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Develop a Case Study on ‘Represencing’

tl;dr: Identify and critically review a case study of a hybrid, tangible or smart object that you can use to build your technical skills with prototyping. You will work to remake some aspect of this device over the next few weeks. To begin, identify a precedent project. Review its own past and experiment with it by represencing (remaking) it or an aspect of its interaction. Use this as a resource for design and skill building. Report your discoveries.

Learning Objectives

In addition to the standard case study objectives, here we specifically hope to:

• Find an example of a technical project that you can use to build your own skills and competencies with prototyping electronic objects.

• To become familiar with practices of prototyping hybrid objects by learning from a relevant prior project.

• Identify a well documented project and become familiar with the inner workings of a specific project by investigating it, its functionality and its experience.

• Identify a reference project that can become useful in adapting and re-working in future projects.

• To learn how others in the field approach the preparation and prototyping of hybrid objects.

Selecting the work(s)

Re:Presences: Review the examples of tangible devices and hybrid objects introduced in class (and more next Tuesday). Choose a precedent that you find interesting and inspiring. This will become a resource for you to learn from, experiment with and adapt for your project work. You will try to remake parts of the interaction or experience (you don’t have to have a perfect replica). Carefully choose the device (avoid objects that use video and audio – these will be complex to reconstruct i.e. keep it simple and approachable!)

Review the device, discuss how it works, and what aspects of it you think are interesting to represence and experiment with.

Preparing your work

• Use the cases and examples offered in spooky tech as a template.
• It should have a by-line that provides the title, credit the creators, include the year
• Offer an image (or two) to illustrate the project
• Find a quote to draw us in
• Describe what the work is, why it matters, and what’s spooky about it?
• Conclude with a few recommended links and resources to explore the ideas further.

What to write up:

Follow the guidelines for posting a case study to Slack. Include in your post about 200-300 words in which you discuss:

1. Briefly introduce your case study in a couple of sentences).
2. Describe why you selected this case study (what is interesting, inspirational, innovative, etc. about it)
3. Unpack any example projects in terms of the how it was made (execution, tools, technologies) and why it was made (context, intent, concept)
4. Describe why the projects are significant or exciting
5. If appropriate: Critique projects - what are their shortcomings; what concerns do you have, etc.
6. Draw relationships between projects: What inspired or informed it? How does it compare to other work? Why is it influential and what has it influenced?

The post should contain supporting materials (video, audio, data, code, documents that will help serve as augmentation of the project narrative and represent the case study to your peers. You should provide at minimum one cover/masthead image at the top of the project and you should import from online sources (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.).

Example formats for a case study are provided in the main case study information