I posted this on my Grad Project blog, but I’d like to re-post it here for the crowd who hasn’t been following my schoolwork. So without further ado, here’s Gezellig:

How it works:

The quilt is made up of pockets with buttons, and static squares. One of the static squares has been outfitted with an array of LEDs, and one of the button pockets has been stitched with conductive thread. I sewed a circuit onto a separate piece of fabric, which leads into an Arduino that’s been embedded into a secret pocket in the quilt. When the button pocket is closed, the circuit is completed and the Arduino is programmed to tell the LEDs to pulse softly.

The button pocket.

Pulsing LEDs behind one of the static blue pockets.

How it helps lonely people:

The intent of the Proof-Of-Concept is to show how a ‘traditional’ medium can be updated with technology, and send a message to its users without being obtrusive or tacky. Quilts are, in my opinion, one of the best examples of a comfort object, and they tend to be treasured artifacts that carry a family’s story through multiple generations.

In context, this project would be kept in the home of a lonely, elderly person. When updated through social media by their family (that element is going to be detailed in the next semester), the quilt will be able to show a visual message to the user that they are being thought about, and loved. For people who are separated from their families due to distance or disability, having a visual reminder of their family can be a powerful motivator. The creative element of the quilt (putting photos or other nostalgic items into the pockets) should also help the user to get into a creative mood, sharing memories of their family with others and contributing to the personalization and customization of their quilt.

What’s next?

Next semester (Spring 2010), I plan on adding to the customization of the quilt in a number of ways: First, I’ll be working on the capacity of the user’s family to update the quilt via social networks such as twitter, flickr, and facebook. I’d like to aggregate information from the APIs of those services, so that family members can trigger reactions on their grandparent’s quilt through something as simple as tagging a photo, or using a #hashtag on twitter or facebook.

Second, I’ll be working on the visual elements of the quilt. I’d like for the static pockets to do something more than just pulse an array of LEDs. Though I felt like it was a good end-point for this semester, I’m not satisfied with the message it sends. I feel as though the message can become more complex without complicating the integrity of the quilt as both a medium and a metaphor. I’d like to figure out a way to incorporate either thermo-chromatic inks, or OLED panels so that the message can become slightly more tangible and ‘realistic’.

Third, I’d like to work on my craftsmanship and try to create an object that’s both technologically sound, as well as technically beautiful. Quilting is a timeless activity, and I come from a long line of smart women who have perfected their craftsmanship through quilting and needlework. Over the course of the next semester, I’d like to get my quilting to the point where I’m very satisfied with my quality of stitching, accuracy of layout, and create more complex geometries/patterning.

The concept is that students are given a ‘potato’ with an RFID reader and bluetooth arduino board embedded inside. Each student wears an RFID tag ring, and the potato is programmed to light up once a randomized number of tags are read. The students pass the potato around like in the game hot potato, and when the RFID potato lights up, the student holding the potato is selected to present. The student’s presentation is loaded by the computer (via the bluetooth arduino) and he presents. Afterwards, the potato is reset and the game starts over.

The project is only about halfway to completion, so I’ll probably end up making a new post with pictures of the sketch model and final prototype. It’s been a neat process, though- I love having an excuse to work with RFID, especially when I can make it fun.

The intention of this project was to create an object that interacts with people through the use of sensor technology. I chose to develop a stuffed animal to give confidence to little kids who have difficulty falling asleep at night. Fugu is a stuffed blowfish that blinks its fins whenever his embedded RFID reader comes into contact with a corresponding tag (intended to be sewn into the sleeve of a pair of kids pyjamas). Whenever the child hugs Fugu, he reacts by blinking LEDs sewn into his fins in an ordered sequence.

The pattern for Fugu includes a pocket for the electronic components, which are powered by a 9V battery. Two clusters of orange LEDs lead into the fins and connect with an Arduino microprocessor and breadboard. The Parallax RFID reader is situated directly in the belly of the fish, and is connected to the Arduino via the breadboard. The Arduino is programmed to react to one specific RFID tag and runs a blink program to light the LEDs in a metered pattern.

Fugu at work:

Hexter is what our instructors call an “Interactive Object for Children” or put more simply, it’s a toy with constructive qualities that encourages children to play in an intellectual way. The hope with our project is that the children will become inspired to build, communicate and play, and in the end they’ll have come up with a spectacular, sculptural construction.

I like Hexter, it’s the object that our design collective has been working on since the beginning of this semester. Three months in the making, we have a polished object that meets all the criteria of our project, and oh my god is it a clever little thing. In addition to qualifying for all of the components that are required for the project (manufactured on a pin router, made from plywood, bears a 2-D graphic that has been screenprinted onto the wood) I feel as though this project also exibits qualities of Dieter Rams’ 10 commandments of good design. I bring these up time and time again, but I still consider these rules to be of utmost importance when it comes to my work in design.

Earlier today I was browing through my google reader and I stumbled upon a post from kottke called “The business of parenting” which floored me a bit. I’m not a parent and not particularly interested in becoming one within the near future, so I haven’t been truly surrounded by the lifestyle. Beyond my research on interactive play and childrens’ behaviour for the Hexter project, I wasn’t paying too much attention to the influx of madness that seems to be going on in the spectrum of parents, babies, and cosmopolitan consumption. From the Salon article that kottke referenced, one quote in particular stuck out to me:

“Everyone thinks: “Toys need to be interactive.” No, toys don’t need to be interactive. Children need to interact with toys. The best toys are 90 percent kid, 10 percent toy…”

So I’m going to throw something out there, to my instructors at Emily Carr and to parents who would consider purchasing something like Hexter in the future: As a guardian, you should concern yourself more with buying toys that will allow your kids to interact, as opposed to buying toys that will interact with your kids. In the context of this project, my collective was focused at first to create an object that would coax kids to interact with it, and in a way that wasn’t too terrible of an idea- but it is very basic, very one-point-oh. Our first iterations involved providing kids with stimulation visually, or giving them a space to customize by themselves. However, our final iterations were more involved with giving them an object with which to customize their space. Instead of the object being interactive, our object inspires interactivity. That’s kind of huge, and in a way I don’t think we quite realized that quality as being extraordinarily important until after we started playing with the object, ourselves.

Minus spices and a few items that I completely forgot to include, this is all of the food in my apartment. It’s what sustains me and Quentin, and it all fits neatly on top the coffee table. This isn’t the prettiest of pictures, since I did it more or less in a rush and didn’t put much forethought into how I was going to place all of the food to maximize visibility, but it suffices for the purpose: today I randomly audited the food intake of a couple living in Vancouver, BC. I was really, really surprised with the results.

So here it is: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

SO-SO: I’m very interested in how my intake has shifted since exiting vegetarian-mode and crossing over to the realm of the meat eater. Quentin was a vegetarian while in college, but went back to meat a few years ago. I was a vegetarian for nearly four years, and just recently transitioned out in January of 2008. Nary 3 months after I made the shift, I’ve discovered that only 4% of the total food in our kitchen is meat-based. Though I wouldn’t consider that to be a good percentage, as 0% is the optimal amount of meat that people should be buying in order to live sustainably, it does seem to be a pretty small percentage compared to the amount that I would imagine most North Americans consume. Something to keep in mind, though, is that while it would seem that neither me nor Q are big meat eaters, we’re not factoring in any of the food we buy when we go out to eat (where the meat consumption is significantly higher.) I’m going to consider the 4% to be a so-so factor, then. It’s not good, it’s not bad. It’s just okay.

YIKES: The source of my disgust is mostly about the percentage of food that has been or is in packaging. Holy shit. I never realized that such a large amount of the food I purchase is in plastic or wrapped somehow- and it seems that only some of the fruits and vegetables are spared from living in containers. The other distressing part is knowing that the food that isn’t in packaging was very likely shipped in packaging, so in a way, 100% of my food has required containment in one way or another. Where the hell does all the packaging go? I’ve been saving my yogurt containers for planting veggies, but suddently that doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment.

ARGH: I’m really put off by the percentage of food in my diet that is local; I thought I was doing better than that- a whopping 16% of my food is local. I didn’t count the breads, which are manufactured in Vancouver but require ingredients that are shipped from elsewhere, adding them would only bring the total percentage up marginally. This means that I’m not keeping up with my goal of consuming over 50% locally-produced food. Admittedly, this audit was for all of the food in the kitchen and pantry- which means that I’m factoring in food that was purchased months ago, as opposed to what I’m purchasing now on my current trips to buy food. I think that the percentage of local food I consume would go up significantly if I were auditing receipts instead of the physical goods, but in terms of the total amount of food, 16% is a pithy amount. Boo-urns.

YAY:  You know what’s awesome? 96% of my food is vegetarian, meaning that no animals had to die in order for my food to be produced. That’s what’s awesome, and this too: 69% of my food is vegan. That’s phenominal- over 2/3 of my food has NOT caused undue suffering to any creatures, big or small. That’s good news. I’m hoping to increase the amount of vegan food in my pantry, but it’s good to start with a majority percentage.

NOW WHAT?

Alright, so I’ve definitely got some percentages to work on. Fleeting thoughts of returning to vegetariansim have been flitting through my mind, as well as coming up with solutions for the packaging problem. While I already made the decision to eat > 50% local food, I want to do more to reduce that percentage of packaged foods, as well as tuning up the percentage of vegan food in my pantry. So where do I go from here?

Part of the reason that I decided to do my audit today, besides out of afternoon thundersorm boredom, was because I wanted to get a real, definite view of what I’m eating, how I’m eating, and why I’m consuming what I do. I think in a way it’s part of the (industrial) designer’s preogative to catalogue and categorize things, and I’m no stranger to wanting to organize and catalogue just like a scientist does. I’m not the biggest fan of charts and graphs, but the google spreadsheet of my (and Quentin’s) food purchases has helped me put this all into perspective. I think that’s rad.

And I think that, time permitting, you should do it too.