Becoming

Introduction

At the course „interactive communication systems“, the students had to find a topic that they could convey in an understandable manner.

The idea was to create a communication system that could be used at an exhibition or a museum. It had to be interactive, so the users could discover the content in a linear or explorative way.

We decided to choose the development of the senses as our topic. The idea of recreating the experiences we had in the first months of our lifes - and can‘t remember - really inspired us.

We found it fascinating that there are huge differences in how each sense is developped. Many of the information was new to us, so we were highly motivated to provide a system that could educate others about it.

The development of the senses builds the foundation for cognition, recognition and human being itself. That‘s why we chose the name „becoming“.

Our Project

we started having several topics in mind. Two of them stood out
to us, so we decided doing some further research on both. After conducting the pros and cons, the „becoming“-topic clearly served us better. See its pros above.

The Senses and recognition

The senses provide a natural separation of the content.
Each sense has their unique progression.
All senses refer to the development of the human being.

We wanted a combining element that could connect all the senses. This would help us create interactions that fit to one another later on.

The exhibition

After some time with no real-life events (or exhibitions), we wanted to create a physical, tactile experience that can take place in the exhibition and be experienced by real users.

Context

Keeping our target group in mind, we thought that a natural history museum or an exhibition about human biology/devlopment can fit perfectly as our context.

As our target group we thought of people that would be intrested in the topic. We‘ve found that young adults, young parents as well as expecting parents are all in this category and can benefit our exhibition the most.

Young parents
Expecting couples
Adults from 20-30

In order to create an experience that will contain all five senses, we came up with the „wall“-idea: create a wall that will provide an interaction for each sense and allow the user to learn about their development.
It was important for us to have mumultiple users using the exhibition simultaneously.

Interactions
The interactions had to be age appropriate, and recognition theme related. We wanted to create an immersive experience, which lead us to think of diffrent kinds of interactions that will engage all the senses.

The first layout didn‘t fit right. User testing on a low-fi prototype and a new flow-chart showed that we should reduce the number of users to one in order to be able to provide the desired interactions.

Also, the space for our exhibition was limited, but we still wanted to create interactions for each sense and not just focus on one.

We reduced the number of simultaneous users to one.

Our brains memorize and learn best when new information is perceived with more than just one sense.

That is one reason why a topic about the development of the senses has great educational potential.

One of the best ways to achieve a perception with several senses is writing. That drove us to the idea of adding a booklet.

The Booklet will guide the user through the whole experience and provide the most important information. Also, he will have to write in it and - in the end - be able to take it home.

Interactions

Seeing sense
The User will see a video that is manipulated in order to recreate the visual perception of the different development stages.

Touching sense
To keep the flow fluent, we decided to put a video to illustrate the touching sense.

Hearing Sense
The user will hear muffled voices that will get clearer with time. That‘s to recreate the recognition of the parents voices.

Smelling Sense
There are three drawers that contain different smells the user needs to recognize.

Tasting sense
A jelly bean will fall out by the touch of a button. Tasting a surprising taste and judging it will remind the user of tasting something for the first time.

We used conductive ink as the main design element. It was a nice choice to connect analog and digital content.

An Arduino is connected to the conductive ink. Through protopie connect, it controls the UI.

A short distance Beamer makes sure that there are no shadows in the way while interacting with the wall.

Headphones are connected to a laptop to drive the hearing experience.

A Tablet is wirelessly connected to the laptop to show the seeing experience.

User testing

Testing the new layout showed that some elements were still confusing or lacking.

We realized that the user needed more guidance as well as a more structured division of the content.

For our last change, we wanted to really put the content more into focus and give each interaction a specific area.

Affordance of the buttons is missing.
Alignment of the buttons and interactions was confusing.
Information seemed to be something additional rather than something central.

Final Layout

In the final layout, every sense has its own section. We therefore have a clear division of all the interactions. Also, the Information is now centered to stay in focus. The buttons have a new style to provide the affordance.

As we had many technological and constructional obstacles, we have learned that having a great team moral at all times is the key for success.

We are very grateful for having such a wonderful group.