=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1450/paper2
|storemode=property
|title=Teaching Product Design Students how to Make Everyday Things Interactive with Arduino
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1450/paper2.pdf
|volume=Vol-1450
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/iwec/Alsos15
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==Teaching Product Design Students how to Make Everyday Things Interactive with Arduino==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1450/paper2.pdf
Teaching product design students how to make everyday
things interactive with Arduino
Ole Andreas Alsos
Department of Computer and Information Science
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Trondheim, Norway
oleanda@idi.ntnu.no
Abstract. This paper describes how industrial design students made everyday
things interactive with Ardiuno in a programming course. It also describes 6 in-
novative projects made by the students; (1) A beat machine inspired by Rubics
Cube, (2) an interactive and moving lamp that scans the area for faces, recognizes
your smile, take a picture of it, and posts it on Twitter, (3) a self-typing typewriter
from 1920’s which you can have a conversation with, (4) an interactive art instal-
lation where you use your own shadow to play with falling objects, (5) a digital
audio workstation where you change the sound characteristics by moving tangi-
ble rubber blocks on a surface, and (6) a tangible music player where you dis-
cover new music by moving a cylinder around on a plane. The range of solution
fit three different categories: (a) Music, both creating and playing, (b) Everyday
things with personality, and (c) Interactive art. Videos of all projects are availa-
ble on http://bit.ly/1K4YPYB
Keywords: Arduino, programming, teaching, industrial design, interactive art
1 Introduction
The Department of Product Design at the Norwegian University of Science and
Technology (NTNU) offers a master program education in industrial design [1]. The
master program offer two study specializations: product design and interaction design,
educating product designers and interaction designers, respectively. In the same way a
product designer need to know and understand the materials they work with, an inter-
action designer need to know and understand the virtual material they work with – in
other words they need to know basic programming in order to make good interaction
designs, and to be able to communicate with developers. Further, in the age of Internet
of Things, many products designers now need to know programming in order to make
their products interactive and to give them life. Therefore, the Department of Computer
and Information Science at NTNU offers a course to industrial design students where
they learn how to make their products or artworks interactive. This course is called
Prototyping Interactive Media [2] and aims to teach the students the art of programming
through project based work.
Copyright © 2015 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted only for private and academic purposes.
This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.
Make2Learn 2015 workshop at ICEC’15, September 29, 2015, Trondheim, Norway.
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1.1 Teaching industrial design students programming
In the course we teach the industrial design students programming with Arduio (us-
ing the Processing language), which is “an open-source electronics platform based on
easy-to-use hardware and software (...) intended for anyone making interactive pro-
jects.” [3]. It is basically a small programmable computer where you can, with the help
of code, sensors, servos, LEDs, and other cheap hardware components, create remark-
able things. Arduino is open source, and there exist numerous code libraries where other
programmers have solved problems before so that you don’t have to do it again. These
are like LEGO pieces that you can connect to each other (with the help of a little code)
to build new projects that does new things.
1.2 Course assigments
The course consists of two individual assignments where they get familiar with the
possibilities of Arduino and the Processing programming language. In these assigments
they build a traffic light and a music instrument. In addition the students are given an
open group assignment, where about four of them collaborate:
Find an everyday thing, make it interactive and make it talk to the world (or other
everyday things) or let it publish things on the Internet, for example tweet or update
facebook status.
It can be that does something useful for the user, or an art project that inspire the
user. It can be something for your home or something for your study desk. The design
challenge is to find the valuable interaction.
1.3 Design process
Although the group assignment was open with few restrictions, the students had to
reach a number of milestones with hard deadlines (which they had to show/demonstrate
to the course staff).
Project planning
Idea generation
Idea selection
Wizard-of-Oz-test
Iterations
The students had to deliver or present the following:
A video of the project (maximum 2 minutes)
A functional prototype presented on an exhibition where an audience could
test and try it
A short oral presentation of the project during the exhibition
A long oral presentation of the project in a classroom
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A report that documented the product, the design process and wiring diagrams,
and with references to code libraries used.
The complete code
2 Project descriptions
Below is a short description of the resulting 6 projects. Videos are available on
YouTube on http://bit.ly/1K4YPYB
2.1 PLAY
PLAY is an art installation where you (or you and a friend) use your own shadow to
interact with falling (or flying) objects of different sizes and shapes. The objects cannot
pass through your shadow, which allows you to stop, hold, bounce, hit, and pass the
objects on to a friend. There are two modes, changed with the press of a button, that
either shows your shadow or hide it.
The installation consist of a curved wall, where the final image is projected, a button
on a pole that is controlled by an Arduino, and a back wall, which hides a projector, a
Microsoft Kinect sensor, and a computer with the Processing code. The interaction with
the objects is possible through blob detection and a physics simulator.
Fig. 1. PLAY
2.2 GhostWriter
GhostWriter is an old typewriter from 1920’s that is given life – it responds to your
input and writes it down on a piece of paper. When you write something on the type-
writer, it responds as a human being; with quriosity and humor.
The typewriter is connected to wires that sense your typing, translates your key
presses to a text string, sends your message to a chat-bot. Further the system translates
the answer from the chat-bot to key presses, and press the keys using pneumatics so
that the message is actually typed on the paper sheet.
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Fig. 2. GhostWriter
2.3 RubberBeats
Rubberbeats is an interactive tool for creative music production. Colored rubber
blocks represent different sound clips. These clips are played when you place the rubber
blocks on a transparent surface. The sound image is changed by moving the blocks; by
moving the block vertically you can change the pitch of the sound, by moving it hori-
zontally you change the tempo. You can play several sounds clips simultaneously by
placing several blocks on the surface. When you are happy with the sound, you can
record the sound clip and post it on the web based audio platform SoundCloud with the
hashtag #RubberTracks.
Rubberbeats uses a PIXY-camera and colour recognition to recognize the different
blocks. The system also translate the position of each block to the corresponding pitch
and tempo.
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Fig. 3. RubberBeats
2.4 Beat Ball
Beat Ball is a beat machine that allows you to combine up to 3 different beats into a
more complex beat. Beat Ball is shaped as sphere with movable panels, inspired by a
Rubic’s Cube. By moving a panel you switch from one instrument into another, for
example a clap into a whistle, or a base drum into a bongo drum. In this way a user can
experiment and play with sounds to make a beat that they like. All the technology is
hidden inside the sphere. Only a headphone jack and a power button is visible on the
outside.
Rubberbeats uses a PIXY-camera and colour recognition to recognize the different
blocks. The system also translate the position of each block to the corresponding pitch
and tempo.
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Fig. 4. Beat Ball
2.5 Argus Ball
Argus is a curious lamp. It constantly scans the room for faces. When it see you, it
moves closer. When you get too close, it moves back. When you smile to Argus, it takes
a photo, shows it to you on a computer screen, and looks down on a big blue Twitter
button. If you are satisfied with the photo, you press the button. Argus then nods and
posts the image on Twitter. If you are dissatisfied with the photo, you do nothing, and
Argus sadly shakes his lamp head and then continue to look for smiles.
Argus has an embedded video camera in the lamp head, and uses face tracking to find
faces. Six servos continuously move the lamp to scan for faces, to make sure your face
is in the middle of the image and has the right size, and to simulate its personality. It
uses smile detection to take a photo, and a Twitter library to post the image on the
Internet.
Fig. 5. Argus lamp
2.6 Discover
Discover is a tangible interface for the music streaming service Spotify with the in-
tention to expand the user’s musical horizon. The users start playing a playlist from
Spotify by placing a cylinder on a circular plane. Based on where you place the cylinder,
a specific music genre starts playing. At any time you can move the cylinder to play a
new playlist from a different music genre. You can also push a favorite button to save
the track in your favorites for later. In this way you can explore music and find new
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genres and tracks that you like. You stop the music by placing the cylinder in the dock
at the base of the device.
Fig. 6. Discover
3 Discussion
Looking at the variation of solutions, they can be placed in the following categories:
Music: Here we find BeatBall, Rubberbeats and Discover. The two first are for creat-
ing music, while the last is for playing music.
Things with a personality: Argus and GhostWriter are both everyday things with a
clear personality.
Interactive art: PLAY is an interactive art installation where the audience can interact
with the installation.
4 Credits
I thank the clever, creative and hardworking students for delivering impressive work.
Argus: Christer Rebni, Magnus Oulie, Tuva Haddal, Astri Eiterstraum
BeatBall: Truls Ottesen Johansen, Ellen Wagnild-Antonsen, Polle van Duuren and Inga
Nedrebø Søreide
Discover: Pål Jørgensen, Marianne Kleveland, Martin Kristoffersen og Camilla
Dahlstrøm
GhostWriter: Kjersti Bjelkarøy, Aurora Brun, Alexander Jonassen, Sigve Lien,
Ingeborg Skogsfjord
Play: Jan Magnus Neverdal, Kaja Drews, Johanne Parelius, Thea Togstad
Rubberbeats: Anja S. Hansen, Arne H. Aaraas, Emilie H. Weydahl & Viktor Rydal
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References
1. http://www.ntnu.edu/design/studies
2. http://www.ntnu.edu/studies/courses/TDT4262#tab=omEmnet
3. http://www.arduino.cc/
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