What I thought I was going to write an essay about.

For my essay, I will be researching and writing on the topic of E-Ink based technologies. (I've actually changed my mind now, but I thought posting this might be helpful anyway.)

Initially I will be looking at the Amazon Kindle, and how it is portrayed.

This advert is of a stack of books, with a Kindle resting to the side. It's simple, and effective. The kindle is the same height as the stack of books, but so much smaller. The message is easy to see - the Kindle can hold a lot of books in a small device, it's equivalent to the stack of books and more, but at a much lighter weight and much smaller size. The advert uses no text apart from that on the books and the kindle logo on the device. The advert casts the books in a slight shadow and highlights the Kindle, making it the subject of the image.

As a result, it is depicted as a good alternative to having a lot of books - carrying a small and light Kindle around is far easier, as well as providing a storage space for books if your bookshelf is already full. It is depicted as an alternative to traditional paper books. The kindle could be seen as a replacement for books, and although I think that it's a really useful piece of technology, I am fairly sure that most people will still prefer traditional books over ebooks.

Reflection

One idea behind this installation, and the idea that I think is probably one of the most useful, is to create a replacement for the screens that display train times at the train station. While I am not sure about the RFID tag idea, as it would be tricky to implement, it certainly would be a much better way to display the information than the current system.

I'm very happy with the way my little cloud weather demo turned out. It's a simple and quick way to see the weather, and one that adults and children can understand easily. It has the advantage of being useful for foreign travellers too, as it based on images rather than writing or spoken words, so it could be easily understood for someone who is just visiting and just has a travel book for translations.

The train journey map would also be useful - audio announcements at the train station are often unclear and hard to hear over the general noise of the station. Having a quick and easy referable map that can be easily understood would be advantageous.

Creation and Realisation

I've created two little videos showing what some aspects of the dome might look like. They're pretty rough around the edges and not that spectacular, but I'm hoping that they convey the idea.

While Vimeo has a nice interface and design it's pretty slow unless you want to pay. It took about fifteen minutes to convert my 10 second video clip, and cut a second off the end. Edit: Now it has cut off about half of my second video. :c I'm just going to use YouTube.



This video shows the idea of a map that would be projected onto the inside of the dome. The idea is that if someone has an RFID enabled ticket, they can view a little map showing their train's journey when the RFID signal is picked up by a monitor.



This video shows another idea for a projection inside the dome. It displays in a cute and fun way, the weather of different towns / cities in the UK. The first would be the one where you are currently, and then the rest would be for locations that trains due shortly would be traveling to.

Requirements of our Interactive Installation

Here is a list of requirements for our groups interactive installation that I have come up with.

1. The installation must utilise a dome within the internal space of the current train station without any constructional adjustments.
2. The installation must use projection as its main display method.
3. The installation must be a good source of information for the traveller.
4. The installation must be a better replacement for the screens which display the train times currently.
5. The installation must be non-obstructive - there should be no large things getting in peoples way in the middle of the train station.
6. All projection equipment should conform with requirement number 5 and if possible be wall mounted also, to further reduce any path blocking.
7. The train times information must be very clear and easy to see - it should be the main focus of the installation.
8. The installation must be visually appealing and suitable for all ages.

...

My Inspirations

I wanted my 'tattoo' to display what influences me most of all, and to show what kind of person I am. The background of my image is a section of my bookshelf, which sits at the bottom of my bed. I see it every day, and I feel it shows my interests (Japanese culture) and aesthetic tastes (how I like bright, childish, and rough designs, but also dark, elegant, and mature designs).

I adjusted the levels in the image to darken the background slightly so it did not overpower my hand. I chose to go for a handwritten and organic feel for my font. The font is called "Sunshine in my Soul". I decided to stick with one font as I wanted to give the image a uniform feel, and show how my inspirations are all interlinked as I like to mix and match styles.

The swirls on my arm are there to tie the text together. I wanted everything to be subtle, so I made all the images and text faint and in fairly neutral colours.

The text in my design is a collection of things that inspire me and make my days brighter. They are:

• Listening to music
• Playing the guitar
• Colour, texture, and pattern
• Photographs
• The Victorians and vintage items/antiques
• Japan
• Alice in Wonderland

A Little Bit About the Kindle...

For my essay, I will be researching and writing on the topic of E-Ink based technologies.

Initially I will be looking at the Amazon Kindle, and how it is portrayed.

This advert is of a stack of books, with a Kindle resting to the side. It's simple, and effective. The kindle is the same height as the stack of books, but so much smaller. The message is easy to see - the Kindle can hold a lot of books in a small device, it's equivalent to the stack of books and more, but at a much lighter weight and much smaller size. The advert uses no text apart from that on the books and the kindle logo on the device. The advert casts the books in a slight shadow and highlights the Kindle, making it the subject of the image.

As a result, it is depicted as a good alternative to having a lot of books - carrying a small and light Kindle around is far easier, as well as providing a storage space for books if your bookshelf is already full. It is depicted as an alternative to traditional paper books. The e-ink technology within the kindle provides so many more benefits over the usual way of reading e-books, on LCD screens. It's a lot gentler on your eyes, and consumes very little power. The Kindle has a battery life of over a month within optimal conditions. The kindle could be seen as a replacement for books, and although I think that it's a really useful piece of technology, I am fairly sure that most people will still prefer traditional books over e-books.

Procrastination

If I let myself talk about whatever I want this will no longer be a work blog, so I've got to make sure I don't start ranting about anything... I should probably set up another blog for the purpose of talking about which odd socks I am wearing every day and other deeply personal issues.

I'm really quite excited about making a game. It's something I've attempted to do loads of times but I've always given up because I didn't think it was good enough or just could not be bothered. This time something will get done, because I have to do it. I wish I was one of those people that have the motivation and willpower to make anything they want, but sadly I'm not one of them. This piece of coursework comes at a good time, as it was only yesterday I was thinking about what kind of cute and mildy amusing game I could make. I might do a game where you have the character bouncing from platform to platform, like the kind you have on smartphones with the built in gyroscope as the control mechanism. I'm not sure if it's for a smartphone or just the computer, but I would imagine just the computer at this stage. There's no point in trying to make a RPG or anything, considering I spent a few hours trying and failing to make a snake clone a few months ago, this should challenge me enough for now.

For one of Simon's modules I'm going to write a bit on E-Ink. In fact, I should probably do that now.

I made a few sequences of pictures which I'll animate (using flash? or a video?) tomorrow in Simon's other module, the one with the group work (train station stuff). They demonstrate how the inside of the dome would look if you let a 7 year old take control. I'll write up more about this later, because I'd like to attempt making something a bit better at a later date.

Hannah's modules coursework is writing an essay on a particular technology (there was more to this but I don't remember), past or present. I'm going for past, as it will give me an excuse to spend ages reading about Victorians, and I'll probably enjoy it! I should certainly make a start on research this week... I'm not sure which kind of technology I will research. Perhaps the printing press, or another industrial machine, or gramophone? Maybe one of the earlier wax cylinder players... I'm not even sure if they are all in the Victorian era.

I should stop writing about work I need to do now, and do some work.

This post went off topic slightly

I'm really happy with how my site has turned out thus far. It's pretty simple, but I'll add more stuff to it as I learn it. I really like the hand-drawn element to my site - although I like digital art and such, it's good to mix new with old. I think it gives it a bit more of a personal feel. And vectors tend to make everything look better, which helps. I'm starting to use illustrator more and more.

For anyone that wondered, the picture on my about page is me wearing a mask of a creeper from the game Minecraft. Minecraft is one of my favorite games at the moment, but I haven't played it in months. It's pretty addictive. And it can be really scary at times, especially with the new Halloween update. Here is a comic for your amusement.

Creepers are cute but very annoying when they blow up something you have spent wasted hours making.

Anyway back to the subject, I think I'm going to make some little pixely buttons to link to my twitter and facebook, and maybe add another page to display some of the stuff I've made. ^_^

I found the comic on this page. So I didn't make it or anything. All credit goes to the person that made it. Not me. It's not mine. Don't sue me please. :3

Ta-da!

All done. I finished my buttons, and after much faffing around got them to work. I re-did the "Home" button because I had made it bigger than the others. I made the buttons in Illustrator.

And here is a screenshot of my completed site, on the "Contact" page. Yay!

You can see it at www.christabriggs.co.uk! (b^__^)b

Pretty Much Done...

I think it's pretty much done now, I just need to check the compliancy, and I'm thinking of making some buttons to pretty it up a bit.

...

Yay! It passed the compliancy checker thing and the CSS checker thing.

The Final Countdown

As I am so clearly a fantastic organiser of my time, today is the day that my site will be completed (to the standard of the assignment at least). In my own time, I'm going to make it a lot prettier, but right now my priorities are to meet the requirements of the assignment.

In other news - yay no errors!

I spent a long time going through and removing all my " <center> "tags because I realised they were naughty. I spent a while trying to get the hang of CSS to center everything again too.

 And as I near the end of this project (for now) I realise that I really have chosen the right course. If I had done another year of my soul crushing previous degree I think I might have had to kill myself. It's funny how desperately trying to learn stuff I had no interest in triggered me to think "why not do something you actually want to do?". I'm more than £6000 in debt for a year that didn't account for anything in the end, but I'm glad I did it because otherwise I may have not realised how much I need to make pretty things, and wouldn't have chosen this course. Besides, everyone else is in debt too. I'm just a little bit more in debt than them. At least tuition fees are not £9000 a year yet.

Yay!

So far so good!

YEAHHHH

I love my site so far even if it is wonky and not completed. It makes me happy because of all the little clouds and stuff. :3 Here is a picture of it at the moment.

I love Mr Cloudses. :3

Site so far.

Here is a screenshot of my site currently. I'm trying to add the little clouds I drew to either side, and I still have a lot more to do, but I'm looking forward to having a website of my own.

Here's my background at the moment, which I made in Illustrator and Photoshop. I'm not sure if to have images or text for my links between pages at the moment, but I thought maybe I could make some small shapes as the navigation menu buttons or something like that... A banner of some kind would be good, but not sure if I will need to re-arrange my clouds or not. I guess I could have one baner in the middle? That would probably make more sense.

I'm also trying to figure out how to add my blog posts to the site, an RSS feed would work, but then it would only be the 'headlines' of my posts. What I really want is to display my posts on the site in a similar way to my blog... Something to think about for now anyway, I really want to get this done and do it well!

The Journey of a Train Ticket

I wish I had taken pictures last time I got on the train. It'd make reading this a little more interesting.

One of the ideas we had for the interactive installation in the train station, was that a ticket could have an RFID tag embedded within it, so that it was picked up by a sensor when you stand by a certain area of the dome. A small portion of the dome would then display the information for your journey, like the time of departure, platform number, time of arrival at your destination, etc.

So, I'm borrowing Simon's idea of artefact tracing, with the subject being a train ticket!

The ticket is purchased in one of these ways:

• It's bought online, to be picked up at the station from the ticket machine on the day of travel, or posted to the buyer.
• It's bought at the station from the person in the ticket booth.
• It's bought from the ticket machine,

So now we have a ticket, let's see what happens next!

• The ticket usually gets put in a pocket or purse. I usually put mine in my pocket if I'm wearing trousers, and if not I usually put it in an easily accessible area of my bag.
• If my train is in a few minutes from when I bought my ticket, I don't bother to put it away and just keep it in my hand - either way the ticket will remain on the passengers person.
• The passenger might wonder around in the shops for a bit, or even leave the station if they've come to pick up a ticket for a journey that's later in the day.

After wondering around for a bit, the person usually proceeds though the ticket barrier. Maybe this could be the 'check point', the place where the RFID tag reader is in our theoretical installation? Though it might not work if the person is in a hurry - usually when you go past the barrier you're next stop is the platform where your train is. Having people hanging around the barriers is probably a bad idea on second thought.

Then the person usually heads onto their train, or stop to buy a drink from one of the expensive vending machines on the platform. Then they hop onto the train, and travel away into the distance, taking their ticket with them.

Signature~

I tried my best to get my digital signature to reflect my personality. The font I decided to use is "Romance Fatal", which I chose because I appreciated the non-uniformed and free nature of the characters. I feel the font reflects my attitude, as I am open minded and expressive, characteristics which I feel are present in this font - the swirling and squiggly characters have an organic and textural feel to them.

I chose to vary the size of my letters in my first name, as a way to represent how my mood is often up and down, but I kept the letters of my surname fairly uniform, to show that despite this, I am reliable and loyal.

I chose to kern the letters in my first name in a disjointed but close way, to represent my non-linear way of thinking, and the fact that others see me as shy and closed at times. The letters in my last name are tracked, in an effort to show stability (a notion which I also tried to reflect in the organisation of the letters – a stable rectangle shape), and that once people get to know me, I tend to be more open and outgoing.

I kept the colours of my signature simple – black and dark grey. I chose to stick with monochromatic colours as I wanted to express how I tend to aesthetically prefer texture and pattern over lots of colour and busyness in my creations.

The layout of my signature on the page is near the bottom, and fairly central. I did this as I feel I still have lots to learn, and lots of room to grow. I kept the signature relatively small compared to the rest of the space to reflect this too, and how I prefer not to be the centre of attention, and am not an extroverted person.

Rambles

HTML for my site is halfway done. CSS is on the go. But I can't seem to make up my mind about the design! I'm trying not to aim too high and waste my time making pretty backgrounds and such, but maybe if I just make a simple pattern for a background it will let me make something pretty, but not waste too much time...

Either way... Making websites is... fun! Even if I am very slow at doing it. After A7X I will finish off my signature, and tomorrow I'll get some more stuff on my site done, and revise for that exam on Wednesday, and clean, and do all the other things I need to do by Monday morning... >_< I'm so bad at managing my time.

Extremely Boring Site Layout

Here's a really bad image of my sites main page. I won't be using that particular colour scheme, and I'm trying to make a pretty background to go where there is just white on the page.

It's hard for me to plan in advance when I'm not sure about the content yet... But I'm thinking I want something similar to my blog at the moment. The pages will be split into something like" Home | About Me | Contact | Images". 

So I need to start thinking about my website. It needs to use JavaScript, XHTML, and CSS. I'm not really sure of the difference between HTML and XHTML... I think the only difference that really matters in this project is that XHTML is stricter than HTML, but I don't think it will matter to me as I usually make sure I close tags... (I do not care about using elipses incorrectly Ross!) CSS, might be a little tricky, but if I can imagine what the site looks like and then get that planned out I think it'll be easier. But first I need to sort the actual content - all I know that it is to be a personal site, so I'm guessing some kind of personal identity / business identity site? Maybe it could be another place to display my blog? Either way, I need to get on with it. If I stop worrying about what it is going to look like and just do it, it might get done on time.

The Environment of Plymouth's Train Station

A very badly drawn map of Plymouth train station.

The environment of the Plymouth train station is a busy one - people move in different directions, and sometimes with cumbersome luggage. It is an area where one must be mindful of others, as the area is small and confined and usually packed with people who are in a hurry.

To the left of the entrance there is an electronic ticket machine, and a traditional ticket office. Most people, including myself, usually go straight to the machine. The machines are useful if you are in a hurry and there is a queue for the main booth, but they are also the only place where you can collect pre-paid tickets - there are often queues for the machines as well as the booth, possibly for this reason.

Opposite the main entrance, there is a WH Smiths, and to the shops right, the barriers to the platforms. On the right of the entrance, there is a small waiting area with seats, and to the front of that area (adjacent to the ticket barriers) there is a Spar.

In front of the seating area and Spar, there are a couple of monitors displaying train information. I found these hard to read, and there were always people crowded around them.

This area of the station is somewhat circular - wherever you stand, you can see the other main attractions (seating, Spar, WH Smiths, Ticket offices, and exit). The main source of natural daylight comes from the entrance, which is mostly large glass doors and windows. The room is fairly light, which may cause trouble with projection equipment.


The area goes between being fairly quiet, and extremely busy and noisy.

This image is of the ceiling of the train station. This is the area where the dome would be.

Throughout this post I have used photographs that Dale and Euan took, which can be found on
Flickr, uploaded by Beth.

Thoughts

I've been thinking about what I want my site to look like, and I've come up with a very basic and unoriginal layout. It's totally uninspired, but I drew it up while sitting in Primark, so maybe something better will come to me when I'm somewhere a bit more inspiring.

 

I've been on the lookout for any interactive displays at train stations and the like, but the best I have seen was a large video screen with advertisements playing. Maybe it's time to look somewhere else for ideas...

I need to be in a good mood to create anything decent. :c

Academic Papers and Articles Relating to Interactive Public Displays

Finke, M. et al., 2006. Lessons Learned : Game Design for Large Public Displays. Computing.

This paper looks at the design and deployment of an interactive game for a large public display. There is an interesting diagram which may be of use included in this paper.

The diagram shoes the 'flow' of users when interacting with a public display - it's an interesting observation. The 'actors' are those that are actively interacting with the display - controlling it or engaged with it. The 'spectators' are observing the display and mentally engaged with the content, but are not as active as the 'actors'. The 'bystanders' are people that are not really observing the display at all.

Kaviani, N. et al., 2009. What goes where ? Designing interactive large public display applications for mobile device interaction. Strategies, pp.129-138.

This paper provides a good idea and describes well the way people interact with displays when in large numbers, going into more detail about the above diagrams idea.

Vahey, P., Roschelle, J. & Tatar, D., 2007. Using handhelds to link private cognition and public interaction. In Educational Technology. p. 13–16. Available at: http://asianvu.com/bookstoread/etp/Educational_Technology_May_June_2007.pdf.

Vogel, D. & Balakrishnan, R., 2004. Interactive Public Ambient Displays : Transitioning from Implicit to Explicit , Public to Personal , Interaction with Multiple Users. Work, 6(2), pp.137-146.

Wichary, M. et al., 2005. Vista : Interactive Coffee-Corner Display. Design, pp.1062-1077.

Creating an Interactive Space

The full brief for this project is readable here.

In your teams, you are to plan and design an interactive installation for use in a highly social "playful" space. You installation should encompass some form of media (of your choice), combined with an appropriate mechanism to allow participants to interact with it. Your installation should encourage engagement of the audience within the space and integrate with or even support the activities that take place within the space. You should avoid a purely functional purpose and strive to produce a piece of work that provides users with an aesthetic, conceptual or sensorial experience.

Choosing your space

You should attempt to target a technology-literate audience, in order to maximize the likelihood of successfully engaging participants. Equally, targeting a space where audience members dwell for some time will increase the opportunity for interaction. You should bear in mind that you will need access to the space for the purposes of surveying and observation. You will not however need to gain permission to actually install the work as the focus of this module is design and planning, rather than actual realisation. It is up to you which space you choose for your work, however a few good examples include night clubs, cafes/bars, shopping mall, "lunchtime" gardens, bus/rail stations. The space to be chosen should be negotiated with the lecturers on the module.

Outputs

Due to the limited time available, you will not have to actually produce a complete and working final product (other modules will focus upon hands-on practical production skills). The emphasis of this project is more upon the analysis, design and planning of production, your aim being to document the whole lifecycle of the project. You should first identify a concrete set of requirements that you will derived from the brief. You should also carefully research the background to the brief with respect to other technological and artistic work in the area. The next step will be to survey and observe the environment and the context you have selected. Following this, a deployment and operation plan should be produced. Finally you should provide a description of how you would go about critically reflecting on the experience of the installation in use (including outlining protocols, designing questionnaires, defining success criteria etc). You will be guided through each of these stages over the duration of the module.

As a group, we came up with quite a large list of possible locations. My contributions were the Starbucks cafe located at the lower end of the city centre, and the bridge that you have to cross to gain access to the National Marine Aquarium.

I thought of Starbucks initially as I have sat upstairs there many times before. The area is fairly open, and depending on the time of day, quite busy or fairly quiet. I thought it would be a good area for an installation as it is away from the main serving area of the cafe so wouldn't get in the way of people that were in a hurry or queuing for a drink, and the upstairs area is generally where people that wish to take their time go. The people upstairs would possibly be there to socialise, or to take some quiet time away from work, so they may be open to something interactive to engage with. The people here would generally be technology aware - many of them bring their laptops and netbooks to browse the internet - so open to a technology based interactive display.

For the bridge, I thought of how when I went to the Aquarium I had to wait for a few minutes for the bridge to raise and go back down to let a boat pass. As most people who cross that bridge would be going to the Aquarium, I thought this would be a good place to install something. The people going to the Aquarium would most likely be in a good mood for interacting, and may have curious children with them who would enjoy an interactive display while they waited for the bridge to raise and lower.

Blogs!

This blog will be a place for me to record my ideas and tasks for my lovely super duper degree in Digital Art and Technology! It's so good to be creative again. :)