Outcomes: View Now
The first phase of any project is planning. This is a quick assignment designed to help you gather the resources and assets you’ll need to complete your first creative assignment. The goal here is to find an resource that is immediately useful to you in how you approach your creative assignment. As part of this exercise, you’re going to search for one resource and report back on what you find. Together, we’ll prepare an inventory of resources to inspire and support our exploration on this first project.
As part of this exercise you might:
i.e. find something that is immediately useful to your project and can help advance it. It could be technical or conceptua.
By the end of this exercise, students will:
have identified and rigorously review one resource that relate to the project at hand
helped co-create a set of exemplars to draw on as part of their own explorations;
have increased their ability to prototype and generate a hardware prototype for the first creative assignment
Basically find a starting point that you can borrow, extend or employ in your project. Create a Post in the #discoveries channel on slack that includes the label “#startingpoint” for grading purposes e.g. An open source nest #startingpoint.
It’s got to be something that you haven’t seen before, are relevant to the project and you find particularly interesting. So, the emphasis here is on discovery.
No two students may submit the same example/resource. Claim early and make sure you review each others work before posting.
Create a Post in the #discoveries channel on slack (see this guide on submitting your work for discovery exercises.
Important: Title your post with the name of the project and include the following label at the end for grading purposes “#producthunt” e.g. My example name #producthunt
In the post, embed a video and/or images of the project, and write a short critical reflection on the project (about 200 words) in which you:
Briefly describe the project (a couple of sentences) and who made it.
Describe why you selected the project (what is interesting, inspirational, innovative, etc. about it)
Describe why you believe it’s an important or innovative example of an IoT device
Critique the project - what are its shortcomings; how could it be made better, what did they get right and what didn’t they get right and why, etc.
Draw relationships to other work: What inspired or informed it? How does it compare to other work? Why is it influential and what has it influenced?
Note: Create a separate post for each example.
Note: Follow the instructions carefully as these projects require you to follow the posting instructions to receive full grades.
By no means an exhaustive list! You should explore beyond these!
Online Aggregators and new Sites
Conferences and Research
ACM International conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI)
INST-INT- “assembles an international roster of acclaimed creators to explore the intersection of art, technology and interaction.Expect a broad investigation into creating interactive experiences involving space, architecture, and bodies, all aided by high and low tech.”
Labs and Agencies
Northwestern’s TIDAL Lab
Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID)’s Current Projects
CMU’s CodeLab
Steve Wilson’s (not maintained) site contains multitudes of tangible and reactive projects