Category: Workshops

Convergence task

Connor Osadczuk / / Ideas, Workshops

This Monday, we were set our “convergence” task – the aim to bring together everything we’ve learnt thus far, and present it as a 2-page proof-of-concept PDF document responding to one of these areas:

  • Making simple music
  • The death of newspapers/books
  • Personal security
  • The Digital Doctor
  • Toy Hack

One of the great things about this task is that the product does not have to exist in the real world, and the brief states we are not restricted by “time, technology or budget”.

The idea I’m going to go for falls under the theme of “personal security”. It’s actually a concept I touched upon in my very first blog post – an application that utilises NFC/GPS technology to transmit a signal to a receiver and act as a form of digital registration – useful for school, or work. The idea is that the user will automatically be signed in and out of the system based on the signal and the the receiver. For instance, the application sends out a signal every 10 steps the user takes (judged by an accelerometer), or every 2 minutes. This means that as long as they are within range of a receiver, they will continually logged as present wherever they may be – however if their signal falls short of the receiver, they will be automatically signed out as absent at that present time. This application would be useful for automatically logging the presence of an individual in the workplace or school – allowing for the data to be automatically uploaded and managed via a database. This concept has several shortcomings, such as the unreliability and distance available for transmission via NFC, and in GPS case, the need to be constantly within mobile or wifi signal range. The app could be exploited and abused in several ways and, finally, there would have to be several receivers, depending on the size of the building/area in which the system is utilised; for bigger companies/schools, this may become rather costly. While it may be impossible, or costly, or even simply inconvenient; I believe there is a high possibility that the app could have some potential great uses – including military application.

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EDIT: I’ve just short conversation with my workshop tutor, and he’s given me several good ideas.

Thinking about the broader uses of such an application is the idea of automatically generating census and statistical data from the information received from each individual who uses the application; if the application submits anonymous statistics from the user such as location, then by the information gathered from every user is compiled and a, for example, a heatmap can be generated of the area. If the example was a university campus, from this data, it would be easy to see where students go and where they don’t go, leading the way for improvements on less desirable areas of campus, event planning and even applying the data for future safety purposes – if planning a fire route, it would be useful to have a generated heatmap to tell which areas to avoid and as such reduce congestion. In military application, this would also be useful for training and field exercises; planning strategies, for example.
Even more so,  

I like the idea that, in the future, almost anything you could possibly want to do when out and about could be done through NFC technology – imagine not only being able to pay quickly with NFC, but also being able turn on your car and open secure doors (http://www.nfcworld.com/2012/04/23/315235/bmw-uses-nfc-car-keys-to-open-hotel-room-doors/, http://www.nfcporter.com/)

But what about having, if you chose – your entire identity on your NFC (Driver’s license, Passport). Although this idea is somewhat a scary one, I believe that the technology could be coupled with fingerprint identification, retinal identification or something of the similar so that no-one can steal your information if you lose your phone. Imagine being able to buy a plane ticket just by swiping your phone at the terminal – your card is charged, and your passport information – linked to your NFC, if automatically transmitted to airport security, who perform a manual check before letting you on your way.

I personally think one of the big promises of NFC is removing the aspect of carrying so many various things – keys, ID, money, etc… and condensing them down into a single device. Like I said – security is the problematic issue I’ll have to try and find a decent solution for – but as it’s simply a concept and security could always get better in the future, I’m still going to stick with the idea for now.
Problematically, such features could lead to a potential Orwellian future – if all this information is on a single device which has a consistent internet connection, then anyone who could gain potential access – including companies and the government – would have so much information about you that privacy wouldn’t even be a concept – where you live, where you’ve been, where you visit often; your financial transactions… Not to mention your (in theory) entire body of identification. I imagine many people may be opposed to such a concept from the start.

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This is an app concept idea I made quickly for fun.

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SEE: Time and motion study, NFC/Bluetooth alternative to GPS

 

Indoor/Bluetooth GPS:

https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/#project

http://www.infsoft.co.uk/Products/Indoor-GPS-Hardware

I’m trying to think of a way I can implement a system like this, but the only thing I can think of is military application. If a unit of soldiers mapped out a space in full 3D; the data could effectively be transmitted real-time from units on the ground and sent back to command; from here, along with IF tagging of the units, command effectively has a real-time 3D map they can interact with – something that would provide a huge tactical and strategic advantage over traditional helmet cams or satellite/drone feeds.

The device should be strapped to the helmets of the soldiers and, with hopefully a much larger FOV than is available now, this would allow for 3D real-time mapping of objects some distance away. If the information collected from each soldier’s cam is stitched together, it could create a decently accurate and sizeable 3D map of the area.

App + Icon, improved

Connor Osadczuk / / Project work, Workshops

My digital media workshop tutor today critiqued my previous work, and suggested further developments on how I could improve upon what I already had. These are those improvements.

Icon

The first step I took was to re-design my previous application icon. The previous consisted of a single blue house on a white background. Upon being reviewed, it became clear that the icon didn’t really give the message I was trying to send – for starters, it was a single house, which doesn’t exactly re-enforce the idea of “community”. Second, it looked very similar to a lot of application “home” icons. My re-designed icon, as can be seen above, is not all that much a drastic change from my previous icon. It was simply a case of copying the house and moving it over; but already  it looks a lot different. The fact there are two houses removes the connotations of homeliness, and instead re-enforces the idea of community.

Interface

My interface has had an extensive re-design; I did away with the swiping idea I had to instead focus on a more classic, user-friendly design based upon the previous “My Council” app. For this workshop, I wanted to focus on the icons, spacing and usability (I have not yet given the colour scheme much consideration). All the icons are supposed to be visually represent the text beneath them, although this is very difficult to do. “Jobs” could also easily be “news”. Nonetheless, I’m extremely pleased with how this turned out, and am looking forward to developing it further.

TED talks and other things.

Connor Osadczuk / / Inspiration, Workshops

University news first: in my first workshop for digital media we looked at digital magazines on an iPad and have been tasked with designing and interactive magazine for a subject of our choosing. (In typical fashion we chose technology and gadgetry, of course)
So in this interactive magazine we can utilise such things as scrolling text, embedded videos, hyperlinks, photo galleries, etc. So it should be pretty fun to design and compile into what will hopefully be a product that looks and works great. But we shall see.

On the subject of design, Moshe Safdie, an architect (among other things) gave a 5 minute TED talk about reinventing the apartment building to be a nicer place to live. It’s a good video and worth watching from a design standpoint; he explains why his designs work better than what is common at the moment and is generally an interesting watch anyway (as are most TED talks), so check it out.

Moshe Safdie: How to reinvent the apartment building