StoryBoard

Written Description

Idea - I will be creating an application for a iPhone, iPod touch and/or iPad. The idea of this application is to make people aware of their energy consumption. This will be done by creating an emotional attachment to the users energy. The app is a garden game called Eplants (short for Energy plants). The Idea is that each energy type will be represented by a plant ; Electricity = electric plant , Water = water plant , Petrol = petrol plant. The energy consumption of a household will determine how healthy the pants are. If to much energy is used then the plants will begin to die. Each plant has human features to strengthen the attachment to the plants. There is also a game for each plant. These allows you to earn fertilizer for your plants which helps keep the plants healthy. If the user has not saved energy then the game is made a lot harder, penalty's will make the game harder and you will also not earn much fertilizers for your plant. There are scores for each game which can be shared online and be compared with other users. . The app is meant to make the user care for the plants and the games keep the user more interested. If the user cares for the plants then ultimately the user will care about their energy consumption.

Development

This is the designs for the main menu and the icon for the application

These are sketch ideas for different plants

This has information about the plants and the design for the water plant

 This has the design for the petrol plant and electric plant

These two pages have the ideas and the design of the games on them

Possible Ideas

Brainstorm Ideas

This is a brainstorm i wrote to generate ideas for my energy project

Research

Plants Vs Zombies was a good application to draw inspiration from. It can help me to design the plants that are suitable for there energy type. It is also good inspiration for ideas on the garden i will be creating.

 here is a link for info in the app -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plants_vs._Zombies

Energy Research

Kilowatt hour (kWh):
The kilowatt hour, or kilowatt-hour, (symbol kW·h, kW h or kWh) is a unit of energy equal to 1000 watt hours or 3.6 megajoules. For constant power, energy in watt hours is the product of power in watts and time in hours. The kilowatt hour is most commonly known as a billing unit for energy delivered to consumers by electric utilities.

Examples:

A heater rated at 1000 watts (1 kilowatt), operating for one hour uses one kilowatt hour (equivalent to 3.6 megajoules) of energy.

Using a 60 watt light bulb for one hour consumes 0.06 kilowatt hours of electricity. Using a 60 watt light bulb for one thousand hours consumes 60 kilowatt hours of electricity.  Really interesting site on how much energy computers use: http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html

Whats a Kill a Watt? The Kill A Watt is an electricity usage monitor marketed by P3 International. It features a large LCD display and it enables cost forecasting. It measures the energy used by individual appliances plugged into the meter, as opposed to in-home energy use displays, which display the energy used by an entire household. The name is a play on the word kilowatt.  

http://www.claw.gov.uk/index.php?id=89&L=0 

Observing Energy Use

Studio Work

In this studio session, we were divided up into small groups where we would go off and research a certain topic which was given to us by our tutors.

In my group we had to research "Social Networks and Comparing Personal Data" This is the information that we found:
 A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes" which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.
 The first type of social network was to allow users to compile a list of friends and search for other users with similar interest.
WHO: 51. 90% of internet users know at least one social network. This influences quite a lot of people.
WHAT: photos, videos, personal info eg DOB, name sex. Also competition on game scores.
WHERE: Everywhere.
WHY: Keep updated with friends. Competitions between people. Businessess
It makes life easier eg you are able to talk to people all over the world.
Easy to find friends and family. You can literally find anybody.
HOW: (how do we share personal data?) Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, myspace, nike, blogging.
Learning sites for young people eg maths. They are able to share their intelligence with other people. Competition as well as a learning site.

Examples
http://www.funbrain.com/
http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/
http://www.facebook.com/
http://www.youtube.com/

Project 2

In this project you are asked to design an interactive application, service or tool that helps people to reduce their energy consumption. You can either decide to design the interface for an energy- monitoring device for a certain user group, or you can design a social networking service that allows comparison of energy usage amongst specific users, or you can address the problem in a more visionary way and come up with your own ideas.

Written Description

Sub-conscious Tester

For my project I looked into something call ‘habituation’. Habituation means is a decrease in response to a stimulus after  repeated presentations.  For example, a novel sound in your environment, such as a new  ring tone, may initially draw  your attention. After you become accustomed to this sound, you pay  less attention to the noise  and your response to the sound will diminish. So with my project I want people to feel this sensation. To do this I created a sound  that plays for a long period of time. The sound is constant and in order for this to work  you would have to listen to it over a long duration of time.  It should be used in an environment where you are busy.  You should feel Relief once the sound has stopped. Instruction The sound has been put on to an IPod.  All the user has to do is press play and listen over a long period of time. Then stopped the sound to feel the relief. The effect is greater if a person plays it to someone else with out them realizing.

Final Sound - Reasoning

I chose this sound for numerous reasons and it wasn't just by random choice

When experimenting i discovered some interesting things.

First I found that high pitched noises do not work for what i was trying to achieve.

when this was tested people found it irritating and it also caused headaches(I personally experienced this my self). Because of this it made it impossible to drown out. So i decided to make the sound mid pitched

Second was the relaxing sounds. The relaxing sounds were nice to listen to which was precisely the problem. It was to hard to to ignore so it didn't fit well.

Third was the wave fluctuation. This did not work well because of the wave sound that was made. It cause quite an imbalance making it a lot more obvious when the sound was playing. I found that sounds that were constant and on going were much more effective.

So this is the final sound. I couldn't fit the whole sound on because it goes for 30min so I shorted it down to 1min.I sound has a fade in which lets the sound into peoples ears a little slower then if the sound played straight away.

 

5 High Resolution Photos

Photos turned out to be very challenging for this project because essentially it is impossible to take photos of sounds so i am going to justify the reasoning for the photos I have taken.

Photo 1 - I got the idea of this photo from my story board and thought it would be a good place to start.

This it the begin of the sound when it first starts to be played by someone.

Photo 2 - This photo is to show the set up that i have made to produce my sound in a sneaky fashion

Photo 3 - This photo is to show that the sound has began to play while someone is unaware what is going on

 

Photo 4- This photo is to show the tension the person gets from listen to the sound.

 

Photo 5 - This photo shows the end of the interaction where the sound has stopped and relief has taken its place

Development of Sounds

Sound 5
With these sounds i was exploring obscure and strange noises that you wouldn't here very often.
Sound 5A - High Pitched, Strange

Sound 5B - Low Pitched, Strange

Sound 4
With this sound I wanted to explore the opposite direction by making an annoying sound that drove people crazy when listened to.With this sound i used a sub synth bass instrument and used a phaser which alternates the volume of the sound between left and right.


Sound 4 - High Pitched, Annoying

Sound 3
With this sound I wanted to to get away from pitches and waves so I changed the sound to a more relaxing sound. I did this because I didn't just want to test one sound with different pitches .I want to experiment with different sounds that provoke different emotions to see what kind of sound is easiest to drown out.

Sound 3 - Mid-High Pitched, Relaxed

Sound 2
Since the first experiment can back with feed back about the pitch I made a high pitched noise and a low pitched noise for my second sounds. I still used the bass but the difference is that i filter will be playing meaning the sounds will raise and fall in volume making the sound a little more interesting.


Sound 2A - High Pitched Wave

Sound 2B - Low Pitched Wave

Sound 1

I have begin to start off with a simple low pitched sound that is constant and looped over its self. I want the sound to stay simple so it could be background noise that is easily tuned out. If the sound was complex it may be to musical which would then stay in the conscious mind.

Videos are the only way to upload sounds to blogspot so i will be posting videos of my sound
This is the first sound I have made

This noise seemed to be quite hard to tune out on the people i experimented with.It was then compared to a higher pitched noise and the majority of the testers said that the higher pitched noise was easier to tune out. 

Developement of the Purpose - Research

I was trying to research information about the sub-conscious to aid the ideas of my interactive sound and found very little. What I did find though was methods to train the sub-conscious mind, The benefits of training the sub-conscious mind can be great, it can be known to make people happier and successful in all aspects of life. The method of my constant noise would test peoples sub-conscious. The aim would be to see how long you could listen to it while carrying out your everyday process. If it trains the mind then it could help depression and make people feel better about them selves.

here are some links to sites that explain this

http://www.creativelivinginc.com/

YouTube video on the sub-conscious

Research - Habituation

Definition: Habituation is a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations. For example, a novel sound in your environment, such as a new ring tone, may initially draw your attention or even become distracting. After you become accustomed to this sound, you pay less attention to the noise and your response to the sound will diminish. This diminished response is habituation.

link is here

I found out that there is a word that describes my project which is habituation.

StoryBoard

Written description

I want to test peoples sub-conscious by making a constant sound that is very ... and quite that enters someone’s mind sub-consciously. I want the user to experience frustration or discomfort while the sound begins and then eventually for the user to forget about the noise. Once the sound is stopped after a long period of time I want the user to remember that the sound was still there to whole time. The user should come to the realisation that he/she had sub-consciously tuned the sound out. The user should feel relief once the sound has stopped. This is not the only way it could be used. A more effective way of using it would be if someone played it to someone else. The user doesn’t know that it is happening until the sound stops. This would go further into the sub-conscious because the user is unaware at the start.I will use the program 'GarageBand' to create and experiment with different sounds and frequencies. I will test different tempos, wave variations, and sounds them selves to find out which ones are harder to notice, which ones are more frustration and which ones are more relaxing. The sounds could be played through mp3 players and iPods. The user should be excited to use it because it taps into there sub-conscious. The user will curious as to see if the sensation will work on them or their friends.

 

Concept 3

Concept 2

Concept 1