This past weekend I was sent to experience a new part of New York. For me it was indeed a new place, and without a doubt a place I will return to sooner than later. This bookstore is a true gem in the heart of Prospect park neighborhood, located on Vanderbilt off Bergen st., Brooklyn. Being a book lover and book designer, I feel like this experience was a perfect fit. The actual shop is […]
This past week did user testing on our prototype, and updated things like the bill of materials and the timeline for the project. We also had a wonderful meeting with Anita Perr, PhD and Clinical Associate Professor, and Kristie Koenig, Chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy at NYU. User Testing On Monday we had the chance to do some user testing is class, which was a great opportunity to see how people reacted to our project […]
In this week’s prototype we experimented with materials to create the physical object of the Silophon. Felt seemed to be a good material to work with for two primary reasons: Felt is a relatively soft material, hopefully encouraging children with autism to engage with it. Felt has a sound-proofing attribute, since it absorbs sound. For the prototype this week, we used foam core as a base, felt, and wooden dowels. Here’s our shopping list! (Bill […]
This weekend I read an article titled As We May Think, written by Vannevar Bush in 1945. In his article, Bush describes a future that can cram data to microformats, making the storage of huge information seem effortless. One of the things I realized through reading this article was how much we have abused the seemingly infinite attribute of modern technology, and our prime source of mega-data, the internet, has turned into a junkyard. Technology […]
Silophon By Louis Minsky and Dalit Shalom Project idea To design a soft toy / musical instrument that is physically silent but generates sound digitally. Background It is well known that some people on the spectrum of Autism are hypersensitive to sound. The characteristic of wanting full control can be very frustrating when it comes to situations with sound where often there is no control. Traumatic experiences with sounds as a child could evidently lead to […]
Here are some photos that document the final prototype of Hydrate.me. To view the making of this project, please click here.
For our Physical Computing midterm, Abhishek, Songee and I paired up and designed a hydration device called Hydrate.me. The device is an electronic coaster that works by sensing the amount of liquid remaining in your bottle and providing a corresponding graphic representation. According to your timer setting, you will be reminded once every so often to drink, and when need to refill your bottle. We worked well together from the very beginning, and started out by brainstorming around […]
This exercise was one of the trickiest yet — I attempted to get plants to grow on the click or the mouse, each time along the X position of the mouse. After playing with the code a bit, I also decided to program the leaves to show up in random values of green on each appearance. Here is a short video of the growing plants: This sketch is part of object oriented programming, which means that […]
This week we are testing the serial output by the Arduino. This specific example has a nice graphical representation that visualizes the serial output that changes according to the potentiometer’s knob turning. To start, we will need the following materials: We will follow this schematic map in order to wire the components together: This is what the end result should look like: Once everything is wired, use this code in Processing import processing.serial.*; […]
On October 1, 2014 I gave a presentation about Guide Dogs in the class Design for Assistive Technology. You can view the presentation by clicking the button below: presentation-guide-dogs-dalit-shalom