Final Project designs

Ian Asaff and I are working together to make our final project for the TUI class. Ian came up with the original idea for the project, which is an exhibit to be included in the Computer Corner in the Boston Museum of Science. The idea is to model RAM usage with a Tangible User Interface, thus mimicking the actions of a computer with human actions.

In last week's class, we modeled the idea using clay from our HCI lab. As seen below, we modeled the frame of the system, as well as a "focus" frame where a process would be in action. We also had a space for an operating system, and if you look hard, you can see the different program tokens that we sculpted. Also, to the right, you can see our first draft of a storyboard for a scenario in the system.



This week, we made a rough prototype of the system using posterboard and printed icons. This version can be seen below, and was well received by the class. We are now working on a new prototype based on suggestions from this class.



The week before spring break, we decided to further modify the design by modeling the entire interface with a pyramid shape, and having specific slots in which we want to keep the programs instead of an open canvas. These changes came about because of concerns with the implementation and time frame issues. From now, we have five weeks to complete the project, so we must now start work on the final version of what we would like to show in the museum. It is very important that our product is robust and complete, so we are going to decide which aspects of the project we are going to be able to implement in the week to come. By the end of this week, we hope to have a good idea of what our final implementation will be, as well as starting the actual building process. A picture of our latest prototype is soon to follow.