NQRemix: Expressing Self Identity and Fostering Community in Student Dorms
Background: This was a course project for Pervasive Interaction Design. The course focused on designing interactive applications through different computing devices (e.g., phones and kiosks) in our environment, as opposed to personal computers. As one of the two members on our team with a software development background, I led the milestone of high-fi prototyping.
To facilitate collaboration, I designed a crash course of prototyping using Adobe Flex for my teammates so that designers, content writer, and developers on our team could collaborate using Adobe tools. I also served as the lead developer to design the overall system architecture and implement the majority of the components.
My role(s): Project Milestone Leader, Researcher, Lead Developer
Collaborator(s): Sayan Bhattacharyya, Danlu Fu, Travis Lafleur, Erin Zolkosky
Motivation: North Quadrangle (NQ) is an academic-dorm complex where students can learn and live together. NQ offers an excellent opportunity for college students to connect with fellow students and form identity. However, as an academic-dorm complex, doors are mostly closed, and busy students pass by without interaction.
Problem Solving: Our team performed a series of design exploration including interviews, persona, user enactment with residents, and hi-fi prototype for a live demonstration. The exploration confirmed our initial observation ("NQ is not social") and led us to design a kiosk that presented itself at areas where people would have a brief pause (e.g., in or in front of an elevator) in their busy lives when they could engage with other residents. The goal was to foster community interaction and develop each individual's unique identity.
Contextual Inquiry
Persona & Scenario
User Enactment
Prototype
Public Demonstration
Outcomes: The outcomes of this project is a kiosk application, NQRemix, that allows residents to see and remix location-filtered and tag-based social media feeds. Residents can mix and match in a magnetic poetry style to remix concepts and ideas that community members generate.
Summary:
Date: 2012 Fall
Concept & Demonstration
North Quad Remix Hi-Fi Prototype Demo from Erin Zolkosky on Vimeo.
A Working Prototype and a Concept Video Explaining the Design Goal
North Quad Remix Video Prototype from Erin Zolkosky on Vimeo.
I taught a crash course for the team so that we get to understand how to use Flash and what visual materials we need so that the artists on our team can help updating and changing the visuals.