Task: A non-verbal, gestural interface for a display-less mp3 player
Research Method: Scenarios and Personas
Subject: bodies in social relation
Create a gestural interface for operating a display-less ipod-shuffle-style mp3 player. I'm defining gestures here as any non-verbal input that is neither key/button nor mouse-based,
You should design gestures for each component of standard operation:
- play
- stop
- next track
- previous track
- volume up
- volume down
- mute / unmute
Design your set of gestures to be used with or without any object - ie, it can be while you're holding something or without any object reference at all.
You don't have to figure out how to make it work - imagine there are sensors for anything. All parts of the body are game.
Consider your set of motions as:
- easily identifiable and distinct from one another
- either exaggerated or obvious, but choose one for a reason
- either closely connected to one another in an intuitive way, or NOT, but choose one strategy for a reason
- recognizable or not
Once you've designed your set, create a series of pictograms using digital photos and drawing or vector graphics. Assemble these into a Powerpoint presentation for use in class.
Lastly, use Scenarios and Personas to prototype and evaluate your design. Imagine at least four different actors in four different settings engaged in four different specific tasks. (At least one of your scenarios should involve playback of the device without headphones, with speakers, for another to hear.) Draft them up and talk them through with your crew. Be prepared to present one slide for each scenario, and discuss with the class how your design changes for each scenario.
On Scenarios and Personas:
- A good explanation from another class here
- A more academic introduction of the method here from an influential Apple designer
- Some examples here
- here's an article that gets more into the theatrical/stage techniques involved in this. (You'll need to access it from on campus.)
On Bodily Social Interaction:
Edward T. Hall's The Silent Language is a central study of non-verbal communication. Hall breaks down non-verbal communication into some useful categories that may help you in your conversations. He also talks a lot about proxemics, or how space functions as communication.
- summary of the book here (check the first four pages is all)
- a helpful outline of some of Hall's principles here
Sociologist Erving Goffman also contributed a great deal to our understanding of non-verbal communication. You can catch a sense of it from the wikipedia entries for:
- Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (his most famous book)
- symbolic interactionism
- dramaturgy as a sociological understanding
You might also have a look at this video, wherein an autistic woman explains her unorthodox ways of interacting with the world, and how her modes of interaction affect how people see her and communicate with her.
On Gestural input and computing:
News item: Japanese gadget controls iPod in blink of an eye
Georgia Tech's Tongue Computing Project
G-Speak, a Minority-Report type interface
g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.
U of I Professor Lisa Nakamura has a great take on the iphone and gestural computing's allure. Watch the video here.
Though this example isn't display-less , it's an interesting recent iteration in gestural input:
Gestural computing doesn't have to be about the hands, it can be about the body's location in space. Check out some of these New Media art projects for examples of how the body's location in space, and in relation to others, can serve as an input device.
David Rokeby's Very Nervous System was a very influential early example of this.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has made a series of works that track the body's location in a room as an input device. Check out some videos here:
Homographies
Subtitled Public
Standards and Double Standards
Also, lately he's been using the heartbeat as an input device.