privacy

Interaction Observation

Tesla Door Unlock

The unlocking of the Tesla door is an intangible interaction that replaces the tangible interaction of using a key fob. People who may have difficulty using it are people without access to a phone. The system senses bluetooth connection and responds by unlocking the door. Errors, and confusions may occur when there is no phone to detect. This interaction centers the phone, and thus this is a limiting factor.

If I were to redesign this, I would explore ways to sense the specific person. Given that there are cameras on the car, I am curious why it cannot use machine vision to know that it is ME, or other people that we’ve trained the model on to unlock upon me walking up to the car.

Simple Sensors project

The system senses people walking by using mmWave technology. This is an alternative to CCTV based sensing, that protects privacy. The project itself makes transparent what is being tracked, where that data is sent and why it is doing that. The participant just goes about their day. The system responds by sensing and then changing its data module to show that the person was tracked. This is designed for a civic purpose. This interaction is unexpected in that it centers user privacy and transparency.

If I were to redesign this, I would explore ways for more ways for the user to interact with it so that they can keep the results of that interaction.

My takeaway

I think my biggest takeaway from this exercise is to really think through why certain systems use certain inputs (for ex. the Tesla centering the phone) **Is the easiest thing to use as the trigger, the best? **

Weekly Reflections

Exploring the sensor-action when it came to the more speculative, out-there ideas really expanded my thinking about what is possible. Something that I have been thinking about is how to be more hardware-centered and less so software-centered – or at least redefining what software means. There does not need to be a visual UI, or an HTML file, or a React app, or something like that to power an interaction design project. Excited to learn more about this.

Lab Reflections

I have learned a lot of this stuff in highschool, so reviewing this. One thing that I really took away is the metaphor of electricity as water flowing through a pipe with esistors functioning as gateways to reduce flow. What I remembered of electronics from high school physics is a lot of calculations (ohms and whatnot) – but I am looking forward to digging into the design of circuitry as a means to achieve different design objectives.