Individual project
Processing&Unity | Kinect
Research | Interaction design | Development
2018.07-2018.08
Stacy Yuan - fabrication and hardware development
Monni Qian - research, UI design, animation design and fabrication
p5.js&HTML | Arduino | C4D
2019.10-12
Research | Interaction design |
Front-end and hardware development
Wildlife now is in an increasingly worse situation. Poachers keep targeting rare creatures, like pangolins. Last year, we lost the last male northern white rhino in the world. There remain so many sad stories of extinct species. What’s worse, on Aug, 12th, 2019, the Trump administration announced that it would change how the Endangered Species Act is applied—the government will now consider economic factors before categorizing a species as endangered or threatened.
Under new rules, it will be much harder to protect wildlife from the multiple threats posed by climate change. Undoubtedly, climate change will lead to the loss of wetlands, sea-level rise, invasive species, and disease, where wildlife will lose their habitat and be forced to move or die. It’s inevitable that human is responsible for climate change while humans might be indirect causes in this case. But human could also be direct causes in terms of countless poaching and turn wildlife habitat into farmland. Luckily, some organizations and individuals have already started to care about climate change and species distinction. However, it’s often hard to get funding and other support for these growing problems. The public and media tend to focus on current emergencies rather than long-term issues. If we were not about to take action immediately to protect our habitat, the human might also be in extinction one day.
Therefore, we would love to dive into the topic of endangered wildlife and design a system engaging multiple sectors to get public eyes in focus on this issue.
We made a spreadsheet to analyze related stakeholders. In the sheet, we were centering around questions for different stakeholders as follows:
1. What are the notable players?
2. What are their motivations?
3. What are their strengths?
4. What are their blind spots?
5. What are their needs?
And eventually, we created an infographic to demonstrate our ecosystem map.
After having conversations with Lyel Resner, we iterated the logic model for a few times based on his suggestions and decided to further develop our concept by contacting related museums and galleries.
Currently, we have reached short-term goals through the demo at NYU ITP Winter Show 2019; we welcomed around 150 people to experience our installation. Most of the users got inspired and impressed a lot; they not only got the takeaways but also brought their families and friends back to our installation. What's more, some users were from concerned museums and organizations; they offered us great advice to further refine our project (user feedback will be listed in the Further Steps section).
Initially, we were inspired by the upside-down world idea in the TV series ”Stranger Thing”. We wanted to create a box to present two worlds: one lives human and another one lives the animals.
When users put coins or something related to profit in the upside world, the upside world will shake and sink. As the space of the underneath world shrinks, some animals will gradually disappear.
This design aims to show that humans and animals are living in a shared space, while humans have little knowledge of how huge the irreversible deterioration we've made to the animal world.
1. The underneath world confused some users where they thought those animals were living underground.
2. Also, David Rios (physical computing prof) pointed out that users might not have valuable takeaways because most have already known human factors contribute to animals' decreasing. It's better to bring some unknown information to the installation.
So we decided to narrow our project down to a virtual buying process and added data visualization.
To make a more specific buying process, we had to identify which animals we would love to include. looked up some the most endangered animals whose death rate closely related to human hunting on WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) website. I talked to my group members and we agreed on the four animals: elephant, tigers, pangolins and sea turtles.
We used a single screen behind the box to show info we wanted our users took away. A vending machine appearance would be the one of the most intuitive ways to simulate the buying process. So we designed a vending machine and let our users pick up any animal and eventually, there would be a corresponding animal product coming out from the machine. Also, we would print a 'receipt' for users where users could learn more about the chosen animal current situation.
Q1. Should the process be in a reversed way: users choose animal products at the beginning and eventually they get to know which animal those products are made from?
(Some testers pointed out when users chose the animal at the beginning, they didn't expect an animal product coming out.)
We regrouped to discuss our user feedback.
Answer: We should keep the current process.
We considered the surprising outcome would convey a stronger message. Normally, when consumers buy products made from animal body parts, they wouldn't think about where the products come from or what might have happened to the animals. Through this vending machine, we are intended to show users the killing process behind the buying experience.
Q2. Should users have the option to save the animals before they falling into trap?
Answer: We don't have to.
If users chose to save animals, they won't see the output products and will leave with only saving a virtual animal. Also, in real life, once humans still have desires to consume products made from endangered animals, hunters will endlessly kill the animals, which is hard to turn things around at this point. We would rather have our users to experience the cruelty of reality.
Q3. The trap covered the back screen which might affect the experience animation.
Revision
We changed the trap to a hole on the third floor board instead of a box.
We analyzed specific interaction requirements and came up with solutions. I made a schematic diagram to help us deliver the prototype more easily.
Stacy and I worked together on hardware testing and Arduino code implementation.
1st floor--start the experience We chose a microswitch to register if a coin has been inserted. Because microswitches offer tactile feedback (clicky feeling); switches close when pressed and will be back to open state once released. One switch registration triggers a new buying process.
2nd floor--choosing animals Four push buttons will control each animal spinning.
3rd floor--trap open/close Two rotating servo motors represent two doors of the trap opening and closing. Instead of a single-time open and close, I added trap doors shaking with decreasing frequency after trap closes; the shake suggests animals are struggling inside the trap, which can create emotional associations with users and achieve full immersion.
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A vending machine using coil to hold products
Inspired by how some vending machines work in reality, we 3d printed the coil to hold products and glued it on the stepper motor.
Once one animal has been ‘trapped’ and the screen shows ‘processing’, the motor will turn the spiral coil and drop the product to the bottom. We designed four motors to control products from four different animals. Also, since each animal might produce different products, we laser cut multiple products for each animal and randomized their dropping probabilities to add more surprising experience.
I took a lead on UX design, interaction design, and code implementation. Monni designed UI and created the animation. The on-screen experience is meant to use dynamic elements to enrich the experience. For instance, data visualization serves as a supplement to background information; animated effects are used to guide users’ attention and in turn, influence their behavior.
On the first floor, we would love to provide our users with the astounding statistic about endangered animals, which could quickly immerse users with realistic scenarios. (However, in ITP winter show testing, we received user feedback about the timing of showing this part, see details in the Further Steps 3)
Also, I added a customer counter on the screen to learn about the number of visitors, which in turn unconsciously could help our visitors feel more responsible for the buying.
We chose PER WEEK as our time measurement because the numbers are closer to integers; also, the shorter the time range is, the bigger impact it will bring to our visitors.
We got inspired by slot machines that use flashing lights to encourage impulse buying and take risks. Hence, I designed four on-screen phases behind animals:
Phase 1. idle phase: four background lights flash alternately at a slow pace.
Phase 2. Once our users insert the coin, the color will turn to red the pace will be speeded up. The speed difference helps users to see the results of their coin inserting actions.
Phase 3. When our user has chosen one animal, flashing light will stop at this specific animal.
Phase 4. By the end of animal spinning, all background will turn black, which means the chosen animal has been 'hunted'.
Upon completion of the whole buying process (printer finishes printing), the system will turn to the idle phrase again.
We found that some users started with pressing the button without inserting coins because they saw the color block flashing. They tended to interpret the flashing as a to-do action. Also, since the coin slot is up on the top, even there’s a sign to insert the coin, some of them still have no idea where to insert the coin.
Revision:
So I planned to animate the ‘insert the coin’ at the beginning and stop the animation when the coin got detected. The idle phase would be all black instead of flashing. Only after users insert the coin, they will see the light flashing suggesting them to press the button.
Phrase 1: A big scene representing a human-animal co-existing world
Phrase 2: Individual animal falling
A simulation of animal falling into trap
Phrase 3: Animal asks for help while struggling
Add some sentimental elements and inspire users' empathy
Phrase 4: A "Processing" scene
Fill the blank time before the product comes out. Also, it could give user a hint of what is happening soon.
Phrase 1: A big scene
Represent a human-animal co-existing world
Phrase 2: Individual animal falling
A simulation of animal falling into trap
Phrase 3: Animal asks for help while struggling
Add sentimental value and inspire users' empathy. Also, this part is accompanied with physical trap shaking.
Phrase 4: A "Processing" scene
Fill time blankness before the product comes out. Also, it could give user a hint of what is happening soon.
Special thanks for help from David Rios, Ben Light and Lyel Resner.
Another big thanks for Daniel Shiffman and other 148 users to experience our installation!
1. Pepper's ghost effect could be used in the animation section that animal fall into the trap.
The 3d projection effect will leave users more immersive experience.
2. When animals fall into trap, there could be added more physical experience for users to relate to. For instance, some simulation of shaking, falling, up-and-downs experience could be a plus.
3. Screen data visualization(number of killing) could appear as a takeaway after user finish the experience instead of being shown at the beginning.
In that case, users will come to our installation with little knowledge of the hidden message about hunting. They start approaching the vending machine due to curiosity. They will be more surprised when the animal fall into trap and in the end, an animal product comes out. The more drastically different compared with users' expectations, the more users will remember and take away.
4. Since we are talking about endangered animal protection, we should've considered more about whether the fabrication material is eco-friendly or not. Also, printer cost paper
