My Master of Science Final Project and Thesis: tangible interaction interfaces in everyday objects using Arduino

After some years of really hard studying (and actually some great fun :-) ) I finally completed all the exams in my Master of Science in Computer Science! That's great, isn't it?

So, I spent the month after my last exam meeting professors from my university in order to find a great final project and a thesis to work on.

Well, I have to say that I received some great offers of projects from the professors, some of them really matched my studies curricula but I finally decided to move to a quite new (for me at least) field of Computer Science: I'll explain you why below.

From Hardcore Computer Science to User Experience

University taught me a lot. I arrived the first year that I was barely able to write a for loop (I did some little programming in High School) and I'm now really skilled in a lot of CS fields: I'm able to use any kind of programming and database language; I can understand, design and evaluate complex networks; I'm able to model and simulate complex systems and really a lot of other things.. I'm really happy of my studies: kudos to all my professors.

While I was studying, I always kept me busy with projects aside from the University. Somehow I needed to be involved in something different from university projects: something that I could enjoy, so that my geekiness could be satisfied. I've been a web developer, network consultant, linux teacher, floss developer, computer technician, etc..

So, I have to say that this working experiences actually taught me a lot: things that University courses don't covers. For example I became a pretty experienced Linux user, I'm able to develop standard compliant and good looking web pages, I know how to program a Drupal module, I know how to conduct an usability test and really a lot of other cool and CV relevant stuff.

One of the things that I learned is the importance of the user and its user experience. Users are the key factors in most of the projects. If users are unable to use your product/website/program/etc.. well it's better for you to change your job because you won't be commercially successful.

Usability, the science which study how easily users are able to use a given object/website/program/etc, slowly became one of the field I'm most interested on. Dealing with people, is in my opinion really more interesting and personally rewarding.

Focusing on code or people?

Imagine this scenario:
you have a program which is used to resize an image. Your program is great, it uses great algorithms and it's really fast. You actually spent the last 2 weeks implementing a new algorithm which is now able to convert your picture in 80% of the older algorithm. That's cool you rocks!

Still, one of your users takes 1 min to 5 min to resize an image. Why? Your algorithm is so fast that it should took 200 ms.. What's happening?

Well.. your users got stuck on the user interface of your program. It's so complex and bloated that even a photographer or a programmer has problems understanding what it does.

So, you spent 2 weeks in developing the new algorithm.. but why didn't you took 30 min to watch one of your users using your app? You would have understood that your program interface sucks and nobody is able to use that.

People or users are more important to me

Ok, the above tries to explain almost everything. At university I studied how to create super fast algorithm, super cool networks, great applications.. but after the experiences in my side projects I started wondering.. Is this where shuold I really focus?

I think that the goal of everyone should be making life easier for other people (yes, that's quite pretencious but I'm really convinced in that). This, coupled with the fact that I really think that there is a lot of work to do in the usabily of most computer related (and not) things, finally make me decide to choose Usability and User Experience / Interactions as base to my final project and thesis.

Let's be Tangible!

One of the research fields related to user experience which has always been pretty cool to me are Tangible User Interfaces, a user interface in which a person interacts with digital information through the physical environment. This is why when Prof. Console offered me the opportunity to practice in this field I started to be pretty entusiast!

He proposed me to use Arduino, a low cost electronic circuits board and software especially developed for interaction design prototypes, to create some prototypes of tangible user interfaces. OK OK, this is pretty pretentious but we'll move gradually and slowly.

Project steps

Firstly I'll have to start experiencing with Arduino: it's quite a completely new world for me. In Computer Science we study software. Arduino is pure hardware. I don't know almost anything in circuits, resistors, capacitors, etc.. Well, I do remember something learned in High School but that's quite foggy in my memories.

So, this first part of the project will be on experiencing with all of this. Getting back my old book on circuits and revise all of that stuff.

After that I'll move on Arduino programming. The Arduino platform seems quite well documented: the website is full of examples and there a quite well frequented user forum which will probably come in hand.

While experiencing with Arduino I'll have to read a lot about Interaction Desing, User Experience, Usability, Tangible Interface, etc.. I'll be reading standard books, papers, conference slides and I'll search the web and video websites for anything interesting.

I'd like to get a quite complete overview of the current statuses of these fields.

After that I'd like to clone some of the Tangible User Interfaces prototypes I'll read about. This will make me still more comfortable in Arduino prototyping as well as giving me insights on how to create a tangible interface with it.

Then I'll start working on my prototypes.. I still don't really have a clue on what this will be.. still I'm pretty excited on this!

Let's keep in touch

During the whole project I'll be updating this blog with my progresses. I'm doing this so that I'll be able to share my ideas, finding, etc with the world and I'll be also able to have a online project diary that I'll be able to use as source while I'll write my thesis.

If you are interested in this project and everything which will came out of it you can check this web pages regularly or subscribe to this project RSS feed. I hope to hear your comments!

Conclusions

I'm pretty happy for all of this: with this thesis I'll be able to merge two of my passions: user experience/usability as well as hardware hacking! Pretty cool! I'm looking forward working on all of this stuff!