TANGIBLE TIME
BRAILLE EMOTIONAL CLOCK
TANGIBLE TIME
BRAILLE EMOTIONAL CLOCK
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPING EXPERIENCES
As stated in the brief:
Considerations
“You must design a new visual experience for telling the time. It must have an element of interactivity and response with the user/users. The key to this brief is not only how you visualise the display of time but how the users actions create a responsive, immersive experience. There are vast possibilities to how you may approach the delivery of this information. A successful outcome will be well informed, researched and tested.
Your design should be well researched, considered and informed. A synopsis of your final design concept is required. The final prototype must have some level of interactivity with the user/users. You must employ the use of processing and arduino to obtain your designed outcome. A well resolved functioning prototype of your final concept is expected. Consider branding and placement of your design as a gallery installation. You may incorporate external user interfaces into your design.
Using processing and arduino to achieve your outcome there are many methods and mediums and methods you might utilise to achieve you results. Remember that you are not limited by the confines or the screen, the keyboard, the mouse or even the size of the room you are exhibiting in. This is a prototype and may propose a bigger installation in both and physical and/or online space.”
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ASSESMENT: TANGIBLE TIME
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DOCUMENT OF DEVELOPMENT
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPING EXPERIENCES
“The basic intuition of our approach is that the experience of time can depend on the emotional valence of events or situations that people anticipate. For instance, when a person anticipates an event that generates a positive emotion, say spending the next holidays on a sunny beach in the Maldives, she may experience impatience and feels that these longingly awaited holidays may never arrive - that is, the anticipated duration expands. On the other hand, if this same person faces a negative event some time in the future, such as a difficult exam, she feels anxiety and time seems to fly up to this event and it feels to her as if the exam would arrive too quickly. Hence, the sensation is as if time contracts. This “time experience” is indeed supported by evidence from psycho-physiology and neurobiology. Time, therefore, is not exogeneous to the individual, it is elastic, and this will be influenced by the emotion the person experiences.”1 1 Changing Time and Emotions, Pierre-Yves Geoffard & Stéphane Luchini, September 2007
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TIME AS AN ILLUSION
When people have a positive expectation towards an event in the future, the feeling of impatience can cause time to expand.
DOCUMENT OF DEVELOPMENT
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Time is said to be a very accurate way to measure events and facts. However, as it is stated in the article “Changing time and Emotions” by Pierre-Yves Geoffard and Stéphane Luchini; the perception we have of time can variate according to the emotional response we have to it. We feel as if time flows going from present to past, and on into the future. But time as a precise measure in physics is not perceived in relation to people or particular subjects. They do not express which events are happening “right now” in what we consider our tangible present.2
On the other hand, when having a negative expectation towards an event, the feeling of anxiety will cause it to contract, thus appearing shorter.
What we can conclude about this is that human beings relation to time and it’s mathematical significance are different. People cannot separate their conscious mind from their biological self. Therefore, the experience of time isn’t detached from the emotions and expectations people feel. With this premise we approach our design concept, understanding that when building an emotional clock, it should respond to the user and not to the theorical measure of time. 2 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-time-anillusion
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPING EXPERIENCES
BRAILLE EMOTIONAL CLOCK / CONCEPT
Since the concept of time can seem somehow flexible, it is only logical that an emotional clock that is linked to people should be flexible too. As people get closer to the clock and pay more attention to it, the clock will go slower. This creates a feeling of impatience in the person who is observing the object. However, as the clock detects someone in the distance it will start going faster. This may cause anxiety on people who do notice this. The clock is also accompanied with a set of pulsing lights that pick on the speed of the “seconds”, making it even easier to recognize when the clock is going faster or slower. When there is no one in the room for the clock to interact with, it will simply go on like a regular clock, ticking every second, minute and hour like is due.
NUMBER SYMBOL IN BRAILLE
FIRST DIGIT
SECOND DIGIT
For reading the clock, each disk has a set of holes and indentations that correspond to a certain number in braille. The first line is the symbol of number, the second one is the first digit and the third one is the second digit.
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The “Braille emotional clock” is thought to interact with the space and the people that are passing. Wether the person wants to directly interact with the clock, or simply walk by it, the clock will create a response to the situation.
DOCUMENT OF DEVELOPMENT
SECONDS
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HOURS
MINUTES
The clock is composed by 3 disk floating in a wooden base. Their are 3 beams of light showing the corresponding secods, minutes and hours. The disks rotate to accomodate the numbers to the beam of light. The design of the clock is not made to be practical but beautiful1. 1  Beauty undestood as an aesthetical concept: That causes emotion on the beholder.
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPING EXPERIENCES
WHY BRAILLE?
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We chose braille as the lenguage for the clock because visually impaired people don’t have the same perception of time as someone with fully functioning sight. The concept of day and night associated with the existance of light is less important and other factors start determining how they understand time. Although the clock is not thought to be for blind people it is including.
Blind people can read the disc by touching it and feeling the temperature caused by the beam of light. In the prototype this was not accomplished because the LED lights don’t radiate enough heat, but in a fully functioning product, this problem would be solved.
The fading lights and bright colors from the protoype are thought to help people who are visually impaired but not blind. They are able to recognize changes in light and some of them are able to recognize bright colors such as orange.
DOCUMENT OF DEVELOPMENT
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1 = 2.5
1 = 0.5
1=1
The sensor has a maximun range of 2 metters. When someone is 50 close to the watch every second equals 2.5 seconds. When someone is 1.5 metters or further appart, every second equals 0.5 second. Finally, when there is no one in the range of the sensor, every second equals 1 second.
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPING EXPERIENCES
The programming and circuits was my part of the project, the building and prototyping was assigned to my other team members. Design and conceptualization was a joined effort. The clock’s prototype is operating with 3 full rotation servo motors that can’t be position programmed. This means the accuracy of the prototype is not very high. Although accomplishing a precise position was not possible, recreating the movement of an actual clock was achieved. The coding in the “Braille emotional clock” is divided into two Arduino boards, one master and one slave. The master Arduino is the one attached to the sensor, and is the one controlling the motors. The other Arduino controls the set of LED pulsing lights, and receives information from the master Arduino. To communicate both Arduino boards it was necessary to use the wire library and the SCL and SDA pins of the Arduino. In the final prototype the communication within boards wasn’t working for some unknown reason. The strategy to get the 3 servos working together
was to relate them to one another. The whole movement of the clock is determinated by the code of the “Seconds” servo. At the end of the code there is a Counter adding 1 unit to the interger. “if” conditions were assigned to control the movement of the other two motors. Whenever the counter is divided by 60 (minutes variable) or 3600 (hours variable) and the result of the remainder is cero, the corresponding servo makes a turn. The movement of the motors is programmed with simple “write” and “delay” commands. To control the speed of the clock in relation to the sensor, the delay value that responds to the second was made an interger. This interger varies depending of the values that are being read by the sensor, causing the clock to slow down or speed up. For the pulsing lights, the code was taken from the “fade” example. Again, the delay that controls the pulsing of the lights was associated to the interger of the sensor, making it pulse at the same rate of the motors. For the final prototype a problem with voltage made it impossible for the light to pulse properly.
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SOFTWARE
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DOCUMENT OF DEVELOPMENT
MASTER ARDUINO
SLAVE ARDUINO
Controls the 3 servo motors, the ultrasonic sensor and sends information to the slave Arduino board.
Reads information from the master Arduino and controls the pulsing lights. The pulsing lights are using the digital pins that can mimic an analog output.
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPING EXPERIENCES
HARDWARE
As it has been stated, the servo motors used for this project cannot be position programmed. This means they do not real accurate values of position and can’t write movement in degrees. Even though the code for the servo is the same command (servo.write) the result in the hardware is different. In this type of servo the “write” command controls the speed and direction of the rotation of the motor. Values go from 0 to 180. the 90 value is the stopping position, in which the motor should stay still. 0 and 180 are the fastest speeds, one turning clockwise and the other counterclockwise. The motors have to be regularly calibrated to guarantee the still position at 90. The LED light powered by the Arduino are divided into the analog outputs of the board.
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The mechanism of the clock is composed by 3 full rotation servos and an ultrasonic sensor (powered by one master Arduino), 10 fading leds (powered by a slave Arduino), 1 breadboard and 2 sets of LEDS lights (powered by AA batteries).
DOCUMENT OF DEVELOPMENT
ULTRASONIC SENSOR
MASTER ARDUINO Page(15);
SERVO 1 BREADBOARD
SLAVE ARDUINO
SERVO 3 SERVO 2
LED LIGHTS
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPING EXPERIENCES
PROTOTYPE
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For the prototype we used the laser cutter from the university and vector-based files. The reason why we used it is because we needed a precise position for the center of the circle and also because the complexity of the design. The explanation board was laser indented to create a texture for the braille part.
All the electronic components were attached to the wooden base of the prototype
For the disks and the outer edges of the box we used translucent acrylic.
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DOCUMENT OF DEVELOPMENT
For the explanation board we used plywood that could be laser indented
The base of the clock is made with special plywood made for laser cutting.
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPING EXPERIENCES
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EXHIBITION
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DOCUMENT OF DEVELOPMENT
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INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPING EXPERIENCES
NAPIER UNIVERSITY / JULIANA VÉLEZ / 2013