The Window of my Mind
Designing a toy for bedridden Homo Ludens.
Time
8 weeks, 2021
Role
Overview
Theoretical background
“To play is to be in the world. Playing is a form of understanding what surrounds us and who we are, and a way of engaging with others. Play is a mode of being human.” — Miguel Sicart, Play Matters.
- Bed compatible
- Multisensory
- Embodied
- Fosters play*
- Is a toy*
- Encourages curiosity-driven interactions*
Design process
01 Research
Research into inclusivity, game design and multisensory experiences. Interviews to understand the impact of long-term physical activity limitation.
02 Ideation
Bodystorming and embodied sketching to inspire ideation and empathetic prototyping.
03 Prototyping
Physical prototyping of an installation setting, digital prototyping, experimentation with Image-to-Image transition algorithm.
04 Testing
RESEARCH & IDEATION
Embracing personal experience
To understand an impact of physical limitation we interviewed three people who had an experience of being bedridden. Time varies from 1,5 month to 1,5 year.
“First, I tried to touch the floor with my toes. I wanted to have control over something — for me it meant that I could do more”
“At the hospital, they had images with no consideration, there was no depth, they were not harmonic or nice at all. Outside my room there was a painting of a bird that gave me really bad feelings, maybe it was needed, I don’t know?“
Later, we applied bodystorming and embodied sketching to inspire ideation and empathic prototyping on the early stage of the design process.
Sketching of the input/output and a setting.
Variations of gestural input.
Prototyping
Prototyping The Window of my Mind we applied an open-source algorithm Image-to-Image Translation by Memo Akten. Input is the image from the camera and output is an abstract, constantly changing image which has visual qualities of the dataset it was trained on.
The setting consists of two main parts — Decoupled Projector and Adjustable Edge Unit.
The final setting.
The elements of the Adjustable Edge Unit are built with Nvidia Jetson board, RaspberryPi camera and a magnet phone holder on the bendable arm, which hides power cables and allows to move an artefact over the bed.
Elements of the device. Technical drawings by Love Lagerkvist.
The smartphone app plays the role of a remote controller to activate the camera and select the filters. In this case, we linked the output with weather parameters like temperature and humidity. In that way, the colour and texture of the visual projection change depending on the weather in the selected destination.
Key screens in Figma.
Testing
“You can see the patterns of the blanket!”
“I wonder why it turns red?”
“You need to adapt and slowly move, to be bodily aware.”
To evaluate how people perceive images in different mediums we showed three static and three dynamic visuals with different filters to 8 participants, age 29-68 and asked what they see on the screen and what kind of feelings it evokes.
These images were shown to participants in static and dynamic form.
According to participants responses, the dynamic image becomes more complex, ambiguous and “adds new perspectives”.
Design Outcome
The Window of my Mind
Demo video by Love Lagerkvist.
The study shows that it offers conditions for free play with an abstract visual output, provokes to appropriate the space around, explore different bodily positions, gestures and mimics, encourages curiosity and reflection.
The behaviour of the visual output is somehow organic in its autonomy and constant change. The engagement with abstract imagery provides a strong emotional context, but its interpretation can be remarkably diverse. The wide spectrum of emotional responses should be taken into consideration during further development.
Next Steps
Richer input modalities
Looking into other networks to add the ability to further manipulate.
Investigation into form
Looking on how enclosures could afford bed interaction.
Articulated filters
Further exploration into other kinds of imagery, better adapted to the bed context.
Long-term testing
Ethnographic inquiry with actual bedridden users.
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