halla – Tangible Interfaces

Stack O’ Letters

halla — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 16:12:52 +0000

A daily interaction with painted bits for most people is checking emails. It would be great if we could make that more tangible, especially since email is a digital metaphor for physical letters. I was originally thinking along the lines of having emails projected onto a piece of paper for reading, and being able to scan and send replies, but then I realized that’s effectively a fax machine. So instead, I went along the lines of a peripheral display.

Introducing: Stack O’ Letters

Stack O’ Letters is a stack of letters (subtle, isn’t it?) whose height is actuated based on how many unread emails are in your inbox. This provides an easy way to keep an eye on your unread email count without having to be tied to a phone or computer.

Stack O’ Letters would consist of a base box, and inside that box would be an actuated platform with a stack of letters on it. When the platform is at its lowest height, the base box should be tall enough to hide the stack of letters, illustrating that there are zero unread emails. As the unread email count increases, the platform will rise, pushing letters into the visible part of the display. There will be a set number of letters in the stack, so there won’t be a 1:1 ratio of letters showing to unread emails. Instead, a max limit will be set by the user (such as 100 unread emails), and the percentage of the stack showing will match the ratio of actual unread emails to the max limit. There will be a ruler-like part of the display to show where the maximum height of the stack is.

But Stack O’ Letters isn’t just a display; the user can interact with it! Although I don’t think reading/writing emails would work out very well, there are other interactions a user has with their inbox. For instance, the user can turn auto-reply on/off. This could take the form of a flag, reminiscent of the flags on residential mailboxes. The user could also choose to ignore all of their unread emails by pushing the stack back down into the base, effectively marking all of their emails as “read”.

Light Palette

halla — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 01:47:56 +0000

There are decorative lights that can be different colors, but either you have to program it to display the color you want, or there’s a remote with only a few color options. It would be cool to create an interface for such a light that allows users to adjust the quantities of red/green/blue light being output. I’m imagining something with pneumatic “bubbles” that the user can depress to decrease amounts and inflate (some sort of conductive sensor would probably be needed here) to increase amounts. It could also be a useful tool for teaching children about mixing light colors.

Halla Moore

halla — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 17:07:24 +0000

Hi!

I’m Halla. I’m an EECS MEng student working in CSAIL, with a concentration in HCI.

I specialize in web interfaces, so I’m super down with JavaScript, jQuery (my non-problematic fave), HTML, and CSS, but I also have experience (ordered from most to least) in Python (TwistedWeb, anyone?), Java, C++, and running both Java and C++ on Android. I also have some moderate electronics experience.

I really enjoy the process of interaction design and I can’t wait to collaborate with the rest of you!

Email: halla@mit.edu

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