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:. Binary Time
:. NetModule
:. Intimate Computing
:. Placebo
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Binary Time



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Duration: 1 week
Tutors: Gillian Crampton-Smith & Nick Durrant
copyright©1999 William Ngan, all rights reserved.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
-- T.S. Eliot
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  		Theme:
A visual representation of time

Extracts from the brief:
"...this project will be to get you thinking widely about something quite small, to get you to try lots of different ways of representing one small piece of information: TIME and HAPPENINGS in time."

 

Description:
This is a short one week project looking at different ways of representing time in digital media. This is one of the several concepts I come up with, which ask the user to see time as a pattern. By converting the typical base-12 numbers of time into binary values, time can be represented as a pattern in a 3X6 grid, instead of numerical values on a LCD module or positions of the hands of clock.
 

NetModule



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Duration: 5 weeks
Tutors: Gillian Crampton-Smith & Nick Durrant
copyright©2000 William Ngan, all rights reserved.

Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
-- Emerson
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  		Theme:
A concept application to bookmark sites, share links, and construct an internet map

Extracts from the brief:
"..explores the way computer can be tools for our mind, enabling us to get our minds round things we could not have grasped before. We will be looking at things such as: What is information?... Metaphor at the interface... Navigation--techniques for moving through large amounts of information... Information structures..."

Description:
Map-mapping in the past was a very serious and difficult undertaking, often involving explorers trekking through high mountains and crossing rough seas. Is it an equally (or more) difficult task to map our ever-changing virtual information space on the internet? NetModule is concept for the mapping of internet.

 

NetModule allows the user (as the explorer) to record his/her explorations on the internet, and to share his/her maps with others. The explorations can be recorded and catergorized as different "modules" (e.g., news module, comedy module, Cameron Diaz module, etc); the modules can then be shared between friends and in communities of common interests (e.g., the Leonardo DiCaprio fans can share their explorations of everything about their Leonardo on the net!). The user can also combine all his/her modules to make a personal internet map, and by sharing the personal internet maps between users and communities, a more extensive internet map can be generated. In this way, the mapping of internet requires the input of everyone rather than that of some media experts.
 

Intimate Computing
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Duration: 4 weeks
Tutors: Bill Gaver and Neil Glen
copyright©2000 William Ngan, all rights reserved.

I would learn of their dreams in the flowers
but butterflies have no voice.
-- Reikan
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  		Theme:
Design a strange wireless application concept for EXTREME characters in EXTREME scenarios.

Extracts from the brief:
"To explore new opportunities presented by technology, such as Bluetooth... Consider the new languages of communication when the focus is no longer the technology but the social need... Imagine 3 fictional characters, make them extreme. What do they do? Who do they do it with?... Take one character and create the tasks and techonology to enable the character to live out the life you have created."

Description:
The most interesting part of this project, to me, is to the "extreme character" aspect. The reason for doing this, said the tutors, is to push us thinking about all the unusual applications of technology that we won't quite think about when designing for the general users.

 

My characters for this project are derived from the children's classic The Little Prince by Antonie de Saint Exupery. The scenario describes a form of non-verbal communication between the Little Prince and his flower using gestures and colours. After this project, I realize that it is just important to incorporate human qualities such as emotion, imagination, and ritual into technology, as to design a faster Pentium processor.
 

Placebo



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Duration: 4 weeks
Tutors: Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby
copyright©2000 William Ngan, all rights reserved.

I am human, and let nothing human be alien to me.
-- Terence
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Theme:
Computer technology as a placebo for anxiety/phobia.

Extracts from the brief:
"Design an electronic 'placebo' that provides mental well-being and psychological comfort in relation to real or imagined anxieties about the cellular city... be precise and aviod general purpose products for all occasions and all people... designer working in a medium that can present experiences... the user becomes a protagonist and co-producer of narrative experience."

Description: The technological device needs to be a PLACEBO, providing mental comforts but without actually solving the problem. It is a project to make believable but weird things that provoke thoughts and generate discussions -- very interesting and tricky project!

 

The anxiety/phobia I target is kind of a Fear of Reality. The victims typically spend too much time in the many virtual-worlds that they either:

(1) find the real world really boring;
(2) confuse about the many different personalities they use in the virtual-worlds;
(3) incapable of properly expressing themselves through gestural / facial expressions (staring at the computer screen for too long);
(4) socially very active in virtual-space but isolated in the real world
(5) all of the above.

As a result, the victims develop a fear of reality and tend to retreat to their virtual caves whenever possible; consequently, their fear about the real world intensifies.

If this sounds completely strange and crazy already to you, ahem, well, great! Please checked out the placebos on your left. I developed a few products/services that may help the patient by assuring them that reality is but another virtuality.