ActDresses:
People tend to personalize their technology; stickers and cases are common accessories like Fernaeus and Jacobsson mention in their paper Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses. Technical gadgets are a big part of our everyday life end therefore I understand the need to personalize and differ them from others. I’ll guess my iPhone could be comparable to my beloved doll I had as a child. Brought it with me everywhere, spend time dressing it up, fixing the hair, you can call it general maintaining. I maintain my iPhone as well, clean the screen often, buy new cases and change my background pictures to make it more personal and show the world that it’s mine.In the paper Fernaeus and Jacobsson introduce the concept of actDresses and demonstrate it by a picture. When wearing different accessories the robot acts in different ways. By applying the concept of actDresses, e.g. dressing up robots, you create a connection, a bond, between the robot and the human. I’d guess you could call it humanizing the robot, giving it accessories humans could wear and giving the robot the role of a pet like the scholars mentioned. The focus in the study was using accessories and design influences in the human life and applying it on robots and therefore creating new bonds. If robots are supposed to be a part of our everyday life in the future I think it’s important to make them more human, to blend in, and this kind of research is a good way to start.
Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration:
1. How can media technologies be evaluated?Since media technologies are supposed to be used by people I think a good way of evaluating is prototypes and user studies. By making a prototype the users can test the product in an authentic environment and give instant feedback that could lead to improvements. The best way to evaluate new technologies is to test them in a user environment, and the type of method depends on what kind of product the test is focused on.
2. What role will prototypes play in research?
Prototypes will play an important part in research since it is a way of describing the results. The prototypes will help future scholars to continue the development since with the help of prototypes you can understand what’s working and not. A prototype is a kind of guideline that will lead the way in the future. The evaluation of the study could increase of you have a prototype since it can be used for testing on actual users and necessary improvements will easily be discovered.
3. Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
It could be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype to demonstrate the theories of the study. If you have a prototype that works correctly it could increase the credibility of the research. If you can prove your theories it’s more likely that people will believe them and continue to use them.
Hey Marit,
SvaraRaderaThank you for a good text. I was quite interested by this theme's topic, about the sort of "digi-physical" approach of the two papers. Do you think that there is a bright future for these digi-physical solutions? As you say, as robots may start to become a more normal part of our daily lives, don't we need to integrate these kinds of mindsets in order for them to blend in? Can you picture yourself dressing a robot in ten years?