Had an interesting workshop/lecture about connectivity. Where we would learn how to connect, use and control the arduino via a web interface. What is needed is several components but noticeably Node.js and Johnny-Five would serve as core software components. Johnny-five is a framework suited to control the arduino. Johnny-five is a well documented project and has tons of basic example code on the project site which is very useful when trying to do something quick and fast.
Provided for the lecture was a mini project from instructables, which I found enough to get started in a good way and get a feel for the different components. It comes with some caveats but overall when you have familiarized yourself with it, it could come really in handy when designing prototypes. Basically the function of connecting and using the arduino over the internet gives it additional usability. For that additional function it doesn’t seem to require that much extra work (In comparison with using a specific JavaScript library to model a prototype…), and it sure could pay of a whole lot more.
As I previously stated in my post about IoT, giving the device capability to be controlled via internet doesn’t necessarily yield in higher usability factor, maybe the way we make the interaction becomes a more complex question. But then again the capabilities of interactions via internet isn’t always going to yield a positive experience. What happens when there is no service and device needs to be controlled, does it become useless at that point? How much security will have to be implemented into the device in order for the user to feel secure and have a peace of mind? I can argue a lot against making every gadget “IoT-certified” but as to play around in a quick prototype environment I find arduino and related software components (johhny five, node.js etc) to work very nicely. At end of the day security aspects aren’t really an issue that we (interaction) designers think much of. That’s left for the software developers within the design team, I would guess.
Questions we try to make sense of would, in this case, be rather, is internet enabling the user to use the product in a different way. Is it positive or negative and what happens with those values when the internet function is disabled? As previously mentioned, creating products with internet connectivity is cheap, it’s just a matter of finding the right use for the function.
Haven’t had any real physical meetings with my group the last week. Since I’ve been sick with (traditional) flu. Finally managed to shake of the fewer after being offline for 5 days. What I have missed is roughly the whole Milestone 2 work. I will re-update myself with the new information as soon as we have new group meeting. As I couldn’t develop my concept, I left it to my teammates to iterate and develop any further. The concepts was based around shared custody and problems in communicating between the custodians.
Micro blogg 