Reflection Workshops EI

Workshop mini EI In this workshop we went through the first cycle of the project at a fast pace. We were asked to form groups of 5 and come up with a target group, design goal and an interaction vision which we then presented to the entrire class. In this particular workshop we chose people in hospital waiting rooms as a target group and stimulating conversation as a design goal. This was done by brainstorming on a blackboard. The interaction vision was defined as giving people an "ice-breaker" to initiate a conversation or interaction. The excercise was very basic and fast, and most of our time was spent choosing the right target group, but in my experience it was good to start thinking about possible design directions for the actual project in this exercise as my final target group was also mentioned in our brainstorm. The chosen interaction vision was still very far from the detail it needs to have in an actual project and the design goal was also far from specific enough to work with in an actual project situation, but having been superficially introduced to the concepts was good. Workshop interaction vision In this workshop we were shown a number of ways to present an interaction vision. We were given the metaphorical representation and multisensory composition. We received a design brief and two keywords to work with. The results were interesting but very far from the quality needed in an actual project. Many of the results from other groups were very similar to what we came up with ourselves and almost all of the presented visions lacked depth and detail. Also i had a hard time imagining the use of some of the methods in the actual project. I did however like the way metaphors or anecdotes can be used to describe the way an interaction is envisioned. The excersise was concluded with the presentation of a concept, which was entertaining, and a good way to try and apply our created visions to a product. Workshop IP The interaction prototyping workshop was the most interesting for me. In this workshop we were asked to prepare a prototype to test our first design directions and concepts. The results were very stimulating and the discussion that followed was very fruitful. My own protyping session consisted of an activity that required concentration (a maze or crossword) to simulate making homework or playing a video game. While performing this activity, my groupmates were distracted by sound and light to test wether it was possible to subconciously raise some kind of awareness using these two stimuli. After having performed this excersice i had reason to review my design vision and the brainstorm/discussion afterwards led to a number of good insights.