Aarnav

New Waters Radio

On the more abstract conceptual side, this project aims to get people to listen to new music through non-conventional tangible interaction. Based on the phrase “dipping your toes in the water,” the idea is for people not to be apprehensive about trying new music. To activate the radio, you have to physically have your hand in the “pool of water,” which lights up the radio. Once the radio is lit up, you have to press on the lit up portion (which contains pressure sensors) to play a random song. If you don’t end up liking the song, you can take your hand out of the water which will stop the radio. I want more interactions to take place (e.g not just putting your hand in the water, but spinning your hand to create whirlpools for the music to be playing). Maybe for adding another gate, there could be something like whether it’s sunny outside since I want this to be a much more natural experience for people. 

Unanimous Decisions

A playful approach to questions in blind-dating shows, this device is a way to see whether two people agree on different questions without having to vocalize their answers to the public. Each person will have a yes and no button that is concealed from each other and other people, and when presented with a question they press their choice. Whether they agree or disagree is then displayed via LEDs as green  (agree) or red (disagree). The idea is that only the players will know what the other player’s answers were because they didn’t vocalize their input. Additionally, I thought it would be funny if the game can only be played if the players are silent, meaning if they ever argue after a result, the game stops. The project would also have interactions mid decision making – like when players are waiting for a question/thinking, the LEDs could display a flowing gradient. Additionally, at the end, I want there to be a visualization of how well they agreed with each other – maybe a percentage of the LEDs are green and red. 

Salad Lunchbox

Another playful project, this one is supposed to explore healthy diets and food portioning with a lunch container that only opens the snack section after the salad part is empty. The idea is that the lunchbox itself has manual inputs where the user can say whether they finished their salad or if they’re full yet. The dessert section of the container is somehow locked and can only be unlocked when the user finishes their salad AND isn’t full (to avoid the unhealthy habit of overeating). However, to make sure they aren’t lying, the salad portion of the container also has a pressure sensor of sorts that can detect whether that part is actually empty or not (whether they’re lying about eating their salad or not). Unless all of these conditions are met, the dessert section won’t open. This is a very rough sketch about the possible idea, but I would like to explore the form and input options more to better address the topic of food group portioning and other large habits that contribute to food insecurity/wastage. 

Sep 13. 2023 – First Check-In

Building from my idea of Unanimous decisions, I wanted to focus on the concept a bit more: 

The idea of social interaction today has become very binary (you take one stance or you don't), which limits people from actually understanding each other. I want to create an experience that shows the awkwardness of polarized conversation through this device: a silent conversation where people can see another person's "stance" on a yes/no question, and cannot argue/interrupt each other. 

In terms of programming, I also wanted a tangible audience-based interaction (not just for the players), so the idea is that people would write questions and leave them in this device for players to engage with. Possibly, the question card can have writing on it and have an RFID, so to activate the device/get ready to display the response to a question, a question has to be "present"? I also liked the idea of being able to look back at certain questions to see previous people's "answers on it."

Additionally, rather than buttons, I want to use pressure sensors in the device for players to select "yes, no." I want people to be able to express the "extremities" of their opinions and have it correlate with the light – e.g if both players are EXTREMELY against each other, the light might be very bright, etc. 

In terms of logic, I realized that the idea of "only taking agreed answers" is the same as an NXOR (taking exclusively NOT or answers). From there,  I enter a 3 input AND gate where all the conditions need to be met for the answer to display (until the room is silent the answer won't display?).  Although, I can forsee that an audio gate can be unreliable depending on ambient noise, so maybe some other way for the game to understand "it's ready."