Theme 5: Design research

This weeks text “Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses” by Ylva Fernaeus and Mattias Jacobsson was about concepts on how to design psychical language for controlling robotic products. The authors explore theories of semiotics in two different fields of comics and fashion. The concept, actDresses is defined and presents three cases of how the concept can be used for controlling, programming and predicting the behaviour of robotic systems.

It was interesting to read about the different cases on how it could be used. The first one was about the electronic pet “pleo” where you could change the outfit of the pet depending on which mood you wanted it to be in. The second one was a behaviour pin collection for Glowbo and the third one was, comic signs for a vacuum robot.

In general I find the topic on Human computer interaction (HCI) very interesting and important. We live in a society where technology is essential in our lives. It is beneficial to see the interaction between humans and technology. There are different artefacts that are being used, and it was interesting to see the interaction with robotic artefacts.

Question for the lesson: When is design research good to use?

The second text we read this week was. “Turn your mobile into the ball: Rendering live football game using vibration”, by Haibo Li and his colleagues. The paper presents a new method rendering live football game on phones using vibration.

Prototype

A prototype in a research is used to demonstrate an idea or collect data for the phenomenon that is being examined. The use of prototypes makes the idea or the concept more concrete by providing a deeper understanding of the idea. It is also good to use a prototype to see the improvements that needs to be done and you can do this in an early stage.

References:

Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M (2009). Comics, Robots, fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses. Proceedings of the 3^rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction. New York: ACM.

Rehman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn your mobile into the ball: Rendering live football game using vibration. IEE Transactions on Multimedia, 10 (6), 1022-1033.