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Demo Video 

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Paper Play Final Presentation

(not sure why it uploads in bad quality but here is the dropbox link to the hq one)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qemtkn98ep9dwig/googleglass%C2%B1app.jpg

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Final App Interface

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Semester Reflection

I think this semesters projects worked out a lot better than the projects in interface1. My group designed the app called Paper Play. The main concept was to create an app using wikitude studio which allows you to scan article images from magazines or newspapers with your phone or tablet to see corresponding videos on the topic. We also designed an interface for google glass. This interface is a simplified version of the application and works with simple buttons and voice commands.

I designed the app interface and I think as a whole it looks clean and profession. The boys worked on the functionality which in the end didn't work that great because they were unable to keep the video inside the app it always just takes you to youtube. If the app was properly coded I think the interface would be possible.  Overall I am happy with the final result, though it would have been nice to have the whole app coded. 

I liked the open source design workshop it was interesting to learn about all the different types of open design and how easily you can contribute tp them. The Munich excision was ok although it would have been better if it was more organised and we could have finished the proposed project.

Finally, I have enjoyed studying in the interface courses. I believe I have learnt a lot of new things about screen design which will be really handy in my design career. 

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This was our groups design from the open source design workshop

I think it turned out pretty cool, it's a post-able card in which will be posted with compacted soil and herb seeds then you are enabled to grow your herbs out of the card. 

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From Design Fiction to Experiential Futures

http://news.noahraford.com/?p=1625

This chapter explores the role design fiction, experiential futures and visual media in foresight work.

The article has various examples these were some of my favourite. 

http://youtu.be/pbZu1WNJNLQ

“Fly Me to the Moon” is a short video developed by APF member Heather Schlegel for the financial transaction company, SWIFT.  On the surface, it explores the future for electronic payments. Beyond that, it explores how concepts of trust, identity, ease, convenience and technology will interact with money in the future.  It is told with realistic characters, emotion and social meaning, embedded in an everyday world of remarkable richness and depth.

This project is subtle and compelling.  Like the best kinds of design future hybrids, it is also well researched and rich with strategic insight.  It thus works as an excellent piece of futures research and as an engaging piece of media and entertainment. Even more interesting, it does so with practically no special effects or high technology.

Our Plastic Century

http://news.noahraford.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/IMG_0855-edit-s.preview.jpg

Futurists Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagan sought to create an installation that would trigger “the wisdom of repugnance” in their project, Our Plastic Century; an attempt to visualize and extrapolate trends in ocean pollution debuted at the California Academy of Sciences in 2010.

The projectPlastic Century consists of four large water coolers filled with plastic debris representing the total amount of plastic produced and existing on Earth at four different points in time: the birth of Jacques Cousteau (1910), at 1960, at the present, and forecast out to 2030.

The project uses an intensely visual and intuitive approach, provoking a powerful reaction from its viewers. Although not a scenario project, the projection of plastic accumulation evoked the futurist’s goal of “making the familiar strange and the strange, familiar”. “We are trying to recalibrate people’s reality,” write Candy and Dunagan.  In its simplicity and museum exhibition formatting, the installation successful transports the viewer into a future world, grabs them emotionally, and then suggests new ways of seeing their behavior today with renewed clarity.

In all of these projects the designers have used design in way that evokes an emotional response to their viewers I think this is a beneficial way in which we should be designing for the future.

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Questioning the “critical” in Speculative & Critical Design

A brazilian researcher’s rant on the blind privilege that permeates most Speculative Design projects.

“The political, economic, social and cultural implications of technologies are never local but always global and systemic — they ripple out and affect people you may never know or see in your lifetime. It’s great to believe in the promise of technological progress when you belong to a class and a society that will directly get to reap its benefits in the end.”

This article describes all about SCD and whether its necessary to our society. I think after reading this that yes it is necessary and has much to offer. I think design is a powerful language and can provide relevant social and cultural critique. 

Speculative Design can only earn its “Critical” name once it leaves its own comfort zone and start looking beyond privilege, for real.

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TED - Should we design humans?

Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering

This talk questions the harmfulness of bio-engineering in animals, cells and organisms. 

He talks about if its ethical especially changing the cell structure of animals, hooking up animals to computers. Although by putting technologies into animals could be very useful for future activities such as using the robotic living bugs for perhaps a war zone using their cameras etc. We are now at a point where we are creating creatures for our own use. For example growing body parts in animals and transferring them to humans but the question is.. is this ethical?

Molly Stevens: A new way to grow bone

This talk is about finding creative ways in finding products to use for medical purposes. The main message I got while watching this was that even simple materials can elicit powerful biological responses.

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Crowdmilking

http://collectivate.net/journalisms/#_ftn9

This article articulates the difference between working for money and wokring for pleasure on something that will help the society. To me digital labor is human activity that is undertaken solely for pleasure that results in economic value. The article suggests that in todays society, you can either wait for the immaterial worker movement to materialise or are you can be part of the reshaping and invention of coalitions that will help to meet collective needs.  

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Wicked Problems

This is a social design where they invented an innovating idea to alleviate the problem of aids. They achieved this by using a participatory design to understand the meaning of the project and the people involved. 

They emphasise the fact that we should be using design on a bigger scales for more social awareness and problems that matter rather than just designing material items (consumptive crap) 

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Chapter 2 - Shape of Design

Craft and Beauty

In this chapter it talks about making your works beautiful not just making them because you have to the Shakers proverb sums this up:

 “Do not make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both, do not hesitate to make it beautiful.”

Obviously we all know we design things to be useful but we have remember to put love into the work to reach out to the clients. I really think this quote from the book is a very good reminder of this:

"Craft is a love letter from the work’s maker, and here in my hands is that note enveloped in stone"

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What is a Hypersurface

A hyper surface is where reality meets the digital work, its a virtual performance in which the audience can enter the artwork, be apart of it and interact with it. In performing through the hyper surface the viewer enters a world of stimulation while maintaining a direct rapport with their own environment. The hyper surface is more than just a surface, its a representation as well as a materiality. It belongs to both the world of media as well as the real world. Hyper surfaces are also said to be an exchange of consciousness. 

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Hyper surface design Example - 2 

Space becomes a media itself: Just like all other media – audio, video, images and text – nowadays space can be transmitted, stored and recovered in a snapshot. Space can be squeezed, re-formatted, changed into a flow, filtered, computerized, programmed and interactively managed (L. Manovich, “Il linguaggio dei nuovi media”).

http://www.digicult.it/digimag/issue-052/hypersurface-and-mediafacade-urban-screen-and-nu-former/

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Example 1 - Hyper-surface Design