My final 4-in-4 project was originally going to be “Plan Trip to SXSW” – including buying plane tickets and book a hotel – but not quite enough people seemed like they were ready to commit yet (props to Liesje for being decisive).
It was during this realization that I went to post my finished blog entry for the M[]leskines, and noticed that DreamHost was down. I spent a while trying to diagnose the problem (before they finally posted a proper status update) and researching other web hosts.
Somewhat simultaneously I received another flurry of random Twitter followers, and, since I hadn’t looked at my feed in days, decided that organizing them was more urgent, and made that my project. There’s a blog post that will come soon about some UI design thoughts that were crystalized by this project, but I don’t have time to finish it now.
I went through the 107 people I was following on Twitter, and copied their user names and real names (if specified) into one of five txt files based on my relation to them (click for full size) –
Those groups are Friends, ITP, Networking, Unknown, and Bots. I then used those lists to create groups using the functionality in TweetDeck, and now my Tweets are sorted (see rotated image below, or click for a horizontal version). This should make it easier to keep up with the groups which are most important and look through the less important feeds when I have time. I’ll keep both sets of lists up to date as I follow more people. It was a small project, and not as creative as I would have liked, but it needed to happen anyway and my day didn’t quite go as expected.
I was in NYC for a couple of weeks during the summer of 2006 after I finished the Career Discovery Program in architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and I went to see the exhibit of the work of architect Zaha Hadid at the Guggenheim. I enjoyed exploring the variety of her built and unbuilt design work, but it was her sketchbooks that made the most lasting impression (image by Ivar Hagendoorn, same books different exhibit) –
If you look carefully, you’ll notice that a rectangular piece has been cut out of each page so that a pen can be stored inside when the book is closed. I had started to use a Moleskine notebook during the program at Harvard, and when I finished my first one I cut my second one like Zaha’s using a ruler and an X-Acto knife. That particular brand of notebooks is relatively popular and often recognized, but I think the reputation is deserved, as they are quite durable. I carry them everywhere, and with some black electric tape on the binding they will last more than six months.
I was shopping for architecture supplies at Accent Arts in Palo Alto, and noticed a short black lead-holder style pencil that looked like it would fit horizontally across the top of a notebook rather than vertically next to the spine. I compared it to one they had in stock, and it fit perfectly. My notebooks since then have all had a whole cut out at the top, and I’m currently on my eighth.
In addition to the pencil, Gabriela gave me a fountain pen that fits nicely, and I’ve been using Pilot G2 Mini‘s more recently for their simplicity and reliability.
It takes an hour or two to cut each notebook, and I decided to try getting them laser cut. I took one to Canal Plastics, and talked to Raymond, with whom I had worked to get pieces of acrylic laser cut for architecture models at Kevin Kennon Architect. Both covers of the notebooks bend back, allowing for a cut straight through all of the pages, and he agreed to give it a try.
The experiment was a success, so I ordered ten more moleskines from Amazon. I had planned my third 4-in-4 project to be to set up a store on Etsy on which I could sell the lasercut Moleskines.
He agreed to cut those too, but had some trouble with burning on one of them, and didn’t want to cut any more. I cleaned off the ash –
- and will probably give a few to the friends that have requested them (Dan, Kabir, Jorge, Cassidy) and save the rest for later. It’s a somewhat scaled back third project, but my second one was pretty ambitious, so I’m satisfied.
Update on December 18, 2011: There is a similar notebook made by Suck UK for sale here and here, as well as this one made by Düller and Dietrich Lubs for sale here. I still like mine better though :)
My final project for my first ITP class involved the automated manipulation of time to improve a user’s behavior in coordinating with other people. People are often late, and in an effort to make themselves less late they set their watches and clocks fast. This causes people to think that they have less time than they actually do, and as a result they hurry more and are less late, which is theoretically good for everyone.
This approach is imperfect, however, because the person who set his/her clock fast would know how fast it was and would account for that adjustment in subconscious judgments of how much time they had to complete the given task. The alternative method of “closing your eyes and holding down the button” is still imperfect, since the offset is then random and not necessarily useful. People are also not always in a hurry, and a fast clock in those situations can be inconvenient. Finally, the delusion about the actual time becomes even more fragile when other clocks are involved that either display the correct time or were randomly set to a different incorrect time.
The goal of my project was to prototype an immersive and dynamic delusion about time. I would use the XBee radios to synchronize the time between multiple devices, and Arduinos would interface with the XBees and handle displaying that time. I would use a sensor on a watch device to gauge the user’s stress level – measures of galvanic skin response, heart rate, speed of motion, and watch-checking-motions were considered. Then each device in the network would then offset its own current time by an amount that was a function of the user’s stress level. (Note there is an alternative possibility of slowing down time as the user got more stressed in an effort to calm him/her down. Both this laid-back and the other approach have interesting psychological consequences, but the fundamental techincal details are the same.)
Thus, as the user got more stressed, time would speed up, the user would hurry more, become more efficient, and would be less late. As the user calmed down again, the offset would slowly return to zero and the time would return to its accurate setting. (The function calculating the offset would approach a limit to prevent the problem of a positive feedback loop.) Changes would be gradual enough to go unnoticed by the occasional observer, and thus the user would act as if the time displayed on the devices was correct.
I made substantial progress in the implementation of this device network. I hacked a digital watch so that it was possible to set its time from an Arduino by rapidly sending high voltage pulses to the button contacts in the same pattern as a person would use to set the watch. I configured a serial LCD screen to receive and display a time and date (in the same manner as an alarm clock) and keep its own internal count of the time. My computer was then able to send out a time and date to the other two devices, and they would then set their own times to be (roughly) in sync with the computer. After the initial times were set, the watch could then instruct the LCD to change its time by a specified offset (I ran into difficulties setting the System Time in Mac OS X using Processing, but it would work in theory) corresponding to a users stress level. Accurate gauging of an individual’s stress level is a project in and of itself (including calibration for each person), so a simple push button was used as a placeholder for that signal.
Additional work on the project could include multiple types of devices (how would one accurately set an analog wall clock without being able to see the hands) and the introduction of multiple users into the system (what’s a clock to do if one person in the room is stressed, and the other is not).
Following are the slides that I used for my in-class presentation, a demo video of the entire project, a demo video of only the watch component, and several images.
