laikyle

Lab 1:
The Sony Walkman and the Apple iPod are both potable music players. The walkman is the older device that requires a magnetic cassette tape to play music. The iPod is the newer device and it has built-in memory that can store and play mp3 music. The Walkman has a mechanical interface, which requires its user to press on an actual button to input commands, for example, play, pause or rewind. The iPod added the circle scroll and a color LCD monitor. The iPod also has the function of watching videos, play games and take photos. The iPod should have better sound quality because iPod plays digital copy of a song, which uses a perfect copy of the original song so that each copy’s quality would not be damage. However, the Walkman uses the magnetic cassette to record music, and the copy is not as good as the original live play. The quality of a magnetic cassette is more likely to wear down gradually as well. We can see how portable music players evolve over the years. A portable music player is more diverse with a lot more different functions. Some of these functions are not even music related, for example taking photos.

Lab 2:
Q1-

__Shelter:__ The Mad Housers Hut provides not only a safe shelter for sleep and storage, but also a place to cook. It is also easy to build, so they are good for emergency use, for example in a earthquake or hurricane, where disaster could strike any time.

__Health:__ Most of the water sources in developing countries are usually unfiltered and unclean. Drinking of these water could cause diseases. LifeStraw is a convenient solution to this problem, as the straw can filter unsafe water and make it drinkable.

__Water:__ Water is needed in not only consumption but also in agriculture. And agriculture needs water everyday to fertilize the field. But it does not rain everyday and water storage is important. The Bamboo Treadle Pump is made of cheap bamboos and uses underground water to fertilize the field. A low cost construction with large profit return.

__Education:__ Although food, water and shelter give everything a person needs, that person is still not independent. Only through education can people provide themselves what they need and be dependent. The One Laptop Per Child is a plan that provides all children a laptop. The laptop consist of educating programs, and also mesh networking so that machines can share networks.

__Energy:__ Solar power is the cleanest and most accessible power. StarSight uses solar power to provide light but also wireless network and telephone grids.

__Transportation:__ Even though there are clean water source, delivering the water to the village is a problem. The water pipe are not well constructed in developing countries, but water is an essential element in everyday life. The Q drum is a round water container that carries the adequate amount of water, not too heavy or too light.​

Q2- We have to learn from our own experience, and design things that are better then what we have. We also should give these technologies to developing countries so that they will be independent from us, but not rely on us. Keep the design interface simple and easy to use.

Q3- - Sustainability: Could be used in the long future - Economical: Affordable by the public, not only design for rich minority - Usable: User friendly interface, do not require much skill or knowledge to use - Accessible: The technology can be used by all people, including different language or the handicapped - Improvable: In case the technology gets old, they should be improvable, this make the technology more sustainable

Personal Inspiration Narative
Television remotes might be considered one of the worst designs on earth. People always moan about how there are too many useless buttons, unclear function of the buttons or there are no response pressing these buttons. However useless they are, television remotes taught me logic back when I was a kid. The first television remote that I had was a simple one, where you have all the basic buttons: a button for turning on the television, the numbers for switching channels, two pairs of up and down arrows for switching channels and the volume, and a few other buttons that I don’t know what they’re there for. During advertisement, I would always play around with the remote like switching channels. The basic buttons were easy to understand, but there were still some buttons that I have never touched before, because I was afraid that I would break the television if I pressed something wrong. But the more I watched television, the more I started to learn about the remote, either by hitting some buttons accidentally or simply out of curiosity. Like the mute button. The first time I pressed the mute button I thought that I screwed up the television. I then pressed the “volume up” button; the volume indicator on the screen went up from zero, the volume recovered, and I relieved. Later on, I learned that you could bring back the volume by pressing the mute button again, and it would bring back the same volume the moment you muted it. These seemed to be common sense, but it was like discovering America for me as a kid. There is a different between pressing “volume up” and mute after muting. Pressing “volume up” raises the volume from zero, while pressing mute recovers the original volume. The first function is useful when, for example, switching to another channel, the volume of that channel is extremely loud, the viewer mutes the volume, and then reset the volume from the lowest volume. The second case is useful when, for example, the viewer wants to talk on the phone, and just mute the television for a while. Neither these functions are extremely useful nor very intelligent; however, the process of me discovering this difference is important for me. Whether I understood the reason of having this difference or not when I was a kid, it allowed me to understand the logic behind the design of the remote control. It encouraged me to go discover other hidden differences in the remote control, or other special functions of it. It’s all the small details in all different designs that make big difference. I became good at using the remote control, and understood most of the functions of it. Later on when my family changes television, the first thing I do is to play around with the remote control, study what’s the new function of the remote, until I master most of the function of the remote. This tradition carries on for all the new technologies that I see. Whenever I see for example, a new cell phone or maybe new computer, I started testing out all the function and see if the work well or not.

Lab 4
Extraction: Is the first step of the whole cycle. As Marx would say, humans can’t live without materials, like shelter, food or water. Extraction is the process of gathering natural resources into raw materials that can be later produce as goods. As the population grows, the demand of these goods increase, and the more we take from Mother Nature. The issues are if the earth has enough resources to sustain our needs, or if what we need is really what we need. We can not give back the nature what we have extracted, what has been done has been done and can not be undo. It takes more time to grow then to extract. Therefore, we must thing clearly before we do any destruction – are we getting enough? Are we getting what we really need?

Consumption: Is the part which we get the product. In a money economy, we do not use a product to exchange for another product, however, we use money to buy commodity. We earn money from selling our own labor power. And we use the money we get to buy things that are necessary. However, people start spending on stuffs that we don’t need, like switching a LCD television to a plasma television, even though the LCD television works fine. A part of it is to show your social status, while the part is because of the influence of the media.

Disposal: Since we have made so much unnecessary product, we have to find a way to dump them. Dumping these products create air or water product. They also take away space to store them, and more resources to bury them. These trash all contribute to global warming.

Lab 7
Definition of physical computing: Physical Computing means using technologies that is embedded in the physical objects itself, and it requires the user to interact with the object physically in order to use it.

According to Hiroshi Ishii, it is to give a tangible form of representation of both computation and information but also at the same time, the object serves as a control mechanism.

And since it is hard to manipulate the form of the physical object, physical computing nowadays are usually used with projector or music, so that it seems more realistic.

An example from the six sense project is that gathering information from the book without going to the internet and search the book, but by just looking at the book, there's information embadded in it, and there's some kind of a sensor to load data of that book.

d.tools: He has to begin with setting the limits of the threshold of the accelerometer by tilting it. He can review and test the accelerometer using the PC to show.

Build a prototype of the accelerometer, and then test out the accelerometer. The testings are recorded, and these clips are later analyze, finding out which are some of the most frequent action of the user

Exemplar: First of, the designer uses a accelerometer to record the action of tilting, and test the behaviour of the action by do it himself. So that he can tell what motion is equal to what outcome from the computer.

He then uses these data to generate hardware out put. For example, if the computer recieves data from the accelerometer that it is tilting left, the left light would turn on. He also has to refine, which means to set a clear value to what is left or right.

Lab 8
1. The New Plumage: I liked it because I think be using this technology we can reduce the energy consumption but at the same time create an even a higher quality of pictures.

2. Leaving no trace: This techology would keep the streets clean and at the same time reduce a lot of cleaning work. Keeping the streets hygiene also meant that there will be a less chance of spreading an epidemic disease.

3. Scrubbing Bubbles: Is really making use of the "useless" stuff, and turn it to something useful. This would improve the sustainibility by making our enemies our friends.

4. Skeleton Key: This technology maximizes the power of materials by aligning them in a specific way that is similar to our bones. This way, with very little resource, we can do a whole lot more.

The nature has learnt it's way to survive in and with the earth for such a long period of time. Not only do they take stuff away from the earth, but at the same time, they give it back.

They programmed themselves in a way that they became a part of the earth, as a function, so that not only they need the earth, but at the same time, the earth needs them, and they became interdependent.

Humans on the other hand, are although naturally gifted with their power to construct and harness, has not learnt how to cope with the land the live on. We should take merits from the nature world, absorb it and combine with our natural talent, so that we can be accepted totally by the natuaral world.

Lab 9
Service design is the combination "design of methods from product design and interaction design for designing the experience of and the interface to service."

It is very important nowadays because most of the products today combines with services, and it is the overall experience that is important to the customers. Which means that failing to provide good service to customers equals to failing to give customers good experience.

Service design is about making your service more usable, useful and desirable for the customers and also providing your service more efficient, effective and valuable, which should finally result in a good experience for the customers, but also a better service.

The method of doing a service design begins with listing all the possible service elements, and divide them into frontstage - which are actions and events that occurs during the interaction with the customers; and the backstage - which are action and events the are not seen by the customers. Then reveal the needs of the customers, prototype the best service possible then run and test them under different scenarios to see if they work or not.

Some of the benefits of service design is that the work rate will go up, since you have redesign some of the work processes. This will also result in reducing some of the cost, because some of the repetitive and useless processes are taken away. The ultimate goal is to satisfy your customers and to leave them a good impression, so that your brand will benefit from a good word-of-mouth for your overall product. It will also increase the chance of a customer paying for the premium service, if once they gain confidence in your company's service.