Getting Real with Connected Devices
In early February, IxDa, the world’s leading UX conference, took place in Amsterdam. R/GA conducted a workshop on physical prototyping which was lead by myself, Ilia Uvarov and Stuart Taylor.
This main initiative was for R/GA to build a presence at the conference and spot potential talent. The workshop illustrated how UX and tech can collaborate during the process of making and refining prototypes, a massive part of R/GA London culture.
The workshop named ‘Getting Real with Connected Devices’ focused on creating a connected device, the R/GA Cube. The gesture-controlled cube was designed to control music playback on a computer through Processing. Through this workshop, participants learned who R/GA are, what we do and how we work. We then took them through Arduino and Processing basics so they would have a better understanding of how we both work separately and together. Then we moved on to building the Cube.
The cube is composed of an Arduino board, a gyroscope and an accelerometer (mpu6050). The sensors send their data to the Arduino board, which via the USB cable sends it to Processing (computer application). Processing then interprets the data (x,y,z rotations) and transform them into behaviors (play/stop, skip forward, skip backward, volume). Everyone managed to get their cube to work so this was a real success. We then discussed as a group what were the strengths and weaknesses of the interaction and how it could be improved. We at this point reinforced the importance of learning through prototype by refining after each iteration.
One of the main take aways from the workshop was also that nowadays you don’t have to be a hardcore programmer to do this sort of thing. It’s about choosing the right components, usually the older the better because you can easily find out caveats and learn from other people’s mistakes. Also there is usually a lot of code available that people have produced and released for free.
The workshop was a great success on many levels since all participants left with a working version of the cube. Participants had a great time making it and R/GA made great contacts in the UX industry.
This video was shot the day after the workshop in Amsterdam and illustrates how the cube works: http://rgaixda14.tumblr.com/post/75890963816/quick-demo-of-the-cube-player-on-the-streets-of
You can find the Tumblr page dedicated to the event here: http://rgaixda14.tumblr.com/
The GitHub repo with code and schematics is here: https://github.com/sebastienjouhans/processing-arduino-cube-interface
The Slides used during the presentation are here: http://www.slideshare.net/sebastienjouhans/getting-real-with-connected-devices-presentation