36 out of 100

36% of women in the US have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner at some time in their life and 13% of women in the US agree that a husband/partner is justified in beating his wife/partner under certain circumstances.

Feelings of guilt and shame (among other reasons) encourage them to remain silent and as survivors it is difficult to open up and share the experiences lived. There are many untold stories and my intention is to provide a voice in order to share some of them in an anonymous and intimate way.

The installation consist on a switchboard that contains a visualization of 100 women represented with circles, 36 of them will have jacks that will play a story when the user connects  a phone (1 story per each jack).

*Note: The content shared in each story might be a trigger to some users therefore I will create a content warning. The data that is being represented comes from an study made by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on 2014 about women in the US however the intention of the project is not to exclude women identifying, transgender, and gender-nonconforming individuals.

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Final Project ideation | ICM and Pcomp

Concept: Physical Visualization of violence against women.

Compare two different data sets using human interaction to define the product of the digital (or physical) visualization:

  • Attitude towards violence: The percentage of women who agree that a husband/partner is justified in beating his wife/partner under certain circumstances.

  • Prevalence of violence in the lifetime: The percentage of women who have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner at some time in their life.

Steps:

  • Define dataset: Data set

  • Choose a Visualization Paradigm (consider p5 vs d3 or combine both?)

  • Design a meaningful interaction between the human, the data and the 3d elements of the visualization.

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Week 4: Lazy Candy Dispenser

For this week I decided to apply the knowledge acquired during the past classes in order to create a candy dispenser machine that would provide the candies when the user makes a gesture with the hand, like if they were asking for the candies to come out.

The main idea behind the concept was to create a machine that would recognize basic human expressions to activate the servo motor and for that I used the gesture of curling the fingers.

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Week 3: Angry/In Love Sloth

For these week’s assignment I decided to continue working with the concept of the sloth that feel in love while holding hands, the last week I wanted the eyes to be white when there was no contact and then turn red when the switch was on, however since I didn’t know how to program the Arduino I didn’t do it. For this week I already have the required knowledge to (at least) try to program the LED lights in a more coherent way according to my concept.

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Interactive technology in public: Citi Bike

For this assignment I choose “City Bike”, a piece of interactive technology used in public by multiple people. The systems consists on two different platforms: 1) physical kiosk in each bike station, 2) mobile app. For the assignment purposes I will focus on the kiosk and the interaction of the users with the bike stations. I did my research on the Washington Pi & Broadway station, which I figured is not a very touristic location, most of the users already know how to use the system and they normally already have the code in their phones when they approach the station. I assumed that the interaction with the kiosk would be fast and easy however it might be challenging for tourists who are not used to these kind of interfaces, specially non english speakers.

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Week2: Creative Sloth Switch

For the second week the assignment was to make a creative switch. Since we learned in class how to create one with a pushbutton the idea of the homework was to come up with creative ways to “cut” the power supply and reconnect it in an interesting way by exploring different conductors.

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Week1: Intro to Physical Computing

The following is a reflexion on two readings: “The Art of Interactive Design” by Chris Crawford (Chapter 1 and 2) and Bret Victor’s, “A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design”.

I believe the authors dedicated a fair amount of time on defining what Interactivity is, and what it is not, however I would like to expand more on my personal opinion about what interactivity is (or at least should be for my personal interpretation).

In my opinion the differentiation that is being done by Chris Crawford regarding Interaction Designers and User Interface Designers is too focussed on age and capabilities, but he doesn’t talk about the fact that a User Interface Designer can also be a, Interaction Designer (and viceversa), I’m not saying this should be the rule, but it definitely is a very recurrent mix of capabilities.

It might come from the fact that the profession has changed so much over the years and probably it was different when the book was released, however I believe that the mixture between Mathematics and Engineering with Arts and Design could definitely be achieved by one professional.

In general I believe the concept of Physical Computation should go beyond just understanding who communicates with who, and expand more to the analogy of how the interactivity could augment the senses of a human being. It goes beyond trying to understand if a rug is interactive ir not. The power of technology should be used as a tool to provide humans with more developed senses and enable them to achieve their goals, overcoming their disabilities (mental and physical) with the help of Physical Computing.

Last but not least, I want to take a moment to talk about an issue that I am deeply concerned about. As a women being involved in Engineering and Tech environments I have faced sexism in a lot of different expressions, verbal, phycological and physical. Since we are in an era of women empowerment I have started to realize the material that we read and the videos that we watch as part of a class or our professional education should encourage us as women to overcome our mental barriers and also the industrie stereotypes.

I found the introductory video to be very sexist, I am aware that my Latin American descent might be influencing me to interprete the material in a different way, however I believe a blog that allow us as students to express our reactions is a great tool for us to also raise our voices regarding important issues in the society.

Male characters in the video

Male characters in the video

Male character winking this eye to a girl

Male character winking this eye to a girl

Female character explicitly saying no.

Female character explicitly saying no.

Female character hitting a wall

Female character hitting a wall

Male character making fun of a female character

Male character making fun of a female character

Male character blowing a kiss

Male character blowing a kiss

Female character clearly rejecting the male's offenses.

Female character clearly rejecting the male's offenses.

This might me my own “Rant” however I strongly believe that it is important to empower women in our industrie and the materials that we use during our lessons are a great point to start that women empowerment.