Projects Project ideas

If you find any of the following ideas interesting, contact me for collaboration.

Use the Kinect to embed a person in a video clip

gestural-interactionmsc-project

Interactive immersive video. How can we design videos so that users can interact  by being "transported" into them and triggering actions? Imagine a Kinect that grabs a user's picture and overlays that picture in a pre-recorded video. 

View details »

NFC-augmented displays

interaction designmsc-project

Explore the design space of displays (analogue or digital) that are augmented with NFC tags. What new kinds of interactions can we create beyond the typical "get more info by touching with your smartphone"?


References:
http://www.nearfield.org/

View details »

Communication design study for interactive public displays

computational designmsc-project

Develop and evaluate a set of icons for public display applications that are easily recognizable by users. The public environment imposes several limitations on the attention of users and so it is especially important to have well designed icons that users can recognize rapidly and without much thinking.

http://boxesandarrows.com/optimizing-ui-icons-for-faster-recognition/

View details »

Graphic design for a shop window gesture-based application for the Catolica bookstore

gestural-interactionmsc-project

It's currently relatively easy to develop webpages that can be interacted via pointing gestures captured by a Kinect device.
However, it is less studied the requirements for developing such webpages from the point of view of their graphical and interaction design.
In this project, the goal would be to develop a shopwindow application for showcasing the products of the Catolica bookstore that would allow users to interact by performing pointing gestures at the window, following a "don't click it" interaction style. The focus would be on the challenges imposed by these kind of application/interaction style of the graphical design of the application and on the interaction design.

View details »

Generative book cover tool for the Catolica.Porto editora

computational-designmsc-project

Develop a tool that allows the generative creation of book covers for the Católica.Porto editora. 
This could result in a nice master work about the design process of the tool, including interviewing the main stakeholders to extract requirements, iterate the designs, and evaluate the usage of the tool in a real world setting. 

View details »

GPS audio composition

computational-designcourse-project

Inspired by the GPS drawing project (http://www.gpsdrawing.com/) make a GPS audio composition following the same principle: walk or drive around with your GPS on (you could use several of the now ubiquitous smartphone apps for this), download the data to your computer and use it as a musical score (the main challenge is coming up with an interesting way of turning GPS data (lat, long, alt, time) into music.

View details »

Audio spotlight parametric speaker

course-project

Build an audio parametric speaker (directional speaker). Instructions on: http://zao.jp/radio/parametric/index_e.php 


View details »

Tangible jukebox

tangible-interactionmsc-project

Use the Reactable to play music according to the objects that are put on top of it. Objects should represent music types instead of specific songs.

As an way to make the project more interesting, the system could detect several objects simultaneously and cycle through each one.

The projected interface should display the current system state (current song, next song, album cover)

This could result in a nice demo for TEI: http://www.tei-conf.org

View details »

Singing Fingers on the Reactable

tangible-interactiongestural-interactioncourse-project

Implement an application for the Reactable, similar to the Singing Fingers app for iPad (http://singingfingers.com/).

Ideally, you could take advantage of the fiducial objects and finger tracking of Reactivison to make fingers and objects behave differently. One possibility, for making the implementation easier would be to use a fiducial object for recording, and finger tracking for playback.

This could be implemented with medium difficulty in Processing, MaxMsp, or any other programming language.

This could result in a nice demo for TEI: http://www.tei-conf.org

View details »

"Don't click it"-style interface with Kinect

gestural-interactionmsc-projectcourse-project

Create an interface similar to the one on http://www.dontclick.it  (you can see a video recording of the site here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIYdBl-Q7pY&feature=youtu.be) where you can interact with gestures captured with a Kinect device. 

Ideally, the interface should be web-based (HTML5 + Javascript). 

This could also be a research project into studying and evaluating free gesture navigation, from the usability, speed, accuracy, etc., perspectives.

View details »

Generative design cover for the CITAR Journal

computational-designcourse-project

The CITAR Journal is an academic publication on various areas related to science, technology, and the arts. This project involves creating a generative cover design for an issue of this journal, using Processing. More info on the journal: http://artes.ucp.pt/citarj

View details »

Sharetape player

tangible-interactioncourse-project

Implement a player device that is able to read sharetapes (http://www.sharetapes.com/)  or a similar kind of tape (maybe just QR code based, or just NFC based). The player should have a graphical visualization interface that displays the status of the playing.

Picture from sharetapes.com:

View details »

Crystal glass multi-touch table interface

gestural-interactioncourse-project

Make a "crystal glass" interface in a multi-touch table that allows users to fill or empty the glasses and then play the tunes. 
Watch this for inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lAEXH9DAH98

View details »

Public tangible beatbox

tangible-interactionmsc-project

Objective: Study the use of tangible musical interfaces in public environments, by designing, implementing, and evaluating the usage of a tangible beatbox system.

Description: Inspired by Incredibox (http://www.incredibox.com/en/#/application) create an application for the Reactable table where the objects represent the various kinds of beats, effects, etc. The interface should a graphical representation of the beats (not necessarily using human characters like Incredibox). Use special mute and solo objects. Follow an interaction design process that starts with sketches, mock ups, etc., to help define what the final system should look and function like. Study the usage of such a system in a public environment. 

What are the challenges of designing such a system for a public environment?
How do people react? How do people use the system? Does this kind of system make sense in a public place, why? What lessons can be learned from this system and generalized to other tangible musical interfaces for public places?


View details »

Tangible vs digital interface for public display control

msc-project

Design tangible and digital interfaces for controlling the content that appears on a public display, (in a café environment, for example). Compare their usage.

View details »