Jetha's Graduation Project

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Research

Week 12 – Introduction & Literature Review

SMART goals for this week

  • Finish first draft of Intro and Literature Review
  • Finish How I Experience the Web Parody
  • Start Wire framing and iterating designs for project

What I did this week

Monday

I’m hardcoding this at the moment as it’s just a draft and not what I intend for the final project. I’m doing this to just help me figure out how I want people to interact with the diegetic prototypes.

I also did some more writing.

Tuesday

I think I have unconfused myself after talking it out with other people. Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams was recommended to me to look at it. It made me realise I need to use what she said about Meta actively analysing users in detail for the benefit of advertisers and profit as an example of technofeudalism. However, Meta and advertisers can only do this by making the app addictive and seemingly safe by using UX design in order to gain access to the users in the first place. Then the only reason we are so open to these apps is because they live on our devices. So, how we interact with our device in the first place will give us more control over the apps on it. But this also isn’t a big nefarious plan. It’s because of the history of devices that has made them a perfect tool which Cloudalists have taken advantage of. Also that UX principles have been based on the user being in the cog in the machine for a company to make money rather than the the user being the end goal. This has happened to due to the fact that within the product we are already sold the computer the phone there’s a secondary product that needs to be sold to us so the design of the device has to also turn how the user interacts with the device as a marketing tool to sell the secondary product.

Wednesday-Sunday

I did some work for the Open Source class and had my grandfather’s memorial over the weekend. So I’ve done a rough draft of my intro but no my lit review. I had someone read my intro and got some feedback that the technofeudalism part was well explained but the parts after need more clarification.

I had to explain my thesis a lot of the weekend and it made me realise that the idea may be too surface level and focused on the concept of design rather than impact of design. Not that I have to come up with something new but maybe something to consider in the next iteration.

Categories
Research Supervisor Meetings

Week 11 – Last Week Before Easter Break

SMART goals for this week

  • Finish writing Lit review and Intro
  • Presentation for Formative

What I did this week

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Project considerations

  • The interface
    • Hard to make interesting
    • Make the the external and screen
    • Make it shout out
    • A controller that does a lot of things but it takes a lot of time to control
    • Eye tracker whether you look at pop ups with things that it thinks you want
  • Example Ken
    • 8 bit keyboard
    • To make the most useless e.g. both raspberry pi and arduino
  • Concentrate the quantity

Thesis Questions

  • Audience
    • Technologically extensive to non tech savvy people
    • SMART Goals how to measure improve that
      • I do like this to reach that goal
    • Prove that what I’ve done targets these people
    • Evaluation more systematic
    • Can ask people to informally test it does need to be included in the thesis
  • Extra context with stuff that’s older to support the newer stuff
  • Beneficiaries who might have an overlap with the audience

I started writing my introduction and planned out my literature review. As now that I have the idea to iterate I need to finish the writing before I start working on the project because I will not prioritise the writing as I struggle with it the most.

I thought I found a good structure for my writing and then realised it wasn’t very clear. To be honest I have spent this week mainly feeling very confused and mixed up my thoughts so not much got done this week. I was also very busy with other commitments.

I talked with Agnes who gave me some references to look at and also helped me pick out some physical computing stuff to play with over the break. I also attended her soldering workshop so, I should be well prepared when I come back.

I realised that I missed some stuff out that I need to add to my intro and lit review like

  • Explaining how the current GUI design is based around a capitalist framework
  • Looking at esoteric and artworks that question the design of Operating Systems
Categories
Class notes

Class Week 5 – Methodology & Conclusion

Methodology

enquiry and process

Structure

  • Intro
    • brief overview of methods used
    • justification
  • Research approach
  • Data collection approach
  • Data analysis techniques
  • ethical consideration
  • limitations of the study
  • summary
  • Research
    • scientific methods to answer questions
    • inquiry directed at increasing knowledge establishing the truth
  • Evaluation
    • judging the merit or worth of something
  • Evaluation research

Why evalusate

  • Improve existing programs
  • Measure

Evaluation tests

  • Usuabilty

Goals of Evaluation

  • Asses extent
    • Measure the level of system functionality, usability
  • Assess effect
  • Identify problems

What to evaluate

  • Usability specifications at all lifecycles stages
  • Initial designs
    • partial integrated

Evaluation approaches and methods

Types

  • Qualitative – quantitive
  • secondary – primary
  • survey – experiment
  • internal – external
  • who

Expert evaluation

  • cognitive walkthrough
  • heuristic
    • Nielsen and Molich
    • usability criteria
    • designs examined by experts
    • 10 rules

Qualitative research

  • gather in depth understanding of human behaviour and the reasons that govern such behaviour
    • Why and how of decision making

Data analysis

  • Open coding
    • Nvivo
  • Systematic coding
    • categories from existing literature
    • affinity diagramming

Empirical Evaluation

  • quantitative
    • numerical
    • R SPSS
  • methods
    • observatory
      • think aloud
      • cooperative
  • Query techniques

Conclusion

realisation, communication and knowledge

Intro 5-10%

body 80-90%

conclusion 5-10

  • Reiteration of question
    • remind the reader of what you’re attempting
  • summary of main points raised
    • Identify all points highlight most important point, balance of evidence falls
  • conclusion
    • Make sure question is answered
    • Highlight using the words from the question
    • justify your answer with evidence
  • closing statement
    • what has been learned as a result of conduction research
    • Indicate what still needs further research or unresolved questions
    • identify most important point (beyond the scope of this thesis)
Categories
Class notes

Class Week 4 – Development & Implementation

realisation, process and knowledge

Put D&I after methodology

Should include:

  • Programming dev process
    • Justification for programming languages and frameworks
      • Code structure, modular design and algorithmic complexity
        • snippets
        • Version control strategies
    • Debugging
      • not a part of the criteria but it’s important
      • debugging tools, error handling techniques and optimisation
  • Concept dev and artistic vision (diagram)
    • Inspiration, creative methodologies and theoretical frameworks
    • Mood boards, design iterations and conceptual (make sure it’s industry standard way of presenting)
  • Materials and Media (Schema might be a good way of showing)
    • Choice of digital and physical materials (3D models, generative art, installations)
    • Integration of interactive technologies (motion sensors, VR/AR, projection mapping)
    • justifications (literature)
      • Everything method, materials needs to be backed by research
    • video link for installation
  • Production Process and Workflow
    • software tools used for creation (Adobe Suite, Blender, Houdini, TouchDesigner)
    • physical production (fabrication, digital printing, multimedia installation)
    • Iterative design methodology prototyping and testing
    • Agile development (SCRUM & Kanban)
  • User interaction & experience
    • Audience engagement strategies and interactive design principles
  • Sustainability
    • Eco conscious production methods
    • Energy efficient computing practices
    • Sustainable UX/UI design principles
    • Clear documentation for future use
Categories
Design Process Supervisor Meetings

Week 10 – I’ve got an Idea

SMART goals for this week

  • Look at examples
  • Structure for literature review
  • Prototyping and mockup

What I did this week

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Project considerations

  • On current design
    • Too on the nose
    • more metaphorical
    • Break down more
      • what do I mean by optimisation and spatialisation
      • Is their obvious representation
      • connection order of spatial design linked in to optimisation
  • Look at the exhibition next week
    • Go in without reading the description and the look at description
  • Difference between eras of digital video
    • less control and more control.TV vs Youtube
    • summarising other video media
      • time optimisation
  • Examples
    • How I experience the web today
      • not specific
      • abstract

Thesis Questions

  • How it sits in the area of creative computing
    • Make obvious you’re taking the computing to show the computing
  • Do the justifications after the fact
  • Introduction
    • prime for the project
    • little about the project
  • Literature Review
    • What is already there
    • connect research and idea
    • Take ideas to make idea a+idea b+idea c = mine or idea a -> idea b -> idea c-> = mine
    • Challenge
      • Clear connection between research and project
  • Ideation
    • conceptually
      • layout argument
    • Practically
      • If possible add all iterations
      • highlight important ones

I really like How I Experience the Web Today it’s a very clear piece that shows how web articles work. As an exercise and thought process I tried to mimic this piece with what I’m looking at.

Ideas

Sci fi human computer hybrid symbiote. Showing the evolution of human if we continue to “improve” time optimisation, spatial design and control. How would this domesticated creature exist on earth without technology. Digital isn’t forever it could be gone there’s many places around the world that have to load shed. Even now I’ve seen lockers that use keycards break and trap people’s belongings and people struggle to open it.

How could this be shown

  • D&D boardgame make it computational digital
  • A punch and judy play with robotic puppets with interaction
  • Parody Star Trek or Doctor Who

I realised that I was trying to make the project interesting for me to make and not actually focusing on the fact that what I’m saying is essentially time optimisation, spatial design and control make life short, boring and stressful. So, making it interesting goes against that

  • Surround audience with tasks that they can complete and will autocomplete after every few clicks the installation will ask what will you do with your free time? This would make people think about how even with all this optimisation and efficiency the free time technology promises is very rarely achieved
  • sliders https://londondesignbiennale.com/pavilions/2023/mudac
  • Three sliders time optimise, spatial design and control. Use these controls to show animation that shows what life looks like with different levels.
    • This is gonna be difficult as I don’t have much experience with animation so to animate multiple different possibilities would probably be out of my time and skill scope. It’s a good idea but not worth it for a poor execution. I mean I could limit the options

How I experience the web Exercise

I haven’t finished the exercise yet but it made me think that maybe I could expand on this format. As I realise that the previous ideas were missing the implication that time optimisation, spatial design and control is a computer design not computers themselves. So in order to show that is just a design I could design a bunch of diegetic prototypes they don’t have to be better than what we currently have they just have to show that there’s so many different ways we could explore. It also shows the influence a design can have especially with products that are ingrained in our lives in multiple ways rather than a tool for 1 or a couple of things.

This concept I really like, I show time optimisation, spatial design and control; I show that these things are just a design and not the computer; The audience can interact with it closely and immerse themselves without me having to try and personalise it to them.

This also feels very doable, I’m the most confident in HTML and javascript. It’s interesting for me to make. I could even add more to the immersion and installation part I could set it up like tech departments in stores where they have all the different types of computers everywhere but instead of marketing different hardware I’m marketing different OS.

https://uxdesign.cc/the-worst-volume-control-ui-in-the-world-60713dc86950

Categories
Design Process Refining Idea Supervisor Meetings

Week 9 – Refined Idea & Literature Review Structure

SMART goals for this week

  • Literature Review and Introduction
    • Finish structure
    • Bullet point
    • Gather list of citations needed
  • Start design process
    • Have a first iteration of the piece by the end of the week

What I did this week

Couple of days after my supervisor meeting my laptop and phone decided to break at the same time so I didn’t do as much work as I had planned to do this week.

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Project considerations

  • 15 minute city
  • retrace
    • Took photos around the world. location, data time, colour influences design of jacket
  • Diegetic prototype
    • Linear interface
    • How would different people in society interact with it
  • Jewish Museum Berlin
    • Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) by Menashe Kadishman

Thesis Questions

  • focus on one subset of the movement
  • consider the approach for the argument
    • hard to define movement without looking at the previous and hard to put something into a movement.
  • Back up decisions with reasons
  • Planning
    • See using them
    • Refer to them
    • Reflection on the GANTT chart

Exploring ideas

1 Mail, message, folders etc all lined up for you, You can jump between these different things

2 While we plan our physical spaces in a certain way for example schools being close to residential areas etc. The digital version of our buildings (clothes store, grocery store, hospital) all exist in the same area you don’t have to travel to get from place to another. You can have 3 different tabs open zara, sainsburys, call with doctor

3 Is this how we lose our sense of time in the digital space? because we don’t have to travel a distance it feels like everything is done so quickly. (Look into humans and productivity is it important that we are always doing something? Time and mental health?)

4 instagram is a grid format you could 5 posts about each day of your holiday. Friends can jump between the different days look at them in a different order as opposed to listening to you tell the story in a particular order

5a linear internet

MOSCOW Prioritisation

There was something off with the ideas I was coming up with. Which I have now realised is because I have drifted from wanting the audience to realise that the way a computer is designed in its function influences how we perceive reality and how it can change their behaviour. So, I used MOSCOW to help make sure I keep to that

  • Must have: Show spatialisation computer designs effect on human perception of time
  • Should have: Use a new skill I have to learn and an old skill I want to develop
  • Could have: A comparison of the current design and a potential design
  • Won’t have: a simulation won’t have time to make a simulation that would work for a variety of people

This has really helped me organise and make my thinking clearer.

Visualising the foundation of my idea

Categories
Class notes

Class Week 3 – Ideation and Conceptual Design + Ethics Application

Realisation, Enquiry, Process, Communication, Knowledge

User Research – Personas – Scenarios – Ideation

Foundational theories

  • Cognitive load theory
  • Activity theory
  • Emotional Design

Usability

  • Effectivieness
  • Efficiency
  • Satisfaction

User centred design

  • Agile UX
  • Empathy Mapping
  • Iterative Design

Principles

  • Early focus on users
  • Empirical measurements
  • iterative designs

Steps

Put in methodology

  • Needs analysis
  • User & Task analysis
  • function analysis
  • prototyping
  • iterative testing

User Journey Mapping

SCAMPER

  • Substitute, combine, adapt, modify, eliminate, reverse

Artistic Projects

  • Expressive and conceptual ideation
  • Aesthetic and experiential design
  • Emphasis on storytelling and engagement

Categories
Refining Idea Supervisor Meetings

Week 8 – Experimentation

Changed the structure of these blog posts so I can talk about goals for this week with supervisor

By March 15th need to be clear on what you’re doing including whether you can learn a new skill in time etc.

Goals for this week

  • Finish with The Language of New Media
  • Start experimenting with specific ideas that come up from the reading
  • Start recording references
  • Make Project Plan

What I did this week

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Project considerations

  • Marshall Mcluhan the medium in the message. Media theorists. Understanding media. The medium is the massage
  • David Carson Postmodernist graphic design
    • Massimo Vignelli
  • Skeumorphism
  • Creating something jarring
    • physically morphing clay with digital outputs
    • digital interface onto physical interface
  • Challenge will be creating a narrative that is smooth and linear
  • relevancy
    • creating a story behind it
    • This particular issue
    • relatable starting point
    • technofeudalism callback at the end

Understanding Postmodernism

I’ve understood that postmodernism is a rejection of modernism which focuses on simplicity and usefulness. I searched for postmodernism computing and came across a talk from Larry Wall about Pearl and its connection to postmodernism.

I think in order to refine the idea and start playing around with the idea is to define these to use as a framework and guideline

  • What is postmodernism
  • What is modernism
  • What is spatialisation

Experimentation

After looking at Perl I realised that I wanted my piece to be understood by a non tech savvy audience. Perl isn’t a commonly used language amongst coders so, it’s less likely to be known by non coders.

I booked out a projector and have been learning to use MadMapper.

First time projection mapping
projecting photontide image on radiator

What aspect of spatialisation do I want to show?

  • Daily life comparison
    • Show how we think about time linearly but we display time spatially on computers
      • We wake up, go to the bathroom, eat, shower, check mail routine
      • Mail, message, folders etc all lined up for you, You can jump between these different things
    • While we plan our physical spaces in a certain way for example schools being close to residential areas etc. The digital version of our buildings (clothes store, grocery store, hospital) all exist in the same area you don’t have to travel to get from place to another. You can have 3 different tabs open zara, sainsburys, call with doctor
      • Is this how we lose our sense of time in the digital space? because we don’t have to travel a distance it feels like everything is done so quickly. (Look into humans and productivity is it important that we are always doing something? Time and mental health?)
      • Could you create an interface that has that injection of distance and travel.
      • What would a linear computer look like?
  • Media specific
    • instagram is a grid format you could 5 posts about each day of your holiday. Friends can jump between the different days look at them in a different order as opposed to listening to you tell the story in a particular order
      • Linear thinking with a spatial interface. Everything is laid out in front of us all the time. With linear thinking there will always be the next thing.
    • Wikipedia you can jump through the web page find the specific thing and jump elsewhere.
    • Drawing depending on medium you can’t erase what you do but digitally you can jump between layers adjust something you did it at the beginning of the piece right at the end
  • Our strong tie to technology is through media. Media will morph to the new technology. Are computers different? computers are a flexible technology we could use computers in a different way to how we do now. Is optimisation and simplicity the best way to design is this a modernistic view that postmodernism rejects? Odd contrast of computers being designed spatially not linearly which is a postmodernist effect but we want to make things as simple and optimised which is modernist view. Oxymoron?
  • Different parts of life to look at spatialisation to see the digital version of it
    • Geography, urban planning
    • Sociology, social structures
    • Philosophy
    • Time, History
    • Economics
Categories
Class notes

Class Week 2 – Literature review & Project Planning

Literature Review

Objectives: realisation and enquiry

What is it?

critical synthesis of academic and industry research, identifying gaps, challenges and opportunities

Purpose: build a foundation for your project understanding the field and identifying area of your contribution

Art example

interactive art installation would examine theories of sensory experience in public art and case studies

Structure

  • define focus
  • thematic organisation: group research key themes technology, audience engagement, interactivity
  • critical analysis: highlight gaps and compare findings
  • conclusion: how does it inform your project

Concept Framework

  • Intro : describe your artistic themes
  • relevant theories and movements
  • existing projects
  • synthesis: Connect to project direction

Writing style

Artistic: reflective language to connect theme to practice

Common Pitfalls

  • Over summarising: Avoid describing analyse them critically
  • Lack of focus: Stick to themes
  • Insufficient citations

Project Plannning

Objectives: Process

SMART Goals

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time-bound

You can use this to aid in the GANTT Chart

MOSCOW Prioritisation

  • Must have: essential
  • Should have: important not critical
  • Could have: nice if time allows
  • Won’t have: out of scope

GANTT Chart

Put into thesis

Categories
Refining Idea Supervisor Meetings

Week 7 – The Idea and Supervisor Meeting

What I did this week

Notebook correlation: Research (Artwork and Media (Neuromancer) – Academic (Lev Manovich))

I picked ‘Digital and Physical World Swap’ out of my options as Monday we had the first graduation project class and we were starting our introductions and research proposals. I picked this one as I found it the easies to explain to other and people and felt confident in what I was talking about. All the options were interesting to me.

I made a notebook for all my research notes and eventually also for design iterations. I want to keep the blog as a space to summarise the week.

Random thoughts I had during class

  • Maybe look into a specific spaces like software that’s supposed to make us more “connected “or “easier”. E.g. Spotify, Instagram,
  • Short simulations using dark lab or something. Maybe rigging my flat with physical hardware and film the experience.

I have meeting with my supervisor every Monday now so Blog posts will have a Meeting Notes section now.

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Project considerations

  • Compare how we live now to pre technology
    • So music now with Spotify, iTunes, YoutubeMusic etc compare to pre recording music
  • Look at cyberpunk genre and art movement and see how they explore cyberspace
    • Make note of the visual language used from this genre
    • Look at neuromancer by william gibson
  • Use Double Diamond Process
    • Currently in the define stage
  • Pick 1 experience
    • Show the differences in cultures and the internet
  • Keywords
    • Technological dominance social impact of technology.

Thesis Criteria questions

  • Communication objective for art projects: identify key audience impact coming through the work, if you’re looking to make a change in the audience
  • Avoid making thesis question a rhetorical question
    • Open to interpretation. What kind of differences are there between digital and physical world. and what questions why is more research
  • Research proposal is not part of thesis
  • Conclusion of the research
  • If doing an installation put it all up in dark lab and take pictures and videos.

After looking at artwork I’ve started looking into academic papers. I used Chat GPT to find papers as I struggled to find the correct keywords to find what I wanted.

I found Lev Manovich’s book “The Language of New Media” which talks about the language we use to understand and operate computers. He identifies that we use language from text and cinema as a foundation for how computer interface has been made.

I’ve been quite drawn to the text influence on computers over the cinema influence. I might focus on that aspect of the how the digital space works. Although the part about how the cinematic frame and postmodernism has influenced computer interface is interesting.