the brief
Actuation and movement are very important aspects or components of life. Living organisms move, change shape and evolve over time. These variations in space and time generally induce strong impressions, emotions and feelings. Unfortunatelly, very few human-made systems or devices use actuation/motion as part of the interface or experience. During this project, you will propose and build a prototype of an  interface that uses actuation and movement to engage with the user. The movement should be inherent to the device or system. The actuation should be the part of the language or a form of expression coming from the system. Tangible interfaces are getting more and more common these days but very few systems involve actuated output or feedback.

The main goal of the project is to let a system engage with the user(s) via movement and actuation.

  
the team
Stina Jonsson
Fabricio Dore

 
the concept
The idea was to make this TV that would give ‘feedback’ about the quality of the tv show being watched.

It’s this feature that you can’t turn off. You can probably buy these TV sets with different personalities but you can’t control how it behaves.

In the original plan we wanted to make an old big TV move but we had to scale down.

 
the lofi prototypes
#1 The TV hat: we  used it for many sessions with 'users' to identify and study movements and people's reactions.

#2 Understanding Movements (on table one)

#3 Understanding Movements and Trying New Experiences

key findings
a Actuation many times feels unecessary. Objects are unanimated by natura. When they move they jump into other categories in our mind, like almost becoming pets and having a life and soul.

b Actuation is also in the fringes of the kitsch if not properly designed. So many times we heard: "why does it have to move?" or "can it only shows something on screen?".

c To make something move and communicate a piece of information with the movements requires fine-tuning and trial and error. It's a time consuming process but when you get it right, it's extremelly powerfull. Take the case of Keepon (on YouTube). But does it always have to be human/animal like movements? How much can you communicated without being so?

d Within the short time we had we couldn't push it too much on the point made on C above. Our conclusion is that the variations of movement and how much you can communicate plus the problems of communication due to culture issues for instance, make it an expensive and time consuming process to come up with a language based on actuation for interaction with a device.

On the other hand, it's SO MUCH FUN!