cjfu – Tangible Interfaces http://mas834.media.mit.edu MAS.834 Sat, 12 Dec 2015 03:52:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://courses.media.mit.edu/2015fall/mas834/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/09/cropped-TIlogoB-02-copy2-32x32.png cjfu – Tangible Interfaces http://mas834.media.mit.edu 32 32 Project Interference http://mas834.media.mit.edu/2015/11/03/project-interference/ Tue, 03 Nov 2015 15:09:32 +0000 http://mas834.media.mit.edu/?p=4980 In the System Design and Management programme I’m in, we think a lot about how to manage complex engineering projects. One of the biggest challenges is that these projects (think cars, spaceships) are larger than the mind can comprehend and it’s very difficult to get a sense of whether it’s going well or about to run into problems.

This idea aims to reflect some of that complexity in water ripples, hoping to show how different actions on the project are literally constructive or destructive. This body of water will have a few different features: Point sourcesFrequency, and Gates.

The idea is to have a point source for every subgroup of a project team that’s working on a large system. For example, one point source can represent the thruster team for a spaceship, another the flight path planning team. Or for a car, one can represent the software team, and another the proximity sensor team. The sources can be positioned in many ways relative to one another, whether all starting on the same side of a rectangular pool, or different sides of a circular pool, or starting at different distances from the start end of rectangular pool (perhaps to make a literal swim lane diagram).

Each of these point sources can vary the frequency that they dip in to the water, corresponding to major milestones. For a software project, it can be as simple as every time there is a new commit on the project.

This is an example of the complex kind of patterns that can be produced by varying source location and frequency:

Wavepanel-2

Finally, gates are barriers with slits that can be put further down from the point source, such as midway in a rectangular pool. These gates represent the same funding gates or deliverable deadlines that any project has structured into it. These slits serve to change the interference pattern.

FullSizeRender

More thought will have to be put into exactly what each dip should represent, and what the interference can really mean, and how patterns might be interpreted, but one can imagine that intuitive project feedback it could provide. Teams might also experiment with different locations and frequencies, to see how a project could be structured differently, in terms of timing of deliverables or division of teams.

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Terrmill http://mas834.media.mit.edu/2015/09/28/terrmill/ Mon, 28 Sep 2015 06:05:57 +0000 http://mas834.media.mit.edu/?p=4382 star1

Sam the Starman owned a very normal sort of treadmill. Every now and then he would use it for a bit of exercise — walking perhaps, or running, or maybe walking, or maybe running.

star2

He also owned some pretty good virtual reality products, that allowed him to pair his treadmill to his video games, immersing him as he ran through the various worlds of warcraft.

starsad

But this was not enough for Sam. He dreamt of something more — a richer, deeper experience of the journey through his real and virtual worlds.

starh

And as he dreamt, lo and behold, the ground beneath him changed!

star3 star4

His treadmill was now a brand new Terrmill (Terrain-adaptable-treadmill), a revolutionary new surface that changed according to his in-game terrain, so he could run up mountains or fall into ravines as his avatar did. His exercise routines now turned into riveting obstacle courses, which he could even program into his very own skatepark.

And Sam was never sad again.

starskate

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Carolyn Fu http://mas834.media.mit.edu/2015/09/19/carolyn-fu/ Sun, 20 Sep 2015 03:05:39 +0000 http://mas834.media.mit.edu/?p=4219 Hello! I’m a first year grad student in System Design and Management. I did mechanical engineering at UPenn and then more of it at Stanford, and learnt a lot of biomechanics and product development. I can do design in the design thinking sense but want to venture more into its aesthetic sense; I can code in Matlab and halting Python/Java; I can machine things but it’s been a while so I can also cut fingers off.

I dream of making computer-supported cooperative work platforms that rely on whole body gestures, or ways of reading team performance from biomechanics. I write arts reviews and code biomechanical analyses of ballet for fun.

cjfu@mit.edu

★★★★ Fabrication & Craft
★★☆☆ Design
★☆☆☆ Electronics
★★☆☆ Programming
★★☆☆ Biology
★☆☆☆ Chemistry

 

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