I and other group members were actually not quite familiar with each other at the beginning – the formation of our group were actually the result of a lucky draw done between a bunch of students, since we all wish to work with someone that were not the closest with. So we had this combination of one Korean, one Thai and two Chinese. Due to language problem I think we were not very open with each other about ideas at the beginning, but I think there is great improvement in communication between us throughout the process, since we are becoming more and more familiar with each other.

In this group I think I am the communication and time management person… which is a position I’ve never been in any group projects before. I think this is quite a challenge to me, since I am not good at time management… SERIOUSLY. I think that there’s still room for improvement in this.

Nayoung is a very hard working girl and she had been the most efficient one in doing her part. Neil is a very creative guy and he always comes up with lots of good ideas that surprises me. Catherine contributed a lot for the research part and she gave me lots of ideas in the project as well. Here I wish to say thank you to all my group members, I enjoyed doing job with all you guys in this semester. Thanks again.

A draft that we’ve drawn for the bed. Yes, we decided our “alarm clock” would not be a clock anymore, since there’re so many functions in it, and we think that it should be given a whole new look.

The shape of the bed was by Catherine – it was so machine like, and I would say it has a feeling about the future. I think I kind of understand why this idea jumps into her mind – what we’re doing is about the future, and about it we kind of get our ideas from movies like Steven Spielberg’s A.I. . But I think it can be a little bit more cosy, since it’s what we sleep in every day. Or maybe it’s just the A.I. thing – that movie gives me a pretty unsafe and cold feeling. It’s just something personal, maybe.

Our answer to ourselves were – just go as far as we can go.

We think that we are capable of doing sound, sight experiment, as well as having some changes in temperature. We recorded or downloaded some different sounds in our computer and put those sounds in our mobile phones, and tested them ourselves individually. And we did the light and temperature experiment at home – one of us spent some time to fall asleep in bed, and the other three do the light difference by hand, either by opening the blinds or switching on the light. The temperature difference was just having the heater on or off. The experiments were simply what we feel, and technologically not very perfect – we even had some sounds while we try to switch on the light – that may even be a factor of why the person wakes up. But I think that’s what we’re capable to do I can’t say it helps much, but it’s better than not doing – and, at least we feel by ourselves that what works better.

I made a storyboard for the video, but after consulting with Neil there’re some technical problems that we cannot overcome, and some effects I wish to have may take too much time to make – so we used his idea instead, since he knows what we’re able to do.

We decided to take photos about the story, edit them in photoshop and put them into the video frame by frame. Neil became not just the tech guy, but also the actor in our movie. He posed and I took photos – at that time we didn’t quite understand what he was doing, everything was in his mind – but when we put the photos together it all made sense.

The editing part was actually VERY time-consuming – each of us had to process at least 50 images, and not all of time were used in the video. Then we went to the studio together and put them together in Imovie, and Neil did the sound editing – he had done an amazing job about it.

The final outcome was really amazing – I can see that people really enjoyed watching our video. I am quite proud of it actually:)

This is the survey we’ve done for our group project. I thought it would be easy to write a survey, but it turns out quite difficult to find the exact wording to ask what I really want to ask – I’ve actually done two, yet when I gave the first version to my friends they didn’t get what I am trying to ask. It’s partly about language, but the main problem here is they’re not quite familiar with our group project, so we have to find a clearer way to let them understand – since people are usually not that patient.

There’s not much to talk about here about question 1~4 – answers were quite expectable. What surprises me the most is question 5 – actually we’ve gathered some ideas about new functions of our alarm clock through previous discussions, and we thought that we covered a lot – but the answers from people gave us even more ideas about it, like a machine that can punch you until you wake up, a bed that jumps and becomes vertical, a wake-up kiss…… they are actually quite funny to read.

When I was researching for my group project, I found this really funny video – a clock which can be used in every country! Not much thing to do with my project, though.
The only flaw that the clock is that it doesn’t have the minute clock, but how the clock works makes it unable to be kept. But adding to much thing to it makes it kind of unnecessary. So maybe it’s in its best form already.

(Find some problem when trying to embed it onto this blog. It’s not a Youtube video. Just click on the link maybe.)

Enjoy:)

The topic about the wake up system was actually suggested by me – I don’t know why this came up to my mind, but I think this would be quite a funny project to do – and, this is quite a big issue that affects everyone. To some it may look like an innovation that is made just for fun, but when you think deeper it can actually be big that it helps to avoid many mistakes or inconvenience caused by oversleeping – I am quite sure that most people have this experience of oversleeping that made them missed some chances or causing some consequences that they would wish to avoid, even with high costs.

So, the idea was there, but HOW it’s going to be done? At early stage we were a little bit confused. So we started with doing a little bit research online, followed by some surveys. The results we’ve got from the survey was actually amazing. We gathered some ideas about what functions can be added to the unknown device we’re going to propose in the project which we never thought of before. And after this we had clearer ideas about what our outcome might be.

I’ve read two books about this brand. One is “Brands A to Z: Muji” by Peng Yanjun and Chen Jiaojiao.

This book includes the history of the brand to date, and photos of its products as well as its ads and campaigns. Another is “The Design of Design” by Kenya Hara, who is the art director of Muji. This book is not entirely about the brand, but also about some of his works, which is a book that I highly recommend. But it’s not the books I am going to talk about here. It’s actually an award winning CD player designed by Naoto Fukasawa, which is one of the most famous products under the brand, that I want to talk about in this entry.

(image from http://www.read-my-mind.com/page11/page11.html)

It’s a wall-mounted CD player. The design relates to traditional fans, thus without even have to think about it, people will just pull the string below the CD player, and the CD will play. This design is, again, about instinct. Because of usual practice, people doesn’t have to spend time to find out how the CD player works. This design is so subtle that people may do so without realizing why they do so, which goes with the concept of Muji – “the least quantity yet the best quality of design”.

It seems that I can never resist products that I can interact with touch. I remember when I was small, I love playing with my electronic dictionary which had a touch screen(well is it a design on purpose, to get kids like me learning?) And then it’s those touch screen maps in shopping malls, like those in Melbourne Central. It’s all about instinct. When you see a little kitten with downy fur, what you would really wish to do is touch it. And there’s always more fun keying in letters by touching the screen (at least, for me, while I was a little kid) rather than using your keyboard, which the interaction feels more “direct” , without having to have the memories of which key you should press on to key in those letters.

Honestly I’ve never heard of the term “interaction design” before this semester. Yet I think all kinds of design are the same – there’s a message to convey, and a reason behind the design – the reason would be about how the design helps to convey the message efficiently. So from this point of view I would see interaction design as design of efficient interaction between two parties. This concept is quite basic, but as this is the first entry and for the fact that I am new to interaction design, let me give myself a clear objective for the following entries, so that I will never go to the wrong way.