Design game with embedded media.

Neha sayed
EDG 07-08

Introduction:

My MA thesis is on understanding the experience of togetherness and redesigning it for situations where it is desired and cannot be achieved.

Togetherness is experienced by two friends in a context which they choose for themselves, for example in a coffee table meeting. Where this context is made up of surrounding environment, scope of topics and ethics. I will study and develop methods to understand and define togetherness and redesign it for two friends in physical separation. I will use mobile communication as a media between these two friends which will facilitate this experience. The final design concept will propose an application of the existing technology, appropriating it for a mobile phone.

I am currently formulating my thesis proposal. I would like to start with building a design game which will facilitate participatory design and help me investigate how people build on a specific design idea and appropriate in to the new need.

Proposal:

The design game will be for a specific age group of people to experiment how they develop a design idea. These experiments are targeted for ordinary people, who can generate a design idea from their acquired experiences, for their future imaginary experiences.

I will develop a tool box used to generate a design game which will help to create design ideas. The elements of this tool box will have embedded media. The embedded media will help enable making a more realistic prototype, and will help visualize the mobile phone. The elements will be geometric shapes, flexible or non flexible which can be mounted on a base. I will start from making many of these shapes and decide on which elements can be embedded with a media.

This tool box can be later used for generating ideas for any other electronic device. There are many such experiments already tested like, `Make Tools´ which are used for similar purposes. But none of them have been specifically developed for a mobile phone and which has an embedded media in it.