week 4

busy week wow

descriptive

in order to explain to someone who does not have any prior knowledge of what my project is, i improved on the concept map i did up in week one, simplifying the stages of my prototypes with shorter and more concise explanations. although i did mention that i would start by focusing on the interactive artefacts, i ended up only sketching down some rough ideas and then moved on to trying to generate some visuals. i was stuck at generating ideas for the interactive artefacts and i did not have enough information on what interactions could translate the emotions i had shortlisted. i needed to carry on with my observational study before i could fill this in.

while drafting the objectives and perimeters for the observational study, i focused on some experiments on the visuals first. i took into account what kyu had suggested last week, and i researched on the visuals used for visual mindfulness exercises. there was a common connection between them, and it was that simple shapes were used often. i think simplicity is often used to comfort. the movement of the animations were often subtle as well. it made looking at the animation easy for the eyes. although there were a lot of complex emotions i wanted to portray with my visualiser, i continued by experimenting with visuals that were simple and organic.

in the end, i really wanted to achieve these types of visuals. but i am aware of the technical difficulties i will face while doing so. thus, i started off small by generating simple blobs. the most successful one was using a blob maker online to create animations of the blob. what i understood from this exercise is that the values of a blob are different from a regular shape. i can use this as a base shape in my future exercise.

the other tutorial is not as successful and unfortunately i don’t know what went wrong.

this week was actually filled with a surprising amount of events lol this entry will be segmented into 3 parts - dissertation, cid lab, and roundtable reflections

dissertation

i tried to start with writing my dissertation, but i was honestly having trouble to linking the different sections together. some sections made me feel like i was just repeating myself. i think i needed help with finding what were the most relevant points of the work. as i was hyper focused on making the project part of this semester work, the last time i touched my dissertation was a long time ago. i think i needed to restructure many areas, and i’m unclear what to write about under approaches and methods. these issues were cleared up during consultation which i am very grateful for. thank you andreas :)

cid lab

this was a session to stop me from running away from my problems. i presented the p5js attempts, and also my are.na board to show what type of visuals i’m looking to do. in response, andreas showed me some simpler p5js image filters and suggested that i look into shaders. shaders seem to be manageable. certain attributes were adjustable, which was important to my project. i needed whatever software i used to be able to react to the interaction with the artefact. continuing from this, i should come up with a visual moodboard and matric to see what interactions would lead to what visuals.

roundtable session

it was interesting seeing projects from other classes. i can tell a lot of careful considerations and work was put into the projects presented, and it honestly made me self-reflect a bit. vikas seemed to take a bit longer to understand my objectives and approaches, so i need to put a little bit more effort into how these parts are explained. i wanted to use this roundtable session to clear my doubts on the visual exploration. as i had researched, colours is an important factor in conveying emotions, but the current surveys and research on this topic do not bring conclusive results about the colours i should use for my visual matrix. i also brought up the idea of creating a mindfulness guide that the users could follow based on their visual tracking results. i brought up these concerns and ideas, and these were the comments gotten-

the hue and saturation comment brought up by vikas was a valid concern that i hadn’t thought of. while i wanted some levels of customisation by the users to fit their needs, i didn’t want the objective of the visualiser to stray too far from my initial objective due to the customisation. it’s something i should think about. overall, it is agreed that simplicity is an important factor for the visualiser.

analytical

it’s really important sticking to simpler experiments first, or just using concepts i know. the explorations i tried last semester were out of my comfort zone. the experiments i tried this week was way easier to comprehend, and i can see myself proceeding further with these techniques. but i do wish to achieve more with the aesthetics. these are not satisfactory for me. now, i’m looking into tutorials that would allow me to achieve something closer to what i like with techniques that are easy to understand. i’m also trying to take in all the comments given so far, and building my project around them.

the dissertation consult was very useful, and helped me understand the different methods of my research. i concluded that i would be using 3 main methods - observations, prototyping, and designing a visualiser.