Posted: April 16th, 2013 | Author: Sophia | Filed under: Assignment 8 | Tags: Mindfulness Bracelet | No Comments »
Mindfulness Bracelet
Mindfulness is the state of being aware in the present moment as well as taking a non-evaluative and non-judgmental approach to one’s inner experience. Adopting new habits and new ways of thinking is very difficult. New books and studies are constantly released with methods for self-improvement and the secrets to happiness, but trying to remember these in the midst of the hecticness of life can seem impossible. Practicing mindfulness is one way to improve awareness of habits and goals during those busy moments, but remembering to be mindful itself can be hard! Is it possible to build a device that can improve mindfulness?
To change habits and reach goals we need to remember our intentions at the right time. Existing tools for remembering and achieving goals are evaluative and can feel judgemental, two qualities which go against the teachings of mindfulness. Notes, visualizations, inspirational images, logging tools, point systems…even tying a string to your finger…are all easy to ignore when your attention is elsewhere and not easy to take with you. Calendar reminders and alarms feel judgemental and intrusive. Devices like Fitbit and reflectOns are evaluative and may feel judgemental to some. In general, systems that use rewards or punishment to motivate are shown to not be as effective in the long run. Once the system is gone, the person’s behavior tends to go back to normal. In addition, happiness and satisfaction also lessened using punishment and reward systems because the accomplishment feels less authentic. Developing intrinsic motivation through a mindfulness meditation practice is supposedly one of the best ways to train yourself for awareness, focused attention, and willpower, but it can be hard to integrate with your daily routine.
Some people are already experimenting with devices to bring awareness to emotions. The EmoBracelet (http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/gadget-warns-online-traders-of-dud-decisions-20091015-gy7d.html) was developed for stock traders to be mindful of stress and overexcitement. The Noumic (http://www.noumic.com/) was developed for use as a meditation tool. However, both of these use lights and/or sounds, which are disruptive and attract attention, and the Noumic is not wearable and must be held.
I propose to build a subtle yet stylish bracelet that provides gentle reminders during your daily routine. Embedded within the bracelet is a sensor to measure galvanic skin response. Galvanic skin response is used to measure emotional arousal. In response to strong emotions, the bracelet would become warm and give the user’s wrist a gentle hug to remind the user to be aware of her actions and mental state. Galvanic skin response can show whether you are excited or stressed but it has trouble distinguishing between the two. Though for other applications this can be a problem, mindfulness requires a non-judgemental approach and this would actually be a benefit in this application. The user would be reminded to reflect during all kinds of heightened emotions, which is what mindfulness encourages.
I would find such a device useful within my own life. For example, I am reading Flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. In this book, he describes methods for making our work feel more meaningful and increasing happiness through focused attention, challenging myself, etc. It is very hard to remember his methods when I am actually in the middle of my work and stressed out. What if the bracelet gave me a reminder through warmth and a gentle squeeze to think about these methods that I want to remember? Also, affirmations (shown to be effective at increasing happiness, decreasing stress, and changing habits) and calming exercises are also hard to remember. Could my bracelet detect my stress and then subtly remind me to relax? Could such a device be used to help during meditation? During meditation, it is extremely easy to let your mind wander. Could I use a sensor to detect my wandering attention and gently guide my thoughts back to my meditation?
To implement this this device, I would start simple, maybe just using heat. Flexible heat circuits are easy to get and could be sewn into fabric or cast into flexible silicon. Galvanic skin response sensors are also available online, but I believe that this bracelet would be effective even if it only went off randomly. Currently, I don’t know how I would implement the gentle squeeze functionality, but I think the bracelet would work with just heat. For a device like this to be useful, it would have to have good battery life and recharging would have to be easy. It would also have to be stylish and unobtrusive so the user wouldn’t mind wearing it. Ideally, it would be nice to have a small screen on the bracelet so you can optionally use it to remember different things. Also, it might be useful if the bracelet can be tied to other devices using bluetooth or some other type of wireless communication in order to be able to tie it in with different contexts and perhaps do some logging.
Through this project, I hope to demonstrate that I can increase the likelihood of changing my behavior, habits, and thought patterns. I believe that this will be effective even if the reminders are done randomly, reinforcing pathways and associations during all kinds of situations. I also hope that the bracelet can be so subtle that it can eventually trigger different thoughts and behavior even if the user isn’t fully conscious of the physical signal.
Posted: April 3rd, 2013 | Author: Sophia | Filed under: Assignment 7 | No Comments »
I thought the system that was developed for learning Japanese polite phrases was an extremely good example of just-in-time learning, and it made me think about what might be some other good applications. Maybe a similar system could be used to help people give public presentations. A wearable device that reminds the user of their notes on a particular slide might be a much less intrusive than the speaker reading their notes from a computer. In addition, perhaps such a system could help pull up relevant notes and research during Q&A. Both would help the user maintain their connection with the audience much better than having to look at things on a screen on the podium. Also, maybe a system like this could help people in dating situations…helping them get through initial icebreaker questions, reminding them of the other person’s interests, etc.
The location-based AR games were also interesting. I liked the idea of certain games being written for a specific geographical location, especially as tools to improve the landscape or to encourage people in those locations to get to know each other. The article also mentioned games which get customized to whatever location you are in, and both of these types of AR games are discussed in great detail in the science fiction novel,
Halting State, by Charles Stross. In his novel, he wrote about an elaborate spy game that actually turned out to be a real branch of the government secret service. Players were unknowingly working for the government against actual terrorist threats.
Posted: March 21st, 2013 | Author: Sophia | Filed under: Assignment 6 | No Comments »
I very much enjoyed the reading on deschooling. In my own experiences with school, I resented being told what I needed to learn and how fast to learn it. I often wished I could move faster and have access to teachers that could teach me different subjects not available at my school. I found myself ill-prepared for college (because I lacked certain knowledge that I needed) and even more ill-prepared for a role where I finally had to make choices independently (having had it drilled into me that my own intuition is inferior to the wishes of my teachers). I strongly believe that a system where students can request what they learn would be much better fostering genuine curiosity and autonomy. In the real world, someone will not be planning everything out for you, and being able to manage your own objectives is an invaluable skill. On top of that, I think the world would just be more interesting with more diverse, interesting, and passionately curious people.
However, I am not sure how this system would prevent the “charlatans, demagogues, proselytizers, corrupt masters…” the author speaks out against. Present in structured education, I believe they would still be present in a less structured way of learning. Choosing teachers, students, or peers would be fraught with the same dangers as craigslist or online dating. How do you know someone is not dangerous? How do you know if someone actually has the knowledge they claim to have? How do yo know if someone will be a valuable, responsible teacher and mentor? I don’t think the solution to this will be as simple as doing reviews, giving scores, or using some kind of point system. While the internet makes information very easy to find, it is hard to know if it is reliable, and I think the same could happen with this more informal approach to teaching.
This leads me to think that maybe a hybrid approach might work best, a system that has a standardized core (that doesn’t take up all of the student’s time like it does now) but that allows much of a student’s education to be tailored to their own interests and goals using this less structured method.
Posted: March 14th, 2013 | Author: Sophia | Filed under: Assignment 5 | No Comments »
Good Eye
Teaching composition and design principles to artists and designers is difficult. Some people have an inherent knack for composition, and, for others, it is learned. In both cases, it develops only with much looking and practice, and it is not something which can be easily learned from a book. Traditionally, it is taught by showing slides of the work of other artists and designers and then by critiquing finished assignments. Creating a painting or making a design, however, is made up of a series of hundreds decisions where the artist/designer is working without guidance. Only after many hours of work, hundreds of steps later, might an artist receive any feedback on their work. Often the most paralyzing part of the process is staring at a blank or nearly blank page and not being able to determine what the next step should be. I propose to augment this process by building a tool which assists its user in developing a “good eye”.
To do this, I suggest a system that works with the user during the process of developing a composition, aiding them in making all those small decisions as opposed to only receiving critique once a piece is finished. I imagine that the user would place a shape on the canvas or screen, and the system would propose a series of possible next steps that the user could make on screen or projected directly onto the work. Even just being able to see how a one choice might affect the rest of the composition without committing to it would very helpful because this is something that can be hard to do when using physical materials (cutting out shapes of paper, etc.). The possibilities would be varied in shape, value, texture, color, and line, which are the ways that an artist or design can influence the feeling of the final composition. The user could cycle through the possibilities and choose what feels best. The user could repeat this process for as long as it is helpful. The way the system would make suggestions would be derived from an algorithmic analysis of a bank of images of the work of other artists and designers.
I see a few different use cases for such a system. I imagine that this could be very useful for teachers of art and design. Teachers commonly tell students to study the work of artists before or after giving an assignment, but this sort of system would help the student during the process of making a work. A teacher could assign a set of images to feed to her students’ systems to hone certain skills. In addition, a teacher could tailor the input to each student, diagnosing weaknesses in the student’s design sense and prescribe artists that would help to counteract those weaknesses. I also see such a system helping artists and designers working alone. The user could teach themselves by inputting the works of artists they admire, and using the system would help them understand what it is about those works that is so appealing and successful. Furthermore, the images fed to the system need not even be works of art but any source of inspiration, any image, and the system could become a new way of making work in general.
A system like this could also be easily adapted to record how an artist arrives at a composition and then play back those steps to someone else. This would be almost like a paint by number but with an emphasis on the process of arriving at a composition and not just reproducing the final result (in which it can be very difficult to understand how the artist/designer got there), and it could also be a very useful learning tool.
When working digitally, something like this could be built directly into the graphics software. For sketching and painting, a camera could record the work in progress and the suggestions could be projected onto the work itself or shown on a screen on top of an image of the work. Ideally, the user would be able to see the suggestions directly on their work and not on a separate screen. Using projection would be problematic because projected colors do not have the same quality as those made with real materials, which will affect the user’s ability to weigh out their options effectively. Also, artists need to work in bright light, and projections would not work as well in those conditions. Projecting onto already colored surfaces also would also be a problem because the colors would mix and shapes would overlay and not occlude each other. Many of these problems might be avoided by using AR glasses.
Such a system would also be useful for learning to arrange 3d spaces, making sculptures, etc. but this use case would likely have a confusing UI and be hard to implement. Starting out, the algorithm for making suggestions would likely be very primitive and might not always analyze the input images correctly. Understanding that one shape occludes another and that they are not just two shapes side by side also seems like something that would be hard to implement in the algorithm. In addition, often good compositions are nuanced ones, and it would be hard for a computer to understand these nuances. However, despite these limitations, such a system could still be very useful.
That this system might train artists and designers to all work in a similar way is a valid concern, but I would argue that this is no different than using any tool or technology (paint, a pencil, Photoshop, etc.), which also imposes constraints on how to think and work. By being able to iterate through the design choices more easily and reversibly, users could develop a “good eye” more quickly. This system would also help the user learn from someone else’s working process, which is hard to do now. I imagine this could be used in class, but that it would be particularly useful as a way for people to teach themselves when they do not have access to expensive art and design schools. Furthermore, I believe that such a tool will help its user find her unique voice as an artist much more quickly. As the user trains the system, she will discover what she likes and define her own style. Finally, such a system might even grow to be more than a learning tool and become a new method for creating works in ways I cannot even predict.
Slides
Posted: February 28th, 2013 | Author: Sophia | Filed under: Assignment 3 | No Comments »
I’m interested in using similar systems to the remembrance agents, etc. to augment the creative process. Computers currently expect users to make the leap to remember where things are, what they are named, and that they even exist. Similarly, tools and systems that creators rely on also put the burden on the user. Creators must search for connections between disparate sources and ideas, and they must develop their own systems to help them do this. Most artists I know rely on keeping a sketchbook, having an inspiration wall, or free writing to help them generate new ideas. Few I know are able to use a computer to help them with this process, and many have complex rituals they use to put them in the right frame of mind for creation. Often, the most important “aha moments” seem to come from nowhere. What if a system could be devised that would help the user stay in this creative, associative mode more of the time? How could inspirations, interesting connections be given to the user proactively? It is much more difficult to determine what might be relevant to a creative process than in the memory agent. Maybe this is where generative systems might be come into play (which have long been used by many artists, musicians, and writers in aiding them in their creative process). I wonder how such generative systems might be able to work with the user’s current context? People are very good at immediately knowing if an idea is a compelling, but the hard part is blending information and concepts in new ways to come up with those ideas. Maybe here the computer could be a help. Would such a system work as a secondary task, something running on the side and not requiring the user’s full attention?
I also felt interested in the idea of computers worn as jewelry. Using metaphors of traditional objects changes the user’s expectations of what the computer can do. How might one of these systems be different if it were incorporated in a bracelet, a bracer, a necklace, a locket, a ring, an earring, a pocket watch, a wristwatch, a headband, a crown, etc. as opposed to a magnifying glass, a book, glasses, etc.? So many of these traditionally are ornaments and sometimes status symbols and only a few serve practical functions.
Posted: February 21st, 2013 | Author: Sophia | Filed under: Assignment 2 | No Comments »
I liked what Andy Clark wrote about how we are “natural-born cyborgs”. He argues that more than any other creature, the human brain is primed to adapt to technologies and extend its process into the world around us. He describes humans’ adaptation to technology throughout history as a “cascade of ‘mindware upgrades’: cognitive upheavals in which the effective architecture of the human mind is altered and transformed,” citing speech, written language, photography, etc. as major examples. The structure of the mind adapts to our surroundings, experiences, and the tools we use.
In the article describing Sparrow’s research, this is confirmed in the case where the presence of the internet affects the way people remember things. If the participants knew they would have internet access, they adopted a model of “transactive memory—recollections that are external to us but that we know when and how to access”.
I feel these effects myself. I grew up using computers as an early age, and I strongly sense that this has affected the way I organize my thoughts and how I process information.
Like Lanier, I also see an incredible danger in the malleability of the human mind being combined with a constant overlay whose its information is controlled by only one or two sources. This will drastically shape society and the way humans behave, and it will likely do so negatively if the new AR technologies are not designed thoughtfully and ethically. The potential pervasiveness of advertising in order to interact with these systems is quite disturbing also. (There is a great short story about this by the science fiction author J. G. Ballard called “The Subliminal Man” in which Ballard describes a future in which all of society’s behavior is controlled by billboards with subliminal advertising messages.) These AR devices could easily become the “gatekeeping functions” Lanier describes where advertisers pay for access to to our minds (only now in a much more direct way than ever before).
The design of an interface says much about how we see ourselves…it is how we believe we fit with the tools we use. Knowing how adaptable our mental processes are, what would it mean to design a system with a vision of how we wish we were instead of how we see ourselves now?
Posted: February 21st, 2013 | Author: Sophia | Filed under: Assignment 1 | No Comments »
I think the H-LAM/T system Englebart describes, well-defined but general, is very helpful in thinking about how to approach the design of augmentation systems. I also really liked his description of human intelligence: “If we then ask ourselves where that intelligence is embodied, we are forced to concede that it is elusively distributed throughout a hierarchy of functional processes — a hierarchy whose foundation extends down into natural processes below the depth of our comprehension. If there is any one thing upon which this ‘intelligence depends’ it would seem to be organization.”
Building on this understanding of intelligence, he writes, “The important thing to appreciate here is that a direct new innovation in one particular capability can have far-reaching effects throughout the rest of your capability hierarchy. A change can propagate up through the capability hierarchy; higher-order capabilities that can utilize the initially changed capability can now reorganize to take special advantage of this change and of the intermediate higher-capability changes. A change can propagate down through the hierarchy as a result of new capabilities at the high level and modification possibilities latent in lower levels. These latent capabilities may previously have been unusable in the hierarchy and become usable because of the new capability at the higher level.”
I am interested in how we can augment our creative capabilities. Reading about creativity, I haven’t yet found anything which describes the creative process in as useful a way as Englebart describes his framework. In what ways would it be possible to augment certain portions of our creative process? Can different kinds of symbol manipulation through an AR system affect our abilities to manipulate concepts (conceptual blending or “aha moments”)? Perhaps a small change in the capability hierarchy would have a large impact on overall creativity, which is a higher-order capability.
Reading suggestion: Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (http://www.egs.edu/faculty/donna-haraway/articles/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto/)
Recent Comments