – shaping the way we experience our work, play, relationships, etc – what responsibilities do technological designers and developers have to the people they are supposedly designing and developing for? What tensions and opportunities arise when fields of computer science and human-computer interaction come into contact with traditionally nontechnical disciplines such as art, design, and cultural studies. For your final projects you are asked to consider these questions and embed that reflection and critique into your interactive artefact/system. Ask yourself (as Sengers, et al do) “what values, attitudes and ways of looking at the world are we unconsciously building into our technology, and what are their effects?” Thus you will not only create a coherent interactive experience that involves the Arduino communicating with another device (computer, another Arduino, MIDI instrument, etc.). But more importantly, you will do so via a process that is based on principles of critical reflection on technology and reflective design strategies (e.g. ambiguity). The design and final construction of you interactive system or interface should reflect this.
This approach actually presents significant technical and problem-solving challenges. On a purely technical level, your interface/system should demonstrate that you understand digital and analog I/O on an Arduino, serial communication, etc. On a design and experience level, your project should be engaging and/or thought provoking by encouraging user reflection and providing for “interpretive flexibility” (e.g. via the introduction and encouragement of ambiguity as a resource and not as a factor to be eliminated). And on a conceptual level, your project should address some social-cultural theme (e.g. privacy, relationships, pollution, student debt, mental illness, disabilities, etc). Ideally this will be an engaging project that uses sensors, serial communication and some sort of visual, textual and/or sonic output on a digital computer (e.g. via Processing) that communicates meaning in addition to some functionality. Implementing this requires technical as well as “soft” skills (just like in the “real world” of interface design and development).
A good place to start might be to extend your Homework 4.
Your Final Project should include mock-ups of your design (diagrams, circuit schematics, sketches, illustrations, etc), photos and/or video of the final project actually working and being used and a description of the critical perspective you took and how you used your chosen design strategies to enhance user engagement and reflection. For the final project, circuit schematics are required.
* Note that you are not being asked to use technology to make an overt political statement (e.g. Bernie 2020!) but rather critique and examine the assumptions and prevailing modes of thinking in technological design and development (e.g. something as simple as considering users emotional response to a game or VR interface as opposed to simply considering its functionality). In addition, although critical reflection as a guiding principle can be applied in any aspect of technological design, to help you focus, you should keep your project ideas in line with the course theme: Physical computing and Alternative Interfaces. Thus you could for example make an alternative interface to a game that explores workplace sexual harassment where a touch/tactile interface explores appropriate and inappropriate touching by bosses and coworkers – with the game content reacting to different types of touching, squeezing, etc. You don’t have to build a full game but your interface prototype should clearly demonstrate how it would influence game content.
Assignment submission is through myCourses.
Examples
Zapped! (RFID technology)
Autonomy Cube (Tor network relay)
The Art of the Eco-mindshift (environmental health)
Acclair Art Valuation Service (brainwaves)
Slow Game (… a slow game!)
Anne-Marie Schleiner (serious games/critical design)
Darkgame (sensory deprivation game)
Umbrella.net (ad-hoc network umbrellas)
ImageNet Roulette (machine learning/facial recognition)
Sentient City Survival Kit (privacy/surveillance)
Swipe (data privacy)
Technological disobedience: Cuba’s amateur inventors create without resources