Homework Day 4 – Arya Qiu

• Write shortly about your previous experiences communicating ideas and prototyping if you have any. Compare the crafting method you have used in the past to prototype and what you learned today. How do you think that these digital fabrication methods can help you for your future projects?

I have build prototypes in Solidworks, exporting them to Keyshot to render and use Coraldraw to print out in cardboard and laser cut it in lab before putting them together.

These fabrication methods help me to understand the limitations of each tool: laser cutting being more effort-consuming and 3d printing being more time-consuming. There are many unknown tools out there like Ultimaker and Gravit, some are even web based. However, this makes tools less important as they are merely means to an end but not an end itself. I learnt to focus on ideas and goals to achieve, rather than focusing on mastering the skills as softwares are ever-changing.

• Read The art of interaction. Based on your reflections on the reading, define in your own words what interaction is for you.
• Finally, explain what contributes to a successful interactive experience based on your definition of interaction.

The article focuses on the interaction as an art form to expressive artists’ statements. It is based in the context of art and its development from an artist’s perspective. The author mentioned that the frameworks to interactive art is “in the same way that words such as hue and saturation help with the painting of color.”

To me, an interactive art is entirely from an interaction design. I used to be appreciate interactive art from an artist’s perspective and strongly agree with the author on the viewers’ engagement part. Be it ambient or influencing, art is nothing without audience. However, now being an interaction designer/ student, I am more thinking about the user experience, balancing different stakeholders and consider about design ethics.

Thus, the interaction should be an entire ecosystem, encompassing not only the artist statement, in this case, it should be designers’ own voice, but also the users and the stakeholders. The impacts created on the user become much broader than just “engagement”. More often than not, engaging becomes less important than bringing comfort, being invisible to the user. Be like water.