Hello everyone! My name is Yvonne and I’m a graduate student in the Tangible Interaction Design Program  (MTiD). This will be my second semester here, so I am still a newbie if you will. Prior to studying here I worked as an intern architect in Iowa and in Pittsburgh. Before that I got my undergraduate degree in architecture from Iowa State University. I’m interested in a lot of things, but I guess the relevant ones would be game design, accessible technologies, and making architecture more fun (because honestly, it’s a drag in the profession).

Website: www.arealess.com
Twitter: @yvonnehidle
GitHub: www.github.com/yvonnehidle

ToeSight

ToeSight is a quick project I did for Making Things Interactive with Nick Durrant. For starters, it is basically a shoe for the visually impaired (or you weird people out there who want to know what it feels like to have your toes vibrated). It’s really simple and consists of an ultrasound sensor and five pager/vibration motors that correspond to your toes. Obstructions that are far, around five feet away will buzz your little toe, and obstructions less than six inches away will buzz your big toe.

It was pretty successful in “sterile” environments such as the interior of a building. I could navigate through doors, rooms, and upstairs with it. Later experiments outside, however, proved to be troublesome due to the excessive amount of “noise” from things such as leaves. I stopped working on it because I felt the vibration feedback (at least how I was using it) was not very robust. In addition, the shoe lacked a lot of exploratory value; unlike the assistive cane, the shoe gave very limited feedback about my environment (I.E. is this grass or concrete?). I haven’t worked on it since the second prototype, but it was a pretty fun project. I’ll probably revisit it with a different technique in mind when it comes to tactile feedback.

Hello Everyone!

My name is Patra Virasathienpornkul. My last name is a ‘tad bit’ long, and for some odd reasons, it is not pronounced how it is spelled. To make life easier, you can all call me Patt! I am a junior mechanical engineering major, but is very interested in art and design. My interest in interactive art and computational design initially started when I learned about generative art through a company ‘Nervous System’ (http://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com) — a generative design studio that employs science, art, and technology to generate design and create products such as art, jewelry, and housewares. Additionally, after attending the Wats:ON Festival last spring and listening to the lecture given by Leah Buechley – a director of the ‘Hi-Low Tech’ research group at the MIT Media Lab, I was inspired.  They strive to create art, that is achievable yet intriguing, by integrating simple objects such as paper and high technology. I can only hope that the IACD class will allow me to learn and explore beyond what I can imagine.

Twitter: @pattvira
Github: www.github.com/pattvira

My project: Groupings Game

I programmed this game using python as a final project for the introduction to programming course. This is a game where a player tries to set up a grouping of three or more same-color consecutive pieces in a horizontal or a vertical line. In order to do so, a player switches two consecutive pieces by clicking, one after another, the desired pieces. If the move makes a grouping, the grouping is removed and new pieces are added in. The scores increase, in an increment of 10, every time a grouping is removed.

I initially planned to design the Bejeweled game, similar to the one online. However, due to some difficulties, there are some slight changes even though many features of my project are very similar to the game. The differences between this game and Bejeweled are that the rows above the grouping do not move down. Instead, the pieces are added at the position where a grouping is found.  A move is legal if the second piece is either above, below, right, or left of the first piece. As long as a move is legal, the pieces can switch even though it does not make a grouping.