The purpose for this exercise was to test my initial ideas with a physical prototype. I asked some people to interact with my prototype and give feedback to what it was like, and what they thought.
Based on what feedback I received, I changed my final piece to make it the best it could be. This is a great method of getting recorded feedback and finding out what needed to be changed in the final thing. In the end, it worked for this purpose so the use of Paper Prototype Reaction videos was very successful and helpful to me.
Reaction 1 - Successful playthrough, it all worked as it should. Person who I recorded seemed to get it easily, so it is definitely very easy to access by all. This was a good sign, as I was not certain it would be an instant 'I get it', but it turned out to be.
He seemed to enjoy it and appreciate how it worked.
Reaction 2 - This person went through all the menus and understood where to click (tap in this prototype) so this was another good sign of the prototype being easily understood. I did have some feedback from this: There needed to be a 'back' button after you go to the menu or the examples, instead of it just going back to the title screen after a few seconds, so in the final piece I added a back button.
Sound is used very widely and often intuitively in
interactive media. It can be used for dramatic effect, suspense, ambience, etc.
The term interactive media refers to anything that is
displayed and portrayed using technology and/or electrical devices, ranging
from powerpoint presentations to blockbuster movies, and from radio shows to
music videos.
In each of these, sound is expected and by some measure,
necessary for a good experience. Similarly, great use of sound can improve
anything it is used in, therefore; it is always worth using sound unless the
lack of sound is on purpose, to make a point or for atmosphere.
In movies, sound can cover many bases. These bases are
ambience (the sounds you hear in the background that come from nature a lot of
the time), background music (this usually adds tension and atmosphere by
conveying just what the actor/actress is feeling at that moment – fast-paced
music can go with fast-paced action, for example) and sound effects. The sound
effects, which are usually added post-filming (the scenes for the movie), play
a major part as well as they bring noise to actions.
I will be researching different interfaces in many different forms. Be they on computers, in real life or on devices, I will hopefully look at them all. I will find information on each and post it here.
A sound toy is simply what happens when an interface is interacted with. For example, in the below image of the Wii interface, when you navigate onto one of the tiles, a noise will be made and the controller will vibrate. This is an example of a sound toy: a noise being made when something is interacted with.
Nintendo Wii's user interface. Simple and easy to see.
This is the Nintendo Wii console's user interface. It is used by the console's unique remote's motion sensing control to point to certain points on the screen instantly, and the buttons on the remote interact with what is on the screen (for example, the 'A' button would be the standard 'next' button). By pressing this, a noise is made and the screen changes.
The Wii interface has different pages other than its original page. I do not know how many pages there are, but there are at least 2 pages, which should be more than enough for anything you would ever need. To access other pages is easy; simply select the arrow on the right side of the page. This makes another noise and takes you there.
This is the settings menu for the Wii. Within these headings are more menus for things like screen settings, internet connections, etc.
Like most interfaces there is a settings tab which can access the console's settings and change them from there. This is easy to find for ease of access.
This is a 3d sound toy called '3D gamelan'. I'm not sure what the name means but it is an interesting sound toy nonetheless.
With this sound toy, you can click and drag the + symbols (in boxes) and the circles to move them around. If the circles move past or through (depending on how you look at it) the lines, a noise is played. There is a different noise played with each line, and you can experiment with these noises and the boxes. You can throw a box and quickly move another box to get two noises at the same time and create some sort of jingle or short tune, with some practice.
With this, a lot of experimentation can be done and I think that the creation of the interface itself was an experimentation: someone wanted to see if they could personally make an interface which can be manipulated using a mouse and makes sounds whilst doing so.
This is a TED talks video in which a man, Matt Mills, has created an application that can bend the fabric of time and space.
By 'bend the fabric of time and space', I of course do not mean he has created a black hole. Rather, he has created an application for smart phones that can read videos embedded into images. The application can be used to focus on an image and what Matt Mills calls an 'aura' is applied to the image, which can be read by the smart phone and linked to a digital file. The digital file is the video, which will be played as soon as the phone reads it.
Using this technology and software, it can be possible to make instructions easier to follow by using voice and video, and things like video postcards become possible.
Along with the 'aura' technology he shows, it is clear that augmented reality is very possible even with a modern smart phone. He creates a 3d Tyrannosaurus Rex which appears real - it looks as if the dinosaur is really there!
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