design for experience
Josh Benjamin McDonald Glasgow School of Art Product Design Year 3 2013: jbmcdesign@gmail.com 07894742545
“Responding to the theme of tourism, design an experience that is interacting and of value to the flow of everyday life and the people living it�
DISCOVER. 03 - 12 Exploring tourism and what it means to be a tourist. What does a tourist do, look like and feel like? Why people feel they have to bring back a souvenir from where they travelled.
DEFINE. 13 - 16 Looking at ways of changing the way people take pictures on holiday to better enhance their holiday experience. DEVELOP. 17 - 22 Creation of working prototype and user testing, determining values. DELIVER. 23 - 34 Making of plastic sketch models to show proposed final design. Mock up of website interface. User video to show function of product in suite.
ELIO CACCAVALE
IAN GROUT
STUART BAILEY
JOSH BENJAMIN MCDONALD
Elio Caccavale was one of three Glasgow School of Art tutors involved in this project. However for feedback and advice I would turn to him, as he was my direct tutor throughout the project.
Ian Grout, another Glasgow School of Art tutor was also involved in this project however he had a separate group of students whom he worked with. This meant I had almost no contact with him during the project.
TUTORS/TEAM 01
Stuart Bailey was the final Glasgow School of Art tutor on this project. Similar to Ian he had his own group of students therefore there were only limited discussions with him.
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After discovering that I was working with tourism as a topic I began to explore the idea of being a tourist. What were the habits and rituals of being a tourist? To do this I thought back to my own experiences of being a tourist and my perceptions of one. I had thought about the journey that a tourist undertakes when exploring a new place and the activities that they might take part in. The way they might travel. The equipment they might take with them: suitcases, cameras, passports. However one thing that seemed to be universal to every tourist’s experience, young or old was the idea of bringing back a souvenir from the place, that they had visited.
Tourism 03
+ taken from “small world: a global photographic project�
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Buying and receiving souvenirs is something that I have first hand experience of, as I am sure the majority of people in the world have. Whether it be a shell from a beach, a fridge magnet or a photograph, people will always come home from traveling with a reminder of their time away. I could understand why people would bring souvenirs back for themselves but what I found strange was the notion of buying a ready made souvenir. Countries have became aware of this and turned selling souvenirs into an industry. You only have to go to Edinburgh to find shops littered with tartan products and miniature highland cows to witness this. This lead me to research why people might do this, turning to books such as Material Memories: Design and Evocation and neurologist Oliver Sacks. What I discovered was that people used souvenirs as a means to document their travels and to validate to others where they had been.
souvenir 05
“SOUVENIRS BECOME TOUCHSTONES THROUGH WHICH PEOPLE MAKE SENSE OF THEIR LIVES” + lucy lippard
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The most popular way for people to create these memory keepers is through taking photographs. It is very rare to travel abroad and to see a tourist without a camera. Someone with a camera is synonymous with a tourist. This is another area that travel companies have exploited creating so-called “viewing points” where the best photograph can be taken. However, in people’s desperate attempt to capture the best picture it takes away from them the experience of having direct encounters. The development of the digital camera has not improved matters, allowing tourists to take countless pictures without any real thought and emotion.
“Tourism in effect has become a search for the photogenic; travel is a strategy for the accumulation of tourists” + john urry, “the tourist gaze”
Photographs 07
+ one tourists many pictures of the eiffel tower
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+ leaning tower of pisa, italy
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+ golden temple bangkok, thailand
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It was from this that I decided to re-create the experience of taking photographs. I wanted tourists to spend more time experiencing their surroundings first hand rather than through a camera lens and for the memories created by the photograph to mean more.
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To make the user step away from the camera and experience what was around them I would have to remove their ability to take pictures. This was unrealistic as most forms of technology have a camera included. There was also the challenge of convincing the user that not taking a camera would be beneficial. My approach was to de-construct the camera. How does it function? What does it look like? How do people interact with it? If I could redesign the camera to suit my function what would it be like? I decided to explore how I could allow the user to have a camera however take away the control they had over it.
Design Ideation
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The solution I designed for this was a wearable camera that was linked to a heart rate sensor. The camera would only take a picture when the users heart rate fluctuated. This would allow the user to take part in the holiday experience but also have pictures to document and remember the experience. The reason that I chose to use a heart sensor was that the increased heart rate is a reaction the body only experiences when the person’s body is affected by something. The result of this is that pictures taken by the camera would be those which evoked emotional or experiential value. Leaving the user with meaningful memories.
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In order to test my design I used an Arduino UNO board. I used the Arduino to connect the heart sensor and camera together for quick testing purposes. This made the prototype bulky and difficult to wear. However it would suffice, as its main function was to test my idea. The heart sensor that I used was a small ear clip, which took a reading through infrared. I wasn’t previously aware that taking a reading from the ear was possible, however with this knowledge I decided to use the ear as the position of the heart monitor in the final design. To capture the imagines I bought a small webcam that plugged into the USB port of my laptop. To begin with I also used a heat and humidity sensor to activate the camera. However later I decided to only use the heart sensor.
Product Development
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+ working prototype
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+ top: connecting the heart sensor to laptop camera bottom: stress tests with heart monitor and user
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+ head mounted arduino & camera
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I had successfully created a camera that responded to a user’s heartbeat. With the user wearing the heart rate sensor and mounted camera I was able to capture moments when the users heart rate went above average. Once I had the camera fully functioning I ran stress tests with different users to set a number which would activate the camera to start taking pictures. The heart rate changed depending on gender and size therefore it took a lot of testing before I came to a final decision.
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Average: 60-100 bpm Trigger: 120 bpm 22
Product Refinement
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When designing what the product would look like I had to take into consideration three separate parts; the camera, the heart sensor and the web page. The web page would allow the user to upload their pictures and share them with family and friends on a community website for other users. All three however had to communicate the same aesthetic language if they were to fit in together. I began creating foam models of the heart sensor and heart monitor to test different shapes before I decided on a final design.
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Trace : Verb Find or discover by investigation
When designing the shape of the heart sensor and camera I did not want it’s form to be geometric or a certain shape. The camera is about experiencing new things, not following usual conventions. I did not feel that a box or triangle would convey this. Therefore I went for an organic form for both components. The ear clip and camera link wirelessly whereas the camera has a micro USB port for connection to a computer. Ideally if the product was to be manufactured I would have liked to experiment with ceramics as a possible material. I chose to call my product TRACE as I felt that it related to its function.
sketch model
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+ final model made from plastic
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+ top: profile page bottom: gallery
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+ login page
The website had three functions. It would enable potential customers to buy the camera, create a profile, upload, share and view other users photographs. The photographs could be viewed in different filters such as recently added and by heart rate.
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+ at the scene of the video
To show how the camera would be used in situ I filmed a short video using the sketch models that I had made. The working model was to big too use therefore I used two cameras, one mounted on my actor’s chest and another which I used to film the actor while he played out the scenes. The story of the video was an urban tourist who was exploring an abandoned factory when something scares him into running off, increasing his heartbeat.
video 31
+ clips from the video
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I really enjoyed working on this project, successfully creating a working model was a great achievement. It is my opinion that the camera, heart monitor and website communicate well together and with more time I would have liked to design different iterations and colour ways.
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