week 5! Presentation!

we are going to present our two ideas after we talked to the lecturer and tutors on monday, we have to make 2D or 3D prototypes for our two ideas for tommrrow's presentaton.

i think we did really good work in this week!

our two ideas, one of it is the universial device and the other one is interactive story book.
for the idea one, we want to help people to exchange their personal information immediately, and the idea comes from a bussniss card. our concept is to collect all personal details together, and they can share, what you need to do is simply touch others phone or card by using yours. for example, if we are going to denist, the first thing you have to do is to make appointment with your doctor, and fill our the form with your personal details. what if we just use device to get the personal details transfer, and we save our time to fill out the form.

the second idea is designed for children, a book there, and when you open the book, the animation will show up, when you turn over the page, the animation will changed.
what we want to do is the help children to study in a more fun way. also we would like to show the context about the sustainablity, like how to save water, etc.
it is good for childrens.

First edit--prototype

This is the first edited prototype i finished, hopefully it helps to explain our ideas clearly, waiting for the feedback to do some changes for this first edited one.

Week 4 Brainstorming!!!!

My new idea comes from the buses. The biggest inconvience for the people who take buses every day is that the buses always get late, so we have to wait and wait till the bus comes.
what if our target is disabled people - especially blind people, we are talking about what they really need!
what is not convient for those people?
In consider of saving time and money, i thought this is an issue we should care about.

inconvience:
1. Blind people could not see the noticed board which shows the bus timetable.
2. They do not know wether the coming bus is the one they want to catch.
3. They need particular person who can take care of them to help them to get on the bus. How long will it take? The person can not do anything without others help.
4. I used to see a blind woman sitting at the bus stop and holding a paper board which has the bus number on it, which is in order to show
the bus driver which bus she wants to catch. please notice her!


For the convenience of those disabled people especially for the blind people , we intend to build a 'Voice Prompt Device' at each bus stop in Brisbane.

What is a 'Voice Prompt Device'?

Let me introduce this with it's working process. When the bus gets close to the bus stop, the device installed will do an early broadcasting.
The content is about the bus numbers and also the exact time the buses will arrive.

How to achieve?

A sensor will be installed an hundred metres away ahead of bus stop. This equipment can induct buses passing through and identify them with their bus numbers and the estimated arriving time. Then the recorded information will be sent to the device in bus stop and be transferred into voice messages so as to remind passengers.

What technology will be used?

RFID(Radio Frequency Identification) Tag will be installed in buses, different buses will have different identification code. The sensor is the RFID reader which can identify their differences by different codes. In terms of the device installed at bus stops, in order to save energy, we are going to use solar cell to keep it working.

Some other functions

1. In order to Check wether the buses will come on time or not, all the 'Vocie Prompt Devices' will be connected to Traffic Command Control Center, which means the center can record the time of the buses, so as to supervise drivers.

2. Regarding the traffic problem which may happen, for instance, when there are traffic jams or accidents, the buses could't arrive on time. The control center is able to consdier the situations and give proper suggestions, and they also can broadcast the traffic report to all the people by radio which could help them to choose better trasnportation methods.

Week 3 Review

Desktop Fireworks from Saqoosha on Vimeo.

Description:
people hope their lives becoming more fresh by using new technology. They are not only satisfied with their wealthy life, but also
want to improve their lives, no matter mental demands or material demands. It being partly responsible for upgrading
new productions to be functionable and sustainable. As a new technology age, ARTOOLKIT would be a high-performance technology.


Technology:
The desktop fireworks has been created by using the ARTOOLKIT technology, users just need to print out the A/R code from their site, hold it up to your webcam and voila, instant virtual fireworks came out, great way to get the public playing with this new technology. designer
used Flash and ARToolkit (the ported version of ARToolKit) and Papervision3D.
Visual C++ plays an important role in the whole process as well.

Project Process:
1. The camera captures video of the real world and sends it to the computer.
2. Software on the computer searches through each frame for any square shapes.
3. if it found a square, the software uses some mathmatics to automaticlly calculate the positon and orientation between webcam and the black square.
4. once the webcam knows the position, a computer graphics model is drawn from that same position.
5. this model is drawn on top of the video of the real world and so appears stuck on the square marker.
6. the final output is shown back in screen, so when the user looks through the display they see grahics overlaid on the real world.

here is the sketch for the process design:



Project dissemination & usefulness:
ARTOOLKIT has been exploited as a bran-new technology in resent years, more and more productions have been designed by using this technology in educational field, economic field, enviromental field and so on. Taking game design by using this software as a good example, the fresh technology which players never met before could help game developers to create a huge benifit. If we change the content from fireworks to alphabet or mathmatics, it could be used as an educational materials to teach childrens in the most interesting way in the future. Most importantly, people only work with a few softwares, they do not need to use other materials, it has significances to energy saving and environmental protection.

Relevance:
The relevance of taking this course in three reasons. Firstly, it created in a interactive way. secondly, it largely saved materials. For example, users only need to print out the square marker or save the images of each square marker into PSP or MP4 to play with the game. Constrate with other games, it does not need any handle controls to play with the game, which saved materials indeed. Thirdly, papers could be recyling after the game, this is the proper way to reduce enviromental pollution in a sense. This is exactly how to achieve sustainability and interaction.

Reflection:
It inspired me to dig this technology deeper and deeper, looking forward to see more productions created by using ARTOOLKIT technology.
As a user, i know how to take actions to save energy. On the other hand, designers could notice what the users truely needs, it is the other way to save materials too.

Week 2 Research for TOPIC!

Desktop Firworks

I found one of the most interesting design in the web is the "DESKTOP FIREWORKS", created by saqoosha. a japanese flash developer.
as you see, the demo, how the fireworks work in front of the laptop. it is amazing!!


Desktop Fireworks from Saqoosha on Vimeo.

when i was doing my reaserch work, fortunately i found the designer's blog about this desktop fireworks,
which is http://saqoosha.net/2008/08/31/1221/


He shows people how to set up or install the software, and what techniques he used in his work.

and then i want to dig further with this technique, called ARtoolKit, Augmented Reality (AR). It is pretty new technique. I found the webpage to describe
what exactly how it works.


for further informations, you can check out the web:
http://studierstube.icg.tu-graz.ac.at/handheld_ar/artoolkitplus.php


"ARToolKit is a software library that can be used to calculate camera position and orientation relative to physical markers in
real time. This enables the easy development of a wide range of Augmented Reality applications. ARToolKitPlus is an extended
version of ARToolKit's vision code that adds features, but breaks compatibility due to a new class-based API"

http://www.hitlabnz.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=7


This is the place people wants to develope and work with code within this technique.


http://sourceforge.net/projects/artoolkit


This is the source web for ARTOOLKIT technique. you can look at.. and free to download the software they used!!!

http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/download/


this is the download page for different types of laptops, for Windows,Linux and macOS systems. easy to get to know this!

Week 1 Sustainability

It is totally new word to me, i looked up the dictionary.

The defination of "sustainability" is involving the use of natural
products and energy in a way that does not harm the enviroment and that can continue or be continued for a long time.


everyone does effected in this issue.
We had a short disscussion,how to save energy and money around us in our daily life? how the production could be sustainable in
designer's respect and user's respect.


what we missed out in our daily life? designers should keep this in their mind to make productions more sustainable. users could
upgrade the productions with higher functions. It is in order to save materials and money as well.


we think the most interesting exmaple would be the energy tree. it shows how much energy we used. and what else the tree
needs? it helps users to reduce the energy clearly. obviously, it shows on the devices. it is just cool!


we don't notice how much energy we have used until we see the bill. So, if the device could give us feedbacks on whether it
should be turned off, it could help us on saving the energy.