Triple Shadow

Building challenges

My major goals in improving on my previous prototype were:

• Increasing the scale of the exhibit. When I tested the previous prototype, most people told me they wanted the experience to be more immersive.
• Improving interactivity. Letting users manipulate the shape that casts the shadow could make it easier for them to explore the phenomenon.
• Making the piece more surprising. A couple of testers also mentioned that more 'surprising' shapes would make the overall experience cooler.

Given these goals, I made a couple of major changes to bring this piece to where I wanted it to be: 

• Doubled scale. This was a substantial logistical challenge, as you can probably imagine. I ended up attaching the sides together using brackets, which worked really well.
• Additional shapes. These were pretty easy to make, and I've got at least one more in the works for this week. The letters-object needed to be made out of layers of foam core because it has complex internal geometry, but I made the other one out of pink foam, which was pretty easy and worked really well. I also attached the shapes to dowels so that users could hold them up in the light themselves.
• A shroud to hide the shape. I built three intersecting tunnels ("the box"), which served the dual purpose of holding the lights and hiding the shape from view when casting shadows. (More on that later, too.) The major issue with this part was securing the box to the backdrop-- it was fairly heavy on its own, so it stayed in place but was susceptible to tipping over. This was an issue I wasn't really able to resolve before the piece went on the floor.

Label

"Hold the object in between the three lights. What shapes do you see?"

Observations on usage

Social character of the exhibit. I noticed a couple of typical dyadic interactions with the piece, which I'll describe as parent-child, child-child, and adult-adult.

A common parent-child dyad might interact with the exhibit as follows: the parent hands the child the dowel ("This is the object, Hannah."), reads the label to their child, then guides them to hold the object under the vertical light. Then, they ask the child to tell them what shape is being cast as a shadow onto the bottom face of the exhibit backdrop ("See shapes? Cool, huh?"). The child usually gives a plausible answer that the parent immediately reinforces ("A square." "That's right, a square."; "I think I know how to make a C"). Once this goal is achieved, the parent moves the child on to the next exhibit. The other typical parent-child dyadic interaction I observed was a bit briefer-- some parents discouraged their children from exploring the exhibit ("This might be for older kids."; "You're gonna break this."; "Let go, Aidan.") and hurried them along to the next thing.




A common child-child dyad (or a larger group of children) would pick up the dowels, and either begin swinging them around or examining the shape at the end of the dowel. These groups seemed less likely to hold the objects under the shadow. By contrast, adult-adult dyads (although I only observed a couple) were more likely to figure out the interaction in its entirety ("You've got to put it up here. You can make three shadows." "Oh you got it, good job!").

AIl in all, I'm not too worried about the child-child or adult-adult interactions-- but the parent-child interactions could have used work. In general, I found that the parents were reinforcing the first interpretation the children came up with. Since the interaction I planned for was not particularly intuitive, but possible through extended interaction, this was a substantial obstacle to getting the children to see the phenomenon in its entirety.

Interaction issues. The majority of users did not interact with the piece in the way I originally intended. Most commonly, they placed the object under the vertical light and examined the shadow underneath it. Only one user initiated the ideal interaction, and it took him a nontrivial amount of time to figure it out ("In between the lights? What does that mean?"). However, when he got it, he seemed pleased and intrigued by the phenomenon ("<laughs> That's cool.").

There were also a couple of users who never even made it to the dowels-- one particular visitor tried looking in the backs of the LEDs, and left after doing so. It was pretty apparent that height was a major factor, too. Most of the kids could only see the bottom shadow, since the shadows cast on the wall were obscured by the box holding the lights.

Finally, quite a few users only saw a square when they held up the object to the light, and stated "a square" (as if in response to the label) before moving on.

Changes for the next exhibition

I've planned a few changes to the exhibit as it currently stands:

Remove the box. I think hiding the shape makes the interaction undesirably complex. It may be easier for users to hold the object between the shadows if their path to holding the object is unobstructed.

Add an orienting handle to the dowels. Users were unlikely to orient the object in the way I wanted-- a handle that orients the object somehow will make it easier for the desired shadows to show up immediately.

Set up the exhibit at a lower height. Some kids were too short to really see the bottom shadow from a good angle.

Change the label. A lot of people spoke about their interaction with the exhibit as if in response to the label's question ("What shapes do you see?"), but were uncertain about what it meant to "hold the objects in between the three lights." I'm going to run with this and see if there are more informative labels that might work better.

The week 8 prototype

At the end of last week, my goal was to finally put together the electronics and come up with an exhibit that could be tested on the floor. While the main goal of this consisted of adding the electronic components, there were several piece of the exhibit I wanted to refine.

The Week 7 Prototype

By the end of Week 7 I had a prototype that was pretty exciting.  I just couldn't get it to work on its own yet.  I had changed the exhibit around so that the wax flowed over the sides of three layers of terraces.  While I had tried using mirrors and other methods to make the wax more viewable to the user, this method seemed best.

Prototypes working toward the week 7 model

While this worked, I wanted to play with the shape of the terraces and angle at which they were slanted. After looking at a wide variety of shapes and testing them out of paper, I decided on an organic shape that reminded me waterfalls that I've seen.  I also spent time texting which angle would be best for the wax.  I then used the power nibbler to cut out the terraces, which needed to be metal so that at the end of the day they could be heated to melt the remaining wax.

After building and attaching the terraces to a stand, my next challenge was preparing the circuit and making the pieces that would melt the wax.  Testing out several prototypes in plastic and wax, I settled on a design made out of sheet metal that I felt would best melt wax and allow it to flow out onto the terraces. While making wax melters that were functional was important, these pieces of metal that would rise to very high temperatures also needed to be safe, so I attached wooden tops to each such that they would prevent direct contact with the metal through a wooden barrier.

Sketches of possible designs

A plastic prototype 

The final wax melters 

The last piece was to create an electronic circuit using resistive wiring that would heat the metal.  While I initially had no idea how to approach this, one of the TAs showed me that the pink foam cutter in Room 36 operated using nichrome wiring and had a homemade circuit that I could copy, which was my goal.  Once I had all the parts in hand, I tested out the circuit with the wiring which was largely successful as it generated enough heat to start melting the plastic on the alligator clips I was using.  

While the circuit worked well on its own, there were several instances I hadn't accounted for.  First of all, I realized that connected the wiring to the melters was more difficult that I initially thought, a mistake that I will fix in my next phase of prototyping.  On the other hand, I failed to account for the load in the nichrome wiring.  While I had copied the circuit almost exactly from the pink foam cutter, I never measured the resistance across the wire, so when I ran the current across the circuit I built, within a few minutes the transformer heated up and was blown out.  Moving forward, I plan to troubleshoot further and make certain that the heating element has an appropriate resistance such that I do not blow another transformer.  I hope to fix both this and the melter by the coming Friday.

As a result, my piece was unable to be put on the floor for user testing.  Nonetheless, I had the chance to look at my classmates exhibits and how the visitors interacted with them.  Dan's electric radio was by far the closest to mine and gave plenty of insight.  With such a dangerous phenomenon, he placed a plastic case around the electric charge, something I plan to do with my exhibit.  While this did put a wall between the visitor and the phenomenon, he put the exhibit at the edge of the table so visitors could get as close as possible, which they did with eagerness, something else I plan to take into account for my final prototype.

Something else among the many other things that I noticed during my time at watching visitors play with others' exhibits was the importance of draw and placement in the museum.  For example, the darker parts of the room were much less often frequented than the lighter parts.  Even with Clementine's exhibit which displayed a bright and fun mirror box, visitors were much more likely to play with the exhibits in the lighter parts of the room and that were closer to the entrance such as Winnie's, Emily's, Dan's, and others.  For me, this underscores how important having a light setup is to my final piece.  However, for next Friday my goal is functionality.

The Geometry of the Infinite

-Write about the challenges you encountered when you were making this prototype. Write about problems you couldn't solve while building this prototype, write about issues that you were able to solve and the progress you made.

The first challenge I encountered was that the guide rail on the band saw in Room 36 was too small to cut a 12 inch square. I tried going to the wood shop and the metal lab, but those band saws also did not have enough clearance for my piece which was 24"*36". Eventually, I decided to modify my design to make the cuts feasible.

I also had issues with the switch that controlled the lights in the box, as the PRL was all out. I had to make do by reusing the switch from my earlier project. The LEDs I selected also were not ideal, and need to be changed if I pursue this direction.

-Write about your experience on the Exploratorium floor. What did you observe? In what ways did the users' interactions with your piece correspond to your expectations, and in what ways did they not?

I really enjoyed getting a chance to watch users interact with the exhibits on the floor. I observed many points of the interaction that needed to be modified in my piece. 

People did not know where to look. After reading the instructions, people did not know what to do with the light source, and where they were supposed to look. A lot of people also peered into the box from afar, which also seemed counter intuitive to me but I need to fix.

These guys kind of just looked in from afar, I need to make it more obvious that one needs to be close to experience it.

This young boy pulled the rod out from below the stand and put it where I intended the user to look. He seemed to have a good time though. 

Some other key observations:

People also seemed to have a hard time with the rod mechanism

The entire exhibit would slide back along the table when groups of people interacted with it.

The stick would bump into the legs of the stand restricting motion.

It was too tall for some kids.

The unappealing nature of the exterior of the box did not attract visitors.

Some kids fogged up the inside of the box if they got too close to the box.

Kids' internal monologues are almost never internal

Kids recognized it was an iPhone and started switching pictures even though there was no mention of that in my instructions

People's reaction to the piece varied, but was on the whole very positive. I liked seeing the delighted reactions of the kids when they looked in. I need to consider how to make a longer interaction, 

-Write about anything interesting you may have noticed regarding the visitors' interactions with any of your classmates' exhibits.

The younger audience really enjoyed playing with Winnie's cityscape. It was very interactive and groups of children could use it at the same time. They also seemed to enjoy knocking the pieces down.

Kids loved the buttons on Clementine's exhibit. I wonder if there is a way to play up that aspect of the interaction. Maybe have one button cause a drastic shift in lights or something.

People seemed to have a hard time finding the correct place to put the object in Alex's shadow exhibit.

All the laser exhibits involved kids pointing lasers into eyes.

-Write about any other changes that you think would improve the piece based on your experience on the floor. Changes could be informed by your observation of visitor interaction, seeing your piece in the museum environment, seeing your piece in a certain light condition, on a certain table.
-tell us which of the above changes you would like to make by friday

Firstly, I am considering getting rid of the LEDs. The did not add any meaningful interaction, and usually ended up confusing the users.

I need to make the stand more robust, so that I does not slide around on the table as much.

I would also like to try lighting the entire panel below the box. Some feedback I received from the Exploratorium staff was the interaction felt very removed using the stick and handle. I am thinking of ways how I might be able to make this interaction feel more personal. Perhaps if the users user their arms instead of the stick. I am also thinking of ways to increase user input on the shapes. Many people lamented the inability of increasing the length of the rectangle on the iphone.

Although this would be a big change, I hope to make the exterior of the box look presentable. Perhaps creating a wood frame. Also better lighting to make the sign more present and to dict people's attention the exhibit.

Some pictures of people interacting with the exhibit.

Build Your Own Cityscape

That was definitely a somewhat unexpected and very amusing experience,
and it was very interesting to see the contrast between the morning and afternoon groups.

While the kids in the morning were very enthusiastic, I feel like they didn't pay that much attention to the shadows  in their interaction with my piece, and were occasionally more involved in throwing/stacking/playing dominoes with the buildings. It was great to see them have fun, but I feel like I could probably make some changes to the prototype to enable a slightly more restrained experience, such as reshaping the buildings to make them less homogenous and stackable.  Also, it was interesting to see that almost none of them read the whiteboard descriptions, and collectively they actually managed to accidentally wipe the whole slate clean.

Photo from John's camera

On the other hand, for the families that came in the afternoon, most were moving at a less chaotic pace, and actually had time to play with the "shadows" instead of the buildings. Most of them would fiddle around with the buildings a bit, then read the whiteboard, and then try to observe the pinhole effect.

(On that note, I remember hearing someone say at dinner that "people aren't as smart as you'd expect"; there were quite a few people who left after failing to see the effect, because when they moved a building closer to the light, there were still multiple buildings blocking out all the light in the front. Next time, the instructions should probably be a bit more explicit.)

I also noticed at least 3 separate groups that sat down, and had parents explaining the color separation effect to their children. A completely unintended but nice result of having the sofa instead of a stool, was that I think the parents were slightly less impatient...

But one thing I noticed was that more often than not the parents would actually hurry the children along, and force them to leave in the midst of exploration. This was somewhat surprising and not entirely pleasant to watch.

The biggest challenge I had in developing was probably the light source, or more generally the direction I should take with the light and shadows component. I tried fairly hard to achieve an actual reversed image pinhole effect (I really wanted to be able to have the windows "change shape") but in the end as John pointed out I couldn't have both that and the element of scaling. Later on there were a few other light sources that proved to be less-than-ideal, and a mishap that involved me buying a set of light bulbs with a weird incompatible socket..

I'm partly satisfied with the light source I have now, but it's still somewhat of a compromise, because the colors while on one hand contribute to the pinhole effect, also contribute to distractiveness and blurriness. I think I will have to try a few more light sources before friday.

Another thing that Alex pointed out when we were observing the morning session kids was that it'd be cool to have landmarks or iconic buildings dispersed through the regular shaped buildings. While originally I was hesitant about making different shapes because they'd take away from the rescaling factor, after hearing conversations of kids where they'd exclaim "This is New York!" "No, it's San Francisco!", I think that would be something they'd enjoy. I could probably still preserve the rescaling factor by making the shapes incorrectly scaled, and this would also hopefully prevent the games of domino. So this is something I'd be working on this week.

Adjustments Week 8

1) Challenges you encountered when you were making this prototype. 

I couldn't figure out the right amount of white paper to use on the inside of my cube. I tried small bits of all different shapes and sizes. I tried covering an entire wall in white, I tried strips, and backing the glass in white. Nothing really caused the colors to pop the way I wanted them to. I was also disappointed with my "extra-bright" LEDs, which weren't all that bright.

2) Write about issues that you were able to solve and the progress you made.

I think I did a good job of containing all the wires and resistors for the button console (which was clearly a hit). I was shocked that I was able to get it all to work. Electronics are magical to me. I "solved" the issue of the thread being visible, but I think I want to unsolve it. The fishing wire made the disks spin a lot less and restricted their freedom to move, which made the whole scene less enchanting. 

3) Write about your experience on the Exploratorium floor. What did you observe? In what ways did the users' interactions with your piece correspond to your expectations, and in what ways did they not?

It made me just gleeful to see the kids interacting with my piece, even if their interactions were just pushing ALL OF THE BUTTONS, and then bringing their friends back to do the same. I did feel like kids--especially the ones moving a bit slower--"got it." They sat down, played with the lights, looked around a bit, and encouraged their friends to look inside. I didn't feel, though, like there was enough of an interactive hook to slow down the kids that were moving really fast. 

4) Anything interesting you may have noticed regarding the visitors' interactions with any of your classmates' exhibits.

I stood very near Alex's project and it was an absolute delight. Like he mentioned, parents totally sabotaged their kids' discovery. The kids started out very determined to crack the code, but very few of them succeeded before being ushered along by their parents. Many of them gave up on their own after a few failed tries, but many of the things that they tried were hilarious and delightful to watch. I also stood near Nish's cube. Most visitors didn't know to look into the eye piece, which actually surprised me, since I'm forever trying to peer into boxes. Winnie's piece garnered tons of attention from the kids, but very few of them were interested in the light patterns. They were mostly just knocking the buildings over energetically. 

5) Other changes that you think would improve the piece based on your experience on the floor. Changes could be informed by your observation of visitor interaction, seeing your piece in the museum environment, seeing your piece in a certain light condition, on a certain table.

In addition to seeing the piece in action, talking with one of the explainers and another artist from the Exploratorium gave me a lot of good ideas.

Small changes:

1) from fishing wire back to thread

2) from hot glue to less hot glue, with the thread passing through the center of the glass

3) attach the base to the button console 

4) attach the cube to the base

Big changes:

1) make it possible to move the lid in a controlled manner

2) add more LEDs, shining directly at the dichroics

3) replace one of the side walls with white, directly opposite the wall with the additional LEDs

Possibly:

1) make it possible to move the LEDs somehow. Perhaps put them on some kind of hand crank. I'm not sure how possible this would be, but it would be very interactive and it would allow the user to forcibly cause the lights to hit the dichroics.

6) Which of the above changes you would like to make by next Friday

All of the small changes. #3 under big changes. I want to try my "possibly" change, and if it fails, revert to simply adding more stationary LEDs (#2 under big changes). I'll probably leave lid movement until next week, when I have a better sense for how much movement the lights and thread together will create.

Grow & shrink periscopes, sketches #2

Added multiple sizes (.5, 1, 1.5 feet), handles, blockages, and signage.